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Sapporo Lion Ginza
From the street, it’s pretty unremarkable, just another Sapporo Lion beer hall with a display of plastic food in a big, modern building. But stepping inside this place was a surprise. This beer hall was designed and built by Eizou Sugawara in 1934. It’s gorgeous. It’s an art deco cavern. At the far end, a…
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My kitchen sings
My kitchen sings a symphony of morningtime domesticity. The watery swish and thump of the washer sets the tempo for an 18 minute concerto. The coffemakers clucks and chirps melodiously. The psst of spray cleaner on the countertop, whisper of sponge, and the legato smoothness of water from the tap join in the chorus. The…
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Get me out of here
I’m itching to get out of Tokyo for a daytrip. In the first two years we lived here, we often went for hikes or short trips on the weekends. We travelled all over Japan on these little jaunts. But the last two years have been more settled–on the weekends we have social engagements, work commitments,…
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Astronomy links
I’ve always been fascinated by things in the night sky; when I was a little girl I wanted to be an astronaut. I memorized sky charts and read all the classic science fiction epics. Living in a city, I don’t get to see the night sky, so I content myself with NASA’s Astronomy Picture of…
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Food news
Two articles in today’s news: Police raid firm in Mister Donut caseGov’t to abolish Food Agency The juxtaposition generates amusing ideas about what the Food Agency is doing. Covert food ops, no doubt.
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Slogging blogging
What’s happened to my schedule? It’s a quarter to 4 in the afternoon and I’m just now realising I didn’t blog this morning. Maybe all the computer troubles around me are throwing me off kilter. Yesterday’s chicken-waving session with MJ didn’t yield any useful results and today I’m in my office fighting with Premiere 6.…
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Denzuin
Ack! It’s 11:45 in the morning and haven’t blogged yet today. I’ve been caught up in writing an article and answering e-mail. Now I have to leave to go wave a dead chicken at MJ’s computer so forgive me if all I give you today is a photo series. This is Denzuin, an old and…
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Children’s procession
As we prepared to leave the house yesterday morning, we heard drumming echoing around the neighborhood. “Hey, let’s go find that!” I said. I’m always interested in local festivals. As it turns out, the drumming came to us. We left the building, we saw a parade of children and parents pulling a little shrine at…
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Caution, subtitles
In video stores in Japan, foreign movies make up the bulk of films for rent. And they come in two varieties: dubbed in Japanese and subtitled in Japanese. Which means the unwary English speaker sometimes ends up with a subtitled movie where the original language isn’t English. As an example, we rented Jackie Chan’s Accidental…
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Tax office efficiency
Yesterday I went to the tax office; I needed to pick up a copy of a form I’d failed to fill in at tax time. I pondered for a moment over which office to enter–the none of the complicated kanji combinations on the directory in the lobby exactly matched the one on my letter–and finally…
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