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Yakatabune
Yakatabune! Dining on Tokyo Bay. Floating parties on ships like these are a summer tradition dating back centuries. Poetry readings and courtly music have been replaced by karaoke, but the spirit is the same. It was fun to dress up in yukata.
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Typhoon Chataan
Typhoon Chataan blew through yesterday (so much for too little rain) and by 2:30 this morning, it was extraordinarily windy. We battened down the hatches and went to sleep. This morning the sky is bright and clear except for an appalling haze of pollution around the horizon.
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It’s stopped raining
It’s stopped raining. Yesterday’s weather was hot and humid–typical Tokyo summer. We’re due to have thundersorms over the next couple of days, but that’s not a typical rainy season all-day drizzle. Looks like tsuuyu is over. If so, that was a very short rainy season. Farmers rely on a long tsuuyu to keep the rice…
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Naming hills
Tokyo has a lot of hills with names. Streets generally don’t have names, but the hills do: Andozaka, Tomisaka, Dangozaka. A few of them are well-known for their neighborhoods or train stations–Kagurazaka, Nogizaka, Akasaka–and there are plenty that loan their names to busy intersections, but many are only etched onto historical signs dotting the local…
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Julianne live
Julianne is a musician I know through DigitalEve. Last night she played at the Artist’s Cafe, a bar/restaurant on the 43rd floor of Tokyo Dome Hotel. Although I’ve heard her music recorded, I’ve never heard her live, so Tod & I met at the hotel after work and listened to a set. Julianne’s music mixes…
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Countdown
Shortly after Tod & I arrived in Japan, we saw a big billboard with a digital display counting down the number of days remaining until the 2002 World Cup. It was a lot of days in the future, why should anyone care? In Shibuya this week, I noted a sign counting down the days to…
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Brand name fever
I’ve never been sure whether to believe the idea that Japanese are excessively fond of brand names. None of the Japanese women I know display flashy, expensive belongings that are outside their means. If they have them, they don’t flaunt them. Since showing off is the main purpose of brand name goods, I think they…
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No more loanwords
The education ministry is setting up a committee “to propose ways to prevent too many imported words from entering the Japanese language.” Spoken Japanese is a mishmash of Japanese and ‘loan words’ from English, French, German, Dutch & other languages. Rendered in katakana, often both the pronunciation and the meaning change from the original. Are…
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Take that, smokers
Japan is one of the most smoker-friendly places I’ve ever lived. So many people smoke here I forget sometimes what it’s like to breathe non-smoky air. But one of Tokyo’s wards just passed a new ordinance against smokers–the first one of its kind in the country. As of October 1, Chiyoda-ku is banning smoking outdoors…
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World Cup view
This was my view of last night’s exciting US-Germany game. Although the US lost, they played well. One shot on goal really might have been a goal, but it was ruled not. Even in the instant replays, it was hard to tell if it went in or not. Half the US team got yellow-carded for…
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