I was in the small town of Suwa on Sunday, and had lunch with friends at a cafe owned by an Iranian man. The coffee was good and the chicken curry with flat bread was excellent. We lingered over our coffees, visiting and occasionally chatting with the owner who of course asked where we were from because that’s just what you do here when you see other non-Japanese. Three of us are from America, one is Canadian. When it came time to leave, we each paid individually and I was the last to pay. As he said goodbye, the owner added — quietly and with a pleasant smile on his face — “Please kill Saddam Hussein.” It was so unexpected I wanted to double-check to see if I’d heard correctly. But it really wasn’t something I wanted to hear again, so I just smiled, waved and left. I’m still wondering if it’s what he actually said or something I imagined.
Zenkoji Go-kai-chyou Receiving Ceremony
Last Sunday saw the unofficial start of Nagano’s most important festival — the Zenkoji Go-kai-chyou. This festival is held only once every seven years at Zenkoji Temple, when a sacred statue of Buddha is revealed to the public. I’m still trying to put together background information on the festival and on Zenkoji, so I’m going to save that for a later post.
The event on Sunday was to celebrate the delivery of a wooden pillar from Matsushiro (a neighboring city) to Zenkoji. The pillar plays a central role in the Go-kai-chyou festival.
I’ve posted photos of the procession and the subsequent ceremony at Zenkoji, along with some videos and sound clips. The video clips will be up on the Photos & Flicks page for a limited time.
The photos are here.
The Mask
The next global, must-have fashion accessory? Likely to be the surgical mask There was a spread in the Japan Times today showing a collection of fashion-enhanced masks.
It’s very common to see surgical masks in Japan and in other Asian nations. People here wear them when they have a cold (to politely prevent the spread of germs) and also to protect themselves from the cedar pollen that makes so many Japanese miserable at this time of the year.
With the fear that’s spreading more quickly than the actual SARS virus, I’d say it’s only a matter of time before wearing surgical masks becomes common throughout the world.
Thanks to v-2 Organisation for the photo link.
Shadows & Light
MacDara also snapped some great shots of the interior of a cinema while waiting for the show to start.
Hubble Captures Light Echo
These are time-lapse images of an erupting star, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The first image was taken in May 2002, and the final image seven months later in December 2002. You can get more information and see additional photos on the Hubble Site.
(Thanks to ChariOtaku for this link.)
WWII Leaflets Dropped On Japan
Tim over at ChariOtaku has found a picture of a leaflet dropped by US forces on cities and towns in Japan during WWII. It’s what you might call “truth in advertising.”
Hirosaki Trip
I had a four-day break from work last weekend, so I took a trip up to Hirosaki, a medium-sized city near the northern tip of Honshu, the main island of Japan.
To get there, I bought a special ticket called the seishun juuhachi kippu, which is only offered during periods that coincide with student holidays. For about US$100, the ticket gives you five nonconsecutive days of unlimited travel on local trains. Cheap, but slow. Travel between Nagano and Hirosaki took 15 hours each way. But I had time to spare, I love riding trains, and the scenery was great.
I rode on six different trains, taking me through many cities and towns along the way:
Nagano –> Arai
Arai –> Niigata
Niigata –> Murakami
Murakami –> Sakata
Sakata –> Akita
Akita –> Hirosaki
Much of the trip between Niigata and Akita was right along the coast of the Sea of Japan. The weather was spectacular and the views were great as the trains traveled through small coastal villages.
Through the mountains between Nagano and Arai, and then again between Akita and Hirosaki, there was still a lot of snow. In Hirosaki, banks of snow remained, but it was melting quickly in the warm, spring sunshine.
I visited Hirosaki because it’s where my great-grandfather lived in the last years of the 1800s. There is a museum in Hirosaki that contains family photos, letters, diaries and more. My grandmother visited the city in 1991 along with her four children for the dedication of the museum. I’ll be posting more about this part of my visit to Hirosaki soon.
I’ve added two photo albums of the trip:
Local trains to Hirosaki:
I love trains.
Nagano to Hirosaki:
Scenery as seen from many trains, and photos of Hirosaki.
I’ve also added nine video clips taken during the trip.
Who’s To Blame?
It’s surely not a good sign, especially so early in the war, for the generals and the secretary of defense to already be laying the groundwork for passing blame. Is there any better way to tell when a war is going badly?
First, anonymous Pentagon officials spread disparaging comments about Rumsfeld:
Report: Rumseld Ignored Pentagon Advice on Iraq
Reuters (via Yahoo! News)
“He thought he knew better. He was the decision-maker at every turn,” the article quoted an unidentified senior Pentagon planner as saying. “This is the mess Rummy put himself in because he didn’t want a heavy footprint on the ground.” It also said Rumsfeld had overruled advice from war commander Gen. Tommy Franks to delay the invasion until troops denied access through Turkey could be brought in by another route and miscalculated the level of Iraqi resistance.
Then, Rumsfeld drops a subtle comment during a news briefing, shifting responsibility for the war back onto General Tommy Franks.
Pentagon News Briefing Transcript
New York Times Online (reg. required)
Rumsfeld: “Well, we’re one week into this and it seems to me it’s a bit early for history to be written, one would think. The war plan is Tom Franks’ war plan. It was carefully prepared over many months.”
Ultimate responsibility, of course, lies with neither man, but with the commander-in-chief.
Copy Protected CDs In Japan
It seems that most of the new CDs here in Japan are being released with copy protection. I’m wondering whether Japanese consumers are complaining about this?
As far as I can decipher from the labels (the image here is a big sticker on the front of the CD; there’s more detailed usage information on the back), you cannot rip music from these CDs into a digital format of your choice. You can listen to the CD on a computer, but only if you’re using Windows and a media player with digital rights restrictions. You can’t listen to one of these CDs on your computer if you’re using a Macintosh. They also won’t work in DVD players (including Sony’s PlayStation).
At least they’re labeled well — you can’t miss that you’re about to buy music that limits listening options.
There have been several new releases that I’ve wanted to purchase, but I don’t even own a CD player. All of my listening is done on my Mac or with an MP3 player. That means no new CDs for me.
The strange thing about these copy protected CDs appearing in Japan is that there’s a huge market for renting CDs here. At any number of big rental stores, you can grab a CD along with the DVD you rent for the night. I thought I remembered reading once that the Japanese music industry never really complained about this because there was a tax built into either the rentals or the sale of blank CD-Rs, and that money went to compensate for any copying that occurred. Or maybe it was because widespread CD copying didn’t occur until just recently. Anyone know more about this than I do?
We all need to remember that unless consumers complain about these copy protected CDs, the recording industry is going to get away with restricting the lawful rights of fair use. You pay for the music — it’s yours to do with what you want (within the law). Listening to the music you purchased on the device of your choice is not breaking the law.
Stern Man
An extreme close-up of a photo I took of a politician speaking from his soundtruck near the station. Typically, Japanese politicians will stand on top of a large van — with huge speakers pointing in all directions — and disrupt the peace with campaign speeches that no one pays attention to.
The man in this photo is not the politician, but one of his entourage who saw me taking the picture and evidently didn’t like what he saw.