I went after photos of a matsuri at Miwa Jinja today. It turns out that I like the photos of the grounds more than the ones of the actual festivities. Recently I don’t like taking photos of people as much as I do taking photos of things. It’s interesting: On one hand I find myself wondering if this somehow has a deeper psychological meaning and on the other, I really don’t care if it does or not.
I almost never feel guilty taking photos of random things, but human subjects sometimes cause me worry or even grief. This stems partly from the Japanization of my perception and values over the past decade, I’m sure. I still don’t bow when I speak on the phone at work to clients, although this is somewhat of a conscious effort not to do so when it’s a really high ranking executive who could affect our bottom line to any significant extent, or have my head by expressing displeasure at the tone of sincerity in my transactions.
Month: April 2004
Japanzine Award
Last week I received an e-mail from Ed Jacobs, the editor at Japanzine stating that this blog had been chosen for a “Best of the Web” award. Japanzine is a free magazine of high quality distributed all over Japan and I have been reading it since its past life as The Alien. Anyway, they have an online version of the zine as well and the “Japan Blogging Scene” article this blog was featured in can be seen at:
http://www.japan-zine.com/0404/Feature1.htm (link updated 4/30/04)
C. Buddha’s Hasty Musings is sandwiched between Antipixel and 35 Degrees, two of my favorite photo blogs (if I can be so forward as to term them such). All I can say is: We’re. Not. Worthy.
Props to Japanzine!
P.S. to Bill: You should stock Japanzine at the bar. They are looking for new distros. I’ll bring the current issue this weekend to show you the ad (read: to brag with).
P.P.S. to Japanzine’s webmaster: Please fix my link! (It’s appearing as a relative URL because there is no protocol prefix.)
Violated by Nurse Naomi
Went to do the annual physical for work today. Came back with bruised needle tracks. It was frightening to watch this inexperienced nurse with sweaty, fumbly hands try to find a vein in my arms. I swear to god this chick was blind in a previous life, because she used that needle like a walking stick, tap tap tap on one arm and then the other. Frustrated by lack of success, she binded both my arms with surgical tubing at the same time and told me to open and close my hands and sit in a corner for a few minutes (bitch, my arms turned blue before you came back).
No longer willing to persevere with the standard setup, she pulled the QUEEN MOTHER OF SYRINGES from a toolbox of medical goodies and started waving it in front of my face, saying, “now this might hurt a little.” I started whimpering in protest right then and there – the goddam thing looked like a turkey baster with a really long bicycle pump needle fitted on it. In my mind, we had the following conversation:
“Now wait just a goddam minute – just how much blood do you need?”
“Just a bit”
“So why can’t you use a smaller syringe – the hollow tip of that needle looks like a fucking cookie cutter!”
“Why, you’re right. You know what? I’ve stabbed you so many times today, I’ll just collect the blood smeared on all the needles I’ve used and that should be enough for our purposes. You are free to proceed to the hearing test.”
In reality, of course, things happened differently. She sucked many shot glasses worth of blood along with half of my right bicep into that syringe like a Hoover and the high point of the entire day was that I got to yell “OOOW! YER SUCKIN’ TOO HARD!” in public and started trembling with the kind of laughter that causes physical pain (needle in arm), but is somehow worth it.
By the time my exsanguination was complete, there were fifteen other guys waiting to get poked and they all thought my outburst was pretty funny. Except for the next guy in line. He was visibly disturbed when Nurse Naomi started squirting my blood from the syringe into the vials.
Update: It turns out that about one in four people are getting poked in both arms by this angel of destruction. Those are some seriously horrendous numbers. I can understand that doctors suck at needlework, but for nurses this sort of incompetence is unforgivable. To my little sister who plans to start med school next year: Please take this advice. Practicing on lemons and oranges isn’t good enough.
Say Wut?
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Um, as flattering as that is, I think this quiz is kinda sus. Aside from the fact that my English has acquired that unmistakably “Fresh Off the Boat” quality from living overseas for a decade, every single person whose results (I just mistyped that as “resluts”) I’ve seen have been “Grammar God.” I object to this title being passed out like penicillin ampules at a syphilis convention; it’s a stinging insult to my monotheistic way of life (I worship the One True God of Technoeroticism and may you heathens forever burn in Luddite hell).
Finders fee (TBD) goes to Biggie for the quiz.
Toyota Prius
After lengthy observation, I have come to a conclusion: In Japan, the Toyota Prius is a car marketed for a single demographic, namely, painfully slow drivers. I have never seen such a bunch of I-can’t-drive-55 brake tapping, hesitating, yellow light anticipating, slow-ass idiots. If this is the price us normal folk must pay to “save the environment,” I say we start a “Spit at the Prius” campaign in retribution.
Seriously, the way these people drive really makes me wonder if there actually is a gasoline engine in there among the fields of capacitors and NiMH batteries. A Prius owner I recently spoke with affirmed his penchant for driving at Nader-like levels and explained that the more he idles and breaks, the more the batteries are recharged. Now this is a level of idiocy I hadn’t previously regarded as being possible, but there it is. This guy had been blindfolded and brainwashed by the “eco-driving” crowd and somehow thinks he is doing the world a big fucking favor by stepping on the brakes and imitating an electric wheelchair.
Let me tell you pal, I’d be a lot happier if you rode a goddamn mamachari (granny bicycle) and got the hell off the road. You might not be saving mother earth, but you might not get a tree planted in your ass, either.
Kikkoman
Posted at Nam’s request:
Show Me, Show You
The albino black sheep site it’s hosted on has a lot of interesting stuff on it, check it out. The site’s claim to fame is the famous google spoof , French military victories and its accompanying list of French military defeats.
I 5uXX0r
Cruftety, cruftety, cruft. Anybody who comes here now can see how cruftily I have crufted together this site. I spent so much time on the css with no clue of what controlled what, I have ended up with a hodgepodge design. Still, I kind of like it but my inability to tweak the little places that need it is driving me insane. Of course, it might help if I spent more than ten minutes on it at a time, but then again maybe not.
Apology to an ancient Sun Goddess
Dear Ama-chan,
I am sorry that I called you a man. Please forgive me; as a typical male I automatically attribute spears, muddy work, and world creation to other men without thinking that it might be the work of a female.
Please do not pout (it makes your eyes all puffy and swollen) and stay in your cave all year; rice is too expensive as it is.
Love,
Justin
P.S. Here is a link to one of your other fans:
“The rice does not grow without Her.”
Update: I was apologizing for the wrong reason. While Amaterasu IS a female deity, Izanami was the one who did the spear work (yeah I KNEW a girl couldn’t do that!). Timothy Takemoto straightens me out in the comments of the original post. You see, I really am fascinated by this stuff. It’s just my chronic memory loss that gets in the way.
Monster Island
The reference in my new top banner to monster island is not a reference to Godzilla or Mothra, but rather to the cats that insist on crapping in the vicinity of my car. Some friends in Nara insist on calling me, alternatively, “tamanegi-kun” (onion boy, a reference to the famously delicious onions grown here), or “the guy from monster island” (This is a reference to the fact that I live out in the boonies. Alas, ’tis like the pot calling the kettle cookware.)
Also, not to be misleading, but the bridge in the photo is not the Awaji Kaikyo Bridge (the longest suspension bridge in the world connecting my island to Kobe). It’s the Kansai International Airport Access Bridge (click here for details) that links the airport to the mainland. In an ironic twist of fate, however, the airport is a manmade island created by digging away entire mountains on my island and dumping them into the sea. Even today I saw the huge earthmoving machines transporting the dirt onto barges at Sumoto port, preparing them for the next runs to the airport where they are adding to the island to create more runways. For some reason, I think this sucks. Of course, I think everything sucks, but I find this disturbing on a spiritual level.
You see, according to ancient myth the island of Awajishima (uh, what I have been referring to as “my island”) is the origin of the rest of terra firma. Some bad ass named Amaterasu stuck his spear in the ocean floor and when he pulled it out the first drops became Awajishima (actually the very first drop became Nushima). I guess when Amaterasu busted out the shovel to dig the Mariana Trench things got messy and he created the continents, and when he hocked a random loogie it became Tsutenkaku (go read my comment before they delete it).