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Access Interrupt
If we’re Skyping and I suddenly go offline, you’ll all know why: Fiber Haters, a.k.a. Cicadas UPDATE: Oh, great. The crows are out to get me, too. (via Magnoy)
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Benikamikiri
T solved my weekend bug mystery. The answer is Purpuricenus (Sternoplistes) temminckii, a name even your best friends couldn’t remember. Let’s just call him beni-kun.
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Future Spirits
Taro’s aunts called from Horyuji to say they were harvesting this year’s plums from the ancient trees in their front yard and to ask if I wanted to come pick up the resulting umeshu in seven or eight years. Um, yes. I can think of many stupider reasons I’ve heard for visiting Japan.
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Bottled Water
In general, bottled water from France is expensive and disgusting. Funny, it doesn’t taste nearly as bad drinking it when you’re in France. Maybe they save the good stuff for domestic consumption and export the lower grades. After all, that’s what Japan does with, say, solar panels (I’ve seen the sorting bins at the factory so I know this to be true; Grade A stays in Japan, Grade B is exported to America, and anything below that is shipped everywhere else.). The worst tasting bottled water, in my opinion, is evian. And of course, evian spelled backwards is naive. That is as far as I can bear to think today,…
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Red Mystery Beetle
Anybody know offhand what this bad boy is? (click on image to enlarge) I found him crawling on my car last month. When I tried to touch him, he flew off into the wind. UPDATE #1: I’ve put in an inquiry to What’s That Bug. They say they are swamped, but maybe something will work out. UPDATE #2: Whats That Bug wrote back: Hi Justin, We believe this beauty is one of the Cerambycid Longhorns, though we are not positive, and we have no idea of the species. The list of specimens that could use Eric Eaton’s assistance is growing and we are not sure when he will return from…
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Akashi Kaikyo Bridge Photos
Some photos Nam took with her new Coolpix S6 when we passed under the longest suspension bridge in the world (4km) last month on the Taco Ferry (this “taco” means “octopus” even though they spell it with a “c”). Update: Hi-res versions of these photos, plus more, can be found here: http://flickr.com/photos/cbuddha/sets/72157594175411073/
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Parking Inspector Assault #2
This time it happened in Okayama, the home of Momotaro (the chldren’s story character, not the kaitenzushi chain): Man busted for biting parking inspector Now I’m just waiting for the first BIG story to hit. You know, “Man Drags Parking Inspector 2 Kilometers, Claims He Thought It Was Rat,” or, “Angry Ninjutsu Student Disembowels Parking Inspector,” something like that. Followed by a critical review of how revenues collected from third-party ticket collections aren’t reaching the projects they were intended for, how parking inspectors are ticketing innocent cars because they work on an underhand commission from their employers, and how it’s STILL FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND A PARKING SPACE ANYWHERE IN…
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Lead Belly
I was doing some research on Lead Belly for a blues project I’ve been kicking around in my head, when it occurred to me that he lived until 1949 and there might be video footage… YouTube to the rescue. (The video is actually pretty lame unless you are interested in Lead Belly. This video, however, is pretty entertaining and completely unrelated to the subject of this post.)
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Kentaro redux
Somebody upped a better version of the DJ Kentaro/Shinichi Kinoshita clip from NHK’s LiveJam last year. This is basically his best stuff so far, besides the Solid Steel compilation, so it’s worth posting again. I got so hooked on the Solid Steel CD, it was loaded in my car stereo for five months straight.
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Doggy Love
Some Japanese really love their pets… And among those that do, some choose to express that love in strange ways.
