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Kitten Update: I need your advice
The cat is permanently blind in one eye. The eyedrops received at the first trip to the vet worked for his right eye, which is now normal, but the left eyeball has burst like a rotting grape. Eeew. Poor Yoda (now his official name since we are very unlikely to find a home for him with someone else) is in pain when his eye needs to get flushed with sodium wash. We have to hold his little kitty paws as he mews in pain. Absolutely heartbreaking I tell you. At this point I have stopped hating society as a whole for abandoning this little baby (the vet says he was…
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Goblin Nation
Yesterday reaffirmed my contempt for the Japanese police. My little sister, who lives in Sakai (Osaka), got home from teaching her morning classes at noon. There was a strange guy lurking around the stairs of her apartment building who set alarm bells ringing off in her head, so she hurriedly rode the elevator up to the 7th floor. She looked down the staircase once to see if he had followed her that way, but there was no sign of him. Just before she got to her door, she turned around to find the guy standing right behind her! Startled, she took a swing at him and started yelling at the…
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A-Diamond Railing
I’m convinced that railing on a ferry exists mainly because the water is so damn inviting on a hot summer day.
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Pink skies over Awaji
It was more impressive to the naked eye.
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Sunset over KIX
My patented diagonal horizon.
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Ship Rat
Kuro digging into shrimp/meat clumps hand picked from our cup ramens.
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Precarious
You never know what you may find strapped haphazardly to overloaded big rigs on the Kobe expressway. This was fairly scary, but even scarier was the truck in front of it carrying a reinforced stainless steel tank labeled TOXIC that was weaving between lanes like an Indy driver. Idiots.
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Set-tripping and the Art of Parts Procurement
Mondays. I fucking hate Mondays. I am muttering this weekly mantra as I walk into a meeting with a problematic vendor yesterday morning. After greetings, bowing, and the compulsory 30 seconds of silence, I open with a blunt: “Your parts suck, Suzuki-san. One in every twenty are failing incoming testing. This is unacceptable.” “But Yoshida-san, you asked for them to be made as cheaply as possible…” he offers, weakly. It is time to unload with both barrels: “Never at the expense of quality. Never. Did we ask you to make shitty parts, or inexpensive parts? Because if the last ten years of recession has taught us anything, it is that…
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Korea Blocks Blog Access
Hot from the inbox: Fellow blogger, I am sending this message to the bloggers on my blogroll (and a few other folks) in the hopes that some of you will print this, or at least find it interesting enough for comment. I’m not usually the type to distribute such messages, but I felt this was important enough to risk disturbing you. As some of you may already know, a wing of the South Korean government, the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC), is currently clamping down on a variety of blogging service providers and other websites. The government is attempting to control access to video of the recent Kim Sun-il…
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Nail Factory Kana
My cousin Kana opened a nail salon behind Tenri station.
