I get all sentimental thinking about the Citroens we had. I had a BX and Taro had an AX. The funny thing is that Taro got them both for free, the BX from a professor at Tenri university and the AX from an OBGYN who worked at the hospital his mom stayed at when she got sick. That BX was a tempermental French piece of shit, but it had the smoothest ride because of the hydraulic system, which also allowed me to slam the car to the ground when it was parked and prevented donut-eaters from placing a boot on my tire more than once.
I broke the tranny on my BX by fucking around in the mountains and slam-shifting. We later found out that the ATF had never been changed (for 60,000 kilos over 8 years). It was like black mud.
Taro crashed the AX and caused a three car collision on his way to see a girl in Nagoya. He had been fucking aroung changing CDs and didn’t notice cars stopping on the highway in front of him. A sad sidenote of what was never meant to be is that he never told the girl he was going to see her because he wanted it to be a surprise, and he lost all interest in seeing her in the aftermath of the crash. Also, he “fucking hates” Nagoya now (before, he only “hated” it).
ISO 14001 Compliant
This is a warning that I will be archiving posts that I liked on my old blog on this one because I want that tingling feeling on my scalp from feeding the monster that is RSS. Don’t worry, I will recycle in a responsible manner so as not to disturb the natural surroundings. I’ll just filter out all the hate and venom from the posts, and then maybe I’ll screw a tree just to show you that I really do care about baby seals.
Sunset on the Awaji Bridge
Every so often, I hear of people jumping off the Awaji bridge. Most recently, it was a police officer. It would never really occur to me to go out that way, simply because it seems stupid to me to die by jumping into water, unless you don’t mind drowning if the fall doesn’t kill you. In that sense, the Awaji Straits would be a good place to drown if you didn’t want your body to be found, cause they are DEEP… You would end up as octopus bait or something.
It always strikes me as funny when people say that when jumping from a great height, hitting the water is the same as hitting concrete. I tend to doubt this statement and would ask those people if they would rather land in water or on concrete from any given height, assuming they wanted to live. I would choose water any day.
Of course, if you jump from the Awaji Bridge, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll land on the deck of a supertanker or car transport, seeing as it’s one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world… Then again, you might land in the swimming pool of a cruise ship, so I guess it evens out.
Kizu Sky
I like the details and colors of this photo more on the screen of my keitai, a fact which has exactly zero value to you, dear reader.
The Road to Kizu
Kizu is an area between Nara and Kyoto where Taro showed us the best junk/secondhand/recycle shops we have ever seen. Didn’t take any pictures inside because I was having too much fun looking at stuff.
Brimful of Asha
I once drank a pinchful of vibhuti, sacred ash, dissolved in a cup of water at the insistence of a crazy white guy I met in Japan who was a follower of Sai Baba. He told me great things about Sai Baba and how he conjured this ash from nothingness.
Now, I am fascinated with India and always have been – it’s high on my “to experience” list – but this one point regarding the ash always gnawed at me. I mean, really, why ash? Why not something useful like powdered milk to feed the hungry masses or graphite powder for lubricating squeaky rickshaw axels? The guy didn’t offer an explanation as to what kind of ash it was but it smelled like sandalwood. Maybe it was the feathery ash of burnt incense ground down to a fine powder. Either way, this guy insisted that I would pretty much feel a warm healing power streaming from my chakras as soon as I downed this cup of ash-water. Well, some did get stuck in my teeth and tasted gritty, kind of like a faceful of sandy water when you play in heavy surf at the beach and get tossed around, but the waves of energy simply did not appear. It was not for lack of effort, I really wanted to feel the rush as described, but it just did not happen.
I think Sai Baba should implement a Quality Plan and get ISO certification if possible. I think I got a bad batch of ash that day.
Update: There may be some image problems to work out, too.
Product Diversification
Scoop of the Year: The mattresses at the Mitsui Garden Hotel in Nara are made by Toyota. True futon otakus know the Toyota I speak of is not the same company that makes the 376mpg Prius.
Free Blog Comparison Link (Japanese)
Found this link for a site that compares free Japanese-language blogging services:
Muryo Blog Hikaku (Free Blog Comparison)
My moblog on yapeus is still getting a lot of traffic and links from other Japanese sites, as is the old version of this blog. I never archived the contents of the old blog here like I wanted to and I’ve been thinking of moving some of the posts I liked here one by one… we’ll see. I often find myself wanting to do stuff I never actually get around to doing.