Photos of Stuff in Kobe

A Beverage Vending Machine This Restaurant signboard proclaims:
"I humbly partake of this food"

We found this good luck charm vending machine in Suma.

These frogs would make a great stocking stuffer!

This Bear is in memory of the many Japanese who moved to Siberia before and during WWII and never returned home. It plays a folk melody when you touch the bear's head. Sad story, but a very cute bear!














Here's a family that has fallen on hard times, only being able to afford a ghetto half pair of glasses for poor Tanaka kun.

Suma Beach: Home of Genji

The Beach that smells like a cannery: A day at Suma Beach

Sunday found it in its heart to allow both Mr. and Mrs. Nyar the same day off so we high-tailed it over to Suma Beach, Kobe’s place for fun in the sun.

We were glad we went there primarily to see Suma Temple; the beach itself at first glance could have been confused with an abandoned harbor/cannery row. But Suma temple was fantastic. It’s a must-see for its cool battery-operated dioramas of the rich history surrounding Suma Beach.

On this sandy berm dividing nature’s apportioned sea and land spheres, Genji chased down and shot a 13-year old son of the Heike clan full of arrows. A true Wounded Knee sort of place, in it was not a fair fight. After decapitating the poor arrow-ridden boy, Genji recanted his violent 13^th Century ways and became a monk.

Perhaps it was out of shame at the bad form garnered from public opinion when a warlord kills a preteen horseman, or the general PR hit taken, but Genji was never known to harness his adept archery skills in an aggressive manner ever again. The story is true, the diorama tells the tale in motorized textless form anyone can understand.

Next time you’re on the soft, fragrant sands of Suma Beach, congratulate yourself on your luck. A romp in the surf in this day and age, certainly isn’t likely to fill YOU full of painful arrows…

Now who says we don’t live in an enlightened society?

From Buddha to Bullets

Life is full of contradictions. A Big Mac and Diet Coke. Those with the most want more. Greenpeace's boat badly damaging a Philippine coral reef it had sworn to protect.

Japan has many contradictions, too. Old homes brimming with new technological gadgets. One style of Japanese is taught to foreign language students; quite another kind is spoken by the citizenry.

World War II brought about many contradictions, horrors and ironies, perhaps none more striking than the fate of Hyogo WardÂ’s original Daibutsu, third largest among the sitting Buddha images in the country. (#1 is in Nara, #2 in Kanagawa Prefecture).

It was 1944, and the war was slowly being lost. Metals are a chief need in wartime, such raw copper, iron, steel and brass are chief ingredients for the bullets, planes and tanks of any proper war of imperial aggression.

This dilemma at the forefront of the collective military leaderships' consciousness, the idea popped into their heads- What better source of metal than the Hyogo sitting Buddha?

Yes, you heard it here first. From Buddha to bullets. In some cataclysmic case of terribly bad karma, some allied soldier may have met his doom with a bullet made from his lordship, the Great Buddha of Hyogo Ward.

Friday Flowers

Flowers adorn the school grounds, though cold temperatures have kept spring merrymaking to an unprecedented minimum. This has, however, delayed the inevitable hot, sweaty Kansai summer away for at least another week. Enjoy the tulips!

Hypermarts

Hypermarts and the cool stuff contained therein:

Carrefour is a French version of Wal-mart; except that the stuff is good, prices are fairer and everything is made in France, not China. It seems to also attract a wider socioeconomic customer base. And the branch of Carrefour in Amagasaki is right next door to Costco. It’s a nice, convenient world where foodstuffs drink and households needs collide to allow any shopping list to be completed.

After a shop there this past weekend, here two things they had on sale that caught my eye: Choco surf breakfast flakies and sweet, succulent durian.

Don't Cut Me Down To My Prime

On the chopping block are:

Nishinomiya’s threatened flowering cherry trees (and a few stately pines, too). The sakura flower is a quintessential Japan symbol. It’s bloom is the highlight of the new school year, as the school year begins here according to the blooms, bursting forth predictably from late March to early April.

Well maybe not anymore. Many sakura trees nationwide are nearing the end of their life spans, beginning to rot as nature intended. Due to a lack of devoted manpower, there have not been enough new trees planted over the years since WWII to replace these aged veterans of many a public bout of inebriated merrymaking.

And Nishinomiya has one of the nicest free Hanami (sakura flower viewing) spots, situated along a ‘river’ halfway between Kobe and Osaka. The river is more of a culvert, like those you see in flash flood-prone Los Angeles.

Nishinomiya in English means West Shrinee, a historical point from when pilgrims and various merchants would traverse in to Osaka from points east and west.

It’s a town full of sake breweries, the famous Hanshin Tigers baseball club, several prominent universities and also, Shukugawa Park, where blankets are laid down and fun had. But plans for a tunnel had threatened to remove several dozen of these trees. I can’t be sure of what the official reasons are for the tunnel project, but signs denoting its purpose haven’t been changed in two years, perhaps signaling the PR nightmare cutting down the Shukugawa sakura would invoke.

Though, Japanese tend not to be a sign-wielding, fist-clenching bunch when something angers them. So for whatever reasons those who have the power have not pushed the project ahead.

The Japanese sakura are under the knife both with their advanced age, warmer summers that wilt the tree leaves and by projects such as the Shukugawa tunnel.

Wouldn’t Japan be a different place, and take quite a cultural hit if they were to be lost? Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. My parents planted several Saukra trees back in the Lower 48, so in a worse case scenario, we could import Japanese to have an overseas hanami, should Japan’s domestic supply of cherry blossoms fall below acceptable levels.

These photo you see was taken in April 2004, and the pine tree shot was gotten this past weekend. I look forward to seeing them both next year, again, too!

My Job in Pictures

Something about a snoozing brain...

A Modern Japanese Fire Suppression System...

This are the chairs at my bus stop. Too much free time on the hands of the local folk, it seems.

If you're going to cleanse, you might as well cleanse together.

These milk crates are empty. Maybe that's why all the students can fit into a rabbit hutch. They're great kids, but they need more milkfat in their diet. Tiny, tiny tykes be they...

I am Umbrella, My Whereabouts Are Unknown…

Yesterday I lost my umbrella. This was not the first time. But I am relatively new to the mechanics of this foldable, easy to carry and easy to lose rain avoidance implement.

I grew up in a city where it rained, rained and rained some more; year-round precipitation in Portland, Oregon often tops 42 inches per year. Imagine that: almost four feet of the wet stuff falling around 10 months out of the year. You’d assume I had fallen in line and learned proper umbrella management by now. But no one used umbrellas. Portland is the home of the American rainwear industry- Columbia Sportswear began here in a Sellwood home turned outlet turned global outdoor brand. So all the coats you buy are usually Gore-Tex hooded ones. The antithesis of wet and damp, these nylon jackets make carrying an umbrella from home to work, dinner to nightcap wholly unnecessary.

That couldn’t be farther from the truth. In my 3-odd years living in Japan I have lost at least a dozen umbrellas of varying ownership, quality and price. Others have been bent back during typhoons or due to operator error. It seems to be a male trait, but that may lie in the fact that males work in higher proportion to females in Japan, many umbrellas get left behind at work-related sites- train stations, video shops, convenience stores and bars.

The umbrella racket is a seller’s market. Try to shop around and find a good umbrella during good weather. It’s my private paranoia coming to the forefront here, but I think merchants hide the good ones, hoarding them for the knowing umbrella-toting elite. And there are some good ones out there. Umbrellas with leopard print, to match leopard tights and a leopard shirt so loved by Osaka’s army of late-to-middle aged women.

When an umbrella’s wet, it’s not easily handled. You can’t put it on the train’s rack. You lean it against some vertical surface, think about something else suddenly, your train arrives and you impulsively pile on. Umbrella industry 1, pocket money 0.

Luckily in Japan, there are several forgotten goods offices at train station termini, and one can call and be reunited with their helpful, selfless nylon and aluminum workhorse. But a call placed to such a place yesterday was fruitless. Someone, somewhere is enjoying my $9.00 bent beauty, which smells slightly of several instances where it didn’t quite dry. Rest in peace, umbrella kun, and may you be reincarnated as a Totes, to live and protect again.

I have to go now, I’ve just left my wallet on the bus…

Hello and Goodbye...

The enkai. A place to shed off workplace formalities and have a good old-fashioned drink till you burst. Had one on Friday. Ate Chinese noodles and beef wrapped in an iceberg lettuce leaf. I was unaware the Chinese use iceberg lettuce in their cooking, but apparently they do. Good food and I was able to lay the charm on thick, though I'm only at the job until late July.

Before the festivities began I was sipping on a Tsing Tao at the Kobe Chinatown's public square, when I noticed some Korean kids playing. The boy had one of these hairstyles that is truly Korean. He had a few strands of hair maybe six-eight inches long that had been bleached and appeared to be a misplaced rat tail, which was what all aspiring boys had when I was 10. These boys were emulating, as best they could the mullets which their fathers had and their mothers were hesitant to comb the snarls out of.

Myself, I had always gone to get my pate trimmed at Barber Bob's barber shop. Located next to my elementary school, Bob was a pillar of the community and his ramshackle shop smelled of talcum powder, aftershave and pipe tobacco.

Decor was eclectic with several prominent 'America Needs Wallace for President' and 'Eat More Possum!' sign boards adorning the walls. For $3.50, he was the best deal in town, and the political commentary was laid on thick at no extra charge.

Mrs. Nayr's photos of flowers in glasses.

A modern interpretation of Ikebana, Japanese flower arrangements. These are remnants of a bouquet from our big birthday event last week.

There was a flash of color and also a fine dinner of wasabi-laiden foods with the wacky couple comprising the best of Cape Town and somehwhere in one of the Carolinas.

Of course cake was also had, and eaten, too.

Good fortunes for 89 Cents...

Americans get their fortune in a cookie. How American is that?

When visiting Japanese Shinto Shrines, you'll notice these big orange machines. They give you a rolled-up paper fortune for less than a dollar.

But these Japanese fortune telling dispensers give a shout out to Japan's sizable Chinese and Korean population.

I have yet to find one in English, but I'm sure there is one at one of the thousands of Shrines around the archipelago.
Here's hoping your fortune will be great!

What's in a Takoyaki Ball?

Takoyaki with pizzaz.

You could call them octopus balls. You could call them a Japanese take on Surf n' turf, with the surf being octopus and the turf being bleached wheat flower, shallots and pickled ginger.

Okay, on second thought we won’t call it anything but takoyaki. It's a slice of octopus in a round dumpling, simply put. See the ocotpus at right for reference.

Anyhow we stumbled across a nice venue for takoyaki in Motomachi (one of Kobe's coolest neighborhoods) last night. The scarcity of mayonnaise allowed the main ingredient, octopus to be tasted and enjoyed. Mayo is the condiment of choice. It’s put on everything in lieu of America’s favorite plumpifier, butter.

You can see the mayo industry’s spokesdoll, Kewpie, all over, with an especially heavy predominance in curio shops.

Just how takoyaki came to be round, I don't know. Ease of cooking is my guess. I would have preferred triangular bits, as the corner could be nipped off, allowing stored heat to dissipate and avoiding lots of scorched roves of mouths. But it just wasn’t meant to be.

To wash down the takoyaki was Suntory The Premium 100% All Malt Beer

This ‘limited edition’ beer was only 250 Yen, which in a restaurant is a steal. The aged cook was polite, unitrusive and kind looking. Just what you want. I prefer not to have sadistic, humanity-hating sociopaths preparing my meals.

Next time you're hungry, try takoyaki. Or just eat a cup of sugar. Either way.

Win a Stitch or Dino Chocolates!

Two examples of what was contained inside the previous posts' Game Center Crane Game. Machines.

Game Centa-

Game Centers: Loud, obnoxious but som much fun. My long-lost freind, Gringolandia and I went to Umeda to people watch, drink a few brewskies in public (Legal in Japan) and catch up. We made some friends and watched some poeple losing mega coinage on these crane games. There were various items in the crane machines, waiting the skilled to award their smooth hand. There was a plethora of Disney-themed plush toy machines, like Stitch, Pooh san Winnie the Pooh) and of course, baby Mickey Mouse. Fun times. Then we enjoyed dinner at Yoshinoya. I tried a nice chicken don, grilled chicken atop steamed rice. It needed Veggies, but for 380 Yen (About $3 US) I wasn't going to anything but scarf it down.