An article explaining the specifics of the Japanese beer market.
A memory from the second-most memorable night of last year.
Rishiri Island, an island mountain in the sea off Northeast Hokkaido. Respect to the photographer, because Rishiri is deceptively difficult to photograph.
Iraq was a mistake from the start, but Iran is much more complex, especially given the loons involved. Seymour Hersh's latest rundown makes for sobering reading.
The New Yorker: The Iran Plans
The people of Japan believe the bad times are over. (Financial Times)
But happy enough right where I am.
With the marathon training and the new job, I've been tied to Tokyo for a few months now. I'm not complaining: things are moving along nicely here and I'll be back out and about bikewise and in the hills soon enough. In the meantime, I'm reliving some old memories. These are from the Hokkaido trip last summer. Hokkaido really is the perfect place for a bike tour, especially if you're a fan of seafood, hot-springs and beautiful mountains.
Taken while sitting on that wall after just pulling into the port of Utoro after a stunning 40k stretch along the coast going out onto the Shiretoko Peninsula.
Another view from that wall, of the Shiretoko range in the background, with Mt. Rausu on the right. It was around about the time I saw that view that our bike tour began to incorporate a mountain climbing element.
Another view of that range from that wall.
A sunset on a barren stretch of road just south of Cape Soya Misaki, the northernmost point in Japan.
This is Cape Soya Misaki, the northernmost point on the Japanese Archipelago and one hell of a dump. We cycled 60k into a massive headwind that day to make it there and when we got there we were less than impressed with what we found. Neither the destination or the journey itself bore any resemblance to a reward. Headwinds, long distance on bicycles and shameless tourist traps in the middle of nowhere do not mix.
I must have spent an hour on the back of the ferry coming back from Rishiri Island taking pictures of the gulls. Climbing Rishiri in the rain had been the culmination of another successful Hokkaido holiday. It had looked like it wasn't going to be possible, but we made it at the last minute, just like we did in fierce winds on Asahidake, the last mountain we had left to climb in the Daisetsuzan range, the year before.
One small step for man and all that.
Today I started answering the telephone using keigo (the ultra polite and highly confusing register of the Japanese language - the English language has no equivalent - it's like a language within a language).
I've a long way to go before I sound as polished as an NTT Docomo receptionist, but one small step all the same my friends, one small step.
Incidentally, the title of my post means "Will I get him to call you back?" If we said the same sentence in one of the "normal" registers of Japanese, only two of the words would be the same.
Keigo embodies both the inherent beauty and the difficulty of the Japanese language. It has to be one of the most sophisticated communication structures of all languages. And after all these years, I'm finally becoming confident enough to start using it.
Peak photos.
Click to enlarge.
Do you remember this song? These are the latest beautiful words running free in my head. They've been there since I saw Scorcese's documentary.
Of the singers of my youth, Bob Dylan had a natural gift for the lyric surpassed only by McGowan (and possibly Cohen, but he was too fixated on seducing martyrs, so he doesn't count -- and don't tell me the sincerity of the words or the integrity of their writer doesn't matter).
