Cats

It is said that no blog is complete until it has pictures of cats. Here's a picture of "Toro" sniffing "Chibi"'s ass.


Yay! Cats are great aren't they? More pictures up here: 彌光庵 I think that means "Increasing Light Hermitage" but I couldn't swear to that...

Obanzai! Cthulhu!

Another fresh posting today on almost-but-not-quite-vegetarian Obanzai all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. And here's a link to something quite hilarious. I so want one of those. Now I'm going to eat pizza and watch a DVD. Supernatural in case you are wondering (the DVD not the pizza).

Deep Kyoto Madness

I'm being terribly productive these days, dashing about the city looking for places to put on the sister-blog. Today I visted the temple/art gallery Hounen-In and then a cafe in the woods of Mount Yoshida named MO・AN. And if you click on those last two links you can read all about that. I've no time to say more about that here. I'm off out for a jog. I've recently become a jogging-fool, and am going for short runs every night come rain or shine. Strange...

Mid-life crisis?!

Funaoka "Yama"

I went to Takeisao Shrine on Funaoka Yama today. It's called a "yama" which means "mountain" but it's really just a small hill. Actually, all the small hills around Kyoto are called "yama". Perhaps Kyoto people just can't bring themselves to admit how small their hills are. I think Oda Nobunaga (one of Japan's founding fathers) is buried on this particular mock-mountain. Anyway, the shrine is built in his honour and they have festival for him there too on October 19th. The shrine looks like this:


From the top of the hill, you can see out over the city but the views weren't so good today as it was cloudy. Here's the smaller Daimonji Yama (another hill) little brother to the bigger more famous Daimonji to the east of the city:


And after strolling round there, and listening to the little green tweety birds I went to Funaoka Onsen and had a super-relaxing time. And you can read all about that here: Funaoka Onsen

The Thick of It

Up on Deep Kyoto today, a fresh posting on the famous folky peacenik cafe Honyarado.

My old friend Simon Blackwell wrote to tell me that there's a book of scripts out for The Thick of It, the political sitcom he co-writes, and thus he is listed as an author on Amazon for the first time - ever. And about time too! Simon tells me it's "an ideal Christmas gift for any relatives who love swearing". Now I was trying to find a nice funny clip on youtube with no swearing on it and I found quite a lot of funny ones but they all had lots of swearing. So no embedding I'm afraid. You'll just have to click here for a very funny (very sweary) clip. Or watch some episodes up here. Or order your book of scripts for Rude Aunty May over here.

Enough links for ya?

Betty's Pictures

Mista Masuda was dj-ing at Weller's last night so I went along and pulled out my camera (as I do) and as I did so Betty was like "Let me play with that" so I did and she did and I'm not sure if she took all of these or if someone else was playing with it too but you know they didn't turn out half bad.

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* * *

Here's a short film about Dugong. They so cute!



And here's a site where you can take action to save the poor old sea-weed chompers.
TAKE ACTION

Devotion

Here's the latest meditation from Hozouji:


It might be a little difficult to recognize because of the stylized calligraphy, but the “精進” here is the same shoujin we see in 精進料理; traditional Zen vegetarian cooking. Let’s take another look in kanji and romaji.

日々精進（努力）______ Hibi shoujin (doryoku)
未来と________________Mirai to
自分は________________Jibun ha
直せる________________Naoseru

精進 means “devotion”, devotion of one’s body and mind to living a pure life, and just to help us out, the writer has added 努力 or “endeavor” to clarify the meaning. In Buddhism this devotion is a process of self-discovery, of finding one’s true self and this seems to tie in with the 直せる at the end of the meditation. The idea is that you can “fix” yourself, or straighten yourself up. The key-word however, is right at the beginning: 日々 － “everyday”. If you want to break your bad habits and get some good ones, if you want to become a more fully-rounded person, there is no quick fix, you have to work at it and work at it every day. Now how to put that concisely? Here goes…

Day by day devote yourself to your endeavors
And one day
Your self
Can be made whole

As always anyone is free to make suggestions if they have a better take on this. I quite like mine though. :)

Here's some Talvin Singh:

I had supper at Little Bamboo this evening and Kotake-san was asking me why I hadn't been blogging lately. What to say? I have been slacking off. And I have a huge back-log of stuff to write up and post up on Deep Kyoto too. Not to worry, I'm more or less free till Tuesday (Monday being a national holiday) so hopefully I can catch up.

Last night I went to NEGA・POSI to see my friend Okuda Satoko performing with a rather eccentric chap with a curiously shaved head named "Kasou no Takeo". They did a mixture of comedy skits and music and it was all very entertaining (and funny!) but I think they should have weighted it a bit more towards the music. I think that way, because the music was very very good indeed. Kasou no Takeo seems to be able to play every musical instrument imaginable. And when they sang together I was well.. (ahem!)- moved. Well, I've put a review up on Deep Kyoto of NEGA・POSI for you. And you can see a video clip there of Satoko singing her song "Ongaku" accompanied by the aforementioned eccentric on piano - (a bit of a rarity to see her singing hands-free as she usually plays the keyboards herself). Here's another clip to wet your appetite:



And you can also see a bit of the comedy up here - it's in Japanese but not so difficult to follow. The theme was 数える or "counting". Which doesn't sound very exciting - but it all depends on what you are counting, eh?

Something remarkable...

If you haven't seen this already, this is worth a look:

Animals at Play

Heads you win. Tails I lose.

I've written before about Abe Shinzo. I think it's pretty clear I despise the guy. So I was all glad today, to hear that he has finally resigned as Prime Minister. Hurray! I thought. An end to his nasty little right-wing nationalist agenda! And then I read this and other articles and it seems like Aso Taro is his likely successor. So we are back to square one then really, aren't we? Remember that story about Hercules battling the nine-headed Hydra? He'd chop off one head and instantly another one would grow back in it's place? The Prime Minister is just a name and a figure-head. He goes. Another one pops up in his place. But the idea is the same. It's a very bad idea and it worries me. A lot.

And also remember that Abe didn't go because his nationalist right-wingedness was abhorrent. Nobody here cares about that. Abe was incompetent on domestic policy. What if the next guy does everything right domestically but...

School Sports Day

The great thing about school sports day is that on school sports day I don't have to work, and as today is a Tuesday, and Tuesday is when I have my difficult classes, that's a very happy thing indeed. So, how did I spend my completely undeserved, smug-self-satisfied-smirk-inducing day, today?
Deep Kyotoing, that's how. There are three posts up for you today (Yes! THREE!). I have been busy.

Long overdue is a short review of bar/eatery: Joao.

Also, there is the Brazil-lovers cafe/bar: BAR Cafezinho.

And finally, the hostel/cafe: Gojo Guest House.

All of them excellent places if you want a / . (Geddit?)

Today is of course September 11th. And I have absolutely nothing to say about that.

Just a few pictures from last night at Joao. We had a wee party for Chiba-chan and Non-chan's birthdays. Below are Mista Masuda, Non-chan and Janet Jackson.


Nana and Chiba-chan.


Yoshida-kun and Mista Masuda.


I ought to drink less.

Ashwin

Congratulations to Kumar-man and Wonder-Georgina on the birth of their own little super-hero Ashwin yesterday! Apparently, he likes to pee in his daddy's face. But don't we all? (yay!)

Here are some kids rocking out by the Kamogawa earlier this afternoon. No, I don't know what they are called.

Lost & Found

Some time ago, I had the (quite simply brilliant) idea of putting up a list of people I've lost touch with, in the hope that they might just get bored one day, google-search themselves, find me and get back in touch again. Three days ago my old housemate Judith did just that! Isn't the interweb marvellous? And aren't I pleased with myself? Still, three more UNFINDABLES to go:

Matt Fernyhough AKA Matthew Fernyhough
Jon Irwin AKA Jonathan Irwin
Ester Fleischer-Brown AKA Ester Fleischer

Oh GREAT and POWERFUL INTERWEB your job is yet half-done! Lure these minions to your mystical keyboards! Let the karmic googling commence!

What a load of...

You can't not go into a place like this really, can you? To my surprise, the bar inside was pretty swanky, not at all what I would have imagined from it's charming name. Asking the inevitable "Why?", I was told:

Well you see, British people really like this word. They see it and they always come in and have a drink. So it brings in the customers.

Ah. That would be me then, wouldn't it? The bar is quite famous in Kiyamachi apparently, but though it has been open for ten years it will be closing it's doors forever at the end of this month. Another piece of Kiyamachi bar-room history get's washed down the toilet of time...

なんで閉めるんですか？

ま、色々があって・・・

色々ですか？大変ですね。

Morning Call

"Hello"
"Good morning. This is K____-san from M_____ Clinic..."
"Yes."
"It's Saturday."

Pause.
Look at clock.
Pause.

"Ahhhh! - Ahhhh! Sumimasen! Aaah!"

Oops. I think Dr. M_____ will be giving me a bit a harsh talking to next time he sees me. Must get back into the habit of SETTING ALARMS (not just one, one doesn't quite do it).

Well, it's September so here's something patently obvious.