I ride my bike in inappropriate places

Go to my other blog!

2008-11-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hey, if anyone winds up on this now defunct blog, go to my other blog! Updated Daily. Well, weekly. Well, at least not as defunct as this one, just go ^^

Travel Blog: seouljapanbeijing.blogspot.com

Nessie

2008-02-04T10:15:00.001-08:00

Aww, you crazy Japanese. You're so great. It took me a couple of weeks to get around to posting this, but no matter! By the way, I completely know that bridge that they show, it is the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba where Marianne used to live. It is way fun to ride over because there's no room for an on-ramp (so Japanese..) , and so you go around in these big upward spirals instead.Mom, you should remember that bridge. We rode over it when I took you on the monorail tour of Odaiba.

Liz and Graham and I...

2007-12-09T19:05:00.000-08:00

... shot each other with airguns. A bunch.

Only Graham knew how to make them work. We shot him anyway.

GOLDEN ADDENDUM

2007-10-20T12:45:00.001-07:00

Oh, also, it was a gold themed party and these are my favorite shots.

I declare it neat.

Saw some old friends tonight

2007-10-19T19:45:00.001-07:00

My friend Alta opened an art show tonight down at 87 Lulow St.

Alta's painting are frikkin' awesome.

Alta herself (in the orange glasses) +sister.

Rachel.

Ben.

and of course, the dude.

The dude wanted me to eat some cheese he had been carrying around in his hand. I was all, no way.

Aw, mah precious antique cans!

2007-10-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I had to leave my collection of weird cans behind when I left Japan. These are them, and some other strange stuff from my last days in Fukuoka.

Gabu Nomi (Guzzling Drink)

Gatsuri Saida (Mighty Cider)

Explanation necessary? I think not.

Fukuoka has so many sister cities, it is not reasonable.

Below, we have Fireman practice.

Or it's an exam or something. It's not really important, because these meat-spacers are only for backup in case something happens to the SUPER GO FIGHT ANDROID FIRE STOP TEAM! that Fukuoka upgraded to back in '92.

and finally.. An Obon festival lantern, for guiding home the spirits of the ancestors.

More old photos! (really, these are pretty old)

2007-10-19T13:06:00.001-07:00

Pictures from a zemi party about six months back. Did you ever wonder what one of those was like? No? Okay, well, maybe you're a jerk.. huh, well? Did you think of that? Jerk..

Azioka-san.

Kida-san.

Hori-sensei and Hangai-san.

Suehiro-sensei.

Food?

More old photos (well, not that old)

2007-10-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

Straightening out all the files on my computer, digging up old sets of photos that I had meant to post back when..

These photos are from my last bike ride around Fukuoka, about a month and a half ago. I set out to circumnavigate the city by following the ring of elevated highways that wrap around it. It's a 22 mile course, but the ground level roads don't follow the elevated road exactly, and all of the resultant meandering made the trip a lot longer. It also started raining about halfway through, so I decided to shortcut back along one of the big rivers that runs through the center of the city. During a particularly bad downpour, I ended up holing up under somebody's balcony playing ds for about twenty minutes. Despite trying to wait it out, though, I still ended up completely soaked. By then it was too dark and too wet to take and pictures, so these are all from the first part of the trip, around the southeastern part of the city near the airport. Ah, Fukuoka..

Pictures from when I was in Florida

2007-10-15T14:46:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the Sunshine State!

We have nice clouds..

and nice light..

and Caitlins.

Who I've known forever.
We went out for coffee..

with my brother Evan..

and Dr. Corey.

Evan has too many DVDs.
I try to help him with this.
I help by stealing.

This is my mom.

Who is a hippie.

Who mows her lawn..

with hippie-power.

Her house has weird stuff in it.

Weird hand-related stuff.

and dogs.
Dogs like Erin.

Who tries to escape.

Because she's bad news.
At least, she's as bad news as a Terrier can be.

Kennedy.

Kennedy does not approve.

and I..

I shaved my head.

A trip up the Sumida River

2007-10-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I returned to the States, but this video is from when I was still in Tokyo. The last time I was in the city was about a month ago, just before I left Japan. When I arrived in Hamamatsu off of the monorail from Haneda Station, I decided to haul all my luggage through the Hama-rikyu gardens and take the water bus up to Asasukusa, where I was staying. The waterbus runs under the thirteen historic bridges along the Sumida River. Dr. Satterwhite had talked it up something fierce, back when, and I'd been meaning to check it out for a long time.

Serendipitously, Dr. Satterwhite and his family had then same idea on the same day, and we ran into each other while waiting to board the boat. Despite my protests that I was 'resting' and not taking any photos, I ended up taking a couple hundred during the 45 minute trip, and strung them together into this video. Enjoy the Tokyo.

Bye Japan

2007-09-20T07:25:00.000-07:00

In 17 1/2 hours, I`ll be on a plane home.

Do you like donuts?

2007-09-08T19:34:00.001-07:00

This is so much better than leeches.

Oh sweet lor... NO NO NO NO NO

2007-09-06T08:23:00.001-07:00

Leech invasion makes Japan residents see red

TOKYO (Reuters) - Long confined to the mountains, Japanese leeches are invading residential areas, causing swelling, itching and general discomfort with their blood-thirsty ways.
"Yamabiru will climb into people's socks and stay for about an hour, growing five to 10 times in size. Unlike with water leeches, people don't immediately realise they've been bitten. Only later when they see their blood-soaked feet, do they realise what has happened," said Shigekazu Tani, the institute's director.

LOOK AT IT MOVE

レミーのおいしいレストラン

2007-08-31T04:47:00.001-07:00

'Ratatouille,' as it's known in America Town.

Lupin takes Tokyo

2007-08-25T02:35:00.000-07:00

Just a desktop I made up of some Lupin graffiti that I
found in Kyoto and the Hankyu Building in Tokyo. Enjoy.

Mr. Cockfield, I Have a Question

2007-08-19T02:44:00.000-07:00

Can someone tell me why this building is still standing?

The Deutsche Bank Building was turned into a toxic motherfucker almost six years ago. In a city where you can get an eighty story building up in less than half a year, why has no one has been able to dismantle this forty story toxic waste-dump six years after the fact? There were things that had to be done, yes. The building is dangerous and can't be imploded because of the danger of releasing another toxic cloud into the city, yes. This is not something that should take six years+ to get on top of.

and why do we still have to refer to the old WTC site as Ground Zero? Why is it still a big empty lot? The architect/developer/political mud-wrestling match that's been going on down there since 2001 is ridiculous. The teensy-tiniest piece of space in lower Manhattan will run a renter, bare minimum, $1600/month. How is it that no one can get it together enough to do something, anything, on this tract of empty real estate in the middle of the city? Why do people in Manhattan still have to look at that big damn empty lot and the tourists swarming around it every single day? The situation was ridiculous three or four years ago, now it's unconscionable. Two more firefighters just got killed, fighting a fire in a building that should not be there. I'm glad I'm not in NYC right now, because watching another toxic cloud rolling over the city would probably freak me the fuck out.

From the NY Times:

Burning debris flew from the building to the street below as dark plumes of smoke billowed over Lower Manhattan in a scene eerily reminiscent of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Viktoria Baklanova, 40, a resident of 90 West St., a 24-floor residential building that overlooks ground zero on its north side, said that the fire evoked scary memories of Sept. 11, especially since firefighters died. “It’s very sad,” she said. “A lot of people died in the area. They just keep dying.

They should have removed the building much faster, she said. “It just took too much time.”

Tsukiji

2007-08-14T05:42:00.001-07:00

Tsukiji Central Fish Market is big. It is big and in Tokyo and sits next to a very beautiful garden. It's a testament to how well the place is run that you don't realize just how close the two are to each other. Even inside the big curving warehouses that house the market, nothing really smells fishy. I used to go running past the Fulton Fish Market in NYC, and even months after it had shut down the whole block still gave off an odor to be reckoned with.

The interior of Tsukiji is organized chaos, cramped spaces piled up for hundreds of meters and overflowing with carts and styrofoam and more 日本人 and 魚 than you can imagine. Things move fast. Big things. It's best to try and stay out of their way.

Wait wait wait... sweet Physics, you make it all better.

2007-08-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation

Ah, my faith in the inherent total awesomeness of the world has been restored:

"Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing this pheneomenon, known as the Casimir force, so that it repels instead of attracts.

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

The practicalities of designing the lens to do this are daunting but not impossible and levitation 'could happen over quite a distance'."

Thanks Mr. Casmir Force, and thanks Prof. Philbin!

Ergh? oh..

2007-08-06T04:46:00.001-07:00

Huh. I guess that is coming out here.
I feel kind of really weird about Japan watching this movie.
'Moore-sensei,' did you really have to tell the nihonzin?

Birthday Capuccino

2007-07-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

Capuccino. It is delicious.

Mom and I saw some fireworks.

2007-07-26T20:56:00.001-07:00

Irony

2007-07-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Evan Turner

to me

show details

9:02 am (6 minutes ago)

you mean "noes"

- Hide quoted text -

On 7/19/07, Brian Turner <cawley@gmail.com> wrote:
> NOS NOS NOS NOS NOS

Yamagasa Matsuri: Night

2007-07-18T09:22:00.001-07:00

The Yamakasa Matsuri culminates with a big float race around Gion and Nakasu. At 4:59am on the last day of the festival, each team loops around a temporary stadium set up at Kushida Shrine and races off into the dawn. The course is a couple of miles long, the floats weigh a few thousand pounds, but the teams are moving fast. Mom and I were there for the whole thing, but there was a typhoon, and it started raining, so I stopped taking photos. All of these are from before the race, when the floats were lined up outside of the shrine. It was fun. I seriously hope that no one died.

Oh ho ho ho... look who got woken up early for a stupid festival. I don't think that daschunds really appreciate float racing.

Yamakasa Matsuri: Day

2007-07-18T08:45:00.001-07:00

My Mom and I were wandering around Nakasu, and all of a sudden I said..

"Look Mom, naked men!"

It's time for the Fukuoka Yamakasa Matsuri!

But the first few days are mostly just the float teams standing around in costume..

..getting drunk..

..passing out lanterns..

and taking big group photos.

Outside Kushida Shrine, epicenter of the Yamakasa Matsuri.

Inside, where people are prayin' it up serious.

Amused.

Not amused.

and then Mom and I made friends.

With one of the float teams.

I swear, they made me get drunk in the middle of the day.

Those guys were sooo wasted.

Harry Potter！！

2007-07-14T04:49:00.001-07:00