The Grandma and Fukumaru

These photos hit three soft spots for me: our elders, Japan, and cats. A trifecta.

From Demilked...

For the last 13 years Japanese photographer Miyoko Ihara has been taking pictures of her grandma, Misao, to commemorate her life. 9 years ago, 88-year-old Misao found a stray odd-eyed cat in her shed: she called it Fukumaru, hoping that “the god of fuku (good fortune) would come and everything will be smoothed over like maru (circle).” Miyoko has been photographing their beautiful friendship and the way they go about their daily routine ever since. 

The strong bond between the two glows in every shot: “Partly because they are both hard of hearing, my grandmother and Fukumaru are always looking into each other’s eyes. They’re really close,” says Miyoko.

This Week's Flavor: Matcha

For this week's flavor I returned to the past. Matcha, green tea powder, ice cream is one of the first flavors I made almost exactly three years ago when I bought my ice cream maker.  Since then around 60 different flavors have come out of this gem of a kitchen gadget.

As the chicken slowly turned on the string, I made a half batch of black sesame shortbread cookies to go with the ice cream.

The dessert was supposed to follow the fireplace chicken but after a bit too much vino and a relaxing massage I was out like a light.  So, we ate dessert for breakfast the following morning.

Wrapper's Delight

Just in case you were wondering.

From The Atlantic...

But where did the wrapping tradition come from? The short answer is that wrapping, as a practice, has been around for ages. The Japanese furoshiki, the reusable wrapping cloth still in use today, is a pretty faithful rendition of the version that's been around since the Edo period. The Korean bojagi dates from the Three Kingdoms Period, possibly as early as the first century A.D. In the west, using paper as a covering for gifts has been a longstanding, if largely luxury-oriented, practice: Upper-class Victorians regularly used elaborately decorated paper -- along with ribbons and lace -- to conceal gifts.

In 1917, however, in the U.S. decorative paper became democratized. A pair of brothers running a stationery store in Kansas City, Mo., were having an exceptionally good holiday season -- so good, in fact, that they ran out of their standard inventory of tissue paper. Not wanting to be hampered by their success, but needing a replacement for the sold-out paper, they found among their supplies a stack of "fancy French paper" -- paper meant not for display, but for lining envelopes. Figuring, "hey, why not," they put that paper in a showcase, setting its price at $0.10 a sheet. And the paper sold out -- "instantly," Mental Floss notes.

By 1919, having confirmed that the lining sheets' sales weren't a fluke, the pair began producing and selling their own printed paper -- decorative, and designed for the sole purpose of wrapping gifts.

The brothers? Joyce and Rollie Hall. Their store? Hallmark.

The Commute

I will NEVER complain about my commute again...

 

 Photos from a Tokyo commute by Michael Wolf...

Veteren's Day

In honor of Veteran's Day, a look at one small but critical part of WWII, Navajo Code Talkers...

And in memory of one of the Code Talkers, George Smith, who passed away 10 days ago at the age of 90. 

No Dancing Allowed

Sounds like it's time for a Japanese re-make of Dirty Dancing.

From Time Out Tokyo...

Ask anyone from Osaka, and they can tell you what's happened to the club scene there: it's dead. Since 2010, the police have been taking the fueiho law at face value, busting all-night parties and shutting down clubs that are permitting dancing without a proper license. What's more, the trend seems to be spreading.

Big-name techno DJ Takkyu Ishino had only just started his set at O/D in Fukuoka on the morning of April 15 this year when the club was raided by police and the party summarily shut down. 'Dance is not a crime,' he wrote on Twitter shortly afterwards, a statement that's since been retweeted nearly 3,900 times. 

This sense of helplessness, a keep-your-head-down-and-everything-will-be-okay mentality, pervades the club scene here. Venues routinely post 'No dancing' signs, with some even sending staff onto the floor to ask customers to stop moving to the music (I wish I was making this up). Nightclubs advertise themselves with vague descriptions like 'entertainment space', and expressly forbid any use of the word 'dance' in advertising copy.

Manhole Covers

I'd love to get my hands on several of these to use as stepping stones in the yard but at 100lbs each the carryon is out of the question.

From Twisted Sifter...

In 95% of Japan’s 1,780 municipalities you will find artistic manhole covers unique to each city and town. It has become apart of the country’s national culture and it’s fascinating to see the different designs and styles that each town and city has chosen to represent them. With over 6,000 manhole cover artworks, it’s no surprise that spotting and photographing them has become a hobby for many. 

Apparently all manhole covers are forged in Nagashima Foundry from carved master plates that have all been preserved in a central library.

More here.

 For comparison, an artistically crafted and crossword puzzle inspired DC manhole cover...

Foto Friday: Hotaru

Beautiful.

From Twisted Sifter...

On May 5, 2012, 100,000 blue LED spheres floated down the Sumida River in central Tokyo to kick off the inaugural Tokyo Hotaru Festival. The spheres were 100% solar powered and designed to be large enough so they wouldn’t be swallowed by fish. 

The LEDs are meant to resemble hotaru (fireflies) as they float gently down the river. [T]here are many literary references regarding the Sumida River once being a haven for fireflies. 

For those wondering what happened with all of those LED balls, they were captured in a large net downstream. 

Stolen Kobe

This is one of my top three culinary pet peeves, the other two being restaurants that call some kind of processed fish crab (call it "krab" if you must), and the other one, well I don't remember what that is but there is a third. 

From Forbes...

Think you’ve tasted the famous Japanese Kobe beef? 

Think again. 

I will state this as clearly as possible:

You cannot buy Japanese Kobe beef in this country. Not in stores, not by mail, and certainly not in restaurants. No matter how much you have spent, how fancy a steakhouse you went to, or which of the many celebrity chefs who regularly feature “Kobe beef” on their menus you believed, you were duped. I’m really sorry to have to be the one telling you this, but no matter how much you would like to believe you have tasted it, if it wasn’t in Asia you almost certainly have never had Japan’s famous Kobe beef. 

The bottom line is that the only reason there is beef called Kobe beef sold in this country is because our government lets vendors call a lot of things Kobe beef. But the reason consumers buy it is because the cattle industry in Kobe spent lifetimes building a reputation for excellence, a reputation that has essentially been stolen.

1,000 Year Old Warning

A remarkable story about a warning from the distant past, a small fishing village, and respect for one's history and ancestors.

From the LA Times...

After a long day of field work, my colleagues and I were chatting with a community leader, Koutaro Ogata, from a fishing village called Murohama. We asked what had happened to him in the moments after the earthquake. He told us that he and his neighbors were well aware that a large earthquake would generate a large tsunami and they knew, particularly, what to do because "a thousand years ago" a massive earthquake and tsunami had all but wiped out Murohama.

This is the story he told. A millennium ago, the residents of Murohama, knowing they were going to be inundated, had sought safety on the village's closest hill. But they had entered into a deadly trap. A second wave, which had reached the interior of the island through an inlet, was speeding over the rice paddies from the opposite direction. The waves collided at the hill and killed those who had taken refuge there. To signify their grief and to advise future generations, the survivors erected a shrine... 

...I asked the community leader if "a thousand years ago" was a figure of speech or an estimate of time. 

To my astonishment, he indicated that it was in no way a figure of speech.

Bringing Memories Home

In honor of those who died as well as those who survived the Tōhoku earthquake.

From MSNBC...

In a large, bright room not far from the ocean that raged through this coastal Japanese city nearly a year ago, a handful of people with magnifying glasses pore over boxes of photographs of friends or loved ones. 

The massive March 11 tsunami that leveled buildings and flattened towns along a wide swathe of northern Japan, including Ofunato, also took a more subtle toll, with hundreds of thousands of photographs lost to the churning waters. 

But now these memories are slowly making their way back to their owners, thanks to the painstaking efforts of a team that cleans them of mud, dirt and oil. 

"I got one photo blown up, and I was so thankful for that. I put it in a frame, and it brought tears to my eyes," said 77-year-old resident Yoshiko Jindai, looking through boxes of photographs.

Lego ISS

Taking meta to a new level.

From Collect Space...

It took more than 200 astronauts from 12 countries more than a dozen years to build the International Space Station (ISS). Satoshi Furukawa, an astronaut from Japan, matched that feat in just about two hours — and he did it all while aboard the orbiting outpost itself. It helped that his space station was made out of LEGO. 

"It was a great opportunity for me to have built the LEGO space station," Furukawa, a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency flight engineer, told collectSPACE.com in an interview after he returned to Earth. "I enjoyed building it."

To keep the bricks contained and to protect against some potentially serious dangers, Furukawa pieced together the model inside a glovebox — a sealed container with gloves built into its sides to allow the contents to be manipulated.  

Sushi Done Right

Unfortunately, there is a dwindling number of skilled sushi chefs in the U.S., partly because of difficulties getting a visa but also because there's a strong market for them in Japan.

From the NYT...

Inside, standing behind a sushi bar in a 25-seat restaurant with all the linoleum charm of a coffee shop, Kazunori Nozawa was in the zone: hands flying, eyes darting up across the restaurant, sneaking sips of Diet Coke and cutting pieces from the slab of big-eye tuna from Ecuador he’d selected at the fish market when it was still dark that morning. By now, most of the customers who had waited for a seat at his restaurant, Sushi Nozawa — 2 1/2 hours for a meal that would last 45 minutes — knew the rules: no cellphones or texting, no loud talking, no asking other patrons to switch seats, no telling Mr. Nozawa what you wanted. 

The place was hushed; no music, just the click of chopsticks and worshipful conversation about the fish and how to be sure not to offend the diminutive man behind the counter. This was not a day to become the latest customer ejected from Mr. Nozawa’s domain.
Because all too soon, at the close of business on Wednesday, Mr. Nozawa will retire from sushi-making.

He-Gassen

Ribald, strangely hilarious, and brilliantly Japanese. 

From io9...

Approximately 200-400 years ago during Japan's Edo period, an unknown artist created what is easily the most profound demonstration of human aesthetics ever committed to parchment. I am referring to He-Gassen a.k.a. 屁合戦 a.k.a. "the fart war." In this centuries-old scroll, women and men blow each other off the page with typhoon-like flatulence.  

Gassy competitions weren't limited to the scenes of He-Gassen (which is hilariously named in retrospect). Fart wars were also used to express displeasure at the encroaching European influence in Edo Japan — artists would depict Westerners being blown home on thunderous toots.

You can find the rest of the scroll, in its gaseous entirety, on Waseda University’s website.

Blind Tennis

First blind soccer now blind tennis. Fantastic.

From Oddity Central...

The creation of the sport is largely credited to Miyoshi Takei, who in spite of his blindness, started to play tennis as a kid with the encouragement of his high school teacher. His only aim at the time was to hit a ball that was flying through the air as hard as he could, even though he couldn’t see it. After several trials, he finally invented a special kind of tennis ball that is spongy and light in weight. The ball rattles, so that blind players can track its movement with their ears. Miyoshi’s endeavors met with success and the first national blind tennis championships were held in Japan in the year 1990. Today, hundreds of Japanese players take part every year and a few from other countries too, such as China, Korea, Taiwan, Britain and the United States.

Blind tennis is played on a badminton court with string taped to the lines so players can feel the boundaries. Junior-sized rackets are used to hit the ball. Players who are deemed legally blind wear eye masks to level the field. They are expected to hit the ball after it bounces two to three times, depending on the level of their visual impairment.

$6,400 Grapes

I've posted previously about the ridiculously priced melons in Japan but I didn't know the same applies to grapes too.

A fascinating article the WSJ...

Swallow this: A single bunch of Ruby Romans, the titan of Japanese grapes, on Friday sold for ¥500,000 or about $6,400 – or in more remarkable terms, that means each grape is worth about ¥20,000. A steep jump from the record fetching amount of ¥250,000 per bunch in 2009 it is by far the most expensive grapes sold in Japan and likely in the world... 

...Along with Sanya Nagata, head chef at Le Musee de H, the two men will use the grapes to craft a dessert for a group of middle school students from tsunami-ravaged Miyagi prefecture performing at a local jazz concert.

Slo-Mo Tokyo

One of my favorite cities.

Of all the countries I used to travel to, I miss my trips to Japan the most.

Honesty

I'm sure there are outliers but honesty is a norm that's strongly embedded in the culture.  We'd do ourselves a favor by embracing it as well.

From ABC News...

The earthquake and tsunami that walloped Japan left much of its coastline ravaged, but left one thing intact: the Japanese reputation for honesty.

In the five months since the disaster struck, people have turned in thousands of wallets found in the debris, containing $48 million in cash.

More than 5,700 safes that washed ashore along Japan's tsunami-ravaged coast have also been hauled to police centers by volunteers and search and rescue crews. Inside those safes officials found $30 million in cash. One safe alone, contained the equivalent of $1 million.

The National Police Agency says nearly all the valuables found in the three hardest hit prefectures, have been returned to their owners.

Major Hering's Question

The days of the Cold War, fallout shelters, and Mutual Assured Destruction are a distant memory but Maj. Hering's question has just as much relevance today as it did 40 years ago and there is still no answer.

From Slate...

It was a question that changed his life, and changed mine, and may have changed—even saved—all of ours by calling attention to flaws in our nuclear command and control system at the height of the Cold War. It was a question that makes Maj. Hering an unsung hero of the nuclear age. A question that came from inside the system, a question that has no good answer: How can any missile crewman know that an order to twist his launch key in its slot and send a thermonuclear missile rocketing out of its silo—a nuke capable of killing millions of civilians—is lawful, legitimate, and comes from a sane president?

...[Y]ou've probably read about Richard Nixon acting erratically, drinking heavily as Watergate closed in on him. You may not have read about the time he told a dinner party at the White House, "I could leave this room, and in 25 minutes, 70 million people would be dead." James Schlesinger, secretary of defense at that time, No. 2 in the nuclear chain of command, was reported to be so concerned about Nixon's behavior that he sent word down the chain of command that if anyone received any "unusual orders" from the president they should double-check with him before carrying them out.

What Richard Nixon said still holds true: Any president could, on his own, leave a room, and in 25 minutes, 70 million (or more than that) would be dead. Not likely but in the new, more unstable, multi-polar nuclear age we've entered, Maj. Hering's question about the instability or sanity of the president himself remains valid, as does the larger sanity question: Can any order to kill 20 million with the twist of a wrist be sane?

On the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima my answer to the latter question is NO.

The Lingering Distaster

Given the vast amount of devasation caused by the tsunami this is a sidenote that will take years before it impacts North America.

From Good...

The earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear power crisis in Japan have been devastating. But there is, unfortunately, yet another dimension to this multi-faceted disaster: The massive 9.0 earthquake created a bunch of debris and the ensuing wave washed a lot of it out to sea. Those bits of buildings, household things, trees, tires, and other fragments of civilization are heading out across the Pacific and will eventually hit Hawaii and the west coast.

The International Pacific Research Center has created a model of how the debris is expected to travel, to aid in tracking it and cleaning it up. The first wave of debris is predicted to hit Hawaii within a year. Then it will hit Vancouver and the rest of the west coast of North America [in three years], before heading back to Hawaii.