Mountain fog comes in
there is no far away -
we are the horizon

NEW TRADITIONS

Omikuji vending machine
at a shrine up the road,
as compared to the
traditional omikuji dispenser

When your fortune
was in your own hands...

DEFINITELY NOT SPANISH SCIENTISTS

Definitely non-Spanish scientists have finally 'discovered' what has never been concealed -- in fact that practically everybody in Spain, even those doing lab research, have known for the past few thousand years -- to wit, that a nap is good for you: "In countries where mortality from coronary diseases is low, siesta is quite prevalent." Some researchers who managed to stay awake found that people who took long, frequent naps (my favorite kind) had a 34% lower risk of dying from heart disease, which is a plus, than those who pointlessly stayed awake.

When I was in college I didn't need naps most of the time because I was already asleep anyway, since being a creature of the night I slept well beyond nap time, which was only a minor disappointment. Still, I remained an interested amateur. So I didn't realize my full siesta potential until I lived in Spain, where my soporific exercises helped me rise to the Olympian level of afternoon somnolence that I now enjoy on pretty close to a daily basis. When the whole country is filled with Zs and even the labs are closed for siesta, the tendency is to go lie down and close your eyes.

By contrast, here in Japan at the office in the big city, salaried sleep is frowned upon, so I have these wide-open eyes I stick on my glasses for PLS (Post-Lunch Syndrome), which works fine until somebody addresses me personally or I fall out of my chair, which is rare. Otherwise I resort to the less satisfying but more popular Japanese nanonap, in which you fall deeply asleep for less than the blink of an eye several dozen times a day. This is easy at a desk, but sometimes poses problems while driving, though nanonap recovery times are generally quick. As far as world-class napping goes however, like most professionals I prefer to work at home.

It took those scientists so long to find this out, though, that I suspect they might have cots in the lab corners...

THE LOGIC OF THE UNTERMENSCH

It's surreal, but not surprising, to read that some untermensch tried to strongarm Elie Wiesel into admitting that Jews had never been strongarmed by gangs of earlier, starkly ruthless untermenschen.

That's typical of what I call untermensch logic, which is manifested in individuals whose sphere of thought is dwarfed by a received idea, or to whom objective reality is rendered invisible by a mental scotoma. For the untermensch, aggression is validation.

SHIMIZU UICHI

Tea Bowl
Celadon

Shimizu Uichi was a potter and Living National Treasure who lived in our village. He died in 2004. These are two of his tea bowls. More Shimizu Uichi works here and here.

Tea Bowl
Stoneware with Horai-type Iron Glaze
Chinese Character Design "Wind"

In 1985, Shimizu Uichi (1926-2004) was designated a Living National Treasure. Born into a family of ceramic wholesalers in Gojo-zaka, Kyoto, Shimizu later decided to become a potter. In 1970 he moved to Shiga Town in Shiga Prefecture, where he gathered clays and glazing materials from the Hira Mountains and built the noborigama (climbing kiln) he named Horai-yo (Horai kiln), in which he fired the works for which he is famed.

NORTH KOREANS PRETEND TO BE DISGUSTABLE:
Kidnappers 'disgusted' at victims' behavior

You can imagine how irritating it must be, after you've openly admitted to kidnapping Japan's citizens in the dead of night for decades so you could train spies to do Japan further harm, when just as you're busy trying to extort the international community with threats of nuclear holocaust, that same nitpicky Japan, who for some reason won't take your word for anything, keeps pestering you about where the hell the rest of its kidnapped citizens are, while you're busy trying your damndest to appear sane and scam the best possible deal for not making WMDs you're gonna make anyway... it's... it's gotta be way worse than a stone in the shoes of the People of the Democratic Republic, if only they had shoes.

"It is ridiculous and disgusting that Japan, which is not even qualified to attend the talks, keeps saying that the abduction issue is a basic agenda [when our own ravenous desires are always the basic agenda]," said the North's official Korean Central News Agency with cellophane credibility.

"The international community will never tolerate Japanese politicians' behavior if the nuclear talks become complicated [how simple they've been thus far!] and fail to produce substantial fruit [big change!] due to Japan's wrong maneuver," they babbled on between the bars of their self-constructed cage, as righteously as anyone who believes he's Napoleon.

No one in the civilized world has ever thought that the leadership of North Korea is playing with a full deck, but this puts the cherry atop the dungheap.

TRAVELER

Some say that the first half of life is spent acquiring things, and the last half is spent letting them go. That's generally true, I suppose, but it's different for travelers, who from the start of their journey begin to let things go. One of the unsung benefits of travel is learning how to do this, how not to invest too much of your presence in static physical things.

If you're a traveler, you know the deepest meaning of goodbye. As to physical things, you never accumulate more than you wish to carry, and from your first day of wander you work to pare even that down, to give yourself maximum mileage; you therefore reduce all that matters to practicals, minimals, symbols, essences, thoughts, memories, things you can take with you when you go-- as you always do, or at least always think of doing.

If in your latter travels you physically settle down somewhere, in spirit you still treat time like a traveler, still live like a traveler, consider like a traveler, eye your surrounds like a traveler, always thinking maybe next month, maybe next year, viewing all your possessions with a jaundiced eye, plotting what to do with them at departure, who might need them, enjoy them, buy them... for you know what anchors they are to passage on the endless river - known only to travelers - that runs through the world and has carried you here, the marvelous river you've never really left, that runs now inside you, calling to the boat of your soul...

The traveler spends his life letting go and going onward, and at death it is the same.

THE HEARTBREAK THAT IS BOB'S HOLIDAY SCHEDULE, Part II:
The Man without a Holiday

Oh, the paranoid naivete of a visitor from a foreign land! Here I was thinking (if I may so label it) that the universe was colluding against me vis-à-vis the home/office space-time continuum, when in fact I and the Japanese government were to blame! I, for not knowing what the Japanese government was up to, and the Japanese government for being up to it.

Turns out that in the very year I retired, the government initiated, starting with the first holiday of my retirement, what is known as the 'Happy Monday System,' under which several randomly arranged holidays were moved to Monday, and no one said a word to me about it. And as if that weren't enough holiday excision, "A provision of the law establishes that when a national holiday lands on a Sunday, that holiday is moved to the next day." They circumlocute, but that means My Monday.

Moving through the year like a clockwork orange, the new system works like a charm, ensuring that all national holidays in January, February, March and April fall on Mondays, rendering me a man without a holiday. Then we dance flower-garlanded into the month of May where, in a bizarre departure from the crush-Bob's-retirement-vacation-dreams norm, two of the three May holidays fall on a Thursday and Friday, though they may well be moved in some fashion before I arrive at them. Just to keep the sinister hand in, the other holiday falls on a Saturday.

Then in June we get right back into the groove with no holidays whatsoever. Flowing on into July on time's big trackless roller coaster, we see that the single solitary July holiday falls on a-- Monday! I get this one doubly off!

Then we come to the vacation desert month, August, where there are no holidays except those that full-time workers get, which leaves Bob over there by the dried-up oasis, tongue hanging out before a mirage of shimmering days off until we get to September, with its two holidays where, in stark contrast to the aforegoing monotony, both fall not on Fridays... not on Thursdays... not on Tuesdays, or any combination thereof, for both fall on the extremely over-vacated Monday!

Then in October, the sole holiday, in another shocking surprise, falls on a Monday! This brings us to November, when the single holiday falls on a Friday-- though I understand the government is working to have this corrected. December holiday? A Monday: 'When else,' the calendar says, 'You were expecting maybe a Christmas present?'

So if probability operated alone in my holiday-deficient world, of the 13 Japanese national holidays, 8 would fall like manna on my workdays, but only 3 do. I never thought I'd be saying anything like this one day, but if I want to have more days off, I'll have to work on Mondays.

THE HEARTBREAK THAT IS BOB'S HOLIDAY SCHEDULE FOR THE COMING YEAR

I know this is way less than a pixel in the big picture, it's purely a personal thing like a chipped molar you just can't keep your tongue away from and who else even knows or cares. Well this year is the chipped molar and I'm the tongue. Ok maybe another metaphor would be better but you get enough of the picture, which isn't a pretty one as I stand here head bowed over a Japanese calendar, fully aware that this is of no interest to anybody other than myself but I've got to put this microgripe somewhere so why not as graffiti on my cyberwall, like I say I can't keep my mind's tongue away from this chipped molar of a year, metaphors run amok, get as out of control as... as... my Japanese holidays. Life after all is a balance of panorama and pixel count.

You've heard of Job, the troubles he had - such as they were - well that was several thousand years ago if a day, but I know just how he felt, though I can safely say his vacation problems paled in comparison to mine, probability-wise. Let's talk about my holidays, and how the universe can get really nasty with small stuff like me.

Now that I've retired, I only work in the Big City on three days a week: on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. That's: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I'm off on two weekdays, Monday and Wednesday. That's: Monday and Wednesday. So the odds are 3 to 2, better than a coin toss, that any given Japanese national holiday (there are 13) will not fall useless and forlorn as a Daliesque clock on one of my days off, but will settle graciously and delightfully as a butterfly on one of my workdays. So out of 13 holidays, if probability has any meaning in this holiday-deficient world, 8 of them will fall on my workdays and give me more than an extra week off!

Visit again tomorrow for Part II of the engrossing, probability-violating heartbreak that is Bob's Holiday schedule! Right now I have to work.

YOU KNOW YOUR EMPIRE'S CRUMBLING WHEN...

REMINDERS OF HOME...

Health Minister Yanagisawa vows
to minister to the health of both men
and child-bearing machines and devices.

Just another day in the life of the LDP, whose recent resignees include Tax Commission Chairman Masaaki Honma, who was found to be "living with his mistress in a government-subsidized condominium in Tokyo despite advocating that such properties be sold off," and administrative reform minister Genichiro Sata, who "resigned after admitting accounting irregularities by one of his political support organizations."

Then there's Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki, Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka and LDP policy chief Shoichi Nakagawa, who declared "enormous 'office expenses' in their political funding reports while using rent-free government offices."

This is all rather nostalgic to me, since I grew up with the old Albany Machine...

SHINZO ABE'S MUG

This is a good indicator of the LDP's dinosaurial perspective on reality. Graft? Birth-giving devices? Plunging popularity ratings? Let's erase all that by selling coffee mugs bearing the Prime Minister's image! That should undo the disaster!

And not just mugs; you can get Shinzo Abe phone straps, Shinzo Abe bookmarks, Shinzo Abe ballpoints, note pads and other politiko-kool stuff now on sale at the LDP party headquarters' souvenir shop.

Before too long we'll see Shinzo Abe truckers' caps, tees, sweats and hoodies, as the PM's ratings plunge to a new lows following ministerial money scandals and political gaffes amid the general populace disaffection miasma that comes with the removal of wool from public eyes.

"We hope the goods can help his support ratings to recover," said LDP spokesman Yoshiaki Ishige, without even a hint of a snicker.

Maybe the Prime Minister should do a rap album.

I just posted
The Big Wind Chill
at
The Blog Brothers.

THE GROWING VALUE OF GRANDFATHERS

A fascinating story posted by Gordon Coale... how what we do in the present can stir up voices, images from the past...

"I've done a website on my Grandfather, Griffith Baily Coale. He was a mural painter in New York City in the 1930s and started the Naval Combat Artist program during WWII. He published a couple of books and I have them up on the web site with some additional writings...

Several months ago I received an email from a storage facility in Connecticut. They had a painting done by Griff and wanted to know if I would be interested..."

SO THERE I WAS, SNUG IN THE TOASTY LOFT

So there I was, snug in the toasty loft on a cold snowy winter evening just a moment ago, when the peaceful air was suddenly rent from here to there by a woman screaming at the top of her voice: "ONI WA SOTO! FUKU WA UCHI!" Lifted me right out of my chair. It was Echo, who definitely has a stage voice, doing Setsubun.

She had bought the necessary roasted soybeans, which come with a scary mask for extra terror to scare the poor general-purpose demons with, but Setsubun had slipped her mind (though much less than it had slipped mine, we're talking continental differentials here), what with the big snowstorm today and the grandkids aren't visiting at this time like they were last year - with little kids around you sort of automatically remember Setsubun, since the littlies keep you well minded of devilishness - but like I say it was peaceful here till Echo opened an email from Kasumi that had as an attachment a Setsubun mask Kaya had made in kindergarten, being worn by Mitsuki in the photo-op, for whom it is a bit too big as you can see, so shortly after that came the aforementioned celebratory screams and the ratatat of soybeans everywhere outside as demons were sent packing and good fortune was invited indoors. First via the door toward the south, then the east, then the north, then the west, Echo (who has a powerful stage voice), screaming each time far loud enough to scare the demons out of probably the village down below, but certainly any of them so unfortunate as to be lurking in the dark vicinity, and getting hit in the eye with a roasted soybean is no fun either, you can bet.

WHO'S YER DADDY, PROFESSOR?

I don't know about you, but I've always trusted the big oil companies. I always knew that, like any massive, faceless juridical body, from Halliburton and Philip Morris all the way to Dupont, Enron and beyond, every corporation had my best interests at heart at all times, that public concerns were always at the very top of their agenda, well above concern for profits; I knew in my heart that, despite frequent and disastrous mistakes, unfortunate oversights, devastating errors, regrettable miscalculations, unfortunate outcomes, what have you, that such things were only due to loveable human fallibility, that capitalism was every bit as trustworthy as socialism was untrustworthy, it's all down there in black and white, so this story must be a lie. They couldn't be so stupid as to put it in writing!

"Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered."

Maybe all that integrity got locked in the safe or something...

Kyoto Journal #65 is Now out.

Available wherever the finest magazines are sold.

(It contains, beautifully illustrated and arranged,
a ramble and a poem of mine, first published here on PLM.)

YANAGISAWA APOLOGIZES TO BIRTH-GIVING DEVICES

He also bowed briefly in parliament, after having insulted the better half of the nation. Prime Minister Abe apologized as well for the public revelation of Yanagisawa's unpleasant thought processes, in an attempt to stem the plunge in his administration's approval rating, particularly among birth-giving devices. So far, two members of his Cabinet have resigned in scandals, with strike three now in the offing. "I want him to fulfil his duties with all of his body and soul," insisted Abe, who appointed Yanagisawa in now-apparent ignorance of his serious limitations. Abe says that the Health Minister shouldn't resign, despite what everybody else thinks, because that would be terrible for Abe. And even though Yanagisawa has driven one huge nail into the LDP effigy. But the really odd thing is, women gave birth to these guys.

JAPAN HEALTH MINISTER VIEWS WOMEN AS 'CHILD-BEARING DEVICES'

Reality intrudes slowly for some people. For others, it intrudes not at all: the current Health Minister of Japan, for example. Apparently selected from a stockpile of political dinosaurs the LDP keeps stashed away in an underground bunker somewhere, Hakuo Yanagisawa, the man in charge of national health and who presumably should be an exemplar of health- and body-related attitudes (though I admit that's asking a lot of a Japanese male who is still of the Edo period), in a Saturday speech on Japan's birth rate problem, in a slip of consciousness called women child-bearing machines. "Because the number of child-bearing machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head." So let's accelerate overall line production and per-head unit output, ladies. He later apologized, since women can vote in these modern times, but now that we all know how he thinks, they should put him in charge of a bakery or something, maybe he could monitor a bread-making device.

MAYBE GLOBAL WARMING IS A MIRACLE?

As in other attempts to withstand science, the global warming naysayers are soon going to have to blame god for a naked Antarctica and a submarine Florida, among the many geoanomalies yet to come, as actual nature marches on in actual reaction to the designer-shod human footprint.

According to Climate Change 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report, as previewed by The Independent:

"'Anthropogenic warming of the climate system is widespread and can be detected in temperature observations taken at the surface, in the free atmosphere and in the oceans,' the draft report says. 'It is highly likely [greater than 95 per cent probability] that the warming observed during the past half century cannot be explained without external forcing [human activity].'

* Sea levels will rise significantly even if levels of CO2 are stabilised. By 2100 sea levels could be 0.43 metres higher on average than present, and by 2300 they could be up to 0.8 metres higher.

The IPCC also finally nails the canard of the climate sceptics who argue that global warming is a myth or the result of natural climate variability; natural factors alone cannot account for the observed warming, the IPCC says. 'These changes took place at a time when non-anthropogenic forcing factors (i.e. the sum of solar and volcanic forcing) would be expected to have produced cooling, not warming.

There is increased confidence that natural internal variability cannot account for the observed changes, due in part to improved studies demonstrating that the warming occurred in both oceans and atmosphere, together with observed ice mass losses.'

Key findings of the report:

* Global temperatures continue to rise with 11 of the 12 warmest years since 1850 occurring since 1995. Computer models suggest a further rise of about 3C by 2100, with a 6C rise a distant possibility

* It is virtually certain (there is more than a 99 per cent probability [emphasis mine. RB]) that carbon dioxide levels and global warming is far above the range of natural variability over the past 650,000 years

* It is virtually certain that human activity has played the dominant role in causing the increase of greenhouse gases over the past 250 years

* Man-made emissions of atmospheric aerosol pollutants have tended to counteract global warming, which otherwise would have been significantly worse

* The net effect of human activities over the past 250 years has very likely exerted a warming influence on the climate

* It is likely that human activity is also responsible for other observed changes to the Earth's climate system, such as ocean warming and the melting of the Arctic sea ice

* Sea levels will continue to rise in the 21st Century because of the thermal expansion of the oceans and loss of land ice

* The projected warming of the climate due to increases in carbon dioxide during the 21st Century is likely to cause the total melting of the Greenland ice sheet during the next 1,000 years, according to some computer forecasting models

* The warm Gulf Stream of the North Atlantic is likely to slow down during the 21st Century because of global warming and the melting of the freshwater locked up in the Greenland ice sheet. But no models predict the collapse of that warm current by 2100.

***

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that over the coming century we are likely to see big changes to the Earth's climate system. These include:

* Heat waves, such as the one that affected southern Europe in summer 2003, are expected to be more intense, longer-lasting and more frequent.

* Tropical storms and hurricanes are likely to be stronger, with increased rainfall and higher storm surges flooding coastlines.

* The Arctic is likely to become ice free in the summer, and there will be continued melting of mountain glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets.'"

The IPCC 4th Assessment Report Summary for Policymakers will be available on the IPCC website from February 2, 2007.

via Metafilter

Then there are the completely impenetrables:
Survey shows 13% of Americans never heard of global warming

The twins' shoes in the genkan