A bird on Mother's Day

Mother's Day is only a couple of months away, and I'm eagerly awaiting Seiyu's display this year. (Seiyu is a Japanese department store, which is now almost entirely owned by Walmart.)

Last May, the good folks at Seiyu decided to mount this display outside their store.


This was such a touching display of affection and respect, that my wife and I felt we had to talk directly to management about it. But not before snapping this cellphone photo.

I wonder what we can expect this year? Headless mooning mannequins? Child mannequin abuse? Or maybe a recap of last year?

Whatever Seiyu's (and Walmart's) plans, I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

Kofun (古墳)

Kofun are enormous (often) keyhole-shaped burial mounds. They are quite remarkable, and now, with online mapping tools, anyone can get a bird's-eye view of them. Who were the originally intended viewers of these giant keyholes? Certainly not imaging satellites flying hundreds of kilometres above the Earth.

I've scoured Japan and here are a bunch of Kofuns: (zoom in and drag the maps around to see more)


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These are near Heijou Palace in Nara.


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These are in Sakai, Osaka.


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These are a bit east of Osaka.


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In Chiba.


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In Osaka.

DVD Recommendations

Recently, we thoroughly enjoyed two short-lived TV series and a movie, all starring many of the same actors and all produced by the same guy, Judd Apatow.

I'm going to introduce them in the order in which we viewed them, but feel free to watch them in any order. I'm not gonna be upset if you tell me you watched the newest one first, and then watched the middle TV series backwards. If that's what you feel like doing, then do that.

A few months ago, I read somewhere on the net that two of the greatest TV shows were Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks. I hadn't heard of F&G and I had been completely uninterested in Undeclared when it was first broadcast on television, because of an irrational dislike of the main character. (The fact that my parents had initially recommended it to me didn't help either.) Nine years had passed since its release (and subsequent cancellation) so my emotions were sure to have dissipated.


So we started watching Undeclared. We immediately fell in love with the show: the quirky characters, the storyline, the music. The setting made me think of my sister's residence at U of T. (I think you'd like the show a lot, sis.) I didn't relate too much to this series, but I thought it was great.


I strongly related to the next show, Freaks and Geeks, which was released a year prior to Undeclared. The reason I suggest watching F&G second, is that some of the characters are slightly more unsavoury than in the other show. Undeclared lets you warm up to some of these actors before seeing them as Freaks in F&G. This show revolves around a brother and his older sister going to high school right around 1980. This is just a touch before my time, but I still felt a strong connection to the show. The sister is intelligent and gets good grades, but she starts hanging out with the Freaks. The brother is short and thin, and he and his friends are labelled Geeks. They play with chemistry sets and Dungeons & Dragons. Looking back at my high school experience, I was a composite of these two characters, moving away from my "geeky" self and getting in with a "different" crowd. The acting and writing are top-notch and I strongly recommend renting the DVDs. (The show might be a bit nostalgic to the former highschool teachers out there too.)


The last recommendation is the movie "Knocked Up". This is like Freaks and Geeks, but fast-forward 10 years into the real world. The Freaks are portrayed here as a bunch of morons trying to start a website indexing all of the nude scenes from every movie known to man. The Geeks are simply the typical 9 to 5'ers, trying to live a "normal" life. It's a fun film, perhaps not so realistic, but worth a rental.

A French Couple

A married couple joined our school last week. They are our first married couple, but what really makes them stand out is that they speak English with French accents. It's quite fascinating. It feels like I'm speaking to someone in Quebec or Paris, France. Sometimes they'll slip into French for connecting words like "donc" and "alors".

What's even more interesting is that they met in Chad, Africa. (Chad's official languages are French and Arabic. That's its flag above.) I believe they also spent some time living in France. So, their French is better than mine. But it's quite a good combination as I can understand both of their second languages and a little bit of their native one.

They might be around for long though since their work takes them back and forth between Japan and Africa. They work for NGOs operating in Africa although I'm not sure of their exact roles yet.

A la prochaine!

The Story of Crow

I recently asked one of my students if she had had any pets when she was a child. She said no to a cat or dog, so I asked her if she had had any other kinds of animals: fish, turtle, etc. No, no, no, she said. But, she continued, she had had a crow.

A crow! I exclaimed. I started asking question after question about the crow. Here is its story.

When she was young, her brother came across an injured crow and brought it to an animal hospital. As he carried the bird there, its companion followed on the ground, hopping all the way to the hospital.

Her family decided to keep the flightless female crow in a covered enclosure in their back yard. Every day, the male companion would come to visit his "girlfriend". Every day for over a year, the male came. My student and her family would watch in the morning as he and the female touched their heads together through the cage. They would stay motionless like that for more than ten minutes. The male would often bring shiny objects to his friend: pieces of metal, bottle caps, etc. The only time the male didn't visit was during extremely windy or stormy weather.

I wonder how he felt after his girlfriend passed away. Did he forget about her? Or does he still wander the skies looking for his black-feathered friend?

Attack of the Cypresses

I just learned that sugi trees (杉) which are known as Japanese cedars, are actually not cedar trees. This is a misnomer. Sugi trees are in fact cypress trees. So my earlier post on cedars should be read again, substituting "cypress" with "cedar".

This is the tree whose wood is used in the construction of many pieces of Japanese furniture, including the drawers which safeguard many of the beautiful kimonos here. I was told that cypress (perhaps like cedar) keeps away worms and other bugs. However, I can't rectify this idea with the following from Wikipedia: "Cryptomeria [the scientific name for the sugi tree's genus] is used as a food plant by the larvae of some moths of the genus Endoclita."

Japanese Snowballs

These snowballs were part of a gift from a departing student. They were damn good! A delicious substitute to the snowballs I missed this past Christmas. They were so good, that I'm going to have to find the shop where they were purchased, and get some more. Needless to say, they did not compare with my Mom's snowballs, which will always be at the top of the snowball heap.

@Kath: If you see these in a cake or cookie shop, buy them.

Attack of the Cedars

Cedar pollen is the bane of a seemingly huge number of Japanese people. Everybody's eyes are watering. Everyone's face is covered in white masks. They suffer. People don't go out. The economy shrinks. And why? Because 60 or 70 years ago, a gazillion cedar trees were planted all over Japan to take advantage of the growing housing market. However, something happened, and the price of cedar skyrocketed, and the trees were never cut down. Soon after, everybody started to develop varying levels of allergies to the trees' pollen. The kanji which symbolizes this allergy is actually relatively new.

Why doesn't the government cut them down now? Well, before they were planted, a ton of indigenous trees were razed to make room for the pollen-profferers. If the cedars are cut down now, there will be a lot of ugly, barren hillsides. Another (possibly more cynical) reason is that the pharmaceutical (and other) companies depend on these mighty cedars for their profits. Cut the trees and you cut the sales of pills, sprays, masks, air purifiers, and numerous other products I'm sure.


Post scriptum: The gist of this blog was communicated to me by a student and like a good little blogger I have done no research at all to substantiate it. However, I have received confirmation from a few other students that something like the above happened in the past. And so, I have passed these facts on to you.

From Akasaka to Harajuku

Today, we made our way to Akasaka (1 hour trip) to watch Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite", to which I won a pair of tickets last week. I wasn't too impressed with it and we ended up leaving at the intermission. I think I just don't like plays. They always seem so melodramatic, fake, and forced.

After the play we decided to walk around, with our end goal being to get to Harajuku to do some shopping. One of the first things we saw was this very old building. The striking thing was that in the background there was a huge new skyscraper. (You can see this on my Flickr site.)



Then we came across the TBS building (Tokyo Broadcasting System) whose entrance contained a number of interesting little displays. Outside the side exit, we were surprised to find Japan's most famous superhero: UltraMan!



Turning our backs on UltraMan (actually, on the UltraMen (there were two!)) we saw this interesting art installation. Note the interesting clock symbols.



Next, I was happy to stumble upon the Nogi Shrine. This shrine has a short "torii" path which was fun to walk through. Is this the same place you went to, Mom and Dad?



Yuu took this nice photo of some early blossoms:



Here's Yuu walking back down the tunnel:



You can see more photos of the shrine on our Flickr site.

I was surprised that we were so close to Roppongi. After walking a few minutes from the shrine, we found ourselves in front of Tokyo Midtown. We had been there once before with Kathleen. Today, it was much less busy. Here's a shop window that caught our eye. The shop sold hanging ornaments and chopsticks, etc.



After seeing many cool things in many cool shops, we got a bit peckish, so returned to the fish restaurant we had tried to eat at our last time there. This time, it was open, so we entered and ate a lot of delicious fish. Here's a shot of an anglerfish (those supremely ugly deepwater fish we sometimes see on TV sea documentaries) that was hanging above our heads. This is just the head. You can also see a dangling "antenna" thingy.



Here is one of the many dishes we ordered at Uoshin. Under this mound of seafood, there were many tiny cucumber maki rolls.



After dinner, we started walking towards Harajuku. Again, we were surprised to find Roppongi Hills on our way. We walked up to the main level where we saw a nice view of Tokyo Tower. We even danced. (We were a bit drunk.)



All in all, it was a fun day. However, when we finally got to Harajuku, most of the shops were closed or closing, so we didn't do any shopping.

Please take a look at the Flickr page for more fun photos of our day!

And, "Hello to Nanny!!!"