 |
Winter Light
I think the only reason I can stand the freezing winter in Tokyo (ok, freezing is a relative matter, but let’s just say it’s much colder than Tanzania right now) is the fact that it is sunny all along: that does make a big difference.
Great light for pictures.
The one on the right was taken right behind my house… I’ll let you guess what it is.
Got to have priorities
I was gonna post a deep and insightful post about life, death and the pursuit of happiness.
Then, I realized that the brand new Suntory winter-edition homebrew was on sale at Lawsons…
新宿
 |
 |
 |
Tatamis, Miso and the emergence of Blogging Critical Sense
Few people know that the natural color of the Japanese tatami is, in fact, green.
It is only with wear and sunlight that it becomes its trademark straw-yellow color.
All right, everybody knows that. Especially around here, where Eriko gave me her usual demeaning laugh when, upon my discovery that every patch of tatami that had remained covered by furniture so far, was much greener than the rest, I suggested mould.
Crazy stuff, I know…
Oh, and the free-falling posting rate? What can I say, critical sense is a bitch.
Seriously: once you start actually wondering twice whether what you are about to type is worth the time, or if you shouldn’t instead run to the local combini to see if they got any new seasonal flavored beer… that’s the end of it all.
Back on the Road
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
After a week camping on and off at my house, Kristy and Tara are back on the road… this time they are doing Eastern Europe before heading for Latin America… Good luck and see you soon girls!
Take a walk (and a beer) down Memory Lane
When I am taking visitors out and they start on the whole tired “Tokyo is like Blade Runner, without the flying cars” thing, I usually just nod and take them to Shinjuku Nishiguchi… Making our way toward Sakuraya and its floors upon floors of useless electronic gadgetry, before taking a sharp turn into the insanely narrow backward recesses of 思い出横町 (Omoide Yokochou: Memory Lane).
Impossible not to experience at least some level of self-sufficient ‘bet-they-don’t-mention-this-in-lonely-planet’ pride when you walk through that über-authentic remnant of post-war Tokyo, trying to catch your breath amidst the carcinogenic fumes of kushiyaki barbecues and slaloming between drunk salarymen and people sitting at the street-side stalls in an alley that is barely big enough to walk with your arms outstretched.
Rick’s Bday pty
 |
 |
思い出横町
La Côte d’Ivoire
I used to read MeFi every once in a while, the same way as I used to read Slashdot a long time ago…
This particular thread is a perfect illustration of why I stopped reading both. In one or the other, you could sum up every single thread thusly:
- Random guy posts unsupported statement, presenting it as news accompanied by dubious piece of media and trolling comment, then leaves never to be heard again on the thread.
- Dozens of people pick up the thing and take it at complete face value, post immediate emotional replies without ever questioning the information itself.
- A few hundred more share pathetically uninformed, yet strongly assertive, insights on a topic they had obviously never heard of until that day.
- Three people post interesting, thoughtful, carefully researched post explaining why the whole thread makes absolutely no sense and why most of the previous posters ought to read the news once in their life.
- Sensible posters get royally ignored, quickly give up in face of the ridiculously steep road that needs to be walked back to sanity.
- More ignorant posts pour in.
- Thread invariably degenerates into canonical Holy War for the remaining 3000 comments (most of which are only monosyllabic rebuttal to the previous ones, by then).
Mmmn, sounds familiar?
And yea, I know I am quite late on that train of world news, but it’s not like they’ve stopped killing each other in the meantime…