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The nearly 400 year legacy of a cutting edge ceramic coffee filter
This NY Times piece on a 1,020 year old shop in Kyoto has been making the rounds online. It got me thinking about other examples of products or skills that have traversed centuries, and a random discovery we made at a…
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Island of Gods, Island of Demons
According to the old stories, Iki was one of the first islands of Japan, made by the creator gods themselves. It is the island of the Moon, with Tsushima across the strait being the island of the Sun. The gods had…
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Negotiating the seas
It has been busy recently for Japan’s three disputed territories. Early in October China opened a new digital museum about the Senkaku Islands, and China has had coast guard vessels near the Senkakus for a record number of days this year.…
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Articulate Noise — Review of Better Living Through Criticism
For a book with “how” in the title, there is not much instruction. Better Living Through Criticism is more of a “watch me think about art, pleasure, beauty, and truth” which is much more entertaining. If writing described as “pontificating” or…
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Immersed in audio dramas
There has been a spate of new Audible Original Dramas out recently, and I have been hooked. As everyone knows, I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Audio accounts for about 2/3rds of the books I read each year. My very…
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Pure Invention
First of all, this is not really review of Matt Alt’s new book Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World. The book is great, it is a fun romp through Japanese history using the lens of some of its…
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Excerpt on travel luck
I have been working on a feature article about travel writing for a magazine, an essay on my thought processes while writing a travelogue. Below is an excerpt that I cut from of the piece (which focuses on Japan) that thought…
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What’s your travel philosophy?
I have finally finished Emily Thomas’s short book The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad. I started this fun little read in the summer on my last trip to Kyoto, and held off on finishing it until I was back here, as…
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Invoking the God of Letters to fight Coronavirus
In the fight against coronavirus, some in Japan are pulling out all the stops. Kyodo reports that a temple in Kyoto recently held the Kitano Goryoe, a Shinto-Buddhist rite which hasn’t been held since since 1467. The rite originates to the…
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First island typhoon experience
[This is a long post. At the very bottom is a condensed list of lessons learned if you do not have the time to spare.] Since the typhoon was due to strike on the Monday, we started shopping for supplies on…
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