I went to Asian Arts Museum of San Francisco, almost by accident, and caught the tail of "Drama and Desire": an exhibition of old Japanese paintings about the Pleasure Quarters of Edo. Tomorrow, Sunday May 4, is the last day it's running.
They included old shunga scrolls from 1700s. My …
read moreOverall, just about everything in Tokyo was exactly as I expected. I've met all of it in anime, which turned out to be quite truthful. Akihabara, not generally portrayed in anime I watch, was disappointing with its crampled stores.
Ueno Park was PACKED. The crowd mills around, and parties drink …
read moreThe nation's four Internet provider organizations have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of users found to repeatedly use Winny and other file-sharing programs to illegally copy gaming software and music, it was learned Friday.
Nice. But this is not all. Here's the Japanese …
read moreA timely reminder that Japanese produce cartoons other than anime is Usavich. For some reason they remind me about Mikanseijins (ミカン星人).
UPDATE: I've beaten Iwa ni Hana to the press (by less than a day), but they have screenshots.
read moreWas reading a funny article by Hinano and saw this:
I mean I know I get annoyed when people write articles that Russia is a refrigerator 365 days a year so everyone wears those wooly hats and dances the russian dance to keep warm.
I don't get annoyed by this …
read moreI'm just back from a Bunraku, or a traditional puppet theater, performance in UC Berkeley. Promoter, Peter Grilli, mentioned in the pre-performance lecture that Bunraku started in 1650s as an art for the masses, as opposed to then pre-existing theater for highly educated, and turned into art for the elite …
read moreJAXA reports that their lunar probe Kaguya carries an HDTV camera, provided by NHK. Mind boggles at the uniquely useless and spectacular public-private partnership.
read moreAs seen at Spaceflight Now today:
The orbiter was nicknamed Kaguya after thousands of suggestions were submitted to JAXA by members of the public. The probe was named after a character in a popular ancient Japanese folktale.
They are talking about this:
I'm afraid I'll have to research that girl …
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