The Rose Bar

25Oct05

Friday is my busiest teaching day, and it’s the busiest teaching day for Richard and Bob as well. Since we’re all pretty exhausted by the end of the week Friday tends to be our night out, though on a low-key scale. This last Friday we headed over to Honmachi, the station just up from Shinsaibashi, […]

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Tags: America-mura, DJ, hip-hop, Rose Bar, Shinsaibashi

Dream: 24 October

24Oct05

I’m standing in a small forest dell that is ringed with moss-covered rocks. There is a brown bear at one end of the dell and I’m trying to get out of its way so that it won’t attack me. Strangely, I begin to hear instructions, but only in my head — not by sound. The […]

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Tags: bears, dream, friendly bears

Dream: 20 October

24Oct05

I’m with Richard walking through some grape fields in Greece. The grape fields are located on the edge of a blue bay that arcs off into the distance. The day is cool, but dusty, and the air smells good. Richard asks me if I’m teaching and I tell him that I am and then he […]

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Tags: can't catch a cab, dream, Greece, late for work

Train track hiking

24Oct05

On October 9th I went for a fantastic hike with Yoichi-san, or Yo-chan, who works at a film developing stand just outside of the west gate of Ishibashi station. From Ishibashi station we took the Hankyu Takarazuka line and then transferred to the JR Takarazuka line at Kawanishi-Noseguchi. The JR line took us straight up […]

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Tags: abandoned train tracks, basic onsen rules, bathing culture, 紅葉, forest, hiking, hot bath civilization, maple trees, momiji, mountain, nature, onsen, river, Takarazuka, Takarazuka mountains, tunnels

The Black Pot: Dutch Oven Restaurant

17Oct05

A new restaurant just opened in Ishibashi called Black Pot: Dutch Oven Restaurant. The Black Pot is a kind of offshoot of Urban Chuckwagon Wild Beard in Minoh. Aji-san, the owner of Wild Beard, helped in the design and construction of the Black Pot with its perfectly finished woodwork and incredible attention to detail. Like […]

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Tags: antlers, Black Pot, bourbon, Ishibashi, Wild Beard

Strange eyes

17Oct05

A recent posting at BoingBoing led me to several interesting animations produced by the amazing design team at 1stAveMachine. The animation that the BoingBoing post highlights is a series of scenes of forest vegetation sentience. Though this sequence could be read as simply another example of the “what would happen if we graft an ear […]

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Tags: 1stAveMachine, colorful robots, phenomenology of nature, plants with eyes, strange futures, video animation

World Beer Summit and the Floating World

15Oct05

At the end of the first week of classes, Richard, Bob, and I headed over to the Umeda Sky Building (one of the seven famous viewing towers in Japan) for the annual World Beer Summit. It was a cloudy evening, but there was a great orange hole in the sky and sunset light was pouring […]

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Tags: beer, friendly people, salsa dancing, Takimi-koji restaurant mall, Umeda Sky Building, World Beer Summit