There is a major faux pas in Japan about leaving your chopsticks stabbed upright in a bowl of rice. If you’ve read any guidebook on local etiquette, you’ll know that this is a pretty serious offense. Basically, it relates to the visual similarity this chopstick posture has to incense sticks commonly seen during Buddhist funeral […]
Several times this past week I ventured outside my normal Sapporo city birding hot-spots and headed south by southeast to one of the better Ramsar wetlands maintained by the Wild Bird Society of Japan. For my fellow non-car possessing Hokkaido-ites, here’s a walk through of my trip(s) to the Lake Utonai Sanctuary: After a 5:00 […]
And so it comes. Earlier this week the winter vomited out its last blast of snow. For one glorious morning, after another 5:00 AM parking lot shoveling, my snowshoes were strapped on for what might have been the last time this season. I left for my trailhead at -6(ish)℃, and returned mid-morning in +10 ℃ […]
Caveat… Obviously if you are unemployed and left destitute by your situation then you may not agree with title of this post. But if you find yourself with the opportunity (a working spouse whose given you leeway to decompress), quit that abyssal dead-end job and don’t look back. That is where I currently stand and […]
Each year the snow piles up. Many hours are spent each week pushing snow around the in-laws’ 6 car open air parking lot (9,000 Yen per car/month – inquire in comments); a task that is boring, cold, and ultimately unrewarding. It will all just pile up again, without warning, without regard for your life. There […]
In 2007 I broke by leg while slipping on black ice outside a boarding cottage I was responsible for at The Church Farm School in Exton, Pennsylvania. I was laid up for months with a compound fracture to my right tibia/fibia, crutching around my parents’ home, on medical leave from my duties, and with a […]
There is nothing like forcing yourself through the ultra-realist-modernist hell that is James Joyce’s Ulysses. For the last several months my “To Read” list has been mired in quicksand while this behemoth of a tome, with its micro-font, thin pages, and countless footnotes/ endnotes / addendum notes – plugs a hole in my brain. I […]
Ah yes. The cool Hokkaido summers. Where temperatures stay pleasant and mild. No need for air conditioning. No humidity. These lies still get pushed upon us. Those lies gave us an Olympic Marathon and the ridiculousness of the Run-Walk. (Come on. This is a sport?) These lies kill quite a few elderly people up here. […]
On a recent camping trip south to Shiraoi, we stopped by the Poroto Mintara (ポロトミンタラ) Tourist Information Center, not far from the Upopoy National Ainu Museum and Park, where I managed to pick up these playing cards with Ainu vocabulary. I must admit that I am still rather ignorant of the history of the Ainu […]
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy My rating: 4 of 5 stars Have you ever felt that you are not a good person, a little dirty, a bit of a slob, or just had an impure thought? Just read this short novel from a modern master and you will soon feel positively angelic about your […]