Comments on J-List side blog: My Narita Reconsideration, a very useful Japanese ...

Peterd, yes, that's partially true. I'm sure peopl...

2006-07-19T00:57:00.000+09:00

Peterd, yes, that's partially true. I'm sure people who make it a point to never vote are certainly in that category...

Awesome! Seeing Roaring Camp Railroad made my day ...

2006-07-18T10:53:00.000+09:00

Awesome! Seeing Roaring Camp Railroad made my day Peter. My parents took me there several times as a kid, as we always made sure to ride all the functioning antique trains that we could.

*I* know what waiting for you on the tracks ahead!!

Looking at that picture of the Redwood slice remin...

2006-07-18T04:28:00.000+09:00

Looking at that picture of the Redwood slice reminded of one of my favorite SNL sketches. Tom Arnold is a park ranger who is doing another one of those "this is the year the magna carta was signed" presentations with a log slice and it all seems to go on normally, but toward the outside of the slice things, well, went off on a tangent. He explains that at *this* point he first proposed the idea of the tree slice and was denied, and *this* point was his second, third, and fourth denials, *this* was the point where he was fired, and *this* was the point where he took matters into his own hands and cut down one of the redwoods to obtain a slice. The sketch ends with real park rangers dragging him off. Good stuff.

"sho ga nai" or "shikta ga nai" sounds to me like ...

2006-07-18T01:46:00.000+09:00

"sho ga nai" or "shikta ga nai" sounds to me like apathy. I do understand why it is done in Japan. But if I heard an American say that, I would probably automatically think they were apathetic.

I went to Roaring Camp many years ago. I still do go down to that area, but to areas near there as there is some awesome mountain biking a short distance from that park.

You just have to love the differences between Amer...

2006-07-18T00:35:00.000+09:00

You just have to love the differences between America and Japan, Peter my boy. I wonder how the Japanese would deal with "taxation without representation?" Would they go on with their traditional tea ceremonies, or have a rather different "Tea Party" at a local harbor? Still, I'd love to see some group where someone suggests the solution we (America) had to that little problem: "Why don't we just go shoot a British man with a musket?" I bet that wouldn't fly 'round your parts.

But, Peter, if you want a real "Wild West" experience, just mosey over to the windiest city in America, Dodge City, Kansas! Because, honestly, that's all they have: the wild west and the wind. Yeah.

Finally, my family had an eminent domain problem recently. My father's mother's house is the one she raised my father and aunts in (yeah, it's still around). A while back, FEMA tried to buy it from her because the creek that runs through her backyard is prone to flooding. Believe you me, I've cleaned up her basement more times than I can remember. So our benevolent overlords thought it fit to buy her house and turn the lot into a levee. They didn't offer her as much as she would have liked, so she said no. All the people they offered said no save one. That lot's now a little city-run park. I would guess from your article that, were her street in Japan, there would be a nice levee there now.

I had to post just to say the Nana anime is really...

2006-07-17T20:29:00.000+09:00

I had to post just to say the Nana anime is really really good. A friend got me addicted to it right when it started, and i love it. Great music in it, too.