As I posted about the other day, a local restaurant suffered a fire two weeks ago. It appears that they tried to renovate, but driving by today we noticed that they've resorted to somewhat more drastic measures...

The sign says, in elegant prose whose lilt can't really be translated, something along the lines of...

The sign looks like it says a lot more than that, but the extra is all the flowery honorifics sprinkled throughout.

Posted next to it was the demolition company's work permit, and a statement that the building had no asbestos. Of course, I'd never seen nor [...]

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Okay, so the What am I? quiz wasn't very challenging this time, unlike my first one and the one prior to this. At least there were some answers this time, unlike an earlier quiz.

So, yes, Fumie got some new bowls. They're not mixing bowls, but fine tableware, the "deep bowl" style of the Noritake N4 series. I'd never seen nice tableware that stacked like mixing bowls, and thought they were beautifully photogenic. She also got the "flat plate" and "deep plate" series, which are also elegantly stackable.

I think the concept is that the different plates and bowls of [...]

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Until two days ago, I don't think I'd been inside a high school since having graduated from my own back in Rootstown, Ohio (class of 1984... yikes!). I'd certainly never been inside a Japanese high school, but had seen enough of them from the outside to have the impression that they were somewhat like prisons... dark, dirty, bleak.

One of the dads at Anthony's kindergarten, Yoko-chan's daddy, teaches at a high school, and invited me to visit his class. I'd mentioned that it'd be interesting to do a series of blog posts on kindergarten daddies, having recently featured another such [...]

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These signs popped up at intersections in my area of Kyoto a month or so ago. They read:

June 26 (Thursday) 〜 June 27 (Friday) Summit Foreign Ministers' Meeting Due to traffic controls, etc., traffic congestion is expected. Please exercise restraint on driving into Kyoto.

As I mentioned the other day, the G8 Summit meeting of foreign ministers was recently held in Kyoto, which entailed a lot of hubbub.

There was a massive police presence everywhere. I snapped a couple of pictures from my scooter while waiting at red lights. Mostly, there were congregations of police at intersections, looking bored....

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The photo below, of pizza at a cafe, appeared on my previous post. It was taken with a polarizing filter on the lens adjusted to block glare from the window in the background. Mouseover the "Without Polarizer" button below for the same scene two seconds later, without the filter...

With Polarizer   -   Without Polarizer mouseover button to see that image

The difference is striking.

Without the filter, the reflections on the pizzas, table, and glasses of water just destroy the scene. I'm glad I happened to have brought the my polarization filter that day. In the "Without Polarizer" [...]

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