Cleaning up around the house today, I came across the menu for a pizza chain. I thought I'd share some of the entries, which are quite typical of pizza in Japan.

They have three "series" of pizza: the Italiana Series boasts "cheese stacked to the top of your ears," the Quarter Series has pizzas with four different combination of toppings (one combo per quarter pizza), and the Long Seller Series are the traditional standbys.

In this post, I'll feature one from each series...

The first pizza in the Italiana Series has four combos like a Quarter-Series pizza, and [...]

Continuing with my cherry-blossom pics from last year, here are more from my trip to Daigo Temple last April.

Last year's cherry-blossom season was pretty bad in the sense that the trees didn't all bloom in unison, but each at their own straggly pace. In the picture below, you can see that many of the trees on the right side have yet to bloom.

The area around Daigo Temple was very crowded, yet oddly nice nevertheless. This is in contrast to the ugliness some areas become during cherry-blossom season (the subject of one of my very first blog posts). At [...]

On the drive into the mountains the other day, we were on a twisty mountain road and came across the surreal sight of a bridge leading directly into the rocky face of a mountain.

Taking this bridge would mean a really short trip.

Of course, it's a work in progress. A tunnel will certainly follow, thereby cutting off a long and dangerous segment of the current road....

I expected the road to become dangerous, but what followed the Bridge to Nowhere was actually fairly pleasant, and not narrow nor at all dangerous. A shockingly short 1/3rd mile (500m) later, we [...]

I mentioned two weeks ago that I'd post some cherry-blossom pictures from last year, as we await this year's season, and so today I begin. To help get me in the mood, I'll start with a picture from my balcony of the trees across the river, and then two from ground level. These were taken on April 7th last year.

I'm not very confident of their color balance -- they seem to have a redish tint to me -- but the sun was heading down, so perhaps it's deserved.

I like these because they show the fluffy, cloud-like nature of [...]

The Japan Times (the major English daily in Japan) has an amusing article this week....

The full article at the Japan-Times website goes on to explain in detail.

The article is by Alice Gordenker, whose writings I always enjoy, especially her "What the heck is that?" column. She can dive quite deeply into the most obscure little things, and you come away from one of her articles really feeling you have the complete poop on whatever subject is at hand.

In this case, she talks about a good luck charm, 金のうんこ, which can be translated in any number of amusing [...]