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.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 29mm — ¹/250 sec, f/8, ISO 200 — full exif
Looking Down

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 200mm — ¹/200 sec, f/7.1, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Across

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 200mm — ¹/320 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Up

I like these because they show the fluffy, cloud-like nature of some kinds of cherry trees at full bloom, but they're not really very good. They're not pictures to hang on the wall or even on your desktop, so I'll include another photo I took the same day, at Daigo Temple. It's as typical of a cherry-blossom picture as you can get, but pretty nevertheless. Below the picture you'll find six different versions suitable for use as a desktop background, should you feel so inclined.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR @ 170mm — ¹/125 sec, f/11, ISO 100 — map & image data — nearby photos
Standard Cherry-Blossom Shot

Desktop-Background Versions:
Standard: 1024×768  ·  1440×1081  ·  1600×1201     Widescreen:  1280×800  ·  1680×1050  ·  1920×1200  ·  2560×1600

I just realized that with Vista™, there are now enough major releases of Microsoft® Windows® for the desktop (as opposed to PDAs and servers) to put out a “Top 10” list, so without further ado....

The Top 10 Worst Major Releases of Microsoft® Windows® for the Desktop:

As one would expect in a “top worst” list for Windows®, it includes all the major desktop releases.

The list is in chronological order, but if what I hear about Vista™ is any indication, it also belongs solidly in the #1 spot in a traditional order-by-rank list of worsts as well.

I must thank Microsoft® for one thing: the flakiness of my previous Windows® box resulted in a blog post — How to Waste a Lot of Time in Two Weeks (or More) — that has perpetually been one of the most popular posts of my blog.

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 ways, although I'll stick with “golden poo.” I've seen these around, and as with so many things that I instinctively know that I just “don't get,” I rolled my eyes and didn't really give it a second though. So it's surprising to find out that they're just a play on words, with no deep cultural background behind them, and that they started only in 1999, and not hundreds or thousands of years ago.

They're made of porcelain and coated with 24-karat gold, but are relatively cheap. To quote the article, they retail for “just 105 yen for the mini poo to 2,100 yen for the big dump, which sits proudly on a silky red cushion” (that's a bit less than a dollar for the petite poop, and about $18 for the tremendous turd).

Golden-Poo Stickers

Of course, by now there are many copycat caca around, and with a quick web search I found ones made of clear glass with embedded gold sprinkles, little poops nested in baseball mits, and tiny turd cell-phone charms.

Then there's the golden poop that doubles as a rubber stamp (stamping “good fortune”), and sheets of golden-poo stickers complete with little smiley faces. Now really, who couldn't love these cheery cute little craps?

The stickers with the non-anthropomorphic piles have labels that indicate good fortune in general, and good fortune with finances, the latter being the common phrase that “golden poo” is a wordplay from (which means that “Feces of Financial Fortune” is probably a more accurate translation of the true spirit of the Golden Poo).

Gee, now that I think about it, I should have gotten one for Anthony when he made is first poop in the toilet.

The other day, we went for an impromptu drive up into the northern mountains, although phrasing it that way perhaps makes it sound sounds like more of an adventure than it is. Kyoto is in a valley surrounded on three sides by mountains. You can be in a populated area of the city that gets virtually no snow for years, but a fifteen-minute drive puts you into what seems to be the middle of nowhere, where snows are measured by the meter.

Of course, there's not much snow left anymore, particularly after such a mild winter, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there was some. We were on a small road winding up a mountain and came across a turnaround with a little wooden shrine / rest stop, so we stopped to play a bit.

On the back end of the shrine's roof, the snow had slowly been sliding off, and the projecting snow and long tendrils of ice sagged, and took on a curve under their own weight, thereby forming something that looked like a long row of frozen ram's horns. Sadly, I didn't have my camera, but I did borrow Fumie's phone with which to take a tiny picture.

Later, Fumie was standing some distance away with the camera phone, so I started lobbing snowballs at her. After a few warm-up throws, I had surprisingly good aim. I wasn't throwing hard, so she could easily lean out of the way, but it was silly fun and she tried to take a picture of a snowball coming at her.

Unfortunately, during the midst of this, she spent one moment concentrating just a bit too much on the picture and neglected to bob, and got positively plastered directly in the nose. (I did say that I was having excellent aim.)

I say “unfortunately” because she's my wife and decorum dictates that I say that, but it was really funny. Imagine my shock, totally expecting her to deftly bob out of the way as she had numerous times, when her face suddenly disappeared behind an expanding cloud of wet, slushy snow, the product of a slushball absolutely obliterating itself upon her nose.

Her first thought, after the initial shock, was to lament that she hadn't even gotten the picture. Her next thought was to remove the snow embedded in her nostrils.

After hugging her and apologizing profusely, we couldn't stop laughing as I helped her get the snow out of her face, hair, clothes, and even boots. We also took pains to make sure Anthony knew that I hadn't intended to hit her, much less hit her in the face. Considering that we didn't stop laughing for 10 minutes, I don't know how seriously he took us.

I really wanted to get a good picture of that funky curving snow, so the next day while Fumie was in Osaka on some preparations for a trip to Malaysia (mimicking our trip to Malaysia last year), Anthony, Fumie's mom, and I took another drive up into the mountains. Sadly, it was much warmer and the snow had mostly melted.

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 52mm — ¹/125 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Not Much Left

All the freaky ice and most of the oddly curved snow was gone. Oh well, we could still play in the snow on the ground.....

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 31mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Taking Aim

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 31mm — ¹/640 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Launch

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 31mm — ¹/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Happy with the Results

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 44mm — ¹/160 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Obaachan Laughing at Her Poor Throwing

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 26mm — ¹/320 sec, f/2.8, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Anthony Teaching: “You need a wide stance like this, then....”

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 @ 18mm — ¹/160 sec, f/9, ISO 200 — map & image data — nearby photos
Looking Up: Very Tall and Very Straight Trees

Throughout the rest of our drive, we saw a lot more snow and a lot of pretty scenes, half of which involved snow and the other half involving plum blossoms.