August 2010
28 posts
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we're going to japan!
Some supporters of ours graciously donated their SkyMiles to us and are sending us to Japan for two weeks!
We’re flying United Airlines.
I was hoping we’d get a guy as funny as this dude, but at the end he says ’ you will not get that on United Airlines, I guarantee you.”
We’ll be visiting Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto!
Tokyo, Japan
Nagoya, Japan
...
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Japanese Officials Reveal Execution Chambers
I know this isn’t the cheeriest subject, but it’s kind of fascinating. The NY Times recently did this article on how Japan implements capital punishment. They still hang people!
The execution chamber, noose ring, and trap door
The Japanese government opened up its execution chambers to the public for the first time on Friday, taking journalists on a tour of Tokyo’s main gallows....
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“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all...”
– The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Watchcouldn’t pass this one up…
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it pays to be a sumo
BBC just posted this story entitled:
“Fat-fingered sumo wrestlers given iPads”
“Fat-fingered sumo wrestlers, unable to tap the keys on a standard mobile phone, are being given iPads to help improve communication.”
“Many Japanese newspapers also reported that the iPad had been chosen because of its large touch-screen keys that can be easily prodded by...
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the breakdown
So here’s a bookmark we made to make things simpler to understand. It’s overwhelming to think of how much money we have to raise to get to Japan and seems like you can’t help us out with all the zeros. So, we are looking for 175 faithful people who can help us out. Would you consider being one of those people?
All we need is:
100 supporters @ $25/month
50 supporters @...
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grilled, microwaved marine life
George Foreman ain’t got nothin’ on this…
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look for the bear necessities...
This panda has quite the itch…
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usavich
Usavich (ウサビッチ) is a play on the words ‘usagi’ (meaning rabbit in Japanese) and ‘vich’ (which simply sounds Russian). It is a series of very short animated pieces (currently at around 39 episodes) which show the absurd life of two rabbit inmates and their attempt to escape a Russian prison and get to the city. It contains virtually no dialogue at all and relies entirely on sound effects...
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live long and prosper
The New York Times recently published this article called Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone. It’s fascinating.
Japan has long boasted of its innate ability to churn out, not just people who have mastered longevity, but people who have the most disease free lives on the planet. In fact, Okinawa, where my mom is from is one of only 5 Blue Zones where people commonly live...
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dear japan
Matthew Brown’s breathtaking montage on Vimeo.
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this makes the ipad look like atari
via SGCafe:
If you are going traveling to Japan later this year, you might want to check out this vending machine in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station. The cool factor about this vending machine? A full touchscreen for the customer to choose the favorite drink and an embedded camera that recognizes your gender and age, the machine will be able to recommend a beverage based on these factors.
This...
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homeless toyota workers
I realize this video is a year old, but if you can remember all of the chaos going on with Toyota in the recent past, this video will help you see how that stuff directly affects the city of Nagoya. Ministry doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but in the midst of real pain and struggles that stem from real decisions, economic circumstances and political systems. It goes without saying that...
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going to the "21st floor osaka hotel english...
Thanks to Hollywood the typical Christian, Western wedding is all the rage in Japan now. Japanese people are flocking to chapels like this one in Osaka, which is a replica of a famous English church, to get a real, Western wedding as an alternative to the Shinto or Buddhist ones. A ‘priest’ even performs the service, but he’s usually just for show...
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remember the titans
It’s called the Titan Arum. When I first saw photos of this plant I wanted to go out in the yard and plant one immediately. But now that I hear it smells like a garbage dump that has been lit on fire, and that it takes 20 years to bloom on top of that, I think I’ll just keep viewing it vicariously through other people and from a distance.
From Yuriko Nakao with Reuters:
The...
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shinichi maruyama
Another great Japanese artist for you to get to know. He does this thing called ‘High-Speed Water Shooting’ and captures some crazy photos of water and ink colliding.
Here’s the man at work.
From DesignBoom.com:
Maruyama takes full advantage of a recent advancement in strobe light technology which can record physical events faster than the naked eye can perceive...
