Posts from — November 2004

I was afraid of heights when I was a kid.

A pretty good dark beer in Okayama. There used to be a really great microbrewery in my neighborhood, Shirakawa Beer, but they stopped making it a couple years ago.

Mitsui Urban Hotel Osaka Bay Tower (left) and Hankyu Navio (right)

Careful there, I think your motorcycle is leaking oil on Heian history.

Next to the cigarette vending machine, between two parking lots on a sidestreet northeast of Senbon-Marutamachi is a marker showing a piece of foundation of the inner part of the original Heian Imperial Palace, from soon after Kyoto was officially founded in the 8th Century. This is north of Nijo Castle, so quite a bit west of the extant Imperial Palace. Related info here.

We went to Okayama this week on a Nozomi 500 Series Shinkansen, the fastest looking of the bullet trains.

Home of the Chariotaku.

Kurashiki gets 5 stars from Gregory for being so baby friendly. He really liked Tivoli Park, and both the park and the tourist information center located in the middle of the Bikan sightseeing area had baby changing facilities. We’ll be back, and maybe go down to the sea as well next time.

Ryokan breakfast in Kurashiki. He was crawling around and around, shouting for joy, as happy as could be to explore a new room.

I have confidence in this. I’ve estimated that the huge amount of newly-registered Democratic voters will turn out in unprecedented numbers and make the difference in the election, despite the best efforts of the RNC to organize numerous schemes to prevent them from voting. My calculation was Kerry 279 and Bush 259, but it may be even stronger for Kerry.

We have been in Kurashiki in Okayama for a couple days. Kurashiki was a storehouse (“kura”) town, and many of these old buildings still stand (it would take a lot to knock one down.), with ceramic tiles arranged in white plaster in fancy patterns. Kurashiki also has Tivoi Park, a branch of the world’s oldest amusement park in Copenhagen, Denmark.