Recently, an amusing phenomenon came up on Facebook: a page that claimed to let you type words upside down. But when I actually followed the link later on, I found it led you to a gaming website. But I discovered the Unicode characters they were using to generate the upside down characters, which would be easy enough to enter manually.
On Tuesday, January 5th, 2010, I headed to my local train station, as usual, to head toward the Tennoji section of Osaka. The traditional new year’s holiday is called o-shogatsu, an honorific term referring to it being the start of the first month of the new year, and typically strings along from the first to [...]
Or, “It’s cold. It must be mid-winter training.” In the Japanese martial arts tradition, students of each of the various schools typically hold a special training session called “kangeiko” (寒稽古 in Japanese), which means “mid-winter training.” No one is certain of the exact origin of the kangeiko, but the tradition appears to have started in [...]
Before 2009 came to its sudden halt, I went along with a group of aikidoka and friends to hike Nijouzan (Mt. Nijo), which is situated in Nara prefecture overlooking Osaka to its northwest and Nara city to its northeast. Our sojourn started by assembling at 8:30 AM at the Kintetsu Abenobashi station, and from there [...]
Finally. After a year on the sidelines, I’ve finally returned to aikido! This morning, I decided to go to the afternoon 2 pm aikido session at Shodokan honbu, hoping for a small class size. Almost a year ago to the day, I broke a finger (the proximal phalanx of the left pinky, to be precise) [...]
Last night I went along with friends to dinner at the Gozanbou teppanyaki restaurant on the top floor of the Kyoto Granvia Hotel. I was gobsmacked at the high quality of the food, the surroundings, and, indeed, the entire experience. What a treat! The evening started with garlic, and lots of it. Frankly, I think [...]
