All posts filed under: Japan

3rd Generation Toyota Prius

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   3rd generation Toyota Prius   Toyota announced the arrival of the latest version of the Prius hybrid car on May 18th. You see quite a few of the new Honda Insight hybrids as rental cars on Okinawa at the moment. It will be interesting to see how the sales of the new Prius compare to the new Insight. The Toyota Prius is a fantastic bit of technology, it’s just a little bit too big, and a little too ugly plain for me. On a related note, I just read on the Guardian website: “America’s gas-guzzling automobiles were heading towards extinction yesterday as Barack Obama set strict limits on car exhaust emissions and directed producers to make a more fuel-efficient vehicle fleet. The policy requires US auto makers to produce cars and trucks that achieve an average 35.5mpg by 2016, and will reduce America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 30%.” After a bit of time with a calculator. I managed to work out 35.5mpg is 15km per liter. 15 kilometers a liter is what my little Suzuki Swift …

Tokyo Mater

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What do you get if you cross the Pixar movie Carswith the high octane thrills of Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift? Six minutes and thirty five seconds of pure brilliance. There are numerous clever cameos by Japanese cars: Mazda Miatas (brings a tear to my eye), the Toyota (Lexus) Crown, the Nissan Skyline ninjas. It was very interesting to see that the restaurant the truck flies through was called Harryhausen (it was written in Japanese script). Nice nod to the film making genius Harryhausen who created one of the most fantastic movie scenes I’ve ever seen, but will leave that for my next blog.

Veggie Japan

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Living in Japan can be a little tricky if you are vegetarian or vegan, but it is far from impossible. In general you don’t get products that are specifically targeted at vegetarians. So no veggie burgers at fast food chains, no veggie symbols on packages of food, no spicy bean burgers or anything by Linda McCartney. There are  veggie / vegan restaurants but they tend to be quite rare and, until recently, it was difficult to find out where they were.  For the opening evening at Cotonoha I asked a local vegan restaurant, Salon Cuttho, to provide half the food. They made samosas, spring rolls, bruschetta,  croquettes and ratatouille. The guests thought the  food was delicious, and it disappeared fast (too fast in fact – didn’t realize that an international crowd require far more food than an all Japanese crowd of the same number). The next day, while settling the bill at Salon Cuttho,  I saw they were selling a Japan Vegan Restaurant Pocket Guide. Written by Herwin Walravens it gives information on over 100 …

Birds of Japan

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Box just arrived from Amazon.com with a couple of books, a couple of cd’s and a movie I’d ordered. One of the books was A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Japan and North-East Asia by Tadao Shimba. I’m most impressed by the book. Colour photography throughout , over 600 species, a little bit of a description on each bird, and its geographic range. The photographs range in quality but still give you a good idea of what the birds look like. One problem I have already noticed is that the book has the English name and the scientific name of the bird but not the common Japanese name. If you  buy this book and plan to use it while in Japan (which would be most people I imagine)  having the Japanese name would allow you to ask locals what a bird was or confirm your guess. Until the photographic guide came out the standard book (in English) of Japanese birds was A Field Guide to the Birds of Japan by the Wild Bird Society …

Solar Eclipse on July 22nd 2009

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If you’ve seen the movie Apocalypto you will be well aware that a solar eclipse can be a life changing experience. On July 22nd 2009 there will be a total solar eclipse visible from a narrow band across Asia and the Pacific. From Wikipedia: “This solar eclipse is the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the twenty-first century, and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132. Totality will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds, with the maximum eclipse occurring in the ocean at 02:35:21 UTC about 100 km south of the Bonin Islands, southeast of Japan. The North Iwo Jima island is the landmass with totality time closest to maximum.” This map shows its progress across southern Japan. The main island of Okinawa is in the 90% eclipse zone. Most of the Japanese islands in the total eclipse area are tiny. The island of  Yakushima however is a little larger and still in the zone of totality. There is access by plane and ferry from Kagoshima, but tickets are either gone or …

Stripes Okinawa – May 8th

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The Stripes Okinawa, is the free weekly supplement of the Stars and Stripes newspaper.  Kluso (the musician in an earlier blog post) does some writing for the paper and came down to Cotonoha to chat about the exhibition. Kluso’s article along with some of my photographs appeared  today in this week’s edition. 

Interview on F.M. Okinawa

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Yesterday  I was a guest on Arisa Muto‘s chat show on FM Okinawa.  We talked in Japanese about topics ranging from how blue the sky is to my favorite Okinawan food.  It will be broadcast on May 23rd at 9.30pm, and if you’d like to hear me butchering the Japanese language it will definitely be worth tuning in to. I had never been into a recording studio before. I was most impressed by the doors.

Takashi Murakami and Louis Vuitton

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Takashi Murakami doesn’t just lend his talents to pop stars. For many Japanese women there is one brand that ranks above all others, and its name is Louis Vuitton. Their designer bags are so popular in urban Japan that you could be forgiven for thinking they were part of a national costume.  Murakami teamed up with Louis Vuitton to inject a dose of modern Japan into the rather staid French designs. The result was a series of special edition bags that had forgone the traditional brown colour scheme for something a little bolder.

Kanye West and Takashi Murakami

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Kanye West is quite the Japanophile. The album cover for his album Graduation was created by Japanese manga artist Takashi Murakami. The music video for Kanye West’s song Stronger was filmed in Japan, and I think is based in part on scenes from the anime movie Akira. Enjoy!