Comments for Japan: Life and Religion

Comment on Happy Belated Setsubun! by Doug 陀愚

Doug 陀愚 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:48:56 +0000

Hi Wren,

I kind of thought the same thing at first, until I saw the leopard-printed pants and the frowny faces.

Comment on Happy Belated Setsubun! by Wren

Wren — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:29:31 +0000

Cute! These look kind of like foxes rather than oni, but I guess the things that look like fox ears to me are the oni horns. I love kitsune but my relatives in Japan think they are very tricky and devious.

Comment on Bigger is Better: Adventures in Fukagawa by Doug 陀愚

Doug 陀愚 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:54:08 +0000

Hi John,

Glad you enjoyed it. I certainly did. I didn’t realize it was part of the whole shitamachi (下町) until yesterday when I happened to look at a map of downtown Tokyo. My geography is surprisingly poor in Japan, despite visiting often, probably because I can’t use Internet easily. ;p

Anyhow, yeah, I would love to visit Narita-san. I saw a documentary about it once, and it seemed like a pretty awesome temple, though I am unclear how to get there from the airport. Their english-language instructions assume a starting point from Tokyo. Also, I tend to arrive in the late-afternoon when I am already extremely tired and eager to get to my in-laws home.

Comment on Bigger is Better: Adventures in Fukagawa by johnl

johnl — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:46:29 +0000

That was great! That neighborhood has a lot of interesting stuff–it is one of the typical ‘shitamachi’ areas. I also made a special trip to the Fudo-son a while ago, but the big new building was still under construction. I need to go again, I see. On a side note, you mentioned Narita temple near the airport. If anyone has a layover at the airport without enough time to go all the way to Tokyo, the temple is definitely worth a visit, and you can easily spend a couple of hours there. There is a large park-like area with lots of auxiliary temples that is very interesting (assuming the weather is good). Many interesting shops and restaurants as well.

Comment on Chinese Pinyin in HTML Ascii by Doug 陀愚

Doug 陀愚 — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:27:09 +0000

Hi Kendall,

That’s certainly true. The HTML stuff is useful in a web-context because it’s portable and universal, but it’s not the easiest method unless you do it all the time (I do :p). Thank for the extra tips!

Comment on Chinese Pinyin in HTML Ascii by Kendall

Kendall — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:58:04 +0000

While using HTML entities can work, they aren’t easy to remember. The Mac can let you type these characters in directly using the extended keyboard. For instance, ā is typed by Option + a, (release) a (or any character), for ǎ type Option + v, a. I use this for typing Japanese and showing the proper inflections in words. The following web page shows more details about this and how to turn on Mac’s extended keyboard. It has a Windows section, but it mostly involves using the character map. http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/psu/gotunicode/macron.html

When having the characters directly in the web page, the encoding is important. Anymore, I use UTF-8 for all pages to help include any Japanese I use and characters like these.

Comment on Happy Belated Setsubun! by Doug 陀愚

Doug 陀愚 — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:13:09 +0000

妻も描くことが上手ですが、僕はコンピュータしか出来ません。多分、DNAでしょね。:-p

Comment on Happy Belated Setsubun! by cocomino

cocomino — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:03:04 +0000

上手な折り紙とイラストですね。ちょっと怒ってるみたいです。。

Comment on The Awesomeness of Japan’s 7-11 by Doug 陀愚

Doug 陀愚 — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:22:38 +0000

No! I’ve seen those before, and was really curious to look, but Natural Lawson isn’t in a convenient location for me (relative to where my wife’s parents life).

Hm, I’ll have to try that next time though.

Great service indeed.

Comment on The Awesomeness of Japan’s 7-11 by Rurousha

Rurousha — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:04:06 +0000

Have you had a chance to go to Natural Lawson? It’s similar to Lawson, but they have a bigger (and, of course, more expensive) selection of food with no artificial additives. It might be a marketing gimmick rather than really healthy food, but they do have a bigger selection and sandwiches that aren’t totally toxic.

They all have great service, though!