entrance to Shotengai
A shotengai is a a covered shopping street with a lot of small shops. This is one of the entrances to the one in my neighborhood.
view down my street
This is the view looking down my street. Yes, there's an elevated highway running right in front of my building, that's how the rent is (relatively speaking) cheap, but it's much quieter that you'd expect in the U.S, since fewer people drive.
Many people have bikes (as you can see) for short trips, and take the subway or train for longer ones.
shinto shrine in the alley
A small Shinto shrine, on a side street in my neighborhood. Right outside some sort of metal-working shop, there was a guy there with a welding torch.
No, the Japanese aren't Nazis; the swastika is a good luck sign in many cultures, that why Hitler tried to steal it. You will often see it in Buddhist and American Indian art.
no bike parking? so what?
The people of Osaka are notorious scofflaws. Not only do the park their bikes in spaces clearly marked "no bicycles", as seen here; they also cross streets against the light. This is the street outside my apartment building.
re-interpreting Star Wars: "Revenge of the Hope"
I've been thinking a lot about stories lately, on the nature of the brain as a storytelling machine. More on that later, but one point that I've been considering is that, just as an infinite number of curves can be drawn through any finite set of points, so an infinite number of stories can be told through any finite set of events.
And then a few weeks ago, along came this lovely example, in which the Star Wars movies are re-interpreted with R2D2 and Chewbacca as prime agents of the Rebel Alliance. I love it!
A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-IIIIf we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
...
Japanse girls with dogs in bike baskets
In Osaka Castle park, two young ladies with matching small dogs in bike baskets
"Place that touches dogs"
In Shinsaibashi, unfortunately the text on the sign - "Place That Touches Dogs" - didn't come out. Apparently a "dog cafe", where you can take your inu or play with the locals.
kids' paintings - Daruma
Daruma (Bodhidharma) is all over the place here. This set of paintings from a local school (displayed in the grocery store in my building) includes paintings of Daruma figurines.