ChanPonGo

We've Moved --- Update Your Links!

2009-07-17T01:50:00.001-04:00

We're moving the blog over to Wordpress (again). Please visit us here:

http://chanpongo.wordpress.com/

MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE LINKS!!!

-Chris and Erumi

難波 Nanba City

2009-07-16T13:44:00.011-04:00

Mario Kart! Chris is evil...

... and Erumi is good ^_^
Incidentally, evil won this time. ---Chris

Tasty Ramen

鶴橋 (tsuruhashi) ramen - the specialty of this restaurant. Full of kim chi and spicy goodness.

例の鶴橋ラーメン

あの...文化は文化やし、別に批判などしようとも思わないけど、このようなサービスはやっぱり . . . （でもやってもらいたいかな）
↑だめです。ひざ枕耳かきその他同種のサービス一切禁止。
クソ。

Translation of sign: "Don't piss here!"
For some reason, there is a little shrine gate at the top; a warning of dire consequences from the gods should some foolhardy salaryman ignore the prohibition?

Random stuff in Japan!

2009-07-16T12:57:00.010-04:00

三蛇酒："Three snake liquor".
Chris ordered a glass of this stuff at a restaurant in Kobe's Chinatown.
There are three quite poisonous snakes in there, and drinking it is supposed to make men vigorous. Well, Chris couldn't drink more than a few sips of it, so Erumi finished it for him. At first she felt pretty great (vigorous?), but then the poison seemed to kick in, and she got really hot and felt sick. Erumi does not recommend three snake liquor :(

A cicada (Japanese semi) --- symbol of summer (and ephemerality) in Japan

Kobe (Hyogo prefecture)

Chris and dad eating yakiniku

Eating yakiniku (grilled meat) at the Korean town with my parents. We had tongue, stomach, beef, kim chi, and more.

Chris and I began learning the sanshin (a type of stringed instrument) this summer. Getting together at our sanshin teacher's house after Sunday practice

Osaka Night

2009-07-16T12:25:00.013-04:00

Eating takoyaki with ponzu sauce and leeks in Amerika-mura (American village)
Cultural note: In Japan, you can drink beer on the street, while walking around. Oh, and you can get it in vending machines. Yes, Japan is truly a land of liberty. ---Chris

Going on a boat tour !

Dotonbori Street

2009-07-16T11:50:00.012-04:00

Dotonbori Street

Dotonbori street

Famous blowfish (fugu) restaurant

Takoyaki is a famous Osakan food. It's octopus inside of a fried ball of dough, topped with mayonnaise, tonkatsu sauce, dried bonito flakes, and seaweed. Yum!

Eating Takoyaki :) We took a boat tour on the river in the night.

Guriko (Glico)

Chris+Meat

Osaka Castle

2009-07-16T11:12:00.004-04:00

Chris excited---In front of my parents' apartment

After having nice lemon-flavored snow cone, we went to explore the castle.

Sakura Gate

Chris's amazing self-photo skill 1 (Taken by holding the camera in his right hand)

Chris's amazing self-photo skill 2

View from Tenshu-kaku

Chris with Shachihoko

Getting stamps! In Japan, many places (especially historical sites such as castles and also other local places like train stations) have their own stamps. You can create your own collection of these stamps :)

Chris having fun in front of the castle 1

Chris having fun in front of the castle 2

Day 3: Naruto Straits

2009-07-07T23:42:00.006-04:00

阿波踊り

Vertigo inducing.

Day 2: Strawberry-tasting-night

2009-07-07T23:23:00.015-04:00

We took a walk in the surrounding mountains before visiting my brother.

My brother building a very big greenhouse

Sisters

Farmer pianist

The farm cafe

The front of my brother's farm

My grandpa

Strawberry tasting night

Chris playing the cajon

Day 1: Trip to my brother's farm

2009-07-07T22:46:00.017-04:00

Dinner with my brother and sister-in-law

We found a huge spider in our room!

We woke up at 5 a.m. and began to explore the neighbourhood. This is the house of the family who owns the log cabin. They also raise cows and other vegetables there. When we woke up, everybody (including cows) were already working.

We stayed in this log cabin

Good Mooning !

Freshly picked corn ! Yum !

Breakfast after morning walk

If there were fly creationists...

2009-06-12T15:45:00.003-04:00

Article in Journal of Semantics

2009-05-20T04:00:00.002-04:00

I have a paper appearing in the Journal of Semantics, hopefully at the end of this year. You can read a pre-published version here.

Random thought

2009-05-06T18:59:00.002-04:00

The beginning of the intro music to Star Trek NG sounds like the beginning of Mahler's Symphony No 1.

Here's a MIDI file with the beginning of Mahler's Symphony No. 1.

And the opening of Star Trek NG.

Willie Nelson & Family in Concert

2009-05-02T01:23:00.009-04:00

Chris and I went to Willie Nelson's concert at Mullins Center, UMass, on April 17th. We could also listen to Ray Price and Willie singing together. Listening to Willie Nelson reminds me of my trip to Austin since Chris and I were listening to his music as we drove.

During the concert, I heard Chris crying “Yeaaah!” (and “Yiii-haaaah!”) quite a lot. Especially, it was when a giant Texas flag appeared from the ceiling at the beginning of the show and that a musician from Fort Worth was introduced that Chris's cry sounded loudest and most exciting.

It was interesting to observe that there was a large population of “hidden” cowboys and cowgirls in this area. Many of them were out there on that night, wearing cowboy/cowgirl hats and boots. I could even eavesdrop people speaking in a Texas accent. I was very excited about this and told Chris but he, who also heard them speaking, said that they were probably fakes. I don't know about who they actually are but I guess I just believe what a real Texan says about faking Texan.

Singers are not musicians

2009-04-07T20:52:00.001-04:00

Rachmaninov had big hands

2009-04-02T01:19:00.000-04:00

お雛祭り×牛タンタコス×カレーライス

2009-03-26T22:24:00.007-04:00

今となっては何週間も前のこととなってしまったが、お雛祭りのお祝いについて。

その前にちょっと話はそれますが、、、2月の終わりに決行した無謀な「4日間日本の旅」で私は何をしてきたかというと、やるべき事もちゃんとしたのだが、それ以外にせっせとお雛祭りのための物品を買いに走ったりしていた。お雛人形はあるので、とりあえずひなあられ、ひなチョコ、そして「お子様白酒」を購入した。「持って行きなさい。」と言って母がくれた多量のお赤飯味のおむすび山も一緒に持ってきた。3月3日の日は特別な雛祭りの食事をこしらえてクリスと一緒にお祝いをしよう！とはりきっていたけど、当日は結局近所のレストランで牛タンタコスを食べた。お雛祭りの日に牛タンタコスを食べたのは始めてかもしれない。でもその数日後、クリスが私の大好きなカレーライスを雛祭りのお祝いに作ってくれた。とってもおいしかった。買ってきたひなあられ・ひなチョコの類はいただいた。が、例の「お子様白酒」は飲む気になれなかった。瓶の裏に、「米、糀（こうじ）が沈でんしますのでよく振ってから」云々と書いてあったが、確かにそれらが沈澱しており、飲みたいという気分にはどうしてもならない。しかも気持ち悪いくらい甘そうだ。調子に乗って買ってしまったが現在処理に困っている。実際、この白酒よりも普通の酒が飲みたいと思ってしまう自分がいて、時の経過を感じてしまった　笑。よく覚えていないけど、白酒で興奮していた時代もあったに違いない。あったことにしておこう。
この「お子様白酒」は、結局未だに開封しないまま飾り物のようになっている。更に言うと、未だに雛人形も飾ってある　笑。今日このブログを書いたことをきっかけにちゃんと片付けようと思う◎

写真の解説：我が家の雛人形。お人形を乗せる台の具合で、モダン雛人形（このネーミングはモダン仏壇からヒントを得ました）のようになってしまった。

Happy Pi Day

2009-03-14T15:08:00.007-04:00

That's π, not pie (yum). You can, of course, use pi to calculate the circumference of a pie if you know its diameter.

Pi is the most familiar of the irrational numbers, which are so called not because they lack good sense, but because they cannot be expressed as any ratio of whole numbers. The ratio 22/7 is a good approximation; pi was apparently proven by Archimedes to have a value between 223/71 and 22/7.

The value of 3.14 that many of us learned in school is a numerical approximation to pi. A better approximation is 3.14159, which you can memorize by listening to this catchy song. A variety of numerical approximations were in use in the ancient world, including the very crude approximation of 3 found in the Bible (I Kings 7, 23) in relation to construction of the Temple of Solomon. I suppose the hardcore biblical literalists should mount a campaign to "teach the controversy" in our math classes.

The following visual demonstration of pi as the ratio of a circles diameter to its circumference is from the Wikipedia article on pi.

Happy Pi day!

Huh?!

2009-03-14T00:47:00.002-04:00

I watched this video, which for the first several minutes seems pretty nice and inspiring...

Until the end, when we get the line:

I pledge to be a servant to our president, and all mankind.

Say what? Listen for yourself; you'll find Demi Moore making this pledge around the 3:55 mark:

What the hell is this? Are these people trying to give fuel to the idea that Obama is some kind demagogue with a cult of mindless followers?

Allow me to make a pledge. I pledge to never, ever make myself a servant to any man. A servant to mankind? Wonderful. A servant to a man? Screw you.

This looks really bad, guys. Penn Jillette is definitely right about this one (Fair warning: this video contains some naughty words):

Classic Home Video Games from my Era

2009-03-13T16:33:00.003-04:00

Brett Weiss's (full disclosure: he's my uncle) new book on classic home video games from 1985-1988 can be found at the publisher's site here (no doubt the book will appear on Amazon after publication). This is a follow-up to his earlier book covering the years 1972-1984. I'm looking forward to this one, as the systems covered include the 8-bit NES (aka the "FamiCon" for you Japanese readers out there) and the Sega master system, both of which featured largely in my childhood.

A lot of my early reading practice came from playing Dragon Warrior --- I wonder what my elementary school teachers thought of all the "A slime draws near", "You lose 5 HP", etc. that appeared in my daily journal at the time.

Chris Davis via Google

2009-03-12T18:51:00.002-04:00

As a very common name, it is not surprising that, historically, I have not ever been able to search for "Chris Davis" on Google and find anything about myself.

However, I tried googling my name just now and am happy to say that my professional website now comes up sixth place, after sites related to Chris Davis of the Texas Rangers, and Chris Davis the (unsuccessful) candidate for Nevada District Court Judge.

Charges of narcissism can be addressed in the comments section. I assure my readers this search was done in the name of science.

2009-03-11T17:11:00.003-04:00

The god of commerce had a crush on Chris...
This is going to be a very complicated love triangle situation...
---At Awaji Puppet Theater

My Brother's "Sweetie(s)"

2009-03-11T13:55:00.014-04:00

During my FOUR-day trip to Japan, I met my brother's "sweetie(s)" (this is how he calls them) in person for the first time...!

My brother is a strawberry farmer in Japan and is now working at a farm in Kagawa prefecture in Shikoku region.

I have not been to the farm yet but am planning to visit there this summer. They are making four different kinds of strawberries and from December to July, visitors can do strawberry picking. Also, you can meet lots of animals who live there--According to the farm's website, there are goats (grown-ups and little ones), a cow, a dog, rabbits, and a bear (?!...I think this is supposed to mean my brother, who is sort of like a bear...)--. There is a small place where you can have some coffee, strawberry ice cream and so on. There will be lots of special events as well. Right now, it seems that they are having "The Best Strawberry Biter Contest" :D This contest is about how you eat strawberries, not how many you eat, in which case I may have the chance of winning the award...?

Here is the link to the farm's HP.

Oh, Cheesus...

2009-03-09T01:18:00.000-04:00

My sister's wedding info...

2009-03-07T22:23:00.002-05:00

... is here.

I hope it's not some kind of copyright infringement (on second thought, I don't really care) that I repost their picture here:

2009-02-20T01:23:00.004-05:00

One of the activities we have here at UMass for Japanese majors is a conversation table called Japanese Tea Table. We do not actually serve any tea, or sake, for that matter, but it is still a very fun occasion ^_^. Today at the Tea Table, we discussed "what we accomplished during the winter break." As a teaching assistant for a Japanese language course, my role was to join in a group and facilitate the conversation among the students in that group. As I listened to them, however, I was also thinking about my own. This winter break, I accomplished so many things. In my first trip to Texas, I met lots of new people (and animals, including a dog who seems to believe that he is actually not a dog) and together with them, I experienced lots of new things. For my first time, I played Wii (almost addicted...almost), watched Star Wars 4, 5, & 6 (began to appreciate Chris's wookie sound more than before), some Star Trek shows (Data is cute), and classical horror movies (highly addictive), ate lots of great meals (including some "eyeballs"), watching wonderful DDR demonstration by Mr. Q and Mr. C (Can I put the video on Youtube...?), doing Christmas gift exchanges (I don't mind having such mornings more than once a year), walking outside in summer clothes in December (giant snow cone in winter! Yeah!), enjoying trivial pursuit (I did not contribute to my team very much but at least I was good at throwing the dice)...Hmmm, it's already 2am. I can continue this list but I guess I should go to bed now...I may have a nice dream tonight...

きんくま

2009-02-18T01:46:00.008-05:00

先日とあるアジアンマーケットに行った時、コアラのマーチに激似の「ちいさいきんくま」というものを見つけました。コアラのマーチのパッケージに記載されているコアラと比べてきんくまコアラはやたらとリアルで目つきが鋭く、しかも体型も細身で可愛げがなく笑えました。このようにパッケージに描かれているコアラはリアルなのに、きんくまのお菓子一つ一つに描かれているコアラはコアラのマーチコアラと比べて妙に雑でまた少し笑えました。更に、名前についても「きんくま」はすごくテキトウな感じで素敵だと思いました。

2009-02-16T23:30:00.005-05:00

I think that my previous entry made an impression that I am a terrible cook. Well, I would not say that cooking is my hobby but I can make something edible as well.

Recovering soon from my traumatic experience of making the awful cookies, I made a bold decision to carry out another plan for Valentine's Day, to make a pecan pie! This time, I was very careful about following the recipe. Also, I tried not to make an optimistic prediction about the final product from the taste of the dough. In fact, the dough did not taste very good, which actually somehow made me feel optimistic about the pie...

With the help of two scoops of vanilla ice cream, the pie was at least edible and tasted ok for the first trial, I think...

2009-02-16T02:14:00.006-05:00

Slightly changing my initial plan to make TexaSushi, I decided to make Texas cookies for a Valentine's Day gift with the state-shaped cutter. I thought that cookies were somehow more romantic than raw fish for this kind of occasion...
Admittedly, cookie dough (or any kind of dough) always looks so appealing to me. So as usual, I kept eating the dough in the process of making the cookies. Since the dough tasted fine, I though everything was going well until I tried the first baked ones. They tasted surprisingly unique, or more precisely, shockingly awful with the strange flavor of some kind of chemicals. After blaming other things, such as the recipe itself, I realized that I put 1 tbs of baking soda instead of 1/3 tbs of baking powder...

Busy busy busy

2008-11-20T00:16:00.002-05:00

This semester is coming to an end fast. I will be in Texas exactly one month from today. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody there.

Things are going well here. I've been teaching an intro to linguistics course this semester, which is going well. I'm also making progress on my own research. Some colleagues and I have just completed a paper in which we explore the use of expressives (like wow, damn, and so on) in four different languages. If you're interested, you can find the paper here.

Next semester I'll take a break from teaching, and go back to work on the SUBTLE grant. This semester marks the end of my coursework, generals papers, and other pre-dissertation hurdles, so I'll be able to focus on my dissertation. This means you will probably hear even less of me in the year-and-a-half to come, but I'll try not to disappear completely.

Incidentally, it is now ridiculously cold in western Massachusetts. It's 20 degrees Farenheit right now, with a wind chill of 14. It's only going to get worse from here on out. Brrrr.

Christianity and Witch-hunts in Nigeria

2008-11-19T22:54:00.000-05:00

Miriam Makeba

2008-11-15T17:27:00.005-05:00

This article reports on the funeral of Miriam Makeba, the late South African singer famous for her struggles against apartheid and for her music, which included songs sung in Xhosa, which (like Zulu and other Bantu languages in the Nguni cluster) contains click consonants. The following video is of her singing Qongqothwane, aka "The Click Song".

Notice the clever percussive use of clicks. Keep in mind that in Xhosa, clicks are just another kind of consonant, like an English "k" or "t" or "s". Here's Miriam giving her own description of the situation, with a little anti-colonialist jab thrown in for good measure.

The linguist in me feels obligated to point the interested reader to this entry on language log. The media is *terrible* when it comes to reporting anything at all to do with language. Really, really terrible.

Voting Accomplished

2008-11-04T19:48:00.002-05:00

I hope you all voted. Unless you're a McCain supporter, in which case I hope you stayed home and watered your fence posts with used motor oil. Just kidding.

Time to Vote

2008-11-03T23:58:00.012-05:00

I'm waking up early tomorrow to go vote. My thick layers of cynicism can't keep me from being a little excited about this election.

Incidentally, if you didn't have enough reasons already not to vote for McCain and Palin, just watch this video:

Oh, Sarah, you sure showed 'em! Imagine spending all that money doing research on fruit fly (aka Drosophila melanogaster) genetics. You'd have to be a real knucklehead to want to do that. I mean, what has research like that ever led to, anyway?

Oh, wait.

Seriously, if Sarah Palin had ever taken a biology class in college, or even just read a bit on her own, she would realize that essentially all basic biological research is done on simple, so-called "model" organisms, of which the fruit fly is a favorite. Maybe Governor Palin's SAT scores weren't good enough to get into MIT. That's ok. She (and you, and me) can watch MIT lectures online thanks to OpenCourseware. The reason biologists use simple organisms like fruit flies (or yeast!) is explained quite clearly and briefly by Prof. Eric Lander starting at around the 2 minute mark in the following video. Don't take my word for it:

These organisms (peas, fruit flies, yeast, etc) are used because they are simple. The research results can be applied to other, more complicated organisms because, at the molecular level, humans and fruit flies and sperm whales have a whole lot in common.

And the reason they do, of course, is because they descend from a common ancestor. But don't tell that to Palin.

(Incidentally, you'd think that with a child who suffers from a genetic disorder, Palin might be a little more knowledgeable about the sort of basic research that is our best hope of figuring out a cure for the horrible genetic accidents that plague us. You'd think that she might have such knowledge, since her personal experience and attendant competence regarding kids with disabilities has been advertised more than once (I remember "autism" being mentioned a number of times by Senator McCain) as a qualification for the office of Vice President. You'd think, but apparently you'd be wrong.)

Update (Nov 4th): This strongly worded response drives home the point well, I think.

How to Open a Locked Car with Poster Board and Sandpaper

2008-10-08T19:39:00.006-04:00

I am certainly well on my way to becoming a good exemplar of the "absent-minded professor". The other day, after returning home from the grocery store, I left my keys in the ignition. I was, however, careful enough to lock the doors. Unfortunately, this combination of carelessness and scrupulousness did not allow for an obvious method of vehicular re-entry.

Not wanting to pay a tow-truck driver or locksmith to unlock my car, I decided to see if I could get the door open myself. My supplies?

Poster board
Sandpaper
Tape
Something to wedge the door frame open

Step one: Fold the poster board on itself several times, and cut it longways. Tape it together, so that it is roughly in the shape of a yardstick.

Step two: Tape a strip of sandpaper to the middle of your yardstick-shaped posterboard.

Step three: Fold in half

This is the main tool that I used to get the lock open. I found an L-shaped shelf brace that I used to wedge the door open from the side, and then inserted the tool, as shown in this picture:

With the tool inserted, I pushed in the right side of the tool farther, creating a loop at the end with the sandpaper inside, then worked this over the lock.

Finally, once the sandpapered loop was over the lock, I pulled back on the right side to tighten the loop over the lock. The sandpaper provides friction, and pulling back on the tool puts pressure against the lock, so that the tool can grip onto the lock. Finally, I just pulled the tool up, while continuing to pull back. Amazingly, perhaps, this was sufficient to unlock the door.

"regular lady"

2008-09-12T09:39:00.003-04:00

This article by Sam Harris is worth a read. I've long felt that American presidential candidates are marketed like brands of toothpaste (or maybe a better analogy is Coke vs. Pepsi), but Sam argues that with Palin's nomination even the veneer of political respectability has been thrown out. He sees the Palin nomination as a symptom of a narcissism harbored by "regular people" who would like to think that a "regular guy" (or "gal" in this case) is qualified to take charge of the executive branch of the most powerful nation on earth.

As a person working in academia, and therefore a member of the much-maligned intelligentsia, I notice a large amount of anti-intellectualism in the culture. To some extent, this is a good thing - a lot of intellectuals are, frankly, full of shit. But when healthy skepticism becomes all-out anti-rationalism, we're in a sad state indeed. I actually blame the widespread disrespect for expertise in areas like science on that subset of academics in the humanities who have fallen victim to the intellectual virus called postmodernism, a topic a may come back to in another post.

New Semester Underway

2008-09-06T21:02:00.003-04:00

The first week of classes is over. You can have a look at the course website for the Intro to Linguistics course that I'm teaching this semester.

New Semester, New Stuff

2008-09-01T15:59:00.007-04:00

Classes at UMass begin tomorrow, making today the last of my summer "break" (note the scare quotes). I'm spending today putting the last touches on the syllabus for the introductory linguistics class I'll be teaching this fall.

In other news, I have a very nice bed and a washer-dryer combo that I got on the cheap from my friends Yoko and Shoichi.

Everything is working nicely, although I had to play amateur electrician for a day to get the dryer installed. The dryer came with a three-prong cord that looked like this:

But the outlet in my house is for a four-prong plug, like this one.

It turns out that the old-style plug has two hot wires and one neutral, and that the neutral is grounded to the frame of the dryer via a cord on the dryer itself. Newer building regulations require the use of a four-wire scheme that keeps the neutral and ground separate, so that the cord has two hot wires, a neutral, and a ground. So I went down to the hardware store, bought a four-prong plug, removed the old plug from my dryer, and rewired it for the four-prong outlet. The process is described here.

The only tricky part is making sure to severe the connector on the dryer that grounds the neutral wire in the original setup; if you don't you can apparently end up electrifying the entire frame of the dryer, as described here. The dryer has 240 volts going into it, so you don't want this to happen.

Beethoven's 9th at Tanglewood

2008-08-24T23:21:00.003-04:00

Today I made a trip with some friends out to Tanglewood to hear the BSO perform Beethoven's 9th, definitely my favorite symphony. The BSO did not disappoint. This was actually the second time I've heard them perform the 9th; as my friend Masashi (who was with me the other time I heard the BSO do the 9th) remarked, for some reason we could really hear the woodwinds well today. I really enjoyed the quiet bits in the scherzo, which despite my location on the inevitably noisy lawn I could hear quite well.

And of course the fourth movement was fun; you could see a bunch of the audience perk their ears up when they caught an aural foreshadowing of the very well-known main theme. I imagine a lot of them had been nodding off in the relatively un-hummable third movement. Having read up a bit on the structure of the 9th before attending the performance, I had my ears open for the "symphony within a symphony" of the fourth movement, and the quick quoting (as the musically literate apparently call it) of the previous movements.

Some pictures:

Me, Masashi, and Misato

Shoichi and Yoko

As you can tell from the overexposure, it was really sunny today --- and hot. Very, very hot.

And speaking of heat - wouldn't you know it, before we can get out of the Tanglewood parking lot, my just-repaired (timing-belt and crank-shaft and water-pump -- oh my!) Ford Escort starts emitting a burned-rubber smelling smoke from under the hood. Not good. Looking under the hood, I see a belt start to shake and make a nasty squealing noise whenever the engine is on. Really, not good. Fortunately, my friend has AAA (and I think I might soon). Good! But even after benefits, a 60 mile tow costs $170... Seriously, not good.

On a whim, I call my dad, who happens to have arrived home for his lunch break just when my engine goes all smoky on me. After listening to my inept description of the situation, he suggests it may be the problem with the cooling and/or AC. Sure enough, turning off the AC (which had been on max) makes the crazy noise and the nasty smell go away. Thanks Dad!

a new location, a new name

2008-08-24T01:36:00.000-04:00

This post inaugurates the new location of my personal blog, previously hosted at wordpress. With the new location comes a new title. Be sure to update your RSS feeds, bookmarks, or whatever you use to link here.

I'll be attending a performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra of Beethoven's 9th Symphony tomorrow, and will post pictures later. In the meantime, an introduction to some features of this blog:

I have incorporated a number of widgets in this blog, which you can find to the right of this post. Below the picture of yours truly, there is a little widget that plays songs from my music library at last.fm - click and you may hear something interesting ... or just weird.

Below that you can find some recent additions to my library, which I keep track of via librarything. Just below that, you can find out how I've been killing time by looking at some videos I've been watching lately.

As always, thanks for visiting.

ChanPonGo

We've Moved --- Update Your Links!

難波 Nanba City

Random stuff in Japan!

Osaka Night

Dotonbori Street

Osaka Castle

Day 3: Naruto Straits

Day 2: Strawberry-tasting-night

Day 1: Trip to my brother's farm

If there were fly creationists...

Article in Journal of Semantics

Random thought

Willie Nelson & Family in Concert

Singers are not musicians

Rachmaninov had big hands

お雛祭り×牛タンタコス×カレーライス

Happy Pi Day

Huh?!

Classic Home Video Games from *my* Era

Chris Davis via Google

My Brother's "Sweetie(s)"

Oh, Cheesus...

My sister's wedding info...

きんくま

Busy busy busy

Christianity and Witch-hunts in Nigeria

Miriam Makeba

Voting Accomplished

Time to Vote

How to Open a Locked Car with Poster Board and Sandpaper

"regular lady"

New Semester Underway

New Semester, New Stuff

Beethoven's 9th at Tanglewood

a new location, a new name

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