With 2009 almost upon us, I thought I’d try riding the wave of cheesy end of year roundups. Here are my personal favorite five items I posted this year. (Adam and Joe can of course do their own.

• Visas I have known. Scans of all the visas in my passport (key data blacked out of course) with commentary.


• Remembering the Railway of Death. A chronicle, in words and images, of the afternoon Adam, his wife Shoko, and I spent at the oddest museum I have ever seen. As a bonus, photographs of the modern state of the nearby Railway of Death itself.


• Mr. Chang – Mr. Oyama. Notes on a conversation I had with a dying man while passing the time outside a 7/11.


• A visit to Lo Sheng. A travel diary, with photographic slideshow, of my visit to Taiwan’s Japan-colonial era Leprosorium. Sadly, it appears that the government has (unsurprisingly) gone back on its promise to preseve Lo Sheng and allow residents to remain. Here is some Taiwanese TV news footage of the police breaking up a protest outside. You can see my friend Em being dragged away at exactly 1:00.


• Tamogami, Motoya, and Abe.  An easy selection for my best post of the year. Also see Tamogami Update and Still More on Tamogami.

Any disagreements? Was there anything else I should replace one of these five with?

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 28th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Personal/Blog News, Recommendations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.