The penultimate night of the Gion Matsuri, and on my way home from being swept down Karasuma Dori through the hordes of locals and tourists buying mediocre festival food like a mentally handicapped salmon not sure which way is upstream, I stumbled across this excellent performance just below Sanjo Bridge on my way home.

All photos taken with Canon EOS 300d and EFs 17-85 IS lense. Naturally, these effects come from long exposures.

I noticed that Kotaku has a post offering very helpful and detailed directions on how to get to Nintendo HQ in Kyoto, Japan.

But before you all book your ticket for a trip to Kyoto, you might want to consider this: Nintendo Japan does NOT offer tours of either its factories or offices. The Q&A section of the company’s website makes this clear:

Q: Can I take a tour of Nintendo’s factories/offices?

A: Since we are entrusted with the business secrets of our various licensee companies, we do not offer factory tours or company tours. Please take note.

Now, one place that does offer tours is the National Diet Building in Tokyo. Perhaps not as exciting as seeing where Mario was born, but hey, you get to see where Japanese policymakers vote to screw their constituents on a regular basis!

This is just one more stop on the long, slow road toward mutual compatibility in so-called high-tech Japan. JR East and West still have separate RFID tickets (Suica and Icoca respectively—click links for image character goodness), but at least they at some point became mutually compatible. Now it looks like there is some hot Private train-on-public train action going on (Abstracted from Nikkei):

Icocca, Pitapa Services Mutual Compatibility Begins, Commemorative Ceremony Held at Hankyu Umeda Station

Mutual use of JR West’s Icoca and the PiTaPa service (which despite its wacky name amazingly does NOT seem to have a cutesy image character associated with it! Oh wait, I should have known...) used on private-owned Keihan, Hankyu, and the public Osaka City Subway (Note: JR East, West, and all other regional branches of JR are also technically private but still considered separate from the 私鉄 or “private” train companies, which are in turn separate from city-owned subway lines.) became mutually compatible starting January 21. Yoshimi Taniguchi of the Kinki Transit Bureau (which collects statistics and manages licenses in addition to apparently administering an interpreter exam for tour guides) expressed hopes that such tie-ups would expand to buses and other modes of public transportation.

Customers praised the convenience of no longer having to buy a ticket when switching lines (Note: Of course, the chief benefit to regular users of both lines would simply be to no longer have to carry an extra card in their wallets…)

There are differences in the two systems, however, that complicate matters: Icoca is a pre-paid service (like Washington DC’s SmarTrip), while “post-pay” PiTaPa collects funds from bank accounts. When customers use PiTaPa for JR, they will have to revert to a prepaid system and insert funds at ticket terminals at the station.

Check it out!

Cool!

Ritsumeikan has opened the first “Confucius Institute,” the Chinese government’s attempt to franchise mini propaganda cells otherwise known as “Chinese language schools” (more info on them can be obtained here) Anyway the statue was a present from the Chinese to reward the University for its collaboration!

The Mainichi’s English language Waiwai feature reports that not all of Japan’s international relations have been damaged beyond repair by recent diplomatic gaffes.

One intrepid reporter braved the frontlines of China to find out.

“Welcome, I’m Nana!” one of the older-looking hostesses in a black dress greeted him in Japanese. “Is this your first visit?”

“Are you participating in a boycott of Japanese goods?” the reporter then asks her.

“What you say? Me no understand?” she replies.

“Never mind. Tell me, what do you think of the recent controversy over Japanese history textbooks?”

“You know, your eyes have got a horny glimmer,” she counters. “It means you wanna do ‘rabu-rabu’ with me, right?”

“Um, okay, let’s move on to a different subject. How do you feel about the prime minister’s making visits to worship at the Yasukuni Shrine?”

“Hey, listen, if you no take me out, I’m really pitiful,” she nags. “I don’t make money hanging around this bar. You Japanese men are all lechers, but I’m good at doing ‘etchi.’ How about I give you nice blow job and then ride you on top?”

And another conducted similar field research in Korea.

There he is introduced to a hostess named Ruby, who croons a currently popular Korean tune, a stirring melody entitled “Tok-do belongs to us.”

“This song used to be banned, but these days you often hear customers in Korea singing it,” she explains.

“Should I take that to mean you intend to declare war on me?” the reporter asks.

“Shhhhhs,” Ruby whispers. “Our ‘mama’ told us to avoid discussing political problems here at the club.”

“You know actually,” the reporter thinks out loud, “I’d like to make that generous cleavage between your breasts my territory for a little while. What do you say?”

New location at Nijo Station, Kyoto to open next fall

Ritsumeikan University announced on March 24 that it would build a new building Southeast of JR’s Nijo Station in Chuo-ku, Kyoto, moving its headquarters operations and law school there from the Kinugasa campus (in Kita-ku). It will begin construction today and plans to finish by September 2006.

The new building will have one basement floor and 7 above-ground floors. The lot area is 8118 square meters, and the groos floor area is 27147 square meters. The land will be purchase from the Japan Post Private Company. Total construction costs, including land costs, will come to 1 billion yen. The building, when completed, will be used by 700 teachers and students.

In addition to the headquarters operations and law school, facilities for the Business Management Section, which trains business school masters students and certified public accountants, and the “University Administrator Development Graduate School” which develops university management specialists, will also move into the new building. All of these schools concentrate on working adults, so the move near JR Nijo, which is also accesible to the City Subway, takes into consideration those commuting to class.

Besides its Kinugasa campus, Ritsumeikan also has a campus in Kusatsu, Shiga, making the Nijo building the university’s third campus.

Comment: Kinugasa was always a pain in the ass to get to, but that’s what made me the fit individual I am today, so I’m not complaining.

From the Japan Times:

KYOTO (Kyodo) Kyoto will offer free subway and bus rides for anybody wearing a kimono over an 11-day period beginning Friday to promote the traditional attire and the local textile industry, city officials said.

Free admission to some tourist attractions, including Nijo Castle, Kyoto Tower and some museums, will also be available for kimono wearers during the period, and a kimono fashion show and kimono flea market are planned.

Free tickets for the transportation and tourist facilities will be available in subway stations, buses, hotels and elsewhere in the ancient capital.

Rental kimono will be made available if people make advance reservations.

For people who need to have their kimono readjusted, they can stop by 10 locations in the city, mainly at kimono shops and in the kimono sections of department stores.

For more information, call the Kyoto Municipal Government’s Traditional Industry Department at (075) 222-3337.

The Japan Times: March 8, 2005
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Kyoto, Sagano -Local Spring Festival
May 23, 2004

This street is located about 15 minutes west of where I was living in Kyoto. I came up this street every wednesday night for several months because I was tutoring some middle school girls that lived in the neighorhood.
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