Failing to Find Frida

This is Frida, a shy lost stray spotted in our neighbourhood last week. We managed to feed her twice, but on the third day, before we could lure her into safer places, she was gone.

So, we tried to find her. Barry dressed like a ninja and hid in the shadows. (I'm not sure why he's covering his mouth.) I used the art of camouflage: can you see my accidentally matching glasses in this picture? (I'm not sure why they're on my leg).

Before I get all jokey about this, we did spend hours looking for this cat, attempting to trap it, and failing wildly. Hopefully she is ok and found her way home. Now, let's use humour to cope.

The street birds, pigeons and wild chickens, are clearly up to no good, and I don't trust them.

While looking for Frida, we found 3 other cats who had clipped ears and did not seem lost. We also found a fairly big patch of banana trees, under which someone is gardening very cute chilis.

We took the path from our house, by the old train station.

It goes 23.4km to the North. We didn't walk the whole thing, because of melting. I don't think Frida would have, either.

We saw a snail turning left. I never really thought about it, but I guess I never really thought they turned at all. Certainly not this kind of rotation.

The closest animal we saw is this black-necked spitting cobra. This is my first cobra, and it was very cute.

We also found the 2 forest woks, which have an oddly and creepily parallel to when we saw two rice cookers in the forest. Not the same forest.

I sometimes consider adopting a Monstera plant instead of rescuing cats, and then Barry and I discuss how it would take over our whole patio, fly away like a kite, maim bystanders below and possibly steal babies. One of us is quite risk-adverse when he's not cycling.

The best thing that we found to blunt the sorrow of our failures is, of course, Critopractice! Watch next time for my new reduced entire skull outline!

I'm particularly excited about #3, where I can address memory loss, insomnia AND face lifting!

I bought Barry some #2, to address his flatulence and Insomnia constipation (which is when you wake up with bowel pain, I suppose). 

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Understanding Japan

In Japan, they don't love misbehaving children running around. However, baby chickens make their chicken daddies' lives glow.

This seal suggests that miss" is more, which is a confusing seal motto.

And the poor puppy just wants to feel secured.

Well, this seems to be some of Cosby's problem, but this is not the address for Madison Square Garden. Details.

Wholly sausage dog!

Seem on an old man's bag on the subway: Sunsetface.

I'm very happy to have found Canada Engrish. "Super, Natural" was a British Columbia marketing slogan, but one word, and not a place.

We saw a pig cafe, "where the pigs are". After the previous Seoul raccoon cafe experience, we were not ready.

We also did not find the elevators in the depths.

Nature does nothing uselessly. Except baldness. And arguably much of humanity.

We found bags made with the most natural of plastics.

"Let's become the smile" is traditional Engrish, and I think I've seen it before. It's an honourable objective.

Sadly, they didn't have the "Gaoo" or the bread person in a T-shirt version. But these serve as good examples that we don't, yet, understand Japan.

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Tiny people with pickles

Let's start with food. The best food we had in Japan was not sushi, but was this mochi kushikatsu, which I'll poorly translate to deep fried sticky rice cake dipped into yummy sauce.

The best noodles of 2023 are these curry udon noodles with a scoop of cream cheese. Amazing fusion goodness.

Kyoto was really into their strawberries. You got to buy one at a time, unless you bought them in a wee sandwich like below, where you get 3 halvsies. I'm more of a basket kinda person.

So instead, here I am at breakfast, eating a grilled fish, just to prove I'm ok with that. Would have preferred curry noodles though.

Kyoto has many fabulous pickles. However, I found out that if you bring them home, they go nucular (sic.) in your suitcase and risk pickling your clothes.

Instead, you can buy plastic or china food replicas.

I'm not sure what you buy any of these things for. Bit I felt like I wanted the musical ladies below, maybe as a Christmas decoration.

Along with the flag dudes and fishies. Not too expensive.

You could pay to get a fortune on pretty paper. We resisted all of these things.

As glorious as they were.

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Torii Temples Two

It was time for some templing.

This temple is all Toriis: orange gates big and small!

We made this one, and pretended to hang it for good wishes, but instead brought it home.

The bigger toriis are donated by local businesses, which is less mystical than I'd hoped.

Special messenger foxes like hanging out in the shrines, carrying stuff around and being Shinto.

Our linguistic limitations didn't help us to understand what the sweepy bits are for, or what the big rocks mean.

We hiked most of the way up the torii mountain.

On the way down, there was also a touch of Buddhism. That's ok, Shintoism and Buddhism blend together somehow.

A lot of ropes are involved. I believe they are Shimenawa, which are used to denote holy spaces, and to separate the holy from the profane! So you wanna stay on the correct side.

In Malaysian/Indonesian Islam, as well as in Japan, ceremonial stones/graves get dressed in nice shirts. I do not know why, in either case.

This is the Higashi Hongan-ji temple.

While it's pretty, there is one main feature: Hair!

When the temple ran out of rope to drag goods around, they just made one out of devotees' hair! And then left it on display for a hundred years. Great tourist attraction; hard to photograph well.

Luckily, crowd control was well managed. Barry noted the difference.

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