smiling wanly. posing. getting paid.

here a geiko is doing all the above with a businessman that leans into her to get a picture...

a group of rich businessmen rented out this kawadoko elevated patio at a restaurant alongside the kamogawa river, and the services of 3 geisha as well. much of the twilight was devoted to this sort of picture taking and the men generally feeling fine about themselves & their position. 

click here for more shots.

local nihon-shu sake, brewed in the famous old brewery district of fushimi in south kyoto. this area is definitely worth a visit; tour the old and still functioning sake breweries, and appreciate the scenic waterways & small shops nearby. there are a few nice restaurants now housed in converted sake warehouses.

I personally think the quality nihon-shu in these small festive bottles, decorated with thickly inked goldfish, would make an excellent souvenir for your friends back home. 

This liquor store is on Teramachi (not in the covered arcade) just above Oike, opposite the west side of Kyoto Shiyakusho City Hall. The staff is usually friendly to me when I poke around in there.

...and another one that leans onto his gal to get home.

ahh...the intoxicated stumble  down kiyamachi to the next location, which is hopefully the back seat of that approaching taxi.

sayonara... (x _ x)

(P.P.S. have u test-driven a Prius?)

It's right McFckng there! Exit from a suburban Kyoto subway stn.

not that I have many...but nice to know I could if I wanted to. about $70, teramachi shotengai covered shopping arcade.

I had followed this Korean-Canadian girl to her home in Vancouver, to house sit an investment property for her alcoholic psychopathological freakshow of a family, propelled as it was by JINRO, kim-chi, secrets, failure and thwarted incest.  Our plan was for us to leave behind LA and we would marry and have a family and look out at the sea and into each other's eyes...

After a short time she lost interest and I was decimated beyond breath.  I relished nothing but a daft dreamy wish that she'd call, come back, put us together again. But it was soon pointed out to me that she was not coming back...ever; we were truly completely for all time over. 

That afternoon I felt a calm bordering on numb; driving home was floating down the hill that led from her house to the road that led to the place I was staying. 

My cleansed head remarked what a nice view this route had of entire neighborhoods spreading out on all sides, lots of trees, lots of people down there...surely there'd be lots of girls.  The blue & green mountains standing crisp, tall beyond in the distance.  Some nice music was playing on my stereo, I knew a good restaurant on the way home.

I remember this very clearly...about halfway down the slope a thought appeared: "I wonder what the next girl will look like?"

That's the guise salvation visited me under that day.

(Actually, turns out she looked a lot like the last one, but that comes with certain territory.)

time to make the Big Macs...

File Under: Chaos Theory; Fluid Dynamics.

further research into self-organizing systems. the college mass konpa.

the slow death of a salesman...

watched this go-getter get door upon door closed on him. sometimes not opened, other times, gapped ajar to be closed gently on his face.

like many a new careerist, he begins his ascent along the well-worn trail of the cold-call salesman. next...?

see dramatic photo-essay here soon.

　a quitter never wins & a winner never quits. but they also probably don't do Sales for very long. Good Luck, my brother...& Gambatte!

a kyoto mom, pushing her baby on a sunny day...keeping herself together well.

yes, she also has a head and torso.

so I had to get a new one...

shake. clap. pray.

I live 7 minutes from the station now. you want to know why? because my new bike hauls ass.  my next door neighbor lives 15 minutes from the station. 

my new bike

mainly to follow these couple of lovelies.

and the beat goes on...another train princess doing the eye makeup.

The second thing they did was start to clean up the water. The first thing they did was to put up a big shiny sign alerting people to be protective of all the healthy fish swimming around in their lovely clear effluent, and then buy some cesspool reared, chemical-tolerant fish from China, throw them in the stream and skim off the floaters every few days, replacing them with a couple more toxin-resistant fish from farms in China. I did not know about this order, and for months would revel in the green & clean neighbor of a nylon chemical factory we had in the 'hood.　

the local fish-friendly nylon factory

and then, satisfactorily lovely, right back to the phone.

people like you just fuel my fire

　|| |  ||

(O  _ o  )

   Hi.

your garden variety pedagogue and quasi-grammarian, working.

Gambatte!

Beat Takeshi...working the idioms.

for ECC, one of the large language facilities.

Because they enlightened me on me the rules of the game, how it works for your run-of-the-mill youngish foreign schmuck. this guy, young, early 20s maybe just out of college. student was a schoolgirl; she was sitting in the lesson in her uniform with the tie and blue sweater and hiked skirt. 18 maximum. a school girl. at the end of the lesson as he was walking to the door, she sitting with her head at about the belt buckle, he reached over and gently, deliberately swept her hair off her forehead and behind one ear.  Long, fluid and greasy was his motion.

From across the street in my lobby my head was exploding: You can't touch a student! a girl a child like that!  Its sexual...(continue) 

　pray

do you know what this is? 

This is wheat; it's like rice, but you can make bread from it. and not have to call it Rice Bread...

(actually of course they know, since I took this picture in rural Japan from a train moving at, like, Mach 2)

an ad on the wall of my train for Kirei deodorant.

Kirei translates to either beautiful or clean depending on the situation; I see both as possible here.

& more manga!!!

Candied Sea Monkeys w/ Beans.

so much manga it's spilling out of the doorway!  

cheap manga!!!

(there are more used manga stores here than shy people)

fellow readers: if you like this site please spread the word like human manure over an Edo Period rice field.  thanks.  doumo arigatou!

posting a link to this site also much appreciated and good karma for you. 

a ramshackle fortune teller's house and studio, central Kyoto side alley.

manga, anyone?

punching in at the satis-factory...

no, really.

yet another satisfied customer

Ecce: Pikachucken!