welcome  friends!!!

names have been changed to protect the guilty; innocence is its own protection. (~_~)

gentlemen, start your engines

lesbians also welcome

( anytime, anywhere )

move b!tch, I can't see the car.

n.b.:  Police Precrime Division, feel free to use this picture as evidence to track down every pervert in this shot; look at them...each one an otaku, low-angler, upskirt train fondler. nip (no slur intended) crime in the bud before it happens, like in Minority (no slur intended) Report  starring Tom Cruise, based on a cool story by the psychoseer Philip K. Dick.

the guy's first cell phone;
not even activated yet.

pikachu...garden guardian

all crosswalks and de facto crossings have some cute anime type character--crafted, painted, installed & tended to by local parents--to alert drivers & keep the kids safe.  nice!

grace

train, train! take me on out of this place!

i fall down seven  times, i get up eight.

七転び　八起き

  a reason to live:  

CLICK these girls! if you haven't already, and got (or need) the time...

...and I took the one more traveled.

AA mantra

( 999 bottles of beer on the wall...)

here's a salaryman looking guy filleting $1000 worth of tuna on the street. I was intrigued by this. it was clearly unorthodox, but with a knife that big, and the guy all hopped up on one-cup sake or shochu, I wasn't asking many questions.

  ???  (O _ O)  ? ??

and with the certainty of the seasons themselves, out come the old men photographers, packed side by side shoulder to shoulder to take the same shot as last year, the same shot as the other guy, in the same spot, in the same season, for the same reason...every year.

these guys...

there are two official seasons of prescribed beauty: spring and fall. spring pops out the cherry blossoms and fall the beautiful reds and oranges of the japanese maple もみじ.

eyez on the prize!!!

A former colleague of mine, a lawyer who lived in Dallas, got fed up with Japanese tourists visiting and constantly asking for directions to the spot where JFK was shot.

One day he snapped. A small pack wearing suits, Nikons swinging like medallions, approached and asked "Excuse me, where was JFK shot?"

My friend touched his own head at 2 different spots saying, "Once here and once here," and walked on.

rice & fish; that's japanese for meat & potatoes

click for: the Big Mac & fries guys guide to sushi!

think      for      yourself!!!

if you could only take one lens to a deserted island...

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what goes around, comes around

do

the infamous japanese beer vending machine...

and the old time family liquor store
to which it is attached. 

japan

　pandemic

...and another satisfied customer.

Lived on the Inside.  Seen from the Outside. ™

wow! a real sumo wrestler in his yukata robe reading manga on the shinkansen bullet train! a trifecta of japanese culture. if only I had on my lap Sailor Moon in a crotchless kimono, I could have had my Spalding Gray Perfect Moment and just gone home.

this guy was big; not many melons pop up above the back of the shinkansen seats (this is a full train).

some guyjin assjack about to get hit by a train just to snap a picture.  art geek.

an image from an intriguing & scholarly pictorial history of Japan, presented by MIT, called Visualizing Cultures. period photos with contemporary comment using words like coolies and moos'mie (a girl... musume?). lots about that hook-nosed bastard Perry and the original guyjin to desecrate this soil, as well as a surprising batch of traditions in place to this day.

If U Seek Amy...

eyes on the prize!    redux.

what they used to call a working girl...at Gion Matsuri, when all the freaks come out to play. here she gets the email...like the firebell going off at the station.

On Shijo I saw and overheard this entire tran$action up until the guy arrived, a halfwit of a Japanese laborer...cackle of the institutionalized, assaulting his groin with a manic whirling at the wrist like a hand propeller.

she said  "Dame! Kochi daiyo! だめ！こちだいよ。" (I translate)”Not here!...This way!" grabbed him by the propeller wrist and led him brusquely down a side street.

the thing that irked my friend & I was--not that we need it--but if we wanted her services (she was cute & young with skin like cream cheese), nice clean smart white quasi-professionals like us would be absolutely denied...but the most lithium gulping crazed-eyed freak of any japanese idiot-savant is fine.

just another day of taking if from The Man...

Full Disclosure:  this was taken a few years back; think she's now a mother of 2 and head of her local PTA, or something.

I have Strunk & White "Elements of Style", a great book...but anybody out there got "Elements of Substance"?  That's the book I really need.

seventeen nice