sk4ek's past comments

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    sk4ek

    I guess Cher was too busy getting her lips re-plumped...

    (Don't get me wrong, I think she's fantastic)

    Posted in: Burlesque

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    sk4ek

    Shouldn't that headline read "Former Porn Star"??

    "... mother of all sinners..." Wow, that's quite a burden to place on a young woman of such...limited renown.

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    sk4ek

    I haven't read through much of the voluminous background on this issue yet, but they seem to be pinning the question of who provided the files in the first place on an army private already in custody. How would an army private possibly have access to confidential State Department records (assuming he obtained them prior to his incarceration)???

    Posted in: Noose tightens around WikiLeaks' Assange

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    sk4ek

    Give 'em an "A" for originality, anyway.

    Posted in: Time for change

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    sk4ek

    My only problem is that I like singers who can actually sing, I guess because I grew up listening to artists like Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, the great jazz singers of the 50s, and--much later--Japanese singers like Chiaki Naomi and Tamaki Koji and Yellow Monkey. So whether it's J-Pop or some other genre, Japanese or otherwise, the quality of the singer's voice and lyrics are more important to me than the style of performance.

    Which means, of course, the vast majority of J-Pop as seen on TV these days is pretty much nails on a chalkboard to me.

    Posted in: Does J-pop really suck?

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    sk4ek

    "Discoveries" as in "Discover how much better this tastes when you get it freshly made at a Starbucks and not from some convenience store cold case!"

    Posted in: Chocolate eclair latte

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    sk4ek

    In absolute numerical terms, maybe the top, but at 10/60,000 vs. 14/160,000, it doesn't sound like Paris needs to be taking on an inferiority complex anytime soon.

    Posted in: Tokyo remains top gourmet city in Michelin Guide

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    sk4ek

    Yabusame is really exciting to watch up close. It's not so much the distance to the target (which differs somewhat from location to location) but the speed at which the rider takes the course that makes it thrilling.

    As for terminology, "umayumi", along with several other terms and variations, is in the written record as far back as the Nara period, but "yabusame" came into common use in the Heian period and later, with the formalization of several different styles and types of horseback archery. There are a variety of schools today, but as in ancient times, yabusame is still enjoyed both as a sport/hobby and as a formal Shinto-based ritual.

    Interestingly, the current head of one of the major historical yabusame schools, the Ogasawara school, has a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Tsukuba University, and now works for a pharmaceutical company. Apparently the Ogasawara school has a long-established tradition that its head should not try to make a living from yabusame, but have some other 'main' career.

    I've seen him run several times--he's a great rider for someone his age (only 29).

    Posted in: Bull's-eye

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    sk4ek

    With an estimated 120 million electric-assist bicycles sold in China alone (as of early 2010), hardly what I'd call a "novelty purchase" with no long-term place in the market. As WilliB notes, it's not a question of speed--especially in Japan where bicycles really are the urban pack mules of many families--but a relatively low-cost power boost.

    Posted in: Electric assistance bicycle

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    sk4ek

    browny1--would'ncha know... :-( Not that I could afford one, anyway, but it sure is an artful piece of design!

    Posted in: Electric assistance bicycle

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    sk4ek

    Now here's a truly beautiful electric-assist bicycle... very pricey though...

    pimobility dot com

    Posted in: Electric assistance bicycle

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    sk4ek

    Actually there is a lot of really good bread in Japan, at least in a place like Tokyo where you can find French, German, Scandinavian, even Italian-style bakeries that sell all kinds of "artisanal" breads--baguettes, peasant loaves, sourdough, rye, nut and fruit breads, etc.--that aren't like anything in the supermarket. It's just that there aren't any in MY neighborhood, and the best the supermarket can do for sandwich bread is a kind of ersatz rye. So my rant about mass-produced loaves stands.

    And I do wish they wouldn't sell the smaller portions in packages of three slices, though I understand why they do it.

    Posted in: Low-calorie sliced bread

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    sk4ek

    This is one of the most beautiful castles in Japan. I first saw it on a drive from Kyoto to Tokyo (via Nagano, obviously) many years ago, just before New Years. It was surrounded by snow, and, just before twilight, its lower section was blanketed in mist, making it seem to almost float above the ground. Unforgettable.

    The castle is hardly an "identikit" example. While it was renovated extensively in the Meiji and mid-Showa eras, much of the wood and stonework are original to it's late 16th century construction. In the latter part of the 19th century it almost fell to redevelopment, but was saved when the municipal government decided to purchase and preserve the site.

    Posted in: Matsumoto Castle

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    sk4ek

    Now if only they would come up with a widely-available whole-grain bread so I can enjoy the occasional sandwich without resorting to the hyper-processed, spongy white stuff.

    Posted in: Low-calorie sliced bread

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    sk4ek

    Shaolin7 -- thanks for the sensible advice. I don't know why I'm finding it so difficult to cut back on carbs here, but at least I've switched to whole-grain breads and 16-grain rice (really good stuff), which is a start of sorts. The rest, well, I should know better.

    Posted in: Slimmed-down comic sings praises of tofu & natto based diet

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    sk4ek

    Yep, exactly.

    I don't understand what the big deal is. Anyone who is a real Beatles fan probably has all their CDs, or cassettes, or LPs anyway, and if they also have an iPod or other music player, probably have that music on their device by now, one way or another.

    Don't be fooled by the hype--this is just a big deal because Apple is treating it like one.

    Posted in: Apple's iTunes music store starts selling Beatles songs

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    sk4ek

    I switched from eating mostly breads, rice, and eggs for breakfast, and now alternate between a bowl of oatmeal with fruit, or a fresh-fruit smoothie blended with low-fat no-sugar yogurt and soy milk. Three months later and I haven't lost an ounce. (I eat a fair amount of tofu, too). Back to the drawing board!! But nothing will convince me to go the natto route, sorry...

    Posted in: Slimmed-down comic sings praises of tofu & natto based diet

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    sk4ek

    Good point. It's not about the event itself, it seems to be about how much they can make off the event. Valentines/White Day for example.

    If "they" refers to retailers, I really don't see any difference between Japan and, say, the U.S. with regard to how holidays are exploited, and certainly the same arguments about how early to "start" the holiday are common elsewhere--and again, usually in reference to when retailers choose to start decorating, offering sales, etc. I was at a major chain supermarket in Hawaii in early September, and they'd already rolled out their aisle cap displays of bagged Halloween candy, pumpkins, and packaged costumes.

    People seem to get upset mainly because the religious aspects of Christmas are more or less absent here, but what do they expect in a mostly non-Christian country? And really, how is buying a bucket of KFC chicken to share with friends and family so much different from sitting around the table to share a store-bought turkey?

    That said, it sure is a big ol' gay Christmas "tree", isn't it.

    Posted in: Odaiba Xmas

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    sk4ek

    On a documentary the other night, they were interviewing the guy in charge of the hotel's mechanical systems, and he was going on about the woes of trying to maintain a building that is all of 28 years old... the scrap-and-build mentality is so ingrained in the post-war generation; surely a building like this was designed to last longer than two or three decades. (The hotel may be 55 years old, but the current main tower was completed only in 1982...)

    Posted in: Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka lights up for last Christmas

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    sk4ek

    I hope this fixes some of the horrible ergonomic gaffs found on some of JAL's other business-class seat types: headphone jacks located right at thigh level, where the headphone plug gouges into your leg (and still only a two-prong jack, in this day and age, requiring an adapter if you want to use your own headphones); controllers stored on the top of the middle armrests, so every time you lean on them you accidentally turn on the reading light or call the cabin attendant; tables that don't adjust front-to-back; etc. etc.

    Posted in: JAL unveils new Executive Class seat and in-flight entertainment system

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