Fishy

There's a small fish market the other side of Tenmonkan from me in an area of the city I don't normally get to.



Have fish, will travel.

Frozen Bones

This marker sign was outside a chiropractor's office. The text reads "Winter is finally here." On the other side of the sign was a message saying "If the cold makes your bones hurt, come to our office for treatment."

Big Frame

I was at the restaurant on the 7th floor of the Yamakataya department store in Tenmonkan one afternoon, and my seat was facing the window, where I could see a construction crane at the site the next block over. Part of the frame of the main column for the crane reminded me of the letter 大 (dai, okii), meaning "big." That seemed appropriate, so I took a photo in an attempt to be artsy.

Trash Jail

When garbage goes bad.

Sukiya-Fate Posters

Sukiya, a fast-food meat joint that specializes in cheap beef bowls and curry rice has also teamed up (as has Family Mart) with Fate-Stay Night.



I'm standing outside with the little pocket camera, and the shop doors keep closing on me while I'm trying to take the shot, so I run up to the doors to make them open, then run back to the other side of the sidewalk to get the photo, and suddenly 20 people all decide to walk in front of me at the same time. And even though I'm under full sunlight, the interior of the shop turns out dark and yellow. Sigh.

"Don't forget your takeout bag, sir and/or madam."



"We're just paid actors here. We don't actually eat this stuff."



"At least one of us remembered to bring lunch. Now, does anyone have chopsticks? No? How about a straw?"

Happy Setsubun, Feb. 3rd

Sigh. Apparently I neglected to upload the below photo yesterday. So I'm going to combine two days of entries here.



Have a nice demon-casting-out day, from your friends at Shiro Hair Salon.



One of the grocery stores had a Setsubun mask promotion. Buy a bag of dried beans to throw at demons, and get a free paper mask (the Shogi Oni, or an Okame woman). The character designs for the kids were taken from Himitsu no Akko-chan (Akko-chan is Secret), but I can't remember the name of it right now.



Wear a mask and play Shogi.



Feb. 3rd was Sunday, and there was supposed to be a big bean throwing event at Terukuni shrine, but I wasn't sure exactly what time. I've been at past throwings, and they're a crazy mob. I usually end up being at the back of the crowd, where nothing ever reaches. People closer to the stage fight over little 1 cent bags of dried beans or 5 cent protective amulets, and I don't see the appeal in that. At 1 PM, I decided to get outside, and I walked by Terukuni on my way to Tenmonkan and then to Amu Plaza. It was raining heavily, and the shrine was abandoned.



I couldn't tell if the event was held at 11 AM and was therefore long over, or if it had been cancelled. There weren't many footprints in the mud near the stage, but a little farther out there was one piece of blue paper folded into a little envelope on the ground. The evidence points both ways. Regardless, it was a miserable day, and nothing else was going on (the past 2-3 weeks have been dead event- and music-wise. I went to Amu Plaza to look at 3D wood puzzles in Kinokuniya (nothing I want to buy right now), and then sat in a coffee shop for a couple hours solving a cipher puzzle from the American Cryptogram Association's The Cryptogram newsletter (the Cm comes out every 2 months, and I joined last year. The cipher was a Monome-Dinome, which I was trying for the first time, and was pretty easy to solve.) Then I went back home and worked on my science and math blog, writing about Swagman and Monome-Dinome ciphers, for the rest of the day. Nothing really spectacular. No big events coming up.

Meat chalk

Hungry yet?