Dolphin Port Tear-Down June 4

"Thank you for the 15 years."





Almost all gone. Sigh.







Bridge to nowhere.

Make-up Mask

"Yes, we like you. We don't like you that way."

Praying Mantis

Bit of a Small Adventure this time. I'd gotten down to Minami Kagoshima one morning, by streetcar, and was waiting for the barrier rails to go up so I could cross to the other side of the tracks. While I was waiting, this young kid half-runs down the ramp leading to the main train station platform, and calls out someone's name, looking frantic. Both the driver of the streetcar at the platform and I are watching the kid to make sure he doesn't run under the guard arm and in front of the car before it leaves. When the streetcar pulls out and the arms raise, the kid half-runs back up the ramp, then turns and sees me crossing the tracks. He runs back down right in front of me with his arms outstretched, telling me that I can't go past him. I'm confused, so I take a half-step forward, and he jumps back and repeats "you have to stop." We repeat this little game a couple times, until we get near the top of the ramp, and he steps aside, looking a little disappointed. He points back down the ramp at the platform we'd just left, and I try to see what he's talking about. I don't, so he points again, and I realize that there's a little baby praying mantis sitting on part of the iron railing a foot or two from me. The kid's really excited by his find, and tells me that it had crawled close to 10 feet along the railing before stopping. I let him talk a bit more, and then thank him and leave because now I'm getting close to being late.







About 2 hours later, I returned to the platform, half expecting to see the kid still there, but he was gone. I looked around for the mantis, and I couldn't find that, either. As I was about to give up, I spotted it back near the bottom of the ramp, this time hanging upside-down from the bottom of the handhold. I'm told that this is hatching season, and there are lots of baby praying mantises now. It's only the third time I've ever seen one myself.

Demon Sword Cards

Found these cards in a konbini for about 140 yen ($1.25 USD) per package. One card and a wafer cookie.

Vent Vert May 26

Lucky Zone Day
No idea what that means.

Lobby Spider, May 25

Not a really big spider in the entrance area to the building, sitting by the elevator doors. Maybe about 1" toe to toe. Camera wouldn't focus. Still, he was polite.

C.M.B. 44 Final Notes

Ok, I know that I mentioned a week or two ago that I was going to stop writing up summaries of the manga I read. But, this is a special case.

C.M.B. 44 and Q.E.D. iff 16 both came out in Japan on the 17th, but didn't get down to Kyushu until 2-3 days later. I finished Q.E.D. first, then got to C.M.B., and there's a bit of an announcement to make, if you haven't already heard.

----- Spoilers -----

In this volume, Shinra discovered that there's been a lot of complaints in the natural history world about a "child" having all three C., M. and B. rings, and the current leader of the Royal History Museum of London has decided to "right some wrongs." The boy has to go to London to face a council meeting, where 5 of the current department heads will declare the fate of the rings. Shinra is joined by his three "step-fathers", and initially, it looks like a stand-off. However, a masked figure attacks Shinra in a park, and the boy recognizes a scent on his clothes as being reminiscent of mummy embalming chemicals. He goes to the antiquities department to check on one of the five members acting against him, discovers the guy dead in an MRI room, and is accused of being the murderer. This kind of mayhem continues through the entire book, with one of the other council members also being stabbed to death, and two of the remaining ones getting hospitalized in a car attack. The attacker sets Shinra's museum on fire in an attempt to get the boy to bring the three rings out of hiding. By the end of the book, the killer gets crushed under the weight of his own expectations, Shinra's class has its Christmas party at Tatsuki's family's public baths, and Shinra decides to throw the rings into the ocean so that they can't cause any further problems like this.

The announcement, then, is that the C.M.B. manga will end with volume 45, which will come out sometime mid-October. The teaser page shows just about everyone that's ever appeared in the pages, from Mao, Bea Brust and the classmates, and Tatsuki's grandfather. Loki and his girlfriend are missing, and the Bill Gates parody guy and his wife are also not in the teaser. But, we'll see. The tag line is that Shinra has some loose ends he has to tidy up before he goes.