Posted in Food, Sake, Technology on May 19th, 2008 No Comments »
Sake is for 70% water, so water is by far the major ingredient. Water used in the sake brewing process is called “Shuzo Yosui” and can be divided into two types: “Jozo yosui,” or the water used for the fermentation process and “Binzume yosui” or the water used for bottling and other processes. The first […]
Posted in Food, Sake, Technology on May 18th, 2008 No Comments »
Rice and water are the two main raw materials in sake, but for sake, not all rice is equal. The rice used for sake is called “sakamai,” “Sake rice;” about 5% of all rice grown in Japan is “Sake rice.”
One particular type of “Sake rice” is the so-called “Shuzo Kotekimai,” the “Rice ideally suitable for […]
Posted in Architecture, Japan, Technology on May 18th, 2008 No Comments »
In the past I have written a post about “lists of three bests” in Japan, based on a huge list I found on the Japanese Wikipedia. But also the English Wikipedia has a page called “List of Records of Japan.”
It contains a mix of both national records and world records. I have picked out 10 […]
Posted in Architecture, History, Museums, Osaka, Technology on May 15th, 2008 No Comments »
The title says it all: this is a museum about the ancient Sayama Irrigation Pond (the oldest in the country) and the most important exhibit is a huge slice of mud of the dam built to create the reservoir 1,400 years ago (and enlarged over the centuries). This mud wall (62 meters long and 15 […]
Posted in Food, Osaka, Technology on May 2nd, 2008 1 Comment »
I have written a recent post on the birth of kaiten sushi or conveyor belt sushi exactly 50 year’s ago - an invention made in the great city of Osaka, but I still had to visit the shop where that happened: Mawaru Genroku Sushi in Fuse, Osaka.
Fuse is just a few minutes by Nara-bound Kintetsu […]
Posted in Animation, Food, Japan, Osaka, Technology, Web on Apr 2nd, 2008 No Comments »
This somewhat creepy, robotlike Japanese woman follows your cursor with her eyes as you move it over the screen! The technology was developed by Japanese company MotionPortrait. (Via Jean Snow)
Billiken, the fiendish-looking God of Good Luck in the Tsutenkaku Tower, Osaka, has celebrated his 100th birthday.
During the ceremony, a birthday cake was presented to […]
Posted in Japan, Nature, Technology, Web on Mar 15th, 2008 No Comments »
Translator’s Tools is a new blog by Gururaj Rao that conveniently introduces tools to make translation from and to the Japanese easier. In his most recent post, he introduces the Glova Bilingual Database, a contextual database/dictionary that will not only be of help to translators, but to anyone studying Japanese.
Asiajin is a blog on webservices […]
Posted in Business, Culture, Technology on Jan 10th, 2008 No Comments »
Rickshaws are something nostalgic, as on the picture below, and at the same time they fill me with a certain indefinable guilt, because of the contrast between the well-fed person (often a foreigner) in the backseat and the emaciated figure of the puller. This despite the fact that originally there was nothing colonial about the […]
Posted in Kobe, Technology, Travel on Jan 6th, 2008 1 Comment »
The Rokko Liner connects Rokko Island with Sumiyoshi Station in Kobe. It is a so-called “automated guideway transit system” meaning the trains are computer controlled and do not need a driver. It runs on an elevated track that winds its way from Sumiyoshi (a JR station) to the island.
Rokko Island is the second major artificial […]
Posted in Architecture, Business, Japan, Technology on Jan 6th, 2008 No Comments »
When I first saw elevator testing towers in Japan (one stands next to the Hankyu line between Osaka and Kyoto) I first wondered what these ungainly, eye-sore contraptions were for.
I found out years ago: they are for testing elevators and always stand inside an elevator factory of companies as Hitachi or Fujitec.
Mitsubishi Electric makes elevators […]
Posted in Kyoto, News, Society, Technology on Nov 14th, 2007 No Comments »
The Kyoto Prize is the Japanese competitor of the Swedish Nobel prize, but unfortunately still much less famous. It has been awarded annually since 1984 by the Inamori Foundation, which was established by Inamori Kazuo (”Profit is society’s award for serving its interests”) with his personal fortune, the founder and long-term president of high-tech company […]
Posted in Architecture, Kyoto, Museums, Technology on Apr 25th, 2007 No Comments »
Kyoto is often seen as purely a historical city for tourists. Indeed, when you sit in a quiet Zen garden you tend to forget that it is also a hothouse of advanced research and industry.
That was already so in the past. In the last 30 years of the 19th century, after the capital was transferred […]
Posted in Food, Technology on Jan 6th, 2007 No Comments »
This is not an advertisement for milk cacao drinks from Bourbon - although the contents of this small bottle tasted not bad. No, when buying this plastic bottle with a hot beverage in it, I was reminded of the fact that Japan is perhaps the only country in the world where hot beverages are sold […]
Posted in Intercultural, Technology on Jul 31st, 2006 No Comments »
For the French author Marcel Proust fragrances called up the strongest memories, also of forgotten things from a long past childhood. An accidental whiff of roses and you are a small child again, riding your bicycle in the old garden; the penetrating smell of charcoal fires and I am walking in the alleys of Kyoto, […]
Posted in Museums, Technology on Jun 8th, 2006 2 Comments »
Nezu lies adjacent to Yanaka, on the inside of the ring of the Yamanote line, and is an area where still some traces of an older Tokyo can be found. It is famous for the Nezu Shrine, which has beautiful azaleas in late April-early May.
Within easy walking distance from the Nezu subway station on the […]
