Headlines

Here are a few random headlines I found in the newspaper Mainichi (English edition online). So this is what is going on in Japan these days (I swear all of them are absolutely real):

- 2 junior high school girls lace teacher's soup with anti-depression drugs.
- For sale: Japanese castle, 15 years old, good as new.
- Man nabbed for chopping up mom after finding her dead at home.
- Sword-wielding pirates rob Japanese captain's ship off Indonesia.
- Gray-haired man sues dye maker for making him go bald.
- Doctor collared for trying to film women's toilet.
- Police return 5 million yen to man who threw it away in trash.
- 600 sparrows mysteriously die in Hokkaido.
- Hot spring skinny-dippers test the waters with flesh-eating fish.
- Long-suffering love hotel employees dread spring's crazy couple season.
- Amazing architect explains how to build your very own cardboard castle.
- Bus that runs on tempura oil to transport visitors to Earth Day Tokyo.
- 7 viewers complain of nausea after watching TV Tokyo programs.
- Doctor found not guilty over death of boy with chopstick in brain.

Fumeurs s'abstenir

Il parait qu'en France ils se cassent la tete pour decider quelle loi anti-tabac adopter. Une bonne idee serait de faire comme ici, interdire de fumer meme dehors et instaurer une police-fumeurs! (voir article dans Le Monde du 19 avril ici).
Bon, c'est vrai que ce n'est pas le cas pour tout l'archipel, mais l'idee d'avoir des "points fumee" (photo) par ci par la dans la ville n'est pas mal. Peut etre un peu discriminant a l'egard des fumeurs, mais tant pis pour eux...

Fish

Some fish we had at home.



Raw fish prepared for "roll your own" sushi. It was bought at the supermarket but still good.



Grilled Hokke with cold spinach salad and flavoured rice.


Buri-no-teriyaki with tofu soup.

Cod with mushroom and bacon sauce.



Fish is indeed quite nice here, and raw fish is really delicious. I even kind of like the fish we have at the canteen, so I am taking it quite often.

Sunset on a cold day and trapped cherry tree

Yes, it is still a bit cold, so I thought I would give you a couple of cool "winterish" links. The first one is by Lake Leman, and the second, I don't know, I didn't read it carefully, maybe Finland?
Now that's cold
Moose in ice

Sakura

There is probably no blog about Japan that can avoid talking about Sakura (cherry blossom) or Hanami (cherry blossom viewing, or actually rather eating and getting drunk under cherry trees). Cherry blossom is a big event every year. People are looking forward to it, a bit like Midsummer in Sweden.
This year, in spite of the colder winter, trees started to blossom 10 days before usual (apparently what matters is the difference of temperature between night and day).




There are cherry trees all over, everywhere. I like the way they blind in with the city.
Saturday was a sunny and warm day, perfect for walking around. Unfortunately everyone got the same idea. As you can see on the pictures it was rather crowded (so crowded that some people passed out -see photo- no, I'm kidding...), but I guess this is part of the event.



Our walk led us to the Kitanomaru park and the Yasukuni shrine. This Shinto shrine commemorates Japan's war dead (Yasukuni= peaceful country). A big political controversy surrounds Yasukuni because since 1978, fourteen class A war criminals are among the 2,5 million enshrined there. For some people (especially the Chinese), the shrine has become a symbol for Japanese militarism and ultra-nationalism, and many are taking the prime minister's visits as a sign that Japan' s political leaders are not looking critically enough at their country's history. Oh well, for us it was just a nice day out.