TV weather

Weather forecast on TV is good fun.
As visual imagery plays such an important part in everyday life in Japan, it is not a surprise that the weather forecast also uses numerous animated visual prompts.
I do sometimes feel like they are addressing 5-year-olds though.

The anchorman is holding his "magic wand", with which he can select various symbols, make them appear on the screen and move them around. One of his favorite things is also to draw big arrows.



Winter for instance has a full set of funny characters. The shogun dog riding a horse (cold, usually sent from evil China), the bouncing snowman, the "King cold front" and the "Queen warm front" who sometimes meet and shake hands (I am still waiting to actually witness this event).

We also need to be told when it is time to take out those turtleneck sweaters from the cupboard and that today is a good day for doing laundry.



This is only weather forecast, but lots of more serious programs rely on those cute little drawings or animated characters so typical of Japanese TV. Probably to keep people's attention, but that cannot be the only reason (any opinion?).
I might write more about it in another post.

Iron-man

Extreme ironing is a new (and quite ridiculous?) "sport" (or that's what they are calling it), in which people take iron + iron board + 26kg power generator + wrinkled shirt to remote locations (underwater, while snowboarding, parachuting, in war zones etc).
This established international sport allegedly started in England, but it is the kind of activity that Japanese people are fond of.
38-year-old and founder of Extreme Ironing Japan Matusawa has recently successfully ironed and folded a badly wrinkled shirt on top of the 3776-meter Kengamine peak of Mount Fuji.
"There was a therapeutic effect and a sense of fulfillment being on Japan's highest peak", he said.
I bet it's his wife who irons all his clothes at home...


N.B: Currently reading Carry on, Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse). Still funny and fresh for a book that was written 80 years ago.

A little bit of Alsace

As you can see, food is very important in Alsace. But we do have other things too .
:-)
Check out more photos of Alsace in my Pictures.
Maybe you'll want to come and visit some day....