This year's Santarchy itinerary is looking to be pretty crazy.

Siggraph Asia will in Hong Kong the week before, from December 12-15. I've never been to Hong Kong or to China, and it's more or less in the neighborhood and on the way. My employer won't pay for my plane ticket or conference pass but they've allowed me to submit the time as work time ( Read more... )

I am hardly an authority on Japan. Spending several Christmases drunk in Japan hardly makes me an authority on Japan (or anything else). But I've got some random thoughts on the recent Sendai earthquake/tsunamiFirst things first: all Santas have checked in and everyone's doing fine. I was particularly concerned about my friend Nafnaf, whose house I ( Read more... )

A little over a year ago ago I wrote about O-ichou, the 1000 year old God-tree of Kamakura, Japan. I am sorry to report that O-ichou fell last week due to "high snow-laden winds from Tuesday night" (according to Google Translate). Rest in peace, giant awesome tree deity.


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My cousin just sent me the following email.

I am currently in Japan and will be here for the next two weeks for work. I am staying near Shinjuku station.  I will have a weekend here and was wondering if you had any recommendations on what to do?  I had a bit of time to explore the station tonight and some of the main shopping areas.  If you have ( Read more... )

I'm back from Japan. I'll post more later. Still decompressing my luggage physically and my mind figuratively.

I arrived at Narita early, bought a couple of hours of wifi time, and logged into my server at home. My new login window says:

Last login: Wed Dec 30 18:53:47 2009 from b132117.ppp.asaWhat the heck is an .asa domain? I've never seen that ( Read more... )

matrushkaka dropped me off at the airport. I forgot to put the JAL silverware in my luggage so I didn't get to do the thing where they confiscate it at TSA, then reissue me an identical set on the airplane ( Read more... )

I just came across an extremely interesting nugget of information while writing a comment to a comment on my last post.

10 days before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima the United States issued the Potsdam Declaration demanding an unconditional Japanese surrender or face "prompt and utter destruction". Behind closed doors Prime Minister Kantarō ( Read more... )

Just out of college, my uncle worked at Livermore making detonators for their atomic bomb project. I admired my uncle, which is one reason why my first job out of college was also at the Livermore lab. I wasn't working on physical weapons, but I was proud to work at the Lab ( Read more... )

This year in Japan our friends told us a weird story about the way that McDonalds did their launch of the product that we call the Quarter Pounder ( Read more... )

I had a great time in Japan this Christmas. I saw my friends, I made some new ones, and I ate a lot of really good food. And - oh yeah - I saw God. I even took a picture of Him. He's O-ichou, the 1000 year old ginkgo tree on the left side of the picture below, at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū Temple in Kamakura. He's old enough to appear in this Edo ( Read more... )