Living, Kyoto

They say: “Three months! What will you be doing in Kyoto? I say: “I’m going to be LIVING”


So here we are, living. In the city of modest, daily, miracles. Including - but certainly not confined to - marvelous food, delightful Japlish, and sakura, the cherry blossoms. Lots of cherry blossoms. The peonies are upon us and the iris is to come. Then - my favourite - the hydrangeas. Then home.


This blog is the accompaniment to a gallery of photos created in iWeb and hosted on mobileme. The galleries there are definitely worth visiting but at the moment they seem to take an INCREDIBLY LONG TIME to load. The links are not broken. For the moment, consider it an introduction to Kyoto time, where folks meander rather than rush. To synch with the city means re-adjusting our pace, making life slower and definitely, definitely, more considerate. The bonus is that, going slow, you notice things and you notice people and you have a life full of interactions.


That site is primarily a place for aggregating photographic observations of Kyoto. Some of the galleries are developing series that will grow day by day. These include the photos on Japlish t-shirts (“Glory is Gripped”), general Japlish (“Signs & wonders”, subtitled “I do not think that means what you think it means”), intriguing street occurrences (“In the street”) and the glory that is Japanese food (“Let’s bite and taste it”). Anticipate many, many more additions as time goes on. They’ll be worth revisiting.


New photo series are emerging. Some are on people (“The Gardeners”, “The Sketchers” and “The Musicians”) . Some are around places (“Wandering up the Kamo”), and some on details (“Community gardening”, “The lanterns of Kyoto”, “Keeping an eye out for details)”. Whether the galleries depict particular events or are devoted to series, within the galleries the photo annotations have acted as an ersatz blog. But now there’s also a blog hosted there called “Without forgetting pleasant life”


For reasons of speed and being able to do what blogs should do, which is act as a kind of diary of observations, I've set up this one here.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

My 'Glory is Gripped' outrageous Japanese t-shirt documentation project proceeds apace

My jaw continues to have cause to drop at the t-shirts I see here. It must be said that I'm avidly scanning them as people go past and searching stores for excellent examples. I always enjoy the ones that come from what we call 'young people's stores' and I found one such store this evening. On offer in the sweet young girls series, on a pink polka dot background, a choice of messages.

The first: "I don't know how to love you"
The second: "Just give me a fucking chance". Exclamation mark. As one would expect.
I'm unsure if the two messages are related.
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