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From The Past

Thursday, March 13th, 2025

We spent a few hours at the antique postcard shop last weekend and amongst a haul of ~200 cards I bought this one:

It’s a lovely bird card, probably 40+ years old, and it would have gone into my ‘generic animal’ stash for future Postcrossing use. While I make a concerted effort to not buy used cards, this time I missed this one. Here’s what is written on the back:

A message from Elfriede to Ruth, written July 27 1989. It’s typed and not stamped, and this with the lack of address shows it must have been mailed in an envelope. It’s a nice message, if a little terse, but reading between the lines we see these women were very familiar.

I love the last line, an evocative glimpse of life in Berlin in those days: In Berlin is all the same with the wall and I think so long I live it will not be other.

Only 105 days later, The Wall was torn down. I wonder what Elfriede thought on that day, and whether she wrote a followup to Ruth?

And as for the postscript on the side, a Grünfinken is a greenfinch. Not exactly a canary, but not dissimilar, which explains her choice of card 🙂

Posted in Animals, Postcards, Time | Comments Closed

Shinagawa

Tuesday, June 13th, 2023

I awoke ruined and a shell of my former self. I suspected a ‘light activity’ was needed, and when I stepped out to get some breakfast the incredibly humidity only affirmed this suspicion. So I went to see some fish!

I visited Maxell Aqua Park in Shinagawa, a district of Tokyo about a half hour south of my hotel. This (not really an?) aquarium has various marine animals on display but is mostly known for its dolphin show. Specific to my situation today, it was entirely indoors and the air conditioning was wonderful!

The usual types of fish and other sea life was to be seen, and most of the displays were creative and clean. They had a wonderful jellyfish section as well as a sort of pseudo amazon environment which had capybara and the biggest arowana I’ve ever seen (bigger than me)!

Unfortunately… some of the enclosures left a lot to be desired. As an entirely indoor facility the question arises whether these animals (such as the capybaras or seal) ever see sunlight, much less plants, and my enjoyment in seeing them was undoubtedly affected by my wish they were free. It’s a difficult quandary of all zoos: it’s fun to see the animals, but is it fun for them?

The above pic shows a penguin repeatedly trying to hop onto the leg of a cleaner. She (the cleaner) had to hold her arm to stop the penguin but once or twice the little bird got through. I think it thought the employee was its mum? It was endearing to watch, and it was obvious the cleaner was tolerant and careful in her handling of the excitable bird. I read online this park is known for the care it shows for its animals; I just wish the enclosures were more natural.

The main attraction was the dolphin show, which was about 20 minutes long and featured five dolphins of different species (one was gigantic… was it even a dolphin?) doing impressive tricks with their trainers. The auditorium was impressive and could seat over 1000, although half or them would be in the splash zone… and these dolphins were relentless about splashing people!

I greatly enjoyed this show. Once again I was hesitant at first since I’d rather they had the entire ocean as their playground, but as performers they were flawless and they seemed to have fun as they jumped to incredible heights and dazzled the crowd with their antics. Maxell Aqua Park wasn’t the biggest aquarium I’ve ever visited, and it certainly wasn’t the best, but the dolphin show alone made it worthwhile.

Shinawaga isn’t too far away by train from a famous covered shopping street, so after the Aqua Park I headed over to the ‘Palm’ arcade for some lunch. At nearly 600m long, this is a once street converted to a pedestrian arcade and now roofed. There’s loads of shops and restaurants, and many are of the ‘mom and pop’ style, so it’s very different from the usual mall.

It also had a ‘Kura Sushi’, which is the sushi conveyor belt restaurant KLS and I ate at in Kyoto earlier this year. This is the place where you get a chance at a prize from a gacha machine for each five plates you eat, and naturally I wanted to try again to win a prize.

Long story short: I didn’t win and walked out stuffed with shrimp tempura sushi! It was fantastically delicious (and very inexpensive) but I still don’t know what’s in the capsules if you win a prize!

It was a low impact but fun day (and I didn’t mention the post-dinner Akiba shopping). I successfully recharged while dodging the heat and humidity, and I’m all set to go go go again tomorrow 🙂

Posted in Animals, Japan, Trip | Comments Closed

Animals, Again

Sunday, June 4th, 2023

Today I went to Oakvale animal park with Sue, Marina and Ten. I’d been here about six years ago and remembered it as the pinnacle of kangaroo-visiting locations, and today absolutely did not disappoint!

We got there right when it opened and there were tour buses full of Koreans unloading in front of us. Everyone legged it for the kangaroos that were sunning it at the park of the park. As it turns out there were so many kangaroos (more than 37; I counted) which were more than enough for everyone to find one to feed 🙂

The Korean tourists were mad with excitement, and everyone was all smiles as the kangaroos welcomed us and our little food bags! Marina and Ten were equally excited, and kangaroos were the first of many animals they fed today that they had never experienced first-hand before.

We fed kangaroos, llamas, goats, sheep, bulls, camels and even miniature horses. The girls were excited and scared of many of the animals – most of which were significantly larger than themselves – and many laughs were had 🙂

Another highlight was the baby goat feeding. Small bottles of milk were distributed to the crowd of visitors and then a pen of hungry baby goats was opened and the little goats went berserk running around drinking from the bottles. It was hilarious!

The park is beautifully kept, with well-maintained enclosures and a healthy animals. The weather today was ideal – not too hot or cold – and we saw lots of activity even amongst animals that are usually quite sedentary.

Marina and Ten are studying English at Newcastle University and both are fairly fluent, so we had no trouble communicating. Of course I was full of questions about Japan and it was fascinating getting the perspective of ‘locals’. I think they were amused by my otaku qualifications, which were similar to Marina’s dad!

As you know I love kangaroos, and I could happily visit them any time. It was a lovely day 🙂

Posted in Animals, Australia, Trip | Comments Closed

Save The Whales

Thursday, June 1st, 2023

Today Sue and I went to a place called Norah Head lighthouse, about a half hour south of Newcastle on the central coast.

It was a lovely and picturesque spot, and below the lighthouse was an expansive area of rockpools. Since it was low tide, we were free to explore them at our leisure.

We saw some brave souls fishing from the edge of the rocks. Fools, some may call them, since they ignored the many warning signs and many fisherman are lost every year from being washed off rocks.

From up on the cliffs near the lighthouse, and only minutes after we arrived, we saw out to sea many sights like this one:

Can you see the little black dot? Here’s a zoomed-in view:

It’s a breaching humpback! The east coast of Australia at this time is ‘humpback highway’ since whales are in the middle of migration north from Antarctica. I had read it was ‘easy’ to see whales off the east coast at this time of year but we were unprepared for just how easy it was!

These are extremely zoomed-in snaps of different whales, but we spotted them dozens and dozens of times in the hour or so we were on the rocks. It’s hard to saw how many different whales we saw, but at one point there were clearly four surfacing at once in different spots. Sue says we saw fifty, and far be it from to suggest that’s an exaggeration 🙂

Afterwards we had some fish and chips for lunch and headed to a lookout further south that we had read was a better whale-spotting point… but saw none there! No worries though, since we had been so lucky before lunch. It was a remarkable experience in a beautiful location 🙂

Posted in Animals, Australia, Trip | Comments Closed

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Sunday, April 23rd, 2023

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai is probably the most famous Japanese work of art:

It was a woodblock print first made in 1831. About 8000 copies were eventually printed, of which about 100 remain. The remaining copies are shockingly valuable now (one recently sold for almost 3 million), but their (relative) abundance means you can see an original in many galleries around the world. We’ve seen one in Japan, and another at The Met in NYC.

And here’s a LEGO kit I bought last week! It’s the second in their LEGO art series, which seeks to reproduce famous works of art in LEGO form (the first was The Starry Night by Van Gogh).

The set has over 1800 pieces, but a few hundred are small flat circles to make up the sky and clouds! You build it in six plates which then go together to form the full image. Here’s a shot before the 3D surface elements are added:

The ‘wave effects’ cleverly use white flower and bird pieces, and it makes a clever illusion of a frothing wave, especially from a distance:

Here’s a comparison between the original print and this set, showing Fuji and some of the fishermen:

About half of the finished piece is the frame (which is optional). All told it took me about five hours to finish, and while a very easy set, was enormously satisfying and relaxing to build. It looks beautiful complete:

It’s designed to be hung on a wall, which I intend to do, but it’s somewhat large and quite heavy so I need to think carefully as to where I’ll place it. I like this even more than I expected I would. I wonder what art sets LEGO will make in the future?

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