Kirk here sharing another valuable post from Charles Waterman.
2021-04-12 12:22 JST 2021 Kirk here sharing another valuable post from Charles Waterman. ↗ View original post on Facebook For a link to the original post on Facebook, open this page on a computer. Reactions: 1 · Comments: 0 · Shares: 0 ← 2021-04-11 19:07 JST 2021-04-12 12:25 JST → Around this time … 2021-04-13 16:27 JSTOur neighbor to the southwest, Miyazaki, got a writeup on Gaijinpot Travel. Both that prefecture and Kagoshima are breathtakingly wonderful places to visit if you have a car and a tent - and remember, you can camp anywhere for free.Get to know Japan's 47 Prefectures: Miyazaki 2021-04-13 11:12 JSTThe Kumamoto red cow (褐毛和種) is pretty famous as far as cows go. I'm not sure if that's something they appreciate. However, they will appreciate that Kyushu Tokai University has agreed to provide grazing land on their Aso campus to bovines bereft of grazing ground following quake damage. Remember that next time you eat a really expensive, tasty steak. - Williamhttps://kumanichi.com/news/id191157 2021-04-13 08:12 JSTGood morning!Here is a post from Untapped Kumamoto about Seta Shrine in Ozu Town and Kumamoto Earthquake Museum, which aims at passing on lessons and stories of the disaster to the next generations. It’s been almost 5 years since Kumamoto Earthquake. Seeing the progress of reconstruction is a great hope for all of us and makes us feel that we are moving forward. Check the article below and I hope it will be your opportunity to visit some of the sites. I’ll be a great support for locals.- Chieko 2021-04-12 15:47 JSTShiromiyagura (城見櫓 - literally, "Castle View Turret") is a restaurant just across from the castle's nagabeya that I've long planned to visit but never have - but now I definitely will. It had been closed due to building damage since the quakes but has recently reopened with the help of crowd funding (that's apparently グループ補助金 in Japanese), spiffed up with an entrance designed to resemble the castle walls and the owner, Hayashi Shōzō-san, promising that every seat will have an excellent castle view. So now I've really got to go. - Williamhttps://www.shiromiyagura.com/ 2021-04-12 12:25 JSTAs a native Californian, I'd been raised to be a touchy type. Once in Japan, I realized that YOU JUST DON'T TOUCH. And you draw a very strict line between professional and personal communications, as a female teacher from Kumamoto related in this Kumanichi story, The "# Teacher's Baton," an initiative from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, aimed at both publicizing the attractiveness of the profession and drawing lines on appropriate behavior. As she succinctly put it, "If you can't follow these guidelines, choose another profession." - William教師の魅力伝えるはずが…過酷な実態訴え続々 「＃教師のバトン」文科省ＳＮＳプロジェクト ｜ 熊本日日新聞 2021-04-12 12:22 JSTKirk here sharing another valuable post from Charles … (this post) 2021-04-11 19:07 JSTKirk here. Today I'm feeling quite happy to be a resident of Kumamoto City -- a community with a municipal government that really listens!The screenshot of Kumamoto City's web site you see shows how machine translated pages currently appear. Machine translation is nothing new on the website but the ability to move quickly and easily between a machine translation and the Japanese original is (note the "Japanese" link under the other languages).Here's the address of the City's page:https://www.city.kumamoto.jp/Try it for yourself. The machine translations are still rather funky but now, if something seems to be important to you, you can easily find the original Japanese and, if you can't read it yourself, show that to someone who can help you figure out the details.This is something I requested about a year and a half ago. Here's a link to the copy of a letter (in Japanese) that I submitted to the mayor:https://www2.kumagaku.ac.jp/teacher/~masden/2021/Kumamoto/提案書.pdfI got the idea to write this letter from discussion we had on this page:https://www.facebook.com/Kumamotoi/posts/2840263016047112That discussion was prompted by a post from Atsuko. Thanks Atsuko!! I'm SO glad I invited you to edit / post to the page.My next target is Kumamoto Prefecture. They use the same machine translation service but, as was the case with Kumamoto City's page in the past, there's no obvious way to move between translations and the original pages -- just a warning that the translations may be wrong.So, to sum up, although I do a fair amount of griping and carping on this page, here's at least one example of my complaining leading to something positive. :) 2021-04-11 15:21 JSTThe Mainichi Shimbun published a series of photos of the restored castle (including views of exhibits inside the castle, an views from the observation platform). -- KirkIn Photos: Restored Kumamoto Castle unveiled to media - The Mainichi 2021-04-10 18:18 JSTKumamoto got a good writeup on GaijinPot which might be useful for clueless relatives wondering where the hell you live - except the caption "Smoke on the water" seems to encourage a bad habit. - WilliamGet to know Japan's 47 Prefectures: Kumamoto 2021-04-10 09:55 JST"Kodokushi" - 孤独死 - means "to die alone." My dog recently died in my arms, and of all the wonderful experiences he'd had in his life, that was likely what he was most grateful for. The "temporary housing" erected for victims of the Mashiki quakes has seen it become "temporary" only as their residents die alone and unattended. Another poor soul, a man described only as "in his 70s," departed this world yesterday, bringing this sad number of those dying alone to 33. I wish something more could be done for these people, but Mashiki is just so far away, both in location and in mind. - William熊本地震の復興住宅で７０代男性「孤独死」 県内２人目 | 熊本日日新聞社 2021-04-10 01:17 JSTA wonderful thing about living abroad is that one can learn new things frequently as an adult, something only infants do when stranded in their birthplace. Today, I learned 玉串 - "tamagushi" - which is that olive-like branch considered sacred in Japan (the best definition I've read about it is "a sprig of the sakaki tree that is decorated with shide - zigzag paper streamers.") Today, the mayor of Uto City presented a tamagushi to a shinto priest in hope that their city hall will not be destroyed by an earthquake again. I don't want to delve into the separation of church and state or efficacy here - but if it works, I'll shower my local shrine with tamagushi. - William