Fishing Cormorants

FEATHERY FRIDAY (ON SATURDAY)...

IN CHINA and Japan, man and bird have come together for "mutual" benefit... traditional fishermen keep cormorants on their boats. These sharp-eyed birds scan the waters for fish, soon to plunge in, grab a writhing carp or whatever and obediently spit it on to the old man's boat.

What this popular commercial for the HSBC bank (formerly Midland Bank; HSBC stands for Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of CHINA) doesn't tell you is that the birds' throats are kindly bound with metal twine to stop them SWALLOWING their fishycatch ~ the feathery swines!

Salad Anniversary

IN THIS future (I was talking of yesterday) I finally want to see Japan... then all those hours doodling mysterious characters shall finally pay off.

My Cambridge Encylopedia of Japan, picked up for £2 in a library sale, covers just about everything Japanese. Each section was written by an expert in the field ~ society ~ economy ~ politics ~ arts ~ geography and so on. The history section tells of fascinating encounters with Dutchmen in the 1600s and there are some beautiful landscape photos of Japan's mountainous interior.

The flora and fauna section even gives an oblique mention to Akita and Shiba doggies:

many family dogs are of a breed which has the dense coat and face of a husky...

the furry swines!

The literature section quotes excerpts from a 1987 haiku sequence by 26-year-old schoolteacher Tawara Machi 俵万智 entitled Salad Anniversary. The book was a roaring success, selling 2.6 million in the first five years:

"Call me again" "Wait for me"
Your love is always spoken
in commands

Glancing up at the falling rain
Suddenly I want
your lips

Escape from a shower into a street stall
and drink a glass of cheap saké ~
fun to be alive

The woman at the stall
calls me your wife ~
and so, for a while, I am

The encyclopedia is edited by Richard Bowring, Professor of Japanese at Cambridge, the man who replied to my email asking for titles of the best language textbooks. I was well flattered that a man of such accomplishments should bother with a nobody like me.



The only work of Japanese literature I've read from cover to cover is The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1702) by Matsuo Bashō 松尾 芭蕉. It is a travel diary illustrated with haiku, which are, in a sense, poetic snapshots.

It's a very Japanese thing to capture the essence of a moment. That's what that scruffy-looking calligraphy in the "grass style" is all about.

When I go to Japan I wnat to take the narrow road to the deep north like Bashō, and see what's there these days.

To the north of Honshu, the main Japanese island, is the hilly land of HOkkaido, which wasn'tpropely colonized by the Japanese until the late 1800s. The cultivated land has European-stylefields rather than tiered rice paddies like the rest of Japan. The island is known for its special Hokkaido inus. These doggies are a mid-size compromise between the giant Akita-inu and the tiny shiba-inu, which means "brushwood doggie".

Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido island is famous for its extensive underground shopping precincts, built to shelter the Japanese northerners from the Siberian-style snows of midwinter when the tiny shiba-inus have to wear little bumblebee wing-holder-style doggiecoats, despite their bushy fur, so as not to freeze into canine cobwebs.

Talking of furrydoggies, did y'all like my Hachi story? When I first read the story and saw the faithful furry and the kindly professor saying goodbye, and saw how the faithfull furry devotedly waited at the busy railway station hoping against hope for his friend's eventual return, all set to music, I was nearly moved to tears...

Anyway time's nearly up, I gotta go.


HAVE A CHEERY WEEKEND, Y'ALL!

Link: Narrow Road to the Deep North ~ full online text

Dawn Chorus

SPRING is everywhere. It is amazing. Golden daffodils shining, cherry blossoms snowing. The skies are Pacific blue. And when I up and out for a pint of milk at 6:30 "of a" morning, the birdsong is bright and psychedelic as rainbows in a prism.

Up in the cherrytrees the fuzzy fledglings tilt heads to heaven and open their golden beaks to trill this spectacular dawn chorus.

When I resided in days of yore in a bourgeois terraced Victorian houseshare I slept with my sash window open wide to wake to the feathery songbirds' community chirping each and every dawn. Here in England the songbirds' spring morning chorus is said to be the most spectacular anywhere in the world and I can believe that.

I think we have a nightingale two trees along from my house. This little brown bird, a little smaller than a thrush, hops across the pavement then flaps up into the canopy when I trot past on my early rounds.

Now the world has sprung open like a fresh new daisy I feel myself living, too.

I can even envisage a future when I'll at long last go places...


DAWN CHORUS, UK

This is hardly dawn and doesn't really do justice to the chirrupy amazingness of hundreds of birds at full trill in the first light of dawn, but it's something...



Not dawn either, but nice birdsong. It doesn't sound LOUD enough to me, but there you go... blue tits (etc) land on that lump thing if you keep watching...

The Tale of Hachi

Chūgen Hachikō 忠犬ハチ公 means the faithful dog Hachi. Hachi means "eight" in Japanese.

This true story is famous in Japan. In the 1930s. Hachi, who later research showed to be one of only 30 pure-bred Akita dogs in Japan, was a puppydog in transit from the Northern Japanese farm where he was born to a new owner in the city. The crate in which he was travelling fell and sprang open at Tokyo station and the dog escaped and was found trotting the streets by a kindly professor from Tokyo University.

Unable to trace the dog's new owner, Ueno Hidesaburō 上野 英三郎, professor of Agricultural Studies at Tokyo University, took Hachi home and devotedly looked after him. Each morning the Professor would walk to the local station with Hachi in tow. There they said goodbye and Hachi trotted back home to re-appear each evening at Shibuya Station in time for the Professor's train.

One day Professor Ueno was stricken with a heart attack while at work and died. Hachi was rehomed but continually escaped, trotting back to the Professor's old home. This went on for months until the dog realized that Professor Ueno didn't live there any more.

From then on Hachi showed up at Shibuya Station 渋谷駅, the third-busiest railway station in Tokyo, every evening on time for his master's train. He became a fixture at the station, ever watching and waiting in hope of his master's return.

Regular commuters grew to recognize the dog, and kept him well-fed with tasty treats as he continued his vigil.

The Faithful Furry continued to show up every evening on time and to wait patiently for the late Professor. This went on for NINE YEARS.

During his lifetime Hachi became a cause célèbre and a national symbol of faithfulness and hope. When he died his body was stuffed and put in the National Science Museum in Tokyo, where he remains on display to this day.

Hachi's story was filmed in Japanese in 1987 as Hachikō Monogatari ハチ公物語. In 2009 a Hollywood version was released starring Richard Gere as a caucasian Professor Ueno.

This screen is a montage of clips from the Japanese original, set to music and telling the complete story in three-&-a-half minutes.




You can watch the complete 1987 film Hachiko Monogatari on my Animals Crackers pets blog by clicking here.

Photos 1: the actual Hachi; 2 bronze statue outside Shibuya station; 3 Hachi's stuffed body at the National Science Museum of Japan, Tokyo.

In Memory of Hachi
Tribute montage. I think those doggieharnesses that fit on their back like a bumblebee wings holder are really cute:
BTW doesn't the cover image look just like a little shiba-inu. Shiba-inu, BTW, means "brushwood doggie"...

Weary golden retriever

I MET two weary golden retrievers outside the shops this morning... trotting along the street, then waiting patiently outside as their master purchased beer and cigs, or whatever, for breakfast... they did look weary indeed, all golden and patient. I think they must have been girls as they were evidently quite old and not puppies, but nowhere near as large as the pitbullesque golden retrievers down the park. Hang on a sec ~ I think those ARE pitbulls ;->...

Is it true Americans don't use the expression "golden retriever" and call them something suitably obscure like Sunshine Labradors..?

You know my Akita 秋田犬 obsession got started off in earnest when a giant fluffy grey-a-brindle female one came bounding up to me in the park a few weeks ago and stared silently at me with this mystical intensity that seems peculiar to that breed... she is so beautiful.

Next time I saw her she came right up to me again but the owner said it was my bags of shopping she was interested in. I had no goodies on me the first time, so I like to think there's more going on with this mystical connexion between me and 日本犬 Japanese inu than plain old cupboard love... but who knows?

Daffodils!

To coin a phrase, it is an awesomely sunny day today. I feel the sunlight shining right into my head and behind my eyes and illuminating some long-shrouded cobweb-ridden granny-attick in my brain... quite luminous and lucid, I feel. How amazing to be in summer at long last. OK, mid-spring, but BRIGHT and SHINY and NEW!! Everything is Amazing!! And the daffodils are out, like smiling faces all a-cheer in rows. Such a lovely day.

I had Lidl's best stuffed spinnaci e rocotta tortelloni for breakfast, topped with mysterious mixed grated cheese and cod-in-parsley sauce. Most civilized.

I even feel a little less boring than per normal.

Hope y'all are having a cheery day too, in those far-flung habitations of y'all...

OPTIKONFUSION
Close your eyes ~ forget your name ~ forget the world ~ forget the people ~~ GO INSANE
I used to love this hardcore "rave" track in days of yore... days so long ago that this, the music of my young adulthood is referred to by kiddies of today as OLD SCHOOL... how wizzening can you get?

Dullardly

O I don't know what to bloody write. My blog, so I feel, has really gone down the toilet as late and become more boring than ever before.

I mean: what can I say? I slept for hours and hours and hours?

Raymond's brother ~ ya know, the one with the sinister voice ~ got married on Everybody Loves Raymond this morning. I saw the bride trotting up the isle, then FELL ASLEEP AGAIN.

Yeah and that's about it. Blah blah blah...

Chortlesome animal clips:

FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY

2 BABY TIGERS AND A MONKEY



ALSATIAN DOG & BABY (AT LEAST, TINY) MONKEY



SIBERIAN HUSKY TROTTING ON TREADMILL



HACHIKO MONOGATARI
(The Tale of Hatchiko) original Japanese version of the famous Akita dog story



SQUIRREL VS CROW
I wonder where this was filmed?... looks like India or somewhere...

Clothes handwash

I SPENT THE BEST PART OF AN HOUR handwashing four pairs of socks, 2 undies and a teeshirt this morning... It was 5:30am so the launderette was shut anyway.

When they first went in the socks were crusty like you wouldn't believe. I have eaten Mr Kipling's bramley apple pies with less crust than those socks, I can tell ya. I have been wearing 2 pairs at once because of the workmen's boots I always wear (steel toecaps, all the better to kick yobbos' heads in down the park ~ haha!)... then I washed mySELF in the same washing up bowl (a socalled "whore's bath" as someone once said in my comments) and that took very nearly an entire HOUR too... I know this because 2 episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond played out during the course of the scrubbing. I think it takes a long time because I soap on, scrub off seven times. Otherwise I am not clean...

And you wouldn't believe it but my clothes washed really clean also. I mean, considering my remiss latherorial ways it is a sheer miracle. The water eventually ran CLEAR.... And THAT has never happened before, I can tell you!

Sorry about this. Yes it is DOGS AGAIN ~ but I could not resist:

An Akita-inu and a Shiba-inu puppy...



NEED YOU TONIGHT by PROFESSOR GREEN
A modern take on that classic INXS tune...

It's really funny:



ANTIHEROIN AD
I like this one because it has that tiny doggie tearing round the park
Also I don't know WHY they insist on doing this, but the 10ml "drug works" they showed would have room for about TWENTY addict-strength fixes... nobody uses needles like that. Nobody!!
The tune is nice though, Mad World from the film Donnie Darko

A gaggle of geese, a murder of crows... a donkey derby of pizza boxes.

YES REALLY I'm talking of abortive posts scribbled on old foodcardboard, untapped in, unfinished. Sometimes I accumulate loads of them, but they're always boring (hence unposted).

In days gone by I used to scrawl out man a post in advance... not "man a post" ~ MANY a one! Lately I haven't done this, hence the boring blog and the degeneration into a morass of chinchillas and Japanese inus.

By the way, Morrisons own sweet chili chicken is nothing on Iceland's fiery chicken pizzas, which are proper stonebaked, and far more generously chickensprinkled.

Now talking of donkey derbies I think I need a Narcotics Anonymous sponsor more than I need a Native Japanese or European curlytailed furrydoggie... Also, living in the big bad city I'm scared somebody might burgle my furrydoggie from outside a shop or NA meeting (well I gotta walk the thang ~ mightaswell kill 2 birds 1 stone, ya know...)

And I don't think naming the shiba-inu "Snarler" will necessarily rub off on her character enough to put off local tea leaves.

Which is where sobriety comes in. Sobriety doesn't moult everywhere in spring, never gets bored and tears up the newspapers, will not tip over frying pans full of sausages and run off with them. It doesn't bark at strangers or scurry past park railings and into main roads.

Sobriety is hard-won yet free as a bird. It is guaranteed never to pee on the carpet (and you are less likely to pee on the carpet when you're sober), it does not need an ID-chip and unlike a cute lil dawg, nobody can ever steal it from me.

So sobriety it is.

God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference!

3 GOOD SONGS ~ or ought I to say "top tunes" to be hip-n-down wid da kidz..?

tHESE ARE BY FAR THE BEST (in my view) OF THE uk TOP 20 ON LAST NIGHT'S TV

#18 PROFESSOR GREEN ~ NEED YOU TONIGHT
Classic tune ~ with that DER-DER-DER from the original.
And rap WITH AN ENGLISH ACCENT ~ very modern & all...



#15 KATE NASH ~ DO WAH DO

Phoney American accents are bang out of fash these days, if you're Brit. And I love the air-hostess stuff, it reminds me of the late Princess Diana's fashion sense...



#1 LADY GAGA FT. BEYONCE ~ TELEPHONE

Musically I don't think Lady Gaga's tunes are that catchy or amazing but I do like this vid featuring Beyoncé ~ Beyoncé who ticks every gorgeous-by-numbers box, yet sexy-on-video she ain't. I think what I've seen of her acting's actually much better than her shrill singing... but anyway.
And doncha think Gaga looks like Aimy Winehouse wid da shark-eye curves?

Sweet Chili Chicken Pizza

I HAVE TWO LOVELY Morrisons own sweet chili chicken pizzas defrosting in my bag as I speak...

AS y'all probably know I do adore Chinese food... with the EXCEPTION of yukky sweet and sour (I mean, how can anyone like THAT?) ~ also pancake rolls I'm not into at all. I.e. the two most popularly ordered things on the British-Chinese menu. Nasty business, all of it.

Anyway so I tried these pizzas from Iceland. Really nice. Now I got Morrisons own. 2 for £2.50. Good value for Britain. Yeah I bet you can get the same for $2.50 in the great US or A but Britain is crap.

I don't know what I was going to say... except, well I'm trying to get a handle on this detoxy-clean thing.

I have heroin in a drawer at home. So I'm trying to avoid going there at the mo. It's 10:28pm, so I cannot avoid much longer. The pizza will go in. Food+heroin= a really good combination so I will reinforce the addiction all over. Somehow heroin x10-ifies the savour of all good eats. I don't know why. When my addiction was at its peak I remember banging up in front of the fridge, then tearing open cold roast chicken legs like a druggie Conan the Barbarian. Oh what a glamorous life I led!

What really puzzles me the most re the depression I complain about so constantly is how I manage to be in the addictional sitation I'm in and sporadically NOT feel like death. That is the real quizzation of the moment.

Then the despair comes flooding back and I'm back at home, wallowing like a swine in the sewer... My life must be mopped up first, like spilled up petroleum... THEN this misery will have no fuel left to feed on... that make sense?

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Thank you Molson. I don't know whether I want an American Akita now or a Japanese Shiba or a Norwegian Elkhound. They all look furry and wolfy and cute.

But shibas are really tiny and roborovskilike and yappy!!



Oh no, even more doggie selection. I see y'all realize the type of hound I like now. I.e. a wild wolf that's furry and tamed. I DID read all the comments yesterday and the day before, thank you everyone. I'm no good at replying when constantly about to be timed out, which is happening all the time in these nasty internet shops that won't even sell a 2-hour account, let alone 10 hrs for £5, which is the going rate. Really for £5 you should get 15... Anyway...

The Norwegian Elkhound, thank you Syd. As a puppy:



Fully grown. If I'm going to be fussy, these encompass the colours I like most, namely pure white or brindly-grey:

Dogs

WHAT was all this crap I banged in yesterday about "doggie fun"... what was I on? Nothing? What was wrong with me. Everything, probably. Well I'm not deleting it even though it was stupid.

I don't know whether I wanna get a dog or not. I do. But I don't as well.

I suppose I wanna learn how to take care of myself first (wah-waaah!!)

I am scared of getting hammies as the gap under my door is so huge they could easily just ping under it and be out in the hallway in 2 seconds flat. Then the people downstairs would jump out of their skin the minute they saw a round roborovski furball scurrying across their carpets in the dead of night.

When Itchy escaped, on the frequent occasions that she did, she usually laid low for at least 48 hours ~ in that time I did not see or hear hide nor hair of her, so as far as I knew she could be dead or out on the street or anywhere. Then, when it was really quiet I would suddenly see this tiny tubby cartoon mouse like thing that looked more like Tweety-pie scuttling across the floor. Any movement from me and she was GONE.

We had wild mice in the house at the same time in one address, and I can vouch that a domesticated escaped roborovski is considerably FASTER than a wild housemouse. The swines!

Anyway when it comes to dogs, these are the types I like.

1. Really fuzzy furry ones, like Spanish water dogs:



2. Old English sheepdogs:



3. Fuzzy terriers. But these aren't a breed, so you cannot reliably seek out and find one, not without endless poring over pictures of internet puppies, wondering what they might grow up into:



4. Wire fox terriers. It's the fluff-round-the-nose thing...



Japanese dogs. There are six original dog breeds from Japan. Their genetics have been traced back as far as 3000BC. All of these breeds have the same wolf-like appearance and distinctive curly tail. The two most popular in the West are the tiny Shiba inu 柴犬 (inu just means doggie).





And the Akita inu I keep going on about.
The appeal of these is that if I'm going to have a dog I want one that's cute and tough in equal measure. This is important today as the parks are full of yobbos with Staffordshire bull terriers (yesterday's fashion) and Rottweilers (today's fashion).
I would go for a female dog anyway. Hopefully then the snarlers in the park would treat her like a lady instead of savaging her. Also if I can find another Akita at the right time of year... free puppies, wahey!!

Note the similarity of features with the shiba, but huge disparity in size:





These are Shikoku dogs:



A Kai inu:

Easter Vulgarity

I HOPE YOU'RE ALL having a great Eggster/Passover/long weekend... whatever it means to you. Here are some cute bunnies for the pagan amongst ya:



And a lopsy-eared chinchilla, for those, like me, who prefer a martian bunny to the earth variety...



A technicolour Easter Chinchilla...



I had a miserable easter with no eggs and no drugs. I was trying to give up but ended up in such pits of misery I only wanted to die and do the world a favour and get it over with as quick as possible. How I hate being alive without drugs. Can't live with them; can't live without 'em. What the hell am I going to do?

I don't WANT to cut my throat, or jump in front of a train, but I haven't the guts to detox. So I'm stuck in this agony of misery ~ toothache of the soul.. and have no idea what steps to take to clamber out of this dreadful morass....

Nobody can help me. Only I can help myself. Yet I can't. I'm too lazy.

So I'm ****ed, aren't I??

Akita 秋田犬 alerts! Akita 秋田 means Autumn 秋 Field 田 or Fallfield 秋田, if you want to be American and succinct about it. I saw a huge dark male one trotting down the street the other day. I wanted to say kon-ban-wa! (good evening) to it, but was too self-conscious. Also it looked 50% really cute and 50% like it wanted to bite me (which is why that breed appeals to me in the first place, a mixture of ultra-furry and scary, haha!...



Then I was watching Ray Mears in South East Asia yesterday and saw a white Akita dog 秋田犬 on a floating Vietnamese boat village in Vietnam. I'm surprised a dog designed to brave the Greenlandic winters of northern Japan could survive in a tropical climate, and it did look a bit scraggly, but I suppose the undercoat moults out in tropical climes... Anyway, Northern Vietnam has quite severe winters, so I spose the poor swine would need his coat for that...



I'm still undecided about what to do about pets. The problem is, roborovski hammies are so very tiny and pingy and are a bugger to get back once they escape (which they do with exceeding ease) and I have a great gap under my door that would NOT be good vis-a-vis getting the tiny swines back...

I was thinking of doing what Mr Downstairs Man did with his Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy and getting a doggie anyway and waiting facing whatever trouble arises as and when. I really want my Akita 犬 swine and do not see why the local council piggery should stand in the way of doggie happiness. The swines!

Happy Eggster!

HAPPY CHOCOLATE EGG MUNCHING to all you followers of the pagan ways, haha!

Monsters of the Cold Water: Alligator Gar

SCALY FRIDAY (ON SATURDAY)...

Resembling a resident of a real-life Jurassic Park...



Gator gars, as the Florida locals like to call them, were a long way down the line when God handed out natural beauty...

... contrary to popular belief, these fish are not man-eaters and can only swallow relatively small chunks of flesh, which they down whole ~ usually in the form of smaller fish...



The aligator gar is North America's largest freshwater fish, growing as long as ten feet and weighing in at up to 127kg...




Named after the alligator, the gar is a true fish that survives partially by "air gulping"... they are known to survive up to two hours out of the water...




And baby gator gars are "tiny and cute"... and could easily pass relatively unnoticed in a community tropical aquarium (until they started eating the other fish!)...



HAVE A CHEERY WEEKEND, Y'ALL!