Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Meat Life
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Today I had the rare pleasure of being invited, with the Delightful Miss E and some Australian friends, to my landlord’s house for a lunch of osechi ryori, the special new year’s food that Japanese love to eat at this time. The photo shows the main foods, all of which were hand cooked by our…
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My Cat, Arashi chan, sleeping off a hard new year’s morning. I’ve decided that this year I’m going to try and take a photo a day every day for the year, and this is the first. I will be trying to put up the better or more interesting ones here, and uploading every one to…
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This is the first of a series of posts I hope to write over the next few weeks. For the last few months I’ve been working with a PhD student on a cost-effectiveness evaluation of behavioral interventions to reduce HIV transmission among sex workers, and in many ways this has drawn on a lot of…
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Christmas in Japan is a time for dating and young love. Although some families also hold a little present-giving ceremony on Christmas day, in general the focus in Japan is on dating, on Christmas eve. Christmas has no value to anyone who is not single and under 30; and for those who are, to be…
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… in Japanese, for my work. Yesterday a group of 40 first year high school students came to my department from Soma City, a town in the tsunami-affected region of Tohoku. I’m not sure why, perhaps as a quid pro quo for research we’re doing up there, but they were brought down for the afternoon…
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This is a cute example of the power of hindsight. Today’s Guardian has a discussion of the christmas tree that appeared in front of Downing St: you can read David Cameron’s twit about it here[1]. The Guardian helpfully points out that Cameron got a rare “tall” tree, once again proving inequality is a potent force…
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After visiting Unit club in Daikanyama to watch The Big Pink live, my partner and I went for dinner at the Sign Cafe, right next to Daikanyama station. The entire ceiling and most of the walls of this cafe are decorated in hex-map style, and on the ceiling near the door a ring of hexagons…
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Yesterday I discovered this excellent essay by George Orwell talking about the joys of English food. Many people will tell you that British food is terrible but actually that’s not true at all, and George Orwell mounts a spirited defense of the English culinary tradition in this article. What is true is the slightly different…
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Now the world’s population has reached 7 billion, there is some talk of the consequences for the planet, and as always happens at this time attention has turned to Japan’s ageing population. This is usually seen as a bad thing for Japan, with various predictions of population crash and economic catastrophe for the world’s second…
Compromise and Conceit 