http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-10-30-plastics-cover_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
Plastic is a metaphor for our times; it also a toxin that is building up in the biosphere every second resulting in this stuff getting in our bodies and making us sick. The 1937 US Marijuana Tax Act is market interference. Let hemp compete freely. Vote hemp http://www.votehemp.com/federal.html.
Plastic pollution is a universal crisis. It is choking us. To expect people to "properly dispose" their cigarette butts, their bento packs, and so on, is naive. The time to make Earth-friendly, cheap biodegradable plastic is now.
Merry Meet to Wiccans. Halloween is really Samhain, when the border between the Spiritual world and the physical world thins. This is the end of the the rule of the Goddess of Life and the beginning of another year, ruled over by the God of Death. More Wiccan material here: http://www.flamesfirepit.org/lowering_the_veil.htm. And here's a jack olantern: http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1695455658&size=l.
I'm reading Sansom's A History of Japan Volume One now. Here's a quote from this classic book about Kyoto in the late 12-th century:
...the quality of the Fujiwara Regents and ministers naturally began to diminish as their authority waned, until in 1180 we find it recorded by a diarist that the then Regent was utterly ignorant of the literature and history of Japan and China. That was certainly a grave complaint to bring against a statesman at the Heian Court, where learning had always been prized and encouraged.
A new order was soon to come to Kyoto. In just five years from the time the above diarist entered those words the two main clans who faithfully supported the Fujiwara Regents, the Taira and Minamoto, would fight to the death against each other at Dan no Ura. When Minamoto Yoritomo set up the Kamakura Shogunate in 1192 he set the precedent of military rule that wouldn't end until the Tokugawa Shogunate formally gave power to the Imperial Court at Kyoto's Nijo Castle in 1867.
Yuruneya is a Japanese-style pasta restaurant about a six minute walk from JR Yamashina Station. It is just south of Sanjo Street, beside Drug Yutaka. It is in a Kyomachiya with a lovely little garden inside, gazing at which you eat your pasta. In my case tonight, I had fish roe, kimchi, natto spaghetti. Your set comes with a cute salad, soup, and drink. For a little extra, you get a dessert of ice cream, chocolate cake and a soy-made pudding. The service is fast and unobtrusive. The restaurant attracts many young women, especially at lunchtime. There aren't many cities in the industrial world where you can have a decent dinner for only 円1,500.
Tsumugi is a Japanese restaurant near Kintetsu Fushimi Station, opposite Izumiya shopping center. I tried their lunch special going for only 円750 yesterday. Genmai, miso soup, pickles, seaweed, beef 'n' mushrooms. This is one of Kyoto's best lunch deals. Lunch is delicious, healthy, and cheap. Dinner is a little more expensive. Ask them about vegetarian meals. No English spoken. Closed Monday.
