Actually, this isn't even funny.

Sometimes I feel like with a certain amount of absurdity even the most shocking thing can be funny, but I think this one pushes the limit.

This is a Harley-Davidson branded motorcycle shop in Sapporo city centre. Sapporo, may I remind you, is in Japan.


And they spell it out in katakana underneath. Y'know just so it's clear. Wow. I would just love to know how they chose that name.

Transit Restrictions

Just thought it was interesting that Sapporo transit are trialling women-only subway cars during the morning rish hour until mid September:


This is pretty common in Tokyo I think, so it's not huge news. For me, I've only commuted at rush hour a few times so I don't really know what it's like at that time in the morning, but I do remember a hundred million charcoal grey suits, all moving as one.

Brrr.

Busy Works

I'm much to busy preparing for future content to worry about providing current content today. Or rather, I just spent so long wrestling with the concept of hosting, embedding and so-on that I really can't be bothered to post much more than this.

I fixed my old "Field Recordings" post where I upped a recording of the train journey into town. Hopefully now I can do a bunch more of these, stream them here and set them for download too using the joys of archive.org and ourmedia.org. Y'see, I should've just gone with the hippies to start with.

Go back and look at the post heeee-yah: Field Recordings 1

I guess in other news, last weekend Matt was cleaning out his old appartment. I went along to help transport a microwave, but all I got out of the deal was a shoe-rack and this lousy coffee table:


It doesn't even have any bloody legs, and those plastic things keep getting in the way all the time. Oh well, you get what you pay for I guess.

Spider-Man <3's The Punisher

Here's hoping Spider-Man 4 is a buddy comedy featuring the Punisher:



Again from Punisher War Journal #13 by Matt Fraction and Cory Walker. Who are both geniuses.

Alex's tiny mind is blown by linguistics!

This'll be two days on the bounce posting articles I found on the Guardian's website, but oh... holy hell I love this one so much.

Peter K Austin's Top 10 Endangered Languages

That's just heart-breaking that these languages are virtually dead, with almost no hope of revival. But just learning that they exist makes the whole world seem that much bigger and more wonderful. Seriously:

Yuchi is spoken in Oklahoma, USA, by just five people all aged over 75. Yuchi is an isolate language (that is, it cannot be shown to be related to any other language spoken on earth). Their own name for themselves is Tsoyaha, meaning "Children of the Sun". Yuchi nouns have 10 genders, indicated by word endings: six for Yuchi people (depending on kinship relations to the person speaking), one for non-Yuchis and animals, and three for inanimate objects (horizontal, vertical, and round)

Holy freaking crap! That's amazing! And if anything this is the biggest kick up the ass to learn Japanese I've had yet. If I don't hurry up and make some progress cracking the language of the country where I live, how will I ever get around to mastering a language where you have to click your tongue, or one of those ones where tones are connected to meaning?

It's interesting to see Ainu in there too. The Ainu people are indigenous to Japan, and especially Hokkaido where there are some small communities. Apparently the Ainu people have been recognised by the Japanese government at last, which is no small thing, so with any luck their tongue won't be endagered for long.

Iconic Obama

Over on the Guardian they have a great three minute video of their political cartoonist Steve Bell visiting Manifest Hope, an exhibition of pictures of Obama by contemporary artists. Ah the Guardian, doing so much for the internet and yet I still can't embed your videos? For shame:

Link!

Morgan Spurlock's in there too, and I was quite surprised at how Shepard Fairey, who's responsible for the ultra-iconic Obama image below, comes across as quite a cock. Still I was most excited to see what Steve Bell looks like since I've been loving his cartoons for years. Bearded!

Monday 25th August 2008

Just some notes from today:

An elderly man found an innovative way to strike up a conversation with me and Matt today, by falling over backwards in a spectacular fashion while trying to get on his bike. He was nice enough, though I understood maybe less than half of what he was saying.

We then cycled back to Hamburger Risa that I wrote about before. Turns out that it's even better than I first thought because you get free coffee refills. Free refills! It's not love, but I would bear that shop's babies.

And I bought a Mos Burger T-shirt from Uniqlo. It's a great T-shirt, but I am pretty much just being a walking advert for one of Japan's largest burger chains. Then again, since I eat there once a week I'm only endorsing sartorially what I'm already endorsing with my hard earned cash.