The lovely lass be scrimshawed by some swabbie from around Cathay, named Masamune Shirow.

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It's CYLON MICE!!

 

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1 Yay mouses!

Thanks for the note on my leekspin post. Worked fine in Firefox and Opera, broke horribly in IE and Safari. All fixed now.

I'm a little surprised; I've done similar tricks before that worked in Firefox and IE but broke in Opera. Oh well.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sun Sep 16 08:03:29 2007 (PiXy!)

2 Muppet, your categories are red-X'd again...

Posted by: Wonderduck at Mon Sep 17 23:27:55 2007 (Hrqgp)

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...somebody might Hsu.

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1 I am not a big fan of Sayoko. Also... I remember how one famous pianist said (I think it was Richter): "If I do not play one day, my fingers notice it. If I do not play two days, I notice it myself. If I do not play three days, listeners may notice." And they want me to believe she can perform like she did after spending years sleeping in a cardboard box? Please! My suspension of disbelief is being over-taxed here.

Posted by: Author at Sat Sep 15 03:35:06 2007 (9imyF)

2

"If I do not play one day, my fingers notice it. If I do not play two days, I notice it myself. If I do not play three days, listeners may notice."

Yes, yes, yes.....
I do what I can. I've been superbusy, am starting school, and now I'm drilling with the CGR.
I swear I'll post more.

Posted by: Ken Talton at Sat Sep 15 16:49:39 2007 (V5zw/)

3
Actually, I didn't recognize the character....I thought it was a random dancing girl with a bonsai tree on her head.

Posted by: Ken Talton at Sat Sep 15 16:49:54 2007 (V5zw/)

4 It's probably ok not to recognize her. But I used to be the world's expert in all things Mahoraba in my other identity, at least according to Google, so...

Posted by: Author at Sat Sep 15 23:13:34 2007 (9imyF)

5 Okay, that's really wierd to look at when you just happen to be listening to "The Safety Dance".

Posted by: David McKinnis at Sun Sep 16 18:55:19 2007 (AreTj)

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Look people...the killogram is unstable!


OK....all silliness aside, it is actually it is an interesting story....

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Instapundit recently linked to this story about the hiring shenanigans of UC Irvine. It seems they hired a super liberal Dean for their new law school.....and then fired him because of pressure from the VRWC.....or something....they can't get their story straight.

Daily Pundit correctly points out that this is unusual only because of the politics of the erstwhile Dean.

While the lack of reciprocity in indignation is certainly annoying, I don't think it should trump principal.

This guy was shoddily treated and if some blockheaded righty did make noises about it the school was wrong to knuckle under.


This is outside of my usual interests and I'm only aware of it because I'm not exactly a lone voice in the wilderness on this. There are other members of the hopelessly naive union of right of center bloggers here, here and here.

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Michelle Malkin has an extensive roundup on the recent desecration of the Vietnam Memorial.

The 'rightosphere' is understandably abuzz with outrage at this vile act but I think spinning people up over this is unwise.

First, as wretched and sick an act as this is, it is nothing new. "Leftie Vandals Disrespect Veterans" is a textbook dog bites man story.It's what they do... We have known this since they greeted the vets returning from SE Asia with Loogies rather than laurels

Second, this terrible act coincides with the defeatophilic crowds big protest in Washington DC on the 15th. There will be a fair number of counterprotestors including A Gathering of Eagles....a group that is officially coming to guard the memorial from such hippy douchebaggery as just occured.

...and there will be cameras.

Now few things could be more calculated to enrage good people than desecrating this memorial. They have defaced the names of husbands, sons, Fathers and comrades in arms. This almost cannot help but illicit a primal response.

This, I'd hazard a guess, is why they did it.

It is also why my fellow righties had best calm down.

Heretefore our counterprotestors have generally acted pretty damned well....certainly they have done little to validate the moonbats stereotypes and the moonbats IMHO have frequently come off looking far worse in comparison.

The moonbats NEED one or more of us to fufill their delusions of persecution on national television.

They NEED one of us to act out of rage and live down to their stereotypes....They get bonus points if one of them is punched by a veteran.

The moonbats as usual are acting like spoiled children in a room with a crayon and a wedding gown.

The fact that they know they are hurting people and take glee in it is no matter.

The cameras will be rolling, we had best be the adults.

(Well, my fellow righties had best suck it up and behave, I'm off the hook as I'll be guarding the coast this weekend.)

Update: Welcome Murdoc Online readers! Note that I'm not criticizing people for pointing this out (it's not like the traditional media is covering it) and Murdoc is surely not trying to start a riot. However, this is such a low blow we need to be extra careful lest we recieve a self-inflicted black eye.

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1 I think you're spot-on, Ken. My position is usually just to point this jackassery out to remind folks what we're up against, but there's no doubt that some would use it as an excuse to bust some heads. I visited a demonstration by the Westboro Baptist loons outside a funeral for a Michigan soldier last year. It was tough not to hurt people.

But that's what they want. We have to be smart and strong.

Posted by: Murdoc at Thu Sep 13 20:36:00 2007 (N+Lui)

2 Oh. Brother. Hey, Ken, this guy's a Lefty.

Posted by: Thom at Fri Sep 14 14:45:01 2007 (3jLID)

3

Oh. Brother. Hey, Ken, this guy's a Lefty.

Hmm....He seems more like a liberal to me. There are lots of liberals in the Military. We are a pretty diverse bunch. More to the point, I certainly don't get the impression that SGM Myers would deface a war memorial.

Thus he's not who I'm talking about.

There are lots of people who are for perfectly principled reasons opposed to this war....eg: Ron Paul, Jerry Pournelle....they tend not to be lefties since this is exactly the sort of nation building excersize that lefties, in theory, support if a prez has a "D" after his name.

Exceptions abound. There are of course some lefties opposed to the war who are genuinely consistent in this regard. I disagree with them but I respect them (and I spent the weekend with some very pleasant representatives of them).

That doesn't change the fact that the silence on this sort of asshattery is as inappropriate as it is telling. I don't think that the fellow you link to would approve of this sort of behavior....He likely didn't approve of the treatment the hard left probably gave him when he returned from SEAsia.

Nor does it invalidate my point that if one of the people on my side of the aisle acts on this they will get far more coverage that the act itself, thereby further undermining the war effort. Regards the merits of that concern, your mileage may vary, but I touched on it here.

Thanks for commenting. Your music is cool BTW.

Posted by: Ken Talton at Fri Sep 14 21:19:44 2007 (V5zw/)

4 Dang - I wish you were as reasonable in your post as you are in the comment. And SGM Myers is a poster at DKos, and his own site. The fact that you have a problem seeing him as a "Lefty" I think is part of the problem. (How many Repubs in Congress have served in the military?) And when you lump all of us who are openly against this war in with the people who would do something like this - and it wasn't even confirmed as vandalism at the time (it has been determined to be today) - you offend people like him too. That's my point. And I'd like to see a post from him about coming home. I believe you've been duped about the treatment of returning soldiers then - good God, most of them were drafted, and a whole lot of 'em, even if they did enlist, opposed the war. The story doesn't make sense on so many levels. There's been plenty of stories debunking it - but you'd have seen them, I guess. And I don't think you'll see it as even possible - but who knows: maybe someone on the Right did it in the first place. It'd work well, right before the GoE counter-protest, wouldn't it? I'm being very cynical, I know. But I'm talking about people who have called me a traitor for four years now for the simple act of expressing my objections to this war - why would I put anything past them? Thanks for the comment on the music. First RW blogger to go there. Appreciated. LT

Posted by: Thom at Mon Sep 17 18:14:44 2007 (3jLID)

5 I see no real difference in reasonableness _{(izzat a word?)} between the post and the comment.

I respectfully disagree with most of the  premises in your latest comment, but one thing in your comment did get up my nose...

Regards the treatment of returning vets, this Ministry of Truth crap is getting tiresome.

You have been duped.

There are plenty of stories debunking it...they are exceedingly limited in scope or are they are lies by people trying to whitewash their past or assuage a guilty conscience.

My father was spat at...he was in the Coast Guard and never served in 'Nam (though like the POTUS, he requested to go there). Service members were ordered not to wear their uniforms off base in some parts of the country (including DC) because they would be (and were) attacked with weapons rather more formidable than saliva.
I am just old enough to remember the hippies trying to pick a fight with my dad because of his uniform.

As to the frustration that I am lumping you all in together....
If you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.

There is little that can be done about that, but given your generally civil nature and obvious talent you should abandon the dark side (Blogger)and come to the south seas paradise of Mee.Nuvia.....

Posted by: Ken Talton at Mon Sep 17 20:19:43 2007 (V5zw/)

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...and yet the story itself had all the sophistication of Smurfs / Scooby-Doo crossover fan fiction.

Heh...

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Nothing to see here gentle readers, merely something for my Japanese class, so just ignore this post and keep scrolling.....

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While in Japan, Bob and I stayed at Casa Nova, a boarding house/ maison/ gaijin-house run by Green Forrest corporation. These are reasonably priced (580 58000yen/month ) and provide one with a small room with TV/AC and a dorm fridge. Showers, restrooms and kitchens are communal. There is  a  coin operated washer and dryer, but the dryer  is a very inefficient type (very common in  Japan).  I often just went to a coin laundry  about half a mile away (which was no more expensive). There is a common area with a computer, TV VCR DVD player and PS2.


Casa Nova was undergoing minor renovations while we were there which accounts for the clutter (that and the photo being taken on Saturday when all the bikes were in.)

There was a very nice staff. The landlord was extremely helpful with directions and logistics. The staff dealt with a wasp situation  with with great speed...and no mercy.

Casa Nova is the oldest of the Green Forest maisons and the only one not located on a JR train line....meaning our Rail Passes didn't work, but the hassle and expense (~3 bucks one way to Shinjuku) were minor.  We were in Chofu, about a 20 minute walk from Tobitakyu station on the Keio Line. A 5 minute walk from the station is Ajinomoto Stadium, a big, fairly important soccer stadium. Bob has stayed in several Green Forest boarding houses and speaks highly of all of them.

I found out the first morning that the whole neighborhood comes with eco-friendly alarm clocks at  no extra charge...grrrrr....


       The area is mainly residential, but still quite urban, for instance the Toho and Kadokawa (Daiei) studios are a short drive from the place, there are 2 universities close by, numerous light industrial operations and....oh yes....farms.

I wonder if Japan HAS any zoning....certainly most US city councils or homeowners associations would have a...er... cow about this agricultural plot in the middle of a neighborhood.....and the poor rooster would be SO dead.

There are LOTS of these micro farms/mega gardens all over, generally about the size of a suburban yard in the Southeastern USA. One benefit of this is fresh produce from little stands that pop up when the crops come in....being there in August I availed myself of some scallions.

The whole town (and most towns) outside of the big city centers like Ginza and Shinjuku has a mildly dilapidated look to it. This is not really unpleasant, it doesn't actually look ratty, just casual and lived in, like parts of Hampton Roads did before "beautification" projects started running people out. This is not to suggest that Japan is a Libertarian Paradise...it most certainly is not...and in a big city like Tokyo lots of ordinances regards trash, noise, odors and such are necessary, but at least there seems to be little in the way of the sort of Ladybird Johnson Jackassery that has so gutted the personalities of many US locales....and that lack is a wholesome and good thing.

Roads here are small, (often alley sized) and the large number of privacy fences restrict visibility at intersections.....hence a logical solution




The tiny roads require tiny cars....

Check out my cap on the mirror for scale. These efficient little "Cushman" type trucks are extremely common over there but are not street legal in the US due to well intentioned but regrettable nannyism....(they are not terribly crashworthy)....but I digress...

Then there is this....

I have no idea.....but I suspect the Blair Witch is involved.

When you have a lot of bikes you need a place to park them...

This is the underground bike garage at the train station....note the ramp to the right, for walking the bikes up and down. Overhead crosswalks tend to have the same feature. The small but long steps this necessitates can be negotiated with some difficulty by wheelchairs and strollers, especially if a special sort of brake is fitted.

Right outside the laundromat, utility workers do preventive maintenance.



Note the gaggle of wires in these two pictures...this is fairly rare in US cities except in areas with a very high water table...due to lessons learned tragically. Why an area so prone to earthquakes and typhoons has such exposed lines is a mystery, though it may be to facilitate maintenance.....

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1

Cool stuff, Muppet! 

The "blair witch" picture shows two breeds of animal little known here in the US.  The cucumber rat and eggplant beetle used to roam the plains of the American Southwest in huge herds, until vegetarianism took off and hunted them to extinction due to misidentification.  A tragedy, really.

I do have one question, though... 580 yen/month?  According to a currency converter website, the going rate right now is 113.57 yen to the dollar... so roughly $5.00/month.  I'm moving, right now.

 

Posted by: Wonderduck at Sat Sep 8 00:06:39 2007 (Hrqgp)

2 It's not a zoning issue, but a subsidy one. Japanese agriculture is hugely subsidized, so you get a lot of little farms in urban areas where they really ought to have put building instead. The farmer only gets his subsidy so long as he's actually farming, sure, but it makes for a weird distorting effect on the land market...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Sat Sep 8 15:07:08 2007 (tPMch)

3

I love the pictures.  The cucumber animals were just...unique.  I'm glad you were able to find decient places to eat and interesting sites to see.  Sounds like you had a blast. 

 

Posted by: Marina at Sun Sep 9 11:37:00 2007 (z3dTy)

4 Thanks Avatar. That makes perfect sense.
It's possible too that the lack of the sort of eminent domain abuses we have over here might be a minor factor as well.
 
No big fan of subsidies, but at least they're getting the money to FARM with as opposed to not grow stuff like the "farmers" in NYC.

Posted by: Ken at Sun Sep 9 19:06:00 2007 (V5zw/)

5 I don't see anything unusual about the garden plot in the city. They have them in New York City, as well as Los Angeles.

I grew up in a city and worked on a farm smack dab in the middle of it. Some years before I moved out of the last city I lived in, there was a dairy farm down the street less than a mile away. It is now a shopping mall, but it had cows on it when I first moved in.

Great posts. Keep 'em coming.

Posted by: Colleen Doran at Mon Sep 10 20:50:03 2007 (5ZI7f)

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I mean really.....

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I've been the unpleasant combination of  jetlagged, sick, busy, and with no free cash since I got back from Japan.

Dial-up +megapixel camera= SUCK so pics will have to wait....in the meantime, as I throw in the towel on another day and crawl into bed after playing catch-up with what's been happening, here are some links from the last week or so that caught my eye today.

Murdoc linked to this.....then, no doubt, sought treatment for whiplash.

The Martian rovers are getting downright geriatric in probe years, but they survived the dust storm and are still going. More here. Heh...I love the '70s future font.

Via Rand Simberg...Lobes of Steel:

"Scientists have suspected for decades that exercise, particularly regular aerobic exercise, can affect the brain. But they could only speculate as to how. Now an expanding body of research shows that exercise can improve the performance of the brain by boosting memory and cognitive processing speed. Exercise can, in fact, create a stronger, faster brain."...

 Jeff Goldstien has thoughts on the new book by Andrew Anthony.

Via Instapundit: At the American Thinker, Thomas Lifson has a must read piece on Arthur Millers secret son.....

Also via the blogfather...a worried leftie actually thinks to take 10 paragraphs articulately asking Whither the anti-totalitarian left?...which the Brickmuppet can answer in one sentence.

We call them neo-cons now.

 The always interesting EagleSpeak has a triple whammy of excellent posts, on the Goose Creek 2, the implications of NATO operations off East Africa, and a link to a thoughtful opinion on the Law of the Sea Treaty.

Colony Worlds posts on one of my favorite things, the prospect of settling what is likely to be the most habitable world in the solars system...no not Mars...Titan! There's a neat presentation on what Titainian music will sound like too! Darnell also relays a story about Space Devs idea for a lunar internet.

Via the Danger Room comes this neat post on flying subs....while I'd linked to a story about the preWW2 Russian idea before, this is MUCH more comprehensive....I never knew they'd gotten one to work!

Don runs the numbers on Potemayo and finds them wanting.

Anyone who loves comics needs to go to Allan Harvey's blog and scroll down at least once a week.  

 Well that's 4 of the unforgivable blog cliche's...

Lessee...if I link to that top10 list again that's 5....

oh......this'll do for 6.

 Thanks to Wonderduck 4 the screencap.

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...is not oil, nor diamonds nor gold.

It is your time.

My time is perpetually eaten by locusts, but, just in time for the new school year, Colleen Doran has finished a really good 4 part series of posts on time management.

These are reprints of an article she published some years ago and was linked to on my old blog. However, the post has been massively updated and expanded.

Part 1 is pretty straightforward with an update, part 2, adds about 2 pages of anecdotes regard reactions to part 1 before it actually begins....read those though...they are telling...#3, is the shortest but in many ways the most pertinant to many of us in college and  4, is geared most closely to artists.

Note that if there are any aspiring artists amongst my..er..legions of readers...her blog is a treasure trove of useful advice.

For any others who, like me, lead Walter Mitty lifestyles, it is interspersed with moments of high weirdness and drama...that for some might be....cautionary tales.

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  Via Danger Room comes this Ares post on an innovative sea-basing concept based on a trimaran hullform. The idea is to operate C-130 sized aircraft from a carrier on a regular basis! As pointed out in the article, the US Navy operated a C-130 off of USS Forestal in the 60s but wing clearance of the island was precarious and it pretty much required all other air ops to stop. 

The trimaran would allow a much wider flight deck...even given the above deck hangars contemplated for the big planes. Another aspect of the hullform is that despite the larger deck dimensions, the ship would displace a little more than half what a Nimits class carrier does.  A pdf of the powerpoint is here .

With a top speed of 35 knots,  faster than a lot of surface warships, the ship makes a startling contrast to the fairly slow moving  (but fricking GINORMOUS) modified oil rigs that have been mooted for the mobile offshore base concept over the past decade. (more on that here and here.)  

The trimaran hullform is new but has been tested by the Brits and Aussies on various mid-sized commercial vessels...though nothing this big.

The propulsion seems to be a decision between commercial off the shelf diesels ( Sulzers) and a British designed nuclear plant.

Now, I like atomic power but the narrow beam of the individual hulls would seem to provide insufficient saftey separation from the sea unless a very innovative safe reactor design is chosen. Anyone with thoughts on this please comment.

According to the pdf, they are looking at having it being buildable at several US shipyards and are designing a structurally similar vessel for the merchant marine, initially with intercostal trailer transport in mind. Both these seem very wise, both to expand our currently declining shipyard base (or at least hold it steady) and have carriers be buildable at shipyards other than Newport News.

 Building the ship to commercial specifications exites me less....there is a big difference in ruggedness and I have heard on navy related forums that HMS Ocean, which was built to commercial spescifications has had problems resulting from COTS design practices. I've not heard specifics though.

Certainly something needs to be done to bring down shipbuilding costs, however, steel...even HY 130, is a lot cheaper than electronics.

This option does however lend itself to economies in maintenance and yard time as well as (possibly) faster construction and repair (if most shipyard workers are familliar with the work).

Again, anyone with actual experience in this area please chime in.

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    I've been ill, jet lagged, and returning to both work and school.
Unfortunately, while I was out Stephen Den Beste completely jumped the shark.

Mechs....stupid?
Of course aside from the first 3 words in his post title, it is an article utterly devoid of merit...just some prattle about ground pressure and tensile strength and square cube law.

The sheer fallacy of the thesis is astounding given the ample evidence to the contrary....

 

That is not stupid.. THAT is kewel!(HT: Danny Choo)

I mean are YOU going to call this guy stupid? Stupid...no way...scary perhaps if you are an uninformed bystander, annoying if you are tasked with filling potholes, and grimly tragic if you are a sewer worker...but not stupid.

Using the photo evidence I would guess that Mr. Den Bestes' pessimistic ground pressure assessments were way off (which is surprising as I thought that was why Mazinger Z generally fought in the forests on the outskirts of town....but I digress).

   Giant Robots have cool theme songs....not insipid ones....

...and the best ones lend themselves to heavy metal as well ....but to deal with the main thrust of Den Bestes thesis..... that Giant Mechs are STUPID....well, just using the first generation of giant superhero robots (and the dubiously legal miracle of you tube) I can refute that handily.



That is not stupid...that's the 36th COOLEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN!!!

And that doesn't even deal with later generations of mechs..Likely the best known in the states are Macross (thanks to Robotech) and Go-Lion, (the more popular of the two franchises brought over for Voltron). 
Gundam,   in all its iterations both poignant and utterly wretched, generally had cool mechs (and even turn A Gundam was saved by a good story). Of course some of the best mech shows are hardly remembered now....more is the pity.

Then there were the next generation of Mechs such as Evangelion....

OK....bad example....

Er....
Anyway....let's look at this from the other side...

What sort of shows does Mr. Den Beste like!?

Opinionated Brickmuppet flaming below fold....

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While I can never be a shining example, I might be a warning to you all...

Case in point....the bullet train stop, Higashi-Hiroshima is not the stop for Higashi and Hiroshima....but for Higashi-Hiroshima....a completely different town.

Also, while it is on the right train line, the town of Fujino is over 2 hours from Mt Fuji.

In retrospect, the name should be a clue..
                                  .

                                                Fuji?...NO!!

A pleasant enough town but trains only visit it once every hour and  45 minutes...

It's so far off the beaten path its got illiterate writing spiders....
...and on the outskirts of the town...the Love Letter of the Gargantuas (?!)

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His Imperial Japanese Majesty's Ship Mikasa is the last pre-dreadnought battleship anywhere on earth and one of the most storied ships in any navy.

Like virtually all of the Capital ships of the early Japanese Navy she was built in England.  The ship was a slightly improved version of the Shikishima and Asahi classes which were themselves very close copies of the excellent Formidable class battleships then being built for the British Royal Navy.

These 4 closely related ships differed from their British counterparts in  squeezing in 2 additional 6 inch guns and being built with the smaller stature of the average late 19th century Japanese sailor in mind. In Mikasa there were a few detail improvements over the preceding battleships including her improved boiler arrangement allowing for only 2 funnels but the most important was provision for an admiral and staff and other facilities for the ship to be used as a flagship....

   Mikasa was chosen as the flagship of Admiral Togo at the outset of the Russo-Japanese War and was heavily engaged throughout that conflict.
At the Battle of the Yellow Sea, Mikasa took most of the damage and casualties on the Japanese side but it is likely that it was one of her shells that hit the bridge of Tcharvitch, killing Admiral Vitgeft, which ensured the Russian retreat.

   The Russian Pacific fleet and the Japanese fleet were fairly evenly matched and both lost 2 battleships during the early part of the war. The Japanese ground forces in Korea were quite successful, but it was realized that they depended utterly upon supply by sea. 
    The Russians determined to decide the issue by sending their Baltic Fleet (which had the delightfully melodramatic designation of The Great Black Fleet) all the way around the world to reinforce the Pacific squadron and sweep the Japanese from the seas...

The IJN did not sweep easily....

By the time the Russians were in the Indian Ocean they received the dismaying news that their entire Pacific fleet was on the bottom of Port Arthur harbor. Admiral Rozhestvensky decided to make straight for Vladivostock. Togo intercepted him in the Tsushima strait.

Togo had his 4 surviving Battleships, 8 Armored Cruisers  and some light forces that included some scout cruisers and 65 torpedo boats. Against him was the entire remaining Russian Navy including 11 Battleships and nine cruisers, but relatively few TTBs.

The Russians had far more firepower, but the voyage had taken its toll on morale and Rozhestvensky had not made optimum use of the training time the voyage provided. Additionally, fouling of their hulls (and the presence of several older ships) reduced the Russians speed and mobility.

When Admiral Togo found the Russian Fleet, his course and position was not ideal for interception and he instituted a maneuver that has become known as the "Togo Turn" . This resulted in the flagship Mikasa bearing the brunt of the entire Russian battle line at one point but also enabled the Japanese to cross the Russians "T". Despite taking most of the shell hits the Japanese received at this battle Mikasa stayed in action throughout, sinking the Russian Battleship Oslyabya with a magazine hit. 

Admiral Rozhestvensky was rendered unconscious early on and the Japanese gunnery proved vastly superior to the Russians. 4 Russian Battlewagons were sunk in the early stages of the battle. When night fell the Japanese torpedo boats fell on the Russians like wolves. The next day the Mikasa and the other IJN battleships finished off the Russian Navy.

The Russian defeat was total. Nearly all of their few ships not sunk were captured.**

The Battle of Tsushima  was the biggest naval battle the world had seen since Trafalgar. The fact that Japan had defeated a European power (when that was considered an utterly surprising thing) secured Japans place as a world power and sent  Europhillic eugenicists scrambling for  excuses.

  Mikasa was badly damaged by a magazine explosion in 1905 shortly after Teddy Roosevelt helped negotiate the Treaty of Portsmouthending the war. Re-floated and fitted with Japanese guns she saw very little action in WW1 but was involved in the confused action against the Bolsheviks after WW1. She broke ice to lead  the American, Japanese and British ships into Vladavostock harbor. She served until decommissioned in 1922 and was thereafter used as a museum ship.

    After WW2 the ship was stripped of weapons by order of the occupation forces and the Russians demanded that she be destroyed. This was not done although a group of Russians is said to have vandalized the ship at one point.   After the occupation  Admiral Nimitz organized an effort to restore the vessel and pointed out that the ship was not really an effective warship anymore even if armed. The weapons were returned and the ships restoration was begun and continues to this day. The vessel is still not fully restored, neither turret is open to the public and the machinery spaces are still sealed off (though there is restoration work going on down there).

 Mikasa is the oldest true battleship in existence and the only representative of a type retroactively referred to as Pre-Dreadnoughts.

   Below the fold....more pictures... more...

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waugh

delayed 5 hours in Tokyo

customs trouble

delayed 6 hours in Detroit

rerouted to Washington due to mishap at Norfolk

layover in DC for 4 hours

arrived 15 hours late

utterly beat...

Now the cybercafe computer is not allowing me to upload pics...

curse you cybercafe computer

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:16 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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3 weeks ago when when Bob and I arrived here, we had been on a plane for 12 hours, had traveled through the subways for 3 hours and were generally beat.

When we got to our boarding house, I for one, plopped my lugage down in my room and made a beeline for he head...only to be greeted by this connundrum...

Well....isn't that special....how do you...I mean...

                                          h e l p

Anyway....I found out rather late that our boarding house,Casa Nova does have a western style commode in the other mens room. However, this began my search for  less primitive toilets.

ALMOST IMEDIATELY...SUCCESS!

At Shakeys Pizza in Shibuya, there is this techno marvel...note that it is rather at the other extreme. All those buttons...the ones labeles with Kanji? They controll various extra functions....only one of which is "flush"...these include but are not limited to: a bidet, heater and making a "flush" sound ??? the location  ensures that large people such as myself can hit the butons with their thigh at an awkward moment.....

Now one might expect the Shinkansen, or bullet trains to be equiped with modern toilettes, perhaps even drifting into the realm of diminishing returns as the one above.....

....one would be wrong.

I did, however  find this behind the great Buddha of Kamakura....

...Buddah it seems, is wise...

 For those as confused by the first image as I was...Asahi. net has this barely helpful & NSFW diagram.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:49 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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