Sacred Garden
Old Mission Santa Barbara’s Sacred Garden
We’ve spent most of the past week in Santa Barbara.
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Posts tagged Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 AF-S NIKKOR G ED N
Merry Christmas
2013 Christmas tree
Most years, and this goes all the way back to when I was a kid, finding the “perfect” tree has not been easy. Frequently it involved stops at multiple lots selling trees. Some years it involved long walks through the forest or Christmas tree farms in which every tree was examined from multiple angles, multiple times. (Wait, haven’t we looked at this tree before?)
I’m guessing the average time it took to pick a tree over the years comes to about 2 hours. Even with all of the scrutiny, you get the tree home and find out it has some bad spots or won’t stand straight.
Not this year. We aren’t in Ashland for Christmas to enjoy this tree so we grabbed the first tree we saw in the Shop N Kart parking lot. The tree was all wrapped up so we didn’t even know what it would look like. We brought it home, untied it, and wah-lah, it is the most symmetrical and perfect tree we have ever had.
Fukuoka Hawk
Fukuoka hawk statue
The inscription under this statue says something about a hawk which rode on a ship in 1827 for 90 days before landing in Fukuoka. I’m not sure what the 1795-1877 signifies. In any event, the local baseball team in Fukuoka are the Hawks so maybe this story had something to do with their name.
The building in the background on the left is the Hilton Fukuoka Sea Hawk Hotel.
Historical, full-size ema
Giant ema pavilion (絵馬堂) @ Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine (太宰府天満宮)
My retired history professor guide who took me to Dazaifu to check out Tenmangu pointed to the ceiling of this pavilion on the grounds and asked me if I knew what these items were. I did not. He then educated me on the history of the ema that are so common at shrines in Japan.
Currently, there are little wooden plaques (ema) that can be purchased for a few hundred yen to write your wishes on. Long ago, you could make a really large ema and pay a shrine to have your ema hung there. These giant ema at Tenmangu are hundreds of years old and still going strong. The owners, long since dead, have really gotten their money’s worth.
BAR MiDiAN (Heavy Metal Bar in Osaka, Japan)
BAR MiDiAN (Heavy Metal Bar in Osaka, Japan)
I have been to a grand total of zero Heavy Metal bars in the USA. I have heard of a grand total of zero Heavy Metal bars in the USA. I have been to six Heavy Metal bars in Japan. I have heard of even more. These are wonderful little places, carefully decorated by their owners. They are usually hard to find so be sure to bring good directions should you ever want to try one of these hangouts.
Bar Midian is located near the Osaka and Umeda Stations. The entire neighborhood is a trip at night. If heavy metal isn’t your thing, you can probably find some crazy place catering to your thing in this neck of the woods. If you aren’t into metal, but still like rock and roll, the owner is very accommodating. Like every music bar I’ve been to in Japan, the patrons can choose the music from the owner’s extensive collection.
Here is the address:
大阪市北区堂山町10ー16ー2F
And here is a map:
View Larger Map
When in Hiroshima, don’t miss Koba.
Fujimi Shoten (富士見商店) from 1970s Tokyo in Sadaharu Oh Museum
Shop with stuff for kids in Tokyo in the 1970s (from the Sadaharu Oh Museum in Fukuoka, Japan)
The Tokyo Giants are poised to win another Japan Series in 2013. Yawn. (OK, so the series is tied at 1-1. If Masahiro Tanaka (24-0 in regular season, 2-0 in the postseason, and 1-0 in the Japan Series) could pitch every day then the Golden Eagles could win, but he can’t so…)
Today’s photo is from my visit to the Oh Sadaharu Baseball Museum (王貞治ベースボールミュージアム) inside the Fukuoka Dome this past summer. This exhibit may have been my favorite part of the museum as it reminded me of some of the similar stands I frequented in the 1980s when I first lived in Japan. These kinds of shops haven’t completely disappeared, even in 21st Century Japan, but they are harder to find. They have everything a kid could possibly want to spend their limited funds on–baseball caps, candy, comics, baseball cards, action figures, etc. I spent the vast majority of my early childhood funds on baseball cards at somewhat similar, American versions of the same.