R.I.P. Garth Hudson. The Band has meant a lot to me over the years.
Author: defjaf
We have somehow managed to schedule our train from Virginia to New York for today, requiring us to travel into DC on inauguration day. Trying to retain a sense of charity toward my fellow Americans
In DC, on a Capitol tour with my expat family. Easy & appropriate to be cynical about symbols of democracy 5 days before the awful inauguration. But somber & moving, even—or especially—speeches by senate Democrats excoriating Republican tax cuts for the wealthy disguised as populism.
Done: Long-tail boat, ferry, taxi, dash through the airport, 2-hour flight, taxi, hotel, food court dinner, pool, taxi, 9 1/2-hour flight, 6-hour airport hotel sleep. Still to come: 14-hour flight, back in the USA.
On the bus from Siem Reap (Cambodia) to Bangkok.
New Year Dawn
We were some of the first travellers on the new Ho Chi Minh City metro, open less than a week.
Overnight train from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City.
… is sad to be leaving Japan.
R.I.P. poet and Japanese Peanuts-translator Shuntaro Tanikawa. Here’s a great 1952 poem, “Two Billion Light-Years of Loneliness” about outer space, the gravitational force, and the difficulty of being a human (or a Martian) in a big Universe. Also, sneezing.
Fuji-san from my office at the QUP Centre, KEK lab.
Kind of obsessed with our views of Fuji-san.
(Reposted from 29 November to deal with technical issues.)
More famous views of Mt Fuji — from our apartment building, 90 miles away, morning and evening.
(Reposted from 27 November to deal with technical issues.)
Recently discovered that, on a clear day, we can see Mt Fuji, 90 miles distant, from our apartment building.
And, because it’s cool and scary, here’s a version after processing with Apple’s new “Clean Up”: 
Try to spot the difference…
(Reposted from 25 November to deal with technical issues.)
Le beajoulais nouveau est arrivé, même au Japon!
(Reposted from 23 November to deal with technical issues.)
Momijigari (紅葉狩り) — hunting the autumn leaves. This version from the courtyard of our building in Tsukuba, Ibaraki.
Testing (mark 2).
Testing…
Kind of obsessed with our view of Fuji-san.
More famous views of Mt Fuji — from our apartment building, 90 miles distant, morning and evening.
Just discovered that, on a clear day, we can see Mt Fuji, 90 miles distant, from our apartment building.
And, because it’s cool and scary, here’s a version after processing with Apple’s new “Clean Up”:
Le beajoulais nouveau est arrivé, même au Japon!
I’ve heard more (good, mostly American) jazz as background music in shops and cafes over the last three months in Japan than the previous fifty years in the US and UK.
Hard work is good work.
Somewhere between stupefaction and fury.
Seen earlier on a slide:
We are in the Golden Age of Theoretical Particle Physics, free from any experimental hints that would restrict free thinking.
Hmmmm… I see some possible problems with this approach.
The bars weren’t open this morning
They must’ve been voting for a new president or something
…
Honest to goodness, the tears have been falling
All over this country’s face
It was better before, before they voted for What’s-His-Name
This was supposed to be the new world
—X, “The New World” (1983)
I voted… in San Francisco (my last US residence),… from Japan (where I am on sabbatical),… by fax.
No one is completely normal for the same reason you don’t have any Monte Carlo samples near the peak of a multivariate probability distribution.
Two views of Mount Fuji, famous or otherwise.
