a bit of history

Took this today at 4pm.

The other day, something rather unusual happened to my bike. Only parked it for about an hour outside Freshness Burger around 6pm, and what do you know, I have a whiskey bottle (mostly empty) in my basket. I guess they must have been celebrating Friday night perhaps? A student? A salaryman? The mind ponders.

I caught up with Z yesterday and had a relaxing day just mucking about. Good to have mental days off work, sure helps with life in general that is for sure.

Not long till Xmas. Haven't even started my Xmas shopping yet, but I know what I am getting people.. so that is a good start. Have even bought the New Year Greeting cards, so now just have to sit down and write them out in my best Japanese writing! This will be first time to send them out, so am looking forward to the reactions from my friends. I am sure they will be surprised to receive a traditional card from me.

Have been munching on a great souviner senbei from Kumomoto, my dear friend M gave me. Just the right amount of sweetness and a slight kick of paprika in it. Sounds like a weird combination, but I tell you what, it is good! I learnt from Z, that on the box, there is an ancient map and it tells us of the different areas that the prefectures of Japan were shifted to in Kumomoto. Tokugawa Ieyasu, made the most important (or influential) people in each prefecture move to Kumomoto, in order to sustain any rivary and to make communication difficult between their home towns. So when you look at the old map of Kumomoto, one can see that there is a section of Sado Island, Hiroshima, Nara, etc situated in different areas and they are calculated on the amount of rice produced (since that was the most important unit at the time of the era).

More info can be found on him by this link. http://www.samurai-archives.com/famousgenerals.html

Having said that, Hokkaido (land of the Ainu) wasn't even acknowldeged since it didn't produce any rice, and it wasn't until Meiji era that they became interested in Hokkaido, and developed a strain of rice that could grow up there and handle the coarse climate.

Another bit of history that Z also told me about (thanks Z for telling me about all this), was that before the world war, the land was governed by rich families and lords, and it was only after the world war that it was split up evenly among everyone. So the ones with the large farms couldn't do much at all, since it was the law. Guess that is what Democracy is about. This could have happened to England, however, it hasn't and the lords are still lords governing the land that they held from common people.

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

Thich Nhat Hanh