Bottled Up

And they tried to tell me it couldn't be done....

Sticks and Stones

So I went to a nearby zoo the other day. It was like any other zoo.



Penguins are cute wherever you go.



If you watch certain primates long enough they will do things that might embarrass you. Well maybe not you, per se, but normal people.



Ostriches are weird and a little scary.



Llamas are, well, llamas.



And so on. But what made this trip special was not so much the zoo, or the animals in it, but an animal I encountered shortly after leaving the zoo. It was a parrot, on a perch outside a coffee shop, with no physical restraints to keep him from taking off.



I had tried to get similar birds in the zoo to say 'strawberry', like in the movie "Up In Smoke" with Cheech & Chong (I think), but to no avail. I decided to give it one more go, and wonder of wonders, the bird spoke! In Japanese. Here is what he said in reply to my 'strawberry. strawberry' proddings: 「ばかやろう！ばかやろう！」("Baka yarou! Baka yarou!") To the uninitiated that does not mean strawberry in Japanese. It means 'You're an idiot! You're an idiot!'

Wanna Rumble?

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Originally uploaded by Hack Rambler

A few months ago I finally experienced a part of Japanese culture that I had been missing out on: SUMO. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. But I prefer to be a spectator when it comes to this particular sport.

Street Poetry

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Originally uploaded by Hack Rambler

Here is a picture that I took weeks ago and have only now managed to put up. There may be many more to come. Or not. I don't want to make promises. I wasn't going to type anything here, but there was all this empty grey space, and I don't usually like empty grey space. So I am filling it with empty white text.