Notices by Wataru Tenkawa 天河航 (watarutenkawa@social.vivaldi.net)

Found, ironically, on the internet

A major regret (and failing) is that I got sucked into the realm of political commentators, on Xitter, Threads, BlueSky, etc., who pretended to know the trends among American voters, when in fact they were conjuring up their own reality and had little idea how people outside their world think. I spent many hours and weeks and months in that fantasy world, not realizing the depth of racism, misogyny, hate, and also ignorance and lack of seriousness that characterize much of American society.

This report claims 40% of Japanese believe in a "religion" but only 3% believe in God or other higher power, the lowest by far among the countries surveyed. #religion #Japan
https://www.christiantoday.co.jp/articles/32605/20230804/ipsos-global-religion-2023.htm <-- Not to be confused with Christianity Today

@SRDas Difficult to translate, no doubt. Which is why I still have an active career despite the rise of AI translation.

@SRDas This seems quite reasonable to me, if by "pray" is meant "pray to a higher power." Many people have shrines to their ancestors in their homes, but these are not for praying to a god. Many people go to small neighborhood shrines, where they ask the "gods" in a Shinto sense for help with their business or personal needs. There are not many Christians in Japan, who would be the only ones to pray at home.

USGS earthquake map of southern Japan. Such a variety of place name spellings. Is it Kagosima or Kagoshima? Koti or Kochi? Fukuoka or Hukuoka? Tokusima or Tokushima? Something to please or displease everyone.

Global rice glut even as Japan is running short? We may be getting some Thai or even Indian rice before long. Great for curry.
"Thai rice exports are likely to be less than 8 million tonnes next year due to myriad risk factors hampering their competitiveness, which include a lack of research and development (R&D) for rice varieties, rising global supply, and the possibility of India lifting its rice export restrictions at year-end." https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/general/2839232/global-rice-glut-set-to-hit-thai-exports

@pippa @Dana @brian I fainted in church a lot as a kid. Probably god warning me to get the hell out of there. Have also fainted in every kind of doctor's office, including at the eye doctor while trying to read a magazine with my pupils dilated.

@Dana An assortment of take-home Italian dishes from Keio, Takashimaya, and Isetan for me, wife, and youngest son

Back in Shinjuku for more culinary treats

Love charts like this one, showing the number of tropical storms in the region each month of each year. None so far this year, but that has no bearing on how many will occur in the peak season.
2024年に入ってから台風の発生なし 1月から4月末までなければ4年ぶり https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/26318453/

@Dana
Followed!

@Dana
Is there someplace where we can view them?

Tonight's main dish: Carpaccio with several kinds of raw fish, avocado, and blood orange from Ehime

A simple sushi dinner tonight followed by melt-in-the-mouth nama warabimochi from Kyoto

"The FDA believes this wasn't just a matter of poor hygiene at the factory. The lead was deliberately added to the cinnamon. They say it was "economically motivated," a way of making the cinnamon cheaper.
This is remarkable. A pouch of applesauce contains something like one gram of cinnamon, which costs less than a quarter of a cent on the global market. But it's cheaper to use less cinnamon and make up the weight with lead?
What's even worse is that the FDA suspects this is a routine practice—but only for cinnamon shipped to poor countries. It was only caught this time because the cinnamon supplier screwed up and accidentally delivered a tainted batch for applesauce that was destined for the US, where we have the ability to detect lead contamination. Everyone else is out of luck."
FDA: Applesauce was deliberately tainted with lead https://jabberwocking.com/fda-applesauce-was-deliberately-tainted-with-lead/

Along Tamagawa Josui, an aqueduct built by the Tokugawa shogunate to supply water from the Tama River to Edo. It is around 43 km long; this portion is in #Mitaka (Inokashira), near Myojo Gakuen Elementary School. No filters.

I just read around 50 replies to a popular post going around and was dismayed to discover that the really dumb people have found Mastodon, too. I thought this place was supposed to be too difficult for dumb folks to figure out, but there they are.

@HauntedOwlbear With most feed readers, whether you get full articles or not is dependent on the site; but there are also RSS reader services that deliver full content for nearly all sites, including paywalled ones. One is NewsBlur, which is cheap and pulls full content by default (with an option also to display the original web page). Another is Inoreader, which will show you the full content of an article (in the desktop version) when you click the W key.

Sending out October with a bang