Like the sign by the front door says, this interesting-looking building in the Gion District of Kyoto is all about rocks (石). The first floor sells crystals and polished stones at prices ranging from reasonable to insane. We never got upstairs, but apparently there’s another floor for custom-carved stones, an excellent tea shop, and an ishiyaki (stone grill) restaurant.

The single most expensive item I purchased during the trip came from here, and I’m not forgetting about the digital camera. Some time when I can set up my lights, I’ll try to get a decent picture of it.

There are several enjoyable performances on the Hello Pro Party 2005 DVD. This is probably the best:

When confronted with the concept of Winona Ryder as Spock’s mother, it shorted across the generation gap.

The heavily-wooded path leading up to the Shinto shrine Kasuga Taisha is lined with stone lanterns, each engraved with the name of the donor. Some of them have been there for centuries, but new ones keep arriving. I’d love to be there when they’re all lit.

Apparently the only thing that’s better than being poled down the Hozu River in late autumn is being there when the cherry blossoms are blooming.

One way to keep a public park clean, safe, and beautiful in the middle of a major city with a homeless problem is to surround it with a moat and post armed guards at the entrances. The Imperial Palace East Garden is open to the public, but it’s not a commons, and therefore not subject to the tragedy thereof.

I bought two albums this week. The first was the soundtrack to Valve’s Orange Box. The second was Melon Kinenbi’s greatest hits, FRUITY KILLER TUNE. Just now, iTunes switched from one to the other, and it took me a good minute to notice.

Okay, at the time I was busy writing a carefully-phrased comment about panty-flashing monster schoolgirls and plot coupons, but still.

Apparently Dr. Master Productions has been around for a while, publishing translated manga, but I’ve never heard of them before. Quite by accident, Amazon just recommended their English version of the Catholic schoolgirl fan-service comedy Puri Puri, which I commented on a while back.

They’ve been around for quite a while, and they’ve got some well-known titles, but I didn’t even know that anyone had licensed Puri Puri, much less that they were up to volume 4 already. I have no idea how good their translations are, but at least in this case the story mostly depends on how hot the girls are, so I can recommend it anyway. :-)