What the hell is up with the TKY weather?
Cold, raining, more cold... I'm so sick of this shit.
I want the nice, sticky Tokyo summer evenings now!
Enough of this shit already. -magu out!

Well let SAAB die, already.
GM, who apparantely do not know what hey are doing
have been trying to force the Swedish government to
save SAAB from dying a certain death. Thankfully,
the government people said stop.

It really pisses me off that companys that can't make it on their own
beg for money when they have reached the edge.

If SAAB was a company that offered products people were interested in
and marketed their cars in a succesful manner, they would not be
where they are now. Let the protectionism out the window please.

Who will support restaurants that cook food that no one likes?

Let SAAB die...

Was just looking around on the Internet when I found some weird page called Tokyo Toilet Map. Yes, it is all out there...
The page looks like a kind of amateur attempt at making a homepage but the funny thing was that it said in bold, red letters:
"Updated Jul. 14. 1997"! WOW. Only 11 and a half years ago! Really made me remember what a fun time document the Internet can be...

Watching both BBC and CNN this morning made me, once again, realize the differences between the US and
many other countries. Why?
Well, BBC did a survey, in the US, and asked people who is the more important historical figure - Charles Darwin or Abraham Lincoln.
The response was 19% for Darwin and 60% for Lincoln. Interesting, huh?

Also worth noticing is that the CNN show "The Situation Room" did of course make a big thing about Obama speaking about Lincoln
but they didn't even mention Darwin.

What do you think? Who made the biggest impact?

I was just reading Rough Guides Japan, and of course, the traditional western values had to be shared.
"...raw meat and river fish are best avoided." Yeah right!
Well, fortunately, this is not the superior knowing, western world. Here, they LIKE raw food!
And it's not only raw fish...

A few days before christmas, we went to a restaurant (supposedly famous). I thought it was a normal izakaya (japanese pub/restaurant)
but was that was not the case...
On the pictures below you can see some of the things we had:
The first pic, with the yellow, slimy things shows chicken liver.
The second pic shows three things: chicken hearts to the left, chicken breast in the upper part
and finally, gizzards (which is called "sunagimo", すなぎも, 砂肝, in Japanese.). Everything raw, of course!

I wouldn't exactly eat raw liver and sunagimo everyday but the hearts were not that bad!
The chicken breast is actually quite good stuff - like a good piece of sashimi.

My advice if you hesitate about eating something here: Just try it. Sure, a few people die every year from
fugu (globefish) that is prepared in the wrong manner but you gotta try what locals eat to really get to know the country.

Next thing on my wish list are moving octopus arms and sashimi cut from live fish where the fish is served on sticks in front of you. Moving around!

A Media Luz, a good tango. Rock on, old man!

Stockholm Tunnelbana (subway) vs. Tokyo Metro.

Hey there,

Here's yet another, useful, japanese word:
お茶, おちゃ or ocha. It means tea in Japanese.
Ocha is the typical, green tea we think of when we think japanese tea. The base of the word is 茶, cha and this esentially means tea. The first syllable, お, O, is sort of a way of putting some form of "respect" into a word. You can see this in many japanese words.
Once you know ocha, you will also understand other "chas" sucha as Oolongcha, Genmaicha or Mugicha. They are all different sorts of teas. None quite as good as a good cup of ocha, though...

Kanji: お茶
Hiragana: おちゃ
Romaji: Ocha

Class dismissed

A great, handpainted poster for some gym in Saigon, Vietnam

Does the California Governor know he is here?

So damn funny!