David Chart's Blog

Author: David Chart

  • Blog Move

    I’ve moved my blog from a subdirectory to be the main page of my website. I’ve done this because I only really update the blog these days. There should be links to all parts of my website in the right-hand sidebar, under the adverts, and any old links to my blog should be automatically redirected…

  • Merry Christmas!

    It’s 8am, and Mayuki is still asleep. There’s no snow on the ground, but looking out of the window I have a beautiful view of the snow on Mt Fuji. In Japan, where almost no-one is a Christian, everyone wishes you a Merry Christmas (but it’s a normal working day). So, Merry Christmas!

  • New Job

    At the beginning of this month, I started a new job. Actually, I started working on it some time before that, but I started getting paid, and going into the office, at the beginning of this month. Yes, I have an office and a salary. Yet another piece of irrefutable evidence that I have entered…

  • Proposals on Surveys and Pensions

    Oh dear, it really has been too long since I posted to this blog. I’ve just started a new job, at the Japan Institute of Logic, so I’ve been extremely busy. I may have to start tweeting, since they’re supposed to be really short. Anyway, today we had another meeting of the Kawasaki Representative Assembly…

  • Flash Player 11 EULA MIA

    So, the Flash plugin for Safari is telling me that there is a new version available, Flash 11. When I download the software and launch the installer, the first screen, naturally, tells me to click to say that I’ve read the EULA, and provides a link to the EULA. At the moment, that link is…

  • Visit Tohoku! Hiraizumi

    Last weekend, we went on another trip to Tohoku, this time to Hiraizumi, in Iwate Prefecture. Hiraizumi was the base of a powerful regional family in the twelfth century, and is particularly famous for its Buddhist temples and gardens. Indeed, in June those sites were registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a bit of…

  • Hayashi Razan’s “Honchō Jinja Kō” — Shinto Texts Course 7

    The summer holiday is over, and yesterday the Shinto Texts course at Kokugakuin University started again, with a lecture on Hayashi Razan’s Honchō Jinja Kō. I am confident that very few of my readers will have heard of either the author or the text, but both were of great significance in the history of Shinto,…

  • Shirahata Hachiman Daijin Festival

    The annual Grand Festival of Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, our local shrine, was held last weekend. The festival itself is on the Sunday, and on the previous day, the Saturday, there is a children’s mikoshi procession. A mikoshi is a portable shrine, based on the palanquins in which the nobility were carried in Heian times (about…

  • Thinking About the Report

    This session of the Kawasaki Foreigners’ Assembly is coming to an end. We still have about six months to go, but that’s only four normal meetings, so we have to get started on deciding our final report and suggestions to the city government. In Sunday’s session, the Life and Society Subcommittee did manage to get…

  • Visit Tohoku! Aizu

    I’ve been to Tohoku again, this time on a family trip in the middle of July. We spent two nights and three days in the Aizu region of Fukushima Prefecture. Yes, that is the Fukushima Prefecture that has the broken nuclear power station. However, it’s one of the largest prefectures in Japan, and the Aizu…