Went to get my driver's licence renewed today and observed the following.
Do the people who build big characterless concrete apartment blocks think they are making up for their sense of design (or lack thereof) by giving names such as 'Garden Heights' or 'Maison Fonteyn'? Does it make living there any more pleasant?
The old man in the car next to me at a traffic light (who must have been in his 70s) was either suffering from Tourette's syndrome or was rocking along to some music on the radio. I saw him again later and I think he was a rocker. Rock on.
Does the fact that I have to sit through a 2 hour lecture on safe driving (to get my licence renewed for a mere 3 more years) make me any safer a driver for those three years? I don't think so, but I didn't resent it and it seems most of fellow drivers didn't either.
A wandering thought during the lecture - if Americans were as electrified with horror everytime one of their soldiers died in Iraq, the same way the Japanese go into paroxysms of fear when one of their nationals get kidnapped abroad, the international war in the Iraq would be over in days. I don't ask for electricity, but I do ask for more sympathy for the families of those soldiers and the dead Iraqis.
The drive back. South Kyoto is ugly. Pretty much like the rest of urban Japan then!
Posted by Joe at April 21, 2004 04:22 PMWow! Too much to comment on there all at once, but agreed about Kyoto. One of the first things that struck me on my only visit there 13 years ago was that, as a city, it's ugly.
For a place with that much historical significance and so many beautiful things to see, I guess I was expecting something more.
I was quite pleasantly surprised that I could see a lot of what I wanted just by walking around.
Posted by: DJ at April 21, 2004 05:24 PMI wonder if Americans saw more Al-Jazeera would they would be more sympathetic to the realities of war?
Posted by: Lisa at April 21, 2004 05:46 PM