Kjell Ericson
@kjelldericson
Historian teaching and researching at intersections of environment, technology, and Japan @ Kyoto University.
And a small exhibit of the library's older information architecture, with cards still in the card catalog drawers.
Lots of space to read and study, but actual books readily at the fingertips.
A taste of the oceanic holdings at Olso's central library, Deichman Bjørvika.
A rare stroll past the appropriately-named Kyoto Face House. I had a chat with a person in the gift shop who also happens to live upstairs, presumably somewhere near (the house's) eye level.
Sad to hear about the passing of Higashino Keigo. I've read a few of his better-known novels, but I retain a soft spot for the relatively unheralded 1989 ski jumping murder mystery Chōjin Keikaku 鳥人計画 (The Birdman Project).
In the area for a meeting at a university near Yasaka Shrine, so I took a chance on jerk chicken ramen. A surprisingly delicate paitan-base soup, but the spices make their presences known. The lime 🍋🟩 was a nice accent too.
Looking forward to my first ever ASCJ conference in Tokyo this weekend. I'll be the discussant for an exciting panel entitled "Shaping the Empire: Knowledge Production and Translation of Labor, Nature, and Techniques in Imperial Japan," organized by Pei-Hsu Lin.
An episode from the history of conference presenting technologies, ca. 1990: " I advise US colleagues not to bring slides that are too thin when they come to Europe."
I appreciate how this Mitaka tatami shop has a tastefully mid-sized LCD screen out front, just showing looped videos of how they make the mats.
Utter lack of clouds yesterday in Kyoto. Ninnaji's gardens and I were both getting a bit parched.
Still a favorite shot, taken a while back during a hike through the Rokkō mountains.
Mentioned here too is the 1977 case of a Japanese fishing trawler off New Zealand that pulled up a carcass thought, by some at the time, to be an example of a prehistoric plesiosaur.
The stages of rice cultivation in Japan, "today" (ca. 1983, left column) vs. "in the past" (ca. 1952, middle column).
And here we have all five levels in lights. Everyone was of course taking tons of pictures of the pagoda, but perhaps the best part of the light up event is that you can also still go inside the main halls (講堂 and 金堂).
Came across a 1932 ad in the Sendai-based Kahoku Shinpō geared toward would-be rabbit breeders: "With 100 yen of capital, 500 yen of yearly profits are assured!" Rabbit raising was a popular agricultural sideline in 1930s Japan, buoyed by growing military demand for warm fur-lined gear.
From a 1960s-era hamachi yellowtail ranching handbook, an illustration of how many yellowtails of various sizes can be raised in a cubic meter of water
A refreshing jellied amanatsu from Fruits & Parlor Cricket on a warm spring day in Kyoto.
One of a series of poems about Kanagawa Prefecture's Misaki peninsula, published in 1930. Here we have Aburatsubo Bay, home to Japan's first marine biological laboratory. Gotta say, I love the kicker: "Oysters resembling the caps of poisonous mushrooms silently breathe water."
I'm calling peak bloomage, near the Horikawa Sakura Festival in Kyoto.
On the 15th anniversary of the 3.11 earthquake, thinking about my visit to the Tsunami Memorial Museum in Ishinomaki last November, with my colleague and co-researcher Matthew Booker. We were struck by how much energy is being put into telling the stories of the disaster and the region.
Nice visit to the last day of the Taishõ visual arts exhibition at the Asahi Ōyamazaki Villa Museum of Art. I'm no film production scout, but my vote goes here as a future Knives Out shooting location.
Amid unusual great white shark sitings that disrupted ama breath-divers' fisheries activities in southern Mie Prefecture for weeks in 1991, an illustration of a shark trying to convince nearby sea creatures that they have little to fear from a great white: "Humans are the scariest of all."
The Kumano Sea coast, outlined by and inscribed upon a skipjack tuna, 1984