Walking over sky, following a bird...

WOW! It's beautiful! I really want to visit it!

Thanks for your post.

Beautiful houses. I love the shrines. They give credence to some excellent ghost stories from that region.

Beautiful houses. I love the shrines. They give credence to some excellent ghost stories from that region.

I'd love to go there some day. It is amazing how present and past seem to meet there.

Money and time is what's needed. I'll definitely visit the place in my life...the question is when!

Given she brings a big supply of nyponsoppa and Julmust, Kerstin could walk to the coast of China, then swim to Okinawa, take some rest and finally swim to Japan.

I love the miniature park and the temple architecture .
Interesting story here too, but what's a bedroom ciry?

You mean that I would have to pay for my trip with Nypponsoppa and Julmust or that if I drank both I would have enough energy to do the travelling?

Are you completely sure? Have you even tried it?

Oh, har-dee-har, mister "I ahve seen one" .

Great reading Darko.

The small shrine garden is wonderful. I saw many of these in Vietnam. There were small herb gardens and fruit trees growing on top of concrete buildings and on balconies or along walkways in between the home and a block wall. I saw one that was maybe ten feet long but only two feet wide and part of that two feet was taken up by stepping stones for the gardener. You can make an herb garden in the tiniest of places.

Who ever would buy nypponsoppa and julmust out of Sweden? You drink it during the travel and if you keep the empty carton and bottles you can even build a raft for crossing the sea. Besides, I guess they have plenty of weird food and beverages in Japan.

Exactly...then it!

Darko, I might do that. I've many more photos I need to upload in my Vietnam Opera album. I thought I'd done a post but I guess haven't. Besides a work in progress on my painting, I've about 6 other ideas in mind. Remember your chair post? I'm going to do one on all my chair projects eventually plus one on old post cards. I have my dad's collection from 1945 to 1999, about four shoe boxes full.

You just added a film to my list. Sounds excellent. I've long talked about the fact that absolute truth is an impossible thing to attain.

I think I've seen that one. A few years back I raided the asian cinema rental section of all it's horror films. Most were in mint condition as no-one in this country can read well enough to deal with subtitles. Some were obviously taken out of the DVD players by illiterates who rented them and didn't notice they were subtitled, then used as coasters or dog toys for a while. The black hair story sounds very familiar to me.

Another great tour. Looks like I missed out on the saki, though. Drat.

I heard/read somewhere that a glass of whiskey in Tokyo cost something like $60 US. Is that true?

Nice post The old architecture is beautiful, especially compared to all the identical building being built now.

it seems like people have no imagination at all - same buildings, same cars, same clothes

It is because most things are made by machines, not by human hands. Automated and optimized process.

People would buy crap if you write "chocolate" on the package.

Cars and other modern industrial goods are produced with the main goal of reducing production costs, in fact many different firms sell the same car with different names or slightly different cars based on the same frame.
The reason why cars look the same is because they actually ARE the same.

Then today's design and engineering make large use of computers to calculate structures and materials, this also produces converging results given the same introductions. This is quite obvious in the average construction works.

Yes, there is also marketing. People working in marketing basically spend 99% time in looking at what other marketing people do and copy. This explains why they do the same things over and over.

You must remember that people in big corporations who make decisions for us have degrees in business, marketing, mathematics, accounting, management, etc. All very analytical type thinking. If they put someone in charge, who had some creative background in art, along with their 'analytical' degree, things might have a different outcome. Just my opinion:D

Most people in big corporations don't even know what the corporation produces and how. Business, marketing, accounting and such is mostly about selling crap as chocolate (when you are customer oriented) or some sort of internal prostitution (when you are "management" oriented). In short, most managers in big corporations are useless or even negative. Why do they exist? Because big corporations work a lot around politics, both internal and external. Politics needs burocracy so all those people are actually burocrats.

The "creative" part was possible in the middle ages when each single stone used to build a cathedral was squared by hand and by hand put in place with million other stones. This changed with the industrial revolution. Nowadays the machines make million pieces all exactly the same from a single prototype and "creativity" means to find the better/optimized solution given some pre-requisites. Industrial design is mostly about "functions" and about "technology" (meaning "to know how to make stuff").

To make a comparison it is like the old decorated manuscripts versus a document written with Office and printed with a laser printer.

It is not that different. Think of the "tatami", it is a module. Same for the wooden houses the Americans build, they are assembled with pre-defined modules as well, produced elsewhere. Now you bring this to the industrial age and to buildings made with steel and glass. It is again about assembled modules. Probably some very expensive building makes use of tailored pieces but on average is just a Lego game. It becomes obvious for low cost mass-production buildings but it exists almost everywhere.

You might be interested in seeing the architectural design on Henar's blog: http://my.opera.com/Henar/blog/beautiful-housing-project

Still module but, at least, colorful with an interesting layout.

Exactly what I meant.
Compare to this:
(Siena in Italy)

It is not "unusual", it is how homes and buildings in general were made till some time ago. BTW I am pretty sure you would prefer to be living in Siena than in one of those "cubes" from the above link.

It is where modern architecture fails, the scale. The old architecture was made at human scale, while the modern architecture is somehow out of scale and that induces some stress.

Are there city ordinances about painting on the outside walls? Even if I lived on the top floor, I'd somehow find a way to paint on the walls. Sort of what I did to the six foot block wall surrounding my backyard. They were drab gray until I painted on them. I got the idea for the rusty orange color with the yellow streaks from a one foot square piece of marble flooring I had. Then, of course, I had to paint Starry, Starry Night. There are no city ordinances for what you do on the inside of your property line but there are if other people have to see it.

http://my.opera.com/PainterWoman/albums/showpic.dml?album=523288&picture=7217418

Not much different from: These buildings are just more of "austrian" style but I am sure you can see the similarities and you can compare to Tokio.

I really would like to visit there one day.. *dreams* ok I'll live vicariously through you for now Darko:p

Yeah.. but first my own country before another i've only travelled half around South Africa., so much to see.. So many lions to feed

...so little of you

Such a modern looking city in many ways, yet traditional architecture still survives - even being built fairly recently. Interesting