京都銭湯看板

Along the tiny Kamiya River in western Kyoto, just off Nishi Oji Dori, is a great old sento.

It has a standard entrance, with the banto-san - the person whom you pay - seated inside on a chair that overlooks both male and female dressing rooms.

(There is nothing odd about this. The banto is usually the owner, and he or she will wander in and out of the bath while you and many others are completely nude. A wall, of course, separates the female and male dressing rooms and baths.)

The interior was fairly basic: a few baths, a high ceiling with a skylight, and a sauna.

On the outside of the sento though was a wood sign that bore the standard symbol for public bath: 湯 (yu). It had been carved and had worn well with age.

Today public baths have an electric sign in the shape of the same kanji. This sento is the only one we have ever seen with an old wood sign.

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ザ・コーヴ

The Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove" has been canceled at the only Tokyo movie theaters planning to show the film. The US-made movie depicts the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture and has drawn flack from Japan's well-organized right wing.

Planned screenings of "The Cove" in late June were canceled at Cinemart Roppongi and Cinemart Shinsaibashi in Osaka due to "the growing likelihood that there would be disruption" - a euphemism for the arrival of the right wing and their bellicose sound trucks.

"The Cove" is available on Amazon Jp as an import from the US. The film was screened at the Tokyo International Film Festival last October - it's only public screening to date.

The movie's distributor in Japan Unplugged is determined to persevere with plans for further screenings. “We will continue to discuss the situation with exhibitors and make the greatest efforts to get the film shown,” said the company's president Takeshi Kato.

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今週の日本

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Okinawa bases row spells end to Hatoyama era

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Last week's Japan news


Japan Statistics

Number of hours spent waiting on May 31 to enter the following pavilions at the Shanghai Expo.

Saudi Arabia: 5 hours
Japan: 4 hours
South Korea: 3-4 hours
Switzerland: 2.5 hours
Spain: 2.5 hours
France: 2.5 hours
Germany: 2 hours
UK: 2 hours
US: 2 hours

Source: Asahi Shinbun

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自転車

Cycling in Kyoto just got a whole lot easier with the launch of www.cyclekyoto.com.


There are articles on Areas to Avoid, Japanese Bicycle Law, Bike Lanes, Bicycle Parking, Cycling Books, Cycling Safety, Cycling Vocabulary and Kyoto Weather. Happy pedaling!

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フェイスブック

Find JapanVisitor on Facebook and become a friend...お願い.


If you are a Facebook aficionado catch up with the latest on Japan on JapanVisitor's Facebook page.

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ホムレス京都

Just south of Shichijo Dori along Kyoto's Kamo River, we saw a homeless man transporting his load of crushed cans.

On recycling days in Kyoto, a small army of middle-aged homeless men on bikes rush to the collection points to take the cans before the official city trucks come for them.

The load he has, while large, would not be heavy. However, he clearly labored to keep the hundreds of crushed and packed cans balanced.

He had carefully stuffed the two blue tarps, tied them, and then with separate rubber chords fixed both to his old bike.

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鳩山由紀夫

He came, he dithered, he went. Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has resigned after less than eight months in office to take responsibility for breaking an election promise to remove a US military base from Okinawa.

Since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept to power in the general election last September, Hatoyama's ratings have begun to plummet and he has resigned along with kingpin Ichiro Ozawa to give the DPJ a chance in next month's Upper House elections.



Besides his policy flip-flops over the marine base in Okinawa, Hatoyama has been involved in a financial scandal over donations made to him by his wealthy mother and has even been criticised for his choice of shirts.

Possible successors to Hatoyama include veteran Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Naoto Kan, lantern-jawed Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and the smooth apparatchik Seiji Maehara, who is the present Transport Minister.

Born in 1947, Hatoyama replaced Ichiro Ozawa as leader of the DPJ earlier last year, after the latter became embroiled in an on-going financing scandal involving political donations from a construction company.

Hatoyama is a rich, blue-blooded, hereditary politician and a grandson of a former conservative party prime minister, Ichiro Hatoyama (1883-1959) - one of the founders of the LDP.
Hatoyama's father Iichiro Hatoyama was Japan's foreign minister for a period in the 1970s. His brother Kunio Hatoyama is now a maverick politician and green-advocate.

Yukio Hatoyama is a graduate of Tokyo University with a PhD from Stanford University in the US.

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