@chadkoh — Generous with Likes ❤️
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I first came to Kyoto in 1999 for university. My first jobs out of school were here. My second daughter was born here. I lived in a dorm, four apartments, and a house, all in different areas of the city. Walked pretty much every street. Even when I lived in Nagoya for those four years [ ]
Today is the 50th anniversary of the coup of Chilean president Salvador Allende, under which the legendary Project Cybersyn was initiated. Cybersyn is an oft-referred to hypothetical in the socialist calculation debate, and was partially masterminded by the infamous cybernetician Stafford Beer. Many books and articles have been written about the project, but earlier this [ ]
The CTO of my company appeared in a recent Wired article about Local-First Software. Gotta say, it is pretty exciting to be in the pages of Wired. “LoFi” is something Fission is trying to enable with the protocols and SDK we have been working on. The Wired article is a good primer on how The [ ]
In writing my newsletter I gathered up all the photos I posted this month from our summer break trip in Tohoku. I thought I should just post the photo round up here, and I can give a little a bit of context for the images. This trip was my first this far north. I had [ ]
See the first part of this travelogue on Iwate and the tsunami Speeding along the highway along the gently curving coast of the Sendai plain, we enter the more hilly Fukushima Prefecture from its northernmost border. Immediately we are greeted with a new road sign: a sensor displaying the amount of radiation in microsieverts per [ ]
3/11: the triple disaster in March of 2011 when the world’s fourth largest earthquake since 1900 caused a massive tsunami to ravage the northeastern coast of Japan, triggering three nuclear reactors to meltdown, the deaths of nearly 30,000 people, and displacement of nearly 300,000. Twelve years later 3/11 still weighs on all of Japan, but [ ]
Over the past couple of months (years?) I have been overstimulated and generally unable to keep on top of all the information I consume. My zettelkasten practice certainly needs a rethink. I still love Obsidian though, it is by far my most used daily app. Recently the Metamuse podcast (Ep 81) hosted Stephan Ango, the [ ]
All the videos are up for Causal Islands, a “future of computing” conference my company put on in Toronto. There are a ton of amazing talks, I highly recommend you check them out. I would like to take a moment to focus on Maggie Appleton’s excellent “The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI”, exploring the [ ]
”Golden Week” is a stretch of consecutive holidays in Japan, that combined with a weekend a day or two of PTO can be like 10 days off. Lots of people take the opportunity to return to their hometowns to visit family and friends, and others go sightseeing… many many people come to Kyoto. And with [ ]
Last March, while hanging out at the Engineer Cafe in Fukuoka I heard about the annual Maker Faire in Kyoto. Some of the Engineer Cafe folk planned on coming up to Kyoto to attend. I have never been to a Maker Faire before so I decided to join. After canvassing on the HN Kansai slack [ ]
The day we flew out of the “cosmoport” of Tanegashima, a remote island (ritō) off the southern coast of Kyushu, was actually historically significant. Not because of my presence of course. We spent a few days exploring the island that we were initially planning on moving to for the remote island study program, before ultimately [ ]
Read Part 1 Kuala Lumpur here → It took about two and a half hours to reach Melaka from the busy bus depot in southern Kuala Lumpur. We had loaded up on snacks and sandwiches for our lunchtime departure, just liking getting the “ekiben” or packed lunches in Japan before getting on the Shinkansen for [ ]
PREFACE: this is a whirlwind post meant to give you the tiniest sliver of context for the accompanying photos which I hope you have a spin through. They are at the bottom of the post. Back in about 2018 my wife and I started talking about living in a third country for a while. My [ ]
I stopped using Twitter last December, but with the news of Twitter is restricting its API I got my butt in gear and set up my personal archive of tweets. I pulled an archive pretty much as soon as the whole dumpster fire started, and thought I would always go back at some point and [ ]
A couple years ago, after moving to Ikijima, I introduced you all to the idea of ritō, or “remote island”. Being a “stratovolcanic archipelago” Japan has a lot more islands than you can likely name. In fact, there are 6,852 at the last official count. A few days ago, the Japan Times reported that the [ ]
Halfway through last year I described my year-long commitment as a lay devotee of Buddhism in the Thai Forest Monastery under Ajahn Sona. I completed the commitment at the end of December and was given the Pali name of Sanghapāla — “protector of the Sangha (the Buddhist community).” I use that name now when in [ ]
At the very beginning of the year I created a Reading Schedule for 2022 note topped with: “Goal is 20 books. 5 Japanese books.” As I looked over the snowy countryside in Canada last January, I was thinking about how I could maintain my connection to Japan and improve my language learning from afar. I [ ]
In recent weeks, as the kids sleep in on the weekend, my wife and I have been taking early morning walks around the city, hitting temples and shrines before the tourists. We chitchat while strolling along, poking around areas of the city that we have not taken the time to explore. Sometimes we talk about [ ]
Last week I passed my first anniversary at Fission, a deep tech startup where I have been working as head of Operations. It has been an entirely positive year, and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the reasons why. First, a little context. After taking a career break to live on [ ]
When I was a kid there was a lakeside campground we went to each summer. Dad would load up the camper with beach toys and we would migrate south for a week. My cousins would met us there for a few days, but there were also these kids from other towns and cities that would [ ]
My first trip to Europe was pretty easy. Not the getting there — that part was actually pretty difficult. I flew through Heathrow, but leaving Haneda the plane flew east over the Pacific Ocean, north between Kamchatka and Alaska, through the Bering Straight and then over the Arctic. In order to avoid Russian airspace four [ ]
A few years ago one of the members of Writers in Kyoto shared a broadcast from NHK s Core Kyoto S05E02 Kyoto State Guest House: Hospitality Imbued with Beauty and Craftsmanship. This is a special compound located in the Kyoto Imperial Palace but run by the Cabinet Office. It is where the Japanese government receives foreign [ ]
Took a walk up the Kamogawa tonight and saw Minamiza, the theatre where all the kabuki greats have been performing for the the past hundred years.
At the beginning of the year I undertook a commitment to take my Buddhist learning to the next level by becoming an upāsaka, or “lay devotee.” Last fall I applied to and was accepted into the upāsikā program at Birken, the Thai Forest Monastery near Kamloops where I have attended a couple of different meditation [ ]
On Shijō this afternoon the Naginata-hoko is going up. Look at the rope work and the size of some of the posts! #gion #祇園祭 #kyoto
Such a glorious day today in #kyoto 😁 Hope you all had a lovely Tanabata 🎋
Cross-posting the greeting from this month s edition of my newsletter, since it is of personal significance. The last day of June. A Real Feel™️ of 42 degrees celsius. Not even summer yet. But things started to settle down this month. We took the kids to Universal Studios Japan. Summer Camp started. Screen time decreased. I [ ]
My neighbourhood has a lot of Buddhist craftspeople. They make altar fittings, carve statues, etc. One warehouse is used for cleaning parts of temples. I pass by every day and there is some new chunk of a temple that has been hauled over to be cleaned and repaired, before it is sent back to be [ ]
Although we live in downtown Kyoto, we are somehow still within the precinct of Fushimi Inari, the mountain shrine south of the city with all the torii gates (some photos from our hike up there a couple years ago →). The other day, to my surprise, an envelope arrived unbidden from that famous shrine. It [ ]
In the rain today I walked to Bukkō-ji 佛光寺, an important temple in the centre of Kyoto for Shinran, the founder of Shin Buddhism. I am not a temple member, but this is the neighborhood temple. In a famously gridded city, its grounds are the local shortcut. Every day we walk diagonally through Bukko-ji to [ ]
After arriving in Kyoto I considered how I should journal daily life here. For the month of May I experimented with the indie Micro.blog service, posting pics, videos, and short updates at everydaykyoto.micro.blog. The service is pretty straightforward, with a simple non-surveillance capitalist business model. The community is really nice too. So I can recommend [ ]
On the Nordic Asia podcast this week Dr Satoko Naito interviewed Dr Kanako Kuramitsu about her research on an unseen population: children of consensual relationships between Japanese fathers and Chinese mothers in the war years. The emphasis on the word “consensual” is mine, meant to underscore that this is not the most commonly heard narrative [ ]
Walking down Shijō, above the crowd is the sound of practice: they are getting ready for Gion Matsuri at the Naginata-hoko! 🔊
Sun setting on Nijo castle
Sunday morning. I hear the calling of Buddhist monks on alms round as they walk down the narrow street in front of my house. I give some dana. I had always lived in apartments in Kyoto, so never had this experience before. Anumodana! 🙏📿
After using Logseq for a solid week, I thought I would capture some observations if anyone else is considering the app, or Obsidian, which is my main tool for thought. I started using Obsidian at the end of 2020, switching from a couple of months working on my zettelkasten in Roam. My Obsidian is pretty [ ]
After 2 years of covid and travel-induced delays, we finally interred my mother-in-law s ashes at Otani-byo ☸️ cemetery, where the family grave is, in a 納骨 (nōkotsu) ceremony. I don t have photos of the proceedings, but I can share pics of the meal afterwards 😊🍱🇯🇵
44 years old today. Took the kids to see the terracotta warrior exhibition at the Kyoto City Kyocera Art Museum
The past two weeks in Kyoto have been pretty hectic. I have yet to meet anyone other than family, for obvious reasons. With the kids not in school, we have been going on walks around the neighbourhood so I can get them off of YouTube and TikTok. Other than those short explorations we have been [ ]
Look what arrived today! 📚 Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital by @matthew_stavros Been on my list for a while, so as soon as I found out we were relocating back to Kyoto I ordered it so I can read and visit some of the locations IRL. 🙌
Higashi Hongan-ji and Kyoto Tower, day and night
Nice hidden coffee joint ☕️🇯🇵
Kyoto alley cat
The 手水舎 at Bukkō-ji is still running dry due to Covid precautions (Photo by my 10yo)
On a rainy Sunday morning I got up early to take the cardboard out for the monthly pickup. Half the 町内会 (neighborhood association) were there! (I had met some of them when we went round the neighbourhood day before yesterday to make our greetings.)
Arrived in Kyoto on a very wet day
Good afternoon from Vancouver International Airport. I am at Gate D70, about to board the plane. Yes, I just got back to Canada 3 weeks ago, but things… have been happening. In last month s newsletter I explained why we had to change our Spring Break destination from a drive to Squamish to an emergency flight [ ]
From a tiny speck on the horizon, the volcano slow grew as I crossed first the mud flats of Kumamoto and then the shallow waters of the Ariake Sea. Now, at the foot of the volcano, looming over the small city of Shimabara, there was only one way to go: up! Unzen, the central volcano [ ]
The Shimabara Peninsula, a peninsula of a peninsula in Nagasaki prefecture, is just one of the fascinating places I travelled to in Kyushu, looking for “Kyushu Firsts.” This is where the “black samurai” Yasuke first landed in Japan in 1579 and is the location of Japan’s first printing press. The peninsula hosted many Portuguese Jesuits [ ]
Recently my kids have been exploring the differences between American Sign Language (ASL) and Japanese Sign Language (JSL). For them it is another way to explore their own bilingualism, and understand how language is tied to cultural context. I recently read this short manga COVID-33 which describes a future world where talking outside is prohibited, [ ]
