ChatGPT is going to put the historians, and their experience evaluating sources and tracing paths of references, out of business they say.
What is going to do is make us all go back to printed written records, and maybe even destroy the value of a whole body of digitisation projects.
My phone just let me set a video as my lock screen, and to be honest I think it might be witchcraft.
Today's highlight was being stuck behind someone travelling with an 8ft bow. While I appreciate security is security, I'm not sure archery is a realistic means to seize control of a plane.
Having spent two days trying to get a plane that works, and reading all this airport discourse, I'm increasingly sure the best option is to just never fly.
I pitched an article to The Conversation about solutions to communal action problems featuring the Tory Party leadership rules, Ludwig Zamenhof's proposal for Esperanto, and a couple of others I forget.
They declined.
I felt this in Tokyo, only I thought I was just tired after dealing with flight delay stuff all day, until people around me started commenting about it.
Hands up who's going to Warsaw
🙋♀️
Hands up whose plane has functional toilets and thus isn't stuck in Tokyo for an indeterminate amount of time.
*lowers hands*
Posh & rude British guy gets his comeuppance in the third act. Something involving a mine or perhaps a shark.
Nope, just a regular visitor.
The 's is a little clumsy I guess.
As a regular crossword doer (& hence not the intended audience) I would say the minute cryptic clues tend to be very easy, but do focus on getting the surface meaning to work nicely, in a way full crosswords do less consistently.
I have so many random bits of plumbing
100% my attitude to farming and all ancillary activities.
The ornate front of a public bathhouse
A graphic showing the layout of the public bath
The description of the bathhouse, established in 1933, and its registration as an important cultural property.
I stumbled across an amazing sento (public bath), and then discovered it's a listed building.
And there's a (associated?) hipster remote working office next door where I managed to break pretty much all the rules trying to buy a coffee.
Pears is the only other soap I can recall from my childhood. We had it on occasion.
I've always thought Imperial Leather was swanky, to be honest.
My nephew would always get wound up if you voted for Pterodactyl/Plesiosaurus/Dimetrodon, but I think the real answer is triceratops, with a honourable mention for diplodocus.
I'm sure your know it, but I loved SMC Paine's The Wars For Asia(?) and have often assigned the bits which compare US/Japan/Soviet management of the different levels of "nested war" to undergrads.
A small harbour on a sunny day.
Increasingly suspect that island life might be the best life.
Yes, that's very true.
There really is.
It's genuinely astonishing how many people my wife and I know are going/have been/are thinking of going. I think it's a combo of post COVID recovery plus cheap yen.
Another recommendation is to look into Goshuin. They're stamps you can get at most temples/shrines. Our kids got into them, watching the calligraphy is great, and they make for a nice souvenir.
The blank books are sold in temples/bookshops, I think I've even seen them in convenience stores.
Nice. I think you're spot on about the influencer, err, influence.
We've found the drop off in crowds from the "must sees" to the next tier to be astonishing.
Tip number three is to use Takkyubin (www.kuronekoyamato.co.jp/ytc/en/send/...),
You can take your luggage to the nearest branch & can send it ahead to a hotel, or a depot, of which there are loads. I *think* it should be pretty doable even without Japanese language skills.
A zigzag bridge over a small pond
Same was true of Nara last spring: the first stretch of grass/deer was full of people, five minutes round the back: same scenario, ~5% of the people.
Even better is to go somewhere else entirely. There's English more or less everywhere these days, and plenty to see beyond Tokyo/Kyoto.
A small garden in a house's courtyard
Kyoto is an amazing city. If the most famous five sites are congested, numbers 6-10 are equally historic and beautiful, and have a fraction of the visitors.
Arashiyama, Fushimi, I think are a skip. But (2yrs ago now)we found myozenji, tofukuji, daitokuji were quiet.
A temple, and sand garden
Tip number two is to go as off the beaten path as you are comfortable with.
Parts of Japan definitely have an over tourism problem, in our experience. To the extent that my wife was saying she has reservations recommending it as a destination. Fortunately it seems to be very concentrated.
A view of a port.
Tip number one is to use Visit Japan Web. www.vjw.digital.go.jp/main/#/vjwpl...
You do the immigration questions in advance, get a qr code and go into a different queue at the airport. It's not super well advertised in my experience, but it's potentially a significant time save.
A view of the Seto Inland Sea from a mountaintop temple
I can't remember if I've done this before or just imagined it, but everyone I know seems to be planning a Japan trip at the moment so I've been thinking about what advice to give them.