👋 Hello there!
I am currently in Lisbon, Portugal. Yes, I travelled 32h45m52.21s to be here. I am very sunburned and slightly dehydrated from walking up and down the waterfront visiting famous landmarks and discovering new kinds of poutine today. Why am I on the opposite side of the world from my family right now? Well, I am on a little holiday before a work retreat starts next week. I have been trying to take it easy, to relax and treat it as a sort of personal retreat. There has not been a series of efficiently scheduled tours and museum visits. I am perfectly content sitting at a café table, listening to the delightfully impenetrable sounds of língua portuguesa (which to my ear is like a drunk Russian trying to speak Spanish), and watching beautiful people zoom by on electric scooters… while smoking. Each morning I walk the city, indulging in epic Euro edifices such as perfectly proportioned plazas and gratifyingly geometric gardens. Already there are a few hundred photos racked up, so expect some travel reports and photo albums next month.
This is my first time visiting Europe. The furthest West I have been is, I dunno, Tehran? And now I am on the very western edge of continental Europe. So far the Portuguese have been excellent to me. The food is delicious, and atmosphere is something entirely new to me. Too many cobblestones though. That is my one complaint. They are pretty uniform however, which is remarkable.
Anyways, I really need to go to sleep.
Xau!
/ck
🖋 From the Blog
Visiting the Kyoto State Guest House
Photos, a bit of a guide, and a recommendation for an excellent documentary about the place where foreign dignitaries are received by the Japanese government.
Minamiza
Walking along the Kamo river I took a few photos of Minamiza, the theatre where all the kabuki greats have been performing for the the past hundred years.
🧭 Elsewhere
This month I hit my 15th Twitter Anniversary. In celebration here are some Twitter threads I made for September 2022:
Japan is opening its borders soon, so I took advantage of the pre-deluge and visited the famous Kiyomizu Temple Twitter 🧵 →
The Kyoto International Manga Museum Twitter 🧵 →
Catching up with the koi 🎏 underneath Shijō bridge Twitter 🧵 →
With the kids at the Kyoto Philharmonic Twitter 🧵 →
Visiting the family grave Twitter 🧵 →
How to get to the UK 🇬🇧 from Japan 🇯🇵 (after arriving in Heathrow) Twitter 🧵 →
📖 What I’m Reading
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (100% Complete)
This month I finished a book that will definitely be in my top ranking at the end of the year. I can’t stop recommending it to people. KSR’s approach to writing about the future of the climate crisis is thought-provoking and radicalizing. This is what science fiction is meant for! And it is very timely.