I have no idea if the Tencho-san at Odaidokoro decided to serve sake in wine glasses or if he got the idea from somewhere else. Anyways, it was a brew (I read somewhere that sake is technically a beer and not a wine) and it went down well with the appetizer (which is referred to as "o-toshi") which came with my meal. I didn't order that much that night. Just this sake, kara-age octopus and deep fried Camembert cheese balls.
This is a record of one of those pure dumb luck moments in life. I had wandered over to take a photo of a mural painting on a shutter door to a building which is going to be demolished. I took the photo, turned to my right and there smack dab in my field of view was a Maryland licence plate. I hadn't noticed it when walking over to take the photo so I was quite surprised to see it there.
There's one thing I do which I've started to take more notice of recently: I often turn the hot water handle on a faucet without remembering that it takes a good two or three minutes for warm (not hot) water to come out. This is a far cry from back in Canada where hot water could be trusted to come out in under a minute (or so I recall). The point is that turning on and running water from the hot water side engages the water heater which uses gas. So running water through the heater and turning it off before the water gets hot is a waste of fuel. It may not be much but it's something I can conserve during the summer months. The winter months are another story unto themselves.
One last thing.... Back in February when I visited Kyoto with my mother and a group from the Vancouver Buddhist Temple I was asked to read and write a short article about the English translation of book "The Buddha's Wish for the World" by the Gomonshu-sama. The article was to be published in the Hongwanji monthly newspaper. It took me a little longer than I had expected to get that done but apparently some people were pleased with the results. The publishers of the book, the American Buddhist Study Center, have asked my permission to post an abridged version of the article on their web site. It's not a big deal but I'm kind of tickled pink. I guess all those years of writing COBOL code and requirements documents didn't completely damage my English writing abilities.
