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I just posted a few photos from our walk in Kyoto, in the neighborhood roughly between the Yasaka shrine and the Kyomizudera temple. I didn’t take that many photos that day, having photographed the area pretty extensively on previous visits. It’s a remarkably picturesque area, though, so I had to pull out the camera a few times. The Flickr photo set is here.

Just over a week after Steve Jobs died, another extremely significant figure in the world of computing has died. Dennis Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language and a contributor to the creation of the Unix operating system. C (and its immediate successor, C++) is probably the most popular programming language of the 20th century, and has to be among the top five, so far, of the 21st. Unix (in various flavors) was the most common operating system for servers (that is, computers on which the web runs) in the 20th century and among the top three, so far, of the 21st, and is the basis of Apple’s OS X. He was also the co-author of the first book on C, The C Programming Language, known amongst geeks worldwide as “K&R” after its authors Brian Kernighan and Ritchie. My first-edition copy is still in the go-to-first section of my reference bookshelf.

So, putting it another way: Dennis Ritchie created some of the tools that were used for most of the advances in computing over the last 30 years. He won’t get the posthumous press coverage that Steve Jobs received, but what Apple has done was made possible in part by what Dennis Ritchie did.

UPDATE: there’s a good piece about Ritchie here. (Thanks to Eric Brombaugh for bringing this to my attention.)

I’ve put up the first batch of photos from our recent trip. These were taken during our first full day, when we made a whirlwind trip to Tokyo and back via shinkansen. We saw our friend Rafael, did some shopping, visited our usual haunts in Asakusa, and had lunch at Ippudo, the ramen restaurant with incredible gyoza. The photo set is here and there are brief captions, but a couple of things bear special mention. (All of the following photos link to Flickr, so you can click them to see larger versions.)

First, rennovation of the Senso-ji temple is complete. When we were in Tokyo in 2010, it looked like this:

You could still go into it, but it was covered up to protect it from the elements while it was refurbished. Now it’s uncovered and looks quite striking with its new paint job, including some nice details here and there.

We also noticed an interesting addition near one corner: a wheelchair lift, so nicely integrated with the existing architecture that it’s hardly noticeable at a distance. Hats off to whatever transpired to make Sensoji more accessible to folks who have difficulty with its front steps.

Second, there was this:

Someone who is familar with local delicacies is going to have to remind me what this stuff is called, and what exactly it is. It’s quite good, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to describe it in a manner that does it justice, or is even faintly appetizing. The whitish substance in the lower half is small cubes of a gelatinous substance, sort of the texture of firm Jell-o. On top of that is a layer of azuki, the ubiquitous red bean that one finds in all manner of contexts in Japanese food. On top of that are some sweetish things that might be derived from either beans or sweet potato, or both. This concoction is served cold, and accompanied by a small vial of sugar syrup. You pour the syrup over it all, stir it a bit, and eat it. As I said, it’s difficult to describe. It was quite refreshing on a hot day, and I’d happily eat more of it next time the opportunity arises. Here’s another version, which simply had large beans on top:

Since I’m on the subject of food, I’ll describe this bento box, which I had for breakfast while on the train to Tokyo:

Across the bottom we have several rolls of rice with a little seasoning. No, unfortunately I don’t know what makes two of them purple. At the lower right is ume, a pickled plum. These I am not fond of. There are some sweet beans above it, and I’ve forgotten what was under the inverted cup at the top. The top left compartment contains a slice of tomato, a wedge of konjac (see Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with this, um, delicacy? aberration?), a pickled pepper, and slices of carrot, potato, radish, etc. The item at the top left is something about which Rafael and I turned out to disagree. He says it’s delicious and possibly his favorite common inclusion in bento; I might choose to avoid it in the future. It’s kind of rubbery and kind of chewy, and (for lack of a better way of putting it) becomes kind of slimy after you manage to chew it into submission. Rafael also claims to like natto, so I speculate that a gaijin can develop a taste for just about any food in Japan if one stays there long enough. On the whole, however, the meal was quite tasty and satifying, and–compared to American fast food–conspicuously devoid of fat and sugar.

The tea on the right appears to be a new brand, and has become my favorite bottled tea.

We’re home now. My intent is to post a number of photos and some anecdotes and reflections during the coming days; we’ll see whether I actually find the time and energy to do that, along with catching up on work, etc. Here’s a snapshot of my synth-geek souvenir:

I first heard YMO about 30 years ago and as long as I’ve been going to Japan I’ve wanted to buy one of their CDs while there. Yeah, I know: physical media is obsolete, I could have just ordered the CD from Amazon, etc. Nonetheless, it was a good deal of fun to flip through the YMO selection in the CD shop in the Porta mall next to Kyoto Station, and buy one from a polite young woman who I think spoke next to no English.

Big thanks to Rafael for bringing me a couple of bottles of this when we met in Tokyo:

That is a bottle of sparkling green tea. Yes, green tea with bubbles in it. It’s a little strange; something seems to have happened to the flavor in the carbonation process. Tracie’s reaction was one loudly voiced obscenity. I guess I’m not surprised that it’s disappearing from the market, according to Rafael.

He also brought me a bottle of sparkling soy milk. I’m trying to summon the courage to try that one this evening.

We went for a stroll through the gardens at Heian Jingu (Shrine) yesterday. These gardens are known for their spectacular cherry blossoms in the spring. We thought it would be interesting to see them at a different time of year. It turned out that they’re sort of between seasons right now. There aren’t many flowers blooming other than water lillies, and few leaves are just starting to change color. It’s a beautiful place any time, though, and it was a pleasure that there were only a few other people around.

Yes, I really need to post hi-res versions of these photos, but I’m feeling lazy (in part because I stuffed myself with ramen today). This mantis landed on the path near us when we stopped at a little refreshment stand to drink iced green tea:

I carefully relocated it to a nearby bush when a group of schoolboys approached, much to the amusement of the two women at the refreshment stand.

That’s the inside of a huge suspension bridge. The underside of the road itself is at the top of the photo. The two flat areas stretching into the distance are service roads and walkways. The bridge looks like this from a more common vantage point:

The first photo was taken just beyond the far side of the huge concrete structure, which must be the anchor for the mainland end of the bridge. The bridge extends from Kobe to an island, and has the longest central section of any suspension bridge. You can read about it at Wikipedia here and, if you happen to ever be in Kobe, you can go to the visitor’s center and see it from the same vantage that we did. Big thanks go to our friends the Makinos for taking us there. Sid, a professional tourist guide, really has a knack for finding interesting things to visit. Tracie and I kept having flashbacks to the bridge-crossing level in Half Life 2 while there.

While walking through the neighborhood between Kyomizudera and the Yasaka shrine this morning, we were startled by several large, black butterflies. The first time I saw one I caught only a glimpse of it, and I thought it might be a bat or a small bird (although, yes, it was the wrong time of day for it to be a bat). They’re at least as large as a monarch, completely black, and have unusually shaped rear wings. They passed by fairly quickly so I didn’t have an opportunity to photograph them, and I’m not having much luck with Google image searches, which is too bad because they’re quite strange-looking.

We also saw a large preying mantis with bright green wings land on the lapel of gentleman carrying shopping bags in both hands. He didn’t seem terribly pleased by its presence and somewhat awkwardly shook it off. I didn’t want someone to step on it so I scooped it up from the walkway. It flew off and landed on a nearby roof. I’ve seen them in Boulder a few times, but this one was the largest I’ve seen–about five inches long.

We’re back in Kyoto for about a week. We arrived yesterday evening (local time) and got up early today for a whirlwind trip to Tokyo to see our friend Rafael. I’m about to crash from jet-lag so I’ll just cut it short here and preset this photo of Fuji-san, shot from the window of the shinkansen on the way to Tokyo.

(Getting a photo like this is mostly a matter of luck, because the view is frequently obscured by buildings, power lines, etc. All you can do is use an auto-winder mode and hope that at least one exposure works.)

Here’s a photo of my most-recently completed modular origami project:

It’s from Tomoko Fuse’s Unit Polyhedron Origami. It’s 120 units folded from rectangles. I don’t really time how long it takes to make things like this, but figure about three minutes for each unit and about two to three hours for the assembly. Assembling it was somewhat tricky because the units were a little springy and wanted to be inside-out until I joined enough of them to form more than half of the spheroid. No, I didn’t do this all in one sitting.