Plenty of Nothing

Stillfried

If you are searching through 19th-century photographic images of Japan and you encounter the description Stillfried, it doesn't mean the picture was developed using some kind of tempura process, but that it came from the studio of Raimund Stillfried von Rathenitz, an Austrian photographer active in Yokohama from the 1860s to 1880s. The photo of the two kendoka, above, is from the collection of Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.

2013 Men's Hockey Playoff Champions

EC-KAC have won their 30th Austrian championship.

KHL: Dynamo Moscow

Finnish: Porin Ässät

Swedish: Skellefteå

Czech: Plzeň

Slovak: Zvolen

Swiss: SC Bern

German: Eisbären Berlin

Asian: Tohoku Free Blades

Austrian: EC-KAC

Belarusian: Neman Grodno

British: Nottingham Panthers

Dutch: HYS The Hague

Danish: SønderjyskE

French: Dragons de Rouen

Italian: Asiago

Norwegian: Stavanger Oilers

Polish: Cracovia

Canadian: Bentley Generals

Shotgun Speed Lines

Chapter 87 of Genshiken includes this panel of Sue greeting Angela at the airport. Is this not the best use of speed lines? You can follow the precise action as Sue mimes raising a shotgun, lowering it slightly and moving it from side to side, all in one motion. [Sorry, it's a missile launcher.]

Nervetonine

From the Post Office Directory for Greenock, 1911-12. Source.

Partick have won the division. League reconstruction has run onto a shoal. Douglas Rae says the club might have to go part-time next season. It's enough to give the Morton fan nervy symptoms, irritability, depression, brain fag, rheumatism, neuralgia, lumbago, sciatica, hysteria, sleeplessness, &c! Thank God for Nervetonine!

Today is the final meeting of the season between Morton and the Accies of Hamilton, and the last match for 2012-13 at Cappielow. Hamilton have been Morton's bane all season, winning two of the three previous meetings, and drawing the third. [And Hamilton win 0 - 2. Dumbarton win and evade relegation.]

Tomorrow Sapporo are host to Roasso Kumamoto, from the island of Kyushu. [Kunamoto win 1 - 3.]

April Wine Like to Play Table Hockey

"I Like to Rock" by April Wine.

Pedestrian Cage

Japanese Word of the Day: Hotaru-Kassen

Sight at Ochanomizu (1880) by Kiyochika Kobayashi. Source.

    There are many places in Japan which are famous for fireflies, -- places which people visit in summer merely to enjoy the sight of the fireflies. Anciently the most celebrated of all such places was a little valley near Ishiyama, by the lake of Ōmi. It is still called Hotaru-Dani, or the Valley of Fireflies. Before the Period of Genroku (1688-1703), the swarming of the fireflies in this valley, during the sultry season, was accounted one of the natural marvels of the country. The fireflies of the Hotaru-Dani are still celebrated for their size; but that wonderful swarming of them, which old writers described, is no longer to be seen there. At present the most famous place for fireflies is in the neighbourhood of Uji, in Yamashiro. Uji, a pretty little town in the centre of the celebrated tea-district, is situated on the Ujigawa, and is scarcely less famed for its fireflies than for its teas. Every summer special trains run from Kyōtō and Ōsaka to Uji, bringing thousands of visitors to see the fireflies. But it is on the river, at a point several miles from the town, that the great spectacle is to be witnessed, -- the Hotaru-Kassen, or Firefly Battle. The stream there winds between hills covered with vegetation; and myriads of fireflies dart from either bank, to meet and cling above the water. At moments they so swarm together as to form what appears to the eye like a luminous cloud, or like a great ball of sparks. The cloud soon scatters, or the ball drops and breaks upon the surface of the current, and the fallen fireflies drift glittering away; but another swarm quickly collects in the same locality. People wait all night in boats upon the river to watch the phenomenon. After the Hotaru-Kassen is done, the Ujikawa, covered with the still sparkling bodies of the drifting insects, is said to appear like the Milky Way, or, as the Japanese more poetically call it, the River of Heaven.

From Lafcadio Hearn, "Fireflies", in Kottō (1902), pages 142-4.

Mark Marsters, "Rescuing the Gorilla Girl"

Academic Corner

Montagnais Impact Crater

The Montagnais Impact Crater is 50 million years old, and at 45 km in diameter is the 19th-largest known impact crater on Earth, and it's only about 200 km SSW of Halifax. Map source.