RTW ’25 Leftovers

Posted on June 12, 2025 by admin

Summertime, and the living’s not bad. Pretty good, really. But those aren’t as catchy as the actual lyric. Time to pause posting for the summer holiday string: Flag Day, Juneteenth, Canada Day, Independence Day and Nunavut Day. Come to think of it, that’s an exceptionally representative run of holidays for North America. Back around July 13.

The flight from Chicago to Tokyo took us far north, as that flight path usually does. There was more light than I thought there would be, looking down at this moment on the February snows of the Yukon or Alaska; I’ll never know which. I could have been eying the border, for all I know, which suggests that borders are a gossamer fiction at these latitudes.

Japan

It was a happy moment when we ate at Mos Burger. One of these days, I’m going to dig out my paper copy of an article I wrote for Kansai Time Out in 1993 about four varieties of Western-style fast food chains founded in Japan, and post it. Today isn’t that day. But I can say that Mos Burger was the best of them.

As good as I remember it from 25+ years ago, the last time I went to one.

In Enoshima, near the ocean, this fellow hawks soft serve ice cream. Goo goo g’joob. Look but don’t touch.

The handsome Osaka City Central Public Hall, completed in 1918. Amazing that it survived the war and urban renewal 20 years later, those forces that generally gave modern urban Japan the boxy concrete character it enjoys today.

India

A monumental monument in New Delhi: India Gate, which honors more than 74,100 soldiers of the Indian Army who died during the Great War, and a number more in the Third Afghan War a few years later. They did their part. One of the larger relics of the Raj, unless you count things better described as legacies, such as railroad lines, parliamentary government, and the bitter feud between India and Pakistan.

While we were looking at India Gate, a group of about a dozen uniformed schoolboys, who had detached themselves from a larger group, approached me and asked where I was from. They were gleeful to hear “America,” a reaction I didn’t know anyone would have anymore, but I suppose they’ve seen a lot of our movies. A middle-aged male chaperon appeared in short order and shooed them away, while giving me a sidelong glance with a hairy eyeball, though I hadn’t precipitated the encounter in any way. I was just a suspicious foreigner, I guess.

The Taj Mahal has a fair amount of parkland around it. That means a population of monkeys, too. I spotted more monkeys in urban India than I would have anticipated. These didn’t seem to be bothered by the men, the dogs or the motorcycle.

On display at the Ghandi Museum: a Marconigram. I don’t know that I’d ever seen one of those before. Or maybe there was one on display at the Titanic Museum in Branson. Anyway, that’s one good reason to go to museums: for things once common, now curiosities. Safia Zaghloul was an Egyptian political activist of the time.

United Arab Emirates

In Dubai it seemed like there were more men at work sweeping, mopping and other cleaning of floors and other flat places, per square meter, than anywhere else I’ve ever been. There are worse things to do with cheap labor.

Not sure exactly where this was, except somewhere out on Palm Jumeirah. Must have been a wall, or like a wall, in one of the posh retail corridors winding through one of the posh resort properties amid the poshness of the island.

Note: White on green is common indeed around the world.

Desert flowers. Of course, sprinklers water that bit of terrain at regular intervals.

Germany

What’s Berlin without currywurst? They say it came into style soon after the city was divided.

What would Germany be without Ritter Sport? A giant stack of them can be seen, in their great variety, at the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin. Later, I bought about 10 squares of RS at a discount price at a Netto grocery store near our hotel. Think Aldi or Lidl, but more cluttered.

Views of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, near the Tiergarten in Berlin. It wasn’t there in 1983.

Czech Republic

Not calling it Czechia. Or, if it ever comes to it, not calling India Bharat, either.

St. George’s Basilica. I admired the nearby St. Vitus Cathedral. That’s a grand edifice. But St. George’s has that human scale, and echoes of an even earlier time. It was completed during the time of Good King Wenceslaus.

Vladislav Hall. The site of centuries of Bohemian parties, banquets and balls, me boys. That and affairs of state.

The Dancing House. We rode a streetcar line out of our way to see it, though not that far. It wasn’t there in 1994.

A sidewalk golem in the old Jewish Quarter of Prague. The Sidewalk Golems was a relatively obscure band who sometimes toured with Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys.

This could have been over Spain or Portugal.

The last image of thousands that I took, a staggering number in any context except digital images that take practically no time or effort to make.

Rosehill Cemetery: Stones Among the Green

Posted on June 10, 2025 by admin

Something I didn’t expect to see Sunday before last at Rosehill Cemetery – which is surrounded by the densely populated North Side of Chicago – were deer. But there they were, peacefully munching on grass, living the unusual life of urban deer on the cemetery’s 350 acres. By acreage, Rosehill happens to be the largest in the city.

I dropped Yuriko off at her cake class in Humboldt Park that morning and headed north to visit the cemetery. It was a fine, warm day. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been there, but I knew it had been too long, since Rosehill is one of the great metro Chicago cemeteries, in the same league as Graceland, Bohemian National, Mount Carmel, Oak Woods and Forest Home.

Of all those, Rosehill has the grandest entrance. Once upon a time, trains brought caskets to a station nearby, and hearses would take their funereal loads through the limestone gate, designed by William Boyington (d. 1898), who is better known for the Chicago Water Tower. Just based on those two examples, seems like he was partial to crenellations.

Boyington is also buried in the cemetery, but I didn’t look for him. There was too much else amid the greenery to track down everyone notable. I did make a point of finding the mausoleum of Charles G. Dawes, 30th Vice President of the United States, who served during Coolidge’s full term from 1925 to ’29.

Rosehill doesn’t have a vast number of mausoleums, but there are some others.

Hey, it’s Darius!

In his Egyptian-style tomb. One for the ages. As a baby name, Darius had a vogue just before and after the turn of the 21st century, when as many as 0.06 percent of babies born in the U.S. received that name. Mostly boys (as you’d think), but a few girls. It would have never occurred to us to append that name to either of our daughters during those years, which happened to be prime child-naming years for us.

I liked this memorial – a path to the water feature, shared by the Weese and Meyer families.

Mausoleums are well and good, but the main reason Rosehill is among the Chicago greats: a rich variety of memorials in a lush setting.

This is Francis Willard, founder of the WCTU.

A wordy memorial, though I’m sure with fond intentions on the part of his family. Here is an obit. Sadly odd that for an expert in eldercare, he only lived to be 66. Not terrifically old, in my current opinion.

Most permanent residents were not notable in life, something almost everyone could say at any point in history. What remains are stones old and worn or merely simple. The most affecting ones, in some ways.

For the affluent who don’t want a mausoleum, there’s always a bronze. Good to give living artists some work, if you or your heirs are going to spend money that way.

Charles J. Hull (d. 1889).

I had to look him up. As this article says, an unusual sort of man. Even for the 19th century, when odd men aplenty could be found in the young Republic. Eventually he made his fortune in Chicago real estate and was a major philanthropist, but I enjoyed more reading about his young life. As a teenager – a term no one would have used at the time – he ran an unlicensed tavern in Ohio for three years. That came to a bad end, and he not only became a teetotaler afterward, he eventually was a temperance activist. Not that I’d want to have lived then, but I feel a sneaking admiration for the lax rules of the time.

Daiso USA

Posted on June 9, 2025 by admin

Retail comes and goes. After we visited Jo-Ann’s – where I bought a single item, an olive-theme doormat for our deck – we went a short distance to something new. Newish, that is, to North America, but well-established in Japan: Daiso.

We hadn’t noticed this particular northwest suburban location before. Back in February, we visited one in Tokyo, which was my first time at the chain, though I’d written about it before. Worldwide, there are about 6,000 Daiso locations, with only 150 in the U.S., and even those are fairly recent arrivals.

The store has an impressive amount of inexpensive goods, and a more imaginative selection that you’d find in a dollar store. Better designed, too. Things cost money in Japan, naturally, and sometimes quite a lot, but that country doesn’t share the notion, common here in America, that if you don’t pay a lot, you deserve crappy design.

Socks and clocks, among many other items.

Also, an unusual pricing structure.

I didn’t buy one of these, because we have one – an odd souvenir from the Bluegrass Inn during a stay in ’08. More recently I used it to swat moths.

Mangled English, no extra charge. An authentic Japanese touch.

The End of an Era? No.

Posted on June 8, 2025 by admin

Recently I was thinking about the closure of Jo-Ann stores, for reasons that will be obvious shortly. Seeking more information about the retailer, I came across an article published at a site called dengarden. The headline says, It’s the End of an Era: Joann Fabrics Has Officially Closed All of Its Stores.

A human- or machine-written head? It doesn’t matter, there’s a cliché that needs to be retired. End of an Era, eh? I remember thinking the same thing when the last Radio Shack bit the dust. Or maybe not.

The company is – was – Jo-Ann Stores. What will customers do without it? “Big-box retailers like Michaels and Hobby Lobby offer a decent selection of fabric and craft materials,” the article says. “Online shops, from niche sewing stores to large marketplaces, have stepped in to fill the gap. Many small, independently owned fabric and yarn stores are also gaining attention as shoppers turn local.”

The closure might be a hardship for those who lost their jobs, but for everyone else, this barely qualifies as the turn of a page, much less the end of an era.

But I quibble. A few weeks ago, at Yuriko’s request, we went to a nearby Jo-Ann store to look for bargains. Rather, she did.

I went to witness the retail dissolution in person. The place had that Venezuelan store look, assuming the reports about that nation are still correct.

Even toward the end of a store’s existence, there can be oddities.

I didn’t buy it, even at a steep discount. Will I regret my decision from now on, until I reach my deathbed? Nah.

The Quick and the Dead

Posted on June 5, 2025 by admin

In Japan, it was never necessary to have a car. In theory, one could wish such a condition for North America, but I wouldn’t want to give up the option of getting in a vehicle and driving a few hundred miles at a go, or further, to seek out fun roads.

There are probably similarly engaging roads in Japan, but I prefer trains there. We took quite a few during the recent visit. Some were crowded, as subways in rush hour tend to be, but none required the assistance of white-gloved train employees shoving passengers into cars – an image known to gaijin lore as much as the vending machines that sell weird items, but one I never saw at any time, even during rush hours in the ’90s. (And the vast majority of Japanese vending machines sell drinks.)

Scenes on the trains.

Almost everyone was paying attention to their phones, but not quite everyone. Still, the fellow reading a book – maybe manga – was a rarity this time around. Thirty years ago, half the car would have been reading physical books.

The train from Kamakura to the seaside spot of Enoshima runs along the ocean for a while, inspiring some passengers to take pictures of the scene.

Unfortunately this time there was no time to visit that most beautiful of cemeteries in Japan or anywhere else: Okuno-in at Koya-san, which is about an hour’s train ride from central Osaka. But there was a cemetery near where we stayed, a more ordinary one in the far reaches of suburban Osaka. I don’t know its name.

It is essentially just a sliver of land not dedicated to anything else. Around it is a short fence.

Around that is a neighborhood.

It also happens to be the location of my mother- and father-in-law’s memorial and ashes.

RIP, Enomoto-san.

Kamakura Stroll Garden

Posted on June 4, 2025 by admin

On the extensive grounds of Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura – or maybe a separate entity adjacent to the shrine, it wasn’t quite clear – was a garden that managed to sport flowers in mid-February.

Part of the gardeners’ strategy seemed to be tepee-like straw structures over the blooms, many of them ‘mid the garden stones.

There must be a word for that sort of cover. In English or Japanese or some other language, and it must work somehow, though speaking as a non-gardener, it doesn’t look like it would keep cold air out. The area is roughly the same latitude as Nashville or Oklahoma City, certainly far enough north for some chilly winter days, though presumably the ocean off Kamakura moderates temps somewhat in Kamakura. Anyway, it does get cold there, as this detailed climate page notes.

Or maybe the growing season is longer than it used to be. Whatever could be the cause of that?

Not every floral growth was covered.

Even without flowers, the place made for a pleasant stroll in an elegant setting.

What would a kaiyushiki teien, a stroll garden, be without bamboo?

Or a stone lantern?

After we strolled the garden, we made our way to the Kamakura Daibutsu, the Big Buddha, a bronze of many tons that somehow makes you think about impermanence. As February days go, the one in Kamakura was top-notch.

Birdman of Osaka Castle Park

Posted on June 3, 2025 by admin

In Chinese city parks during our visit in 1994, it was fairly common to see (mostly) elderly men out for a walk with their birds. Their songbirds in cages, that is, which the men carried along with them and would hang somewhere nearby while they rested on benches. This article at least asserts that the practice goes back to the Qing Dynasty, which was founded in 1644. I’d never seen such a thing before anywhere else, and not since, until we visited Osaka Castle Park in February.

Note the fellow in the blue jacket and blue hat, near one of the former castle walls, with birds perched on his head and shoulders. He seemed to be out for a stroll with his birds.

They were living, chirping birds that would periodically fly away, but they would also come back. The bird at the left bottom corner of the image was one of his as well, tethered to a string he’s grasping with his hand. Guess that was a bird in training.

Of course, Japan is not China, however much the Japanese borrowed from China in earlier centuries. Bird walking wasn’t one of those borrowings, so I believe this man and his birds were eccentric outliers who eschewed cages for freedom of movement. Still, the level of training is impressive. It’s one thing to train the birds to return – carrier pigeons do that – but do they know to go somewhere else when it’s time to drop a load? I’d hope so, but I don’t know whether that is possible.

Even in winter, Osaka Castle Park (Osaka-jo Koen, 大阪城公園) is a pleasant place to stroll. We didn’t enter the castle itself, where we’d both been a few times before, but took in some nice views of it.

Many of the trees are plums. They are the first to blossom, and we could see the very beginnings of buds, but we were too early for full flowering.

Later, peach and cherries blossom in the park, though the place to see cherry blossoms in Osaka without the crowds in 1990s – and there were always crowds in the large parks, including the grounds of the Japan Mint – was Osaka Gogoku Shrine in Suminoe Ward. I’ll bet it still is.

Japanese Food

Posted on June 2, 2025 by admin

Take a pork cutlet, a nice thin one but not too thin, dredge a bit in flour, dip in beaten egg, coat with panko, and deep fry in light oil. Serve sliced so that the pieces are easier to manage with chopsticks, and with a brown Worcestershire-y sauce (but better, I think). Add a bed of lettuce, and sides of rice, miso and Japanese pickles.

A modest dish, but there’s nothing quite like a good tonkatsu. It is an example of salaryman food. Of course, other people eat it – a lot in my case, since the happy day sometime in 1990 when I had it for the first time. But in the lunchtime domain of male office workers in dense Osaka, the Kitchen of Japan, tonkatsu is a familiar regular (and in other parts of the country, too). They are little works of fragrant and delicious art whose purpose is to be eaten for the pocket money that their wives allow them for lunches.

Naturally, I sought it out during my recent days in Japan. This one is before the application of sauce. It’s the legacy of a Japanese adaptation of a European, specifically French dish, back in the 19th century. A detail from the Meiji era.

Another popular adaptation in Japan, spotted among the office towers near Osaka Castle. Doughnuts have long had a home in Japan.

Yes. It was time.

Another day, during a solo wander in the streets near Midosuji Blvd., I took rest at a small coffee shop, part of a large chain.

Doutor Coffee has some 1,200 locations in East Asia, with a concentration of 900 or so in Japan and others in Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore. I expect most of them are franchised locations, and many are along underground pedestrian ways near subways or train stations. Mine was so close to a subway station entrance, you could hear the soft beeping of the electronic tickets and the slightly louder clank of the turnstiles if you decided to pay attention.

Mostly, the place was quiet, with people setting themselves in front of their laptops or fiddling with their phones. I joined the laptop users, pecking out emails or parts of whatever article was due next.

Considering the strong dollar (in February, anyway), the tab for milk tea and a warm chocolate croissant came in less than double digits in US dollar terms. But a refreshing beverage and a tasty snack are only part of the deal: you’re also renting a place to sit.

But not a place to smoke anymore. I was a little surprised, considering how consistently tobacco smoke used to linger, or sometimes billow and swirl, in public spaces in Japan 30+ years ago. That shift oddly reminded me of visits to Preservation Hall in 1981 and 1989 (minus the jazz, of course). The first time, the jazzmen played in a room lightly clouded with smoke. Eight years later, the air was clear.

Volo Bog State Natural Area

Posted on May 29, 2025 by admin

Not a sign that you see very often.

Unless you visit Volo Bog State Natural Area often. It is “the only open-water quaking bog in Illinois,” according to the Illinois DNR, and I’m inclined to believe it, though sad to say my grasp of the scientific difference between a bog, marsh and a swamp is weak. Still, as a pleasant spring day, we figured Sunday was a good time to re-visit the bog, up northwest, about a 45-minute drive.

It had been a while. But I can say that the trail still wobbles a bit, which still takes a few minutes’ getting used to.

” ‘It’s moving,’ I heard either Lilly or Rachel say ahead of me, since they were first to reach the trail, which is a boardwalk over the bog,” I wrote in May 2010. “The boardwalk’s wobble is a little unnerving at first, but before long you get used to it. For anyone over about three years old, anyone who is sober anyway, the danger of pitching into the bog is pretty low.”

It’s moist down there. I’d expect no less of a bog. I know that much, anyway.

“Formed in an ancient glacial kettle hole lake, Volo Bog features a floating mat of sphagnum moss, cattails and sedges surrounding the open pool of water in the center of the bog,” the DNR says. “Further from the open water, the mat thickens enough to even support floating trees!”

The open pool.

The public land at Volo Bog includes more than just the bog. A path loops around the property in parts that are a little less sloshy underfoot.

It takes a while, but when the full flush of spring comes to the North, it’s exuberant.

A modest but elegant building, a barn homage, houses the visitor center. Closed.

Bird apartments. Or maybe bats.

Tip of the hat (if I had a hat) to the Nature Conservancy, whose actions in the late ’50s preserved the bog. The organization has done the same for 119 million acres of land over six decades, E&E News reports, citing the organization itself.

The Chicago Riverwalk

Posted on May 27, 2025 by admin

Noon, Friday, May 23, 2025, on the Chicago River.

Recently I saw another old acquaintance, in a way. Officially, the water cannon that shoots across the Chicago River on the hour for five minutes at a pop during the warm months of the year is the Nicholas J. Melas Centennial Fountain. The bridge off in the distance is where Lake Shore Drive crosses the river.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the fountain, but see it I did at some point, because the jet has been arcing across the river for more than 35 years.

Operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago, the fountain was built to celebrated the district’s centennial and named for a district functionary. Chicago architect Dirk Lohan – who has a great spy or private eye or assassin name – designed the thing. I was glad to learn that he’s still alive.

By Friday the weather was finally spring-like, clear and warmish, and I took the opportunity to stroll along most of the length of the Chicago Riverwalk, which has a good view of the water cannon. I had some time before meeting an old friend for lunch on Michigan Avenue, so I though it was high time I took that stroll.

I used to go downtown every weekday, but that hasn’t been the case since 2005 – just about the time that the first section of the riverwalk was completed. Other sections have been added since then. Counting a few brief visits over the last 20 years, and a walk along the western section, I’d rarely gotten around to a long stroll along the river, especially the eastern section (east of Michigan Ave.).

As public space infrastructure goes, I have to say that the city did a nice job. I started at the Vietnam Veterans memorial, which isn’t far west of Michigan Avenue on the south bank of the river. In fact, all of the riverwalk in on the south bank.

The fact that the Riverwalk is close to the river enhances the views, I believe.

An old favorite.

Once known as the IBM Building. That’s what I call it anyway. A Mies van der Rohe design. If you’re going to do modernism, that is the way to do it.

Now that I’ve seen the Burj Khalifa, I can appreciated a little better other works by Adrian Smith. No need to mention the building name.

As the day before a holiday weekend, and a spring-like one at that, people were out and about. A half-dozen tour boats at least buzzed by while I was walking.

The walk also provided underviews of Chicago River bridges, such as under Michigan Ave.

Under Columbus Dr.

Cool. Even better if the city painted the steel and iron in various bright colors. They could then be promoted as something unique to Chicago, encouraging tourists to come and Instagram them.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There