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This episode we look at time and direction and the influence of geomancy--theories of Yin and Yang and a little bit of how people viewed the world through that lens.  For more, check out the blog page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-127 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 127: Time and Direction in Ancient Yamato   Officers of the court stood in the pavilion.  The soft trill of water could be heard trickling from one reservoir to the next.  They watched closely, as the figure of a court official, one hand out, pointing at a measuring stick, slowly rose along with the water.  Eventually, the figure's outstretched arm indicated a line with a single character next to it. On cue, one of the officials began to beat the large drum that was nearby.  The rhythm was slow, but deliberate, and the sound was loud, echoing out to the mountains and back, showering the nearby palaces in a layer of sound.  Across the palace, people briefly paused, took note of the number of strokes, and by that they knew the time of day.  Without giving it much more thought, they then went about their business.     This episode we find ourselves partway through the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou—his formal reign started in 668, but he had been pretty much running things since the death of Takara Hime in 661 and, arguably, for much longer than that.  668, however, saw Naka no Oe ascend the throne in his new palace of Otsu no Miya, officially making him the sovereign.  And although 645 is the year Naka no Oe and others had started the Taika Reforms, it's not wrong to say that  that 668 and the start of Naka no Oe's official reign, brief as it would be, that he finally had the ability to bring it all together and set it into stone. We've talked about many of these reforms before on the podcast, but a lot of them were associated with the continued push to incorporate continental concepts into Yamato society, covering everything from court ranks to how to organize agricultural production.  Of course, there was also Buddhism, which we've covered numerous times, but there were other concepts coming across as well, including ideas about history and writing, as well as ancient STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  This included architects, and new ways of constructing buildings.  And it also meant ways of seeing the world, including things like directions and time.  And this is what I want to focus on this episode, taking a break from the primary narrative to spend some time on what we might call Yamato concepts of science, especially how they thought about the structure of reality organization of time and the universe – their cosmology, as it were.  After all, to better understand the reasoning and motives of people, it is helpful to try and understand how they saw the world, not just for translation—understanding what it means when an entry says something like the “Hour of the Horse” on an “Elder Wood” day—but also for understanding how things actually worked in their eyes.  For instance, the idea of ”auspicious” and “inauspicious” times and directions is something that most listeners probably don't incorporate much into their daily lives, but the Chroniclers and the people of Yamato absolutely did, so understanding concepts like this can sometimes be the key to unlocking why historical people may have taken the actions that they did.  In particular, we'll talk about things like yin and yang, five elements, ten stems and twelve earthly branches, and what all this meant for the Yamato ideas of organizing time and space. A large part of Yamato cosmology is tied to something called Onmyoudou, literally the Way of Yin and Yang, which in the organization of the Ritsuryo state fell under a particular ministry, known as the Onmyo-ryo.  If you've heard of Onmyoudou before, you likely have heard about the “Onmyouji”, practitioners who studied the flow of yin and yang—and who could reportedly do miraculous things with that.  A 10th century Onmyoji, the famous Abe no Seimei, is perhaps the most well-known, with numerous stories about his exploits, which were then turned into a fantastical series of stories by the award-winning author, Baku Yumemakura.  Those were then turned into Manga, movies, and more.  Abe no Seimei is like Japan's Merlin, or Gandalf, at least in the stories. Back to the organization we mentioned, the Onmyou-ryou was responsible for Yin-Yang theory, or Onmyou-dou, which included divination, as well as astronomy, or Tenmon-dou, and calendar making, or reki-dou.  While some of this was based on straight up natural observances, a lot of it was explained through older concepts of Yin and Yang theory.  Today, you might encounter a lot of this in the theories around Feng Shui, and this can also be referred to as “geomancy”, or earth divination.   To give a broad overview of Onbmyoudou and its origins, it is part of a large corpus of concepts focused around a concept of energy known as qi or ki—which forms the basis for a lot of Chinese and Japanese cosmology, or their concept of how the world worked.  Much of this is tied up in concepts that are modernly broadly called “Daoist” or associated with so-called Daoist practices.  That term can be a bit misleading, as strictly speaking, Daoism refers to the teachings of the legendary philosopher Laozi, in his book, the Dao De Jing, as well as works attributed to later authors, like the Zhuangzi. There is some controversy as to when and to what extent this strict Daoism came to Japan.  However, in the broader sense, the category of “Daoist “ practices includes an entire panoply of various folk practices, including concepts of Yin and Yang – and in the archipelago, many of these concepts were imported with the various books that people had acquired on the mainland, even if they weren't strictly tied to Daoist religious practice.  For example, there were aspects that were borrowed by various Shinto shrines, and others formalized into ritual practices under the new government.  And of course many of these became linked to various Buddhist teachings and practices, as well.   But what did this actually look like in concept and practice for practitioners of Onmyoudo in Japan? Let's start with the idea of yin and yang.  One of the earliest references comes from the Zhou Yi, the Zhou Book of Changes, the core of what we also know as the Yijing, the Book of Changes.  Here we see the idea that the universe began with a single force that split into two, and those two forces make up all of creation in one way or another.  Yin and Yang, or In and You—or even Onmyou—refer to these forces, which are characterized as shadow and light, moon and sun, female and male, cold and hot, etc.  So these forces are opposites, but it should be noted that they are not necessarily good or evil.  After all, too cold is just as bad as too hot.  Likewise too much darkness is as blinding as too much light. As most people have seen, yin and yang are often depicted as a circle divided into two comma shapes, with a smaller circle in each.  One side is white with a black circle and the other is black with a white circle.  This is the “Tai Chi” diagram, but the diagram itself doesn't seem to have been depicted like this prior to the 11th century, at least that we are aware. But the concepts are much older.    Now if you've heard of the Yijing, where it came from is something of a mystery.  One theory is that it started as a written account of folk wisdom, and may have even given instructions for things like when to plant and when to harvest, based on changes in various heavenly phenomena.   But overall it is organized into 64 chapters, each associated with a particular hexagram.  Start with a line, that can either be a full line – representing yang – or a broken line representing yin.  Stack three of these on top of one another and you get a trigram.  If you chart out every single possible combination of yin and yang lines, you get 8 unique trigrams, sometimes referred to as the baqua.  Stack two trigrams atop one another and you get a hexagram, a combination of 6 lines that can have 8 by 8 or 64 unique variants.   It's theorized that the Yijing resulted from taking all of the collected sayings or aphorisms and bits of advice and cataloguing and dividing them into 64 chapters, each one associated with a given hexagram. Going further, each line of the hexagram is  associated with particular line in Yijing, and various meanings are ascribed to it and its association.  It's a complex and fascinating system and I don't have time to go into it fully, but I would note that this was used as a form of divination—yarrow stalks or other means of random lot drawing that gives you a binary outcome – zero or one, yin or yang – could be used to determine the six lines of any given hexagram.  This, in turn, would reference a chapter in the Yijing which was then interpreted as a sign as to how to read a given situation that you might find yourself in. What's really important to understanding the worldview of the time is this idea, represented by the hexagrams in the Yijing, that you can encompass everything about the universe by making and cataloging different amounts and arrangements of yin and yang. It's a science, as it were – a systematic approach to understanding the differences in the world by breaking it into component parts.    And if this seems preposterous, consider this:  today we understand that all things are made up of tiny atoms.  And these atoms are all made up of the same material—protons, neutrons, and electrons.  And yet, how those atomic particles combine create atoms with wildly different qualities.  And how those atoms then combine into molecules and so on and so forth describe how we explain everything around us.  So is it really so far-fetched? I'm not saying that we should suddenly start to figure out the measurements of yin and yang in everything, but if we want to understand how the people of the time saw their world, it may be helpful to hold an open mindand understand the assumptions that they were working from and where they came from.  As human beings, we naturally look for connections in the world around us, and this was no exception.  People would observe facts, know how that it worked, and often then would back into the reason for it.  This is a tale told across cultures, and we still see it, today.  At the same time, we've developed structured approaches to test out our theories, empirically. So for the moment, let's leave the trigrams and hexagrams, and talk about another idea that also gained traction as people were trying to figure out how the world worked.  This was the five elements theory also known as Wuxing, or Gogyou, in Japanese.  The five elements in this case are Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, and Earth.  Some may notice that these, along with the sun and the moon, are used in Japanese for the days of the week:  Nichi (sun), getsu (moon), ka (fire), sui (water), moku (wood), kin (metal), do (earth). Buddhists, by the way, also had an elemental system with only four elements,  Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, possibly connected with some Greek influence, and brought along with Buddhist practice.  For now, however, let's focus on the five elements. The idea in wuxing is similar to that of yin and yang in that everything in creation is made up of these five elements in some degree and configuration.  Furthermore, there are creation and destruction cycles.  So fire creates ash, or earth.  Earth gives birth to metal.  Metal creates water—look at a cold piece of metal in a warm environment and see how the water droplets form on it, and imagine what that looks like without understanding humidity and how there could be water vapor in the air.  And then water creates wood, or plants—any farmer could tell you that without water the plants die.  And wood is where we get fire from. Of course, the reverse cycle is the opposite.  Fire eats the wood.  Wood drinks up the water.  Water rusts metal.  Metal tools plough the earth. And Earth can be used to douse fire. Finally, there is another cycle of weakening. ,. Because fire heats and weakens metal, metal chops down wood, the trees roots break up rocks, the earth soaks up water, and water likewise puts out or weakens fire. So the theory went, if these elements make up all matter, these relationships continue on a more complex scale in everything.  So if something was thought to contain a lot of “fire” element, then it would be potentially helpful if you needed “Earth” but destructive or at least weakening to metal and wood.  Properly accounting for these elements was important to achieve the results you were looking for, whatever that may be.   These were the kinds of things that were incorporated into traditional medicine practices, but also applied to auguries or divination about things like where and how to build a building.  Even today, Shrines will sell calendars that help people know the prominence of certain elements, and some folk remedies may look to balance elements, much as medieval European medicine was often designed to balance the four humors that ancient physicians believed were present in the human body. The chart of these five elements and their relationships is something you may have seen.  It is a five pointed star, often inside of a circle.  Of course this is also similar to a western pentagram, though typically drawn with the point of the star up, but it has nothing to do with Christian values or Satan, or anything similar.  Rather, it is just a way to represent these five elements, and you'll see it frequently in reference to Onmyoudou. The elements were used to categorize many different areas into groupings of five.  This includes grouping the various directions into five directions.  Of course, you may be wondering about that, since most societies usually mark four cardinal directions, and in this case, they did the same, but added the fifth as “center”.  And so you get things like the north is water.  It is related to cool, or cold weather.  It is represented with the color black. To the south, opposite of the north, is fire.  It is hot, and the color is red.  Of course, this probably doesn't take a huge leap to see the connections they drew: since these civilizations are in the northern hemisphere, the farther north you go, the colder it gets, and the farther south you travel, the warmer it gets, generally speaking, at least until you reach the equator. Meanwhile, the west was related to metal, and the color white, while the east was related to woods and forests, and the color…. Blue.  Alright, that last one, in particular, probably doesn't make sense to a lot of us.  After all, we likely associate blue with water, and wood, or trees, would be associated with brown or, possibly, green.  Well, in this case, it goes beyond that.  The north is water, but it is also associated with darkness—shorter days in the winter, and things like that Sothe association of north with black makes sense, but many also look at the ocean and don't necessarily see it as “blue”, or dark or even black, like Homer's famous “wine-dark sea”. Furthermore, although they have a word for it (midori), “green” was not a primary color in Japan, instead  considered more of a shade of “aoi”, or blue.  Even today they refer to a “green” traffic light as an “aoi shingo, not “midori” shingo.  So if you asked someone in the Asuka period to describe the wooded hills and fields, they would have likely used “aoi”.  And of course, we are missing the fifth element.  In the center we have the element earth and the color yellow. A lot of these different concepts were brought together during the Han period, when they were trying to syncretize all of the various philosophies and attempts to describe the world and bring them all together into a single system.  This meant that the Yijing, the wuxing theory, and others were mixed together with various other philosophies and theories of how the world work.  Things like the Shanhaijing, the Classic of Mountain and Seas, along with stories about immortals, the Queen Mother of the West, and more were all rolled together, and basically assumed to be true.  This included various real-world observations.  Therefore, there were many attempts to try and reconcile these various theories together. One of the other concepts, which we've discussed before, was the system of ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches.  We've mentioned this before regarding the sexagenary style of counting the years, but we'll recap here.  The ten heavenly stems and the twelve earthly branches are concepts that go back to at least the legendary Shang period, and even show up in various bronzes Andit wasn't until later that they would be associated with other ideas.  The ten heavenly stems were each associated with one of the five elements, with each element being represented by a greater and lesser, or elder and younger, stem.  And then each of the twelve earthly branches were associated with animals—what we often call the Chinese Zodiac. We talked about how this applied to the calendar, in that it was used to track years in 60 year cycles, but also it was used to track days of the year.  The twelve earthly branches were also used for earthly directions.  The first, the rat, was in the north, and the order continued clockwise to the east, the south, west and then back to the north.  Now this means that the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west—all match up nicely with one of the twelve earthly branches, but as for northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest?  Those were all combinations of two branches.  So, for instance, the northeast was a combination of the ox and the tiger, or ushi-tora. Speaking of eight directions, where have we also heard the number eight come up recently? That's right: the eight trigrams, or bagua.  So each one of those trigrams, each representing a different concept, got associated with a direction as well.  This makes it easier to see where practices of geomancy came from.   You had a system with complex, overlapping associations between concepts and the physical world, and in the Tang dynasty, they used all of this  to understand not only  how things had happened, but also how the world would be in the future—in other words, they tried to use it to make predictions.  Hence the “mancy”. In the Yamato state, all of this became an official part of the government under the Onmyoryou: a branch of the government whose job is to make observations and figure things out from there, for the good of the state and the people.  They made observations of the heavens to figure out how the calendar should be aligned—which months should come at what time, and when there should be “leap months”, or intercalary months, to keep various astronomical phenomena in the correct seasons, which were also further divided up into 24 periods.  They also kept track of the movement of bodies like the various planets, because those planets were also assigned values, and thought to affect the flow of energy within this framework.  And so comets, storms, eclipses, and more were all important because of the theory that everything in the heavens impacted and were reflections of how things were happening on the earth.  Similarly, these various discussions of white animals and other omens were likely captured and catalogued by these officials as well, attempting to figure out what they meant. All of this also influenced things like how palaces, buildings, and even capitals, would be built and laid out.  For the palace, it was important the the sovereign be in the north, looking south.  In fact, many maps would have south at the top because that is how a sovereign would be viewing it, were it stretched out before them.  And one would need to consider various features, including mountains and streams, as all of those things carried various meanings, but it wasn't as simple as just finding the one thing that could affect a person.  As they observed differences they would also have to catalogue what happened and try to determine what the cause could be, based on their understanding of the world.  And in the archipelago this would also include an understanding of Buddhist and local kami-based wisdom and knowledge as well. One of the things in the Chronicles that inspired this episode was something I actually mentioned last time,  a record from 666  talking about Chiyu, a Buddhist priest of the Yamato no Aya family, who presented a south-pointing chariot to the sovereign, Naka no Oe.  this appears to be the same Chiyu from a similar record in 658, which also refers to him building a south pointing chariot.  So did it take him eight years, or is he just now presenting it to the sovereign?  And what, exactly, is a south-pointing chariot? Well, as the name implies, a south-pointing chariot is a two-wheeled chariot that always points south.  More appropriately stated, it is a wheeled device with a figure on top, much like a weather vane, which always points south.  This is usually described as the figure of a person or an official pointing in the appropriate direction.  This was a mechanical, rather than a magnetic compass. As the chariot, or carriage, is wheeled around, the two wheels spin.  The wheels themselves are independently connected to a series of gears.  If the wheels spin at the same rate, then their movement cancels each other out.  However, if one wheel turns more than the other, then it will cause the figure on the top to rotate.  Of course, as the chariot turns to the right, the left wheel, traveling along the outer diameter, will travel farther than the right.  This will cause the figure to turn counter-clockwise to the left, but from an outside observer's perspective, it will continue to point in the same direction, even as the chariot itself turns.  Turning to the left would cause the opposite effect. Though it may have been used earlier, there appears to be reliable written evidence of a South Pointing chariot starting from the third century.  The first one was based on much earlier stories of a similar device, but it is unclear if it was a chariot, some other device, or even just a legend that was told as historical fact.  From the third century on the design appears to have been continuously improved upon. I should point out that all we have is descriptions—we don't have any actual south pointing chariots, let alone diagrams showing how the mechanisms worked.  There is the possibility that it used a kind of differential gear to work automatically, but we don't have any actual evidence.  There are other theories that it may have required some kind of manual switch, so that it would attach to one wheel or the other as needed.  That would require that the chariot be moving in either a straight direction or turning in one particular direction, which seems rather unwieldy. I noted some of the problems with this, and even moreso in a place like Japan, where 70% of the terrain is mountains.  Up and down hills, along paths that are likely anything but the smooth, paved surface we have for roads today—and even those have plenty of irregularities and potholes that could throw off any such device. And if you want to use it for any real distance, then you have to factor in other things, including the curvature of the earth.  After all, with the earth being a sphere, any chariot traveling due west to east or east to west, other than at the equator, would have one wheel traveling farther than the other one.  Granted, at the scale we are talking about, it probably is all but negligible, and the rough terrain and simple slippage of what were most likely wooden gears probably entered a lot more variability than the earth's curvature. One of the other issues is that the chariot only points “south” if you set it up to do so.   And if you know that, well, why do you need a south-pointing chariot?  Ultimately, it seems that this is more of a novelty item, good for impressing crowds and demonstrating some engineering principles, rather than an actual, useful invention.  After all, it was forgotten about and recreated multiple times, often centuries apart.  Had it been a truly useful invention, it probably would have been kept in constant use.  Meanwhile, I suspect that there were a fair number of farmers and others who knew that you could more easily and reliably use the sun and stars, as long as the weather was clear. There is also some evidence of an understanding of magnetic compasses since at least the 2nd Century BCE.  Early Han sources suggest that a spoon made of naturally magnetized ore could be placed on top of a polished bronze surface, and it would align itself north to south.  We don't have any actual surviving examples, however—there are later versions that you can find, where the plate is divided up into various directions, and then a magnetized “spoon” is placed on top, but nothing has actually come from Han tombs.  Furthermore, this seems to mostly be for geomantic purposes.  A more practical compass, with a magnetized needle, seems to have been developed by the 11th century, which could then be used for actual navigation. By the way, the “spoon” as a compass pointer may be in reference to the “Big Dipper” constellation, which was envisioned as a spoon, or ladle, in shape.  The seven stars were often used in geomancy, likely because of their importance, at least in the northern hemisphere, of pointing to the north.  So there's some thought that the “needles” of these early compasses weren't litterally  spoon shaped, but symbolically representive of the Big Dipper or the Northern Ladle.  Quick astronomy lesson, here.  If you are in the northern hemisphere, particularly from the 35th parallel to the north pole, you can see the seven stars that make up the constellation or asterism we know as the Big Dipper.   In English we sometimes also refer to this as Ursa Major, though technically the familiar seven stars are just a part of that larger constellation.  In Japan, the same constellation is often referred to as Hokuto Shichisei, the Seven Stars of the Northern Ladle.  It can be seen further south, but parts of it may dip below the horizon during the autumn season. It is important for several reasons.  One is that it is made up of particularly bright stars, which you can generally see even when other stars may not be visible.  Second, its distinctive shape lends itself to being easy to find in the sky.  And finally, if you draw a line between two of the stars at the end of the “cup” of the ladle, you can follow that line to find Polaris or hokkyokusei, the north star, which means you know which direction is north- and once  you know that, you can use it to figure out any other direction.  And Polaris is less than a degree off of true north, making it even more accurate than most magnets, as the magnetic pole can be quite different, depending on its current position, and magnetic north changes over time as the magnetic field around the earth fluctuates. That said, this was not necessarily the case in ancient times.  Four thousand years ago, the star closest to true north would have been the star Thuban, in the constellation Draco, a star that most of us probably haven't heard of.  Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear, also known as the Little Dipper) apparently took over as the north star around 500 CE.  However, even before then, the mouth of the dipper could still be used to indicate north.  In fact, if you draw a line between two of the stars in the back of the constellation, then you also end up finding Thuban.  So even if the north star itself wasn't accurate, finding the dipper would still help you orient yourself, especially if you can find true north during the day and then compare that with the constellation at night. Which helps to understand why astronomy, or Tenmondou, was so important in the Onmyouryou.  Though it wasn't just a study of stars, but of the way of the heavens in general.  And the changes in the heavens, brings us to another important concept—the flow of energy across the seasons.  From the bright days of summer, filled with sunshine and yang energy, to the dark yin energy of winter's long, cold nights. It wasn't enough to just know what happened, and where, but when was also important. Obviously you need to know when to sow seeds, flood the fields, and harvest the rice.  Beyond that, though, you have other concepts, such as how the the day and hour of an event could be symbolically important. And of course, all of these had their own associations with various concepts of the flow of yin and yang energy. Now knowing the year, the month, and even the day is largely just a matter of counting.  But let's talk about something a little more tricky:  How do you know the hour? This brings us to the vignette at the top of the episode, about the clepsydra, or water clock, that Naka no Oe is said to have built. Now we talked about some of the fountains and similar things that have been discovered in the Asuka region back in episode 118.  One thing that they believe they also found evidence of is something called a water clock, which is, as its name suggests, a clock powered by water.  It is typically depicted as a series of three or more boxes or reservoirs that each hold an amount of water.  Water is placed in the top reservoir, and then a hole towards the bottom is unplugged and it is allowed to drain into the box beneath.  The hole is of a particular size, and thus the water flows at a constant rate, filling up the container below, which has a similar hole, etc. all the way to a reservoir at the very bottom.  The multiple boxes mean that the water level in the intermediate boxes stays relatively constant, resulting in relatively consistent pressure and flow rate.  The last reservoir has a measuring stick on a float, so that as the last box is filled with water, the measuring stick raises up.  Since it is rising at a constant rate, one can use that to tell how much time has passed, regardless of anything else.  Thus you can keep time even at night. There is a record of Naka no Oe making one in the fifth month of 660, and he would have another one built in 671, which we will discuss later.  It is interesting that both of these inventions appear twice in the narrative—once during the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenchi Tenno, and once during the previous reign, that of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  In this case it is said that 671 is the first time that the water clock, or roukoku, was actually used. From what I can tell, there is nothing that definitively indicates that the Mizuochi site in Asuka was definitely the site of Naka no Oe's water clock.  There isn't much in the Chronicles telling us what it was like or where, exactly, it was built, and there wasn't anything found at the site naming it as the location of the roukoku.  However, the site is in a prominent enough place, with channels for water and a pavilion of some sort.  They definitely found evidence of pipes, remnants of lacquered wood, and reservoirs for water, among other things, that suggest something to do with moving water happened in this area.  So it seems a very strong choice, as it all fits with theoretical archeological reconstructions. A water clock like this is excellent for keeping accurate time at all hours of the day.  However, it does have a slight problem in that anyone without a clock is still going to have to use the sun and similar heavenly cues to know what time it is.  So how do you let them know?  Well, it turns out that the continent had an answer for that as well, and instituted various systems of drums and bells to let people know the hour.  In fact, some of these practices continued, in one form or another, right up to the modern day—with or without a water clock.  After all, the key was to give the community some sense of the passing of time, but I doubt anyone was using it to time things more precisely than a general idea of an hour—though they did have the concept of their own minutes and seconds.  Which brings us to just how they saw time back then. The system of time that the Chronicles seems to use also came over from the continent, where there appear to have been several different methods for telling time prior to accurate clocks.  And while there was an idea of dividing the entire day into twelve segments, the time as it was announced was not always consistent with those twelve segments, or hours.  Rather, time was based around the key parts of the day.  So, for instance there was sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight.  And while noon and midnight remain exactly twelve hours apart, sunrise and sunset change with the seasons.  So if you call out sunrise, and then divide the time between sunrise and noon into equal segments of time, the size of those time segments change with the seasons.  On top of that, because of the tilt of the earth and our slightly irregular orbit around the sun, the sun appears to “move” across the sky faster or slower throughout the year, with a difference of about 30 minutes total between the extremes.  This isn't going to affect most people's daily lives, but would have been noticeable to those taking accurate measurements. In ancient Han, this appears to have been common in cities and towns, with a watch that would call out as they progressed on their rounds at set points in the day and night, relying largely on heavenly cues—which I suspect did not lead to the most accurate timekeeping, but it was sufficient for what most people needed.  The telling of time in this manner was partly to help with keeping track of the time of day, but was just as much an announcement that the watch was on duty and a warning to would-be criminals. Now a water clock was an excellent device for keeping track of a standard, absolute time, such as it were, but it required constant maintenance.  If you already have a watch calling out the time, perhaps they can also keep the water clock properly set, but you did have to have someone constantly filling it up and draining it at known points of the day.  Plus there was the problem that you only knew the time if you could check it, and this wasn't like a clock tower or something similar. And so in 671 it appears that Nak no Oe instituted the continental idea of drums and bells to announce the time to the people—or at least to those at the court.  We don't have a record of exactly how they were, used, but we can infer from other sources on the continent, and what we do know that some tradition of announcing the time with drums and bells continued to be employed in Japan until the Meiji era, though perhaps not without interruption:  Temples and the like had bell or drum towers, and as the day progressed they would beat out the time.  It was not, however, telling time as we might think of it, with one stroke at the first hour, two on the second, etc..  In fact, in many ways they counted backwards, and they only counted 12 hours, not our modern 24.  By the Edo period it seems that it was common practice to toll the bells nine times at noon and at midnight.  From there, they would count down, with 8 bells at roughly 2 o'clock, 7 bells at 4 o'clock, and 6 bells at 6 o'clock.  That would be another issue.  From 6 o'clock, the number of bells that would be tolled continued to decrease, so that at 8 o'clock it would be 5 bells, then 4 bells at 10 o'clock.  It would then jump back up to 9 and start over again. Why these numbers were used for the different hours we are not entirely sure, and I have no idea if these numbers were the same ones used back in the 7th century—though it does seem to match similar continental traditions.  Even the hours themselves were known by the twelve signs that came to be associated with the zodiac:  the hour of the rat, the hour of the ox, the hour of the tiger, etc.  Midnight fell in the middle of the hour of the rat, and noon fell in the middle of the hour of the horse, with each hour being almost exactly 2 hours by modern reckoning. There were other systems in use as well.  One divided the entire day up by 100 and then each of those divisions by another 10.  The key was whether or not it was an absolute or relative measurement. Something like the roukoku would indicate an absolute measurement.  After all, the fall of water from one reservoir to another was not affected by the change in seasons—at least as long as the water didn't freeze.  The flow was constant, as was the measurement of time. For those using other forms of reckoning, such as celestial phenomena or even a sundial, things might be a bit less accurate.  This was especially true when using concepts like “sunrise” and “sunset”.  Still, through observing the changes over the year, people eventually figured out charts and rules to help reconcile absolute forms of measurement with solar time.  There were other methods for telling time, as well.  Perhaps one of the more pleasant was the use of incense sticks.  By the time of the Tang dynasty, incense in stick form was relatively common, and it had been noticed that sticks of incense could burn at a fixed rate.  This meant that you could use incense sticks like candles were used in Europe, counting down how far they had burned to tell what time it was.  If you were really fancy, you could make a single stick out of different types of incense, so that as it hit a new hour, the scent would change, alerting you to the time through your olfactory senses. Speaking of time, we are coming to the end of ours for this episode.  We do have some more information on this on our website, Sengokudaimyo.com, and we'll have links to those sections of the website accompanying our blog. Next episode we will focus more on the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, from his seat at Otsu no Miya. Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

This episode we are looking at the early years of the official reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tenno, including the building of a brand new capital on the shores of Lake Biwa. For more information, see: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-126 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 126:  New Beginnings The local farmers couldn't help but talk.  There was so much construction, but it wasn't entirely clear what was being built.  The land between the mountains and the lake had been neatly groomed fields, but now that the government workmen had moved in, all of those fields were being cleared.  This new construction was much larger than anything that people had seen before.  Rocks were coming in from far flung quarries, and local kilns were being set up to create tiles, while woodcutters were sent into the forests to bring logs to the site. There were various stories about what was going on—a new provincial government office, or perhaps a new temple, but perhaps the most outlandish was that this was going to be some kind of royal palace.  The sovereign himself was taking in interest in this little slice of Afumi, and he was going to abandon the Home Territories of Yamato and bring his entire court to the shores of Lake Biwa. What a far-fetched story!  …Wasn't it? Last episode we recapped a lot of the history of Prince Naka no Oe and how he had come to this point: the Isshi Incident, the Taika reforms, as well as the reigns of his uncle, Prince Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou, and his mother, Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou.  With Takara Hime's death, Naka no Oe was now – finally, as he might have thought -- running things officially.  He had prosecuted the war in Baekje, and with that loss, he had turned his focus back to the archipelago.  He now had refugees to settle, and defenses to set up.  And then there were the embassies that would be coming, in an apparent attempt to normalize relations post-conflict.  That could only go so far, however, given that Tang and Silla had simply turned their war efforts against Goguryeo.  So one imagines that any diplomatic discussions were held with the understanding that the international order was still in flux. And so we arrive in the 8th month of 665, as some of the first defensive castles were being erected.  That same month, Tamna—the kingdom on the modern island of Jeju—sent ambassadors to the Yamato court.  The diplomatic ties between Yamato and Tamna were a relatively recent occurrence, but with Baekje gone, one wonders if Yamato wasn't feeling out a new alliance on the continent.  That said, Tamna does not appear to have been a major player on the international stage.    They had been a tributary of Baekje, and may have even been one of the last holdouts of the proto-Japonic language for a long time.  Indeed, a 15th century Joseon history records a foundation myth of Tamna that emphasizes close early ties with the Japanese archipelago. The following month saw another visit by Tang ambassadors, only a year after Guo Wucong had come to the court.  Guo Wucong had been wined and dined, and things seem to have gone well, as this time he returned, but he wasn't the one leading the embassy this time.  That honor went to Liu Degao, sub-prefect of Yizhou, among his many titles.  Yizhou is the same location where the previous missions from Yamato to the Tang court had made landfall.  Presumably, Liu Degao would have had experience with the embassies that passed through Yizhou, so he seems a logical choice to be sent over to the archipelago. This seems like an escalation, with a more titled ambassador leading the party. It is possible that the Tang were trying to not only reset their relationship with Yamato, but also attempt to woo them to their side.  The Tang likely knew that if they defeated Goguryeo, then they would have another problem to work out:  The alliance with Silla.  At the moment both Tang and Silla were in a partnership of convenience, but the Tang empire didn't get where it was by just giving up territory. And Silla was, itself, ambitious.  It would be in the Tang dynasty's best interest to have Yamato on its side in case Silla became a problem.  At the very least, the Tang court could have just been trying to make sure that Yamato would stay out of any continental entanglements, such as by supporting Goguryeo. Within the Yamato court, it is unclear which way, exactly, they were leaning at this point.  The court was clearly building defensive positions—fortresses and more.  At the same time, there were likely those who welcomed any return to stable relations with the Tang.  After all, there were still Wa in Chang'an and elsewhere, and there was still a hunger in the archipelago for the books and other goods that the Silk Road could provide.  On the other hand, they may have felt more at home with Goguryeo, or even Silla.  The bonds with the Korean peninsula were older and likely stronger.  And, as long as the Tang Empire was busy with other states, then perhaps they would be too preoccupied to attack Yamato. Liu Degao and his entourage had arrived at Tsushima on the 28th day of the 7th month.  They would have been put up there for a time, and entertained.  If this embassy followed later conventions, they would have likely pulled into a harbor, like the one near Kofunakoshi.  This is a narrow spot between the two parts of Tsushima, where we know that in the 9th century, ships from the Tang empire would stop, register goods and people, and likely have them transferred to Japanese ships.  All of the checking and cataloging would happen  at nearby Bairinji temple. Even if they didn't have to transport everything to another ship, it is likely that they would held at Tsushima for a while for security purposes.  Tsushima was ideal, both for its distance, halfway between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, but also for its shape, with numerous places that ships could sit at anchor in secluded bays away from any weather or rough seas that could otherwise cause problems. We don't know exactly what the Tang embassy's stay was like, but we know that they were at Tsushima for roughly two months, which was probably the time it took to get a message to the Yamato court and back.  We know how long it was because we learn that it is on the 20th day of the 9th month that they finally made landfall at Tsukushi, or Kyushu, and two days later they forwarded a letter-case to the Yamato court. Two months later, we know they were at the court, as there was a banquet held for Liu Degao on the 13th day of the 11th month, and then a month after that, Liu Degao and the rest of the mission were presented gifts, after which they left and returned to the Tang court.  We are also told that Mori no Kimi no Ohoishi, along with Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwashiki and Kimi no Kishi no Harima all went to the Tang court that same month, no doubt traveling with Degao and Wucong. On the first month of the following year, Neungnu of Goguryeo was sent to the Yamato court to offer tribute.  On the same day, the 11th day of the first month, Tamna also sent someone identified as Prince Siyeo to offer presents.  Immediately, I'm wondering about the way that this is presented.  Both of these states – Goguryeo and Tamna - were allies of the former Baekje kingdom.  I have to wonder how the Goguryeo ships made their way—did they come down the western side of the peninsula, through the Bohai sea, and thus past possible Tang patrols between their peninsular and continental territories, or did they head through the East Sea, aka the Japan Sea, where they would have to pass by the coast of Silla, whom they were also not on great terms with?  The fact that both missions are mentioned at the same time suggests that maybe the Goguryeo embassy sailed down to Tamna, on Jeju Island, and then the two groups made their way over to Yamato together from there. Other things about this entry to note is that the Chroniclers use different terms for these visits to the Yamato court.  Goguryeo uses a term that Aston translates as “offering tribute” while Tamna uses a different term indicating that they were “offering presents”.  This may be as simple as the difference in the various relationships between the polities, as viewed by the Chroniclers.  After all, there was a long relationship between Yamato and Goguryeo, which was considered one of the three Han, or Samhan.  Whether true or not, I could certainly see the Chroniclers feeling that Goguryeo was in a subordinate relationship with Yamato.  Tamna, on the other hand, was a more recent addition to the Yamato diplomatic sphere.  As such, it would be understandable, to me if the Chroniclers still saw it as a more independent entity. It also may hint at different messages being communicated.  As far as we can tell, Tamna wasn't under direct threat by the Tang empire—though they may have been feeling a little bit of heat, given the fall of Baekje and the Tang empire's new outpost on the peninsula.  Goguryeo, however, was under more direct threat, and had been in conflict with the Tang for years.  On top of that, based on what we can tell, it seems that Yeong Gaesomun, the despot who had been ruling Goguryeo and helping it defend against the Tang, had just passed away.  It may have been that the Goguryeo court was seeking support against Tang and Silla, as they were in a moment of instability, themselves.  As such, “Tribute” might indicate that they were more formally petitioning Yamato for support. Goguryeo envoy Neungnu left about 5 months later, on the 4th day of the 6th month but then another envoy, this time Minister Eulsyang Oemchu, arrived a little more than four months later.  Much like with the Tang, this feels like Goguryeo was upping the ante, sending higher ranking officials to negotiate with Yamato.  That lends some credence to the theory that there was something of a bidding war going on for Yamato's involvement in international affairs.  For Yamato, however, it would seem that getting involved in continental affairs was hardly something they were itching to do.  Instead, they continued their moves to fortify. In local events, we know that on the 11th day of the 10th month of 665, while the Liu Degao delegation was still in Yamato, there was a great “review”, by which they seem to mean a sutra reading, at Uji.  It is unclear just where this was held, as I haven't found reference to any particular temple.  However, it does indicate that there was activity in the area. Uji is probably most popular, today, for its role as a setting in the Tale of Genji.  There indeed numerous reminders there of the Heian period, including the hall of Ujigami Shrine, and the famous Hou-ou-do, or Phoenix Hall, of the Byoudouin. In 1053, Fujiwara Yorimichi inherited the villa from his father, Fujiwara Michinaga, and he converted it into a Pure Land temple.  Michinaga is thought to have been one of the people on whom Murasaki Shikibu based the character of the Shining Prince, Hikaru Genji.  That's all too late for this moment in the Chronicles, of course., but we do have earlier references to Uji as a place, as well as in various names.  It seems to have been part of the territory of the Hata, who controlled much of the area of modern Kyoto and environs.  There is a temple, Houjouin, also known as Hashidera, which claims to date back to the 7th century, and may have been the site of the above-mentioned sutra reading in 665.  According to the Temple's own legend, it was built around 604, when Hata no Kawakatsu built the famous Uji bridge, or Hashi, on the orders of Prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi.  Other sources give the date as 646.  The temple was rebuilt in the 13th century, and as far as I can tell, nothing remains of the original temple, but it is possible that it was the site of this review. The next non-Diplomatic record of the Chronicles is from the 3rd month in 666.  The Crown Prince went to the house of Saheki no Komaro no Muraji, paying a sympathy call as Saheki appears to have passed away after having been gravely ill.  Saheki no Komaro no Muraji was one of those who had helped Naka no Oe in the Isshi Incident.  He had been introduced to the plot by Nakatomi no Kamatari, and then critical in the literal execution at the court.  He later led forces against Furubito no Oe, assuming that “Sahekibe no Komaro” is the same as “Saheki no Muraji no Komaro”.  There is also a relative, possibly his son, Takunaha, who was one of the Yamato court's overseas envoys.  Thus, one can understand that he had some importance to the Royal family, and we can probably assume that he had been involved in much more.  The Crown Prince, we are told, lamented him on account of his loyal service from the very beginning. One of the confusing things in this part of the Chronicle is the term “Crown Prince”.  It doesn't help that the Chroniclers were pulling from different records, and sometimes using anachronistic titles for individuals.  Naka no Oe had been known as the Crown Prince since the time of Takara Hime, whether he actually was or not.  Now he was in charge of the government, but it isn't clear that he had been formally invested as tennou.  More than that, there is mention of an investiture in either 667 or 668, several years after his quote-unquote “reign” had begun.  This makes some sense.  After all, when Takara Hime passed away, there was a foreign war to prosecute, and that probably took a fair bit of resources.  Plus, Naka no Oe had been running things for a while before that, or so we are told.  It would make sense if things just kept on going as they had been, and they held the actual investiture when they got around to it. We also know that he was busy with building projects: not just for the defense of the archipelago, but even a new capital and a new palace.  We'll talk about it a bit more, later, but suffice it to say that he may have been taking his time and gathering everything together. All of this makes the Chronicles themselves somewhat confusing.  They throw around the terms “Crown Prince” and “Sovereign”—well, “Sumera no Mikoto”—almost interchangeably.  Meanwhile, they've also stated that the Crown Prince was Prince Ohoama, Naka no Oe's younger brother. Based on my read of things, I believe we can distinguish between the two by whether or not it specifically calls them out as just “Crown Prince”, or “Crown Prince, younger brother to the sovereign”.  The latter is clearly Prince Ohoama, and the first is most likely Naka no Oe.  After all, in this instance, why would Prince Ohoama be the one so struck by the death of Saheki no Muraji?  Based on the story the Chronicles have told us, wouldn't it make more sense that it was Naka no Oe lamenting the death of one who had helped put him on the throne, rather than sending his brother? So keep that in mind as we go through the narrative.  I'll try to point out whom I believe they are speaking about, at least until we reach the point where Naka no Oe actually is invested. Getting back to the Chronicles, in the 7th month of the year 666, some four months after the illness and death of Saheki no Komaro no Muraji, another disaster struck—this time a natural disaster.  Great floods were reported—how widespread we aren't told.  This is often a problem in a land with many mountains that often gets large rains.  It is especially problematic when much of your agriculture is based on being just at or below the level of the rivers and streams so that it can be flooded on purpose.  We are told that the government remitted the land-taxes and commuted taxes that year, likely as a form of disaster relief to those affected by the flooding. In 666, we are also told a story that actually links this reign to the previous.  We are told that a monk, named Chiyu, gave the sovereign something called a south-pointing chariot.  I'll talk about what this was in another episode.  What's important here is to note that there was a previous entry in the era attributed to Saimei Tennou, aka Takara Hime, where a monk named Chiyu, or something similar, using different characters, also created a south-pointing chariot.  Likewise, we are later told in this reign how Naka no Oe installed a clepsydra, a water clock.  This is also mentioned in the previous reign.  It is possible that these reference completely different accounts.  Or they could be connected in some way. The south-pointing chariot is probably not something that we'll have evidence of, as it would have been mobile and probably deteriorated over time.  However, the water clock would have been a fixed installation with some clear architectural remnants, and indeed we think we know where at least one was built in Asuka.  Both of the water clock entries say that it was the “first” time, so make of that what you will. Also in 666, we see that some 2000 people of Baekje were settled in the East, possibly meaning the Kanto region, though this could be anywhere between modern Nagoya out to the far eastern edge of Honshu.  They were maintained at the government expense for three years, after which they were expected to have built new lives for themselves. In later periods, there is much to be said about “Men of the East”.  There are those that point to this region as being the origin point of many of the warrior traditions that would arise and become the military samurai.  Some of the weapons and fighting styles, especially some of the horse-riding archery seems to point to continental influences that made their way to the Kanto region and beyond.  One has to consider just how much did they bring with them and how did it grow, often beyond the view of the court and the court chronicles.  For now, though, it seems to have largely been a form of a refugee program, since the Baekje no longer had a kingdom to return to. Finally, we have an omen.  In the winter of 666, the rats of the capital, in Asuka, headed north to Afumi.  As with previous entries about rats departing a capital for a direction, this is again meant as an omen.  It probably didn't happen.  But it does foreshadow an account in the following year, when, on the 19th day of the 3rd month, the capital, surprise-surprise, moved to Afumi. And perhaps I shouldn't be flippant.  It was a surprise to have the capital move to Afumi.  There are accounts of legendary sovereigns that had their palace outside of the Nara Basin or Kawachi area, but at this point Yamato had been really building up those areas.  So why would they suddenly relocate to Afumi, of all places? Well, probably because of the same thing that had been driving the rest of their large-scale building projects during this period—from the Water Castle protecting the Dazai to the various Baekje style fortresses from Tsushima down to the Nara Basin.  Afumi was a naturally defensive position.  And in such an uncertain time, having a well-defended capital must have seen like a very good idea.  In fact, though they didn't formally change the capital until the 3rd month of 667, they probably had started work on it as soon as they got back from the loss at Hakusukinoe. As far as locations go, it wasn't necessarily a bad choice.  There were still routes to the port at Naniwa, which could still house various delegations when they arrived.  There were also routes to the east, leading to Owari and the rest of central and eastern Honshu, as well as mountain passes to get to the Japan Sea.  The area where the new palace was located was in the district of Ohotsu.  Ohotsu means something like “Big Port” and I don't know if it was already a major port along the banks of Lake Biwa or if that was a name that came from having the capital there.  Ohotsu was a long-inhabited area, even well before the 660's, and an important site for trade.  In the southern end of modern Ohotsu city is Ishiyama-dera, the stone mountain temple, it which was built in the 8th century, but in front of the temple are the remains of the largest freshwater shellmound in Asia.  As you may recall from some of our earliest episodes talking about the prehistoric period in the Japanese archipelago, shell mounds are typically evidence of ancient settlements, remnants of dump sites where they could throw their detritus.  This probably included a lot more than just shells, but shells, bones, and sometimes things like pottery sherds, would remain.  And while much of the wood and waste of the period would have disintegrated over time, shells do not.    These shell mounds accordingly provide important insight into the lives of people back in that day, and the size can also help us understand things about how large a settlement might have been or how long it was there.  The sheer size of the shellmound at Ishiyama-dera likely indicates that the region had been settled for many centuries prior to the 600's. In addition to the shellmound, and more closely related to the current times we are discussing, is evidence of a rock quarry found at the temple site and showing evidence of techniques familiar to people of the 6th to 8th centuries. You see, Ishiyama is a source of a particular white stone called wollastonite.  The quarry sits below the main hall of the temple, and so it probably would not have been quarried after the hall was built, which was in the 700s, so the site is believed to have been active before that.  From the composition of the stone and the markings on the remnants, we can see similarities to stones in the base of one of the buildings at Kawaradera, in Asuka, which we've talked about before and which was one of the pre-eminent temples of its day.  So this demonstrates a link between the region and the court even before the construction of the new Ohotsu palace. Speaking of the palace, we've known of its exact position since 1974,  when archeologists found evidence of the foundation of a large complex in a residential district in Nishikori.  While some initially suggested it was an old temple, further evidence makes it pretty clear that it was the dairi, or inner sanctum, of a palace.  This is very much in the same mould as the Toyosaki Palace in Naniwa and the various palaces in Asuka from around the same period.  In front of the dairi would have been the actual government buildings, but that area has not been excavated. That brings up another question: was this a full-on capital city, Ohotsu-kyo, or just a palace, the Ohotsu-no-miya?  So far we have only found the palace, But since the area is fairly built up, it may take time to find more, assuming it hasn't been destroyed by previous urban development in the area.  There are some hints that there was more: while there were already at a couple of temples that had been built by the mid-7th century, we see several temples built in ways that not only borrow features from important Asuka temples, like the layout of Kawaradera, but they also match the alignment of the Otsu palace ruins, hinting that they were built at the same time.  For example, there is are the ruins of an abandoned temple in Shiga-Minami – actually once thought to have been the Otsu palace. There was also Soufukuji, a temple in the mountains nearby meant to protect the Northwest from malign influences, likely based on continental geomantic concepts, part of what we might today think of as Feng Shui. This same kind of protective temple building is what we see in later capital cities. Of course, we know that this would not be a permanent capital for the nation of Yamato or of Japan—we aren't that far off from the Nara period, and then, a century later, the capital at Heian-kyo.  But that couldn't have been known at the time.  There was no way to know how long tensions with the continent would last, and it was just as possible that people at the time expected this to be a permanent move.  Its preeminence lasted, too: we do have evidence that even centuries later, the region was still known as an ancient “capital”. No matter what Naka no Oe's intentions were in moving the capital to Afumi, however, it didn't exactly go over well.  It was apparently quite unpopular—so unpopular that the move was mocked in song of the time.  That said, Naka no Oe's mind was made up, and the move took place regardless.     Before moving the capital, however, there was still business to attend to.  Takara Hime and Princess Hashibito were reinterred together in the Misasagi on Wochi Hill.  We are told that men of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla all mourned along the processional route.  The Crown Prince—I'm assuming Naka no Oe, this time given his connection to both of these women—apparently had started the work on a stone sarcophagus.  By this was probably meant the actual stone vault of the tomb, rather than just the coffin, which was also likely made of stone.  This was in Kuramaki, in Takatori, in the Takaichi District of the Nara Basin. Three months after the move to the new capital, the district of Kadono, in the west of modern Kyoto, presented to the sovereign a white swallow—an omen of some sort. The following month, on the 11th day of the 7th month, Tamna sent another embassy, led by a Minister known as Cheonma, with presents for Yamato.  This may have been the first envoy to actually visit the new Ohotsu capital, but certainly not the last. Cheonma stuck around for a few months.  In the intercalary 11th month, which is to say the extra 11th month of 667, inserted to keep the lunar and solar calendars at least partially aligned, Cheonma and his companions were presented with brocade and other cloth, as well as axes, sickles, and swords, presumably to take home to Tamna. While Cheonma was at the court, there was apparently another bit of diplomatic ping-pong going on.  Liu Jenyuan, the Tang general in charge of Baekje, sent Szema Facong and others to escort Sakahibe no Iwashiki and those with him to the Dazai in Tsukushi.  They didn't stay long, though—we are told they arrived on the 9th day of the 11th month and left only 4 days later, on the 13th day of the same.  When they left, however, they, themselves, were given escorts of Yuki no Muraji no Hakatoko—the same one whose memoirs we relied on for that previous trip to the Tang court—as well as Kaso no Omi no Moroshi.  So I guess they were escorting the escorts?  At what point does it end?  Hakatoko and others made it back about three months later, on the 23rd day of the first month of 668, and reported on their own escort mission.  That suggests that they didn't escort them that far.  They may have just seen them back to the Korean peninsula and that was it. Hakatoko's escort mission did mean that he missed a rather important event—the Crown Prince assuming the dignity.  That is to say, Naka no Oe finally took the title of sovereign.  A note in the text suggests that there were other sources that said it was the third month of the previous year—the same time that the Otsu capital was built.  Four days later they held a banquet in the palace for all of the court ministers. A little over a month later, his wife, Yamato bime, was appointed queen.  We are then told of his other wives and consorts. To be clear, Naka no Oe had been collecting consorts for ages.  So let's talk about a few of them. To start with there was Yamatobime, the Yamato Princess, daughter of none other than Naka no Oe's half-brother, Prince Furubito no Oe, his former rival to the throne. Then there was Wochi no Iratsume, aka Princess Miyatsuko, the daughter of Soga no Kurayamada no Ishikawa Maro.  She had a son, Prince Takeru, who died in 651 at the age of 8.  That suggests that she and Naka no Oe had been together since at least 643, two years before the Isshi Incident.  Another one of her daughters, Princess Uno, would go on to marry Naka no Oe's younger brother, Prince Ohoama, the new Crown Prince. Wochi no Iratsume seems to have died of grief in 649, after her father and much of her family were destroyed on the orders of her husband, Naka no Oe.  We are told that Naka no Oe also married Wochi no Iratsume's younger sister as well, Mehi no Iratsume.  She had two daughters, Princess Minabe and Princess Abe.  At this point Abe was only about 7 or 8 years old, herself, but she would eventually be married to Prince Kusakabe, the son of Prince Ohoama and Princess Uno, whom we just mentioned. Naka no Oe also had two other consorts.  Tachibana no Iratsume was the daughter of Abe no Kurahashi no Maro no Oho-omi—he was the first Sadaijin, or Minister of the Left, at the start of the Taika reforms, immediately following the Isshi Incident.  And then there was Hitachi no Iratsume, the daughter of Soga no Akaye. Soga no Akaye is an interesting figure.  You may recall the name from Episode 118.  Soga no Akaye was the acting minister in charge in Yamato when Prince Arima tried to start up a revolt against Takara Hime.  It was in his house where Prince Arima laid out his plan, but a broken armrest convinced Soga no Akaye to turn against the conspirators and turn them in.  And so it is interesting to hear that his daughter was married to Naka no Oe. We are also told of four “palace women” that Naka no Oe is said to have had children with.  The implication seems to be that these were women at the palace but they were not formally recognized with the same status as that of the formal consorts and, of course, the queen, his primary wife.  This fits in with at least one theory I've seen that Naka no Oe was something of a ladies' man.  It seems he got around even more than Murasaki Shikibu's fictional “Shining Prince”, Hikaru Genji.  We are told that there were at least 14 children among the nine official wives—and one has to consider that they were unlikely to record many of the women whom he may have slept with that he didn't also have children with.  And there is a theory that one of those not mentioned, may have been his own sister, full blooded sister.  Specifically, his sister Princess Hashibito, who was married to none other than Naka no Oe's uncle, Prince Karu, aka Jomei Tennou. To be clear:  we have no clear evidence that they were anything other than close siblings, but as you may recall how we mentioned back in Episode 114 that there was something that caused a falling out between Prince Karu and Naka no Oe, such that Naka no Oe disobeyed the sovereign's direct order in moving himself and the royal family back to Asuka.  That meant Naka no Oe, his wives, his mother, AND his sister, Princess—now Queen—Hashibito.  So, yeah, he absconded with Prince Karu's wife who was Naka no Oe's full-blooded sister.  And, as we've noted before, ancient Yamato's concept of incest was pretty narrow.  It was only if you had the same mother that you were considered full siblings—even if the father were someone else.  I suspect that this is related to the matrilineal nature of succession as well, which is why it was so important to insist that the ancient sovereigns had a direct lineal connection to the royal line through their mother as much as through their father. So if Naka no Oe and his sister were having any kind of relationship that was considered wrong or scandalous, then that could also help explain why he didn't take the throne sooner, and why it passed over to his mother.  But now, both Takara Hime and Hashibito were quite literally dead and buried, and Naka no Oe had ascended to the throne. Of the so-called “Palace Women” that  are listed as being likewise married to—or at least in a relationship with—Naka no Oe, I'd like to focus on one:  Iga no Uneme no Yakako.  For one, she is specifically mentioned as an uneme—one of the women sent to the court specifically to serve in the palace.  But her parentage isn't further illuminated other than the name “Iga” which is probably a locative, possibly referring to the area of Iga. This is also interesting because we are also told that she gave birth to a son named Prince Iga, also known as Prince Ohotomo.  Despite his mother's apparently unremarkable status, Prince Ohotomo seems to have been quite the apple of his father's eye.  He was born in 648, so in 668 he was about 20 years old, meaning that around this time he was probably just coming into his own at court.  He was married to his cousin, Princess Touchi, daughter of his uncle, Crown Prince Ohoama.  He was also married to Mimotoji, who appears to have been a daughter of Nakatomi no Kamatari, meaning that he was pretty well connected. But we'll get into that in a future episode.  For now, I think we'll leave it here: with the move of the capital to Ohotsu and the formal ascension of Naka no Oe to the throne. We'll talk about what that might mean in the future.  Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Le chemin vers le UN, de Musashi et Otsu.Interpretation entre les lignes de l'oeuvre VAGABOND, Musashi Miyamoto de TAKEHIKO INOUEDE L'EVEIL AU RÉVEIL

Shoot us a Text.We're back at our desks after some time on the road. Today we're talking about Honda's plans to double EV range while reducing cost and size, a new study that says price parity between EV and ICE could come as soon as 2026, and the response to an AI-altered Coca-Cola ad.Show Notes with links:Honda aims to double the driving range of its EVs by the late 2020s through the use of innovative all-solid-state batteries.Research head Keiji Otsu describes the initiative as a “game-changer” that could redefine EV capabilities and consumer expectations.A $277 million pilot production line in Japan is set to manufacture these advanced batteries, targeting a 50% reduction in size and a 25% cost reduction by the mid-2020s.This aligns with Honda's broader goal of producing over 2 million EVs annually by 2030 and achieving 100% EV and fuel cell vehicle sales globally by 2040.Talks of collaboration with Nissan have emerged, with Otsu saying “There may be areas where we can work together” on joint material procurement.A new study predicts EV battery prices are on track to plummet nearly 50% by 2026, powered by advancements in technology and manufacturing. This shift is closing the gap between EVs and gas-powered cars faster than expected.Goldman Sachs predicts battery prices will fall from $149/kWh in 2023 to $80/kWh by 2026 and $60/kWh by 2030.To put it in perspective, a 100 kWh battery for a large SUV could cost around $6,000, while an 800 kWh battery for a semi-truck might be priced under $50,000.Innovations like "cell-to-pack" design simplify battery construction, boosting energy density and reducing production costs.Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, prized for durability and cost-efficiency, could claim 45% market share by 2025.EVs are expected to reach cost parity with gasoline vehicles as early as 2026, even without government incentives.“Rapid battery price drops and smarter designs will make EVs a mainstream option,” says Nikhil Bhandari of Goldman Sachs Research.Coca-Cola's decision to remake its iconic 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” ad using AI has sparked both controversy and curiosity. Critics debate the ad's aesthetics, while Coke sees it as a bold step in exploring generative AI's potential for creativity and efficiency.Three studios used AI to reinterpret the classic ad with tools like Runway and Leonardo.Critics claim the new ads “look fake” and lack the original's charm, sparking backlash online.Despite critiques, market testing showed positive consumer responses with high emotional impact.AI allowed hyper-localized content, adapting the ad for 12 U.S. regions with tailored details.“We balance creative humans with new technology,” says Pratik Thakar, Coke's head of generative AI.Hosts: Paul J Daly and Kyle MountsierGet the Daily Push Back email at https://www.asotu.com/ JOIN the conversation on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asotu/ Read our most recent email at: https://www.asotu.com/media/push-back-email

Kengo Kuma has a philosophy: to enrich the connection between buildings and nature, “almost tuning-in” to the materials. His architecture is inspired by traditional Japanese design, and he is a serious critic of the global dominance of concrete. Kuma's mission has manifested in iconic buildings including China's Folk Art Museum, the V&A in Scotland, and Japan's National Stadium, built for the 2020 Olympics. Broadcaster Nick Luscombe follows Kuma to Japan's oldest and largest lake, and to the ancient capital of Otsu, where Kuma is attempting to represent the history of the area not by constructing a new building, but by creating a monument to a legendary cow.

En el podcast d’avuí, el 1er del 2023, farem un repàs del que ha donat el 2022 pel que fa al manganime en català, i del que ens pot donar aquest nou any. Al parlem-ne, us farem un petit resum dels animes que haurieu de veure si o si durant aquest 2023, sobretot al 1er trimestre. Posteriorment, a l’Espai Japó, viatjarem fins a la ferèstega prefectura de Gunma, i pujarem fins al Santuari Haruna a buscar la bona sort pel 2023. Tot seguit, Xavi Omella ens parlarà de 5 milions de yens en metàl·lic trobats a un abocador de la ciutat d’Otsu. I finalment, al Tenkaichi Musical, torna Nia Catano versionant en exclusiva i en català, l’opening 16 de Naruto Shippuden: “Silhouette”!

Separating the blue cloud and the red sequence using Otsu's method for image segmentation by Biswajit Pandey. on Wednesday 30 November The observed colour bimodality allows a classification of the galaxies into two distinct classes: the `blue cloud' and the `red sequence'. Such classification is often carried out using empirical cuts in colour and other galaxy properties that lack solid mathematical justifications. We propose a method for separating the galaxies in the `blue cloud' and the `red sequence' using Otsu's thresholding technique for image segmentation. We show that this technique provides a robust and parameter-free method for the classification of the red and blue galaxies based on the minimization of the inter-class variance and maximization of the intra-class variance. We also apply an iterative triclass thresholding technique based on Otsu's method to improve the classification. The same method can also be applied to classify the galaxies based on their physical properties, such as star formation rate, stellar mass function, bulge-to-disk mass ratio and age, all of which have bimodal distributions. arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15642v1

Separating the blue cloud and the red sequence using Otsu's method for image segmentation by Biswajit Pandey. on Tuesday 29 November The observed colour bimodality allows a classification of the galaxies into two distinct classes: the `blue cloud' and the `red sequence'. Such classification is often carried out using empirical cuts in colour and other galaxy properties that lack solid mathematical justifications. We propose a method for separating the galaxies in the `blue cloud' and the `red sequence' using Otsu's thresholding technique for image segmentation. We show that this technique provides a robust and parameter-free method for the classification of the red and blue galaxies based on the minimization of the inter-class variance and maximization of the intra-class variance. We also apply an iterative triclass thresholding technique based on Otsu's method to improve the classification. The same method can also be applied to classify the galaxies based on their physical properties, such as star formation rate, stellar mass function, bulge-to-disk mass ratio and age, all of which have bimodal distributions. arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15642v1

Separating the blue cloud and the red sequence using Otsu's method for image segmentation by Biswajit Pandey. on Tuesday 29 November The observed colour bimodality allows a classification of the galaxies into two distinct classes: the `blue cloud' and the `red sequence'. Such classification is often carried out using empirical cuts in colour and other galaxy properties that lack solid mathematical justifications. We propose a method for separating the galaxies in the `blue cloud' and the `red sequence' using Otsu's thresholding technique for image segmentation. We show that this technique provides a robust and parameter-free method for the classification of the red and blue galaxies based on the minimization of the inter-class variance and maximization of the intra-class variance. We also apply an iterative triclass thresholding technique based on Otsu's method to improve the classification. The same method can also be applied to classify the galaxies based on their physical properties, such as star formation rate, stellar mass function, bulge-to-disk mass ratio and age, all of which have bimodal distributions. arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/http://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15642v1

Salve Confradeiros!!! Lendas urbanas existem mas , até que ponto elas podem ser reais? Cris , Otsu e Vash discutem e avaliam o que é real ou não hauahuahaua neste Confraria que se vc falar Velhos Confrades 3 vzs na frente do espelho muito provavelmente não vá acontecer nada!No episódio de hoje tem Fofão, Xuxa, loira do banheiro, Matita Pereira, palhaços assassinos e muito mais...enjoy!

Videos: 1. Artificial Intelligence: The Coming Storm | Michael Harrison | TEDxBlinnCollege (8:00)*Michael holds a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in theoretical physics minor in quantum chromodynamics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He earned distinction in his master's program in aerospace systems architecture at the University of Southern California. 2 .  Vitamin Authentication. Electronic pill that stays in your body & will become a 18bit Battery operated chip (1:00) 3. Pfizer CEO ‘Almost Certain' Americans Will Have To Take New COVID Vaccines ‘Every Year' 4.  There was an unexpected 40% increase in ‘all cause deaths' in 2021 5. Hear ex-CIA director's prediction about who will win in Ukraine 6. Jonathan Haidt The Coddling of the American Mind Anticoagulant activities of curcumin and its derivative Kyungpook National University (South Korea) Curcumin, a polyphenol responsible for the yellow color of the curry spice turmeric, possesses antiinflammatory, antiproliferative and antiangiogenic activities. However, anticoagulant activities of curcumin have not been studied.  The anticoagulant properties of curcumin and its derivative (bisdemethoxycurcumin, BDMC) were determined by monitoring activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), prothrombin time (PT) as well as cell-based thrombin and activated factor X (FXa) generation activities.  Data showed that curcumin and BDMC prolonged aPTT and PT significantly and inhibited thrombin and FXa activities. They inhibited the generation of thrombin or FXa. In accordance with these anticoagulant activities, curcumin and BDMC showed anticoagulant effect in vivo.  Surprisingly, these anticoagulant effects of curcumin were better than those of BDMC indicating that methoxy group in curcumin positively regulated anticoagulant function of curcumin. Therefore, these results suggest that curcumin and BDMC possess antithrombotic activities and daily consumption of the curry spice turmeric might help maintain anticoagulant status.   Probiotics may prevent breast cancer: Study Western University (Ontario), June 27, 2022   A new study has found probiotics may prove to be a critical factor in preventing breast cancer.   Dr Gregor Reid, the professor of microbiology, immunology and surgery at the Western University in Ontario, Canada, said the bacteria having the potential to abet breast cancer are present in the breasts of cancer patients, while beneficial bacteria are more abundant in healthy breasts.   In the study, Reid's PhD student Camilla Urbaniak obtained breast tissues from 58 women, who were undergoing lumpectomies or mastectomies for either benign (13 women) or cancerous (45 women) tumors as well as from 23 healthy women, who had undergone breast reductions or enhancements. Researchers found that women with breast cancer had elevated levels of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis, two bacteria known to induce double-stranded breaks in DNA in HeLa cells, which are cultured human cells. They say the breaks are prone to errors, which can cause cancer to develop.   Health-promoting bacteria Lactobacillus and Streptococcus (lactic acid bacteria) were more abundant in women with healthy breasts, both are anti-carcinogenic.     'Mystical' psychedelic compound found in normal brains University of Michigan, June 27, 2022 In the past few years, thrill-seekers from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond have been travelling to South America to take part in so-called Ayahuasca retreats. Their goal: to partake in a brewed concoction made from a vine plant Banisteriopsis caapi, traditionally used by indigenous people for sacred religious ceremonies. Drinkers of Ayahuasca experience short-term hallucinogenic episodes many describe as life-changing. The active ingredient responsible for these psychedelic visions is a molecule called dimethyltryptamine (DMT). For the first time, a team led by Michigan Medicine has discovered the widespread presence of naturally-occurring DMT in the mammalian brain. The finding is the first step toward studying DMT-- and figuring out its role -- within the brains of humans. "DMT is not just in plants, but also can be detected in mammals," says Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D., of the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology. Her interest in DMT came about accidentally. Before studying the psychedelic, her research focused on melatonin production in the pineal gland. In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Rene Descartes claimed that the pineal gland, a small pinecone-shaped organ located deep in the center of the brain, was the seat of the soul. Since its discovery, the pineal gland, known by some as the third eye, has been shrouded in mystery. Scientists now know it controls the production of melatonin, playing an important role in modulating circadian rhythms, or the body's internal clock.  The core idea seems to come from a documentary featuring the work of researcher Rick Strassman, Ph.D. with the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. In the mid-1990s, he conducted an experiment in which human subjects were given DMT by IV injection and interviewed after its effects wore off. In a documentary about the experiment, Strassman claims that he believed the pineal gland makes and secretes DMT. Borjigin sought to discover how and where DMT was synthesized.  They found DMT in other parts of the brain, including the neocortex and hippocampus that are important for higher-order brain functions including learning and memory." A paper published in 2018 by researchers in the U.K. purported that DMT simulates the near death experience, wherein people report the sensation of transcending their bodies and entering another realm.    Puffing curcumin may blast Alzheimer's Vanderbilt University, Jun 22, 2022   The new delivery method may be more effective than others in getting the compound past the blood-brain barrier and into the brain, where it can fight the plaque that leads to Alzheimer's.   Deep breaths of curcumin may be key to fighting Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study from Vanderbilt University. Curcumin, a compound in the spice turmeric, has a demonstrated ability to smash the plaques in the brain that lead to the neuron loss that causes Alzheimer's, according to the study's senior author,Wellington Pham, Ph.D The challenge, however, has been getting the curcumin into the brain. Pham and colleagues at Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Japan, developed a new delivery strategy. They created a curcumin moleculte that could be tracked with an MRI, to be administered as an aerosol through a nebulizer. This method delivers the dose more directly to the brain than taking the compound orally and digesting it. After tests in mice, the team found that “delivery to the cortex and hippocampal areas is more efficient using aerosolized curcumin than intervenous injection in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease,” said Pham.   Anti-anxiety medication limits empathetic behavior in rats University of Chicago, June 27, 2022   Rats given midazolam, an anti-anxiety medication, were less likely to free trapped companions because the drug lessened their empathy, according to a new study by University of Chicago neuroscientists.   The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, validates studies that show rats are emotionally motivated to help other rats in distress. In the latest study, rats treated with midazolam did not open the door to a restrainer device containing a trapped rat, although control rats routinely freed their trapped companions. Midazolam did not interfere with the rats' physical ability to open the restrainer door, however. In fact, when the restrainer device contained chocolate instead of a trapped rat, the test rats routinely opened the door. The findings show that the act of helping others depends on emotional reactions, which are dampened by the anti-anxiety medication.   "The rats help each other because they care," said Peggy Mason, PhD, professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago. "They need to share the affect of the trapped rat in order to help, and that's a fundamental finding that tells us something about how we operate, because we're mammals like rats too."       7 Simple Ways to Unclog Your Arteries Naturally GreenMedInfo, June 23, 2022   Statistically, atherosclerosis (the progressive clogging of the arteries) is the #1 killer on the planet.  A complex process, involving autoimmunity, infection, dietary incompatibilities, and many known and unknown factors, it is – despite conventional medical opinion – entirely preventable, and in some cases reversible.   Here is the peer-reviewed, published research proving the fact: B Vitamins – yes, something as simple as adding a source of B-complex to your regimen can prevent the juggernaut of heart disease from taking your life prematurely. A doubled-blind, randomized study, published in 2005, in the journal Atherosclerosis found that a simple intervention using 2.5 mg folic acid, 25 mg Vitamin B6, and 0.5mg Vitamin B12 for 1 year, resulted in significant reductions in arterial thickness (as measured by intima media thickeness).[1] Even niacin ]or folic acid  alone has been show to have this effect in patients. [Note: Always opt for natural sources of the B-group vitamins, including probiotic supplementation (which produce the entire complement for you), or a whole food extract, versus synthetic or semi-synthetic vitamins which, sadly, predominate on the market today]. Garlic – as we have documented extensively previously, garlic can save your life. It has been found to regress plaque buildup in the arteries, among many other potentially life-saving health benefits.  Pomegranate – this super healing fruit has been found to regress plaque buildup in the arteries, as well as being demonstrated to provide dozens of validated health benefits, including replacing the function of the mammalian ovary! Fermented Cabbage – Kimchi, a Korean recipe, which includes fermented cabbage, hot pepper, and various other ingredients, including fermented fish, appears to stall the atherosclerotic process in the animal model.  Additionally, strains of good bacteria in kimchi have been found capable of degrading toxic chemicals that can additional bodily harm. L-Arginine: This amino acid is capable of preventing arterial thickening – up to 24% reduction! -- in the animal model. We have done an extensive literature review on arginine supplementation and have found that in over 30 studies demonstrating this fact addition to 150 known health benefits, it is capable of addressing the underlying dysfunction associated with cardiovascular disease: endothelial dysfunction, with no less than 20 studies proving this fact. Curcumin: the primary polyphenol in the Indian spice turmeric known as curcumin has been found to be an excellent cardioprotective, with over 30 studies demonstrating this fact. One study found that curcumin prevented damage to the arteries associated with blockage (neointima formation).  Sesame Seed: probably one of the most underappreciated super foods on the planet, sesame seed, which we have shown is as effective as Tylenol for arthritic pain, may be an excellent cardioprotective substance, ideally suited for preventing the progression of atherosclerosis. One animal study found it was capable of preventing atherosclerosis lesion formation. 

Hoje é dia de "papo cueca" sem a Otsu nos vigiando, decidimos falar do nosso histórico do Youtube. Com um certo receio pela provável lista bizarra do Vash batemos um papo sobre o que estamos assistindo no momento. de GTA RP a Diguinho Coruja, venha com agente mas não sigam nossas recomendações, porque se seguir, seu lote no Inferno será do lado do nosso!

Salve salve confradeiros e confradeiras! puxa uma cadeira ai e vem com gente tomar aquele cafezinho quentinho e gostoso e aprender um pouco sobre essa bebida maravilhosa que a maioria ama!! Descubra neste CONFRARIA que o plural de café é CaFÉZES (com os pós que se vende nos mercados brasileiros) que a OTSU toma café descafeinado (e sempre foi enganada) e que, quem toma café sem açúcar, está fortificando o exercito do cramunhão!

Hoje é dia de Bicho solto, pauta livre!!! Sem freio, sem direção e sem concordância com nada! Os Velhos (Cris, Otsu e Vash) recebem um ex Novo Confrade, o Girovanni (Lucas) pra trocar essa ideia mais solta que arroz de vó! Curtam!!! qualquer sugestão, grita ai que a gente escuta!!! #PLATINAVASH

Japanese trumpeter and composer NATSUKI TAMURA is internationally recognized for a unique musical vocabulary that blends extended techniques with jazz lyricism. This unpredictable virtuoso's seemingly limitless creativity led François Couture in All Music Guide to declare that “… we can officially say there are two Natsuki Tamuras: The one playing angular jazz-rock or ferocious free improv… and the one writing simple melodies of stunning beauty… How the two of them live in the same body and breathe through the same trumpet might remain a mystery.”Born on July 26, 1951, in Otsu, Shiga, Japan, Tamura first picked up the trumpet while performing in his junior high brass band. He began his professional music career after he graduated from high school, playing in numerous bands including the World Sharps Orchestra, Consolation, Skyliners Orchestra, New Herd Orchestra, Music Magic Orchestra, and the Satoko Fujii Ensemble, as well as in his own ensemble. He was the trumpeter for numerous national television shows in Japan from 1973–1982, including The Best Ten, Music Fair, Kirameku Rhythm and many others. Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/thejazzpodcast)

Salve Salve Confradeiros!!! Neste episódio 59 do CONFRARIA, estamos trazendo de PRIMEIRA MÃO que o XDUB FANDUB depois de anos de inatividade se junta ao nosso cast de atrações!!! Sobre um bolo que deu o que falar numa data especial pra OTSU e sobre o Karma atacando o VASH na forma da sua gata!Muitas novidades vindo aí, mas só de saber que a XDUB vai voltar já ficamos animados!!! Curtam ai e se inscrevam no Youtube dos velhos!!youtube.com/velhosconfrades - e curtam os novos vídeos do XDUB (e os velhos tbem)

Salveeeee Confradeiros e Confradeiras!!! Vamos cuidar dos nosso board games caros com as dicas do CRIS? lembrando que War e Banco Imobiliário não são jogos!!! Vamos ver as esquisitices do VASH? que deixa a "mistura" por ultimo no prato...Vamos ver a OTSU mandando uma pessoa que não merecia, "TOMAR CAJU" as 8 da manhã? Vamos, vamos, vamos!!! ahuahuahahuhahahaha espero que curtam!

Welcome to the Five Song Mixtape! This week we discuss the mixtape titled “Haran Otsu” by Devin. You can find the playlist by following our account on Spotify @FiveSongMixtape or you can find us on Instagram @FiveSongMixtape. We would love to hear your thoughts on the playlist and please give us a rating via iTunes to help spread the word!“Haran Otsu” by Devin 1. “Thank you for the music” by Junichi Inagaki2. “It's so Creamy” by Miki Matsubara3. “NIGHT” Tetsuro Oda4. “Parking ~It's Only Love~” by Tomoko Aran5. “GET CRAZY !” by PRINCESS PRINCESS See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Com assuntos diversificados e extremo bom humor neste CONFRARIA falamos sobre Combinações perfeitas de coisas que comemos, bebemos ou usamos. Sobre o aniversário do RJ com a carioquíssima da gema OTSU e os perrengues desnecessários que o Vash passou ao ir a praia e não visitar os amigos (EU).Curtam esse novo Confraria pq está demais!

Se você tem alguma dúvida quanto a dublagem, estamos aqui (Cris e Otsu) como atores/dubladores pra tentar sanar alguns de seus questionamentos! Um papo descontraído sobre esse tema meio que espinhoso e que com certeza renderá um outro CONFRARIA, pois faltou muita coisa...e afinal...onde estava o VASH?

10 lat mija od nabieganego w japońskim Otsu rekordu Polski w maratonie (2:07:39). Z okazji okrągłej rocznicy tego wydarzenia odwiedziliśmy Muszynę, skąd pochodzi autor wyniku Henryk Szost. Wspólnie z rekordzistą przeanalizowaliśmy metody treningowe, dzięki którym doszedł do historycznego rezultatu: Jakie są główne założenia filozofii treningowej, którą stosował? Które treningi były kluczowe w przygotowaniach? Jak rozkładały się akcenty treningowe i jaki kilometraż wynikał z planu? Dodatkowo Szost analizuje plusy i minusy największych kandydatów do pobicia rekordu oraz rzuca ostatnie wyzwanie w swojej biegowej karierze! Komu? W odcinku w różnych kontekstach pojawiają się: Marcin Chabowski, Dariusz Kruczkowski, Adam Draczyński, Tomasz Grycko, Szymon Kulka, Mariusz Giżyński, Adam Nowicki, Krystian Zalewski, Kamil Jastrzębski, Marek Jakubowski, Leonid Shvetsov, Kamil Karbowiak, Stefano Baldini, Grzegorz Gajdus, Bogusław Mamiński, Antoni Niemczak, Jan Huruk i Karolina Nadolska. Sponsorem audycji jest New Balance.

Ahhhhhhhhh chegamos no nosso 3º ano e com uma novidade que espero que dê respiro pra nós e pra vocês, a linda, maravilhosa, fofa, ácida, papo reto, e inteligentíssima e engraçada OTSU.A partir de 2022 essa Maravilhosa "boca aberta" será a voz FEMININA entre os velhos! espero que curtam e se divirtam muito! por exemplo, com ela matando moscas com alcool 70 kkkkkkk

Conversei pela terceira vez com o Roberto Otsu. Estou conectado com a cultura e filosofia oriental desde novo, então sei que se pudesse conversaria com o Roberto mais 100 vezes. Isso porque o Taoísmo, o I Ching e as filosofias chinesas no geral são assuntos que não têm fim.

เหตุการณ์ระทึกขวัญครั้งที่ซาร์นิโคลัสที่ 2 แห่งรัสเซีย เดินทางไปเจริญสัมพันธไมตรีที่ญี่ปุ่น

First showdown between The Eccentric Monk, Takuan Soho and The Wanted One, Shimmen Takezo. Behind them, Otsu played her treasure flute while still wounded by Matahachi's letter. The chilly night surrounded this fateful meeting. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

We are joined by, previous guest and YouTuber, Jess of Under the Pine Tree to go over episodes five and six of the Gintama anime. This episode was released earlier on our Patreon so be sure to sign... Go to www.GintamaPodcast.com for full show notes.

In 2012 my lawyer extraordinaire guest became the youngest female mayor ever in Japan. This is no small feat and even more so in Japan where at the time only 3% of mayors were women. Naomi Koshi shares her tenacity to accomplish goals that improve people's lives. Whether they are the citizens of the city she served as mayor or in the work she now does on Smart Cities as a partner at Miura & Partners. In this episode, we also discuss the timely topic of diversity on corporate boards and how Naomi is now turning her skills to increase female managers in businesses and promote more women to be elected to these boards. A value packed episode as well as a chance to get to know the woman who is a catalyst for making real changes in Japan. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and we'd love it if you would leave us a message here! In this episode you'll hear: What happened when Naomi didn't pass the Japanese Bar exam Her “mic drop” moment that inspired her to run for mayor of Otsu City How she instigated a change that helped women in Otsu City and is an inspiration to other cities in Japan The words that have guided her to her new challenge of supporting more women to be board members of Japanese corporations and become female managers Her favourite author and other fun facts About Naomi Naomi Koshi is a lawyer, an entrepreneur and former two-term mayor of Otsu City, the capital of Japan's Shiga Prefecture. From 2002 to 2011, Naomi practiced corporate law at Nishimura & Asahi in Tokyo and Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. From 2010 to 2011, Naomi was a Visiting Fellow at the Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia Business School in New York, researching comparative corporate governance matters. In 2012, Naomi was elected mayor of Otsu City, a prefectural capital with over 340,000 residents. Naomi won reelection in 2016, serving a total of eight years until her second term ended in 2020. Naomi was the youngest female mayor elected in Japan's history at that time, winning office at a time when only 3% of mayors in Japan were women (another fabulous woman has recently become the youngest female mayor in Japan) . As mayor, Naomi fought to expand opportunities for Japanese women. In light of the homemaker role traditionally thrust upon Japanese mothers, and observed first hand by Naomi in her own family unit, Naomi successfully expanded Otsu's childcare system, thus making it easier for many Japanese women to return to the workforce. Naomi is admitted to practice law in Japan, New York and California and is now a partner at the Tokyo based firm of Miura & Partners. Naomi focuses her legal practice on cross-border M&A and start-ups, including Smart City projects. In 2021, Naomi Co-Founded OnBoard K.K., a company specializing in diversifying Japanese corporate boards. Naomi serves as CEO of the company. Naomi also serves as an outside director of V-Cube, Inc. Naomi was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2015 and was named an OECD Champion Mayor for Inclusive Growth. She holds multiple degrees from Hokkaido University, and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. Connect with Naomi Miura & Partners https://www.miura-partners.com/en/lawyers/00049/ OnBoard K.K. https://onboardkk.com/en/

We're ending our Pride Month Spectacular with a BL-themed Triple Dip! We're looking at Dick Fight Island, FAKE, and Manly Appetites: Minegishi Loves Otsu! dakazu also checked out the newest DC manga release of Superman VS Meshi: Superman no Hitori Meshi!!! Send us emails! mangamachinations@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter! @mangamacpodcast Check out our website! https://mangamachinations.com Check out our tumblr! http://mangamachinations.tumblr.com Join our Discord! https://discord.me/mangamac Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro Song: “Massara” by KANA-BOON from Sarazanmai, Opening, Introductions, Hikaru Utada coming out as non-binary 00:02:26 - Listener Email: Our first shoujo manga 00:14:23- Whatchu Been Reading: Transition Song: Dragon Ball Z OST “Prologue”, dakazu enters a world of craft beer and BL with Yorimichi Ale 00:25:15 - Superman VS Meshi: Superman no Hitori Meshi has Superman enjoying super delicious dine-in meals in Japan 00:30:23 - Smoking Savage is a sequel to Smoking that switched publishers 00:33:46 - News: Hajime no Ippo will be releasing all 131 volumes digitally in Japanese 00:43:45 - Shonen Jump+ launches reality show MILLION TAG where manga creators will compete for cash prize, chance for serialization, and possible anime adaptation 00:57:14 - Next Episode Preview and Rundown: New Chapter Check-in/Darfox Dabbles, dakazu and Darfox will be going full spoilers with the newest chapters of their favorite popular manga series and Darfox will revisit Shueisha's Manga Plus app to checkout their newest titles 00:58:31 - Main Segment Triple Dip: Dick Fight Island/FAKE/Manly Appetites: Minegishi Loves Otsu, Transition Song: “White-Collar Elegy” by Akio Ootsuka from Africa Salaryman, we read the beginning of each BL manga for discussion to see if we'd continue reading it before picking our favorite of the three, including: 00:59:56 -Dick Fight Island by Reibun Ike 01:19:06 - FAKE by Sanami Matoh 01:37:11 -Manly Appetites: Minegishi Loves Otsu by Mito 01:51:54 - We picks our favorite out of the three BL manga 01:54:31 - Next Week's Topic: New Chapter Check-in/Darfox Dabbles, Social Media Rundown, Sign Off Song: “wish men” by sunbrain from Beet the Vandel Buster

The Clippers are yet again down 0-2 in a seven game playoff series, and they're still without Kawhi and the Suns' floor general is about to return. I am not optimistic, and I will be very sad if they end up not even winning a game and especially if they lose the series. Content warning for this episode: The Mars section has talks of suicide, parental abuse, rape, and other general mental health issues. This episode, we're talking about Fuyumi Soryo's Mars formerly published by Tokyopop and currently published by Kodansha digitally, and Mito's Manly Appetites: Minegishi loves Otsu. The song you heard this episode was "Horse with No Name" by America. As always, you can find me on Twitter @ImpassionateK, and my co-hosts Helen (@WanderinDreamr) and Apryll (@manjiorin) on Twitter at those places in the parenthesis. You can find both of their writing at The Organization of Anti-Social Geniuses, more of Helen's writing at Narrative Investigations, and my writing at the Fandom Post. Listen Show notes: 0:56 - We talk about Mars! 9:47 - Mars spoiler section! 22:07 - We talk about Manly Appetites! Next time is Eniale and Dewiela and Boys Run the Riot!

Selayang pandang Otsu akan kepulangan Takezo jadi impuls yang menggerakkan kejadian-kejadian. Ia rupanya memang tak bisa hanya sekadar hantarkan pesan. Kepala keluarga Hon'iden jadi salah satu yang memburunya. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

"Jika agama hanya tentang akal sehat, maka tidak perlu nabi-nabi untuk menyampaikannya" - Takuan Soho, Pesta Bunga. Chapter ini memperkenalkan Otsu, biarawati yatim piatu sekaligus tunangan Matahachi. Pertama kali pula Miyamoto, desa kelahiran Takezo, digambarkan. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Heather Bache was Born in Melbourne, Australia where she began what was to become a lifelong love affair with textiles. At 23 Heather left Melbourne with a backpack and headed north. Without access to a sewing machine, she started to make her clothes with hand stitches. After doing a few fashion shows in her home country in Australia, she moved to South India and worked extensively with one of then local tailors for the next seven years, while sometimes being involved with a local Reforestation and Village Development project there. At 37 Heather then moved to the USA, married her longterm partner, and reinvented herself as a dressmaker to make a living. They moved to Central Texas where she rediscovered her love of design and started working in the fashion industries, creating garments and costumes for fashion and film. Heather launched her own brand OTSU in 2015, an archaic Japanese word, that means, "witty, romantic, quirky, odd and tasty." When Covid hit, she went to work making masks for family and friends, and eventually decided to start using some of the fabrics and yarns she had collected over a lifetime from her world travels. Currently she is focusing her design work on knit and crochet wear. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/aprilklingmeyer/support

Examining the Otsu tactic, the Japanese evolution of the tactic of Crossing the T. This episode is also available as a blog post: http://thetidesofhistory.com/2019/09/15/the-otsu-tactic/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tim-migaki/support

Neste episódio conversamos com Roberto Otsu, escritor, astrólogo, sobre como trazer a filosofia chinesa para o dia a dia.

Neste episódio conversamos com Roberto Otsu, escritor, astrólogo, sobre o taoísmo e I Ching.

Manga mentioned One punch man Minegishi-san wants Otsu-kun to eat Jujutsu Kaisen Titans bride Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

doujinshi- *Plenilune - Attack on Titan* *MAngas* *Deri Pocha - Yajuu no H na Gohan (Yaoi)* *Hoppe Ni Himawari (Yaoi)* *Sweet Bitter Candy (Yaoi)* *Romanticer's High (Yaoi)* *Minegishi-san wants Otsu-kun to eat! (Yaoi)* *King of Masturbation! (Yaoi)* *Yarichin ☆ Bitch Club (Yaoi)* Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.06.17.158485v1?rss=1 Authors: Tang, L., Takahashi, T., Shimada, T., Komachi, M., Imanishi, N., Nishiyama, Y., Iida, T., Otsu, Y., Kitazawa, S. Abstract: The position of any event in time could be either present, past, or future. This temporal discrimination is vitally important in our daily conversations, but it remains elusive how the human brain distinguishes among the past, present, and future. To address this issue, we searched for neural correlates of presentness, pastness, and futurity, each of which is automatically evoked when we hear sentences such as it is raining now, it rained yesterday, or it will rain tomorrow. Here, we show that sentences that evoked presentness' activated the bilateral precuneus more strongly than those that evoked 'pastness or futurity. Interestingly, this contrast was shared across native speakers of Japanese, English, and Chinese, languages which vary considerably in their verb tense systems. The results suggest that the precuneus serves as a key region that provides the origin, the Now, to our time perception irrespective of differences in tense systems across languages. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

In this episode, we speak with writer, professional Japanese translator and interpreter, and amateur historian, Noah Oskow, about a recent article he wrote for Unseen Japan called “The Otsu Incident,” which relates the attempted assassination on Nicolas II in Otsu City, just outside of Kyoto, in 1891. Noah has lived, studied and worked in Japan for nearly seven years, including two years studying at Sophia University in Tokyo and four years teaching English on the JET Program in rural Fukushima Prefecture. Noah is currently working on his Masters Degree in Global Studies at the University of Vienna in Austria. The Deep in Japan Podcast is completely independent and crowd-funded. And by that, I mean we cannot even afford our mics. Please consider supporting the show by becoming a patron at www.patreon.com/user?u=3864210. Naoh's Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoahOskow The Otsu Incident: https://unseenjapan.com/otsu-incident-tsar-nicholas/ Colonization of Hokkaido: https://youtu.be/VJTfGfwY878 Unseen Japan: https://unseenjapan.com/ Author's Page: https://unseenjapan.com/author/nounozlos/ Keep up with all the latest chatter by joining the Facebook Discussion group at www.facebook.com/groups/deepinjapan/ The outro was “Rise” by Origa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1eYYQzuSDA The intro track was ‘Dubstep’ by Ben Sound. Got feedback? Email me at deep.in.japan.podcast@gmail.com And thanks for listening!

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai - without really knowing what it meant - he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed, and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive, and brings life in his own village to a standstill - until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the way of the sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in The Art of War, he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being. He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese storytelling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety, and absolute dedication to the way of the samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai - without really knowing what it meant - he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed, and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive, and brings life in his own village to a standstill - until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the way of the sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in The Art of War, he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being. He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese storytelling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety, and absolute dedication to the way of the samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai - without really knowing what it meant - he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed, and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive, and brings life in his own village to a standstill - until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the way of the sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in The Art of War, he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being. He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese storytelling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety, and absolute dedication to the way of the samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai - without really knowing what it meant - he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed, and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive, and brings life in his own village to a standstill - until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the way of the sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in The Art of War, he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being. He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese storytelling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety, and absolute dedication to the way of the samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal.

The classic samurai novel about the real exploits of the most famous swordsman. Miyamoto Musashi was the child of an era when Japan was emerging from decades of civil strife. Lured to the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 by the hope of becoming a samurai - without really knowing what it meant - he regains consciousness after the battle to find himself lying defeated, dazed, and wounded among thousands of the dead and dying. On his way home, he commits a rash act, becomes a fugitive, and brings life in his own village to a standstill - until he is captured by a weaponless Zen monk. The lovely Otsu, seeing in Musashi her ideal of manliness, frees him from his tortuous punishment, but he is recaptured and imprisoned. During three years of solitary confinement, he delves into the classics of Japan and China. When he is set free again, he rejects the position of samurai and for the next several years pursues his goal relentlessly, looking neither to the left nor to the right. Ever so slowly it dawns on him that following the way of the sword is not simply a matter of finding a target for his brute strength. Continually striving to perfect his technique, which leads him to a unique style of fighting with two swords simultaneously, he travels far and wide, challenging fighters of many disciplines, taking nature to be his ultimate and severest teacher and undergoing the rigorous training of those who follow the way. He is supremely successful in his encounters, but in The Art of War, he perceives the way of peaceful and prosperous governance and disciplines himself to be a real human being. He becomes a reluctant hero to a host of people whose lives he has touched and by whom he has been touched. Inevitably, he has to pit his skill against the naked blade of his greatest rival. Musashi is a novel in the best tradition of Japanese storytelling. It is a living story, subtle and imaginative, teeming with memorable characters, many of them historical. Interweaving themes of unrequited love, misguided revenge, filial piety, and absolute dedication to the way of the samurai, it depicts vividly a world Westerners know only vaguely. Full of gusto and humor, it has an epic quality and universal appeal.

Épisode 43 - on  repars vers le lac Biwa pour  faire une petite balade à Otsu la porte d’ entrée du lac à seulement 10 minutes de Kyoto.   Le coup de cœur du moment  portera sur un nouveau magazine papier sur le japon Tempura  N’ oubliez pas de me suivre sur Instagram Https://instagram.com/ngee pour pleins de photos sur le japon !  Et de suivre la page facebook de l’émission pour ne rien louper des news du podcast https://www.Facebook.com/explorejapon

On this week's episode of The Dropcast, hosts Noah Thomas and Jian DeLeon welcome the new decade with Nicolas Heller, better known as NYC anthropologist New York Nico, and illustrator Naomi Otsu. Though they've both accomplished impressive creative careers in their own respective ways, they're also low-key relationship goals in the fact that they've gotten the chance to work on some really cool projects together, whether it's campaigns around Opening Ceremony's gigantic tote bags, or one of the most deadass memes of the decade: a Baby Yoda that only a New Yorker could love. Listen to how the meme came together at (16:58). Relevant Links: This Genius Agency Just Spent $10,000 on Blank Ad Space to Give Our Brains a Break Take a Look at Ninja’s First adidas Sneaker, Dropping This Month The North Face x DSM Just Upgraded Your Outdoor Flex With Matching Tent & Fit We’re Not Sold on Manchester United’s Crazy Chinese New Year Kit Pharrell Williams Finally Puts His Spin on an adidas 4D Sneaker How Margiela’s Tabi Boot Became a Status Symbol for Fashion’s Elite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Dropcast, hosts Noah Thomas and Jian DeLeon welcome the new decade with Nicolas Heller, better known as NYC anthropologist New York Nico, and illustrator Naomi Otsu. Though they've both accomplished impressive creative careers in their own respective ways, they're also low-key relationship goals in the fact that they've gotten the chance to work on some really cool projects together, whether it's campaigns around Opening Ceremony's gigantic tote bags, or one of the most deadass memes of the decade: a Baby Yoda that only a New Yorker could love. Listen to how the meme came together at (16:58). Relevant Links: This Genius Agency Just Spent $10,000 on Blank Ad Space to Give Our Brains a Break Take a Look at Ninja’s First adidas Sneaker, Dropping This Month The North Face x DSM Just Upgraded Your Outdoor Flex With Matching Tent & Fit We’re Not Sold on Manchester United’s Crazy Chinese New Year Kit Pharrell Williams Finally Puts His Spin on an adidas 4D Sneaker How Margiela’s Tabi Boot Became a Status Symbol for Fashion’s Elite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

O I-ching é também conhecido como o livro das mutações e é um dos maiores legados do povo Chinês. É um instrumento que permite entrar em contato com nossos processos inconscientes, ou seja, com nosso sábio interior. Uma sessão de I-ching deve sempre começar com uma questão pessoal, o dilema ou conflito trazido é o que será investigado em uma consulta de Iching. Existem moedas que são lançadas pelo próprio cliente e que irão trazer uma referência no hexagrama sobre caminhos e possíveis visões a seguir. O facilitador, que geralmente é um estudioso do assunto, reúne o significado da respectiva referência de resposta e seu repertório pessoal para trocar e compor uma visão ampliada de autoconhecimento para que a questão. Não se trata de respostas absolutas, mas de uma visão de sabedoria para ver possibilidade e caminhos que nos leve a um lugar de evolução. A consulta pode ser sobre assuntos afetivos, financeiro, profissionais ou familiares.

O I-ching é também conhecido como o livro das mutações e é um dos maiores legados do povo Chinês. É um instrumento que permite entrar em contato com nossos processos inconscientes, ou seja, com nosso sábio interior. Uma sessão de I-ching deve sempre começar com uma questão pessoal, o dilema ou conflito trazido é o que será investigado em uma consulta de Iching. Existem moedas que são lançadas pelo próprio cliente e que irão trazer uma referência no hexagrama sobre caminhos e possíveis visões a seguir. O facilitador, que geralmente é um estudioso do assunto, reúne o significado da respectiva referência de resposta e seu repertório pessoal para trocar e compor uma visão ampliada de autoconhecimento para que a questão. Não se trata de respostas absolutas, mas de uma visão de sabedoria para ver possibilidade e caminhos que nos leve a um lugar de evolução. A consulta pode ser sobre assuntos afetivos, financeiro, profissionais ou familiares.

En este episodio, Javi Otsu nos cuenta todo lo que tenemos que saber acerca del ayuno intermitente! Su experiencia, tipos de ayuno, beneficios, a quién está dirigido y mucho mucho más! No te pierdas de todo el contenido de javi Otsu en sus redes sociales ( Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Podcast y más)

En este episodio, Javi Otsu nos cuenta todo lo que tenemos que saber acerca del ayuno intermitente! Su experiencia, tipos de ayuno, beneficios, a quién está dirigido y mucho mucho más! No te pierdas de todo el contenido de javi Otsu en sus redes sociales ( Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Apple Podcast y más)

Check out Episode 5 with Naomi Otsu. She's a Parsons alum and former senior designer at Opening Ceremony. Tune in as we chatted about the relations of design and a peaceful life. Also check out her project with New York Nico - NYC Train Tips & Tidbits. How does design correlate with a peaceful life? [1:30] Misinformation is like a Virus [8:32] “NYC Train Tips & Tidbits” with New York Nico [12:00] Inspiring and Fueling your Creative Muscles [16:05] Speaking Up in the Workplace [19:10] Transitioning from Running to Yoga/Lifting Weights [22:23] Listening to Your Body [24:29] Unlocking Emotions through Stretches [28:29] Naomi Otsu www.instagram.com/naomiotsu www.naomiotsu.com/nytt UNDO Ordinary www.undoordinary.com www.instagram.com/undoordinary_ www.instagram.com/askvash www.instagram.com/esymai S/O to our partners: Listening Party and Canal Street Market. www.instagram.com/listeningpartypresents www.instagram.com/canalstreetmarket Producer: William Chang --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/undo-radio/support

Gareth a Catrin sy’n ceisio osgoi'r elfennau ym mellt a tharannau Otsu!

Gareth and Dafydd Pritchard arrive in Otsu, Wales' base before the match against Fiji.

Mae taith carfan Cymru (a Gareth a Catrin) o amgylch Japan yn parhau!

Pues se puso a llover mientras visitaba este destino, así que además de sacar el paraguas de mi mochila aproveché que el tema me había caído del cielo. Os hablo de la lluvia en el imperio del sol naciente y de cómo reaccionan los japoneses a las muchas precipitaciones que reciben. Varios temas relacionados, como los paraguas transparentes, cómo adaptar el viaje si te topas con lloviznas, detalles como el alcantarillado, y más cosas. Es un episodio como en la primera parte con una miscelánea de temas. Por ejemplo, os comento lo que me llama la atención y no deja de sorprenderme la presencia de muchísimos negocios pequeños en Japón (que seguro que tienen una legislación diferente para que algo así sea posible). Y me encontré la joya de la ciudad, que no es otra que el templo Miidera. Un bestial e impresionante complejo de templos. Uno de los más grandes de Japón, con unas vistas alucinantes. El programa acaba en Osaka, donde hago un poco balance del día. Espero que os guste este viaje virtual sonoro por Otsu y hayáis aprendido alguna cosa. O al menos, que algo haya sido de vuestro interés.

Pues se puso a llover mientras visitaba este destino, así que además de sacar el paraguas de mi mochila aproveché que el tema me había caído del cielo. Os hablo de la lluvia en el imperio del sol naciente y de cómo reaccionan los japoneses a las muchas precipitaciones que reciben. Varios temas relacionados, como los paraguas transparentes, cómo adaptar el viaje si te topas con lloviznas, detalles como el alcantarillado, y más cosas. Es un episodio como en la primera parte con una miscelánea de temas. Por ejemplo, os comento lo que me llama la atención y no deja de sorprenderme la presencia de muchísimos negocios pequeños en Japón (que seguro que tienen una legislación diferente para que algo así sea posible). Y me encontré la joya de la ciudad, que no es otra que el templo Miidera. Un bestial e impresionante complejo de templos. Uno de los más grandes de Japón, con unas vistas alucinantes. El programa acaba en Osaka, donde hago un poco balance del día. Espero que os guste este viaje virtual sonoro por Otsu y hayáis aprendido alguna cosa. O al menos, que algo haya sido de vuestro interés.

Programa un tanto especial, porque es cierto que durante el viaje me había centrado mucho en Osaka y diferentes aspectos de la sociedad nipona en general. Sin embargo, en este episodio salgo un día de ruta a visitar esta desconocida ciudad y con intención de dedicarle un rato a grabar el podcast. Un contenido muy improvisado, compuesto por diferentes cortes que iba grabando durante el día. Os hablo de un montón de cosas. No solo de Otsu en sí, sino que toco más aspectos de Japón y del viaje en general. Os comento la existencia de wikitravel, detalles del lago Biwa, animales salvajes y naturaleza que encontré, limpieza en las costas, las oficinas de turismo, el contraste de estos lugares tan tranquilos comparados con ciudades como Osaka o Kioto, etc... Os lo pongo en dos partes porque finalmente salió bastante largo este experimento de podcasting, visitando este destino los últimos días de mi viaje. Arigato amigos. Esperad lo nuevo de GAIKAN donde siempre lo hacéis y seguro que lo encontraréis!

Programa un tanto especial, porque es cierto que durante el viaje me había centrado mucho en Osaka y diferentes aspectos de la sociedad nipona en general. Sin embargo, en este episodio salgo un día de ruta a visitar esta desconocida ciudad y con intención de dedicarle un rato a grabar el podcast. Un contenido muy improvisado, compuesto por diferentes cortes que iba grabando durante el día. Os hablo de un montón de cosas. No solo de Otsu en sí, sino que toco más aspectos de Japón y del viaje en general. Os comento la existencia de wikitravel, detalles del lago Biwa, animales salvajes y naturaleza que encontré, limpieza en las costas, las oficinas de turismo, el contraste de estos lugares tan tranquilos comparados con ciudades como Osaka o Kioto, etc... Os lo pongo en dos partes porque finalmente salió bastante largo este experimento de podcasting, visitando este destino los últimos días de mi viaje. Arigato amigos. Esperad lo nuevo de GAIKAN donde siempre lo hacéis y seguro que lo encontraréis!

Adam LeNaire stopped by the studio to chat about the appeal of Patlabor, his life as a graphic designer and how Beach Language got its start and cut their new album. He was kind enough to bring their new track, Otsu, by for us to check out! Don't miss their vinyl release party on July 19th at Speakeasy!

Disclaimer: This podcast is created by students at Research Triangle High School, Rubi R. and Charanya S., for a project in AP Environmental Science. All the experts in the podcast are played by students; however, all the information is taken from studies written by the experts named. Sources: A. Martyn, personal communication, January 23, 2019 Craig, A. T., Kasai, T., Li, A., Otsu, S., & Khut, Q. Y. (2010). Getting back to basics during a public health emergency: a framework to prepare and respond to infectious disease public health emergencies. Public Health, 124(1), 10–13. Fox-Skelly, J. (2017, May 4). There are diseases hidden in ice, and they are waking up. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up Giant DNA virus revived from the late Pleistocene. Matthieu Legendre, Julia Bartoli, Lyubov Shmakova, Sandra Jeudy, KarineLabadie, Annie Adrait, Magali Lescot, Olivier Poirot, Lionel Bertaux, Christophe Bruley, Yohann Couté, Elizaveta Rivkina, Chantal Abergel, Jean-Michel Claverie. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2014, 111 (11) 4274-4279; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1320670111 Mayo Clinic New Network. (2016, March 23). Pandemic vs.endemic vs. outbreak: Terms to know. Retrieved from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-03-pandemic-endemic-outbreak-terms.html Mock, M., & Fouet, A. (2001). Anthrax. Annual Reviews in Microbiology, 55(1), 647-671. Nasidi, A., Monath, T. P., DeCock, K., Tomori, O., Cordellier, R., Olaleye, O. D., ... & van Der Laan, G. (1989). Urban yellow fever epidemic in western Nigeria, 1987. Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 83(3), 401-406. Pikuta, E. V., Marsic, D., Bej, A., Tang, J., Krader, P. & Hoover, R. B. ( 2005; ). Carnobacterium pleistocenium sp. nov., a novel psychrotolerant, facultative anaerobe isolated from permafrost of the Fox Tunnel in Alaska. Int J Syst Evol Microbiol 55, 473–478. Revich, B. A., & Podolnaya, M. A. (2011). Thawing of permafrost may disturb historic cattle burial grounds in East Siberia. Global Health Action, 4(1). Sobel, J. (2005). Botulism. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 41(8), 1167-1173. Wade, H. W., & Ledowsky, V. (1952). The Leprosy Epidemic at Nauru; a Review with Data on the Status since 1937. International Journal of Leprosy, 20(1), 1-29. Weed, D. L. (2002). Environmental epidemiology: Basics and proof of cause-effect. Toxicology, 181-182, 399–403. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300483X02004766

Fashion photographer David James talks about the challenges of cutting through the noise in the online space, why he learnt about the commerce of fashion during an experience in New York, and why grit and extracting emotion in his images is why he keeps coming back for more.

Simon and Martina travelled to Otsu this week to sample one of the top three beefs in Japan, Omi Beef! While there they stumbled upon the most beautiful, grand, quiet temple (just two stops away from Kyoto!). The duo are still letting us in on how to be awesome tourists.

Due to lack of content, your regularly scheduled Gintalady minisode has been upgraded to a regular episode. On this episode, we talk about Tsu Terekada as well as talk about some news and read some... Go to www.GintamaPodcast.com for full show notes.