Pheasants
August 24th, 2005
The other day I was visiting the same hilly neighborhood where I saw the Enaga (Long-tailed Tit), and spotted something I had never seen before: Pheasants. Not, not serfs. The birds. Specifically, the Japanese Green Pheasant (Kiji • キジ). Unfortunately, it was a hen and her growing youngster (or possibly two hens), which are fairly plain, and not the garish and wattled red, purple, green, and grey adult male. But still, it’s a new species for me.
After spotting them, I spoke with a resident of the area, a nice woman who did not like the birds so much, as they raided her garden, especially of fruits such as strawberries, and–why, she could not fathom–eggplants.
I think you could double how interesting your blog is by providing links into wikipedia for all the terms that you use that the average joe/jill may not know.
e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheasant
I’m sorry that this doesn’t relate to this post. (And you may decide to moderate out this note.) But I wonder what you have to say about the privatization of the Japanese Postal System as promoted by Koizumi and his faction. I just wrote a short piece on it on my blog, and I decided to check yours, thinking you would have already posted something. I didn’t see anything on your index, so I thought I’d ask.
Actually, I did blog on it:
http://www.blogd.com/archives/001134.html
I have little to say about it, as I don’t know too much about it. The existing system seems to have worked so far. What I read seemed to say that it was a restructuring bid to shake up and reorganize finances within the government as well as to throw business to the private sector by doing away with a subsidized national industry.
In the end, I just can’t see how this could possibly benefit the common Japanese citizenry.