So last night there were a few journalists and a photographer up in my room late interviewing me for a piece in their magazine. During the interview one of the senior guys says to me, "Garr, do you know who the man taking your pictures is?" Well, no I said. "He is the great-grandson of Okakura Kakuzō." What?????! Okakura's book The Book of Tea, written over 100 years ago in English, is one of my favorite books ever. I have underlined and highlighted virtually every other sentence in that book. The Book of Tea gives great insights into the essence of the Japanese aesthetic--especially simplicity. It's a book I go back to time and time again and is as fresh today as it was in 1906 when he wrote it. What a thrill it was to meet his great-grandson, photographer Tadashi Okakura. I am such an admirer of Okakura's The Book of Tea, it's a bit funny to think when I read those words written to long ago, that in about 105 years after he penned those words, his great grandson would be in my room taking my picture. It's a small, interconnected world indeed.

Photographer Tadashi Okakura pours me a cup of tea in Tokyo.

Okakura Kakuzō: Still a bit of a family resemblance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okakura_Kakuz%C5%8D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Tea

The ol' draw a picture of your partner activity. More and more trainees just use their iPads for all sketching activities. Tokyo.

Sent from my iPhone

You can't see Fuji-san, but she is there. Some poets find her even more beautiful when hidden by clouds. (snapped on train to Tokyo)

Sent from my iPhone

Dr. Kodama is fed up and we all should be too. But where is the media coverage?

Click on the CC button on the lower right of the player to get English subtitles.
Part II below.

Taking a break from dancing (note the ladies still dancing on stage).

Yakisoba!!! Only 100¥ and beers only ¥200 -- what a deal.

Simple, visual, and just enough words to be understood. Link to the Fortune article: http://tinyurl.com/3vzq5gq Very interesting stuff. Jobs has never cooperated with books about him in the past. This will surely be the best book about Steve Jobs yet. I stopped reading those books about Apple or Jobs years ago, but this one I will definitely get.

Presentation Lessons from the Steve Jobs book cover:
• Make it visual.
• Make those visuals high-resolution, high impact (black & white gets rid of unnecessary information and reveals more of the essence of the image).
• Use few colors: In this case Black, White, Grey.
• Clean typeface (In this case: Helvetica, an Apple favorite).
• No clutter.
• Good use of white space.
• Good contrast (in terms of color, image—photos of young SJ juxtaposed with Today's SJ).
• Only enough text to be clear and make the point. (No text on the back at all.)

Conan's reaction is priceless.

Here's a quote from the writer/director on reddit when asked how long it took to make this film:

"Whew. A long time. I had the idea for the script about a year before I wrote it. I find that's typical for me - it takes my brain stewing on an idea for that long in order for it to get out. But once I sat down to write the first draft of the script, it took maybe... I don't know, less than a day. I knew the characters, I knew the basic story, and I just spit it out onto paper. But the first draft wasn't very good, it was too long. The second draft took longer, as I pared back the script. The third draft is pretty much the one that shot (with small amendments - mostly to jokes and trims to dialogue).
Pre-production took a couple of months. Getting everything set up to shoot it was tough, and my producer, Jon Deiner gets all the credit for putting together an amazing crew. The shoot took 3 days. It was a hectic three days. Post-production took the longest. Almost 4 months. There was a LOT of editing that had to be done, and a LOT of special effects. And when you're trying to do it cheaply (I paid for the movie myself), you end up working on it when your editor/vfx artist is free/willing."

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/jkl4d/iam_the_writer_and_director_of_th...

We were invited by Nathan & Kayo to the Kobe Club again. Kobe Club is at the bottom of the mountain in Kobe (obviously). Kobe Club opened around 130 years ago, shortly after the Meiji Period began. Cool facility. It was my daughter's first time in a pool like this, and she liked it. Also her first ice cream cone. She still needs lessons on eating properly, though I ate mine in much the same fashion.

If you think software transitions are how to engage an audience, then the people of Earth are surely doomed.