Statue in Aoyama Gakuin (青山学院)

I was immediately struck by the strong resemblance to the Raxacoricofallapatorian, and in particular the slitheen family, as shown in the following photo (courtesy of TARDIS Index File).

A Slitheen (photo courtesy of TARDIS Index File)

The first known appearance of the Slitheen on Earth was when they invaded London in 2006, causing World War Three. The Slitheen survivors later attempted to turn off the Sun, but were again defeated by Luke Smith.

Searching the publicly released records of the events, I could find no documentation that the Slitheen had extended their invasion beyond London.

Was this really a Slitheen? Further analysis, while not conclusive, strongly supports the hypothesis.

Comparison

Is this evidence that the Slitheen had in fact been attempting to wage war on multiple fronts, some as far away as Tokyo?

Or is this a remnant of a previously unknown invasion?

I don’t really expect anyone to read what I write, it’s more for my own benefit, but there’s a lot of great info there by other contributors. In particular Eric, who runs the site, posts an amazing amount of material.

合気道 – Aikido
I’m happy to say started training again in Aikido at 合気会本部道場 (Aikikai Hombu Dojo) in Shinjuku in late 2008. I had stopped training in Melbourne after only 3 months, which I will always regret. I started training once a week, but now train 3 or 4 times when possible. My classes are completely in Japanese, which is another plus.

• February – Completed my first semester of Beginners Course in Aikido Gakkou and passed my first grading, to become ４級 (4th Kyuu).
• April – Attended the annual Aiki-Jinja Festival in Iwama, where O’Sensei lived for most of his later life.
• May – participated in the 47th All Japan Aikido Demonstration at Nippon Budokan with my classmates from Beginners Course. I’m sure no-one watched us, but it sure was fun!
• August – Completed my second semester of Beginners Course in Aikido Gakkou, and passed my grading for ３級 (3th Kyuu).
• October – Began my first semester of Intermediate Course in Aikido Gakkou.
• Trained in the regular (i.e. non-beginners) class for my first time on Christmas Day – the last day of training for the year.
• Saw in the New Year with 越年稽古 (New Years Eve Practice) at the dojo.

日本語 – Japanese
I’ve been learning for a number of years, but I’m still intermediate level. I felt like I improved quite a bit in 2009.

• Read my first manga series completely in Japanese – デスノート　(Death Note).
• July – Passed 日本語能力試験２級 (JLPT Level 2).
• Began watching Japanese tv shows with Japanese subtitles. Depending on the show I understand anywhere from 50-90%.
• Sometimes at aikido training I forget the teacher is speaking in Japanese.
• Finally started to feel like I can speak a little. It’s still frustrating a lot of the time, speaking is definitely harder than listening and reading.

色々 – misc

• Unfortunately not much traveling around Japan, but there’s plenty to see and do in and around Tokyo.
• Finally bought a digital SLR – a Nikon D90
• Hired a dog for a day.
• Ran 10km for the Run for the Cure.

Holiday in Bali
Spent just over a week relaxing in Bali. The weather was amazing, 32 degrees and sunny every day. Thanks to Bron for finding such fantastic places to stay!

Became an uncle
Congratulations to Penny and Ken, who had their first baby, my nephew Keiran, on 2nd November.

My nephew Keiran Fretwell

Kids

A woman photographing cow 30

A family looking at a wall-sized map of the cows

And here are some of my previously posted photos showing people interacting with the cows.

Posing with the minimoos

Posing with cow 62

Chillin’ with the minimoos

Overall I’d say the cow-parade was quite a success!

Cows for sale

Cows for sale – closeup

One of the most interesting was “CowGirl”:

CowGirl on a motorbike!

I’d like to see a real-life version of that!

Today I finally found the remaining cows. The final 3 “mini-moos” were spread through the upper floors in the Oazu building, so were almost impossible to find without the map.
The final cow was on the other side of the JR Tokyo station, which I’m pretty sure isn’t technically in Marunouchi.

Minimoo 73

Minimoo 72

Minimoo 71

Cow 64

Today’s cows: 64
Today’s mini-moos: 71, 72, 73
Total cows to date: 65 of 65 cows, 8 of 8 mini-moos, 10 of 10 cows of europe.
Remaining Cows: none.

I found 2 of the remaining “minimoos” with the help of the map. They were on the third floor of the Marunouchi building, in quite a nice spot overlooking the autumn sunshine outside.

Chillin’ with the minimoos

Minimoo 67

Minimoo 66

Today’s cows: none
Today’s mini-moos: 66, 67
Total cows to date: 64 of 65 cows, 5 of 8 mini-moos, 10 of 10 cows of europe.
Remaining Cows: 64, 71, 72, 73.

After about 15 minutes looking for cow 12 I broke down and checked the map, which showed it was in the Kokusai building. Even then it took me another 10 minutes to find it, since it was in the basement (there are about a dozen restaurants down there).

Cow 10

Close-up of cow 10

Close-up of cow 10

Close-up of cow 10

Cow 12

Close-up of cow 12

Today’s cows: 10, 12
Today’s mini-moos: none
Total cows to date: 64 of 65 cows, 3 of 8 mini-moos, 10 of 10 cows of europe.
Remaining Cows: 64, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73.

I went looking for number 37 today, since cows 32-36 were all in or around the Marunouchi building. After spending about 15 minutes looking around I asked at the reception, and sure enough, it was on the 5th floor.

Cow 37 was quite unusual, it had been split in half and then put in what looked like two semi-transparent shipping crates!

Cow 37

Cow 37 frontal view

So while we were there we tried out Kua Aina, a Hawaiian burger chain. Nice burger, a bit pricey.

Kua Aina on the 5th floor of the Marunouchi building

Today’s cows: 37
Today’s mini-moos: none
Total cows to date: 62 of 65 cows, 3 of 8 mini-moos, 10 of 10 cows of europe.
Remaining Cows: 10, 12, 64, 66, 67, 71, 72, 73.

Mini-moos!

Posing with the mini-moos!

Mini-moo number 68

Mini-moo number 69

Mini-moo number 70

I asked at the reception (in Japanese, so it doesn’t count as cheating!), and there were two more (regular sized) cows, on the fifth and seventh floors.

Cow number 43

Close-up of cow number 43

Cow number 42

Close-up of cow number 42

Today’s mini-moos: 68, 69, 70
Today’s cows: 43, 42
Total cows to date: 61 of 65 cows, 3 of 8 mini-moos, 10 of 10 cows of europe.

Cow number 62

Close-up of cow number 62

Girls’ day out

A stranger assists

Cow number 57

Close-up of cow number 57

Cow number 58

Cow number 59

Cow number 60

Close-up of cow number 60

Cow number 61

Today’s cows: 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62
Total cows to date: 59 of 73 (plus 10 cows of europe).

Czech Cow

Swedish Cow

Austrian Cow

Belgian Cow

EU Cow

Hungarian Cow

Italian Cow

Portuguese Cow

Dutch Cow

British Cow

Total cows to date: 53 of 73 (plus 10 cows of europe).

Cow number 36

Close-up of Cow number 36

Cow number 44

Cow number 40

Cow number 45

Cow number 46

Cow number 53

Cow number 52

Cow number 51

Cow number 54

Cow number 56

Cow number 55

Today’s cows: 36, 44, 40, 45, 46, 53, 52, 51, 54, 56, 55.
Total cows to date: 53 of 73.

Cow number 29

Close-up of cow number 29

Today’s cows: 29.
Total cows to date: 42 of 73.

Cow number 24

Close-up of cow number 24

Cow number 4

Close-up of cow number 4

Cow number 5

Cow number 13

Cow number 28

Today’s cows: 24, 4, 5, 13, 28.
Total cows to date: 41 of 73.

Cow number 32

Cow number 35

Cow number 34

Cow number 39

Cow number 38

Cow number 41

Cow number 50

Cow number 49

Cow number 47

Cow number 48

Cow number 63

That brings me to a total of 36, nearly half-way, but quite a few missing from the sequence this time, so I’ll have to cover that area again.

Today’s cows: 32, 35, 34, 39, 38, 41, 50, 49, 47, 48, 63.
Total cows to date: 36 of 73.

Cow number 31

Cow number 65

Cow number 27

Cow number 16

Cow number 8

Cow number 7

Cow number 1

Cow number 2

Cow number 3

Cow number 6

Cow number 9

Cow number 11

Cow number 15

Cow number 14

Cow number 21

Cow number 20

Cow number 19

Cow number 23

Cow number 25

Cow number 33

Cow number 22

Cow number 26

The cows seem to be placed in a sequence, so it looks like I’ve missed a few in the area I’ve already covered.

Today’s cows: 31, 65, 27, 16, 8, 7, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 15, 14, 21, 20, 19, 23, 25, 33, 22, 26.
Total cows to date: 25 of 73.

I saw another one close by, so I decided to have a closer look…

A few years ago I saw something similar in Tulsa (that time is was life-sized penguins), so I figured they were part of some sort of charity event. Sure enough, at the base of the statue was a metal plate with a number and information about the statue.

The statues are part of the 2008 Tokyo Cow Parade (the site is in Japanese but there is an English description here).

I found one other rather unusual cow statue during my lunch break:

In total there are a total of 73 statues scattered around Marunouchi, so I decided it would be interesting to try to find them all!

Cows found today: 30, 18, 17.
Total cows found to date: 3 of 73.

Note: there is a map (english) showing the locations of all the cows. I’m not using the map, just seeing how many I can find. It’s more fun that way, really!

Update: The rest of the blog entries for the cow-hunt will be tagged with tokyo-cow-parade, and all the photos can be seen in my picasa gallery.

I’m seriously considering getting a Time Capsule, since I need a wireless router anyway, and automatic wireless backups would be awesome.

The problem was caused by a couple of hundred locked files on the USB drive, which OS X happily sent to the trash but would not let me delete. Normally you can just restore a file from the Trash to a normal file, and then alter the properties (File -> Get Info in the Finder). But since the files were on a USB drive I couldn’t see them in the Trash.
So the files were effectively stuck, and I couldn’t empty the Trash without hitting “continue” a couple of hundred times (and the locked files would still be there, so that would happen every time).

After a quick google, and a look at man chflags, I found a solution. Open terminal, and run the following commands (replacing DRIVE with the volume name of your USB drive)

NOTE: run the following command at your own risk!


find /Volumes/DRIVE/.Trashes -type f -exec chflags nouchg {} \; -print


After than, “Empty Trash” worked as normal.

Taken at the same location as my rickshaws photo, and also available in my redbubble portfolio.

This photo was taken at Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Penang on my (not-so-recent) trip to Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand in November last year. The blue color was created using the crushed petals of a local flower, in an attempt to match the original 19th century color. The mansion was recently restored, and is now a functioning guest house and is open for tours. It was also used as a setting for the movie ‘Indochine’.

PS: I know the photo is small. I will eventually get a photo gallery set up with a larger version (and some more photos!).

Update:A full-size version of this photo is now available for purchase!

Here’s a couple of pictures I took that night.

Update:Full-size versions of these photos are now available for purchase!