My dearest blog,

My sincerest apologies for not staying in touch. Here’s a cute photo that the P-man took on the first day of 2009 to make up for things. The subject in view is a noren of one of the many images¹ from the collection of Ando/Utagawa Hiroshige‘s ukiyo-e for One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (名所江戸百景 Meisho Edo Hyakkei; go here for a collection of images with English captions). The story goes that he created all these works of art for a travel guide of sorts to Tokyo.

If my dearest blog had been around back in [year so long ago that I can't remember], I’d have posted about a rather ukiyo-e style painting that I’d seen at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, which put me in mind of something that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. It was a copy of this very “Sudden Squall Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake” ukiyo-e, but in Van Gogh’s rather more vivid and saturated colours, and with some poorly copied calligraphy around the edges. I guess copyright hadn’t been conceptualised yet. Or maybe it was one of those Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution type thingies.

At any rate, I’m glad we finally put the noren up. Now the heat stays in the living room instead of escaping to the kitchen, and I can sit happily warm on my armchair and write notes to my blog.

Happy 2009, my dear blog!

曉

P.S. I haven’t forgotten the 30GB of photos from 2008 that I meant to put on you. I just can’t face the curation process.

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¹ Great Bridge; Sudden Squall Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake (名所江戸百景;大はしあたけの夕立).