70 years and counting

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Originally uploaded by Mark Juliana

Dear Dojo,

Thank you so much for all your kind Birthday wishes. I am indeed blessed to have such support.

It has been delightful to reach this milestone. I am disappointed, however, that wisdom did not come along with the aging process. I will continue to work diligently on that.

With best wishes and many thanks,

--Glen (on the left who is harder to find a picture of than you might think)

Kimuchi Yoi

First off, sorry if you're computer can't handle the characters. This post is just silly anyway.

I received a business card today with the above japanese kanji calligraphy and the romanji translation below it: "Kimuchi Yoi". Curious as I am with kanji, I see ki that I'm familiar with, only it looks like it's missing a stroke. No idea what the other ones mean. So I go to google and try to look up kimuchi yoi. Nothing. Kimuchi? Ah, this is the Japanese version of Kimchi, a spicy fermented cabbage sort of dish. Yoi? Good. So...good...Kimuchi?

So I inquire back to the owner of the card and get back that he doesn't know exactly what it is, but he was told:
"It expresses a feeling of contentment and well being".

THAT I can work with. Here's what I got.
気 持
kimochi: feeling / sensation / mood / physiological feelings

That's MOchi, not MUchi.

気持ちよい
kimochi yoi: good feeling / feeling good

気持ちいい
kimochi ii: good feeling / feeling good

Stolen from http://shopnoun.com/grammargirl/?p=100:
For those of you who don’t know much Japanese, “kimochi ii” roughly translates as “good feeling” or “feels good”. But to us, it’s one of those translations that doesn’t really do justice to the true meaning of the original phrase. “Good feeling” sounds kind of dorky and just feels uncomfortable. But if you can imagine warm fuzzies, comfort and both emotional and physical satisfaction you may come close to our understanding of “kimochi ii”.

ち
place

So we're still missing the last two characters and it looks like the two "feeling good" translations above might only be first person singular. "I'm at a place of physiological contentment" might be my long-winded translation.

Ah, so this is Japanese, right? You is probably different than I. So I asked google for "good" and received 19 results. One of them is:
良い

What's 良?
Good. Also corresponds to the grading letter "B"

So google, what is 気持良い ? Why "good feeling" of course.
What is "good feeling"?
いい感じ
好感
気持ちいい

Thanks for clearing that up.

Because 氣 is used instead of 気, I thought that the 良 (with slightly different strokes) in the picture is a kyūjitai (old school) form of 良 but I'm not sure on this one. Maybe that's the lost stroke from 氣 ? ;)

So, although having a stomach full of kimuchi might put you in a good mood, the kanji would like to wish you physiological contentment.

Jacks Peak Monterey County Park Map

I don't how the intarwebs gets away with having shitty park maps. Going to the official site or a quick google search comes back with the blurry Official blue crayon map, or this multi-jpeg obnoxious one. As luck would have it, I came across this brochure that looks like it still has the psd extension in the name and does not contain the word "MAP" as one might assume it would. It's also not linked into the current version of the website so no way to get to it easily. Bah. Linked here is a pdf version of just the map hosted by me.