Breakfast with Oreos

Have breakfast with Oreo cows....Moooooo!

"Diagnosis" by Sharon Olds

"Diagnosis" by Sharon Olds

By the time I was six months old, she knew something
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face
she had not seen on any child
in the family, or the extended family,
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in
to the pediatrician with the kind hands,
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.
It was just these strange looks on my face—
he held me, and conversed with me,
chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother
said, She’s doing it now! Look!
She’s doing it now! and the doctor said,
What your daughter has
is called a sense
of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me
back to the house where that sense would be tested
and found to be incurable.

"Diagnosis" by Sharon Olds, from One Secret Thing. © Random House, Inc., 2009.

Sign up for the Writers' Almanac

Phonetikana

I learned about this on Tofugu.com but check out Phonetikana at johnsonbanks. Of course, it was the cow that got me interested....Moooooooo!

Gifted again!

Thanks to the guys from TrainAway tours in Australia who thought of me when they went to Mt. Isa, "rodeo capital of Australia. " The t-shirt says Certified Australia Cow Girl! They were afraid the shirt might be too small as there were only children's sizes (I guess adults don't share the same love for cows as us kids do) but the shirt fits just fine. It's now my favorite!

The TrainAway tourguides always find time after their tours in Japan to stop by Shiraishi Island and the Moooo! Bar to relax for a couple days before they go back home. Moooooooooooooos of thanks guys!

Top 10 Moos on Japan No. 649

Japan News + Cows = The Japan Lite Moosletter

Top 10 Japan Moos (in no special order):

1. Japan Lite: Nature is a creepy thing (via @JapanLite)

2. Japan’s top 25 popular anime characters (via @TurningOtaku)

3. Full text from Obama's Saturday speech in Tokyo: America "a nation of the Pacific"

4. Japanese films: Onibaba (via @BlogLinkJapan)

5. Top 60 popular Japanese words/phrases of 2009 (@PinkTentacle)

6. Amazing collection of haikyo ruins around Japan and the world (via @idiotandroid)

7. Man barred from China lives in Japanese airport (via @japandit)

8. Daily Fuji—a photo of Mt. Fuji every day (via @japanudit)

9. Letter from an A-Bomb survivor to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Japan Focus (via @tokyotopia)

10 Japanese language study: Secrets to learning Japanese language, numbers
(via @zyaga)

11 World Bovine News—

An ode to the cow plus a recipe

by culinary expert Doris Reynolds

Join me on Twitter at

http://www.twitter.com/moooobar

Shiraishi Island Winter Update

The island truly entered wintery weather this week as the temperature dropped to 10 degrees Celsius. Most of us islanders retreat indoors (where it is often even colder than outside due to the breezy construction of old Japanese houses) and crawl under the kotatsu until spring. I like the wintertime as I can spend more time on my writing.

We are already taking reservations for next year on Shiraishi Island, and The Cottage has been booked for the Sea Day holiday weekend July 17-21. Please do get your reservations in early as next year looks like it is going to be another banner year for the island and at the Moooo! Bar. Since demand far outstrips supply when it comes to summer accommodation, it is important to get your reservations in early to secure a place on weekends and holidays. Come party with us cows on the beach! We open again for Golden Week, at the end of April.

The international Villa is closed until March of 2010 for repairs but you can still come out to the island over the winter by making reservations at one of the minhsukus or ryokan on the Moooo! Bar homepage.

We've also got a lot of great new Moooo! designs in the making for next year. Get your hide covered at the Moooo! Shop. Lots of new merchandise so you can go whole holestein on the beach, including more of our best-selling Holstein board shorts.

That's it for this week's Moooo! update. Have a great week and don't forget to moo: Moooooooooooooooooooo!

More cow spotting--moo dog and house

Big moos to Greg in Vermont who took these photos of a Moo dog and his dog house. Awesome! Moooooooooooo!

While you're here, check out this week's Japan Lite, about life on the island, at the Japan Times Online: Nature is creepy.

Cow spotting--Mad Cow Tavern

Mad Cow Tavern, Cairnes

Thanks to cow spotters Greg and Ken who sent me these photos of cow places they saw in North Queensland, Australia. Moooooooooooos of thanks!

The Cow Bay Hotel. I didn't know cows had bays...

Top 10 moos on Japan No. 648

Top 10 Japan Moos (in no special order):

1. Japanese—a language of tall tales (via @JapanLite)

2. Buriki—Japanese toy cars (via @japansociety)

3. Yuta: Japanese shamans (via @bloglinkjapan)

4. The Tokyo Hot List: 20 people to watch (via @cnngo)

5. Swine flu-resistant Japanese suit (via @TurningOtaku)

6. The wonder of the obento lunch, and a blog called Adventures in Bentomaking (via @bloglinkjapan)

7.Japanese mascots--Laugh-kun (via @Muzachan)

8. Japanese putting bra lets you golf into lingerie (via @tokyomango)

9. Ready-to-wear for cats (via @japundit)

10 Japanese language study: Read the Kanji (via @turningotaku)

11. World Bovine News--Researchers fit N.M. calf with prosthetic legs

Join me on Twitter at

http://www.twitter.com/moooobar

Hanaguri cow nose ring shrine in Okayama

Hanaguri Cow Shrine (with mound of nose rings in background)

Yesterday I went to the hanaguri (cow nose ring) shrine in Okayama. As a cow lover, I had been wanting to visit this place for a long time. Here, they have collected over 7 million nose rings from cows who have gone to slaughter. It was a bit sad, but a little comforting too to know that the cows had not been forgotten.

Close-up of the pile of nose rings.

Every year on the third Sunday of April, there is a shugendo ceremony to bless the souls of the cows who have given up their lives so humans can have beef, leather, and other bovine fancies.