Machu Picchu exhibit in Tokyo

Yesterday my wife and I went to a special “Machu-Picchu” exhibit at a museum in Tokyo.

Have you heard of Machu Picchu ?

They are an ancient Inka ruins in Peru that wasn’t known to the Spanish when they invaded South America…therefore it wasn’t plundered when it was discovered by an American archaeologist in 1912.

Since this year is the one-hundred anniversary of the discovery of Machu-Picchu, the 「国立科学博物館」 (National Science Museum) has a special exhibit about the Inka people and Machu-Picchu, titled 「マチュピチュ発見100年インカ帝国展」 (“The Inka Empire, 100 Years after the Machu-Picchu Discovery”).

The flyer for the special “Machu-Picchu” exhibit.

Among the items in this collection, you can see actual mummies and a short twelve-minute 3-D movie that takes you “into” Machu-Picchu.

This exhibit can be seen at the 「国立科学博物館」 (National Science Museum), not far from 上野駅 (Ueno train station) in Tokyo until Sunday, 2012 June 24th.

Earthquake

Yesterday was the fifteenth anniversary of the 阪神淡路大震災 (Kobe Earthquake).
It was a level 7 earthquake that flatten the Kobe area of Japan and killed over 6,000 people.

Click here to read the post that I wrote about the fourteenth anniversary of this quake last year.

And one year earlier, in 1994, an earthquake hit southern California in America.
Both the California earthquake and the Kobe earthquake happened on January 17th…only a year apart.

Of course everyone knows about the recent earthquake in Haiti last Tuesday.
Hopefully that country can recover from the damage soon.

I hate earthquakes but they’re a fact of life in this part of the world.
Growing up in Florida I never experienced an earthquake until I came to Japan.

The fifteenth anniversary of the Kobe, Japan earthquake and the sixteenth anniversary of the California one…as well as last week’s quake in Haiti made me remember the major earthquakes that happened around the world in the twenty years since I came to Japan.

Do you remember:
△ 1990 June – a level 7 earthquake killed about 50,000 people in Iran,

△ 1991 October – a level 6.8 earthquake killed about 2,000 people in India,

△ 1992 December – a level 7.8 earthquake killed about 2,500 people in Indonesia,

△ 1993 September – a level 6 earthquake killed about 9,700 people in India,

△ 1994 January 17 – a level 6.8 earthquake killed about 60 people in California, USA,

△ 1995 January 17 – a level 7 earthquake killed about 6,000 people in Kobe, Japan,

△ 1996 February – a level 6 earthquake killed about 300 people in China,

△ 1997 May – a level 7 earthquake killed about 1,500 people in Iran,

△ 1998 May – a level 6.6 earthquake killed about 4,000 people in Afghanistan,

△ 1999 August – a level 7.6 earthquake killed about 17,000 people in Turkey,

△ 2000 June – a level 7.9 earthquake killed about 100 people in Indonesia,

△ 2001 January – a level 7.7 earthquake killed about 20,000 people in India,

△ 2002 March – a level 6 earthquake killed about 1,000 people in Afghanistan,

△ 2003 September 25 – a level 8.3 earthquake killed zero people in Hokkaido, Japan,

△ 2003 December 26 – a level 6.6 earthquake killed about 31,000 people in Iran,

△ 2004 December 26 – a level 9 earthquake killed about 228,000 people in Sumatra,

△ 2005 March 28- a level 8.6 earthquake killed about 1,300 people in Sumatra,

△ 2005 October – a level 7.6 earthquake killed about 80,000 people in Pakistan,

△ 2006 May – a level 6 earthquake killed about 5,700 people in Indonesia,

△ 2007 August – a level 8 earthquake killed about 500 people in Peru,

△ 2008 May – a level 7.9 earthquake killed about 87,500 people in China,

△ 2009 September – a level 7.5 earthquake killed about 1,100 people in Indonesia,

△ 2010 January 12 – a level 7 earthquake in Haiti (death toll currently unknown).

Have you ever experienced an 地震 (earthquake)?

蒸し暑い

Now it feels like Summer in Tokyo…sweltering!

Until Thursday, it had been comfortably warm…but since Friday, it’s gotten quite hot and humid here.

We went out yesterday and it got up to 37°C (99° F)!

As we were walking around, we saw this cat resting in the shade:

Although it gets very 蒸し暑い (hot and humid; muggy) in Tokyo during the Summer…there are many great Summer festivals in this city that will be starting soon!

Some photos I took yesterday:

The main reason we went out yesterday was to buy advanced discount tickets for a movie that the five of us want to watch next weekend at the theater.

The movie is 「ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (千年呪い歌)」 (Ge-Ge-Ge-No-Kitarou (1000 Year Cursed Song)).

It’s the second live action movie from the long-running cartoon about a group of monsters. We saw part one last year and it was good, so we’re looking forward to seeing the sequel.

The cartoon started in the ’60s and it’s on TV every Sunday (new ones…not re-runs).

This is a picture of the main characters in the cartoon:

And here they are in a movie promo picture:

After we bought the movie tickets, we went to the park and happened upon a show of two Peruvian Indians playing their traditional music.

They were quite good!

I took a few short videos of them and uploaded them to My YouTube Page.