{"id":241,"date":"2012-04-04T09:40:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T09:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/?p=241"},"modified":"2012-04-04T09:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T09:40:05","slug":"lords-of-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Lords of Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">London has pigeons. Tokyo has <strong>crows<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-243\" title=\"AutumnCrowYoyogi\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/AutumnCrowYoyogi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/AutumnCrowYoyogi.jpg 640w, http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/AutumnCrowYoyogi-300x157.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">They seem <strong>supremely relaxed<\/strong>. Unlike British crows, whose asthmatic <em>GRAAK!<\/em> makes them sound like bad tempered old men, Japanese crows make a sound like a posh English person casually referring to the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Brideshead_Revisited\">Brideshead Revisited<\/a>: <em>WAUGH<\/em>, they say. <em>WAUGH<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-244\" title=\"SpringCrowHanegi\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/SpringCrowHanegi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/SpringCrowHanegi.jpg 640w, http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/SpringCrowHanegi-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I&#8217;ve heard people here say they bring bad luck. One young woman who lives near Yoyogi Park, where I took the first pic above, told me she lives in fear that one day a crow will <strong>peck her eyes out<\/strong>. Famous carrion eaters that they are, it&#8217;s easy to speculate that the crows&#8217; prevalence here is a reflection of Japan&#8217;s impressively horrifying history of <strong>death<\/strong>, <strong>destruction<\/strong> and <strong>disaster<\/strong>, both man-made and natural.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I&#8217;ve only been watching the crows here for three seasons now, but I have a different theory&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-253\" title=\"WinterCrowMiyajimaWatching\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/WinterCrowMiyajimaWatching.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"397\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/WinterCrowMiyajimaWatching.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/WinterCrowMiyajimaWatching-300x148.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">I think <strong>they watch over Japan<\/strong> &#8211; and their <strong>intelligence<\/strong>, <strong>stylishness<\/strong> and <strong>resilience<\/strong> are reflections of their kingdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>London has pigeons. Tokyo has crows. They seem supremely relaxed. Unlike British crows, whose asthmatic GRAAK! makes them sound like bad tempered old men, Japanese crows make a sound like a posh English person casually referring to the author of Brideshead Revisited: WAUGH, they say. WAUGH. I&#8217;ve heard people here say they bring bad luck. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sam-in-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mynameiso.co.uk\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}