My supreme apologies for the lack of updates, loyal fans. I guess I've gotten carried away with the summer--sailing, biking, running around. Usually there isn't this much sunshine to enjoy in Minnesota so I've been out taking advantage of it!

Also my supreme apologies for those who hate selective coloring. It's cheesy. But like my father before me when chided for making two many puns he said, "son, I was born to corn."

The little statues are Jizo Bosatsu, the Buddha protectorate of stillborn, miscarried and—later—aborted children. The Jizo phenomenon borrows heavily from Japanese Shintoism and became much popular during the liberalization and legalization of abortion in Japan.

Although critics of the practice label it as emotionally coercive citing temple literature claiming that aborted fetuses and children become so-called mizuko or water-children held in a state of purgatory in the cycle of rebirth unless proper retribution is payed, the shear number of bibbed or adorned statues pays an honest truth to the widespread nature of this practice.

An elderly tourist couple from the UK asked me if I knew what these statues were about. I told her what I could. The woman remarked, "that's horrible, how can a people get so many abortions?" I told her what I knew of Japanese culture up to and including the taboos surrounding various forms of birth control. I guess she was ready to criticize a culture but she herself wasn't ready to have a conversation about the sociological sexual practices of a nation with a stranger because she grew rather red in the face and abruptly hurried off.