A Day in Mongolia @ The Mongolian and Tibetan Cultural Center (蒙藏文化中心) Taipei A fabulous artwork featuring Mongolia ecology and society  including Slash-and-burn farming, Forestry, Hide tanning, Shamanism, Deer hunting, Buddhism stone altar. A few personal points of view about Michael Turton's informative and well-researched Taipeitimes article:  "Notes from Central Taiwan: What the Japanese learned from indigenous farmers" I. The cover photo should be about Mudan Incident and "The Japanese soldiers" should be  Saigō Tsugumichi   西郷 従道 and his troop. The indigenous should be Paiwan. Two Japanese commanders were identified in the photo. (The 1871 Mudan Incident involved the killing of 54 Ryukyuan sailors by Paiwan people (specifically from Mudan and Kuskus villages) in southern Taiwan after a shipwreck, resulting in a Japanese punitive expedition in 1874 . ) II. There are two Kada 賀田   -  Kinzaburo Kada ( 賀田金三郎 , 1857-1922) and his son-in-law Naoji Kada...

Coming out of  Ishigaki 石垣 airport, we saw 'murder'- a flock of black crows sharing and eating a dead pigeon. Later I learned that  ' the Jungle Crow' is common and prevalent on Ishigaki Island. Arriving in Taketomi  竹富, we were welcomed by rows and rows of neatly trimmed  ' The Indian Coral Tree' ( Erythrina variegata )  -  Okinawa prefectural flower designated in 1972.  Deigo  デイゴ in Japanese and written as ' 梯梧'. Although I am pretty sure linguistically borrowed/developed from  刺桐 ('Zaitun' - aka the historic name for Quanzhou 泉州) The second photo - iconic black crow on symbolic  Deigo,  I would therefore say represent one of the feature of The Yaeyama Islands. Rapa Nui July 2025 What's worth mention here is my trip to Easter Island - The moment we hit the road after arriving at the small Rapa Nui airport - we saw rows and rows of 'coral tree' in every neighborhood. The scene continues during our entire stay. The tree isn't na...