Word: kyoto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Walking the ancient Nakasendo highway from Kyoto to Tokyo is a trip into a nation's past. As the reproduction notices suggest, travel along the mountain route was highly regulated and checkpoints dotted the road. Only feudal lords and their aristocratic assistants, the samurai, could use it. Women were forbidden to journey independently, and travelers who looked even slightly androgynous had to unbutton sometimes for inspection. Travelers were also required to stamp on a Christian cross. Hesitation meant instant decapitation...
...Trips start in Kyoto with a little training in guesthouse etiquette. On entry, for instance, you should slip off shoes and put on slippers or go barefoot on tatami mats (that are usually in the dining room and bedrooms). Wear a separate pair of slippers in the bathroom (forgetting to change back and walking around in lavatory shoes is a horrifying faux pas). In the anteroom of bathing rooms, disrobe and wash vigorously under the showers. Only when spotless can you soak...
...here's the plan. As soon as you hear the word "Kyoto," stand up, and with a big goofy grin on your face, start banging on the table with your cowboy boot. That'll get their attention...
...Then tell them all to stuff Kyoto, and announce your firm intention to intention to wean America off coal in ten years, natural gas in 20, and oil in 25. (Let the current nukes die of natural causes.) Corporate tax breaks will be handed out according to cleanliness by the EPA; personal ones for conservation by the DOE. Subsidies will be generously provided so that Big Coal, Big Gas and eventually Big Oil can die a humane death by diversification...
...Kyoto Protocol aims to limit global warming by making rich countries cut emissions - especially carbon dioxide from cars and factories - but does not put the same requirements on developing nations. Talks in The Hague last November stalled over issues of enforcement. Economic concerns and the exemption of India and China were among the reasons cited by President George W. Bush when the U.S. renounced the protocol in March...