Have you had a chance to see Kiri, the most adorable, cartoonish little Japanese fire truck that lives most of the time in Bernal Heights? Well, you should know that this pandemic-year addition to the city is not an official San Francisco Fire Department vehicle. But it is a functioning fire truck, and awfully charming.

Kiri has an Instagram which as of this writing has almost 1,960 followers, and her owner is longtime SF resident and erstwhile Bernalwood blogger Todd Lappin. Lappin answered some questions this week for the Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub all about how he came to purchase this 131-inch 1990 Daihatsu fire truck from a tiny mountain town near Nagano.

"I imported Kiri directly from Japan with a local importer I got to know," Lappin tells the paper. "Essentially it was retired by the town, went through the auction system. It sold for almost nothing, because who wants a 30-year-old tiny fire truck?"

He adds, "It’s one of those things that seems really intimidating until you do it. If anyone’s thinking about it, I’d say do it."

Lappin had some experience importing a Japanese car previously, and after he got to know the ins and outs of the process, he decided to seek out something cooler and more unique for San Francisco, as a whim. Enter Kiri, which served a volunteer fire department in Kirigamine, Japan for about 30 years, and came to SF about five months into the pandemic. The truck is made to navigate hills and narrow streets, and it's never had its own water tank — it has a pump that relies on suction, so you just need to park it next to a pond and drop a hose in, and you're good to fight a fire.

By serendipity, the name of the town she comes from, Lappin notes, has a San Francisco parallel.

"Here’s the really sweet thing — 'kiri' means fog and 'gamine' means summit of the mountain," Lappin says. "The town is literally called 'foggy peaks' in Japanese, which is amazing."

Lappin notes that the streets and slopes around Bernal make it a lot like a Japanese mountain town, and Kiri has been right at home. It's not really meant for highway travel and barely gets to over 60 miles per hour, but he says he's also driven it up to Sonoma a few times, and it could always be put to use to fight a wildfire there — of which there will surely be more.

He's also taken it out on family outings, he says, and his kids get a kick out of all the attention they get on the streets.

And, he adds, the PA system on Kiri is pretty intense.

"I’ve used it a couple of times," Lappin says. "After the election was called, I basically just drove around the city playing 'When the Saints Go Marching In' really loud. ... That was really great. Around Christmas I played some classic holiday tunes. Pumping Tony Bennett and Dean Martin out of the thing."

And ever since Kiri made her Instagram debut, some people back in Kirigamine have caught wind that their little fire truck lives in San Francisco, and, Lappin says, "they love it. … It’s helped forge a bridge between these two places in this funny way, because people are able to see this decontextualized thing having silly adventures in a place it’s not supposed to be."

Photo via teenytinyfiretruck/Instagram

Breaking news in the craft beer world: 121-year-old San Francisco brewery Anchor Brewing was sold to the Japanese beer company, Sapporo Holdings. (Clinking of frosty opaque mugs of beer.)

In a sweet exclusive scoop, the Chronicle reports that Anchor's owners have been scouting possible buyers around the globe for the past year. In the end, Sapporo was the right fit.

"When you take a brand like Anchor, its very soul exists in the heart of San Francisco. Of all the people we spoke to, [Sapporo] respected Anchor the most, what it stood for and the importance of its connection with San Francisco," Anchor president and CEO Keith Greggor told the Chron.

It remains unclear what changes this sale might bring for fans of Anchor Steam beer, if any. According to Greggor, the brewery has no plans to move from its Potrero Hill home and in fact, plans to grow their production there. Also, Anchor Brewing will open a new tap room across the street from its DeHaro Street brewery.

Gregor explained to the Chron, "Sapporo committed to investing in the Potrero Hill brewery until we exceed capacity of that brewery, but I have no idea when that would be. We are currently running at about 55 to 60 percent of that capacity."

But plans for an Anchor expansion over at Pier 48 are probably a no-go now — at least that's the Chron's guess. A change that might take place sooner rather than later is better canned Anchor beer. “We have a rather inefficient canning system. They would invest in much better canning equipment. We have a rather difficult, labor-intensive management of our glass [bottles]. Automatic palletizing, things like that, will be looked at."

As this tweet would imply, Anchor wants to reassure fans it's not going anywhere:

Anchor Brewing has been serving up distinctive California-style beer since 1896, but it didn't become the craft beer powerhouse it is today until Fritz Maytag took over the company in 1967 and began to make his favorite kinds of beer. It's because of Maytag that beer lovers enjoy the likes of Anchor's Liberty Ale, Anchor Porter, and Christmas Ale. In 2010, Maytag sold the company to Greggor and Tony Foglio.

Sapporo, for the record, is a full two decades older than Anchor. According to its website, Sapporo is the oldest beer brand in Japan and the top-selling Asian beer in the United States.

“People bleed Anchor, they’re passionate about it. It’s that passion that makes handcrafted beers successful in terms of its quality. Maintaining that sense in the brewery is very important, but this is something that Sapporo understands and respects," said Greggor.

Anchor's line of spirits, which include Junipero Gin and Old Potrero whiskey, will become a separate company under the name Anchor Distilling and won't be owned by Sapporo.

Related: Anchor Brewing Co. Under Attack From Mean Ol' Sam Adams

On the porch of a community arts space in Oakland stands a new phone booth built by local artist Jordan Stern. In it is an antique telephone that is not connected to anything, and a message: "Welcome to the Oakland wind telephone! A wind telephone is a magic device that allows you to call your dead loved ones. Just dial their numbers and say hi!" The installation is Stern's attempt at a cathartic response to the loss of his friend Nicole Renae Siegrist, a.k.a. Denalda Renae, who was one of the 36 people who died in Ghost Ship fire on December 2.

As the Chronicle's Leah Garchik explains, Stern was inspired directly by a "wind telephone" in a glass booth that was installed on a hillside outside the Japanese town of Otsuchi, which was featured in an episode of This American Life last fall. Otsuchi was one of the hardest hit places, in terms of fatalities, from the 2011 tsunami and earthquake, with about 10 percent of its population of 16,000 missing after 30-foot waves destroyed the coastal community. Producer Miki Meek traveled to this now popular pilgrimage site and recorded some of the messages that grieving people delivered over the phone, or over the wind, to family members they had lost in an instant — something that was especially powerful given both the emotional reserve of Japanese people, and the fact that most of these lost loved ones were never able to have a proper burial.

Otsuchi resident Itaru Sasaki actually installed his kaze no denwa, or "wind phone," in his garden in 2010, a year before the tsunami, as a way to help him process the death of a cousin. City Lab has photos of the Otsuchi phone booth, which still stands and still attracts mourners six years later, and as they explain, "The booth invites people to drop in to work out painful feelings in a comfortable space: sadness that can feel all-encompassing is, for a moment, confined to a specific shape and landscape. It’s a private way of wrestling with a tragedy that reshaped the whole community."

The Oakland wind telephone was dedicated in an early February ceremony at the arts space known as Oakland.Secret at 577 Fifth Street (between Jefferson and Clay), and Stern says the guest book so far has been signed "by a lot of people."

Last year, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors fought back against the mayor of an SF sister city in Japan who appeared to excuse wartime atrocities. Now that fight is entering another round.

In June of 2014, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said that "Comfort Women" — the sickening euphemism for the estimated 200,000 women and young girls from China and Korea who were enslaved and raped by Japan during WWII — were "necessary to maintain discipline" at the time.

For context, one victim of enslavement was Jan Ruff-O'Herne, a Dutch woman, who gave the following testimony to a US House of Representatives committee.

Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the “Comfort Women”, the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army. In the “comfort station” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for venereal disease.

As a result of Hashimoto's internationally criticized remarks and led by Supervisor Jane Kim, the Board of Supervisors passed a symbolic resolution condemning his words. The Osaka Mayor later sought to have that resolution retracted after he walked back some of his language according to Kyodo News International.

Hashimoto even canceled a trip to San Francisco in the wake of the controversy, and once again, it looks like the politician shouldn't schedule any Bay Area travel. Reigniting the feud last month, Supervisor Eric Mar introduced a resolution to create a "comfort women" memorial in San Francisco, as has been done in Glendale and Rohnert Park. That resolution, which received mixed support and objections (more on those later) during public comment, has been sent to committee.

So, in a predictable result, The Japan Times reports that Hashimoto has been speaking out against the proposed memorial. Yes, he's even threatening to write another angry letter. "It's true that women's human rights were abused during World War II, but it’s not fair to say only Japan did something special,” Hashimoto said at a news conference last month. His purported objections to a memorial also include the vague prediction that such a move could harm relations between the US and Japan as well as those between San Francisco and Osaka. But isn't he doing that single-handedly?

Perhaps not. The Japanese-U.S. Feminist Network for Decolonization writes that "Japanese right-wing activists are waging a mass email campaign in opposition to the resolution. They are also seeking their supporters in the area to show up and voice their opposition at the meeting." Of course the feminist group is in favor of the memorial, writing that it "applauds and supports San Francisco’s leadership in acknowledging and remembering the victims and survivors of “comfort women” system."

The Asian Art Museum got its ‘M for Mature’ rating on Thursday night as celebrated local artist Midori brought a crew of day-glo geishas and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to turn the place into a post-Medieval Japanese pleasure palace. SFist was onhand to grab these pictures at Courtesans, Cooks, Samurai and Servants, the opening night party for the museum’s new exhibit Seduction: Japan’s Floating World. The 17th century brothels of Japan were recreated with geisha house drinking games, burlesque performances and homages to the pleasure quarters depicted in the exhibit’s art — pleasure quarters where one night with these geishas would cost you $13,000 in today’s money.

“To clear this up, a geisha is not a prostitute,” Midori told SFist. “She is somebody who creates an amazing time of entertainment for people who would want a blissful moment of being away from the drudgery of everyday. A geisha is just as likely to be able to sing beautifully, dance beautifully, to tell a dirty joke and also to handle a drunken customer.”

“Think of a geisha as being the camp activity director for grown-ups,” she said.

The Seduction exhibit is a collection of perfectly preserved painted scrolls, pillow books, woodblock prints, and kimono robes from a sort of red-light district of the day called Yoshiwara. Many of these works are essentially the pornography of their era, but from a time when a painting with the chick’s ankle exposed was considered pornographic, masturbatable material.

The centerpiece of the Seduction exhibit is one of the most fascinating historical artifacts you’ll ever see, an enormous 58-foot long painted scroll from the late 1600s. This thing will take you 45 minutes to look at in full. It depicts an epic geisha peepshow in which voyeurs get off on watching the girls read, do their hair or practice the three-string lute. Painted with astonishing detail on silk-backed rice paper, the scroll is somehow still in exquisite condition. The gold paint on the scroll is not gold paint, it is actual gold.

What’s fascinating is that the scrolls and pillow books in this exhibit were never meant for public display. They were intended more as ephemeral love letters and diaries. Midori compares them to gossip magazines like People and InStyle. “These were definitely not intended to stand the test of time,” she said. “They were not intended as fine art, they were meant to be perused through and enjoyed.”

Also massively fucking remarkable are the pillow books in the exhibit, which are sort of little collections of love letters and instructions on the art of making sexytime. You cannot touch the pillow books or even use flash photography around them, as they are more than 300 years old . Instead you are provided with tablet computers that allow you to scroll through them page by page, for an experience not unlike finding your great-great-great-great-great-granddad’s porn stash.

If you have an interest in Japanese history, it is imperative that you go see the Seduction exhibit. If you’re more of a casual art fan or just someone who hits the Asian Art Museum’s first-Sunday-of-the-month freebies, it's still one of the memorable exhibits you'll see this year.

The Seduction: Japan’s Floating World exhibit remains on display at the Asian Art Museum through May 10, 2015.

Related: Castro Braces For Big Pink Saturday/Pride Weekend As Sisters Bow Out As Organizers

Remember how we talked about all that free-floating debris from last year's tsunami floating out in the Pacific and gradually making it onto our shores? Well, in case you doubted us, here's a report about an autographed soccer ball that actually made it back, via Alaska, to its teenage owner, whose home and belongings were all washed out to sea.

A man found the ball while beachcombing on Middleton Island on the Gulf of Alaska, and his wife is Japanese so she read the permanent-marker inscription on the ball and ended up contacting its owner, 16-year-old Misaki Murakami from the town of Rikuzentakata. Murakami told a journalist who contacted him, "I've lost everything in the tsunami, so I'm delighted. I really want to say thank you for finding the ball."

Now we're just waiting for a few cars and boats and shit to start showing up on Ocean Beach.

[Reuters]
[Anchorage Daily News]

Nearly a year after a major earthquake and tsunami shook and doused Japan, some 25 million tons of debris that washed out to sea when the tsunami receded is headed toward the California coast. We're talking cars, boats, pieces of houses, you name it. Whatever didn't sink has been slowly making its way across the Pacific Ocean, and experts believe we'll start seeing large objects start washing up on beaches as soon as next month.

Also — and this should make for a pleasant spring — there's a fair possibility of human remains washing ashore that have been buoyant since last March.

One expert thinks the main mass of trash will take another year or so to arrive.

A lot of the debris is probably already swirling into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch you've probably heard about, which is kept offshore in part by the gyro gyre or large circular current that runs between here and Asia. Some boats off Hawaii and elsewhere have already started spotting stuff and pulling it out of the water. And people who regularly walk and comb the beaches (like the weird buoy hoarder in ABC 7's video) are asked to report what they may find to the Coast Guard or local environmental agencies. This could make for a pretty gross environmental disaster when ocean birds start eating Japanese refuse, etc.

Some may be looking forward to finding cool things with Japanese characters on them arriving on Ocean Beach and Fort Funston. But no bodies please.

[ABC 7]

The folks at Café Cocomo can't seem catch a break: according to the Examiner, the club on the edge of Potrero Hill and the Dogpatch was hosting a fundraising event yesterday evening when an all-out bar fight broke out, leaving five injured. What started as an argument between two lady patrons of the club, quickly escalated when an unidentified group of "vicious females" attacked peacekeepers who attempted to put a stop to the heated exchange of words.

Among the injured was the 55-year-old event organizer who "suffered a laceration to his arm" when he was knocked to the ground. The four other victims also received minor cuts in the altercation, but there seems to be some dispute as to whether or not weapons were involved: One witness says the attackers were wielding broken bottles, while the club's owner told the Entertainment Commission that bottles were not involved.

Café Cocomo rents out space for private events and recently became the subject of some media scrutiny after a shooting back in October left a patron critically injured. That incident prompted some controversial statements about Hip-hop from the Club's manager.

[SFExaminer]
Previously on SFist: Witnesses Sought in Shooting in Potrero Hill Nightclub
Nightclub Manager Suggests Hip-Hop Increases Likelihood of Weapons

Have you ever wanted to have an intimate dinner with Supervisor Jane Kim? Ride your bike alongside Supervisor David Chiu? Sup with Supervisor David Campos at Moki's? Well then, head over to to Som on Wednesday (tomorrow!) for the S.F. Board of Supervisors Fundraiser for Japan. In addition to wonks galore, there will be a presentation from the Consulate General of Japan, DJ tunes by local resident B-Haul (Tasty), lots of booze, and a silent auction. Said auction, featuring goodies offered by your Supervisors, will include the following items:

District 1 Supervisor Eric Mar:
* 4 Tickets to the Academy of Sciences (value: $100)

District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell:
* 2 Family 4-Packs to the Exploratorium

District 3 Supervisor David Chiu:
* Bike Ride with Supervisor Chiu

District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim:
* Dinner and Show at Yoshi's with Supervisor Kim
* Luxury Box Seats to the SF Giants game
* A Pair of Burning Man Tickets (Value: $400)
* A Pair of Tickets to Outside Lands in August 2011 (Value: $300)
* A Foursome for a Top Golf Course

District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd:
* Behind the scene tour of SF Zoo for 4 people
* signed copies of "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters" by Nancy Pelosi
* 2 tickets to SF Ballet's Little Mermaid

District 9 Supervisor David Campos:
* Dinner with Supervisor Campos at Moki's (on Cortland Ave)

District 11 Supervisor John Avalos:
* Lunch for 2 with Supervisor Avalos at Zabb Thai Cuisine in the Excelsior.

And more!

A $20 suggested donation at the door is the recommended entry fee. So, come on, cough it up. Your donation will go to two organizations: the JCCCNC: Northern Japan Earthquake Relief Fund and Japan Multicultural Relief Fund.

Details:
S.F. Board of Supervisors Host Fundraiser for Japan
5:30pm - 8:00pm
SOM Bar - 2625 16th Street (at South Van Ness)

Be prepared for a ton of radiation news, if not an actual "plume" of harmful radiation, in the coming days and weeks. For now, President Obama, Berkeley scientists, and everyone who knows anything would like you to please go on about your lives, and don't believe all the hype and those mis-leading animations about the radiation plume coming from Japan and engulfing the West Coast.

The Chron posted a graphic showing that, at least for today, most of the radiation particles are headed to Alaska and Canada, and even those are at safe levels. Furthermore, the particles are "significantly diluted" as they mix with the upper atmosphere, and whatever hits California is going to be at a very high altitude.

The director of public health in L.A., Dr. Jonathan Fielding, says "The biggest health impact (from this radiation) is the psychological impact."

Berkeley scientists say they have detected a few particles in the air, but it is all at much lower levels even than one would experience on a regular airplane flight. Also, as ABC 7 reports, the animation showing that plume coming across the ocean is very misleading — what's arriving isn't really a plume at all, but some dispersed particles, and no one can actually predict how winds will carry and disperse the particles... but it won't look like that.

Anyway, we remain sort of freaked out. Meanwhile, the severity level of the nuclear crisis in Japan has been raised to a level 5 on a 7-point scale -- equivalent to Three Mile Island but not as bad as the level-7 Chernobyl meltdown.