{"id":25125,"date":"2012-05-18T20:54:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-19T00:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=25125"},"modified":"2012-05-18T20:59:39","modified_gmt":"2012-05-19T00:59:39","slug":"tom-baker-stares-into-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2012\/05\/18\/tom-baker-stares-into-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Baker stares into space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Baker<\/strong> <\/a>(Chiba-ken, 1989-91) is a, coauthor of The Sushi Lover\u2019s Cookbook <\/a>and Tokyo Chic <\/a>and contributor to Time Out Tokyo <\/a>and Time Out Shortlist Tokyo<\/a>. He blogs as \u201cTokyo Tom Baker<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few minutes ago, I went outside and tested my fancy new eclipse-viewing glasses. Forty-eight hours from now, on the morning of May 21, I\u2019ll be among millions of people in Japan and the western United States taking the rare opportunity to view a \u201ckinkan nisshoku,\u201d or \u201cannular eclipse.\u201d<\/p>\n

An annular eclipse is one that occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun at a point in the moon\u2019s orbit when it is far from the Earth and thus appears relatively small \u2013 the exact opposite of the effect seen in the recent \u201csupermoon.\u201d In an annular eclipse, this small moon appears superimposed in front of the sun rather than completely blocking it out. The visible portions of the sun form a fiery ring around the moon\u2019s black silhouette.<\/p>\n

One positive effect of this event is that it has expanded my vocabulary in two languages. The English word \u201cannular,\u201d which comes from Latin via French, means \u201cring-shaped.\u201d The Japanese term is even more straightforward and easy to remember, as it is written with a string of kanji characters that literally mean \u201cgold-ring sun-eating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The moon\u2019s shadow will fall across a large swath of the Earth, but the full annular effect will be visible only in a narrow band that goes through nearly all of Japan\u2019s major cities (what luck!) Monday morning before moving out to sea in a long arc across the northern Pacific Ocean, where it will slip back to late Sunday as it crosses the International Date Line, after which it will come ashore in northern California, pass over Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, and finally fade out over the border of Texas and New Mexico.<\/p>\n

Click HERE for more<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Baker (Chiba-ken, 1989-91) is a, coauthor of The Sushi Lover\u2019s Cookbook and Tokyo Chic and contributor to Time Out Tokyo and Time Out Shortlist Tokyo. He blogs as \u201cTokyo Tom Baker.\u201d A few minutes ago, I went outside and tested my fancy new eclipse-viewing glasses. Forty-eight hours from now, on the morning of May […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,53],"tags":[601,191],"class_list":["post-25125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-events","tag-eclipse","tag-japan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-6xf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25125"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25131,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25125\/revisions\/25131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}