I Am Completely Serious

1) Olfactory Rescue Service – A frequently-updated blog of really detailed incense reviews. No, these guys are crazy. BPAL people may want to look at it? (Because BPAL international shipping is expensive, I’m trying to transfer some of my perfume nerdery over to incense, of which Japan has a lot.)

2) Amazon is preventing gay and lesbian books from showing up in searches, something that, given Amazon’s monopoly status, is obviously going to have an impact on their ability to get sold. You can write cuss words to them via their web form, or phone cuss words to them at these numbers provided by rydra_wong.

3) Last night I had a dream involving a very stoic eight-or-nine-year-old boy who was captain of a naval ship, in a very small island country engaged some vaguely Napoleonic-looking war involving dragons. (Though I don’t think that the dream was Temeraire fanfic – I think it’s based on hanging around in Second Life pirate-themed areas with Jenan yesterday, plus Warcraft withdrawal.) When he was on his ship or on the docks, everyone treated him with proper respect, as if it was perfectly normal that a little boy be the ship’s captain. The other captains and the admiral of the fleet often came to consult him, because his knowledge of the weather was unparalleled – he could predict storms and calms days and sometimes weeks in advance.

But the further the captain got from his ship, the more people began to feel that it might be a little strange that a child should be in the navy.

One day he and a few of his crew were betrayed to the enemy. When the captain was carried onto an enemy ship, the spell seemed to break entirely. Suddenly everyone, even those of his own crew who had been taken with him, saw him only as a little boy. As always, his face was quite calm – but a deep sadness fell over him. When left alone on the deck of the enemy ship for a few moments – because he was only a little boy, so what could he do? – he took a small wooden flute out of the pocket of his red greatcoat and began to play. Though it was a summer day and only a little past noon, and the sun was bright and the wind was strong, a little mist began to rise up off the water.

And then I woke up.

My response to this manga is a string of little hearts.* My favorite is the chapter about the girl who has a crush on Yamane. I want more stuff with Yamane in it. She is perfect and I love her.

This particular Yoshinaga manga’s Horrible Relationship is so deep into horrible it comes out the other end. It’s like Edward Gorey or something. I can’t figure out whether to cringe or laugh at it. It’s very, very horrible.

* But I’m not putting them here because I’ve developed an anal-retentive habit of avoidance of special characters due to fear of problems with my WordPress database. Though I feel that this dysfunction has on occasion damaged the integrity of my writing, it persists nonetheless. There is a small fearful twinge close to my heart when I switch on the Japanese IME, an almost tactile thing, as if UTF-8 character encoding was a physical organ within my body.

(I have such awesome problems.)

This book had all the pacing problems of the last one and then some, plus some extra bonus gender issues. I think Williams had a checklist rather than a plot in mind when she wrote it. This is her checklist:

* ghost wedding

* warrior woman

* dragons

* opera

* penis building

* and Zhu Irzh should TOTALLY have a sister named “Daisy.”

The warrior woman got kidnapped.

Unless someone says something really compelling about book four, I think this is where I drop the series.

(The ghost wedding scene was really great, though.)

I went into the store for bread and I accidentally came out with chocolate cake, wagashi, and a cream cheese danish.

Test edit.

The short version of this post: If you’ve ever had and then canceled web hosting/domain registration/etc. with Yahoo, you probably want to go in and remove all your billing information, just in case.

The long version: Continue reading “Yahoo is not a good company.”

…the kangaroo filler episode had a certain deranged splendor. I like how the shadow puppets show up despite having nothing to say about it and just talk about curry.

Tonight, on my way home, I found a bunch of trading cards – Pokemon, Something Something Battle, and other franchises unknown to me – scattered on the sidewalk by the traffic light closest to the school. I was in a hurry to get back because I had received an urgent summons from the chili in the fridge, but, you know. I work at a school. Some kid’s mom might well call up in the morning saying that Taro’s all crying because he lost his foil Bulbasaur.

So I gathered them all up and took them up to Kagura-sensei (named for her love of Fruits Basket), who rushed them over to Manager and engaged him in an intense discussion of which kid liked both Pokemon and Something Something Battle. They didn’t come to any conclusions, but the cards are in the lost-and-found now.

I hope they actually belong to one of the kids who goes here – it’s a busy intersection. It’s just that of the establishments on that block, we’re the one with the most Pokemon-card intensive traffic, so I figured odds were good they belonged to one of our students. Some of them had already gotten torn up from being on the ground, so I didn’t want to just leave them there.

Mr. Weepy is a little creep. As predicted, today he got all broody when I wouldn’t let him play with blocks instead of studying English, so he started crying, to try and make his Mom think I was being mean to him. But it’s better than that. I had tapped him on the forehead to get his attention, and he pretended I had poked him in the eye. Jesus, sweetie. Regrettably for Mr. Weepy, his mom was talking to Mr. Clown’s mom when this went down, so this masterful performance went entirely to waste.

We have a new girl in Mr. Weepy and Mr. Clown’s class as of last week – a two-year-old, who absolutely should not be in this class – and of course, Mr. Weepy was obnoxious to her. “She’s a baby! She’s just a baby! Go back to mama, baby!” Luckily, Miss Foo doesn’t have the attention span necessary to recognize Mr. Weepy’s extremely subtle brand of harassment.

This week, Mr. Weepy had a change of heart. “You know,” he said consideringly to Mr. Clown as they were coloring, “Miss Foo is actually quite pretty. You’re a pretty girl, Miss Foo!” he told her, in a hilariously lecherous little voice. He obviously thought he sounded quite suave, and my laughter offended him deeply. Oh, Mr. Weepy, you’re such a lady’s man. (Miss Foo, very busy trying to figure out how to right the plastic chair she’d flipped over, remained completely unaware of Mr. Weepy’s advances.)

(Rest of the day is cut for length.)

Continue reading “Good deed for the day.”

I just spent the whole morning setting up an account at the delivery company’s entirely-Japanese website so I can make them redeliver my packages at times when I’m not at work. I used Moji a lot.

(I could probably technically have done this faster over the phone, but the company’s phone number’s voice-menu was so staticky I couldn’t figure out what it was saying when I called. I’d have to ask for help at work, and didn’t feel like waiting to do that.)

Pinto beans! And this teeny little bag cost 400 yen. I am soaking them and will make them into chili tomorrow.

“Pinto bean” in Japanese is “uzura mame,” which means “quail bean.” I assume this is because they look like quail eggs. So it seems like Uzura from Princess Tutu’s name must be “quail.” I wonder if there is some deep reason for this.

(Japan really likes quail eggs. They are boiled, and then breaded, fried, and put on a stick to eat as a snack at bars. I don’t really know how I feel about Japan getting a jump on the South in the frying-stuff game here. Anyway, quail eggs are cheaper than pinto beans here and that feels like a violation of the natural order.)

Also, here is a booth down the road which contains a sort of vending machine, which you can apparently use to have the rice you grew on your farm sterilized so your family can eat it. I found it very difficult to translate the kanji because it’s all brushy.

Today it was kind of warm in the classroom, so I pushed my sleeves up, allowing Zuzu, Princess, and Cookie to discover my arm hair.

Zuzu said, “That’s a lot of hair!”

“Yup. So what’s this letter?”

“S! S is for snake!” (One of the reasons I love Zuzu – even when she acts up, she keeps participating in class.) “Why do you have so much hair on your arms?”

“Princess, what’s this letter?” Princess, who does not have Zuzu’s multitasking abilities, was too busy trying to pinch my hair to respond.

Zuzu demanded, “Are you actually a man? Are you a man who changed into a woman?”

Cookie said helpfully, “That’s called a “New Half.”"

On the theory that denying outrageous accusations made by children has never in history done any good, I said, “Yes.” I wish I could figure out whether “New Half” is derogatory, so I know whether or not to yell at the kids for using it.

In Bonze, Jerkface, and Ken’ichi’s class we were playing a game where I gave each of the kids a color of Jenga block, and they had to try and collect all their color by completing a complex feat involving marbles. Bonze is named for his haircut, his extreme stoicism, and his voice, which sounds unnervingly like that of an unpleasant priest of my reluctant acquaintance. He had the red blocks, and was using them to make a line of torii. I found this adorable. (Bonze doesn’t like being found adorable.) (And I’m aware that multiple torii are for Shinto shrines and not Buddhist temples, yes.)

Leo and Lucca, the two Russian kids, scared the crap out of me today. They have those shoes that have little wheels inset in them, so they can roll around like they’re on skates. They were using these right by the stairwell. This also upset Manager, who sent me out to keep an eye on them until their parents showed up. (Their parents, like most of the parents, are chronically late.)

Because it was cold out there and I wanted them away from the stairs, I subtly drew them back inside by means of 1) speaking English at them (they don’t know English), 2) playing Chrono Trigger on the DS (apparently fascinating), and 3) getting the laptop out and showing Lucca a picture of Dad putting my tiara on the St. Bernard. I told her, “This dog is really big. She’s bigger than you! Do you want her?” “Yes!” “Okay, you can have her.” “No, no, no.”

All the kids attending the juku have to make little signs with “mission statements” for their studies on them, which the juku teachers post up on the walls. Lucca’s says “I want to learn more about dogs!” Then she drew a little fluffy dog with a bow on it and a brush. Aww.

I asked her about this dog, and she got all shy and wouldn’t explain it to me. Leo haughtily explained that this was their family’s Maltese. Then he asked if the laptop had any games. I put the laptop on the front desk (no one ever sits there), and he sat there and played, with Lucca watching, until their step-dad came for them. So the extraction was a success.

Also, today I wore non-matching socks. This was intended to amuse the kids. What I did not count on was that most of the kids I had in class today – Zip, Zoh, and two new students – assumed I’d done it by accident and were too polite and Japanese to say anything. (I think Mr. Rat would have mentioned if he’d noticed, but we were sitting at the table today.) The same was true of my co-workers. No one wanted to say anything about the socks until Kitty, leaving her juku class, loudly pointed them out to the Devil.

You guys, I have to go out into the corridor to get to my classroom. I take my shoes on and off like thirty times a day. Did you really think I didn’t know my socks didn’t match?