I Am Completely Serious

Successfully acquired rice cooker off Craigslist for 1000 yen. (Not from the guy before, from another guy.) The rice is soaking, and shortly I shall test it.

Went to Koishikawa Kourakuen. In January, during my assault on Tokyo’s Important Landscape Gardens, I went to Rikugien, Kyu-Shiba-Rikyu, Hama-Rikyu, and Kyu-Yasuda. I thought Rikugien was the prettiest of those. But Koishikawa Kourakuen? Has magical powers. I will post pictures later - I killed my phone’s battery taking too many (which was almost a problem because I was meeting the guy with the rice-cooker after). I’m beginning to regret my failure to replace my old Canon camera. My cell camera is not up to such things.

Every single person on the train who had a DS was playing Dragon Quest IX. McDonalds here have a WiFi connection for DS use, and if you go in one, you will invariably see a bunch of middle-aged guys sitting around with a small drink and their DS out, playing Dragon Quest. Some of them will have white DSi’s they’ve put decals of the Apple logo on.

From what I understand, the game’s aim is to be WoW for the DS. I can’t be allowed to have it; the combination of short quest-based gameplay and Toriyama art would cause me to cease to be. I’ve been engaging in douch-y power-leveling in Disgaea instead. (Though I kind of feel as if I should dig out my Pokemon Pearl game and beat it already. To get into the spirit of things for the Arceus movie! You know!)

At the grocery, I saw a woman letting her daughter, who was too big for it, sit in a stroller-cart. They were both giggling madly. The mother said, “Beebi-mitai na [something] ne!” The meaning of this is roughly, “Aw, you’re just like a baby!” But this is how I know I’m not fluent in Japanese - I heard all of the sentence but the [something], and I know pretty much what it means, but I can’t figure out what the “[something]” should have been. My brain cannot extrapolate.

(The girl looked a lot like Mr. K and Princess, which made me kinda sad. Mr. K’s class should have started about fifteen minutes ago… I hope he’s being good.)

Please enjoy these demonstrative images relating to the Avatar casting, via kate_nepveu, originally from RaceBending.com.

There’s no Off-House nearby, and I read that there were used clothes stores there, so I went to look for a cheap bathrobe and a couple t-shirts. This is not what Harajuku is for.

But its priorities do not much interest me.

I got an impressively ugly 420-yen yukata at a used clothing store called “Chicago.” As I paid, the clerk looked warily at me through small trendy glasses. He was thinking, “You’re not even going to do anything ironic with this thing, are you?” And I was thinking, “No. It shall become my bathrobe.”

I set out today with a resolution fixed firmly in my mind - I would not buy iced tea from a vending machine. So I kept filling up my thermos in restrooms. In Harajuku I had to go into the basement of the Wendy’s, where I likely inhaled enough tar to send me hastily to my grave. The air was gray. Apparently, in Japan, Wendy’s is for people in their early 20’s who smoke like Kentuckians, buy a lot of overpriced vintage clothing, and have well-formed opinions of the efficacy of at least six brands of hair products. I acknowledge, the Wendy’s logo looked surprisingly appropriate to the general confusion of Western and Japanese nostalgia symbols, with the occasional appropriated Chinese, Indian, and Native American stuff splashed in.

Harajuku’s t-shirts were overpriced and aesthetically insulting, and I ended up going to Wal-Mart (Seiyu) later.

Edit: I apologize, this entry is unnecessarily hostile to pretty much everyone. Today was kind of stupid.

I am in Tokyo and stuff. The guest house smells funny and one of the other residents is a creepy man who sits silently in the kitchen all the time and doesn’t wash his dirty dishes.

But! Mee has been texting me! I gave her my email address (I gave all the kids a website address, but she asked for my email, too) and she’s actually been sending me stuff! And they are very cute! She had a swimming tournament over the weekend and kept sending me messages about her triumphs - she was competing against much older kids and still placed very high. I want to post the texts here, but that would probably be an invasion of her cuteness privacy. Please just rest assured that they are cute.

I’m in a hotel room; it’s my last night in Shibata, and tomorrow I go to Tokyo, spend the first night with Mo, and hopefully move into a guest house Wednesday. (You are again advised not to ask me what my plans are. I have a knife.)

I’m feeling much better that I’m out of the apartment. I’ve barely slept the last few nights in there, obsessing over which parts of it need more cleaning, which things in it I need to abandon and which I can take with me. My mind clings to physical possessions; Snufkin wouldn’t approve; I kept all my Moomins books. I also feel oddly better knowing I’ve decided to take my spices, tea, and coconut milk with me, even though they make my luggage much less manageable than it might otherwise be.

My time today was divided roughly as follows:

Continue reading “Yup. Moving.”

On Saturday, during the class wherein Jerkface spoiled HBP, we played an ABC flashcard game, where they had to come up with words for the letters. Bonze got “S”. He said, “S for Professor Snape.”

I can just imagine Bonze thinking all these very serious, conflicted, Bonze-like thoughts about Snape - he is honorable! But he is also mean! He shouldn’t be so mean! But Harry should be more understanding!

A while later, “H” showed up, and I said, “H for Hermione.” Jerkface said, “Ah, Hermione iya da!” I gestured threateningly at him, and he pretended to die, as is his wont. You know, maybe she doesn’t want to hang out with you either, Jerkface.

I will miss Bonze and Jerkface. And Ken’ichi, who was pretending to be a plague zombie, and thus not participating very well.

and my last day of work was today. I don’t think I can talk about this reasonably right now, but it involved an argument with the owner. I keep tearing up at odd moments, or noticing that my heart is racing for no reason. (I request that no one respond to this entry asking me what my plans are.)

Some things that made me feel better today - Mee and Conan and their parents. They were one of the three families I managed to warn before my last class with them that it was my last class with them, and only because Conan came in for an extra lesson a few days early. They both made me good-bye cards. Conan actually wrote her own message, which is a big deal for a five-year-old, though I think her Mom helped her with the content. (This was in Japanese, not English.)

Though it was quite sedate by Japanese-girl standards, Mee was embarrassed by her card’s contents, and ordered me not to read it until she’d left the building. I didn’t have time until just now, so I didn’t. She assures me that she will be studying English very hard so that she can shock me one day. I will not be shocked by any measure of progress Mee makes - she’s pretty hardcore.

Continue reading “There was a change of plans”

Why do I always forget how much I love Jacqueline Carey between books? Because I totally love Jacqueline Carey.

Moirin is a young Maghuin Donn (pesudo-ancient Welsh?) sorceress raised by her mother in the wilderness, who has spent most of her life largely apart from ordinary people. She discovers that her father, whom she never knew, was a man from Terre d’Ange (psuedo-medieval France), and that some of her magical gifts seem to have come from him. Following a personal tragedy that makes it impossible for her to remain at her home, she decides to travel to Terre d’Ange and seek him out. This being a Jacqueline Carey book, melodramatic bisexual antics ensue.

In this book Carey continues doing well most of the things she generally does well - great dialog and prose, strong female characters in roles of political power, and good sex scenes. It doesn’t, however, work as well for me as any of the earlier entries in the Kushiel series (bearing in mind I haven’t read the third Imriel book yet).

The problem is that I was never really convinced that Moirin was in any danger. I think this is because of the relative weakness of the villains. There are three of them: one is largely off-screen and has extremely shallowly explored motivations; another is largely off-screen, and possesses motivations which can be described accurately as “Muahaha!”; and the third is on-screen, but is only a threat because Moirin herself actively continues seeking him/her out after she’s realized he/she is dangerous. And there are moments where this is compelling - but then we get to the book’s half-way point, and Moirin leaves the country and thus the problem. I guess we’ll come back to this later in the series? Moirin keeps saying stuff like “I sensed that my destiny was still entangled with Villain’s. This would not be the last I heard of him/her.” So I guess we will.

This book doesn’t really stand alone as well as Carey’s series books usually do. In general, she closes some sort of emotional arc in each book. In this one, the emotional arc is a complete cliffhanger. I was not expecting that! It was kind of annoying.

In general, though, it’s by Jacqueline Carey, and thus is superior epic fantasy/comedy of manners/porn that you should read.

Went to the doctor for the first time in Japan. I navigated it mostly-successfully, except that I just got a call scolding me for leaving without my medicine. I’d thought the nurse had just been telling me to pick up some at the drug store, but no, apparently they’d prepared some for me and I didn’t pick it up.

The whole visit was kind of silly, because the hospital I went to, which is forty-five minutes away, didn’t have a specialist for my problem (my problem is stupid and I don’t wanna talk about it), so they referred me to someplace else. That someplace turns out to be down the street from my apartment. I don’t think I’m going to do the hour-and-a-half round trip to pick up the medicine unless the specialist tells me to - I’m going to try and go see him/her before work tomorrow.

Anyway, I have experienced socialized medicine. Continue reading “Milestone”

Shinn has this problem where occasionally she doesn’t seem to buy her own romances. Summers at Castle Auburn was like that. There’s not really anything there to indicate that the heroine and the hero are in love. The book worked because of the heroine’s relationships with other characters, which were much more compelling. The romance existed independently of the plot - everything would have played out pretty much the same way if the hero and heroine hadn’t known each other. There’s no real reason for the romance to be there, but because it doesn’t clog up the workings of the plot, it doesn’t hurt anything.

Jovah’s Angel, unfortunately, has a clog in its system.

The book is the second in Shinn’s Samaria series, which can be categorized as Sci-Fi Where There’s Magic That Is Actually Bad Science (as opposed to Magic That Is Actually Believable Science, like I can’t say the title of this series because it’s actually a spoiler ack). Genetically engineered angels rule the planet Samaria, a human colony that has forgotten the advanced technology that brought them there, and is just on the verge of an industrial revolution. The world is inhospitable due to extreme weather, so the angels were created to keep the weather in check, which they do by singing weather-related “prayers” to the god Jovah - who is obviously an AI.

But something has gone wrong, and the only angel whose voice Jovah still hears is shy, insecure Alleya. When the previous archangel, the brilliant and charismatic Delilah, loses the use of her wings in an accident, Alleya is forced to step into her shoes. She must work together with Caleb, the world’s most brilliant engineer and an atheist, to solve the problem, while searching for the husband Jovah has chosen for her. Meanwhile, Caleb’s best friend Noah, another engineer, has become obsessed with the idea of repairing the despairing Delilah’s wings.

Cut for spoilers.

Continue reading “Jovah’s Angel, Sharon Shinn”

My employer behaved badly today. When I got home, I felt the need to do something productive that had nothing to do with work, which put kanji study and lesson planning out. So I gutted a fish for the first time. It made me feel better.

(Yesterday I’d bought three small whole fish planning to try this over the weekend; perhaps I am clairvoyant.)

It actually didn’t occur to me until after I’d done it that the whole activity might be kind of aggressive. Fish do not look much like people; I felt a little bad for them, but I don’t think I considered the gutting of the fish as something related to my boss.

Despite his frequently inappropriate verbiage, Mr. Rat is very smart. He notices patterns.

Today, one of the exchanges we were practicing was “How’s the weather?” “It’s sunny/rainy/snowy/etc.” There was a worksheet illustration in which a boy was calling his friends in various places asking them about the weather.

“Wait, wait,” he complained. “He calls these people on the phone and they only talk about the weather? What’s with this kid?! And it’s sunny there, and it’s rainy there, and she’s got a snowman there! Where does they live that it’s sunny and snowy both?!”

This question had not occurred to me. I considered it, and told him that the boy was Australian and the girl with the snowman was his friend in America - it’s winter in America when it’s summer in Australia, you know, Mr. Rat. This was all in (very simple) English, and he understood it immediately, which should give you an idea of how sharp he is - he not only understood what I was saying, but was able to connect it to what he’d learned in school about the northern in southern hemispheres. The second part sounds simple, but most kids take a couple seconds to fit the pieces together if something they learned in one context pops up in another.

He grumpily accepted my explanation and finished the worksheet, but I was a little disappointed that he didn’t demand that I account for the time change.

Sometimes, however, his pattern-detection abilities lead him in… unexpected directions. Another exchange we were practicing was, “Where’s [someone]?” “She’s in the [classroom/music room/bedroom].” I asked him “Where’s Santa Claus?” and held up the card for “bathroom.”

“Santa?! Santa?! What’s Santa doing in the bathroom?!”

“I don’t know, Mr. Rat. It’s a mystery.”

“No! Don’t put Santa in the bathroom! It’s gross! I don’t want to go into the bathroom and find a present there! It would be too weird. It’s like, it’s probably got poop in it, you know?”

This idea killed me for about sixty seconds. He said, “What!? What!? You’re the one who put Santa in the bathroom!”

As he was leaving I pointed him out to the manager. “He was saying gross things again,” I said portentously.

“What? What did you say?” asked the manager warily. (He dislikes it when I talk to him in front of the students. Thus I do so frequently.)

“She made this sentence about poop presents in the bathroom!” he explained seriously, gesturing threateningly at me with his slipper. “It’s her fault!”

This whole train of thought was clearly perfectly natural to Mr. Rat. He found it incomprehensible that I did not see the logical outcome of Santa being in the bathroom.

All the way up to chapter 97! It is now 3:28 in the morning.

Spoilers.

Continue reading “Catching up on Fullmetal Alchemist.”

My 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM hour today was on my schedule as a demo class with three middle schoolers. I didn’t recognize their names, but because the school’s presently doing a marketing thing where the juku students can get three free English classes, I assumed they were juku kids.

Twenty minutes before my last period started, as I was carefully drawing a homemade Chutes and Ladders board, Madonna and one of her friends, Cheese, burst in. “Hello! Hello! Can we come!”

I do not, in fact, know Madonna’s real name. She and Peter Pan and Jack’o'Lantern have continued their policy of lying creatively when I ask them their names. I know Peter Pan’s now because I got the manager to tell me, but I haven’t had a chance to make him rat out the others.

So I had two middle school girls, so I assumed they were going to be the demo lesson, and had gotten bored and shown up early. I got them to help me finish the game board, and then we played Jenga and formed sentences involving fruit (because the fruit poster was right over the table, and Madonna is for some reason eternally fascinated by the fruit poster). Some sentences involving One Piece also got in there, because Madonna’s taste in manga apparently extends beyond Saiyuki.

Then at 8:00, the manager showed up with not one unknown kid but three. “So, wait. Five students?” I asked him, pointing to the Jenga-players. “Should I take all five?”

Apparently not; he told Madonna and Cheese that they couldn’t stay in the classroom because I had to teach a class (oh, come on, don’t make me the bad guy here). “No! No!” said Madonna in English. “It’s cool! Let us! It’s cool!” Then, in Japanese, “Suzushii!”

Suzushii means “cool” in the literal sense. The juku classroom’s AC is pretty crappy, and the owner won’t let them turn it up all the way. The English classroom’s AC, on the other hand, is under my control, and he will wrest that control from cold, dead hands.* Gosh, you guys, it’s so nice to be wanted for my classroom’s air conditioner.

But they bowed to the manager’s demands and left, and I taught the demo. (It was fine, if not as cheerful as a demo involving Madonna and Cheese would have been. The boy had clearly been forced into this by his parents, and wouldn’t talk above a mutter until I started calling him Ponyo and got the girls to go along with it. Then his outrage gave him strength.)

* Sniping About My Bosses Corner, Do Not Read If You’re Not In The Mood For Morons: Continue reading “English”

Nalini Singh has disobeyed my direct orders.

Continue reading “Screw you, Nalini Singh.”

Today, I was so mean to Miss Ko-omote that she died.

She had a plastic hammer and was banging on the floor with it, saying sorrowfully, “Work from dawn to dusk, I do!” (In Japanese.) She kept at this for some time. Whatever its merits, this activity prevented her from speaking English, so I took the hammer.

She flopped down on her back and turned mournful eyes to me. “Miss Ko-omote,” she explained in a melancholy voice, “Is dead now. She has gone heaven and you’ll never see her again. Miss Foo will never see her again, either.” (I had also taken Miss Foo’s hammer, but she didn’t die.) “It’s too bad you were so cruel to her before she died. I bet you’re sorry that you were such a mean teacher, but it’s much too late… Miss Ko-omote is in heaven now. Maybe someday, when you look up at the stars, you’ll see her smile…”

I’m not making this up. Somehow I feel that disclaimer to be necessary.

She probably got even more dramatic, but even my vast experience with shoujo manga wasn’t enough that I could keep up with everything she said. I left her to talk herself bored while I sneakily induced Miss Foo to say “in” and “on” by means of a game where she got to climb into a box. After a couple minutes, Miss Ko-omote decided to stop being dead and wanted to play with the marbles. (I still couldn’t get her to speak English, though.)

At the end of class, I went up to the board and drew a little angel flying over a cloud. I pointed to it. “Is it Miss Ko-omote?” I asked her. She frowned at it for a second, and then said, enlightened, “Oh! From where I died earlier.”

Spoilers for Psy/Changeling series up to book 3 (Caressed by Ice).

Continue reading “Someone stop me from reading these Nalini Singh books.”