Busy as I was lately, justifying my miserable research stipend, visiting Japanese universities and writing my Ph.D. thesis (yea I know, it might sound a bit premature, seeing how I haven’t even started on my Ph.D., but this is Japan: in order to get a chance at getting a grant for your Ph.D. you pretty much have to submit your finished thesis, along with the rest of your 200-page application), I nearly let the date slip by…
This month is this blog’s 5 year anniversary. A meaningless token milestone that I would feel very remiss for not celebrating. Also, what would anniversaries be without the self-indulgent navel-staring and faux-emotional look at the past:
Living…
| 1988 | … huh… somewhere? (where again?) |
| 1993 | … amidst the green pastures, snowy mountains and red brick walls of my catholic boarding school. |
| 1998 | … in a rent-optional warehouse, south of Elephant & Castle. |
| 2003 | … in a 1.5 tatami room near Gotanda. |
| 2008 | … in a 4.5 tatami room near Shin Nakano. |
Spending my days…
| 1988 | … studying algebra and grammar. |
| 1993 | … studying latin declensions. |
| 1998 | … at a variety of hip glossy magazines, most of which never made it through to the 21st century. |
| 2003 | … sleeping. Pouring drinks at a seedy Azabu-Juban bar on the outskirts of Ropponghell. |
| 2008 | … plotting world-domination, atop a research center overlooking the imperial gardens. |
Spending my nights…
| 1988 | … reading under the sheets. |
| 1993 | … on group expeditions to the nearby all-girl boarding school. |
| 1998 | … at a variety of hip glossy nightclubs, most of which never made it through to the 21st century. |
| 2003 | … socializing with “snack bar” hostesses at the end of our respective work shifts. |
| 2008 | … socializing with old japanese geezers in improbable Shinjuku ojiyas. |
Listening to…
| 1988 | … lots of dead German and Italian guys and whatever’s playing on my dad’s turntable. |
| 1993 | … still lots of old people’s music with the odd age-appropriate musical ventures here and there (mmn, maybe my first Nirvana?). |
| 1998 | … everything under the sun. Serge Gainsbourg, Pulp, Prodigy, Miles Davis, Laurent Garnier, Leonard Cohen, Sex Pistols… |
| 2003 | … too many botched karaoke renditions of My Way by heavily inebriated Japanese salarymen to keep track of. |
| 2008 | … Polypunk, Fleep and a whole lot of retro-80’s synth tracks with badass electro bass lines. |
Reading…
| 1988 | … my dad’s library, in alphabetical order. |
| 1993 | … Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Arsène Lupin. |
| 1998 | … Burroughs, Anaïs Nin, Baudelaire, Albert Cohen, Boris Vian, Hunter S. Thompson… anything with sex or drugs in it. |
| 2003 | … 皆の日本語. |
| 2008 | … “Class Discovery and Molecular Class Prediction by Gene Expression Monitoring”. |
Plans for the future…
| 1988 | … archeologist. |
| 1993 | … that job where you get paid to read books all day. |
| 1998 | … astronaut, princess or dictator of a small self-sufficient country. |
| 2003 | … assistant bar manager? |
| 2008 | … underpaid slave to Science. |
Plans for the night…
| 1988 | … hoping there’s no liver for dinner. |
| 1993 | … 7:30: dinner. 7:30 to 8:00: recess. 8:00 to 9:00: evening study. 9:30: lights off. |
| 1998 | … editorial committee work meeting in a VIP booth at The End. |
| 2003 | … go spin some records at Bar Tokyo after my shift. |
| 2008 | … drinks in Golden Gai, house party at Aya’s. |
Secret ambition…
| 1988 | … understand more than half the words in la Divina Comedia and Midsummer Night’s Dream. |
| 1993 | … life without an alarm clock. |
| 1998 | … make it alive to the year 2000. |
| 2003 | … speak Japanese. |
| 2008 | … find a cure for cancer. or hangover. |
wow, 5 years huh? congratulations!
And i really like the idea for this post! Actually my blog’s 5 year anniversary is actually sometime around this month (I think i started it when i graduated university… sigh.) though I’ve not had nearly the adventures you have. But I may appropriate this theme for a future blog post 🙂
hope the path to indentured servitude in the name of science goes well!
“Adventures”? merely hardships aesthetically considered. Trust me: anybody can do it.
3 years doing research, lost in the middle of the Kansai wilderness: what could ever go wrong with this plan?