Fuck me. 5 years.

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.

2 comments

  1. 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!

  2. “Adventures”? merely hardships aesthetically considered. Trust me: anybody can do it.

    hope the path to indentured servitude in the name of science goes well!

    3 years doing research, lost in the middle of the Kansai wilderness: what could ever go wrong with this plan?

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