Club Metro, Thursday, 1am
_ “Hallo! How aru you?”
…
_ “Whichu country… Whichu country aru you from?”
…
_ “Ahh… なるほど… すごいですね…”
…
_ “Your nose… Your nose: it is berry strong. はなは… つよい！I like very much!”
Don’t change a thing, Japan.
Category: Japan
Ich bin very confused だよ.
This morning, I absent-mindedly answered a tiny obāchan’s barely intelligible shitamachi-ben address with “wie bitte?”…
Language module of the brain = Fucked.
One Year
Today is the day we remember.
Japanese, Japan residents and pretty much anybody who has been exposed to images and testimonies of the astounding amount of death and destruction that befell the north of Japan a year ago to the day…
Today is also the day I must remember more than ever not to read a single foreign news site (particularly these enduring bastions of journalistic incompetence that have become French and German newspapers). Because I know that, even on this most symbolic day, they will not fail to make their front page on the largely unrelated and comparatively irrelevant aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident.
After all: why bother with the death of 15,000 people in some remote part of the world, when you can instead focus on a political issue that resonates with your local readership…
Old Maps…
Via the ever eye-pleasing online notebook of sir Karl de la Grange, this delicious Renaissance-era map of Japan in French:
In an odd bit of cartographic precision, Okazaki (in today’s Mie-ken) is specifically annotated as the seat of “the most beautiful women in the country”.
January
Amidst the work, chaos and queasiness, a few snapshots of fun and loveliness:
Gavin doing his best impersonation of a mid-90s Ibiza DJ at some improbable makeshift rooftop thai bar in Tokyo, Fang-chan’s enthusiastically taking on a bucket of Hoegaarden at Pig&Whistle’s, 5pm sunset near the house, schnappy crocodile, playful lemurs and jackass penguins at Ueno zoo, remnants of snow in that small cemetery tucked in the back streets of Akasaka… oh yea, and the good ol’ camphor tree wishing me おつかれさま after my defence last week1don’t rush with the congratulations: I do not have the title yet, and I still have to hand in the final version of my thesis in two weeks.
Winter in Kyoto
Inbetween travels, work and final thesis ramp-up, much happy-happy-fun times with friends in Kyoto…
The naming process for our newly adopted pet dragon (a Water dragon, as befitting of the year) was not without difficulties…
My beloved immediately veto’ed Drako, Draky or any similarly obvious variations. She did not share my enthusiasm for Robert either, putting it down as “lacking in fierceness”. However, in the end, we agreed that the only appropriately fear-inspiring alternative we could think of, Siegfried, may inflict needless existential trauma on our pride and joy (you try naming a kid after one of the most notorious slayer of its species, see what it does to its psyche growing up).
Say hi to Robert, the fearsome dragon!
Neko Kafé Sunday
November Backlog: Autumn Leaves
Some low-quality pics from nighttime Momiji at Shōren’in
ブラジィィィール♪♫
These days, I wonder if I’m graduating in Bioinformatics or in Petty Administrative Filing.
A tiny representative sample of the ten pages of instructions on how to file my thesis documents (bear in mind none of it has anything to do with the actual content of the thesis, this is all exclusively about how to format and present the documents, not what goes in it):
1. 60部については、表紙【様式D】をつけ、「論文内容の要旨」、「論文目録」、「履歴書」の順にセットし、左側2カ所をホッチキスで綴じてください。(2頁のものは見開きとなるように印刷) 2. 各3部については、種類別に揃え、ゼムクリップで止めてください。
(1) 2頁にわたるものは両面印刷とし、 「論文目録」、「履歴書」については、必ず捺印し てください。(綴じた60部は捺印不要)
(2) 種類毎に3部をゼムクリップで止め、クリアフォルダーに入れて提出してください。
Yes, three paperclips, not 2 or, gods forbid, 4. And for the love of Amaterasu, make sure that you use a clear folder for your stack of 60 copies of each document. We can and will fail you if you do not comply.
Stamps and Rocket Science
Faithful retranscription of my conversation yesterday late at night at my local combini:
Bored Teenage Combini Employee: Hello and how may I help you?
Dave: I’d like stamps. Do you sell stamps?
B.T.C.E.: We sure do.
Dave: Brilliant. In that case could I get for 90 yen worth of stamp?
B.T.C.E.: Unfortunately we do not have that.
Dave: But I thought you just said you sold stamps…?
B.T.C.E.: That we do!
Dave: Then how come you don’t have any?
B.T.C.E.: Oh, but we do have stamps.
Dave: Then why can’t I get my 90 yen stamp.
B.T.C.E.: We only carry ¥50, ¥80 and ¥10 stamps. Sorry.
Dave: facepalms.