02.14.03
IÕm busy and tired today (and tired of being busy. Ba-dum-bum!), so instead of exerting any kind of creative effort, IÕll just regurgitate a few morsels of unlikely interest for you.
You may remember a few months ago when I offered a horrific excerpt one of my schoolÕs English textbooks. Well in order to balance out the unfavorable impression I may have given due to the downer tale of the little girl and her surrogate son dying slowly in the nuclear aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, I offer the following sweet tale at the end of the 3rd year textbook... which tells of Freddie the Leaf coming to terms with his mortality before falling off his tree and dying on the cold snow.
Honestly, IÕm starting to understand why suicide rates in Japan are so far above the international average. Everyone is too depressed to live by the time they graduate into the real world.
In all seriousness, this one is actually quite a nicely done little story and IÕve become fond of it (at least in lieu of the other stories in these texts). So in the interests of intercultural insight, I might as well share it with you, right?
And then thereÕs this.
Amusing YIM Exchange of the Weekª:
skottie_p (23:34:38PM): whoa, this is cool!
Nicole (23:35:46PM): YouÕre weird.
skottie_p (23:36:24PM): seriously, i've noticed that about myself tho, like i always notice whenever my head goes left in a kiss I'm like, "Hmmmm, this isn't very comfortab....mmmmmmmmmmm."
Nicole (23:36:39PM): You're weird
02.12.03
Congratulations to Albert who correctly interpreted the Mystery Kanji as:
He and our only other contestant, Aaron, also offered that the meaning might also carry the nuance of Temple of Morning Light, something which hadn't occurred to me. Apparently it hasn't occurred to many Japanese people either, because I asked around if that meaning could also be interpreted and the unequivocal answer to everyone I asked was, "maybe."
In my experience, in Japanese, "maybe" almost always means "no." Sorry guys, nice try.
But since these two brave souls were the only two to give it a shot and did get the literal meaning correct, I'll be sending them both a postcard from Fukuma as their due reward. This won't always happen, but since it's the first time, I don't see why not. What a nice guy I am, eh? Look for your postcards in the mail in about a week or so, guys!
For my next trick, I will now go to sleep. Lates.
02.11.03
BTW, I updated my picture in the About Me section to reflect my new hair color and black mood lately. I wasn't sure about it the other day, but upon a second look a day later, I think the lightsaber actually came out pretty well.
Speaking of new hairdos, Nicole over at Spaceport Nagaoka (formerly A Life Less Ordinary) also got hers revamped and I must say that it's lookin' rather bitchin!! She's also had quite a bit of new material gracing her pages lately and assures me that updates will be more steady these days. So if it's been a while since you've been her way, check it out!
(No, I didn't forget to announce the winner of the Postcard Contest, I'm just letting them sweat for one more day before letting you know who won.)
02.10.03
Right so the trip with the Board of Education... do I
really need to go into any more explanation than the photo to the right? No, didn't think so. I spent Saturday, from 10am to 9pm in a drunken stupor. Lordy, the things I do in the name of Internationalizationª. Thing is, I'm relatively young, so I can see how I can cope with it, but how do these old guys do it?
For example, one of said Old Guys shows up at the restaurant at 8am the next morning and you know what he has for breakfast? A cigarette and a beer. How they've lived this long is a mystery to me. I guess there's something to be said for Green Tea after all.
The coolest... well, the only actual local sight we took in on the trip was quite amazing. It was a shirne/gravesight called Toukouji. Let's bust out the kanji lesson for Albert's benefit since I know he's reading this. It's written as so (complete with furigana for pronunciation):
The first person to mail me with the correct meaning of this place's name (you may use any means necessary, such as a dictionary or Japanese person) will get a souvenir postcard from Fukuma! What a cool idea! I just came up with that as I was typing just now. We just may have to have more of these little postcard contests in the future. Anyhow, get cracking kids!!
Anyway, when we went there, it was raining, there were low, foggy clouds and not many people. And when I came to the sight itself I had lost the rest of the group and was there by myself, so it was dead-silent.
Creepy, friends. That's the only word for the atmosphere of this place. I've never been scared, like actually frightened, by symmetry before being here. It was just... you know, creepy. Hundreds of stone lanterns were lined in rows in front of five gates (toori, as we call 'em here), which were flanked to the right and left by two raised grave sites surrounded by even more lanterns.
Have I mentioned the creepiness quotient of this place? Extremely cool!!
After that we stopped off for lunch and had the normal bajillion-course Japanese-style meal, as tasty as it was plentiful. Obata-san even tried to get into the international spirit and polished off a beer straight from the bottle, something unheard of here. And as anyone who has had a bajillion-course Japanese-style meal can attest to, you're soon content to hibernate for a while as these city officials (who shall go nameless) can attest to.
We got to the hotel later on and... I'm starting to feel redundant here... we had a bajillion-course Japanese-style meal and drank a lot. Somehow it still remains entertaining to watch a bunch of old, Japanese guys get plowed and then start clapping and belting out whatever traditional song they can remember because the karaoke machine was broken. Heh heh. Culture is cool.
Okay, that's it for today. Good luck to all those who try their hand at the postcard contest. Check back in a day or two to see who won.
