Electric Ladyland

likes moist chicken right out of the oven

just like one of the characters in the movie amelie, one of my pleasures in life is pulling meat off a chicken with my fingers after roasting it in the oven (that is, after letting it cool for a little while).  having roasted a chicken earlier tonight while studying japanese and listening to the sox game (they won and the yankees are 2.5 games back, yay!), i was able to disassemble it in this fashion later on.  i'd also prepared beans and rice which, along with the chicken bits, i used to put several batches of lunch together.  yum yum. 

what else do i like?  haven't sent any garden gnomes on global trips yet.  the catalogue of things amelie and her acquaintances like and dislike strikes me as a bit like the pillow book.  i have from time to time thought of keeping such a record of my own.  for now, though, i'll stick to my regular journals.  i completed another one today.  tomorrow i begin the 15th journal i will have kept since returning to the united states in 2001.  while christy was visiting over the weekend she spied my pile of completed journals in the corner (dating from 1992 onward, mostly) and said "you wrote all those?"  and i replied "yeah, i never shut up..." "yeah, in your head" she retorted.  hey, gotta have somewhere to put all these thoughts...

american mikoshi

well, through the mugginess and the rain my friends and i made it out to the 日本のお祭り, or japanese street fair (part of the howl festival), today.  it was like a slice of summertime japan!  two blocks of street vendors selling everything from yakitori (delish, delish) to mingei, yukata, fans, etc...  i made one pass-through and decided it was the yakitori i wanted and that was the right choice.  i also had a ramune, the first time i'd had one since returning home from japan.  it felt like summer.  i was not surprised to run across my friend kenji standing by the mikoshi in his happi coat, at the center of it all.  the mikoshi themselves were small but definitely authentic and from what i heard, one was for the children and one was for the adults.  it started raining, however, so people lost the matsuri spirit and started heading indoors.  but all in all, the festival was really nice and i was surprised to see so many japanese people out in their yukata.  it was almost like being back in japan and most people were wearing them really well.  i even saw a graceful looking older american woman in full kimono.  渋いね．．．

on the way home i stopped at sunrise mart and got the fixins for a dish i've been wanting to make all summer:  chilled somen with salmon sashimi, ikura, shiso leaves, and lime wedges (i forgot the lemon).  sapporo to wash it down.  after this week of hard work, half of it related to japan, i could think of no better way to kick back.

fun in the neighborhood

yesterday i took a break for some fun time.  after meeting my study partner in the morning i went home and lolled about the house (what a beautiful day it was!), watching tv shows and just relaxing.  around sunset was when my dear buddy christy rolled into town for a visit.  we went out for sushi at my neighborhood restaurant, then popped over to omonia to look at their pastries.  picked up a DVD of chappelle's show, went home, and had a great time.  that was just what i needed -- sugar and silliness.

now she's off to boston to finish up her second-to-last semester of law school and i will be going back to hit the books, but today there is a japanese-style festival (matsuri) in the east village, reportedly the first one they've had in years.  most everyone i know is going to be there and i'm curious to see the sight of a mikoshi romping through st mark's place, so i'm going to go check it out.  i'm purposely not eating yet so i can enjoy some of the festival food.  yum.

DIY cram school

oh yeah.  my brain is working overtime.

thought i was nearing the end of the work i had to complete before meeting up with my study partner tomorrow and then i saw how many practice exercises i had to do!  aiieee!

well, i am beginning to learn some things though!

burning the midnight oil

burning the candle at both ends?

put in a long day at work and at the end of it, as i said to my friend, i felt like i was "on top of the mountain."  for a day, at least.

now it's already late and here i am studying.  tonight's menu is grammar, grammar and grammar with a side of vocab.  i'm trying to soak up what's in this book called 完全マスター二級日本語能力試験文法問題対策.  it's a pretty substantial volume in terms of content even though it's slim.  i'm learning about japanese grammar in japanese (that is, the explanations are in japanese), then checking with my english-language grammar reference to make sure i'm understanding everything correctly.  oh, and underlining all the vocabulary words i don't know (there are many) along the way and making them into flash cards.

tonight's grammar points include but are not limited to:

• としては／としても／としての
• と共に
• において　は／も、における
• に応じて／に応じ／に応じた
• に代わって／に代わり
• に比べて／に比べ
• にじたがって／にじたがい
• につれて／につれ
• に対して（は）／に対し／に対しても／に対する
• について（は）／につき／についても／についての
• にとって（は）／にとっても／にとっての

... and the list goes on.  many of these i know already, some of them i know when i hear them but have not really used.  many of them i have a vague sense of but really haven't learned.  so i'm going back over them all, even the ones i know.  oh boy.  but at least i've got some great music to groove to while i soak up the grammar.

asahi sunset

had a full day with plenty to do.  required constant application of focus.

the response for afterward?  a trip to my roof to watch the sunset while enjoying a cold beer.  the weather was perfect, the air was silent, and the sky was clear and brilliant.  i could see the lights on the empire state building come on as dusk fell.

nice change of pace.

don't take the law into your own hands...

i went with my friend to small claims court in chinatown after work.  that was a new and interesting experience involving three hours spent sitting on a wooden bench listening to the soft whispers of a mediator trying to get my friend and the defendant to work out a deal.  we had to sit outside for part of the session as she had a confidential session with the defendant, so naturally that brought on jokes about the flying spaghetti monster, goodfellas, and whatever else was handy to pass the time.  ah, the simple beauty of the american justice system.

high point of the evening:  hearing the mediator say "i understand what you're understanding."

second-highest point of the evening:  going out for sushi and beer afterwards to unwind.  we were hungry since the whole thing didn't conclude until 9pm.  good times.  i think he should sue someone again soon.  just kidding.

hitting the books

tonight i really started the push towards 2kyu.  went through the vocabulary section and looked up every single word i didn't know.  the related kanji too.  took me two or three hours.  wrote it all out.  now i'm going to type it up and take it with me to study on the subway to and from work tomorrow.

studying was fun.  i had the right environment.  after cleaning all day my room was nice and orderly.  i found my old collection of MDs and brought out some of my favorite hits from my years in japan.  still playing them on my stereo.  the sound is so much richer with full stereo headphones than it is with this flimsy earphone things you use with an ipod.  so far tonight i listened to prodigy's the dirtchamber sessions, crystal method's vegas, and bits of the stone temple pilots (purple) and the cardigans (gran turismo).  i'm on delerium's karma album now, feeling very mellow.  i forgot how much i like trance.  it's so nice to bring these albums out once in a while because not only do they remind me of people i knew in japan (everybody was hooking me up with good music) but places i traveled.  prodigy i biked furiously to along the shore, delerium and crystal method were playing as i rolled into tokyo on the shinkansen, and the cardigans were keeping me lively on the JR to ise.  i can in some cases visualize the exact environment each album was complementing and bringing into vivid color.  memories in stereophonic sound...

my pearl in the sky is partially obscured tonight but still gleaming a sharp white.

a pearl in the sky

i couldn't stop staring at the moon on my way home from the subway stop tonight.  it was a gleaming pearl in the sky.  it was a perfect ending to one of those rare harmonious days when you are completely in tune with the other people around you and everyone is having a great time.  i felt like i was riding home on a cloud.

you are your own honcho?

i'm reading confucius lives next door, a book i'd heard about a while back.  the alternate title is "what living in the east teaches us about living in the west."  it tackles the timely topic of "asian values" (a buzzword these days) just as china and japan are beginning to throw their weight around on the world stage.  just finished the chapter on the japanese education system and found it fitting with my experiences as an ALT.  some of what's in there is diametrically opposed to the philosophy underpinning the education i was given as a young american and it only seems natural to chafe at the idea of having so many limitations in one's life, but there's a give-and-take there.  we have more personal freedom but we are also left unsupported, to fend for ourselves in this pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps society.  if you can't do it on your own, we think, you must be lazy.  it's a mixed blessing. 

i should know more about confucius than i do.  i took a class on chinese history in college but, mysteriously, managed not to retain anything about chinese history.  erm, nope, not much at all.  ask me to recount the major events in chinese history and you'll be waiting for a while.  the only chinese thing i consumed much of in college besides ramen were the films of zhang yimou and chen kaige (this was before they went all hollywood on us).  wish i had known more about confucian philosophy before i moved to japan.  reading back on his major precepts now i can identify many areas of strong influence that would have helped me to make sense of what i was observing. 

learned today that the english word honcho is itself gairaigo (a foreign loan word, as so many english words are) from -- japan!  i had always assumed it was spanish.  webster's dictionary confirms it comes from the japanese word hanchou (班長), meaning squad leader or chief, and confucius lives next door claims that the U.S. occupation forces brought it home after WWII.  you learn something every day.

well, i'm not going to pass 2kyu of the JLPT with vocabulary like honcho.  i'm off to the cafe to take the reading comprehension portion of 2004's 2kyu test as a diagnostic.  hope i do all right.  it's clear already from the previous two sections that i have a lot to cram before december 4.