Electric Ladyland

last call

went out drinking with christy last night.  that was just what the doctor ordered (or would have if the doctor were inhabiting a parallel universe where draft beer and fried appetizers are all part of a healthy diet).  i took her to kenka, a place where you can be a little rowdy if you want to.  no standing on ceremony there.  i remember the first time i went there with friends i saw someone fall off his stool.  took him a while to figure out where he was and that he should get up.  this time around christy liked the fact that they give you a little cup of cotton candy crystals to put in the machine after you pay the bill.  you turn it on, swirl a single chopstick in there, and idly munch on all that sugary goodness back to the subway.

so we're really down to the last errands, last day now.  went to the rite aid to pick up some gift wrapping supplies and saw that they had a full section devoted to christmas already.  i went over to have a look.  there were candy canes full of hershey's kisses, tree ornaments, hot cocoa mixes, and... sushi sets?  very confusing.  i have no idea why they were next to the porcelain santa bells.  my environment is near japerican these days.  it's okay to straddle two cultures like that but it kind of turns you around from time to time.  on the american side of things i had my first trip to mcdonald's in... years?  tonight.  had a chicken sandwich and was startled at how -- dare i say it -- healthy it looked?  yeah, someone's definitely been tinkering with the cultural control panel behind the scenes. 

all looks well for the departure.  and i may even get to finish watching this taiga drama on minamoto no yoshitsune before i go.  it's actually good preparation for visiting kyoto and kamakura, kind of like the video cliffs notes for those of us who aren't up on our 12th century japanese history.  as i joked to christy, you know it's convoluted when they actually have to show you charts about all the relationships and institutions involved.  still interesting stuff, though, and i'm hoping it'll make my visits to those cities more rewarding.

not sure if i can update the blog before i go or after i get there.  if i can, i will.  if not, well, there'll certainly be a lot appearing here after i get back.

the regular

  "... y un cafe por la muchacha." 

gettin' the regular this morning.  i want a toasted bagel with cream cheese and some coffee.  i used to miss these kinds of breakfasts when i lived in japan.  they're part and parcel of life here. 

things really kicked up a notch this week.  still on top of preparations for the departure, though, and can hardly believe this trip is just a few days away now.  a week from now i will be gallivanting through tokyo with heart of gold keiko.  can't wait.

drop by the packie, then get a wicked good grindah

lightning and rain in new york city tonight.  been taking it slow, don't feel as though there's a lot to write about right now since i'm mainly focused on the details of lifting off for tokyo, not to mention getting plenty of sleep beforehand.

vignette from this week:  i had a regional moment early one evening while walking to the subway with a coworker after work.  i had just bought a copy of now i can die in peace and was explaining to her that i was a sox fan from massachusetts.  i was midway in through my story of telling her a cute anecdote of what it was like going home to western mass a couple of weeks after the sox won it all in 2004 when apparently i slipped into dialect without even knowing it.  i said "dad and i went to the package store ..." and she turned and started laughing!  having gone to school in boston she knew what it meant but i didn't know that it was massachusetts slang (where i'm from, package store = liquor store).  i don't have the boston accent and i think of my dialect as pretty much east coast standard, but every once in a while i get called out for the way i pronounce "boston" or drop a "wicked" here and there. 

i had a hard time believing no one here knew what a package store was so i tested it out on two buddies of mine who are brooklyn born and raised.  they cocked their heads in confusion.  guess it really is just a massachusetts expression after all.  that's right up there with the time i was passing through utah with my dad and tried to order a grinder at a roadside restaurant.  the lady looked at me as though i had three heads and all i could think to do was to earnestly repeat what i had said, expecting that she would hear it better the next time.  i don't think of myself as having much of a dialect since i grew up with a southern mom in the house (now it gets really confusing when lil' ole yankee me inadvertently cranks out some texas-speech without knowing it since i had it around the house growing up) but i've got more of massachusetts in me than i knew.

oh, and if we're talking about baseball, i'm not the only one worried about our rudderless red sox.  the guys at surviving grady have posted a picture of boston in the snow to drive their point home.  the more i've been reading about this the less i like dan shaughnessy (although i do like the nickname the fans have given him -- CHB, curly haired boyfriend).  word has it john henry nearly cried at the press conference this week and said he might not be fit to be the principal owner of the team.  since theo's departure happened on his watch he might actually have a point even if he is a good guy at heart.  fandom is having a field day with this:  witness www.lucchino-sucks.com.  ugh.  in the grand new england tradition, i predict that it's going to be a long, cruel winter.  at least they won it all before i died.

in traveling and in life

i'm almost ready to leave for japan.  there's a flurry of small errands, emails going back and forth across the pacific, as i coordinate the details of my visits with various friends and loved ones.  while browsing a list of kotowaza i found one that's rather fitting for the moment at hand:

旅は道連れ世は情け

dailysoy translates this as "in traveling a companion and in life, compassion."

this picture holds several meanings for me.  it's part of an ukiyo-e by hiroshige depicting a nighttime winter scene at kanbara.  i first saw it as a college junior in a japanese history class at oberlin and was so struck by it that i drew a quick pen sketch of the traveler on the spot.  i still have that copy i drew. 

when i arrived in shizuoka prefecture in 2001 the greeters there gave me a list of stations on the JR tokaido line (a train route which descends from the old tokaido pathway the traveler in this picture is crossing).  kanbara was listed among them and later, after i became familiar with the kanji for the town, i realized that kanbara was the place shown in this picture i loved so much.  it ended up being located in the very same prefecture the JET program chose to place me, just a train ride away from where i went on to live for three years.

during that time i had an opportunity to visit the tokaido hiroshige art museum nearby in yui where i saw the original.  i bought a print of the winter scene at kanbara which now hangs in my room.  and in just two weeks i'll be traveling back to shizuoka with the cold breath of winter not far away.  it's been eight years since i first encountered this ukiyo-e and it only becomes more meaningful as time passes.