The Remains of the (birth)Day (cake)

I made a nice cake from scratch for the mister's birthday, which was August 9.
However, I forgot to get a picture of it before he and some buddies lit into it.
This was one of his gifts: a custom calligraphy scroll. It reads "Repetition becomes Power." It's a saying that is commonly associated with Kendo and other martial arts and it is one of his favorites.
He also got fancy cufflinks, and a set of authentic pint AND middy (half-pint) beer glasses. I suppose it takes the sting out of getting older.

Funky KitKats

Summertime KitKat Flavor - Suica to Shio -Watermelon with a pinch of salt! (on top)
On the bottom is the "akafuku" flavor - available only in Osaka (akafuku is a type of mochi specific to the Osaka area).

Oni no Kakuran

Oni no Kakuran is a Japanese saying that literally translates to "Demon's Illness" and is used when someone who never gets sick, gets sick.

My husband woke up this morning with a fever, covered in clammy sweat and generally looking like shit-on-a-stick. I stayed home to keep an eye on him (and also to avoid work) and at one point, seriously began to wonder if the son-of-a-bitch had up and died on me -- once I realized he had been sleeping for twenty hours straight (completely unlike him).

I was just getting ready to go upstairs and begin dealing with the logistics of removing a 200+ pound corpse from my bed (where's a chainsaw when you need one?) when I heard groaning, stumbling and a flush from the upstairs toilet.

He went back to bed after being given some Tylenol to reduce his fever, some fluids, and a light snack. Kowaiiso (poor thing).

Vacation Pictures

SOH: My favorite snapshot
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Click on the photo to go to flickr and see the rest of our trip pictures!

Holding Patterns

Well, I've been back from vacation for a few days now, and am still uploading and organizing the ton of pictures I took. The trip went off with only a few minor glitches and it certainly was a good time. I'll get the links to the pix up shortly.

In other news, we have been extended here through December 31, 2008. I won't be coming back stateside as soon as I thought I would. This is both a relief and a source of consternation.

37

A Birthday Poem
Ted Kooser

Just past dawn,
the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
ith his bucketfor the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

Ready, Set, Go ...

... on vacation! We'll be heading out first thing tomorrow. I won't have the laptop with me so this is the last entry for a while, unless I get a major jones and hit an internet cafe.

The First Breath . . .

One week until my birthday (yikes)! Because we will be travelling and probably NOT bringing the laptop along , I wanted to blog about one of my birthday gifts from Chris, a calligraphy scroll.

The scroll is currently hanging in our tokonoma (alcove). I change out the decorations in it around the first of the month. Sometimes there are scrolls, sometimes kimono, sometimes sculpture. I like to mix it up. Since July is my birthday month, I decided to hang up my gift.

One of the reasons I adore my husband is that he "gets" me. How else would he know that I would love a scroll that reads "The first breath is the beginning of death" as a birthday present? And in spite its zen sound, the quote is from Thomas Fuller.

The gentleman who did the scroll is a retired school teacher, who taught computer programming (COBOL and FORTRAN) and also worked as the principal of the school. He's retired now and doing calligraphy as a way to earn a bit of money. He was very sweet and took the work very seriously. We liked his work so much that we ordered a scroll for Chris (also a birthday gift) and a placard for me, which I will photograph and feature later.

The image below is a close up of the character on the bottom. The drier-looking strokes where the brush has begun to dry out and you see striations is termed "flying white" and is what gives the calligraphy its dynamism and is one of my favorite parts of the work.

Calligraphy is interesting because every rendition is personal and unique and you can see the artist's personality shine through. Two artists writing out the same phrase will have completely different-looking results. If you follow an artist from the start to the end of career, you can readily see how experience affects the strokes ("experience" includes the aging of the body). I recommend The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen: Paintings and Calligraphy by Japanese Masters by Audrey Yoshiko Seo with Stephen Addiss to see some great examples.

Hi Ben!

Hi Ben!
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

I've been missing my 10 am tea-and-treat with Ben. So I had some tea with him in spirit.

Mysteries of the Human Body

Mysteries of the Human Body Sign

We went to see the local version of "Body Worlds" at the Aomori Museum of Contemporary Art.

Chris was kind of grossed out. I was a teeny bit, too, but mostly I was utterly fascinated AND I got to hold a plastinated BRAIN!
In case you were wondering, the brain was pretty heavy and it felt similar to soapstone.

We also went to the permanent exhibit. One of the "famous" permanent exhibits (a giant dog sculpture) was closed for cleaning/renovation and as a result, we got two pencils free from the gift shop. This cracked us up because the ticketing clerks totally apologized for it and handed us the pencils with much pomp and circumstance. Hee hee!

90 Days

As of today, there's 90 days left on our contract. If I don't count the weekends or holidays or the ten days in July when we will be on vacation, there's really only 53 days left.

We've been in Japan for four years now and I can't believe it is coming to an end.

I am not sure how I feel about any of it; I am simultaneously excited and terrified.

Kanji

Someone recently asked me how many Kanji I could read after living here for four years. Given that you need to know 1,945 characters (mandated by the government and taught in schools) to be able to read newspapers and most literature in Japan - I am assuredly illiterate.

Additionally Kanji have both a Japanese pronounciation called Kun and a Chinese pronounciation called On or Hon, because Kanji came from China. With a few exceptions, I only know the Japanese reading.

What I do know are usually pictographs, symbols and a few ideographs. I know very few phono-ideographs, which are what makes up about 80% of Kanji (they're the hardest to learn).

Here's the wiki entry on Kanji.


Honestly, I really can't read. So a better question would be how many Kanji can I recognize?

In no particular order (and I know I am forgetting some, I'll add them when/if I remember). If I wasn't lazy, I would put the Kanji in, too, but that involves a lot of cutting and pasting.

Oil
Camelia (Tsubaki) I learned these two together because I use camelia oil as a hair treatment.

School

Man
Woman
Noisy (made up of three little versions of the kanji for woman. Ha ha ha)
Child

Dog
Bird
Horse (that comes from learning it to avoid eating horse meat, a popular dish here)
Fish

Sun
Moon
Sky
Rain
Wind

North
South
East
West

Fire
Water
Electricity
Danger
Disaster
Thunder
Lightening
Earthquake
Rain

Wheel (included in the characters for car, bike and train)


Thing/Things
Goods (like in Dry Goods)
Laundry

Fat
Carbohydrate
Calories
Fiber
(all of these are actually a series of Kanji)

Red
Black
White
Grey
Purple
Green/Blue

Bamboo

Raw or Draft (nama, used as in Nama Biru - draft beer)
Alcohol
Rice
Vegetable(s)

Shop/Store/Vendor

Hour
Minute
Day
Month
Year

Most numbers
Yen
Discount

Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall

Entrance
Exit
Stop

Enlightenment
Samurai

Tea

Helmet

Silk
Cotton
Wool (same kanji as "Hair")
Gold
Silver

River
Spring
Mountain
Tree
Forest

Over
Under
Field
Village
City

Gate
Corner

Flower
Book (one of the few I know both Japanese and Chinese readings)
Stone/Rock
Feather/Wing

Person
Love
Spirit
Old

Heaven

Power
Inside/Deep
Dream
Light
Medicine/Drug
Big (also know Japanese and Chinese reading for this one)
Inside

Umbrella
Road/Way
Book also used as Origin - Japanese and Chinese reading)

Genji's Spot

Genji's Spot
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Here's Genji's ashes, in a beautiful cobalt blue urn that I commissioned for him. His name is on the bottom.

He is surrounded by "hot anime babes in bikinis" - my husbands tacky collection. Eh, whatever.

It's been a rough week: I've called for him a few times, got confused about where the food dishes got off to and when I was shopping yesterday, almost picked up a new collar for him.

I'd like to thank everyone who emailed, messaged, called or otherwise expressed their care and concern.

The Very Last One

The Very Last One
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

This is the last picture taken of our little furry guy, Genji.

Our Little Furry Guy
March 2003 - June 2008

If you click on the picture, you can see Genji's flickr set, going all the way back to 2004.

Amazing Day at Towadako (Towada Lake)

Amazing
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

It's rainy season right now, and when I woke up today, there was no way in hell I was going into work - it was an amazing beautiful day, and I think by law we're only allowed three of them per summer in Misawa.

Chris' work ethic almost got in the way of the day trip, but once he got outside, he realized that work would wait but this kind of day would not.

It was a lovely, lovely day. You can click the photo to go to the flickr set to view more pictures.

We went into work in the evening for a little bit, so we weren't all that bad.

Four Years

Four years ago today, we came to Japan!

In Memorium

In Memorium
Originally uploaded by zoom in tight

I remember.
Thank you all.

A Mouthful of Macho

I was digging through some archive CDs and discovered some bits and pieces from a creative writing class I took back in 2004. This was an exercise about evoking the sensory aspects of a memory from your childhood. The only requirement was it had to be 200 words or less.

A Mouthful of Macho

It’s late summer, the taffy afternoon stretching endlessly. There’s nothing to do in this small town, so a pack of barely-teenaged boys are roaming the neighborhood streets. One of the boys is actually a girl and that girl is me.

It’s lunchtime. Being teens, we are hungry all the time. Preternaturally hungry and beginning to sense it’s not just food we are hungry for. We walk by a dead raccoon.

“I’m hungry enough,” I boast, “to eat that roadkill.”

“Yeah right!”

“I used to eat raw hamburger, but Mom made me stop. Said I’d get worms.”

“So? DARE you to eat it.”

“No way!”

“You said! What? You a gir—a chickenshit?”

Great. I’ll be a chickenshit. Even worse, I’ll be a girl.

The raccoon’s entrails are strewn like meaty confetti around the animal. I briefly wonder how much it hurts to get run over.

The guys are waiting. Nonchalantly as possible, I reach into the raccoon’s burst-open belly, to discover it’s hard to grip raccoon guts. I keep plucking at the stringy flesh, like some demented charnel house harpist. I was wrong--roadkill is NOT like raw hamburger. Finally, a brownish-red gobbet gives way. The guys are staring at me.

I glare back as I chew with determined, oversized chomps. The flesh is gristly and squeaks out from between my teeth, skidding across my tongue. It smells like menstrual blood, road tar, and fur. It tastes like the hot copper of a nosebleed with a faint overblown sweetness of rot. I swallow. We all wait to see if I will puke. My stomach churns but I keep everything down. The guys are agog, unable to believe what they’ve just seen me do.

For lunch, we go to a pizza joint. The guys buy me my slices, something they’ve never done before.

Warmers, made for ME!

Warmers, made for ME!
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

My friend Skully is teh R0X0R! She knit me beaded(!) warmers! ZAWESOME. Silk, Mohair, and Merino in my most favorite colors (grey and purple)!

Lots of people have knit things for me, for which I am profoundly grateful. These are things that are full of care and love and that I will cherish. Thank you to all the folks who have kept me dressed warmly with your knitted gifts. I think of you every time I wear them.

Torii Gate

Torii Gate
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

We've got Matt and Alfred visiting for a work project. So on Saturday, May 3rd, we went to Okonomiyaki for lunch, followed by a day trip to Kabushima, and ended the day with a bout of ROCKBAND. Come look at pictures!