Apples in my Eye

Testing the Waters

2009-06-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

Intro: back into blogging

Rereading my blog entries was an odd experience. Besides the obvious fact that I need to work on my comma usage and finishing a thought, it was a reminder of how awful it was to have chronic sinus infections and to be so obsessed with my weight. Basically, I am embarrassed that I wrote the weight part down. Oh well, as I always say, if you have a body you have body issues and I don't feel like spending anymore energy on that particular subject now.

I started up the blog again because I want to use it to help achieve certain goals I have with writing and because the bottleneck of communication that I was experiencing broke open recently and I figure blogging is one of the things I can do to keep it from building up again. The next challenge is the filter. I know from reading the past entries (and deleting certain things) that there are some topics I would regret discussing and other subjects where I would find it helpful to use writing to organize and record my thoughts.

I will disclose here that certain things started happening to me that led me to question their cause, talk about them, and by virtue of that discussion realize that other people had insight from similar experiences that shed light on my own situation and re-awakened my interest in how the mind functions with relations to emotions, the physical body and other human beings. Essentially, what an English professor of mine used to refer to as someone's "mental economy." Beyond intuitive knowledge, I think I would be interested in learning about the technical language and contemporary research on the subject of psychology, both theoretical and applied.

____

There is one encounter from 2008 that I had which really stuck with me. It must have been early spring after an winter of drearily repetitive Portland wetness because everyone was out to experience a break in the rain. I was at a coffee shop, outside in the "sun" (read: 60 degree weather) and next to me was a man I would later learn was named Kevin. Kevin had the type of grizzled thinness that could have put him anywhere between 40 and 60. White tee shirt, sandy hair and skin, brown boots, chain-smoking: If an actor, he could just as easily have been cast as "aging rock star" as "former addict." My imagination led me to choose the second as he indicated to me that he lived in a room in the building across the street, where there seemed to be two types of people coming and going: those who looked like him and those who looked like young professionals. In short, it fit the bill of a half-way house. Kevin wore sunglasses but the childlike openness of his smile still shone through. I remember thinking that it was rare to meet someone of that age that still let their innocence and vulnerability show on their faces like that.

I believe that he started talking to me about the weather and I recall that I was not in a very talkative mood and was very hesitant about sending him any signals that could be received as "initiating/accepting friendship." The main reason for this is that, in my experience, those who are open with vulnerability on display become easily attached at even the mildest encouragement and then experience any subsequent efforts at detachment or distance as deeply painful. In short, I was distant to begin with. However, as I can never not talk to a stranger who is making efforts to talk to me except in moments of extreme suspicion or crankiness, even with treading carefully we had a decent exchange with stretches of silence, not the awkward kind but ones that indicated we were still two separate people who just happened to be at the same place.

Then I got a phone call. As Kevin had set off my "my feelings get hurt easily" meter I was more polite than I may have otherwise been and said excuse me before I took the call. Then I saw it. "It" being the visible signs of a person experiencing rejection and reverting back into himself. His lips pursed, he looked down, his spinal alignment went from erect to concave and even with the sunglasses I could see that he was retreating into his own mind. It's the human equivalent of when a snail goes into his shell because he senses danger.

It didn't make any sense for me to keep sitting there, so I got up to start walking but before doing so I told the person on the line to hold a moment and said to him, "it was nice to meet you, have a nice day." Too late though, as he had already shut himself off and his lips stayed pursed, his eyes downcast and he made not the smallest acknowledgement of what I had said. That was very hard to watch.

I wondered then, and still often do, about personalities that find it easy to engage with people and who have facility and charm with initial conversation but find the pushes and pulls, the infinite small rejections and offenses that are inevitable in a relationship of any length, almost or entirely heartbreakingly challenging. It's all or nothing: the cords of attachment go out like the web from Spiderman and stay there at any hint of human connection. Maybe everyone has this to a certain extent; this capacity for a wildly open heart. Perhaps the difference is in the interpretation of the actions of the others. There are times when one understands someone just has to leave, there are times when one doesn't.

Thinking about it?

2009-02-07T12:27:00.001-08:00

Have decided to start up my blog again

Dress code: jeans

2008-04-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

Marjane Satrapi was in Portland and my friend, who got two tickets to hear her speak last minute, invited me to go this evening. The lecture was thought provoking and engaging, even more than I was expecting, and though I felt rather sycophantish and embarrassed, I went up to her at the reception and got her to sign a book. It's so strange to meet someone you admire because you know a lot about them, and they know so little about you. They know you are in your mid twenties, of middling height, you speak quickly and have jerky head movements. And wearing a lovely purple jacket! (For example).

Especially after hearing her talk for an hour and a half, I wanted to say, get the rest of these idiots away from you so we can relax. But of course the ugly truth is...I'm just another idiot! No matter, it was great to hear her, to go to a crowded auditorium, to see and be seen. Even if what I was seeing was a lot of white faces and Colombia jackets. Okay, okay not so many Columbia jackets--that was hyperbole. Just a lot of jeans and gray wool jackets.

Update!

2008-04-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Cue clouds parting
Oh my goodness. How long it has been since I recorded my memories of me or my doodles (of me). Well, I'll have to play catch up:

I got my driver's license and I have a car.

Cherry blossoms came and are almost all gone from Portland, making for a much longer season than Japan. We now have magnolias, some of the wildest craziest things I've ever seen.

Last weekend was my cousin's wedding and during the lovely, homespun and unconventional ceremony I recited Pablo Neruda's Sonnet XVII (below) in Spanish and English. I went after my cousin's 8 year old son played "Blackbird" on the guitar and before Kati, another cousin, sang "I Found a Reason."

Sonnet XVII
Pablo Neruda

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber como, ni cuándo, ni de donde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

...

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T21:27:00.000-08:00

2007-12-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

A comic hat

2007-12-07T13:28:00.000-08:00

No laughing matter

Gosh, I hate it when I can't make myself laugh. Was it only two weeks ago over Thanksgiving that I was waking up in the night laughing? Well, it was great to have my cousin and his fiance here, and she could crack me up with even the slightest facial gesture, but of course life goes on.

Humor seems to me more than anything a willingness to laugh, even when jokes are scarce. Or rather, if you laugh at anything the jokes find you. Or humor is laughing with people who find the same things funny? But then how come sometimes one of the dogs that lives in the same house as me, Rocky, will make me chuckle, all alone, with his late night antics? (taking up three quarters of the bed and snoring!) and at other times the same behavior makes me, humorlessly, push him off the bed. Yesterday I told the other dog, "vai-te foder," which made me laugh a little, but that is hardly funny and I'm sure the animal rights people will be here any second.

Anyway, today has been dedicated to the bluer sides of things. I went swimming and have been listening to Leonard Cohen. Sugar is unappealing. Comedy a farce.

But maybe I am being needlessly heavy handed! The internet is always able to help, and here is one view of the subject,

Definitions of funny on the Web:
amusing: arousing or provoking laughter; "an amusing film with a steady stream of pranks and pratfalls"; "an amusing fellow"; "a comic hat"; "a .

An amusing film with a steady stream of pranks!

A comic hat!

I feel better already.

Hoy

2007-12-03T17:31:00.000-08:00

aiaiaiaiai....

Hoy: lluva y lluva.

Ganas de gritar a todos, o tal vez de emborrachar me un poco.

Getting to know you

2007-11-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

The Bachelor

Well now that I can be pretty sure that readership of this blog has dropped from three to zero, I am ready to use it for the purposes of talking about my day.

So I woke up at seven, which is sore throat hour, put on my nicest suit (Italian wool: it wears me) and was off to start my illustrious career as a flight attendant. However, I did not make it past the first round in the group interview, as I was not able to convey (fake) my winning personality. In the words of the other elimanatee I talked to after, "how could they reject me? I'm hilarious! Just ask my mom." But talking to this girl, whose charming and warm conversation was in stark contrast to her dead fish in the water performance, made me realize that I should not take this personally but rather as a learning experience--for my next bout with rejection.

In fact, I am getting so good at this rejection thing that I did not explode, or implode, once in private and decided to take a perfectly rational walk to the library and then to have a perfectly rational coffee at Starbucks. I was so rational and undramatic that I mostly believed myself when I thought, "there is no point getting upset, just keep looking for something etc. etc." I even wrote in my journal. I feel more and more like a fourteen year old, except for the new white hairs I find everyday. No laughing matter.

It was in such a state of nonvolatile melancholy that this guy I had met the last (and only time) I was in that Starbucks sat down next to me. I just ignored him I was pretty sure he wouldn't remember me, being as I thought it fairly likely he was there often and talked to everyone. He is the only person to ever ask me if he could get me another drink at a Starbucks. I mean, thanks but no thanks man, I can't really drink two chocolate mochas at a sitting. I remember after I politely said no he replied, "are you sure? I mean, I can cover it." Gosh, turn a man down for a drink and he thinks you are calling him poor. Being a quick study in the arts of Starbucks courtship, I gathered that if you let a man buy you a coffee beverage you are only a few steps away in the conversation from being told he "has a car," so I left before he could get too comfortable and me too uncomfortable to be friendly.

Anyway, today, during a pause in the deep introspection of my journal writing, he asks me how I've been. He went on to tell me about his money problems, so I felt it was okay to tell him I had just got rejected from a job, to which he gave me a pleasant motivational speech that did rather turn my mood around. But before the give and take of friendship could go too far I took off. Everyone tells me this city is friendly, but it's strange because most of the places I've lived uninvited conversation is something to be very weary of. Nevertheless, I am left today with a feeling of being excited to live here. I do like to be able to walk out the door and know that it means the potential for a conversation that can change your mood or your perspective on life.

The Inner Journey

2007-11-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

What's inside?

Reality bites (3)

2007-11-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

1) Totally real conversation overheard at a coffeeshop:

Girl 1: Oh my god, look at her butt it is just sooo big.

Girl 2: Ewww.....she looks like one of those rap guy's girlfriend.

Girl 1: Who understands those rap guys, anyway?

Girl 2: I know, right!? And who uses Lucida font? Don't you just hate Lucida font?

2) Totally real epigraph for an imaginary novel:

"Coffee is a far more powerful liquor than is commonly believed. A man of sound Constitution can drink two bottles of wine a day, and live to a great age; the same man could not stand a like quantity of coffee for the same period; he would go out of his mind or die of consumption." --Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

3) Totally real look for fall:

There is a season

2007-10-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

Having never been to Portland in October, I was surprised to know that the leaves change color here. I really thought that everything went from green to bare. I guess fall is a nice season, and it certainly has many fans. Even me with my heavy summer loyalties am getting some enjoyment of warmer clothes, in an autumnal color palette of course. But beyond clothes, I don't know when it will be that I will live somewhere with no winter and until then I am trying to see the positive side of the chillier seasons (you know, like Spring and those other ones).

Rational thinking and good moods

2007-10-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been back in the states for a week now and today was the first day that I was happy to be in America, by reason of location alone. What I mean is that I have been happy to see people here in New York, briefly excited to be surrounded by my own language, happy the weather was good, satiated after eating bagels, thrilled to be shopping at Filene's, and so on. However, today I felt that my location alone, apart from those things above, was enough to make me in a good mood. Even though the weather was chilly, there was something familiar in the air that I hadn't felt for a long time and it seemed that life was interesting here too. Of course, tomorrow I will leave for Portland and have to see what feelings arise there.

Negative things about the states, as encountered in New York the past week:
tipping
coffee quality, and if not quality price
lack of sensuality permeating everyday life
no Portuguese

Positive things about the states:
abundant laundromats
Halloween
easy to find Alice Munro books.

***

Back in the U.S.A.!

2007-10-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

Totally natural, candid shots of me arriving at my friend's apartment directly from the airport, with bags and seasonal fruit in tow.

Getting in the spirit of fall and reconciling myself to the end of my endless summer.

Dreaming dreams in daylight

2007-09-22T03:43:00.001-07:00

A few months ago when I was still in Japan I read the short story "Sweetheart Sorrow," by David Hoon Kim from The New Yorker online. The narrator is ethnic Japanese who was adopted and raised in Denmark. At the time of the story he is a former comparative lit student attempting to eke out a life in Paris. His love interest is a Japanese girl, recuperating from mental illness far from her homeland and anything that might remind her of the land of the rising sun (not the one in New Orleans). One of the tragedies of the story is that the narrator, who feels himself very much a Dane, ends up a cause of her remission, due to the fact that his face is Japanese. The story was touching and well written and evocative. But why is it that the one Japanese character in a Western story always crazy? Or suffering from mental illness or depression (or whatever more polite term I should use)?

Here in Coimbra, surrounded by what I am sure are the ghosts of erudition and education past, I decided it was time to improve my Portuguese reading and in browsing found a novel by a one Pedro Paixão (passion) entitled PortoKyoto. After finding out that the novel starts in New York, how could I not read it? Well, it is exactly the kind of thing I want to read now, involving a Portuguese man, literary, lonely and depressed, and his impressions of New York (he is in film school after a disgraceful dismissal from teaching French). Already I am barely into the book and we have encountered the Japanese woman, suffering from mental illness and the tragedies of her past. I can´t wait until my narrator gets to Japan!

Reading is a one sided conversation at times. But I have some questions. Are these suicidal Japanese women based on people actually met? Or, is that if you are a foreigner meeting people escaping from life you are much more likely to encounter those living with phantoms? My inner world is running in circles. The life I am living here reminds me of college and I remembering all kind of things from that time and having conversations with books. One was with a novel I found here called The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, also quite good, about a Pakistani man, educated at Princeton and working at one of the most elite fictional firms in New York at the time of the September 11th attack. His love interest is not Japanese (though she does study Tae Kwon Do) but American, and similarly unable to live in the world and cannot be brought back from going further and further into the darkness inside her.

There is just too much romance in the world for me right now, I can barely take it. Not just these readings but the light here; there are flowers, cats, laundry on the line pink concrete houses and large windows with white shutters. I imagine that the narrator of PortoKyoto looks like my Portuguese professor at NYU, though they share very little other than their homeland and love of reading. But no matter. I was hoping to contact my former teacher, "Yo, prof. I finally made it to Portugal! What do you recommend?" but it appears that he is no longer at NYU, and I am sure there are some gothic and sinister reasons for that, and if only I knew them how much more romantic would my life be! My narrator does a lot of thinking and sitting and thinking about how if he had a family his life would have more meaning. Of course he is a Woody Allen fan.

Romance, as everyone knows, is just on the other side of mortality, and I have to do something about my health quick. I don´t want to worry anyone, but I am dealing with a brief remission of my own into sinusitis and my hearing is clogged. I am sleeping and not talking 24 hours a day for a living, so I´m not too worried about recuperating but my face knows more than I do. It looks like a pancake. For the first time since living in Japan people are guessing my age younger than it is and I want to reply, "it`s the acne!"

Relaxation. And a highly erroded work ethic.

2007-09-20T12:14:00.001-07:00

Coimbra, Portugal

Long term plans include needing to exercise, a return to Porto.

Right now I am in the newest youth hostel in Coimbra, a converted kindergarten, with spanking new furniture from IKEA, sunlight, high ceilings, wood floors clean enough to do yoga on, high pressure showers and a room for four--to myself. Though of course I wish them more business in the future.

I am confused and delighted and I miss dancing in the streets of Madrid with the friends I made there.

I wonder how I will ever work again. But I know I will because I am now fueled with a dream. My dream hasn`t really changed. Someday I will live somewhere where there is sun for most of the year. And heat. At night, and in the highest misery of winter, the temperatures are allowed to drop to 65 degrees.

I would also like for such a place to include Thai food, Japanese food, and high quality cheeses and breads.

I have improved my Spanish, Portuguese, and patience here in the Iberian peninsula. But currently things are perhaps a hair too mellow. I could use some hysteric laughter. Until then, I think I`ll read, sleep and try to jog tomorrow.

Arrival in Madrid

2007-09-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Madrid yesterday, after marinating in the Valencia train station for a long time, due to my own lack of foresight in buying tickets. My train ride over was peppered with conversation from my neighbor, a young Sevillan man, travelling around and playing a guitar (so he says. He seemed to be limited to playing the air guitar). What was unique about this young man is that he was not actually any longer young but 38, though he insisted I recognize that his ojos were maravillosos. After one beer (him, not me) I thought it was okay to accept the conversation, as it was an opportunity to practice my Spanish. But after 5 beers (again him, not me) I resorted to the silent treatment and he left me alone. Happy Feet was playing and from the small part that I caught before drifting off, that is one bizarre movie.

Okay, none of that really matters, but I have to say I think I will love Madrid. You get here and everyone says there is nothing to see and talk it down, for reasons that are beyond me. This is a big city with seemingly a lot to explore and I can´t wait. I haven´t really found anyone to talk to here and miss my friend from Valencia, Jaqueline. She grew up in Uraguay but is Italian by nationality and moved there a few years ago with her son and husband. Not only was she interesting and funny and very talkative but she was patient with me and my Spanish, and as she didn´t speak any English that was all we spoke.

I found some people to chitchat with yesterday and go out for drinks with but from the start my view of their company was tainted by having to hear about terrible American culture, politics, people, and way of thinking. I hate falling into that trap of trying to educate or be educated and argue about that kind of thing. I just want to laugh and talk to people and maybe learn something about someone else and not be a diplomat for my country or have to prove my own lack of ignorance to ignorant people. The lady doth protest too much and of course I show my own insecurity perhaps by being so defensive but...I hate when conversation comes at such a price.

Am currently reading Eva Luna in Spanish, but I know if I don´t finish it before leaving Spain it may never get read. How do you say gambaro in Spanish?

I can fly to Porto cheap from here, but I´m nervous about my suitcase, which I´m sure is over the weight limit and which may fall apart without gentle handling. I have four more nights in Madrid but I may decide to extend. In fact, I´m sure I will. I´m not yet ready to leave Spain, especially after my new found gunghoness for the language. And once I get to Portugal?...

In the land of giants

2007-08-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will make one week that I have been in Amsterdam and I'm pretty ready to go. Not that I haven't had a good time or met some nice people, but still...
I managed to do laundry, find free internet (in the most beautiful library I have ever seen), meet one girl who just came from teaching English in Korea (so we could swap Asia stories), see a childhood friend I haven't seen since I was 16, and receive one invite to stay with someone in Milan (my Italian, after a few days of conversation, is pretty much at the level that my Japanese was after 19 months of residence).

Things I have just barely managed to do include get used to sleeping with snoring, talk to some Dutch people, and keep myself looking presentable. But as I'm staying in a tourist area and competing with the backpackers I guess it's okay.

Razzle dazzle

2007-07-16T06:35:00.001-07:00

The show must go on
Clearly I haven't been writing very much in this blog and rather want to consider announcing a brief break, but then again I might change my mind in a few days.

If anyone checks this though to see how I am, I can say that the past few weeks have been filled with laughter, tears, insight and obtuseness and tears. And a not doing of all the things I should be doing.

Until the next elucidating post!

Self-portrait with new hair cut

2007-07-02T17:48:00.001-07:00

To Matsumoto and a wicket

2007-06-10T02:39:00.000-07:00

A 19th century parsonage. Me taking a picture of this house is like when you see Japanese people taking a picture of Japanese gardens in the States.
I took my last days off and went on a solo sightseeing expedition, or as as we say in Japanese "hitoritabi." However, when you take a hitoritabi you must be aware that you are undertaking a very dangerous task. On the bus to the alps one grandpa, who had taken an interest in my hitori status asked me,
"Where is your boyfriend?"
"I don't have one."
"Be careful! There are many bad people in Japan."
"There are bad people everywhere."
"That's true: there are many bad people in the United States, isn't that right?"
"That's right."

Not that I mock that grandpa for being worried about my safety. The youth hostel where I stayed would have been the perfect setting for a horror movie and I'm not sure if I was more creeped out the night I was totally alone in the dorm style place (old, old school) or the time when my neighbors were mysterious Japanese men that I avoided eye contact with the few times our paths crossed. One muttered and talked to himself and the other one was most definitely not a youth.

The owner was terribly charming and helpful though and the moment I got there the first night we were jogging, him with rather impressive speed for his age, because the showers weren't working and I only had about an hour until the public bath closed. The showers were never working, which was fine because I had come partly for the hot springs, and who would have wanted to take a shower there anyway? and he gave me maps and explanations galore and always checked on me at night and made sure my door was locked.

I chose Matsumoto for my brief hitoritabi because it isn't to far but pretty remote and there is a lovely castle there. The castle was almost torn down the Meiji restoration but luckily stands to this day, despite "over 400 years of hardships," according to the informative brochure. There was also an exhibit at the neighboring museum called "Wein" with lovely things from 18th century Austria. Not having an English to accompany the exhibit I was rather curious why it was there and thought that maybe the monarchs they had portraits of had visited Matsumoto (hey, a shot in the dark) and asked a guard. He looked rather horrified at the stupidity of this idea and told me "no, they didn't come to Japan. No one came to Japan."

Another reason to learn Japanese: this lovely used book shop.

Actually I was rather filled with nostalgia at the sight of brick.

Matsumoto-jo.
This castle was wonderful and actually made my heart beat a little faster and I got teary eyed, which sometimes happens in the presence with old buildings. It happened in Brooklyn heights and I cannot entirely explain it. I think its like when people who care about space look at the stars: they see beauty but are also acutely aware of their own death and fleetingness but at the same time they can feel a connection with all the other people looking at the stars. I don't exactly feel a connection with the other people looking at the buildings, who mostly seem like saps for not getting teared eyed, but with all the people from the past who looked at the building before. Also I shed a tear for all that space compared to my apartment.

So, an imagined question:
--Living in Japan do the goofy things in English every cease to amuse you?

The answer: No! Not that I have been here that long but I've asked those who have been here longer and as long as you have someone to giggle over this stuff with it will always be funny. Matsumoto provided two new chuckles. One was a hair salon called "GOD's hair." Hey, you thought your job was tough? Try cutting GOD's hair." The other was almost a poem. On a sign close to the station there was the helpful direction under an arrow, "To Matsumoto station and a wicket." Apparently, a wicket has meanings related to cricket, croquet and potentially is a small gate. There is also a Calvin and Hobbes strip where he uses a wicket when playing Calvin ball. Now I get it!

Everything I need to know I learned from a TV egg.

2007-05-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

From the annals of giving advice that you don't take, one of my ostensibly high level students who speaks in the choppiest sentences and learns the past perfect and then tries to say, "I had been to the supermarket yesterday," asked me for some advice to improve his English. "Well, do you practice at home? Do you speak alone out loud?" Of course not, he said. He only practices in class. And he says things in his head at home. This is clear from his performance in class. The words leave his mouth for the first time with all the grace of me on figure skates. I told him to talk to himself alone in the mirror, anything, but he has to start talking more. Then he remembered that in the past week he had actually used English at home. He saw a cockroach and, shoe in hand, he yelled at the pest, "I'll kill you!"

It's wonderful useful advice that I gave and I hope to take it some day. Actually, my language exchange partner, who is mostly self-taught and really good at English, always practices talking out loud alone. I also practice talking out loud alone. I just rarely manage to do it in Japanese. Although I do repeat a TV channel character named "teretama," meaning TV egg. The egg is sitting on a hill and he says, "ii tenki da ne," good weather isn't it? then he says, "iitedakimasu" and tries to take a bite of a big, big onigiri and then rolls down the hill yelling "ahhhhh." I have gotten so good at that and can talk about the weather just like him. There is also one where he is in the hot spring and he says, "oh it's nice and warm" and then he says "oh no! I'm going to become a boiled hot spring egg!" So I am fully prepared to speak in Japanese if that situation were to happen to me. "Onsen Sofii ni natchau!"

Moreover, I am such a dedicated student of spoken Japanese that I can repeat all the things the child students say, which have varying degrees of utility. My favorite is from little Tomoyuki, the smiliest child, who came to school one day and proudly announced, "a big one! a big one! There is a big, big dumpling in my bag!"

Here is a character of my own creation. I call him, "Benkyou binii", the study bean.

One of these is not like the other

2007-05-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

The Beach

2007-05-06T03:16:00.000-07:00

Rode Thai Air

Am back from Thailand. It's raining here in Tokyo and I am miles from the beach. What a world. But no matter, I will carry the beach with me inside as long as I can. But eventually it will get forgotten and washed away, like a vacation always does.

I went snorkeling for the first time, which was highly delightful. Having never been to the beach in Mexico or the Caribbean I have to say it was a little weird to be the wealthy foreigner and all the more weird because the Thai women don't sit out on the beach and get tan, so it felt like we weren't sharing it with them. But I was happy to see that during the late afternoon sun, when you don't burn, the Thais would picnic on the boardwalk and the kids would play in the waves. Granted Patong Beach is perhaps the last place to go to for a slice of Thai life. I haven't seen that many westerners in a long time. Moreover, most Asian women, except perhaps for the Japanese girls who like hip-hop style, have a fear of "being black" and are pretty covered up at the beach (also due to more conservative dress standards).

The boys who worked on beach renting chairs, jet skis and what not were a very nice dark color, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder as when I was just sitting in the sand a few Thai ladies and their daughters, from a farther off province, asked to take pictures with me! I saw a similar thing in the airport when Chinese girl took pictures of a little German toddler with gold ringlets.

One surprise of the trip was talking to the Thai employees of HIS, the Japanese travel agency that we booked our tickets through, in Japanese. Here in Japan we had been explained that transport to and from the airport was included, but I had though that meant a hotel shuttle. But no! It was a shuttle by our travel agency who knew how to recognize us by the pens we were told to wear around our necks, proudly marking us off as Japanese tourists. Our Thai representative spoke excellent Japanese and it made sure to explain everything to us ad naseum, in true Japanese style. As Japanese customers, we were even recommended a massage package called "kimuchii kousu" (feel-good course), which was about 3 times as much as the prices described in the lonely planet. The way back was more fun though, we had a couple more lively guides who were highly amused to be dealing with us and we joked around with them in Japanese. It was fun to practice Japanese but it was also nice because it was the most I actually got to talk to Thais that brief trip. Tourist trap or not Phuket was wonderful.

Temple dumping grounds

Beware

2007-04-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Looking for beauty I picked up a rock
and scraped underneath to see what I got.
Oh my! (said I) What dirt and grime,
what viscous membrane and putrid lyme.

The unequivocally good news today was that, after three months, I will be off antibiotics. Those horrible things. I swear my skin has developed a thick outer layer that makes me look about 24 in Caucasian (that is I: I come from the caucus mountains.) years and at least 30 in Japanese years. At first I blamed this on pollution and irregular sleep. No doubt these things are to blame, but according to potentially reputable sources on the internet, what helps to maintain the healthy skin is a proper balance of good/bad bacteria. The antibiotics can then kill the good bacteria and can make your skin more sensitive to the sun. As if that was what I needed! But I am off the stuff just in time for Thailand.

Other good news includes two well taught kids classes. Today I have two classes of kids who have lived abroad and this year as we are using a decent text book and plan the lessons ourselves and the freedom creativity and chance to talk to kids in fluent English is very refreshing. In the older class there are two middle school girls who, in addition to having much more varied experience than most kids their age, having had lived abroad, they are also able to express themselves efficiently and precisely and enjoy discussion.