Nag-gan

My thoughts keep turning back to Nagoya. Perhaps, I am excited about that place on a subconscious level, or at least intrigued. It's like it's bubbling out of my inside a little bit every now and then. Perhaps that is the place I will spend significant time, next time I come to Japan. Though I love where I live now and will always keep coming back here.

Na

I went to Nagoya and it was really cool.

Box es

Bought two boxes, and got four shipping lables (probably two in case I MESS UP or MAKE A MISTAKE), from the post office today.

I'm listening to Animal Collective's Sung Tongs again after a long, long time which involved me not listening to that album after seeing the music video for Leaf House against recently and remembering what an awesome song that is./I'm ready to go.

I'm feeling weird.

But/And that's okay.

Time

Time to pull this thing into overdrive! It's time to get going!!

Wow

Wow, I am like, really, looking forward to going back to L.A.

Not that I dislike where I am now.

It's just...wow, it's exciting.

Taking ・ Listening

Taking pictures of things you own to put on a for sale flier while listening to Yo La Tengo (Season of the Shark) is strangely boring, yet slightly emotional and cathartic.

Thinking again,

I think the music of transitions may be the most interesting.
Or at least very interesting in its own unique way.

Trans-music: The transition from 20 months in the Japanese countryside to an uncertain Los Angeles is interesting

The soundtrack for this person's transition from 20 months in countryside Japan to open-future Los Angeles includes a lot of Japanese psychedelia (Jacks, Apryl Fool, Happy End, Asakawa Maki), U.S. Oldies (Smokey Robinson, The Matadors, Francisco Aguabella, Skip Mahoney & the Casuals), mariachi (Los Camperos, Vicente Fernández, Pedro Fernández, Javier Solís), and alternative Japanese rock (Friction, Iwamano Kiyoshiro).

Whoa.

Wow.

Isn't It Crazy?

Isn't it crazy that I am listening to the new album by a Japanese experimental music group from Nagoya which I know of only because I met the original bassist in Bolivia two and a half years ago while I was doing college research and while she was taking a break from her band and life in Japan and traveling around Latin America?

Oh My!

Oh my! I've been out of the cooking game for too long! I forgot how fun and delicious it is! My return started with some salmon a few days ago. I felt simultaneous regret for willingly cooking meat for the fourth time and getting used to it, but at the same time excitement to try cooking fish for the first time (not including shrimp)! That was good, and I enjoyed two delicious rice and salmon breakfasts. I think the meat might have already been cooked or something though, cuz I pretty much just cooked it on the frying pan and it changed color without really changing consistency or going from semi-translucent to not. Tonight, though, I bought some definitely raw flatfish from the Tuesday super sale at the market! I put some onions and carrots in the frying pan cuz that's what I had around, slapped that fish on, and made the perfect mixture of shoyu (soy sauce), mirin (sweet cooking alcohol?), and dashi (Japanese stock) (by eye!!) in which to cook it all. I was a little taken back by how quickly the fish fell apart and I eventually gave up on keeping it in steak form. In the end, though, I got a delicious, fluffy combination of flatfish, carrots, and onions on a steaming bed of white rice with mixed in grains. Mmm, I scarfed that dinner down so fast. And it cost almost nothing! The fish was probably about 2 dollars, the carrots in bought a couple days ago for five for a dollar, and the onions, geez, I've had those for forever, haha. This boost in cooking at home comes from me not feeling like I have enough money to allow me luxuries like going out for dinner every night anymore, PLUS my new resolve to get out across this country while I'm still here and go see the place I've been longing to explore for a long time: Nagoya! I've got to save that money if I'm gonna make the most out of my trip there. We'll see what I can do! Here I come, future adventures in cooking and city-traveling!

Vacation

I suppose one way of looking at my lack of a real job is "forced vacation." And up to now, I've been forgetting the vacation part. I'm not going to get a job, but I will have a good month or two to do lots of interesting things. It's time to more fully enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

LA

I want to read and I want to go to Latin America again. I'll save the latter for later, though (unless you count L.A.).

wow

I've been living in Japan for a year and eight months. I've lived in Japan for two years and two months including study abroad only about three years ago. Remember when the biggest thing to worry about was that this study abroad program started all the way in July?

(Bros - Panda Bear)

Interesting

It's interesting, I've been thinking lately that I want to travel. Then, I realize that I don't feel like I'm traveling anymore, and I haven't felt that way for a long time.

Nice! Warmth!

Oh yeah, and now my apartment barely even seems cold at all! You think Japanese homes have no insulation, try a spacious, 300-year old one made almost entirely of wood and earth on the side of a mountain. Still, that in itself was awesome, too. Ah.

Back!

I'm back from a four-day trip to Iya Valley in Tokushima where a bunch of people including me stayed in a 300-year old house and cut thatch from fields to repair its roof. So great!

Here's a quote from Bobby Darin's "Nature Boy,"
"The greatest thing you will ever learn
is just to love and be loved in return."

Music Stuff

(I really have a bunch of stuff I want to talk and write about, but for now I'll just say:)

Randomly getting back into Cibo Matto makes me also randomly get back in Gorillaz. Then I realized: I love anything that intersects with Miho Hattori or Damon Albarn. Are these bands to which I'm destined to always come back?

Yes, I'm back in Japan. I enjoyed my time/vacation back at home more than I thought I would and almost didn't want to come back, but now I'm back and happy to be so ^o^

I've also been thinking a lot about what to do in the future of me and my education. All I can come up with is: I WANT TO DO EVERYTHING!! Well, I may have a little more direction than that, but not too much.

Also been going back and forth between how much hope there is for humanity to go in a more positive direction rather than just descend into further depravity. It always hits me pretty deeply when I hear about unimaginably horrible things happening, usually done by fellow humans, to innocent human beings. I'm talking about the murder of Annie Le. Ugh, and with all the tons of police cars I saw all over L.A., the instantly apparent and familiar U.S. culture (?) of pushing violence further and further and of doing and taking as much as you can because it's your right, contrasted with recent thoughts about the U.S. as less of a country and more of an anchorless, foundationless experiment taking us all with it as it spins through space and hell...For crying out loud, I listened to some of my own relatives talking about how the bad guy "really tears 'em up" in some new horror movie and describing with excitement all the gruesome ways he dismembers innocent people. I mean...this cannot be natural.

I don't feel completely at ease with the point of view that things are better now than they used to be, just because we've "come a long ways." But I suppose I also don't know much. Maybe it's fruitless to think about whether things are better now than they used to be, but the thought keeps coming to mind that the "culture" that we have in the U.S. is just not healthy for humans.

I also recently had the thought that the worst thing those in control can do is make us think we're at the end of history. But damn, if we're up against "people" who can do that...

For some reason I got into this odd state of mind these past couple of months that says things in terms of colonization are better than they used to be across the world just because (?). I've been coming out of that and thinking about nearly everything in terms of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The difference this time is I feel more collected, a little more positive, and like I have a better comprehension, or grip, on these ideas now. I'd like to try thinking in another paradigm, though.

To do something to help the world, do I go with what's been coming to my head most naturally thus far, or go in a newer, interesting direction? (I ask myself)

To change the topic...I love Korean Air. The last time I rode it was three (?) years ago when I was leaving to study abroad in Japan and Pomona's study abroad fund was paying the bill. Imagine my delight when I found this normally extremely expensive airline to be the 2nd cheapest for my trip back to Japan this week! I spent the 11 or so hours of the flight (before the transfer at Seoul) watching the equivalent of four movies and playing Tetris.

During the flight, I was really surprised to randomly stumble upon Dog Day Afternoon while channel surfing and so I watched that one and a half times. I really, really liked it, but the ending was probably one of the more terrible things I've seen (in cinema), not as in it was made badly but as in it ripped my heart apart and almost made me start to cry. If I had to introduce someone to the U.S. by media I would show them this movie. After that, I watched the first half (or so? i dont' know) of Wolverine (I don't even think that's its name), which was incredibly terrible. Have I ever seen a movie so saturated with awkward, super-masculine male bonding? ...hm, have I?...I don't know. Anyways, I realized soon that I could be watching sweet Korean movies that I never get a chance to watch but are in the airplane's movie libraries so I checked that out and came up with a winner. My Girlfriend's an Agent was really funny and had everything I needed at that moment to make me laugh: hilariously badly staged action sequences, East Asian-style xenophobic stereotypes, and great off-beat jokes. I'm very happy I saw that movie. After that I forced my soon-to-be-bloodshot eyes through another epic drama, I Corrupt All Cops. It's a Hong Kong film, I think, or at least it was about corruption in Hong Kong in the 1960s-70s, and by the looks of the characters, the Chinese title might be something like "Golden Empire"...? Anyways, it was pretty good, although the style seemed discontinuous at times. A little too violent for my tastes at some points, but even then it was done pretty well I think.

Man, I remember when airplanes didn't even have all that stuff. It still blows my mind.

And since when did this blog become a movie review site?

Well, anyways, I'm back in Japan and looking for what's next, I had a great time back at home visiting family and friends, and I'm seeing a lot of good happening in my life.

Oops, I wrote it all.

Back

Back in Japan, as of three days ago.

Hey, pt. 2

So, here's the rest of my update:

I'm here in La La Land until the 17th of Sep., after which I gear up for Me in Japan pt. 2. Actually, this second chapter may have already begun when I ended my job, fought to keep an apartment, started looking for jobs in a foreign country not through a nice little college-style application process, underwent a massive cleanup of my place, applied for unemployment in a foreign country/language (The amount of anxiety and aversion I felt about going to the unemployment office was really surprising and I suppose ultimately understandable - I feel like not having a job, any kind of job, has got to rank up there as one of the most shameful things for someone raised pretty traditionally Mexican-American), and took my trip back home.

I'm really excited for this next part, especially thinking about how much I've learned in what's actually only been a month since my occupation came to a screeching end. New priorities include: focusing on languages more, reading a lot more (this might mean some inner negotiating with my cheap self who doesn't want to pay for shipping books transcontinentally, unless I can figure out another way...), and thinking more specifically about where to take my formal education next. All while continuing to live and learn to move with the flow, which has been cool so far.

I came back home and found my old Kind of Blue CD that my jazz band teacher gave me when I graduated from middle school. This album is so good. I've been listening to it every morning (I keep waking up at sunrise) (although today I listened to Carsick Cars). Amazing how you come to appreciate things over time.

Haha, I just talked to my grandma over the phone right now. Here's an excerpt from her telling me about a senior citizens' travel group trip to Washington D.C.: "Oh yeah, over there they have that thing for the, what do you call them, the soldados, you know where they have the names of all the soldiers that died. That sounds interesting. I don't really want to go to the White House or nothing like that. I don't know if they're gonna make us go there if we're in a group, but you know, they're all caca-heads over there. You know, we vote and vote and vote, and it doesn't matter if they're black, or white, or Mexican, you know, they don't do anything." I love my grandma so much :)

Some of the things I've been happiest about experiencing again since being back:
beans Mexicano style, tortillas, being able to make quesadillas at home easily, my charango, my accordion, a picture of my dad my sister put on the fridge that has the caption, "Hey! Watchate!" by it, my mom's cooking, my dog Chloe!!, concrete and asphault outside, Los Angeles air (okay, not just the smog, smoke, and exhaust, but you know...the atmosphere and wind as cars go by and...you know what I mean, right?!), seeing so many different types of people all together!, beautiful brown people walking on the street and sitting on their porches, having my dad show me all the Japanese Buddhist temples in Boyle Heights, doing a "refresher course" of some of my family's usual hangout spots (plus some new ones!!, which include the Korean chain cafe and bakery Paris Baguette), and you know, just seeing family in general. It's been nice. I'm really surprised at how relaxed I feel. This is really a good vacation. And a good trip home. I'm glad I made it. I'm glad I'm here.

Initial Reactions

Everything is big!!, service here sucks!, I'm not sweating constantly, convenience stores are more aesthetically pleasing here. :)