South Korea in two days.
Sorry, not too much heads up about this one. (>.<)
Do other peoples' fingertips smell weird when they come back from eating sushi?
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
にせんねんもんだい
After at least three years of wanting to see this band, I finally fell into the opportunity.
(This isn't the performance I saw, or even the songs they played, but it should give you an idea of the kind of mind-body-and-soul-enveloping experience it was.)
Watching this band, no, experiencing this band-performance, was amazing in a way I couldn't even fully comprehend in the midst of it. I still feel as if the full effect of it working over and through me isn't registering completely with my mind though it is thoroughly affecting my heart.
In short, I am extremely, and profoundly, inspired. That this kind of music, and musicianship, exists and is being channeled by three, normal-looking people affects me in a way I cannot comprehend, but by which I can only be moved. I'm not able to express all I felt and feel completely in words. I can say it made me feel passionate though. I feel all the more passionate about music right now.
I'm not sure how to describe what I'm feeling. I feel like it's good, but something doesn't match, and it has to do with the center of what my passion is now. I feel, and think, it might be best for me to do "it" sooner, rather than later.
(But then again, what is holding me back now? I feel more and more that it may not be anything beyond what is within myself.)
(This isn't the performance I saw, or even the songs they played, but it should give you an idea of the kind of mind-body-and-soul-enveloping experience it was.)
Watching this band, no, experiencing this band-performance, was amazing in a way I couldn't even fully comprehend in the midst of it. I still feel as if the full effect of it working over and through me isn't registering completely with my mind though it is thoroughly affecting my heart.
In short, I am extremely, and profoundly, inspired. That this kind of music, and musicianship, exists and is being channeled by three, normal-looking people affects me in a way I cannot comprehend, but by which I can only be moved. I'm not able to express all I felt and feel completely in words. I can say it made me feel passionate though. I feel all the more passionate about music right now.
I'm not sure how to describe what I'm feeling. I feel like it's good, but something doesn't match, and it has to do with the center of what my passion is now. I feel, and think, it might be best for me to do "it" sooner, rather than later.
(But then again, what is holding me back now? I feel more and more that it may not be anything beyond what is within myself.)
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Okay, One, Two, Three
I just made some killer Nagasaki Champon while listening to Afrirampo's delicious 45 minute-long Suuto Breakor.
Yes, I used the packaged noodles and sauce powder, but the vegetable choice and frying was all of my own device.
On the way back from elementary school, the teacher giving me a ride and I were talking about the recent changes in staff while the radio played in the background in the front of the car. I had been noticing the types of music playing: what sounded like screamy metal at first, then revealed itself through further listening to be soft, whiny rock, the kind that might come out on kroq; then an electronica-type pop song with a female singer and recognizable synthesizer melodies before and after each verse; then Brother Sport. Wait, what? Doolooloolool doolooloolool doolooloolool doolooloolool went the beginning high-pitched twinkley sound followed by those instantly recognizable voices of Panda Bear and Avey Tare singing those lines I can never understand but sound like, "Open up your, open up your, open up your, open up your." I got really excited, perhaps not so much from the joy of hearing Animal Collective on the radio, but from the pure paradigm shift that placed me in a place where I could hear their music on the radio right after music that's completely normal and easily digestable. I tried to explain to the teacher what was happening in the radio waves around us, "Oh yeah, this is FM. Oh, oh, I see." Haha, oh well, I was happy and smiling, excited by something that had never even passed through the realm of the possible in my head happening right in my area of being and experiencing.
So, here are some pictures of Taiwan, as promised. Most important things first...
They actually had a beagle going around with a security officer sniffing peoples' luggage. It was soo cute! I tried to get a picture of the actual, living dog, but didn't succeed.
Oh yeah, I should also mention that I got pinned for another "random" security check right upon entering Kansai International Airport during which I had to show my passport to an officer in plain clothes and talk about my travel plans. And imagine my luck, I also was stopped to show my papers to officers upon leaving the airport in Taipei while everybody else walked through unchecked. I guess I just have that lovable, terrorist-resembling face. Man, I bet a white guy would have some an easy time sabotaging an airport.
Anyways, back to the wonders of traveling and away from the realities of racism running our societies. No, no, leave that all behind, come with me to a magical land where that doesn't exist, you're floating up now, up, up, up *twinkle twinkle twinkle*...
...where "Che" is an internationally consumed symbol of...something! No, no, no, wait, gotta get out of social analysis mode. Okay, we're going to try one more time to make this work. No analyzing, just experiencing, maybe we can separate the two here we goooo....tooo.....
Rilakkuma! He/She/This androgynous, emotionless, complacent being is all the rage in Japan right now and one of the many emissaries of Japanese "cuteness" and pop culture that seem to be flooding Taiwan. Apparently, most people in Taiwan, especially youth, put think of Japan in a pretty positive light. People seem to hold up Japanese fashion as the top in the region, and students in college overwhelmingly choose to study Japanese as a foreign language (I actually spoke to a young woman working at a store in Japanese when my friend told her I couldn't speak Chinese but could speak Japanese). Before going there, I thought people would almost all think of Japan negatively considering, oh I don't know, the major, violent campaigns to wipe out Taiwanese culture (Southern Chinese and Indigenous) during the time the island was under Japanese rule. Apparently I was wrong. Undoubtedly, there are people like that, mostly of the older generation, but the sentiment does not seem to be nearly as widespread as in China and Korea. When I asked my friend who lives in Taipei and his friends and later the Japanese professor at work, the gist of the response I received was that, yeah, the Japanese did terrible things to the people in Taiwan, but they did even more horrible things in China and Korea, where they took a more physically brutal approach to colonization. Also, the people who took over Taiwan after Japan was forced to abandon it after World War II were, guess who...another military army! This time of the nationalist variety from mainland China. So, from what I've been told, the people who took over after the Japanese may have been Chinese, but in the end were just another group of invaders enforcing their will through violent repression. I'd like to learn more.
So minusing the historical-social analysis didn't work out so well, but now I think I've got it all out of my system. If you've made it with me this far, here is your reward. Unless you just skipped ahead to this part, then that's okay, too, these just won't be as rewarding.
Night market at Shillin
My friend, who is studying and working in Taipei, and his friends took me here the first night I got it in. It started pouring as soon as we got there. For the most part, it is an open air market.
We walked through that awesome market for probably around 3 hours and didn't even see it all before we left for the apartment at around midnight.
Three of us played video games until like 3 in the morning. Not my usual choice of activity for vacation, or any downtime really, but this was Castle something or others so it was different.
The next day, the weather was just as awesome as the day before. I'm not being sarcastic, almost the whole time I was there, the sky was a beautiful, deep mix of different colors of grey and almost half of every day bore all of us a light rain the likes of which I hadn't felt in a long time.
Danshui riverside walk
This was beautiful. A good walk. We must have walked I don't know how many miles, but we went from the station at the beginning of the walk, through all the store-lined sidewalks, into an empty but florid streetside, and eventually came out into this scene...
As we approached...
Apparently this bridge's English name is Valentine Bridge or something like that and it's appeared in virtually all Taiwanese dramas. Go figure.
After a bus and train ride back...
we were ready for a nice dinner in the city-er part of Taipei.
Pretty cool. One of the things I really liked about Taipei was how it was a big city with all the people and movement and energy that cities offer, but at the same time, it was not so massively built up and standardized that it lost its human personality. Somehow, it still felt like a small town. There was some kind of community, some kind of genuine human interaction.
The next day, I was on my own, since my friend and his friends were working and studying. So I took a trip to the National Palace Museum. Here, my Japanese actually came in handy as the bus signs had no English on them whatsoever. So I just memorized the characters for the National Palace Museum, which I had actually already learned in Japanese (score!), and followed those.
Not much to show here, since I couldn't take pictures of the hundreds of years old artifacts, but here's a picture of one of the museum buildings from the exit of the exhibition I saw.
Made my way back, stopping off at Shillin again for more pictures and enjoying the energy, then had another amazing dinner at one of the noodle shops across the street from my friend's apartment at 12 in the morning. My friend and the people in his apartment know pretty much all the street vendors in that area and introduced me to one like he was an uncle.
Here's a really cute dog I sort of bonded with that night before making it back for that late dinner. I did a lot of thinking with him. He had a bit of a limp.
Then, the train I rode back that night.
My friend's friend told me Taipei's public transportation's nothing special, but I really liked it.
From the station.
Delicious bread I got from a bakery by the station before I headed back that night (sorry things got a little out of order). Can anyone say "pan dulce?!"
No, but it really did taste different. It was delicious in its own way!
Back at the pad.
Enjoying the bread.
The next morning, I got a tour of National Taiwan University, the top one in the country, from my friend who's studying Chinese there, and then I was off to the airport to catch my flight which would land me back in good old Osaka, Japan in less than two and a half hours later.
Needless to say, an awesome trip. My friend and his friends were amazing hosts and took me all over the place, ordering all the most delicious food for me (oh yeah, I didn't even talk about stinky tofu, prawns skewered and grilled alive (aw..), and delicious guava with prune powder (ahhh)!), and just overall being great people.
Taipei is a definitely a place I like, a lot. I'd consider going back there with friends again. I really got to like the sound of Chinese, too, which has gotten more and more interesting to me lately. I also realized that if I plan on traveling around and learning more about that region, it's kind of ridiculous that I only speak one, mostly insular, language, Japanese. In any case, these are all ideas in their infantile stage.
Wow, it's been a while since I wrote such a long post. It feels good to let you all know more about what I've been doing and show you some of it with pictures. But it probably won't feel that good waking up tomorrow at 6:40am and taking the bus to spend the day at work. So with that, I will bid thee all (is that even proper English?) a good night and pleasant dreams. With love, as always.
Yes, I used the packaged noodles and sauce powder, but the vegetable choice and frying was all of my own device.
On the way back from elementary school, the teacher giving me a ride and I were talking about the recent changes in staff while the radio played in the background in the front of the car. I had been noticing the types of music playing: what sounded like screamy metal at first, then revealed itself through further listening to be soft, whiny rock, the kind that might come out on kroq; then an electronica-type pop song with a female singer and recognizable synthesizer melodies before and after each verse; then Brother Sport. Wait, what? Doolooloolool doolooloolool doolooloolool doolooloolool went the beginning high-pitched twinkley sound followed by those instantly recognizable voices of Panda Bear and Avey Tare singing those lines I can never understand but sound like, "Open up your, open up your, open up your, open up your." I got really excited, perhaps not so much from the joy of hearing Animal Collective on the radio, but from the pure paradigm shift that placed me in a place where I could hear their music on the radio right after music that's completely normal and easily digestable. I tried to explain to the teacher what was happening in the radio waves around us, "Oh yeah, this is FM. Oh, oh, I see." Haha, oh well, I was happy and smiling, excited by something that had never even passed through the realm of the possible in my head happening right in my area of being and experiencing.
So, here are some pictures of Taiwan, as promised. Most important things first...
They actually had a beagle going around with a security officer sniffing peoples' luggage. It was soo cute! I tried to get a picture of the actual, living dog, but didn't succeed.
Oh yeah, I should also mention that I got pinned for another "random" security check right upon entering Kansai International Airport during which I had to show my passport to an officer in plain clothes and talk about my travel plans. And imagine my luck, I also was stopped to show my papers to officers upon leaving the airport in Taipei while everybody else walked through unchecked. I guess I just have that lovable, terrorist-resembling face. Man, I bet a white guy would have some an easy time sabotaging an airport.
Anyways, back to the wonders of traveling and away from the realities of racism running our societies. No, no, leave that all behind, come with me to a magical land where that doesn't exist, you're floating up now, up, up, up *twinkle twinkle twinkle*...
...where "Che" is an internationally consumed symbol of...something! No, no, no, wait, gotta get out of social analysis mode. Okay, we're going to try one more time to make this work. No analyzing, just experiencing, maybe we can separate the two here we goooo....tooo.....
Rilakkuma! He/She/This androgynous, emotionless, complacent being is all the rage in Japan right now and one of the many emissaries of Japanese "cuteness" and pop culture that seem to be flooding Taiwan. Apparently, most people in Taiwan, especially youth, put think of Japan in a pretty positive light. People seem to hold up Japanese fashion as the top in the region, and students in college overwhelmingly choose to study Japanese as a foreign language (I actually spoke to a young woman working at a store in Japanese when my friend told her I couldn't speak Chinese but could speak Japanese). Before going there, I thought people would almost all think of Japan negatively considering, oh I don't know, the major, violent campaigns to wipe out Taiwanese culture (Southern Chinese and Indigenous) during the time the island was under Japanese rule. Apparently I was wrong. Undoubtedly, there are people like that, mostly of the older generation, but the sentiment does not seem to be nearly as widespread as in China and Korea. When I asked my friend who lives in Taipei and his friends and later the Japanese professor at work, the gist of the response I received was that, yeah, the Japanese did terrible things to the people in Taiwan, but they did even more horrible things in China and Korea, where they took a more physically brutal approach to colonization. Also, the people who took over Taiwan after Japan was forced to abandon it after World War II were, guess who...another military army! This time of the nationalist variety from mainland China. So, from what I've been told, the people who took over after the Japanese may have been Chinese, but in the end were just another group of invaders enforcing their will through violent repression. I'd like to learn more.
So minusing the historical-social analysis didn't work out so well, but now I think I've got it all out of my system. If you've made it with me this far, here is your reward. Unless you just skipped ahead to this part, then that's okay, too, these just won't be as rewarding.
Night market at Shillin
My friend, who is studying and working in Taipei, and his friends took me here the first night I got it in. It started pouring as soon as we got there. For the most part, it is an open air market.
We walked through that awesome market for probably around 3 hours and didn't even see it all before we left for the apartment at around midnight.
Three of us played video games until like 3 in the morning. Not my usual choice of activity for vacation, or any downtime really, but this was Castle something or others so it was different.
The next day, the weather was just as awesome as the day before. I'm not being sarcastic, almost the whole time I was there, the sky was a beautiful, deep mix of different colors of grey and almost half of every day bore all of us a light rain the likes of which I hadn't felt in a long time.
Danshui riverside walk
This was beautiful. A good walk. We must have walked I don't know how many miles, but we went from the station at the beginning of the walk, through all the store-lined sidewalks, into an empty but florid streetside, and eventually came out into this scene...
As we approached...
Apparently this bridge's English name is Valentine Bridge or something like that and it's appeared in virtually all Taiwanese dramas. Go figure.
After a bus and train ride back...
we were ready for a nice dinner in the city-er part of Taipei.
Pretty cool. One of the things I really liked about Taipei was how it was a big city with all the people and movement and energy that cities offer, but at the same time, it was not so massively built up and standardized that it lost its human personality. Somehow, it still felt like a small town. There was some kind of community, some kind of genuine human interaction.
The next day, I was on my own, since my friend and his friends were working and studying. So I took a trip to the National Palace Museum. Here, my Japanese actually came in handy as the bus signs had no English on them whatsoever. So I just memorized the characters for the National Palace Museum, which I had actually already learned in Japanese (score!), and followed those.
Not much to show here, since I couldn't take pictures of the hundreds of years old artifacts, but here's a picture of one of the museum buildings from the exit of the exhibition I saw.
Made my way back, stopping off at Shillin again for more pictures and enjoying the energy, then had another amazing dinner at one of the noodle shops across the street from my friend's apartment at 12 in the morning. My friend and the people in his apartment know pretty much all the street vendors in that area and introduced me to one like he was an uncle.
Here's a really cute dog I sort of bonded with that night before making it back for that late dinner. I did a lot of thinking with him. He had a bit of a limp.
Then, the train I rode back that night.
My friend's friend told me Taipei's public transportation's nothing special, but I really liked it.
From the station.
Delicious bread I got from a bakery by the station before I headed back that night (sorry things got a little out of order). Can anyone say "pan dulce?!"
No, but it really did taste different. It was delicious in its own way!
Back at the pad.
Enjoying the bread.
The next morning, I got a tour of National Taiwan University, the top one in the country, from my friend who's studying Chinese there, and then I was off to the airport to catch my flight which would land me back in good old Osaka, Japan in less than two and a half hours later.
Needless to say, an awesome trip. My friend and his friends were amazing hosts and took me all over the place, ordering all the most delicious food for me (oh yeah, I didn't even talk about stinky tofu, prawns skewered and grilled alive (aw..), and delicious guava with prune powder (ahhh)!), and just overall being great people.
Taipei is a definitely a place I like, a lot. I'd consider going back there with friends again. I really got to like the sound of Chinese, too, which has gotten more and more interesting to me lately. I also realized that if I plan on traveling around and learning more about that region, it's kind of ridiculous that I only speak one, mostly insular, language, Japanese. In any case, these are all ideas in their infantile stage.
Wow, it's been a while since I wrote such a long post. It feels good to let you all know more about what I've been doing and show you some of it with pictures. But it probably won't feel that good waking up tomorrow at 6:40am and taking the bus to spend the day at work. So with that, I will bid thee all (is that even proper English?) a good night and pleasant dreams. With love, as always.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
No Taiwan Pictures > Instead, Music/Los Angeles Nostalgia
Sorry, no pictures this time, too. And actually, not even anything that has to do with Japan or Taiwan.
I find myself at the tail end of another hour-long (actually short) nostalgia run through music that's had a huge impact on me and which I've started connecting with L.A. in my time away.
Okay, so I just found this for the first time! It's genius!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80NsM5_y11E&feature=related
This song is so awesome, especially live, but I've never heard/seen it, or even imagined it, in this context before! And it fits so perfectly! I love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBiMPzmr7XI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SIPaPqumdk&feature=related
I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching the entire thing of that hannah montana video, but...the best bands always have some kind of connection to pop culture. Why? And as I say that, I realize I know almost nothing about popular music and t.v. But I do love (more and more) to scream my lungs out to some good crashing drums and needly rubber band guitar or maybe some fuzzing scratches of feedback while crashing into/through dozens of hot, sweaty bodies. So, maybe that's enough.
I was gonna write more but I got tired. It's 1am now. I'll just say I am really excited to start making music as soon as I get back to L.A. and I've gone through a lot of musical change.
Bye.
I find myself at the tail end of another hour-long (actually short) nostalgia run through music that's had a huge impact on me and which I've started connecting with L.A. in my time away.
Okay, so I just found this for the first time! It's genius!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80NsM5_y11E&feature=related
This song is so awesome, especially live, but I've never heard/seen it, or even imagined it, in this context before! And it fits so perfectly! I love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBiMPzmr7XI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SIPaPqumdk&feature=related
I wouldn't necessarily recommend watching the entire thing of that hannah montana video, but...the best bands always have some kind of connection to pop culture. Why? And as I say that, I realize I know almost nothing about popular music and t.v. But I do love (more and more) to scream my lungs out to some good crashing drums and needly rubber band guitar or maybe some fuzzing scratches of feedback while crashing into/through dozens of hot, sweaty bodies. So, maybe that's enough.
I was gonna write more but I got tired. It's 1am now. I'll just say I am really excited to start making music as soon as I get back to L.A. and I've gone through a lot of musical change.
Bye.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Oooooooooooooh
The perks of living on your own:
You get to eat wondrous meals (such as delicious, moist oboro dofu mmm) whenever you make them.
You - oh, excuse that - You get to eat mediocre and/or not very delicious meals (such as the miso stir-fry thing I just made ohhh) whenever you make those.
You get to listen to "In the House - In a Heartbeat" at a loud volume and have to stop writing your blog post for a while because you are overcome with having to throw your head back and forth to the music as it gets more and more intense.
Well, the last one you can do anywhere, really. But I just thought I'd throw it in.
And yes, (k we're out of the "perks of living on your own" section now) I was inspired by a tofu cafe I went to in Kyoto, and yes, I did buy various, assorted tofu goods from its nearby shop including oboro dofu and soy milk and tofu tare (sauce? marinade?) and tofu dumpling type things, and yes, I did seek recipes from the cafe's website, and YES, I did use one to create a delicious oboro dofu, which I have now made twice and for which I am thinking of new ways to make it better and even more numsaflex (yummy).
Tonight's meal's taste reminded me of when I first got to Japan and started cooking with Japanese ingredients (or really cooking period). I'm getting the impression miso isn't really ideal for frying and maybe I just stick to using it in soups and the like. Anyway, it's not like tonight's dinner is that bad. I mean, it tastes alright, and it's dinner, right?
RIGHT!?
Yeeahhh.
Wow, the soundtrack to 28 Days Later is depressing. Who would've thought? Oh, but it has a motif, as I just noticed! This little thing that comes at the end of "In the House - In a Heartbeat" that always sounded okay but a little out of place is actually its own song earlier in the album! Cool. K, but really, this is too weird listening to this without watching the movie, and it's making me feel like I'm in a life-and-death, fight-or-flight, end-of-the-world situation. I like hyphenating words sometimes. And things like that.
Oh yeah, the thing I wanted to talk about today: karate. Yes! I am taking karate lessons now, and it kind of wound up as a private lesson that the sensei teaches right after his class with the little kids ends. It's sweet. I was really surprised when I remembered, and all the feelings came flooding back (in)to me from some wellspring somewhere within, how much I love martial arts and practicing them. The workout is just so awesome to me - getting good excercise from doing bodily motions over and over again always trying to execute them better. I love the feeling of exerting myself physically and mentally at the same time like that. Plus, you can tell when you're doing it right and getting better. Actually, I think I can tell that more now, being much older than when I did martial arts in middle school or around then. In any case, I love practicing martial arts.
And karate is way different from kali and kickboxing, which I did before. The kicks are crazy! and the stances and punching styles! Oh man, it's really fun and exciting to learn (even if I got a rude awakening/surprise about how much less flexible I've become (I always prided myself on being flexible before!), though it could also just be that I never much used the muscles these kicks utilize when I took martial arts lessons before). Anyways, I always feel really energized and alive when I finish karate lessons, so that is awesome. I can't wait to...just keep going to class and doing karate pretty much, haha. However, I can't go to next Monday's lesson, because...
I'm going to Taiwan! Hurrah! Thank you for your suggestions on places to go and things to see, everyone who gave me those. I don't really have any idea of what to expect, but I'm excited to see where one of my good friends has chosen to be his home for this year and experience what he likes about it.
I finally started doing this idea I've had for studying Japanese for a while now. I found a website with something like 3,500 kanji (still not very much) that categorizes them by grade levels and has really extensive information on them, including what seems like all their different readings. SO...I'm starting at grade one, from the very beginning, and going over all the kanji for which I know the main ways to read and use, but now I'm focusing on all their obscure readings or on certain basic kanji for which I just don't know certain readings because you don't use them that much. That was confusing, sorry, but going with the spirit of leaving things just as they come out of my head, I'm going to leave that the way it is. The long and short of it issss (I never use that phrase) I've studied super high level kanji for the challenge and because I'm curious, but something that's always been in my mind is, "Hey, it may be good to keep learning harder kanji and all, but wouldn't it be cool to learn all the ones used in everyday situations, like on trucks and signs and buildings and stuff, and just be completely comfortable with kanji in my daily life?" Yes, it would be. So now, I'm going over all the everyday kanji! And it's interesting and rewarding! So there's that.
Um, anyways...no pictures again this time, sorry. I do have some I'd like to post, but never seem to have time when I get around to writing in this old thang. You can have this one for now?
(Hint: I searched, "little tiger.")
Also, Mono is awesome. I just listened to "Memorie Dal Futoro." Good, good, good.
That's about all for now. I might not update again until after I get back. Oh yeah, I also felt pretty good today when I was able to reserve a seat on a bus to the airport and a hotel room for the night before without missing anything the people were saying or having to ask them to repeat anything, and that's with all that crazy polite language (敬語ぉぉぉぉ！) (except for this one thing the hotel clerk said which I still can't figure out). But, uhhh, yeah. Good day. I spent a lot of time looking out from my balcony. Goodnight.
You get to eat wondrous meals (such as delicious, moist oboro dofu mmm) whenever you make them.
You - oh, excuse that - You get to eat mediocre and/or not very delicious meals (such as the miso stir-fry thing I just made ohhh) whenever you make those.
You get to listen to "In the House - In a Heartbeat" at a loud volume and have to stop writing your blog post for a while because you are overcome with having to throw your head back and forth to the music as it gets more and more intense.
Well, the last one you can do anywhere, really. But I just thought I'd throw it in.
And yes, (k we're out of the "perks of living on your own" section now) I was inspired by a tofu cafe I went to in Kyoto, and yes, I did buy various, assorted tofu goods from its nearby shop including oboro dofu and soy milk and tofu tare (sauce? marinade?) and tofu dumpling type things, and yes, I did seek recipes from the cafe's website, and YES, I did use one to create a delicious oboro dofu, which I have now made twice and for which I am thinking of new ways to make it better and even more numsaflex (yummy).
Tonight's meal's taste reminded me of when I first got to Japan and started cooking with Japanese ingredients (or really cooking period). I'm getting the impression miso isn't really ideal for frying and maybe I just stick to using it in soups and the like. Anyway, it's not like tonight's dinner is that bad. I mean, it tastes alright, and it's dinner, right?
RIGHT!?
Yeeahhh.
Wow, the soundtrack to 28 Days Later is depressing. Who would've thought? Oh, but it has a motif, as I just noticed! This little thing that comes at the end of "In the House - In a Heartbeat" that always sounded okay but a little out of place is actually its own song earlier in the album! Cool. K, but really, this is too weird listening to this without watching the movie, and it's making me feel like I'm in a life-and-death, fight-or-flight, end-of-the-world situation. I like hyphenating words sometimes. And things like that.
Oh yeah, the thing I wanted to talk about today: karate. Yes! I am taking karate lessons now, and it kind of wound up as a private lesson that the sensei teaches right after his class with the little kids ends. It's sweet. I was really surprised when I remembered, and all the feelings came flooding back (in)to me from some wellspring somewhere within, how much I love martial arts and practicing them. The workout is just so awesome to me - getting good excercise from doing bodily motions over and over again always trying to execute them better. I love the feeling of exerting myself physically and mentally at the same time like that. Plus, you can tell when you're doing it right and getting better. Actually, I think I can tell that more now, being much older than when I did martial arts in middle school or around then. In any case, I love practicing martial arts.
And karate is way different from kali and kickboxing, which I did before. The kicks are crazy! and the stances and punching styles! Oh man, it's really fun and exciting to learn (even if I got a rude awakening/surprise about how much less flexible I've become (I always prided myself on being flexible before!), though it could also just be that I never much used the muscles these kicks utilize when I took martial arts lessons before). Anyways, I always feel really energized and alive when I finish karate lessons, so that is awesome. I can't wait to...just keep going to class and doing karate pretty much, haha. However, I can't go to next Monday's lesson, because...
I'm going to Taiwan! Hurrah! Thank you for your suggestions on places to go and things to see, everyone who gave me those. I don't really have any idea of what to expect, but I'm excited to see where one of my good friends has chosen to be his home for this year and experience what he likes about it.
I finally started doing this idea I've had for studying Japanese for a while now. I found a website with something like 3,500 kanji (still not very much) that categorizes them by grade levels and has really extensive information on them, including what seems like all their different readings. SO...I'm starting at grade one, from the very beginning, and going over all the kanji for which I know the main ways to read and use, but now I'm focusing on all their obscure readings or on certain basic kanji for which I just don't know certain readings because you don't use them that much. That was confusing, sorry, but going with the spirit of leaving things just as they come out of my head, I'm going to leave that the way it is. The long and short of it issss (I never use that phrase) I've studied super high level kanji for the challenge and because I'm curious, but something that's always been in my mind is, "Hey, it may be good to keep learning harder kanji and all, but wouldn't it be cool to learn all the ones used in everyday situations, like on trucks and signs and buildings and stuff, and just be completely comfortable with kanji in my daily life?" Yes, it would be. So now, I'm going over all the everyday kanji! And it's interesting and rewarding! So there's that.
Um, anyways...no pictures again this time, sorry. I do have some I'd like to post, but never seem to have time when I get around to writing in this old thang. You can have this one for now?
(Hint: I searched, "little tiger.")
Also, Mono is awesome. I just listened to "Memorie Dal Futoro." Good, good, good.
That's about all for now. I might not update again until after I get back. Oh yeah, I also felt pretty good today when I was able to reserve a seat on a bus to the airport and a hotel room for the night before without missing anything the people were saying or having to ask them to repeat anything, and that's with all that crazy polite language (敬語ぉぉぉぉ！) (except for this one thing the hotel clerk said which I still can't figure out). But, uhhh, yeah. Good day. I spent a lot of time looking out from my balcony. Goodnight.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Brother
Well, it most certainly has been a while, hasn't it?
Tomorrow will be exactly one month since I last let you all in on what I was doing in this thing we call life and this possessive I use called my.
First things first, I've gone through a huge musical change, or maybe just what feels like one. Listening-wise, I've rediscovered AU and gotten way more into them than I was when my sister and I first bought those two CDs at their amazing show at the Smell a year and a half ago (?! Oh that was an awesome time. It was there I learned about closing my eyes and imagining scenarios to the music from my sister. :)). Before that, I was listening to the Dokuros a LOT. Pretty much all the time. I went to a couple of their shows in nearby Kyoto and Osaka and actually got to know them a little bit, which was really cool. I had the sad and happy honor of getting to see their final show before their guitarist and drummer left. It was an awesome show and felt really weird for me. They've shaped my musical life ever since I first saw them live by complete chance opening for Oshiripenpenz and bought their CD without any hint of how much I would get into them. That was like two years ago. Seeing them play their last show right in front of my eyes was like an end of an era for me. It made me think of how they'd influenced me up to that point, how my music'd changed up to then, and how we all were going to go on to new things and change even more from here on out. Anyways, quite an experience.
So yeah, the Dokuros' new album, 「遅い昼食」(Osoi chuushoku) is really good (came out last summer) and really shows them making their own style even more (one reason why it's kind of a bummer their time to stop come now). I own all their released material now and that's been making up a lot of my listening material for the past month or so. AU happened this week. So did Atlas Sound, another "band" (artist?) which I had listened to in passing, really liked, but never got super into. Atlas Sound is awesome. "Dog Named Apollo," "Lost and Found (for A.O.)," and most of all "Monochromatic" are my favorites and highest recommendations right now.
Ummm...ゆらゆら帝国! Yura yura teikoku is amazing. I just got ahold of another CD by them, called "Sweet Spot," and it's pretty awesome. I've definitely got to hear more of them. I might see them live in a month or two if I can.
A friend of mine asked me to burn her a Bjork CD, and in the process of looking up what songs I thought she'd like I listened to a whole bunch of Bjork I'd never listened to before. I'd actually not really listened to her at all...but now I love Verspertine and some others. I also made myself a Sapo/mariachi mix which was one of the best ideas I've had lately because I put it on and went driving around all night long into the next city over on dark roads through fields and nothing lit by car lamp. It's amazing how down you can feel without knowing why and how alive you can feel when you listen to something nostalgic and deeply connected to you. I just kind of forget all these things that are a part of me somewhere deep inside. It's nice when I remember them again and put them in the forefront of my life.
Listening to a mix CD sent to me by a certain friend with awesome music taste in L.A. :)
'sgot some good mariachi and a bunch of other cool stuff I can't really describe.
So yeah, lots of mariachi for driving, mostly Javier Solis and Los Camperos. I love "Tres Regalos," though, and the rendition Pedro Fernandez does of it. Lots of Verspertine, AU, Atlas Sound, and mix CD at the apartment right now.
Edit: Oh yeah, Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective is amazing. One of those albums I rarely listen to because when I do I have to be ready to jump around my apartment throwing myself into walls rolling around on the floor kicking around screaming and crying with happiness and joy.
I've been making crazy progress (?) with music. Vocals coming out, lots of songs with them as the lead. I've been making a lot of environmental recordings (?) of places like railways and Tofu Cafes in Kyoto. I made a couple of songs over this past month which I am really happy about. Really excited about. I've started releasing my emotions in very interesting ways that seem oddly me. They make for enjoyable, interesting music I can get into, and maybe other people can, too.
Well, I'm actually getting close to my preferred bed time of 10:30 now, soo...
I mean, I don't have to take a shower cuz I took one earlier today so I can go to bed pretty soon, but...yeah...sorry, I should get going pretty soon, ya know?
So I'll just say a few things so I don't end this post without any other updates besides what's been going on in my musical life (There they are again, those two words!).
Works been getting more and more enjoyable. Life in Japan's been getting more and more enjoyable. I realized I've been in the crusty clutches of some pretty harsh culture shock or something of the like for the past couple o' months. I could write a whole entry just on that, but for now I'll just say it sucks. Hah. Aaand, I'm hopefully on my way up and out of it. I've started to come to terms more with the way things just are here instead of getting really antagonistic about them. It's interesting, all the other English teachers I know in this city have been going through the same exact thing, though they may be at different phases of it than me.
Oh, the hottest news on this side of my apartment is that I'm going to Taiwan in a week. Woo. I suppose I will see how much Mandarin (I'm not even going to try Taiwanese) I can learn in 6 days. I'm happy I'll be staying with a good friend of mine who's living in Taipei, studying Chinese and teaching English. I bought my ticket last Saturday! I can't wait to go!
Thinking about what I want to do in the near future, grad school keeps popping up as the most probably option. I think it should be possible to concentrate my interests into a possible research topic by the time application time starts. I'm going to actually send out those emails I was gonna send out like 3 months ago to my professors and see what kind of stuff I should get going on to get ready. Still, I have reservations. I'm always filled with this urge to increase my knowledge of different, varying fields, to make myself more useful and applicable to different situations. Grad school just seems like the complete opposite of what I want to do with myself in that it limits your expertise and knowledge so much to such a specific area. At least, that's the way it seems to me now. I was frustrated with that my last year of college, so I can just imagine what it'd be like at grad school. So, it seems a bit rushed, when the kinds of things I really want to do now are enroll in some kind of Spanish course in a Latin American country (preferably Mexico, but I'm not sure how things are going over there right now), focus completely on music and art (which I could do for the year until I go to grad school anyways...), and...I don't know. Many thoughts. Which is good! Man am I thankful for all the opportunities open to me.
Tomorrow will be exactly one month since I last let you all in on what I was doing in this thing we call life and this possessive I use called my.
First things first, I've gone through a huge musical change, or maybe just what feels like one. Listening-wise, I've rediscovered AU and gotten way more into them than I was when my sister and I first bought those two CDs at their amazing show at the Smell a year and a half ago (?! Oh that was an awesome time. It was there I learned about closing my eyes and imagining scenarios to the music from my sister. :)). Before that, I was listening to the Dokuros a LOT. Pretty much all the time. I went to a couple of their shows in nearby Kyoto and Osaka and actually got to know them a little bit, which was really cool. I had the sad and happy honor of getting to see their final show before their guitarist and drummer left. It was an awesome show and felt really weird for me. They've shaped my musical life ever since I first saw them live by complete chance opening for Oshiripenpenz and bought their CD without any hint of how much I would get into them. That was like two years ago. Seeing them play their last show right in front of my eyes was like an end of an era for me. It made me think of how they'd influenced me up to that point, how my music'd changed up to then, and how we all were going to go on to new things and change even more from here on out. Anyways, quite an experience.
So yeah, the Dokuros' new album, 「遅い昼食」(Osoi chuushoku) is really good (came out last summer) and really shows them making their own style even more (one reason why it's kind of a bummer their time to stop come now). I own all their released material now and that's been making up a lot of my listening material for the past month or so. AU happened this week. So did Atlas Sound, another "band" (artist?) which I had listened to in passing, really liked, but never got super into. Atlas Sound is awesome. "Dog Named Apollo," "Lost and Found (for A.O.)," and most of all "Monochromatic" are my favorites and highest recommendations right now.
Ummm...ゆらゆら帝国! Yura yura teikoku is amazing. I just got ahold of another CD by them, called "Sweet Spot," and it's pretty awesome. I've definitely got to hear more of them. I might see them live in a month or two if I can.
A friend of mine asked me to burn her a Bjork CD, and in the process of looking up what songs I thought she'd like I listened to a whole bunch of Bjork I'd never listened to before. I'd actually not really listened to her at all...but now I love Verspertine and some others. I also made myself a Sapo/mariachi mix which was one of the best ideas I've had lately because I put it on and went driving around all night long into the next city over on dark roads through fields and nothing lit by car lamp. It's amazing how down you can feel without knowing why and how alive you can feel when you listen to something nostalgic and deeply connected to you. I just kind of forget all these things that are a part of me somewhere deep inside. It's nice when I remember them again and put them in the forefront of my life.
Listening to a mix CD sent to me by a certain friend with awesome music taste in L.A. :)
'sgot some good mariachi and a bunch of other cool stuff I can't really describe.
So yeah, lots of mariachi for driving, mostly Javier Solis and Los Camperos. I love "Tres Regalos," though, and the rendition Pedro Fernandez does of it. Lots of Verspertine, AU, Atlas Sound, and mix CD at the apartment right now.
Edit: Oh yeah, Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective is amazing. One of those albums I rarely listen to because when I do I have to be ready to jump around my apartment throwing myself into walls rolling around on the floor kicking around screaming and crying with happiness and joy.
I've been making crazy progress (?) with music. Vocals coming out, lots of songs with them as the lead. I've been making a lot of environmental recordings (?) of places like railways and Tofu Cafes in Kyoto. I made a couple of songs over this past month which I am really happy about. Really excited about. I've started releasing my emotions in very interesting ways that seem oddly me. They make for enjoyable, interesting music I can get into, and maybe other people can, too.
Well, I'm actually getting close to my preferred bed time of 10:30 now, soo...
I mean, I don't have to take a shower cuz I took one earlier today so I can go to bed pretty soon, but...yeah...sorry, I should get going pretty soon, ya know?
So I'll just say a few things so I don't end this post without any other updates besides what's been going on in my musical life (There they are again, those two words!).
Works been getting more and more enjoyable. Life in Japan's been getting more and more enjoyable. I realized I've been in the crusty clutches of some pretty harsh culture shock or something of the like for the past couple o' months. I could write a whole entry just on that, but for now I'll just say it sucks. Hah. Aaand, I'm hopefully on my way up and out of it. I've started to come to terms more with the way things just are here instead of getting really antagonistic about them. It's interesting, all the other English teachers I know in this city have been going through the same exact thing, though they may be at different phases of it than me.
Oh, the hottest news on this side of my apartment is that I'm going to Taiwan in a week. Woo. I suppose I will see how much Mandarin (I'm not even going to try Taiwanese) I can learn in 6 days. I'm happy I'll be staying with a good friend of mine who's living in Taipei, studying Chinese and teaching English. I bought my ticket last Saturday! I can't wait to go!
Thinking about what I want to do in the near future, grad school keeps popping up as the most probably option. I think it should be possible to concentrate my interests into a possible research topic by the time application time starts. I'm going to actually send out those emails I was gonna send out like 3 months ago to my professors and see what kind of stuff I should get going on to get ready. Still, I have reservations. I'm always filled with this urge to increase my knowledge of different, varying fields, to make myself more useful and applicable to different situations. Grad school just seems like the complete opposite of what I want to do with myself in that it limits your expertise and knowledge so much to such a specific area. At least, that's the way it seems to me now. I was frustrated with that my last year of college, so I can just imagine what it'd be like at grad school. So, it seems a bit rushed, when the kinds of things I really want to do now are enroll in some kind of Spanish course in a Latin American country (preferably Mexico, but I'm not sure how things are going over there right now), focus completely on music and art (which I could do for the year until I go to grad school anyways...), and...I don't know. Many thoughts. Which is good! Man am I thankful for all the opportunities open to me.
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