Sons of Loki

I’m not doing Japanese! I’m doing Japanese! I’m confused! Well, I guess I’m sticking with Japanese. I got a language partner and I’m working on listening practice and I’m trying hard not to think about it, but just to do it. Dissertation reading has begun, and I have about two weeks to complete my research. That’s probably cutting it too thin, but I shall endeavour.

It’s a cold November Sunday afternoon, and I’m listening to the amazing Kaji Meiko sing enka. I wrote a haiku:

秋納め、
演歌聴いたり、お茶を飲む

The end of autumn
I’m listening to enka
And drinking my tea

I’m actually drinking coffee, but that’s three morae in Japanese and ‘tea’ is only two, one if you drop the honorific. It’s interesting to compare the English haiku to the Japanese – the Japanese version is based on 5/7/5 morae and not syllables, so a word like enka, two syllables, is three morae. Also, Japanese haikus traditionally require a seasonal element – so you get stuff like the autumn leaves, the summer sea, obviously, but then there’s massive lists of kigo (seasonal words), each with a deeper meaning – harvesting burdock in autumn, pickling wasabi in summer.

I tried looking up some haiku for inspiration, and found ひとり暮らしの５・７・５ (Haiku of a Single Man):

電球を　またも忘れて　暗黒湯』
Once again I forgot
To change the light bulb. I bathe
Sitting in darkness

呪怨見て
表紙のサップが
俺見てる
So I watched “The Grudge”.
After, from a wrestling mag
Bob Sapp stares at me

I guess I should get back to work.

Useless skills you can learn in an afternoon #1: The Coin Walk.

Today’s been a day off – National Foundation Day – and as usual on days off, I have achieved absolutely nowt. Well, I did a tiny bit of Japanese work, I suppose. And learned to coin walk, if that counts for anything. And poached an egg for the first time (delicious!)

I’m a little worried for our upcoming spring break. Okay, Rob’s said we might go hitchhiking with his friend (which will be absurdly fun if we do) and Katie and Chris are coming over for a few weeks, but that leaves the best part of February 17th to April 5th completely void, and I have no idea what I’m going to do. I should just revise kanji in preparation for the Leeds test, which has been dated for May 7th. I could spend lots of money exploring Japan and getting into exciting adventures, just like the old days. I suspect, however, that I will spend it in a coffee-fuelled haze, occasionally writing a page or two for my great unfinished novel (coming in the year 201x) and staring at the walls and occasionally going out and regretting it.

But it’ll be nice to have some time off. It’s just I need a certain structure, a certain regularity to my life, and without it I lose all … whatever it is that I usually have.

I do wonder if I perhaps have something like adult ADD. That’s a big thing to self-diagnose, I know, and everyone would be well in order to tell me to buck my ideas up and get my head down and all that. It’s just … I find it hard to concentrate. I get distracted easily. A lot of things I’ve read about ADD ring bells for me. I ain’t saying that excuses bad grades, or that I don’t need to work hard. It just helps to realise that I possibly have something that means I work a little differently to most people, is all. And, knowing that, I can work around it. Because it’s not like I want to fail. It’s not like I don’t want to be fluent in Japanese.

But I forget what I was thinking about. Back to flashcards.

Coffee and Oreos and rain outside. Is there anything more to life? Well, lots, evidentally, but it’s a start.

On Sunday I rolled into Shibuya, capital of kakkoii cool (I don’t know if the kids say kakkoii any more) with the famous crosswalk:

and stood by ye old statue of Hachiko with all the other girls and boys of Tokyo waiting for people as they have done for decades, and the salesmen blared and the screens flickered and a girl who looked about ten in gothic lolita fashion puffed on a cigarette and hey, this is Tokyo.

Katy turned up (or rather we noticed each other, both of us having waited for each other for about twenty minutes without realising it) and we took a tour through all the weird and wonderful things of Shibuya. Found a Uniqlo and I bought two “Heattech”-enabled (keeps you warmer or something? I’m not sure) t-shirts, which in Uniqlo style came packed square into zip-loc bags with tear-off tops like a packet of salami, two casual shirts, black slacks, a bandana and – in an uncertain moment – a flat cap.

Today we were all hoping to get bank accounts, but apparently due to the volume of applications that will have to wait. 仕方がない – oh well, it can’t be helped.

So instead Ella and Fran and I went down to Kichijouji, another of west Tokyo’s indistinct city centres, so Ella could purchase a guitar, for which she has been suffering withdrawal symptoms (and I can sympathise). With the help of a passer-by we found the shop and Ella picked up a cheap-yet-decent one – complete with an awesome free starter pack including capo, plectrums, peg winder thingy, and other goodies. Only in Japan. So now all we need is Fran on violin for our ultimate Tokyo bluegrass band.

We had a wander around Kichijouji in the intermittant rain and I bought a pot plant and some tonic water. Oh, and stopped off at a Japanese McDonalds, where we had our first encounter with Mr James.

Mr James is McDonald’s house gaijin mascot. He speaks in broken Japanese about how wonderful Japan is and how much he loves McDonalds. He wears funny clothes and silly glasses and is obviously a complete nerd. Crazy Mr James! He doesn’t even have a surname!
Now, Mr James has kicked off a bit of debate in the non-Japanese community, with Arudou Debito obviously a tad miffed, with a thorough dissection in the Japan Times.
Thing is, it’s quite hard to see how disarmingly offensive Mr James is without being down in the street in Japan. This business kicked off while I was still in the UK, and I watched the adverts on YouTube and chuckled a little and thought “Well, it’s hardly that bad.”
But when you’re out in the street and you pass one of Mr James’ ubiqutous standees, it’s like … It’s like a big company got someone to dress up like you, with that silly jumper you’re always wearing, and made them walk around saying the sorts of things you say in a moron voice and acting like a doofus and everyone laughed at that parody of you, because that’s what you’re really like, you clown!
Gaijin/non-Japanese turn up in ads here all the time as – well, token gaijin, or for a sense of international style, or simply because the product is targeted towards us. And that’s fine. I passed an advert in a shoe store today with a black model, and it wasn’t being offensive in the slightest. But Mr James is like a comedy mascot, like a big joke on every street corner aimed squarely at you, you weirdo. It’s not something that really bothers me more than a quick moan in a blog post, but still…
Anyway, headed back, popped in at campus store and got a few useful bits and pieces, including flashcards. The big placement test is on Wednesday, so I better revise.