Sons of Loki

We land on a cloud and I hop off his back, realising in mid-air that I’m jumping onto something entirely insubstantial, and yet I land on a soft, solid surface. I run through it, and it’s like running through fallen autumn leaves, a sense of wonderful, childish joy. He sits catching his breath, watching me run. I feel a little silly, but it’s absolutely incredible. I run and scream my head off, jumping without fear into the soft white fluff, spinning around with abandon in sheer awe at the unscaleable dome of blue sky that hangs in every direction. I run back to him, grab his hand, and we stand on top of the world, on a white meadow, in a perfectly silent world.

NaNoWriMo is back! I’ve come to look forward to November – first my birthday, then NaNoWriMo (3rd time this year), and finally my first Movember (feel free to donate to my ‘tache here).

Back at home for the weekend. Regular readers of my blog will know I very seriously considered giving up Japanese last spring, but somehow I pulled through the exams and started back at Leeds for the third year of this degree. But it feels like a Pyrrhic victory; sure, I passed, but I didn’t pass very well, and it may have been better to just bite the bullet back then and come to terms with the fact that I’m not really that into Japanese.

It occurred to me, the week before last, when I had to write this English essay. It was pretty complex and I didn’t really have any idea of what I was doing, but I happily hunkered down in the library for ten hours with a stack of books and crafted a deeply imperfect, but ultimately finished essay. I realised I really enjoy that kind of work – essay writing and such – because it’s creative work. I find creating something – a story, an essay, something in a computer game, a piece of art, a blog post – to be a wonderfully rewarding experience.

The thing is, I get none of that buzz from learning Japanese because it’s mainly passive learning. I know you create conversations and write compositions, but it’s really not the same thing at all, for me.

Anyway, my real point is, I really don’t think I necessarily need to be doing Japanese any more. The big problem is that I can’t drop it. I investigated, and was a little taken aback on Thursday to be told that I’m two weeks too late to drop the necessary credits to have room to take up English modules for next semester.

So I’m stuck. But! There is a plan C: abort this year entirely, get a job until August 2011, then start again at Level 2 next academic year doing Single Honours English. This would mean I graduate in 2013, not 2012. The job would earn me a nice bit of extra cash (and I certainly need all I can get) and I believe that since I’d still be registered as a student, I wouldn’t have to pay council tax.

This is kind of scary and exciting all at the same time. But then, it might be just what I need to do. There’s that great Talking Heads song, “Found a Job”¹, with the line “if work isn’t what you love / Then something isn’t right” and I’ve always thought I’ll never be one of those people trapped in a boring job they hate just because they’re too scared of things changing. But, to shamelessly quote another song, for me I’m more afraid of things staying the same². So I guess I should perhaps go for this. It certainly beats being bored and miserable in Japanese class all day.

¹: Byrne, David. “Found a Job” in More Songs About Buildings and Food. Talking Heads, CD, Sire Records (1978).
²: Cave, Nick, et al, “Jesus of the Moon” in Dig Lazarus Dig. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, CD, Mute Records (2009).

Things are settling down pretty well here, I guess. For the first time, I’m in Leeds to see all the freshers and wow, they really do look so young and fresh-faced. They wear their college’s “class of 2010″ hoodies and are born in 1991 or even 1992 and don’t know where everything is and ask taxi drivers to take them to Opal Three and have those conversations which go “So what are you studying?” “Joint Honours International Biomedical Frangilistics and Exportation Studies” “wow I have absolutely no idea what that is” and the scariest thing is that they were us, once. No, that’s not the scariest thing. The scariest thing is that every single one of them seems to be having more fun than I am. Bah.

I’ve been bumping into old friends all over the place, and eating my old friend the ‘Wedge (now, scandalously up from £1.79 to £2.20). We dine at semi-fancy restaurants and catch up on how we’ve been doing and have heated arguments about how bloody expensive the Union co-op is, especially with the Tesco’s just across the road. We have people over for poker and video games. We go into uni and the guys go to the gym and I go to the swimming pool, because I’m too cheap to pay the membership fee and it’s only £3 for a swim and use of the sauna and steam rooms, then we come out and study Japanese in the library because we are awesome and are not swayed by Domino’s offers of free pizza (seriously, it’s like sixteen-fucking-quid for Domino’s pizza – sixteen pounds! – and Milano’s down the road do a gorgeous BBQ pizza with your choice of three toppings and free delivery for £4.10).

I come back and write my stupid novel and think about what I’m doing for NaNoWriMo this year (concept: taking the Totoro shinigami urban legend and running with it, making a proper story about a girl who disappears into the forest and meets Death and has to save her little sister or something – shades of Mort and the old Death and the Maiden tale) listen to the Beatles (getting into Let It Be and Abbey Road right now) and drink coffee and read Baudrillard, who like all French philosophers (and all philosophers) takes a chapter to say what he could say in a page, but nevertheless makes me nod my head:

In the same way science and technology were recently mobilized to save the mummy of Ramses II, after it was left to rot for several dozen years in the depths of a museum. The West is seized with panic at the thought of not being able to save what the symbolic order had been able to conserve for forty centuries, but out of sight and far from the light of day. Ramses does not signify anything for us, only the mummy is of an inestimable worth because it is what guarantees that accumulation has meaning. Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view.

Et cetera. I’m a little worried about getting back into English, because my first module is Civil War and Restoration literature and it’s going to (probably) be all about dashing rogues and tartish ladies (probably) and I really can’t wait until third year (fourth year for me) when the modules on modern literature turn up. Japanese I still can’t speak, but I’m going to get a language partner(s) and reading it seems to be going alright.

And my Dickish (as in, er, Moby Dick) struggle with the stripped screw in my laptop has succeeded after I wrenched the broken keyboard off by practically bending it in two until it became detached from the fixing bolt, then very, very slowly and strenuously removing the bolt with pliers (getting confused about the direction – bolts spin clockwise to come off) then getting the screw out backwards with said pliers. Finally, the new keyboard slotted securely into place, and I can finally type on the go again.

There’s a huge spider in the bath. I may never be able to shower again.

And it’s all coming together, just a little bit more. I’ve been here two months today. Can you imagine it? And we all have something to show for it; Ella’s off giving speeches to Imperial princesses, Dan’s hanging out with Japanese actors, and – well hey, let’s just say it’s been an interesting weekend.

Today I did some weight training with Rob at ICU, which was draining work, but we rewarded ourselves with a trip to Book Off (owners of the amusingly-named Hard Off chain of second-hand stores). I bought Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask in the original Japanese, which I will probably struggle with for a few days before giving up on and parking on my shelf to look good for the rest of the year. Then I got lost took a scenic route home, along the Nogawa river, marvelling at the birds and trees and how pleasant it all was, despite the chilly weather. I cut through Tama Cemetery (which I always feel a little guilty about) and saw a colony of cats staring suspiciously at me, and then later after a stupidly tight and low turn on wet tarmac I fell off my bike, grazing my knee and turning it a lovely shade of purple. Hurt like hell for a while, so I sat and rested it before moving on.

On Saturday my dear friend James came up from Kobe with our friend Eri, and I gave them a haphazard tour of Tokyo. Well, Shinjuku. Well, a bit of it. Returned to the New York Bar (“I’m practically a regular,” I said wittily, with the kind of wit I am valued for at the New York Bar, where all the staff probably know my name, maybe) for another £11 martini, then a meal at a Chinese restaurant (where the food is nothing like good, authentic, British Chinese food).

The day after I’d signed up for this 300 yen sightseeing do, run by the International Office. It was rather enlightening. We saw the Diet, the seat of the Japanese government, and the House of Representatives.


Then a westward jaunt to the Edo Tokyo Museum. Not the best museum I’ve seen lately (that’d have to be the National Museum of Korea) but a nice place to while away a Sunday afternoon. A lot of meticulously-crafted little models, which were gorgeous.

Stages in woodblock printing.

Wartime sketches of the USS Saratoga and Yorktown.

There was quite an interesting point in the exhibition where you passed out of the war-era Tokyo, with the bombs dropping all around and fires raging and desperation looming only to find yourself in the post-war section, surrounded by modern automobiles and inane 50s TV commercials. I like to think that this somehow reflects the shock to the national psyche after Japan’s defeat, or it might just be poor planning on the part of the museum.

After that, we went to a nearby chankonabe restaurant which serves the shabu-shabu so beloved of sumo wrestlers. “I can tell why they’re so fat,” I wittily quipped quippily, confronted by mounds of fish and veg and meat.

And did I mention, I finished Nanowrimo? Yes, behold the snazzy winner’s web badge to the right there (unless you’ve got this on a RSS feed, you clever person). It seemed an impossible task thirty days ago, but whether by accident or design I did about 2400 words this morning after class, leaving just another 100 in the afternoon (50,000th word was “to”) and then a few hundred just for good measure.

I eagerly await instruction on what to do next from the Nanowrimo team.

My novel has a title. It is called “The Remnants”, which sounds like some early-90s California art-punk-rock band (I think I’m confusing The Replacements and The Rembrandts). And, thanks to judicious use of WriteOrDie, I’m continuing on like the damn Duracell bunny to 33,827 words, just an hour or two away from passing last year’s 35,608. I was very pleased when I managed to Title Drop the title a few days after picking it:

Humanity finally had harmony, but at what price? In a sense, the Hostiles had already won, for they – the remnants of humanity – were living in a world that very closely matched the Hostiles’ ideal of a well-regulated, orderly, soulless society.

That passage sounded so good when I was writing it. In the light of reflection, less so. But this is Nanowrimo, and I will soldier on.

TV continues to fascinate me. I watch the late-night anime. Back when I was really into anime – it must have been 2000-2002, bookended by Tenchi Muyo! appearing on Cartoon Network in September 2000 and Saiko Exciting! coming to a premature end in 2002 – the sum total of anime available was dubbed, edited, and at least four or five years old (Tenchi Muyo was eight years old in Japan when it debuted in the UK!).
Now, of course, you can download fansubbed versions of the hottest new anime in about ten seconds off the net, but there’s still a spark of excitement in being able to watch brand new episodes of some anime debuting on Japanese TV, even if most of it’s crap and I don’t understand any of it. (An episode of Miracle Train has just concluded on TV Tokyo, which is about anthropomorphic personifications of Tokyo subway stations, or something.)

CHECK IT OUT.

There I was, about to host the first inaugural (what does that word even mean) Movie Night Tokyo (The Last Samurai (2003), snacks: Doritos, cookies), bringing Rob and Miles from Tama station when I passed the freecycling area on my way upstairs.

“Oh, man, a water boiling thingy!” (I don’t know what the real name is, but in Japan these electric kettles are popular where you have a nozzle like in a coffee machine and you press a button for hot water.) I was about to appropriate it when my eyes went past it to the RETRO-STYLE SHARP 20C-M4 20″ phat TV. She was a beauty.

And she works. The remote is from an entirely different model, so it doesn’t work, and there’s bugger all worth watching, and the buttons don’t work, but I can see television, which is probably a boon to my Japanese comprehension or something if I spend all day watching the endless programmes about food (there is nothing on Japanese TV except game shows, ridiculous variety shows and twenty-seven separate programmes about restaurants).

So what’s been going down? On Tuesday, as part of the Japan Music Week thing (for which we got special wristbands but only ended up going to one event but it was worth it anyway) Dan, Fran, Ella and I moseyed on down to the Shib to a little cafe called the Pink Cow, where the Singer-Songwriter night was going on. The artists were all foreigners, mostly American, and most of the audience were other artists, mostly American, but the place had a delightful ambience.

Aren’t Yanks funny? In a good way. Just so much more brash and loud than us limeys. It can be annoying, but it’s also quite endearing.

So we had the usual line-up of people – on piano, guitar, other weird instruments.

And then our very own Ella May Blake got the chance to go up after everyone else, and did her own set.

I’m not convinced anything else happened this week. I certainly can’t think of anything. There was a minor earthquake – I woke up briefly to a mild swaying and the sound of several tons of concrete groaning above my head – and we started a band.

Yes, Fran picked up a neat electric violin (together with all the accessories, as seems to be the norm in Japan) and Untitled Band (working name possibly Ichigo?), consisting of Ella May Blake (vocals, guitar), Francesca Wilks (electric violin), Matt Durrant (mandolin) and special guest Harriet South (plastic strawberry-shaped percussion) got together for a short jam, except we didn’t really know any songs. Nevertheless, it was fantastic, and with Ella’s newfound connections in the music business we might end up becoming underground superstars in Shibuya. Maybe.

Anyway, today I spent some time with Fran in Shinjuku meeting up with the local group of Nanowrimoers for the first time, typing away in a Shinjuku Starbucks. Ended up with 3,415 words, which means I’m only 6,292 words off today’s target!

As of press time, still writing.

Got an email the other day from my editor saying about how there was a new capsule hotel starting up in Kyoto and that I could go along to the opening and do a piece about it if I wanted, and I was like hell yeah. One is never truly a journalist until one starts getting freebies.

Read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity recently, and it made me laugh, and I identified with portions of it quite a lot, and what more can you ask from a book, really?

Yesterday after class I headed down to Shinny-Shin Shinjuku (as it will hereby be known) and walked down to Kinokuniya’s South store, the one I tried to get to the other day and missed by about a minute’s walk, in hindsight. (I took the train to Yoyogi that time, which is actually about five minutes walk from Shinjuku anyway, but a totally different neighbourhood.)

I picked up my reserved copy of J301, and then browsed the English-language fiction, and got William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, which – hey! – is set in Tokyo, and is the sequel to Idoru, which I read last time I was here and tragically, just after finishing it, I left it next to an ATM in Kobe and never saw it again.

God, William Gibson. The writer I want to be. Everything I want to write about is pretty much summed up in his works, and he keeps saying things which make me nod my head and make me angry that I didn’t think of it before. Doubtless, in ten years’ time I will look back and laugh at my angry adolescent love of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk and nascent post-modernist evolutionary self-facilitating technological underground networking media nodes, but right now it still fascinates me.

I thought I’d do a bit of photography around Shinjuku, but it was cloudy and the light was bad and nothing quite worked.

shades of SimCity

So I went to Starbucks (where all those chairs are in the above photo) to buy hot chai and catch up on NaNoWriMo, as I was a couple days behind. I wrote and wrote. Then I went to the cafe next door, which sold me disgusting coffee but it was only 200 yen and I wrote some more. In total, 3,800 words, almost bringing me back on track.

I realised about fiveish or sixish that I was going to hit the rush hour of a million Tokyoites passing through Shinjuku on their way home via the westward arteries of the Chuo- and Keio-sen, so I left, straight into a glorious illuminated wonderland. Oh, Tokyo, how I love thee.

I believe that this may be the karaoke place in Lost in Translation, though I'm not sure.