- call it predictable; yesterday my dream was of you -

To celebrate having wireless - a media post of the times that have been had and some of the music that probably got me through said times.

...I find it amusing that it took a shift of hemispheres to get me into a cowboy hat (for Halloween) and listening to country music (of a sort, but the Eagles are classic and nostalgic and Calexico's music is whispery and whiskey-soaked and the perfect music to listen to whilst curled in blankets. Which I can do now, on my new couch. I'd never thought that furniture could make one quite so happy, but it beats sitting on bare floorboards and small pillows by a long stretch.)

Most of these are songs for autumn; for days of goldenrod and leaves stained crimson; for warm tea and cool nights - enjoy.


- burn that broken bed - calexico feat. iron and wine
(love song. folk song. lust song. alt-folk-country, but watch for the brassy finish. here's to change and changes.)

- siamese cities - metric
(not country. sassy, canadian indie-pop. emily haines should never be happy in love, if frustrated love means songs like this. and yes, that thought makes me a terrible person.)

- river flows in - yiruma
(just the piano. short and evocative and beautiful. a gift from a friend that brought tears to my eyes the first time I heard it. a curl-up song.)

- strangest land - tom mcrae
(maybe it's like someone said; there are a million singer-songwriters in the UK. why care? mr. mcrae's music stands above most of what i've heard - and with an affinity for said music, that is a lot. smoky and strange and a backwards theme for this Japan thing. and arguably for the someone in question.)

- are we family - the tragically hip
(the other Canadian thing that it took Japan for me to appreciate is the Hip. guitar and gord downie - give me ten bucks and a head start; are we family or not? - finding families and mothers and lovers all over again in this corner of the world.)

- dear sons and daughters of hungry ghosts - wolf parade
(wake up. no, really. wake up. shake yourself and move - the year is dying, so dance it off with a smile. electronic cacophony - half bar song, half rally cry, half song to shake the cold. and that's three halves, but who is counting, really?)

- people in love - art brut
(tongue in cheek. it begins with: people in love sit around and get fat; i wouldn't want us to end up like that. because you have to be able to poke fun at yourself some of the time, and failing that, there are facebook pictures.)

- fidelity - regina spektor
(because ultimately this girl's a romantic. singing love songs to break her fall is something she's done before, and finds herself doing it again, with all twenty (of two thousand odd) songs on her iPod that fall under happy-romantic. this song is one of the twenty, and has one of the cutest music videos known to man.)

As always , enjoy your music responsibly. if you like what you hear, you know the drill. i like to think that the grey market feeds the white market (is there such thing as a white market? hrm..) because I'd never have heard tom's or regina's or yiruma's music without the internet, and as a result would not own the former two artists' CDs now. life's funny like that. in the meanwhile, and pseudodisclaimers most certainly aside, enjoy.

- through the eyes of a girl who's still around the morning after -

...oy.

To update?

...I have a couch. Or will, within the span of two hours. I found and bought and arranged delivery for said couch in (broken) Japanese, a feat for which I am inordinately proud; it helped that my sales clerk looked like the incredibly handsome actor from "House of Flying Daggers" and I probably could have tried to talk to him all day and been happy.

...my ninensei (grade 11 to westerners) students are almost done their poster presentations. It has been amazing to see the progression, and while they definitely had their moments of typical teenage idiocy, the posters look really good. Presentations start on Tuesday. It was the first 'big' project I've sent at them, and they took it all in stride. ...It is terrible that I am thinking of staying another year just to see them graduate, isn't it? Damn this attachment thing; it complicates matters.

...I danced right through a pair of socks last night - but considering it was due to dancing the night (and part of the morning) away at a huge Halloween bash at one of the largest clubs in Japan, that's a small price to pay. The club itself was absolutely mad - tons of people, some amazing costumes, and a lot of good times with the other Ibaraki JETs. I feel vaguely like death warmed over this morning, and think that the good people at the station are getting used to my semi-regular pseudo-walks of shame. It helped that I had a cowboy hat dangling from one hand and might have been limping a little - dancing the night through in heels was okay until I stopped dancing, and *then.* Ow, pain. ...and the Facebook pictures. God bless Facebook - network and social watchdog that it is.

... also, the trouble with unrequited love is that you never expect it to run both ways (and the problem with being prone to unrequited love is the oh dear what now? when it isn't anymore. ...oh, it's not love, but it is something lovely and perplexing and fun. Was? I may have torched my chances. But then, I may not have; hoping for respect, at least.

(what is simple in the moonlight, in the morning seems insane?)

A little.

- the trick is to keep breathing -

...write. Inkshed. To Hades the fact that you`re on the train and feel ridiculous and a student whose name and face you only half-remember stands across from you with better English comprehension than he`s ever shown in class. Write and perhaps you will finally say something.

Say anything.

Boomboxes are out of date and you sold your car that you could have stood upon - but everything else from the 80s is coming back, so you never know.

You still can`t believe you looked at armwarmers with anything other than arch amusement, or leggings for that matter. But you are living here - what are you waiting for - a written invitation? Don`t hold out. People stopped writing a long time ago.

Japan will teach you to save your words. If you thought you were wordy in Canada, well. You`ll lose them, though, if you`re not careful - stunted bilingualism and what could be whispers of dyslexia already twist your scribblings on the endless sheets of B5 paper between covers of red and rose and fractured Japlish.

You`ve lived outside yourself for too long - not lost touch but lost perspective. It`s not a cardinal sin, more an aftereffect of a liberal arts education, but in a land where people could not care less, be careful. Now`s a good time to jump back in. Maybe not the leap you were expecting or hoping for, but at the very least, it`s a start. And you - judging from your reflection and the fact that this exists at all - could use one of those.