- but darlin' i want the same thing i wanted before -

...mwah. Go figure - I've been writing like there's no tomorrow since last week (at about four in the morning on a train much to the amusement and dismay of my companions) and I go to set fingers to keyboard and freeze up.

I shouldn't. There's been a change in the weather (though I swear it's as cold as ever) or perhaps I'm simply sleeping better, but something's different, something's changed around me for the better. Auras or some such bunk; who knows?

January, where did you go? I remember moments - first bursts of fuschia cyclamen, shopping trips and soccer games, peace bells and ghostly arches in a city full of life, green wishing hands and hands flashing victory signs and bunny ears and slipping around my shoulders - if you say run, I'll run with you - it's been a month made for running, and finding all sorts of people to run with. To move to dance to play to laugh and lean against improbably warm walls and warmer shoulders over coffee and chocolate and curry, because April might be the cruelest month but January's got to be the coldest. (I'm trying to forget the bottle of frozen olive oil in my kitchen and the layer of ice on my bicycle seat every morning, but that isn't going so well.)

...there are far too many run-ons in that paragraph. So much for not having anything to say! (But it's a good change; I'll take this in a heartbeat.)

And Sapporo is next weekend already! EXCITED. ♥

Take care, everyone.

- put on your red shoes (and dance the blues) -

Mediapost time?

Something like that. Life's been quiet - I feel a little out of the teaching vibe, which needs to be quickly and quietly reversed. I might not be as hopelessly quagmired as I thought I might be about that funny thing called a future, though, so that's always a bonus!

...I really, really should take down my Christmas tree. ^^

But since it's never too early to get a start on the holidays (shh - the hyaku-en store around the corner is just filled with confection... boxes. That's right, people make chocolates and sweet things over here - in great quantities, if the supply at my small store is anything to go by. And in what's got to be a marketer's dream, Japan has two Valentine's Days - V-Day's for the girls to give chocolates to the guys, and White Day for the reverse.

Of course it's not that simple - sure, you can give chocolates to the one you're sweet on, but there's what's called "Giri-Choco," or obligation chocolate (it sounds so much nicer when you don't know what it means, hm?) that you give to people like coworkers on VDay. In return, on White Day, while it started off just being white chocolate, horizons have been expanded. Chocolate of all colours is cool, as are more expensive indulgences - candies, stuffed bears (and probably Stitches, oh hells) and jewelry and whatnot. And if you thought the girls had it bad, the guys have (at least in theory) "sanbai-gaeshi" - the tradition of purchasing a return gift three times the value of the one that they received.

Grin, much? ^_~

In fact-checking on Wikipedia (haha), I came across White Day's evil twin - Black Day. It's a South Korean holiday where locals eat noodles with black bean sauce and "commisserate their singledom." Forgive the Keanuism, but, dude. My heart being ridiculously on my sleeve aside, and love being a manysplendored thing that is really all we need and awesome for the writing (but hard on the knees and I should really stop murdering song lyrics now)...really? ^^

Switching amusements - even though some of you have yet to get your Christmas packages from me (oops) - send me a Valentine?


Get your own valentinr


In case online declarations of amusement/affection aren't your thing, I also have something a little more traditional - a poem that I just found and fell for.

Marginalia - Billy Collins

(Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head....)

...oh, so true, although for Derrida and Socrates in my case.


And for ear-candy this time around?

Jonathon Fisk - Spoon
(has been stuck in my head all week. Tongue-in-cheek indie rock with hooky guitars.)

Take Me To The Riot - Stars
(weird video; ignore the first minute? I'm not sure what's with Torq and Amy actually playing off each other (this is strange but cool.) Stars are... Stars - Montreal indie-dream-rock with just a tiny bit of edge. My Uni band. ♥ There's less winter in this album than I'd like but it still wakes me up every morning.)

After Dark - Asian Kung-Fu Generation
(I admit it, I like this song. And the video is awesome. Business suits? Check. Awkward elevator/office scenes? Check. Drunken enkai moment? Check. Random people in costumes? Check. Enactment of the hero myth? Check-check. Cell phone cameras in time of impending tragedy? You bet. Also the lead singer looks like one of my students aged a few years.)


...take care and stay warm, everyone. ^^

saturday nights in neon lights -

...ah, Hiroshima. You feel old, you feel young, you feel new and unfamiliar and yet the closest to home I've found on this island. Friendly in a way Tokyo isn't, chill in a fashion utterly unknown in Kyoto... oh, you're a strange city - so new and so quietly hopeful and your backstreets rival Asakusa's for quirky shops and a laidback style. I have to wonder about the number of hair salons per capita, though - it's got to be something ridiculous.

You're beautiful, really; I should see you in the summer, green long before your seventy-five year sentence has passed, but you are haunting and angular in the winter ( car horns and peacebells blending in sound noise cacophony life); children laugh and teenagers flirt on teetering heels, pulling their collars up and hair down as the wind pierces even the covered arcades.

I saw a mother and daughter race hand in hand across one of your streets today, laughing as they went; black hair and white jackets not angelic but human and that's maybe the point. Gather and remember but live. Whether in the okonomiyaki villages stacked tight and close, the hands entwined to ward off the chill, the - oh, there's not a name for it, so the vibe for lack of a better - this city has known war and death and worse, despair, but... today it stands and looks both outwards and back.

It's pompous to say "may you always," Hiroshima, but I'm hoping you do anyway.


we're everything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)


...because e e cummings says it best. Take care. ♥