So! I’m heading to Japan! No itinerary and no concrete plans to conquer the land yet, but Japan is where I shall be come October and where I shall dream about from now till then. My friend (Abula the Great V) and I are also taking part in Design Festa, where we will hawk our currently-still-nonexistent wares, eat plenty of sashimi, shiver in the cold autumn winds, and perhaps finally get to see the snow-capped mountain. To motivate ourselves, we set up a blog here where we shall blog about our progress and travel plans. Yeah! Exclamations are plentiful here!

(from artist’s site; link via JeanSnow.net)

I had planned this entry to be one on my sewing Sunday, one where I would be able to extol, at relative length and with adequate pride, my brand new blouse. Unfortunately, due to foreseen but unovercomeable circumstances, that piece of garment did not materialise. It did at some point resemble an effort at making a blouse, but that was about as far as it would go. If a blouse works like a skirt, I would be a lot more pleased with myself, but as sartorial principles and basic anatomical knowledge go, a blouse needs armholes. And armholes, my dears, are as tricky as balancing a pencil on the tip of your nose while having it tickled by a feather plucked from a rooster who knows why it doesn’t crow in the morning. Tricky business.

Instead of moaning over things I can’t (yet) do, let’s move on to something I do extremely well. Buying books. Is that a special skill? Nah. Is it something difficult? Well, it does get less and less easy with every try, especially when the month is approaching its third week, but on most occasions, it is a relatively simple task. I reckon I must have bought at least 30 books since the start of the year, which is probably more than what I bought for the whole of last year. What is slightly comforting is that while I must have read fewer than 10 books last year (magazines do not count. I want them to, but they have withdrawn from the competition, citing the presence of advertising and other evils, which include, but are not limited to, a monthly rehashing of content), this year I have mostly been keeping up with my purchases. Until last week, I guess.

So far, this has been a year of Murakami and David Sedaris. Very different styles, which worked out just fine because I was alternating between the both of them. I would read a Murakami novel, get all sad and depressed and weirded out, then switch to Sedaris who would, on more than one occasion, had me wishing I had spoken more kindly of people who laugh to themselves on train rides so that I would, on the convenient account of karma and whatnots, be exempted from their disdainful glances. I ran out of Sedaris before I could finish Murakami’s novels though, so there was a period of general moodiness. I also started reading ‘Watchmen’ but that, despite being an excellent read, wasn’t exactly uplifting as well.

Probably a common thing, but once I find an author I like, I tend to want to polish off everything that he or she has ever written. There was a J.D. Salinger phase (secondary school to first year of poly), even though he didn’t write a lot (Save J.D. Salinger’s Archives!). I loved ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, duh, and quite frankly, a good deal of my writing compositions then were very Holden-Caulfield wannabe. Phony, I guess. Oh well. I remembered loving ‘Franny and Zooey’ too and ‘Nine Stories’ was probably my first foray into short stories (my preference for short stories would eventually become an excuse for not reading longer works). For some reason though, I never got around to reading ‘Seymour’. I have it, but it is still wrapped in plastic with a Towers Record price tag. Odd.

(I also went through a Milan Kundera phase, though nothing of note has remained in my brain. It is very strange. I probably read half of what he has, but nothing really comes to mind now. I vaguely remember someone dancing in a mental asylum. It is scary how completely I forget some stuff.)

And then there was a Banana Yoshimoto phase. Oh! I found Lizard! It was a large paperback though. My other books are normal paperbacks. Sigh. Anyway, ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Moonlight Shadow’!, and ‘Goodbye Tsugumi’!! Her short stories! My eloquence is unparalleled.

Verbosity rules when you don’t have to verbalise words, and it makes mindless entries look impressively long (yes, this is a redundant mention of length) and thoughtful. And when you get bored, you can just end off with some random pictures:

(“Joge-e 上下絵, or ‘two-way pictures,’ are a type of woodblock print that can be viewed either rightside-up or upside-down.”)

(Joge-e images and writeup from here)

Saw Xavier Comas‘ Pasajero as part of the TransportAsian exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum this evening. Thought it was pretty good stuff, and I made a point to remember his name (and its spelling) so I could google when I get home. I really like his works, especially his series Jiutamai 地唄舞 (Jiutamai being a form of Japanese classical dance).

From Pasajero:

From Jiutamai:

(All images from artist’s site)

山本昌男の写真が大好き。一枚で、一枚で、静かに、この騒がしい世界を静めさせる。

Sometimes the photographs that touch you most are the ones that are so small and quiet you can hardly make out what they are.

Photographs are taken from here.
Masao Yamamoto talking about his work (video)

Am quite taken with Tomoko Kashiki’s paintings. Could be partly because of what I’ve been reading lately, but I’m rather drawn to the fragmentary neither-here-nor-there figures.

Flower

Inside a box

Shadow play

Gallery (Ota Fine Arts) writeup, and exhibition details on Tokyo Art Beat (ahhhh). Here’s a review (in Japanese only) with more images of the exhibition.

(Images taken from Ota Fine Arts and Kalonsnet)

Reading A Wild Sheep Chase has stirred up some serious longing to travel to Japan. Specifically Hokkaido. More specifically, some isolated town with less than 5000 people. Preferably fewer.

I miss train rides. A twelve-hour train ride might sound wretched, but I doubt there was any train ride more memorable than the one Joce and I took up to Sapporo nearly two years ago. There is nothing quite like boarding a train, modern and well-equipped, crowded with people perfectly in sync with the city pace in Tokyo, and switching to a local train, slower and older, in a town whose station will be the only thing you will see of it. An old couple whose wife (or was it the husband? Well, one or the other) sleeps intermittently, like yourself. You read a manga magazine, understanding only snatches but laughing at exaggerated expressions and simple jokes. Your friend sleeps next to you, both of you on seats that could change orientation when the train changes direction in the dead of the night. The old couple awakes, changes their seats, and falls asleep again. At each stop, you lose more of your fellow passengers, until finally, at 6am, you are in a city that is still cold despite it being late spring.

» Continue reading “a sheep, maybe wild, maybe lost”

After 1.5 years of slacking (I have not looked at a Japanese guide since my JLPT 3 exam in December 2007), I’ve finally returned to learning the Japanese language. It is a little depressing to learn that most of my kanji abilities (only a little to start with) have gone to hell. And the vocabulary. And let’s not even think about the grammar. Therefore, am starting from the JLPT 4 books again. JLPT 2 proficiency seems far far away.

今日から日本語の勉強がも一度始めます。
頑張ります。寿司が食べたい。日本に行きたい。酒が飲めない。
分からないことばかり。やっぱりばかになってしまった。

Kondoh Akino. Other than the song being horribly catchy, the animation is pretty damn neat as well. His site doesn’t have any of his animations, but his drawings and illustrations are great too.

Sometimes I wonder why I don’t visit some of the sites that I adore more. Like this Japanese comic journal/weblog. Wonderful, whimsical little comic strips that say so much in so little, that alternate between happy and carefree times and achingly sad and tender moments (sometimes imbued with a cruelty that is oh so Japanese i.e. being unkind and spiteful yet vulnerable at the same time – yeah, I call that cruelty). Oh well, am quite happy that I have a whole backlog of stuff to enjoy.

フェンス (Fence)

顔 (Face)
消失点 (Vanishing Point)
小さい星 (Small Star)

Images from artist’s site