Novel Eye

So, speaking of Japan... I read the very short novel "In the Miso Soup" or イン ザ・ミソスープIn za Misosūpu (ha ha!) by Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami , not to be confused with Haruki Murakami (who writes equally strange but generally much longer novels). Murakami R has always focussed on the seedier side of Japan, one which the Japanese do not speak of and try not to acknowledge. This one was about a young guide who makes a living guiding gaijin through Tokyo's sex clubs--until he meets an American who may or may not be a serial killer. The Japan painted here is unrelentingly shallow, full of desperately lonely people who cannot make any kind of connection. Le plus c'est différent , le plus c'est la meme choses . ADDITION: Per below--at one point konbon wa was written kombon wa . I don't know whether this was an attempt to capture the nasal hum that is the Japanese final n, or merely a typo, but it seems to show that translating sound from one langua...

Matt and Bethany both wrote to tell me that their understanding--that I was trying to say WTF in Japanese--was not being fulfilled on my CafePress shirt. SOOOO --I have decided I will offer both. I think I will add the romanji for people who have only heard it--say in anime rather than read it in manga (or from the lips of their favorite J-Rock stars). Yup, I'll rush right over and do that... at some point.

...except that I finally confirmed that I had the correct spelling and usage from a Japanese friend, I opened a CafePress shop . I have done absolutely nothing to promote it yet. My husband hopes to add some Dr. Whovian related items and I have a few more ideas. Two thoughts on that--one, should I report the people who are blatantly stealing copyrighted work and passing it off as their own, or leave it alone? And two, and this will only be funny to half of my tiny readership. There's a shirt that I covet there that says, "I wanted to learn Alchemy, but it costs and arm and a leg." Bwa -ha-ha, ROFL, snort. Oh, and even more one more thing--should I add "Nan dai yo, ne ?" to the back, just to be more clear?

When I returned I read Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe . I had started a few chapters before I left, but as the book is an 816 page hardback I decided I didn't need to take it on the plane. It's also my husband's book and I don't annotate his books, only ones that are specifically mine. I can't quite decide if Brave Story is a children's/young adult book or an adult book. Being a Japanese novel (no, I did not read it in Japanese) it had more adult themes than you might find in a young adult novel in the US or Britain, but at the same time, they weren't SO adult that they would be out of the realm of possibility that they were for young adults. Sort of Judy Blume meets Harry Potter. Perhaps it was the collision of realistic themes with a fantasy story. The first third of the book is a pretty straightforward description of being an 11 year old (what is it with 11-- Aang in Avatar is 11, Harry Potter was 11 when it began) in Japan with a fairly strict, t...

B is on her way to Tokyo for three weeks, as I type. She has $100 of my money to buy me stuff.

At the end of Paprika my husband whispered, "Well, that's Tokyo destroyed again." It is certainly a common occurrence in anime (and in Japanese film if one considers Godzilla and others). Do we consider these part of the "special" status that Japan holds as the only country to be attacked with a nuclear bomb? A few years ago there was an exhibit on whether that peculiar distinction has led to what is popular culture in Japan, from Godzilla to Gundam (giant robots) to Hello Kitty. There are actually Hello Kitty vibrators and feminine products for sale (don't ask me how I know)--not just cute and cuddly. The giant crater of Paprika, the blinding flash of Otomo's Akira , many others I can't recall at the moment--is this an attempt to deal with the aftermath? Too, is Satoshi Kon's obsession with what is repressed an effort to acknowledge what is publicly avoided by the Japanese--namely their own part in the atrocities of WWII? http://www.npr.org...