This is what the inside of a floor-recessed kotatsu (horigotatsu) looks like. And yes, it feels amazing to have your legs under one.
Two people with a fated connection. A rendezvous in another world, part dreamscape, part prison, part question, part answer. But who are we to demarcate the lines of truer and less true realities? The world they think they know has only just begun to open its elevator doors.
Today’s horrific Engrish comes to you from the subways of Osaka: “Let’s go,delicious Yamagata.” What makes it awful is that it explicitly marks this as the “English version” of a phrase about going to Yamagata.
Monday is cooking class. This week, we make fried sardine fillets, rolled sushi, and pork-vegetable soup. The soup is the easiest part: we chop the vegetables and meat, then let them cook in broth for the rest of class. Set and forget. The hardest is the sardines. I’ve never even eaten a sardine before, much less pinched off the head, made a slit down the belly, scooped out the guts, then split the body along the spine and pulled out the bones. OK: it’s disgusting. I wonder how humankind ever thought to make food out of stuff like fish or pigs. You have to go through a lot of gore to get meat from animal to edible.
But the results are as beautiful as they are delicious, most of all the sushi.
- Darcy: How did I even fall asleep last night?
- Me: You laid on your side and said, "I'm going to lie on my side while I think about the next paragraph," and I knew that was Darcish for "I'm gonna fall asleep now."
- Darcy: And then what happened?
- Me: You fell asleep.
- Darcy: And then what happened?
- Me: Nothing. For like ten hours.
- (Pertinent note: Darcy is an insomniac. This is an event.)
You have to be saved from your troubles over and over again. I would get a girlfriend who looked like she might be able to rescue me, and then need to be saved from the girlfriend, who actually wasn’t so great. And even if it was me who pulled myself from the burning pyre, I had to give all the credit away to a savior in order to get my emotional needs fulfilled.
11:00 am. Had a great adult lesson. To the new textbook they said, “Great, let’s buy it” right away, which was a relief after yesterday’s class whined and whined about how it looked maybe kinda challenging (though they admitted it was worlds easier than the book their last teacher made them use). All my adult students have this “small print = difficult textbook” mindset. They want some kind of “How To Improve Your English Without Trying Very Hard” instruction book. Guys, I’ll just chat with you if that’s what you’re after, but don’t complain that you’re not getting better.
12:30 pm. Subway, ebi-avocado* (the only one I ever order). Darcy: “You have avocado on your lip and on your glasses. It’s cute.”
* “Ebi” is Japanese for shrimp. “Avocado” is Japanese for… avocado.
12:45 pm. Note for consideration: if I am getting into the habit of wearing makeup, I’d better learn to stop rubbing my eyes so much.
3:45 pm. Out in the cold freezing my ass off in the rain because the head teacher is late again. Also, unrelated: When my book is published, people are gonna wanna know what kinda fucked up childhood I had.
6:45 pm. The mother of my private student today independently volunteered to move my lesson up by a few minutes to better accommodate the bus schedule. She did this without any prompting or hint from me that the time was a little bit inconvenient. I saw that she’d taken a picture of the stop’s schedule on her phone - she has a car, so she would have no reason to go there unless she was concerned about it for my sake. She also offered to stop serving me cookies with my coffee (and seemed quite pleased when I said I would love some cookies). And I realized it was because I casually mentioned a month ago that I was trying to lose some weight. And she also remembered to give me the birthday card that I accidentally left at her house before winter break. I’m so touched by her thoughtfulness. I get a really warm family atmosphere from her home, too. When I am a parent, I want to be like her.
7:00 pm. Come to think of it, I have been at the top of my game as a teacher this week. Note to self: keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.
The next morning: Darcy is pestering me to say more about saviors and rescue. There’s no denying that people do need other people, and that sometimes people come through for you in ways you’d never expect. But as I’m writing my book, I’m thinking every day about how rescue is an unsatisfying end for my characters. My main-est character practically begins the novel with an idealized savior fantasy. Having that person then rescue him would be going, well, nowhere. And the more I think about something in my book, the more it starts showing up in my non-book thoughts. Getting caught up in a cycle of disaster-rescue-disaster is just another distraction that keeps us from really examining ourselves, from the more satisfying, meaningful, and exciting questions in life.
We do “real”? We do “dream”? Oh yes. I remember when I did real. You kids inject it these days, but back in the day, we had to snort it out of paper bags. That was before real was illegal of course. And don’t even get me started on dream…More in my new series, “Idiotic Signs People Like on Pinterest.”
(Hint: everyone does those things)
- Me: "Kaiyuukan" means aquarium. You know, like Osaka Kaiyuukan.
- Darcy: No, that's just the name of the place. "Kaiyuukan" means "fun in the sea."
- Me: ...Oh.
Japan is SO parfait-obsessed that this restaurant even offers a parfait-style salad. To, you know, make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you’re not eating an actual parfait*.
*The food was delicious (ESPECIALLY the spinach chicken fritters) and I am not at all sad for lack of ice cream.
So my excuse for spending upwards of ¥50,000 on an iPhone is “I can tumblr better now.” Validity of this statement remains untested.
