Midaregami

Before I get into the textbook reading, I’m going to comment on the “We don’t say that” statement from a girl in class.

It was on Friday, Sep. 16, and we were discussion the phonological changes that occur in rapid or informal speech. You put forth the observation that mora from the ラ行 often change to the mora nasal in rapid speech, and the class was considering the applicability of this rule—was it a predictable phenomenon, or was it like “gonna” and “wanna” in that it was lexically-determined and unpredictable?

AVAST YE!

Arr.

This song goes out to Bianca. It’s from the Brazilian group Querosene Jacaré and basically just rocks. Biank, if you want the rest of the album, just let me know.

I think the line at the beginning means something like, “Hey, waiter, get me a tequila—I got some business to take care of!” Yes, business… the business of rock, Brasil-style. Enjoy.

• Querosene Jacaré, Boca De Oro

I haven’t written about it much, but shortly after we arrived in Hawai’i, Jake started showing us Lost.

Now, I’m not much of a TV person. I don’t consider this a mark of any particular moral or cultural superiority, but the fact is I don’t watch a lot of television. Particulary, network primetime offerings fail to interest me. Again, I’m not being a snob, I’m just easily bored.

But Lost… Lost is as spectacular as it is enigmatic. It’s well-written, well-shot, and generally compelling. I don’t know how else to put it. We blazed through all 24 Season 1 episodes in roughly a week and a half.

The show is shot on the north shore of O’ahu, so the cast members spend a pretty good amount of time in Honolulu. Yesterday the producers of the show put on a shindig to raise money for Red Cross; stop by the Hilton, meet the cast, get autographs, etc. So J and I traipsed over there (more accurately, she bussed and I pedaled—I’ve definitely lost whatever cycling edge I’d gained over the course of a couple of rideless weeks) to see what was going on.

The line was spectacular, but we were relatively close to the front. We both donated some and received autographed cast photos for our trouble—nearly all of the main cast was there, although regrettably we missed the actors for Locke and Kate, and our vain hope that Mira Furlan would be there proved vain indeed. Still, it’s always fun meeting famous people, and being mid-shoot as they were, everybody looked exactly like they do on the show.

Best moment: I asked Matthew Fox (“Jack”) what the kanji tattoos on his shoulder meant; he didn’t hear me, but then Jorge Garcia (“Hurley”) looked over, grinned, and said “Party of Five.” Zing!

Here are the two pictures Julia managed to take.

So there is freaking out about graduate school. And, given that basic fact about my life, we’ll just assume it’s a subtext from here on out and I’m not going to talk about it much more.

I think it’s much more interesting to discuss what I am enjoying, which at this point is Yosano Akiko. She’s the first writer we’re doing in 611B, and I think I am in love. I mean, you know, my domain is Midaregami, so this is hardly a surprise. But I love her work. Love it.

Somebody needs to novelize/illustrate/animate her romance/life/poetry, because done right, it could be transcendent.

I nominate Ayumi Kasai to do the manga.

In these troubled times, staving off despair with a flickering, ever-fainter beacon of hope can be difficult. Just remember that somewhere, out there, a Japanese man is building miniature robot gladiators out of cardboard packaging.

I have a new acquaintance, a colleague in the department who plays games. Last Monday I enjoyed a brisk round of Carcasonne, a map-making and building game vaguely reminiscent of that dork classic, Settlers of Catan.

Last night, this same learned colleague brought over Chrononauts, a card game of paradoxes and shifting timelines. In the course of one game in which the outcome of World War II was hotly contested, Hitler was assassinated, then brought back to life, then re-assassinated before I accidently destroyed the universe.

I always consider an evening well-seized if I manage to annihilate the space-time continuum.

This one got a laugh in the grad lounge.

I’m going to quote verbatim from an addendum to the course syllabus of Classical Japanese here at the University of Hawai’i, and I want to stress that I am not indulging in typographical embellishment with the boldface—no indeed, that was on the handout as well.

…prior experience, or even a high level of proficiency in modern Japanese, is not the primary prerequisite for success in this course. The most important criterion is a burning desire to read classical Japanese literary texts in an authoritative, accurate fashion, no matter what the cost in hard work in frustration. If this is not one of your most deeply held ambitions in life, JPN 461 is not for you.

I found it as intimidating as my upperclassmen found it hilarious. Suffice to say that the class was somewhat thinned down after that first day.