Year 2015

Happy New Year, You.
May you stay healthy or become healthier if you currently aren't, see lots of heart-throbbing sunsets and drink lots of exquisite whiskey.

You are a bird, a fish, dead leaves on the dirty ground, a star, dirt and a red berry. And you are my dear friend. I hope you know that.

It's Very Good

Sawnja, the name I recently gave myself as the author of this blog (hakkaku→mumblebee→sawnja. It's the third one), was taken from an expression of my hometown dialect. It's transcribed そうにゃよか with hiragana characters, pronounced saw-nya-yoka, and it means "very good" or "very nice" in Kumamoto, a prefecture located on the island of Kyushu. Among all these words in our dialect,  そうにゃよか is mainly used by older people, and my grandmother used to say this phrase often.
"Oh that jumper you are wearing is saw-nya-yoka."
"That is a saw-nya-yoka bag!"
Gran Midori's compliments used to make me feel good and a little embarrassed at the same time.
The phrase makes me nostalgic. I  associate it with my grandmother. Thoughts of my grandmother lead to the memories of my chidhood; when Gran Midori was still active and driving the big blue lorry, and when Gran Kiku and Granddad Shigeyuki were still alive. My the other granddad died in WW2 when my mother was only a little girl.

I've lived my life with a policy of no regretting, no looking back, but these days I can't help myself but missing what's gone.
Sometimes I seriously wish I could time-travel to when I was 11, even just for a day, so that I could spend all day listening to my grandparents. There are so many things I want to ask them about and thank them for. And I want to do that being very much aware that it, the time I spend with them, is never going to come back.

It's Sunday Morning

"It's Sunday morning, and Sawnja is worshipping her favourite church."

Husband says as he comes downstairs, finding his wife in her usual Sunday spot in the living room.
I'm holding an empty mug and a plate of toasted rye roll with butter and honey, watching the second half of Jamie Oliver's 30-minute show on More 4.
This is only the first episode, there will be 4 more, I brief him. Of course, he replies. Husband asks if I'd like more tea or coffee.
"Coffee sounds good."
He bends his body, rests his lips on my hair as gently as a pair of feathers and takes the mug from my hand.

Sitting in an armchair with some hot drink and watching gorgeous food being made one after another by Jamie are some of my favourite ways to spend a lazy Sunday.

Passive Aggressive A.I.

This morning, I got hooked on this speech command function of my mobile. You see, when your hormomes are not contributing to your mental health, you have to try anything to cheer yourself up.

"Text Husband", I put my lips near the phone and speak.
"Texting Husband. Say your message", responds the phone. The robo-voice sounds like a woman in her mid-40's to mid 50's.
"Good morning, how are you?" I say the most common greeting expression suitable for 7-ish am.
"Good morning how are you. You can say send or try again."
"Send."
The phone sends the message and closes the function automatically.

I press the button to summon the function again and say,
"I'm testing my speech command function."
My phone understands it perfectly and sends it swiftly to my husband. Oh this is fun!
I say another sentence. This time she gets it wrong. I try again. She still doesn't get it right.
"But she often misunderstands me." I say, and this time she shows the exact words.
"Send." I command and she sends it.

Oh my god, I thought, this is like a teeny baby step to Tony Stark's artificially intelligent computer.
"Oh my god I have my own Jarvis!" Although she doesn't read between the lines and put an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, my voice can't hide the excitement. I was almost reaching the high point of my day.
"Oh my god I have my own job this. You can say send or try again", she goes.
"Oh my god I have my own Jarvis", I correct her.
"Oh my god I have my own joe this. You can say send or try again."
"J.A.R.V.I.S"
"Sorry, I didn't catch that."
"Jaaaaarrrrviiiiisssss."
"Gile's. You can say send or try again."
Okay, she has a long way to go before reaching Jarvis.
"You are so stupid." I sigh.
Then, Ms Speech Command Smarty Pants shuts herself down.

A few moments later, I manually type a message describing what just happened and send it to my husband.
"Passive aggressive behaviour from your phone." He replies.
"Yeah, big attitude coming from a robot." I text.
"How's that for artificial intelligence?"

Comfort Reading

They are on my bedside table recently.

Clockwise from top left:

1. A biography of Richard Yates. I've been in love with this American writer since I read Revolutionary Road. It's a pretty thick book and I read it little by little, because I don't want to finish reading it.
2. An autobiographical novel by the aforementioned author. actually, a lot of his stories are autobiographical.
3. A copy of Banana Yoshimoto's novel, Kitchen. I read this novel more than 20 years ago and for some reason had a craving to read it again. I couldn't bother to order a Japanese copy so bought an English translation instead (10p on Amazon.) Still an enjoyable read.
4. A Japanese magazine ku:nel, November 2003 issue. I have always, always loved magazines.  This one survived a few clutter clearing and traveled to England with me. I would go back to read it time to time and still there is always something new for me.
5. A book about kitchens. Not just kitchens but kitchens of good cooks. It's not a kind of kitchen you would see in ELLE DECO or a kind that Nigella carries out her performance at in her denim jacket (who wears a denim jacket while cooking!?), but practical, workable, achievable everyday kitchens. A kitchen tells a lot about that person and I enjoy looking at good kitchens.

When I want an easy read, I would go for 3. When I feel like having my heart broken, I would reach for 1.

Post posting(?) on 13th May 2013
I changed my opinion about number 3. It WAS enjoyable at first, but then it became a painful read. It reminded me why I stopped reading her novels or short stories in the first place.
Banana Yoshimoto can capture luminous moments in life. Her unique point of view is refreshing. However, she goes on and on about a character's feeling or somthing for two pages and I'm like "How much more do you have to explain why the girl is sad?"
Ms Yoshimoto has the tendency to do that; explaining everything. And it's so dull. It almost feels like she doesn't trust the readers so she underlines important bits by a marker pen to indicate where we should be looking at, or she is a control freak who wants to dictate the reader to feel exactly the way she wants them to. I think a good writing doesn't explain. It would simply show us, leave it to us and let us figure out.
So unfortunately, this book went straight to a nearby Oxfam.

The record player in Moonrise Kingdom

Vintage Barrington portable record player that Suzy Bishop "borrowed" from her little brother.

Just the Way You Are

A kid who has just turned 20 complains that she's "Too old!"
I scoff at such nonsense. You have no idea what you are talking about.  No, the kid really doesn't.

For the past 10 so years, I had always thought that if you were over 35, you would be in the category of middle age. I recently discovered that it's not always the case.
According to Wikipedia, definition of middle age is "around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings." and the categorization varies from 40-60 to 35-44. In Japan, 中年, reads chuu-nen and means middle age in Japanese, seems to be considered someone in their 40's and 50's in general.

I am feeling somewhat cheated. I could have enjoyed 5 more years of not feeling middle-aged! Silly as it sounds, all these years after 35, I told myself I was middle-aged and refrained from saying I was young but instead admitted I was chuu-nen. For what? To appear modest and wise, I guess. There definitely was a social pressure to "act your age" in the world I used to belong and if you didn't fit into the stereotypes, you would either be labeled as "childish" or with approval and admiration, "don't look like one".

I consider childishness is unpleasant quality. Three things I deplore in others are selfishness, arrogance and childishness. But what is this fuss about not looking like one's age? Demi Moore tweets with her naked self-portrait and people praise her less than 10% fat lean body. It's wonderful to be that fit, I admit. My problem is these over-used phrases like "Can't believe she is 48!" which Japanese media love to use. It's a crime for someone who gets paid for what they write to use such unimaginative headlines. I can easily name 5 people around me whom you wouldn't believe in their 40's and they are not Hollywood stars. They never had plastic surgery or use Botox regularly. It's 21st century. People's lives vary and so do their appearances. People don't look their age anymore.

I look around and see a woman who is very slim, wears kids' clothing without looking odd or childish. She knows her style and it suits her. She has a fair amount of freckles on her face. She must love outdoors and must have spent a lot of time being in the sun. Her beautiful freckles are the kisses of the sun. She is 46.
When I look at Meg White in the documentary video of the White Stripes, what I see is a laconic, camera shy woman with a pair of perfect doll-like legs who takes a nap on a sofa with a lit cigarette between her fingers. When she sits behind her candy cane drum set, approximately half a pound of fat tissue sits around her gorgeous tummy. She looks as perfect as Venus. I don't know her age and I don't care.

What I want to say here is that it doesn't matter how old we look. Let's not DOB or stereotypes dictate us. It's not important if we look young or old for our age. What matters is that we look the best we can and being able to feel comfortable with ourselves. Imperfectness is nature. We are perfect just the way we are.

Yeah I Saw the Boy Who Could Fly But..

..a flying fuel dispenser?
Surrealistic TV adverts are not rare but few are therapeutic.
Well, I find this therapeutic. It's kind of like Boris Vian meets Erik Satie.

Steam Punk

Borgen

Forbrydelsen, aka The Killing was sort of disappointing. I loved being able to see the city of Copenhagen and I thought acting was great, but the whole "Who's done it?" business was too tedious for me and couldn't care enough to keep watching it. Then I did watch every episode of the Killing Season 2, but I still thought it was lacking magnetic-something, sort of underdeveloped. It wasn't as gripping as Prime Suspect(not the US remake, the original) or as sinister as Criminal Justice.

This January the new Danish TV series Borgen has started on BBC4. I'm enjoying it so far. They included the Greenland issue in the episode 4, which I thought was a yay; one can't deny or avoid the history if one wants to talk about politics. So I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the series and will be glued to TV on Saturday nights for the next 3 weeks.

New Year's Resolution 2012

1. Wade through the piles of books in my bookshelf and make some progress.
2. No more impulse book shopping until I've done 1. (except No.3)
3. Find and read all of Richard Yates' novels and short stories that I haven't read.
4. Stop being sorry to anyone or anything. Oh yeah.
5. Stop feeling sorry for myself.
6. More adventure.
7. Less wine.
8. Less ale.
9. More gin.
10. More vermouth.
11. More 9+10=Gibson
12. Definitely more Bowie.

Little Glass Jar

When I was about 9 or 10, a friend of mine and I went to the auto-repair shop that my another friend's dad owned. A car with a dented door and a broken windshield was there to be fixed and we kids were there just to collect the broken glass scattered around the vehicle. Those blueish 1cm-square pieces of windshield glass looked beautiful to my eyes. I think I had a thing for glass as a kid.

This petite green jar, about 7cm tall, makes me feel a little nostalgic.

It must be for storing food.
Spice? Dried herb? Sugar cubes?
I'm thinking powdered yuzu or shichimi.

On the bottom it says "Czechoslovak".

Hit the Road

My biggest childhood ambition was to run away from home.
That might give you a wrong idea. No, my parents didn't beat me or ill-treated me. I just wanted to go somewhere, some place else where nobody knew me. You might think I was a born wayfarer, but considering how much I need and love nesting now, I don't think I was.

Having said that, I still get this impulse to go somewhere sometimes. Pack my bag, get on a train and go to a place where people speak a language I don't have a clue of. I like it to be a seaside town. (Not a village, I don't do villages.) I would get a job at a fish monger as a "scale remover", and work from 7am to 3pm. After work I would go back to my little room upstairs of a dry cleaner and fix myself a smoked mackerel baguette sandwich. (Cut the baguette about 15cm long, halve and toast them. Spread generous amount of butter and some English mustard on the bread. Place a piece of smoked mackerel, some sliced tomatoes and onions, sprinkle some sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and squeeze a quarter of lemon over the filling. Put the other half of the baguette on it. Bon appétit.) At night, I just read a book and talk to no one. Next day would be the repetition of this perfect routine...
These days my fantasy seems to have moved up to a whole new level. I am drawn to the idea of doing Walden myself. Am I really up for it? Nahh. But maybe someday...

No one tells me to hit the road and not to come back, but someday, I might hit the road for real.

Voice

It took about a year for her
to get her voice back
She spent countless nights lying in bed
staring into darkness

If the 2009 version of her saw 2010 version of her
this is what she would have said
It's not the end of the world
Don't be a drama queen

Perhaps the old her just could not have seen
what it would be like
to feel completely empty
I am certain
she thought she knew
but she didn't

It was a frosty day
All spotless, all serene
Emerging from its whiteness
were bright red berries and deep green leaves
So vivid, so exquisite
Everything was motionless
she was motionless
The snow, the berries, the green leaves
They would melt and die away
They would be broken down by micro-organisms
Just like everything else in the world
Just like her
She is the snow, berries and leaves

It's not the end of the world, really

She got her voice back

I got my voice back

Clip Top Bag

Why do clip tops, or twist clasp, whatever you call it, attract me? I always wondered about that. And I think I know why. It's feminine.
Clip tops are strictly for chicks.

Seductive Paperback

How could a bookworm like me resist this?
I'm a sucker for many things, but I'm a whore for old Penguin paperbacks.
It was beaming at me in the literature section in the bookshelf of an Oxfam. If it weren't for the cover, I probably wouldn't have thought about reading a copy of D.H. Lawrence book. And I owe Mr Lawrence an apology for my ignorance.
Printed in 1965, a copy of a writer who was way ahead of his time

My First Ercol

Ercol has been my burning vintage desire since I read Margaret Howell's book. It's one of these things that makes me want to obtain just because of its make.
I love Ercol furniture's simplicity, distinctiveness and beauty.

Two years ago, I found this exquisite piece of furniture at a charity shop. It was love at first site.
1950's vintage square butterfly table, in a too-good-to-be-true condition; I could see the signs of aging, but what was obvious was that it had been loved and well taken care of.
I knew my place didn't have space for an extra table but I just had to make this mine.
I did, and it makes me chuffed everyday.

A Trash is a Trash

I was on a bus home a few weeks ago. The whole England (that's what they were saying) was having a "beautiful" Indian summer. "Beautiful" as long as you are not on the city bus which only has tiny pull-open windows on the entire floor to let the fresh air come in; it was a hell of a sauna. What was worse was that the bus was absolutely packed.
On the first row chatting loudly were two kids, about 18 or 19, each one occupying a two-seater seat. It sounded like one of them was talking about a computer war game. So this woman is a slut and she 's like, sleeps with anybody, everywhere she goes, the bold one goes, Uh-huh, the other one nods. It's a battle zone and she is wearing a bikini...

When a man sleeps with anybody, he is a stallion.
When a woman sleeps with every one, she is called a slut.
It's sexist. Gender discrimination. If a word like slut is being used that way, James Bond is a slut.

There are a number of words people use without thinking that are, in my opinion, politically incorrect.
Take "white trash" for example. Why do they need to add "white"? Is the term based upon the idea that white people are not often trash that it has to be defined that way?
A trash is a trash. Full stop.

Everyone Looked Strange

This song used to be my theme song when I first moved to the UK.

The Doors is great.

A Great Tune

The original by a rock n' pop genius,

and a cover by a legendary rock charisma.