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.

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.

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

Words Hung in the Air

The words hung in the air like a three-count indictment.

This is a line from the prologue of Black Dahlia.
James Ellroy describes the deadly silence like a Japanese sword sheathes itself in a perfect slow motion.

Words used to echo in my head. These days words hover in the air. A line or a single word,
a sentence or a paragraph, they float above me and shine in prismatic colours, casting a beautiful reflection over my daily life.

I mumble to myself;

The words hung in the air like a three-count indictment.
The words hung in the air like a three-count indictment....

Preserving

From spring to summer in 2009, I made compote or jam every week. I started making my own for two reasons; store-bought jam is too sweet for my taste and buying from shops means more empty jars to recycle. Although 90% of my production was consumed by my husband, I still enjoyed the process of turning fresh fruit into something a bit more lasting.
My new mutant name was announced when I started talking about making fruit leather, homemade oil sardines and smoked bacon.
"If you were a Sesame Street character, " said my husband, "you would be called Preserve."

Cookie Monster: Ohhh! Cookies!!! Yum yum yum yum...
Preserve: Wait, you blue fluffy thing, let me preserve them first.

Elmo: Lalala...lalala...What are you doing, Preserve?
Preserve: I'm preserving your goldfish. You'll be able to be with him as long as you live.
Elmo: ....(fainted)

Big Bird: Have you seen Snuffy?
Preserve: He's over there. I've preserved him.
Big Bird: Are you saying you've stuffed my best friend!?
Preserve: No, I mummified him.

The Count: One bat, hahahahaha! Two bats, hahahahaha!
Preserve: So they say you are a vampire.
The Count: Me? No, I am the Count.
Preserve: And you are a vampire.
The Count: Um....I suppose I am.
Preserve: So you're dead.
The Count: Well...
Preserve: You don't need to be preserved then.

I think Preserve belongs to the Simpsons rather than Sesame Street.
This reminds me of The Landlady, a short story by Roald Dahl.
I can't and will never be able to understand what is so good about stuffed animals. I'm not a big fan of preserved flowers either. Unlike preserved food, they seem pointless to me.
The obvious difference; preserved animals or flowers are there just to get dusty.
But when it comes to food, time improves its quality; pickled, marinated or cured.

Venus

She is not slim but she's not fat either.
She doesn't seem to be very young.
In fact, she looks like a woman in her 30's with some familiar plumpness.
She has round arms and soft fat tissue around her abdomen.

This is a statue of Venus.
This was the idea of "beauty" in ancient Greece, and I love that.
I stood in front of her and stared at her.
She has sexy knees but she looked quite ordinary.
And yet, she was exquisite.

Parents' Evening

I was sitting in the chair in the school dining room one evening, next to a woman who was wearing a sleeveless shirt and a pair of Birkenstock-like sandals.
"It's horrible. But there's no better way to do it. At least this time the room is smaller so it's not too noisy."
I nodded to her, pressing a handkerchief gently on my forehead . I was sweating.
"You know if you call the teachers beforehand, sometimes they can tell you when they are free. I have three children and there's only one left in here, so I learned my tactics."
she continued and I started asking her questions that I already knew the answers of because I didn't know what else to talk about.
Soon, it was her turn and I was free from a small talk with a stranger.

Everything is so different from Japan in the UK, but the school system here is almost the biggest culture shock.
Parents' Evening for instance.
You have to go to the school during certain time on a certain day and queue up for each teacher's unit for a brief updates. Things they tell you is nothing out-of-blue or new, they would just repeat the same thing they had written in the report cards.
Last year I spoke with only two teachers;PE and art. Most of other queues were ridiculously long, plus my husband and I arrived there too late. And some teachers, to my surprise, weren't even there.
This year I went to my son's school early by myself and got to speak with 7 teachers. I even spoke with some learning support staff.
All of them said the same thing.
Some of it hurt ever so slightly.

Oh, parenting,
this freaking ride in a twirling coffee cup.

Don't Die, Don't Die

In November 2007, I learned about Norman Mailer's death in a newspaper article. He was 84.
I had never read his book but the small article somehow drew my attention. Just then, I received a text from my husband saying "Norman Mailer died." He was looking for empathy and he got mine.
I felt as though some part of me was plucked off without warning when I learned that Yoko Mori had passed away. She was only 52.

Among the few albums which I carefully chose to bring to the UK with me were three Yo-Yo Ma albums. One of them is Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites. The whole album is more than two hours but I hardly notice the time. For me, it's a kind of music that makes me stop doing whatever I am doing and just listen. Yo-Yo Ma gives me the illusion of more than a single musical instrument.
It's absolutely mesmerizing.

In the Guardian Weekend issued on 2 May, the US comedienne Sarah Silverman answers 20 or so short random questions in the interview. For the question "Cat or dog?", she says: Dog. His name is Duck and he's 15. All I can think when I'm curled in bed with him is ,"Don't die, don't die."

The other day, I found myself reading the liner notes of the album to check Yo-Yo Ma's date of birth. He was born in October 1955.

"Still got time."

I was actually saying that aloud.

I wasn't curled in bed with the world famous 53-year-old cellist but I guess I was having a Silverman moment.

Don't die Yo-Yo, don't die.

Nostalgia

It's spring.
Like all flower loving folk around the country, I've been gardening.

We live in a rented terraced house and there's only a tiny garden in the teeny-weeny backyard, so it's not such hard work.
I wasn't always a gardener. My only experiences of growing plants are looking after morning glories as an assignment during summer vacation in elementary, or trying to grow some dandelions and Chinese milk vetch in my parents's place about ten years ago (which I succeeded in, but my grandmother weeded them being unaware of my intentions).
I'm still not a devoted gardener; I am rather a Sunday gardener, but I really enjoy it.

The best part of it is sticking my fingers in soil, getting my nails dirty and not caring about it at all. The smell of the soil takes me right back for years.
It reminds me of the bed of Chinese milk vetch I used to lay myself on when I was a little girl.
The butterflies above my face in the blue sky.
Listening to the buzzing sound of the honey bees as I was comfortably falling asleep.
I could almost smell the sun of those days when I pull out the weeds around my hydrangea that survived the long winter.

Someday, when I have my own house and land, I want to grow all these wild flowers I like.
Daisies, buttercups, dandelions, clovers and Chinese milk vetches.
And I want to lie down there and take a nap.

The Gender of the Tooth Fairy

I was reading my older posts the other day and realized something;
I always refer to the tooth fairy as "he".

Why did I think it's "he" in the first place?

I know why.

I learned about tooth fairies from Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live.

In that show, Eddie Murphy the Tooth Fairy complains that these days kids put Tic Tacs under their pillows to get coins, so when Eddie takes the fake teeth to the god he gets offended because he thinks Eddie is implying the god has bad breath.

Anyway, that's why the tooth fairy has always been male in my mind...

Chuffed

Sometimes when I'm doing the dishes, or when I'm putting away the laundry or something, it hits me.
Thank god.
I remember the faces of this guy and that guy, or that guy I almost constructed a family with.
I would think,
Thank god I didn't marry those guys and did marry with the guy I am with now.
Thank god.
And thank god I went back to Tsuruya to buy that lovely silk agnès b. bag that day.

It's Still Sad

I read online that someone was arrested for trying to bury his wife's corpse in Japan.
Did he kill her? No. He couldn't afford a funeral so he had to face the death of his partner this way.
And it sounds like he's not the only one who was in such a desperate situation.
There were short articles of other people who just left the dead on their futons or abandoned the bodies somewhere. They too didn't have the money to have it taken care of by undertakers.

How sad.
How sad is that that you can't even have a ceremony to see your loved ones off?

I remember watching a documentary about "working poors" in Japan.
A single mum was saying in the interview that once her son needed a new notebook for his Japanese class in his elementary, but she just didn't have a hundred yen to buy him one.
Then the son said, "It's okay Mum, don't worry." and started erasing everything he had written in his old notebook so that he could re-use it.

It breaks my heart to hear these stories.
Yeah, it's not like the end of the world. Things in Japan are nowhere near as horrifying, hopeless or harrowing as, say, D.R.Congo. I know.
But how do you weigh sadness?
It's still sad.

Not So Simple

It's been almost a year since I moved to this side of the planet.
For about a couple of months after arrival, I constantly received the same question from various people asking me if I was settling in okay.
And each time I replied with different answers according to the state I was in.

"Oh, you know, England is nice."
Translation: I am not sure if I like it or not. I mean, it's okay but it's not great.

"Yeah, yeah, I am glad I came here."
A polite lie to my father-in-law.

"England sucks."
Letting it out to my closest friends.

"I am not sure yet."
When I was talking with non-British people.

Whatever I was saying, it wasn't accurate.
The thing is, it's not that simple.

Money is one issue.
We would have enjoyed it more if we had more money.
We are broke.
We are surviving but have no extra money to afford any excursions.
Thank god we have no debt but it is so difficult to save money since only one of us is the bread winner.
We spent all of our little saving to start our new life.
Reality bites. And it itches for a long time.


And I am, simply, a kind of person who takes time to adjust to a new life.
I can't say anything about it until I am ready to do so.

Hey, maybe that's what I should have said.

Anyway, I'm surviving.
Although it's still lacking a lot of things, life does feel a bit easier these days.

Puberty

About 8months ago my son started acting strange.
A few weeks later, I learned that his pubes had started growing.
No, I didn't peep.
That was the only reason I could think of so I joked about it and he said yes.

A couple of months ago, he brought me a tooth and asked me if he should have put it under the pillow.
Hey wait a minute, you still had a milk tooth?
How can a kiddy have a milk tooth and pubes at the same time?
I exclaimed and my husband covered his ears trying not to hear it.

The next day he found a pound coin under his pillow and showed it off to us.

Since then he had two more milk teeth came out.
Again, how can anyone...?
My husband covered his ears and sung a random song.

The third one came out just the other day. My son placed it under his pillow but this time he didn't even find a penny.
He seemed disappointed.
"Sounds like the tooth fairy didn't come to collect the tooth last night."
I turned to my husband.
"He didn't?"
He said, and mouthed, "Oops."

That night, we were doing the dishes after dinner.
"So...you did put your tooth on the right-hand corner of the pillow, right?"
I asked my son.
"No. In the middle."
My son looked startled.
"Oh that is why the tooth fairy couldn't do his job. There's a proper way to put a milk tooth. Wrong place. Oh no wonder. Am I right? You should put your milk tooth under the right-hand corner of the pillow, right?"
"Yes, that's right. And he will be back within the next three working days."
My husband assured the kid without hesitation.

Sure enough, the poor kid found a shiny golden coin later.

But I wonder...
How could a 12-year-old who doesn't believe in Santa Clause anymore buy the tooth fairy story when he was introduced to it a few months ago?
I'm not sure if I should let him, but I guess it doesn't matter anymore.
His milk teeth are all gone now.