Basic Black

In the last 24 hours, lots of things fell to pieces. Yesterday, reaching to put a box on a high shelf at in a store room at school, I aggravated a pulled a muscle in my shoulder. A bath and rest will fix it. Meanwhile, I'm out of the dojo for a few days.

On my way out of the front hall of the school, I pulled too hard on the tab of my boot and ripped through the zipper. The school nurse patched me up with a boot lace and a few safety pins. And then the zipper of my cheap shoulder bag let go. The contents stay inside, fortunately.

Usually I come apart on the phone in Japanese. Some Japanese do not notice my accent, or my lack of full fluency, and do not slow down for me. I tend to fumble when confronted with someone motormouthing me inj Japanes. Today, the downstairs office phoned me in the administration room to say there was a visitor, and I went down to receive him as everyone else was busy. The officer who had received said visitor and called the admin room was a little surprised. Who had she talked to on the phone? Yes, that was me. I feel a lot more confident when I've been reading in Japanese.

I'm still nothing near fluent. My suspicion has been that, if I could read more, I could absorb more Japanese language in a natural way.

So, I've been looking for reading material I can read quickly, stuff that interests me. When I get tired of trying to memorize kanji cards out of context (easily misplaced and quickly forgotten), I have been reading A Graded Japanese Reader , which includes short stories, essays and newspaper items, and Instant Business Japanese which presents some funny dialogues loaded with useful vocabulary and expressions. My favorite Japanese as a Second Language (JSL) magazine is J-Life, which you can get online at ALC Japan. I find these materials keep me interested. This morning's train ride went by so fast while I was reading was an essay about a group of men who started a charity to preserve　the folk art (originating in Buddhist story telling) of kamishibai　紙芝居. Interesting insight into Japanese culture while learning vocabulary.

The vocabulary and themes I'm reading are varied and help me cope with everyday life in Japan. I just keep going, reading a bit at a time. Sensei tells us to build foundation a bit at a time. Fifteen to thirty minutes a day of reading plus grammar review will build it up. I'm drawing on the concept of extensive reading to learn to cope with longer texts, learn vocabulary in context, and review known grammar.

I'm a compulsive reader. Now I can start to satisfy this urge with the heaps of reading material produced in Japan.

Their Own Voices

While looking for Japanese women voices to tell it the way they see it, I tripped over Dorothy Disse's website, OTHER WOMEN'S VOICES, translations of women's writing before 1700. Dorothy has catologued an annotated translations of women's writings from nearly the beginning of recorded history -- see  Sumerian priestess Enheduanna's hymns  -- to Japanese courtiers including Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon. She also includes, Ono no Komachi, a prolific and passionate poet of Heian Japan.

While I was musing over Japanese women's voices, I also thought of Sei Shonagon, an attendant of the Heian Empress Sadako, who compiled her memoirs, lists of interesting words, opinions and journal entries in Makura no Soshi. I love her observations of memory and time:

Things That Arouse a Fond Memory of the Past

Dried hollyhock.
The objects used during the Display of Dolls.
To find a piece of deep violet or grape-colored
material that has been pressed between the pages of
a notebook.
It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To
pass the time, one starts looking through some old
papers. And then one comes across the letters of a
man one used to love.
Last year's paper fan.
A night with a clear moon.

The elegance of her writing lies in its simplicity.

A Modern voice?

Banana Yoshimoto. Her first book, Kitchen, is actually two stories that explore disconnection, change, and reconnection. In the main story, Yoshimoto explores the mixed-up life of a young woman coming to terms with her circumstances and finding reconnection with family, however unconventional hers may be. In the second tale, a car crash and a mysterious woman figure in a story about friendship and hope.

Siri Avtar and I spent one delicious afternoon at Elgin House reading these stories aloud. We downed tea and devoured the books. When we were done, we were hungry for more.

Yoshimoto is very tender towards her characters, but never sentimental. I like that about her writing.

Between the Covers

When it gets cold enough to see my own breath in my room, I just want to curl up with a book and a hot water bottle (2 litre pet bottles of hot water do the trick), and read a book.

I'm plowing through the detailed history of the Knights Templars and other military orders in Desmond Seward's The Monks of War. Seward describes the warrior monks' origins in Teutonic legend, Christian idealism and battle-hardened experience. He chronicles their missions in Baltics and Jerusalem, the persecution of the Knights Templars in the Inquisition, and follows their story into modern times.

It's a bit dry in bits, but it's also very detailed, fleshing out historical characters, giving a play-by-play of battles, and exposing the political machines of the times.

Ridley Scott's movie, Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom as a widowed blacksmith (and a murderer) who redeems himself in the seige of Jerusalem by Salladin explores the same time frame as parts of Seward's book. There are many historical figures, such as the leperous King Baldwin, the Knights Templar, and Saladin, who leap out of the history book onto the screen, quite fleshed out and somewhat true to the history.

Scott touches on problems that have plagued the middle east for millenia. The hero, Balien, makes a speech to the people of Jerusalem - "Which is more holy? The wall? The mosque? The sepulcher? Who has claim?" - a question that has followed the Palestinians, Jews, Muslims and other interested parties since the crusades.

PBS has a companion website to its program, Religion and Ethics, where you can see their Kingdom of Heaven film review, which has lots of links to other reviews, perspectives on the movie's depiction of the Muslims and Christians, and a reading list about the crusades.

They're on the loose!

A number of books that I acquired from a sayonara sale are on the loose in Tokyo. Go catch 'em! And to those who are currently reading them, please be sure to go to Phobos Bookcrossing Page and write a journal entry about it.

SKG's third term started on Tuesday, and we're in the thick of things already. The students complain to me that they've got quizzes and assignments of all kinds. Despite the burden of homework, they are the picture of genkiness. Genki means cheerful, vital, upbeat and healthy. I'm feeling much more genki myself, and I'm enjoying the lesson planning and the teaching even more than last term. It's exciting to see the kids succeeding. This will be my last term with the senior high second years, and we're working on essays, critical reading skills and poetry.

It's really cold at night. The weather forecast for Chiba says the temperature will drop to zero. I'm tucking into the mummy bag plus futons. Now, my Canadian readers might wonder why I'm going polar in my apartment. The answer's simple - no central heating. The aircon is too expensive to run at night, and the kerosene heater is a little scary. I compromise by setting the kerosene heater, which is electric, too, to wake up when I do.

Training, too is in full swing, literally. We're working with rokkushakubo.  That's a big stick to you non-budoka. It's a heck of a job carrying the stick on the train. I've done it once. Darn thing is taller than me (rokkushaku is almost two meters) and it's heavy.

I've been cooking a lot lately - I learned a great deal about meal planning from my friend's mum during my stay in Ishikawa-ken. Also, my friend got me a cookbook for my birthday. I'm preparing okazu, or side dishes, to go with rice and miso soup. I got hooked on pickles, too, and there are a few kimchi experiments going on in my fridge right now. I hope they don't eat the fridge...