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on the rocks
Oct. 27th, 2026 11:09 pmMiscellanea: I’m reasonably pleased with my Yuletide assignment (although no matter what I offer or whom/what I’m assigned, my initial reaction is always “why the hell did I think I could write this”), I think I can have fun with it, and right now at least I’m in the mood to take on a few treats as well. We’ll see. Also a lovely visit with a DW friend whom I won’t name unless they’d like me to, but the lovely Cyphomandra! It was very fun. More people should come to Japan. Everywhere should be closer to everywhere else!
Y and I went to a local bathhouse the other day, a relatively sumptuous one belonging to a large chain. In my own city I rarely feel foreign any more (a sign of various privileges to some extent, but also just that I’ve lived here for going on a quarter century), but walking into the baths always makes me feel an outsider, especially since all the other women of all ages seem to go with (female) family or friends. (The getting naked part itself never bothers me, as long as I’m in a context where being naked is appropriate.) They have a quasi-rotenburo, not quite outside but with a slatted roof where you can see the sky and, in this case, the full moon. That particular hot pool is artistically decorated with rocks of all sizes, so I sat on one for a while, feet in the water, and felt like a mermaid. Also a nice place to discreetly admire all the other bathers; I can’t speak for the men’s side, but almost everyone who uses the women’s baths is lovely to look at naked, regardless of age or build. After we had emerged from our respective baths, Y and I relaxed with the traditional cold milk and soft cream in the tatami-mat lounge, which was also occupied by a group of six or seven college-age boys, heaped up on top of each other like the proverbial puppies, using one another as armrests and pillows to doze, play with their phones, or chat. (I was very sorry I couldn’t get away with taking a photo of them.)
Elen and I have started watching The First Shot|雪迷宫, only two episodes in but I’m enjoying it so far; both the leads are kind of my type in different ways, I like the fact that, while the themes are certainly dark enough, it’s not relentlessly grim (so far, anyway), and the interplay between northern and southern dialects is delightful (thank God for C-subtitles. I can more or less follow the southerner when he speaks standard Mandarin, but the northerner’s full-on, fast, slurred 东北话 is impossible).
Rereading Ross Perlin’s Language City, about endangered languages in general and their speakers in New York City. It makes me feel guilty that I’ve only studied, what, half a dozen languages in my life, all major, and barely achieved fluency in one of them; regardless, it also has some wonderful asides. www.languagemap.nyc is great fun to play with. American Yiddish uses “keslgarten” for “chaotic, confusing place” (from Castle Garden, the predecessor of Ellis Island) and “lunapark” for “amusement park” (from Coney Island’s Luna Park). New York gives its name both to Ecuadorian Kichwa speakers’ “iony” (from I 💗 NY, the whole package of living in New York in particular and North America in general) and Tibetan’s soundalike “New York|mi gyog” (coming to New York to work endless menial jobs). Some Tibeto-Burman languages have what’s called a mirative grammatical form, indicating the speaker’s surprise. The Himalayan Pamiri region calls all keyboard instruments “yamaha.” Nahuatl has a caressive suffix, a grammatical ending “conveying fondness and devotion.”
Really I should start studying Nepali, there are a lot of Nepali kids here now, most of whom are very proficient in English but still struggling with Japanese—Jeevan at the weird high school, broad-shouldered, curly-haired, and cheerful even when adrift in a class of Chinese-speakers, Asha and her sister at the Saturday juku. Last week Asha and I had to read a test-question passage about Saint Helena: “Who was she?” “Goodness, I don’t know, and this is about the island named after her, not the saint herself. Wait, do you know what a saint is?” “No?” (Asha has an adorable habit of ending all her statements with a question mark.) “Okay, um...well, I’m really not the right person to ask...okay, a saint is a person in Christianity who was exceptionally good and...um...I think made some miracles happen? That’s how they get recognized as saints?” I still don’t know who St. Helena was, at that. I should look her up.
Last week—two weeks ago? was the autumn orchestra concert, I think the first time since I started with the bassoon that I came away with no regrets to speak of (I certainly made mistakes, but nothing really significant, and I got through a handful of little solos with reasonable success. The Grieg piano concerto, a lovely piece which is great fun for the orchestra as well as the pianist; the second half was Beethoven 7, which it goes without saying is a masterpiece and a symphony I love, but even with minimum repeats it’s so tiring, I was (thankfully) playing second bassoon and I was still worn out. Still, I had fun with the countermelody line in the slow movement, and remembering a former concertmaster’s fourth-movement injunction “this is rock, get down with it!”). Afterward Y’s aunt and uncle, music lovers who are kind of my second set of parents-in-law, took me out for tea as usual. (I had great difficulty explaining this to a-Pei in Chinese, because I couldn’t pin down the words for “my husband’s mother’s younger sister and her husband,” it’s too confusing and there aren’t any generic terms. She finally offered 老公的姨妈和姨丈.)
Photos: Ripe persimmons, early citrus, and birdberries in the rain; two views of a hibiscus, and a building colonized by ivy; two cats and a rose. These are not the same cat! They hunt as a pack and are almost certainly siblings. This week for some reason they were exceptionally personable, greeting me with eager meows and coming to suri-suri around me, bonk their heads into my knees, and get well scratched around the ears and chin (trying to do justice to both of them at once reminded me of that “~~ has two hands” fannish saying, believe me I needed both hands), although neither would jump up on my knee in order to aid the chin-rub process. 
Be safe and well.
Y and I went to a local bathhouse the other day, a relatively sumptuous one belonging to a large chain. In my own city I rarely feel foreign any more (a sign of various privileges to some extent, but also just that I’ve lived here for going on a quarter century), but walking into the baths always makes me feel an outsider, especially since all the other women of all ages seem to go with (female) family or friends. (The getting naked part itself never bothers me, as long as I’m in a context where being naked is appropriate.) They have a quasi-rotenburo, not quite outside but with a slatted roof where you can see the sky and, in this case, the full moon. That particular hot pool is artistically decorated with rocks of all sizes, so I sat on one for a while, feet in the water, and felt like a mermaid. Also a nice place to discreetly admire all the other bathers; I can’t speak for the men’s side, but almost everyone who uses the women’s baths is lovely to look at naked, regardless of age or build. After we had emerged from our respective baths, Y and I relaxed with the traditional cold milk and soft cream in the tatami-mat lounge, which was also occupied by a group of six or seven college-age boys, heaped up on top of each other like the proverbial puppies, using one another as armrests and pillows to doze, play with their phones, or chat. (I was very sorry I couldn’t get away with taking a photo of them.)
Elen and I have started watching The First Shot|雪迷宫, only two episodes in but I’m enjoying it so far; both the leads are kind of my type in different ways, I like the fact that, while the themes are certainly dark enough, it’s not relentlessly grim (so far, anyway), and the interplay between northern and southern dialects is delightful (thank God for C-subtitles. I can more or less follow the southerner when he speaks standard Mandarin, but the northerner’s full-on, fast, slurred 东北话 is impossible).
Rereading Ross Perlin’s Language City, about endangered languages in general and their speakers in New York City. It makes me feel guilty that I’ve only studied, what, half a dozen languages in my life, all major, and barely achieved fluency in one of them; regardless, it also has some wonderful asides. www.languagemap.nyc is great fun to play with. American Yiddish uses “keslgarten” for “chaotic, confusing place” (from Castle Garden, the predecessor of Ellis Island) and “lunapark” for “amusement park” (from Coney Island’s Luna Park). New York gives its name both to Ecuadorian Kichwa speakers’ “iony” (from I 💗 NY, the whole package of living in New York in particular and North America in general) and Tibetan’s soundalike “New York|mi gyog” (coming to New York to work endless menial jobs). Some Tibeto-Burman languages have what’s called a mirative grammatical form, indicating the speaker’s surprise. The Himalayan Pamiri region calls all keyboard instruments “yamaha.” Nahuatl has a caressive suffix, a grammatical ending “conveying fondness and devotion.”
Really I should start studying Nepali, there are a lot of Nepali kids here now, most of whom are very proficient in English but still struggling with Japanese—Jeevan at the weird high school, broad-shouldered, curly-haired, and cheerful even when adrift in a class of Chinese-speakers, Asha and her sister at the Saturday juku. Last week Asha and I had to read a test-question passage about Saint Helena: “Who was she?” “Goodness, I don’t know, and this is about the island named after her, not the saint herself. Wait, do you know what a saint is?” “No?” (Asha has an adorable habit of ending all her statements with a question mark.) “Okay, um...well, I’m really not the right person to ask...okay, a saint is a person in Christianity who was exceptionally good and...um...I think made some miracles happen? That’s how they get recognized as saints?” I still don’t know who St. Helena was, at that. I should look her up.
Last week—two weeks ago? was the autumn orchestra concert, I think the first time since I started with the bassoon that I came away with no regrets to speak of (I certainly made mistakes, but nothing really significant, and I got through a handful of little solos with reasonable success. The Grieg piano concerto, a lovely piece which is great fun for the orchestra as well as the pianist; the second half was Beethoven 7, which it goes without saying is a masterpiece and a symphony I love, but even with minimum repeats it’s so tiring, I was (thankfully) playing second bassoon and I was still worn out. Still, I had fun with the countermelody line in the slow movement, and remembering a former concertmaster’s fourth-movement injunction “this is rock, get down with it!”). Afterward Y’s aunt and uncle, music lovers who are kind of my second set of parents-in-law, took me out for tea as usual. (I had great difficulty explaining this to a-Pei in Chinese, because I couldn’t pin down the words for “my husband’s mother’s younger sister and her husband,” it’s too confusing and there aren’t any generic terms. She finally offered 老公的姨妈和姨丈.)
Photos: Ripe persimmons, early citrus, and birdberries in the rain; two views of a hibiscus, and a building colonized by ivy; two cats and a rose. These are not the same cat! They hunt as a pack and are almost certainly siblings. This week for some reason they were exceptionally personable, greeting me with eager meows and coming to suri-suri around me, bonk their heads into my knees, and get well scratched around the ears and chin (trying to do justice to both of them at once reminded me of that “~~ has two hands” fannish saying, believe me I needed both hands), although neither would jump up on my knee in order to aid the chin-rub process.
Be safe and well.
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