stray ends and yuzu

[nnozomi]

Daily life: Yuzu bath season! Lovely hot bath with lovely citrus-fragrant yuzu floating in it.
Also I got my hair cut--bangs in my eyes can be a headache factor--and enjoyed myself as usual grumbling with the salon lady about politics. She is maybe late fifties, with bright red-purple hair, the middle one in three generations of single mothers, very kind and fiercely liberal; I keep telling her she should run for office herself, and I wish she would.

Music: The Met streamed Götterdämmerung (if I have the umlauts right) and I've been illicitly keeping the tab open to listen to it a whole lot. As a Jew I have some guilt over liking Wagner; it's not fair that the music is so incredibly good.

Books: Well, reading. I've always had good fortune at Yuletide and this year was no exception, with two lovely fics, "Also in the Act of Reaching" (A Memory Called Empire), a post-canon moment with nuance and warmth and uncertainty and language feels, and "True Love's (Gen) Kiss" (Lost Tomb Reboot), a delightful scene in which the Iron Triangle are not in need of boundaries and Liu Sang is so done. Other than these two I've just been reading around the edges of the collection and haven't gotten very far into it yet.

Chinese: Duolingo made me write the English for 雨伞, and I read it out loud to myself for practice, first "usan," the Japanese reading, and then correcting myself to the Chinese "yusan"; so naturally when I started typing the answer, it came out "yumbrella."

Writing: With Yuletide out of the way I've been trying to make a start on the next volume of my novel thing (the first one is still in beta reading and getting on with the next will make me be more motivated...). I have about a dozen threads to juggle and only a very generalized idea indeed of what the plot wants to be, so this is going to take some outlining work before I can even start writing, but it's nice to be back at it. Do other people do it this way? I can't outline everything because there's a lot I only figure out by writing my way into it, but I can't just write without any outline at all because I only meander uselessly. One gets the impression that most people are one way or the other...

Be safe and well.

Comments

[solo]

Also I got my hair cut--bangs in my eyes can be a headache factor--and enjoyed myself as usual grumbling with the salon lady about politics. She is maybe late fifties, with bright red-purple hair, the middle one in three generations of single mothers, very kind and fiercely liberal; I keep telling her she should run for office herself, and I wish she would.

Wow. Most Japanese people I know are not really into politics. I mean to the extent about grumbling about a particular policy or a particular politician... but I got the idea from them that the main parties are really not all that dissimilar and the attitude is 'to hell with both of them'. I certainly don't know anyone who might at all qualify as an activist, even to a minimal level. (Except the shouty guys at train stations, but I don't know them, thank god.)

Götterdämmerung... you know, we seem to have a lot of musical taste in common, but I have this huuuuuge gap between the early Romantics and... Queen, essentially, where I don't like any of the music at all, while you seem to be able to appreciate almost anything! I'm envious! Of Wagner I like Lohengrin and Tannhäuser, and I'd probably like Der Fliegende Holländer if I ever listened to it. But even the early Ring stuff has long passages where I just... can't, and by the time you get to Tristan und Isolde I don't last through Act 1. Is it Tristan or Götterdämmerung which starts with those three women screeching dissonantly? Wait they were Norns so must have been the latter. Anyway, that scarred me for life.

I always liked German mythology (I have views on the Nibelungenlied) so I tried, so, so hard too listen to all that but... ouch. No.

Thank you for the vocab: I only knew 傘　かさ　at this point. :)

[nnozomi]

Wow. Most Japanese people I know are not really into politics.... I certainly don't know anyone who might at all qualify as an activist, even to a minimal level.
Yes, the hair salon lady tends to agree with me on the principle that most politicians here are untrustworthy simply by virtue of having become politicians in the first place, so yeah, your impression is correct. (I do know a couple of left-wing activist types from grad school and from spending time in Kamagasaki, but they are exceptions.)

while you seem to be able to appreciate almost anything! I'm envious!
Huh! I think of myself as quite fussy musically--I guess I would say that there is something I like in almost all genres (with some popular music exceptions, honestly), but also a lot I don't or can't be bothered with. Most of my musical taste comes wholesale from my father, for good or ill.
I was thinking as I listened to Götterdämmerung that, while the singing is fine, really the orchestra has all the best stuff and it would be just about as good if it were a four-hour symphony...you might enjoy it more that way ;)

かさ is really all you need in Japanese, I've never heard anybody say 雨傘 --maybe pronounced あまがさ to distinguish it from 日傘, but not often! Japanese and Chinese cross wires a lot in my brain...

[solo]

雨傘 --maybe pronounced あまがさ to distinguish it from 日傘

Ah, I have heard あまがさ... in songs, I think!

[nnozomi]

Sounds likely! I was wrong about the うさん reading really, getting completely confused among the languages :)