nnozomi

·I don’t think I’ve posted about this year’s veranda plants yet—I have cherry tomatoes (promising green fruits), eggplant (purple flowers and gigantic leaves), chili peppers (I bought the wrong kind! These are huge, longer than my index finger and about as thick, pardon the innuendo), habaneros (rather wimpy flowers so far), last year’s strawberries (still just about hanging in there), this year’s strawberries (one very promising fruit and a few others on their way so far), a lemon tree (no lemons but some new leaves), and three morning-glories (very small and feeble so far). This basically takes up all the free space on the veranda. On the bright side, no pun intended, the rainy season means I don’t have to water them very often.

·Writing: As noted in my previous post, I finished my zeroth draft of book 2; now I’m struggling with revisions, or rather cheating by inserting three scenes that should have been in there in the first place. So much easier to write than to revise. I do have a lot of ideas about what needs done, and I think they will work, it’s just HARD. (clevermanka and I were saying it would be fun to have an open thread somewhere for chat about the writing process in general, although I’m afraid I would just end up complaining like mad…).

·Rereading Lois Lowry’s Taking Care of Terrific, a favorite all the way from fourth grade. Enid and Tom and Seth (who, on reflection, I bet is Jewish, not that it’s relevant, but I like seeing a member of the tribe in there) and Hawk and the bag ladies, putting together their loneliness to make something extraordinary. The Swan Boat ride always makes me cry—“…their voices almost magically grew stronger; they began to blend together. They became less hesitant. They became a choir.” Splendid Enid.

· Aguas de Março covered by the pianist Rogerio Plaza, with his 11-year-old daughter Bia Plaza singing, adorable and also a damn good musician.

·New adventures in eating: plum and chili pepper tea is delicious, more like broth than tea. Also I learned the Chinese for granola bars/energy bars, 燕麦棒 or 能量棒. (Just the same word for energy as in Guardian; do you think they sell 黑能量棒 down in Dixing?)

·Oh dear, this thing that made me laugh (and kind of scream) at work; I do a little bit of manga translation, and some of it is X-rated, BL stuff. (I asked them not to give me eromanga, they gave me it anyway, aagh.) I’m not going to cite the exact line I was translating, but let’s say it was a very explicit request pertaining to a specific m/m act then in progress in the manga. The proofreader left a note reading, I quote, “if you haven’t ever heard someone say this in real life, then it’s probably not gonna work.”

·Less funny work stuff: translating the last of these 1940s files, a long round-table transcript among various big wheels of Fukuoka Prefecture in 1940 on the topic of Koreans there, and oh God, the more things change.

assorted depressing examples

“Training programs” for Korean farm laborers, ie getting dirty work out of them at low pay for a few years, see also Japan’s technical trainee program now; landlords who won’t rent to Koreans, who have to get Japanese friends to rent apartments for them, just the same now; achieving success in the form of “the child who managed to graduate elementary school without anyone learning that he was Korean,” see also passing names now; adult Koreans learning Japanese who struggle with voiced/unvoiced consonants, I hear these accents all the time; the distinction between 朝鮮人 (Korean, a word disliked by Koreans, if this discussion is to be believed) and 朝鮮の人 (person from Korea, preferred, ditto)*, see also “colored person” vs “POC”, and so on.
*They also mention the hated 鮮人, a derogatory version, sometimes used in the expression 不逞鮮人 “malcontent Koreans,” which the anarchists Pak Yeol and Kaneko Fumiko played on in their journal 太い鮮人, pronounced the same way but meaning “cheeky fucking Koreans” or words to that effect.

·More cheerfully, just a few photos, not that exciting. Two cats: the beauty salon cat in the process of melting (what it does best), and a little half-stray near the school I volunteer at, who comes out of the shrubbery when it’s raining and meows like hell at me and purrs reluctantly when stroked. Cats who understand the value of an umbrella, I’m telling you. Also some early hydrangeas and some…I don’t know what the pink ones are? I always want to say windflowers, but I think that’s wrong. Also some baby persimmons, and a closeup of an old Chinese apothecary cabinet in a drugstore window, partly for research purposes and partly because I like it.

rainy season photos