Irezumi Origami

2011-12-26T14:23:00.001+09:00

People on the train

And me on the train

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Yakkun what are you doing?

2011-12-26T14:21:00.001+09:00

Eating a roll of tape!

On your bed!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

It's SNODoOooowsdyjzbkdh

2011-12-26T14:19:00.001+09:00

Snoooowing

-snooowxbsghixbblutghbluyjth

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-12-13T11:17:00.000+09:00

‎"It is not a partisan issue; it is more than a political issue; it is a great moral issue. If we condone political theft, if we do not resent the kinds of wrong and injustice that injuriously affect the whole nation, not merely our democratic form of government but our civilization itself cannot endure."

--T.Roosevelt

In a world where 8.6 is higher than 8.9

2011-12-13T11:09:00.003+09:00

Only on Fox News is 8.6% the same as 9% and higher than 8.9% and 8.8%.

Via MediaMatters

Take a real look at this and dare to tell me that Fox is not the "Ministry of Truth". They know their demographic are people of low education who don't read quickly. They know people don't read data points, they look at the overall trend of a graph. They know all they have to do is arrange the line to look a certain way, say a certain set of lines, and people will BELIEVE against the rationality of the FACT.

The entire fact can be presented before their eyes but if someone pours lies into their ears they will deny the facts directly and believe it every time.

No class war against the less-educated? Look at the person who made this graph.

No 'conspiracy of misinformation'? Look at the person who made this graph.

Look at all the people who directed this graph be made, approved it, and aired it, and wrote lines to say around it.

If that isn't people outright lying to you, go ahead and try to reconcile it.

2011-12-11T10:14:00.001+09:00

I ADORE this kimono.

Unfortunately, it's a rental, not for sale. But it's only 39,800 yen to rent for a day. awwwww.

It's so cool.

awwwww.

RATS WILL HELP THEIR PALS GET FREE

2011-12-11T10:08:00.002+09:00

Rats are wired to show compassion for each other and will help out their fellow rat rather than get a treat.

Fri Dec 9, 2011 11:21 AM ET
Content provided by AFP

Link at Discovery News

The study is the first evidence of helping behavior triggered by empathy.
When rats could see a trapped fellow rat they became agitated and stressed.
Most rats would eventually figure out how to free the trapped rat.

Lab rats have feelings, too.

Given a choice between munching on a tasty chocolate treat or helping a fellow rat escape from a restraint, test rodents often preferred to liberate a pal in need, indicating that their empathy for others was reward enough.

The observation by University of Chicago neuroscientists, published on Thursday in the journal Science, suggests that even these primitive creatures are wired to show benevolence for their own kind.

"This is the first evidence of helping behavior triggered by empathy in rats," said researcher Jean Decety, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

"There are a lot of ideas in the literature showing that empathy is not unique to humans, and it has been well demonstrated in apes, but in rodents it was not very clear."

Researchers started by housing 30 rats together in pairs, each duo sharing the same cage for two weeks. Then, they moved them to a new cage where one rat was held in a restraining device while the other could roam free.

The free rat could see and hear his (or her -- six of the rats were female) trapped buddy, and appeared more agitated while the entrapment was going on.

The door to the trapping enclosure was not easy to open, but most rats figured it out within three to seven days. Once they knew how, they went straight to the door to open it every time they were put in the cage.

To test the rats' true bond to their cagemates, researchers also ran the experiment with toys in the restraint to see if the rats would free the fake stuffed rats like they did their comrades. They did not.

"We are not training these rats in any way," said first author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal.

"These rats are learning because they are motivated by something internal. We're not showing them how to open the door, they don't get any previous exposure on opening the door, and it's hard to open the door. But they keep trying and trying, and it eventually works."

Even when researchers rearranged the experiment so that the trapped rat would be set free into another enclosure, away from his hero friend, the rats still opened the door, indicating they were not motivated by companionship.

"There was no other reason to take this action, except to terminate the distress of the trapped rats," Bartal said. "In the rat model world, seeing the same behavior repeated over and over basically means that this action is rewarding to the rat."

In one final test to truly measure the resolve of the rats, scientists presented them with a pile of chocolate chips in the cage. The rats were not hungry, and in prior experiments showed they liked chocolate because they would eat it instead of rat chow given the chance.

Still, free rats tended to act benevolently. Even if they munched on a few chips first, they would then free their pal and allow him to eat the remaining chips.

"It said to us that essentially helping their cagemate is on a par with chocolate. He can hog the entire chocolate stash if he want(s) to, and he does not. We were shocked," said co-author Peggy Mason, a professor of neurobiology.

Rats shared their chips in 52 percent of all the trials. In control experiments when the rats were alone with no one to help and a pile of chocolate, they ate virtually all the chips.

Researchers switched the rats' roles so that those who were once trapped later were the ones free and faced with a companion who was constrained.

In those cases, all six female rats became door openers and 17 out of 24 male rats did, "which is consistent with suggestions that females are more empathic than males," said the study.

Since most, but not all the rats became door-openers for their pals, the next step could be to look "for the biological source of these behavioral differences," the study said.

Mason said the study offered an important lesson for humans.

"When we act without empathy we are acting against our biological inheritance," she said. "If humans would listen and act on their biological inheritance more often, we'd be better off."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Best comment:

Andrey Gorohovschi

It's clear that the rats have a bible somewhere, otherwise where would they get their morals?

Oria Bjorklund:

I was just about to go there. "New study finds humans lowest moral creature on Earth".

When Is It OK For Cops To Use Pepper Spray?

2011-11-24T12:49:00.000+09:00

This sums up my feelings pretty clearly.

YES

2011-11-20T23:34:00.000+09:00

I fold my ties before I put them away, because I am a mega nerd

2011-11-20T23:26:00.001+09:00

in case i got your pants in a bunch with my last post, here is a soothing photo to make it better

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Borrowed from public post on Facebook

2011-11-20T23:20:00.002+09:00

Jonathan Reilly

The funny thing with all the arrests of #OWS protesters: It's like the police and the rest of the country think the protesters are *going* somewhere. If you actually deny them a park or a meeting place, they just will move to another one. If you arrest them and brutalize them- the law will actually get them right out of jail (as there was no legitimate right to beat and arrest them in the first place).

The more they are persecuted, the more videos shows up online of the abject injustice being done to them. More people who have only been half-paying-attention will suddenly catch a dramatic case of "What the F***, Mabel!? They just shot that boy in the face!..." Quotes from protesters attributed to retired police chiefs, software engineers, architects, nurses, military veterans, unemployed programmers, bus drivers, welders, factory workers and the like clearly demonstrate that this isn't a fringe group of commune-living hippies. It's everyone.

Arresting 200 people, 150 people, 75 people, beating city council-members, senators, journalists and students alike only shows how utterly unstoppable the situation has become. When an 84 year old grandma gets pepper-sprayed, when teenagers get the truncheon and when veterans get shot in the head by anonymous police under color of authority- who in their right ******* mind thinks that this kind of show of force is justified? Funny thing is, the actions being taken to stop these peaceful protests rather elegantly demonstrate the *need* for these protests in the first place.

If the system in place creates or allows a series of rules or situations whereby it is OK to bludgeon peaceful, nonviolent protesters and attack the elderly (or *anyone*, really) then the system needs to chill the f out. Its best friend needs to take it aside and ask The System if it can cut down on it's caffeine intake or maybe stop so much with the blow because it's really starting to f*** shit up and it's scaring the other systems.

Hello I am Yakkun

2011-11-08T21:11:00.001+09:00

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Japanese Onomatopoeia, or "Why it takes so long to learn to make conversation in this damn country"

2011-09-22T22:39:00.001+09:00

You’ve heard people complaining about Japanese onomatopoeias before, no doubt, because Japanese is kind of famous for using them in place of things like VERBS as well as adjectives.

However, besides the famous ones like “nyan nyan”, there are bunches that we have to use EVERY DAY and if you don’t know them and use them, you will be hella confused by the conversations all around you.

QUICK JAPANESE TEST! All of these onomatopoeia I have learned in situ while living in Japan. They are used in daily life. Many of them sound just like each other, and nothing like what they’re supposed to represent. Can you figure out what these absolutely maddening words mean? Answers below.

1. tsun-tsun

2. biri-biri

3. zuru-zuru

4. neba-neba

5. munyu-munyu

6. fuwa-fuwa

7. guru-guru

8. pika-pika

9. boyon

10. waku-waku

11. chirin-chirin

12. petan

13. doki-doki

14. giri-giri

15. gero-gero

16. zaa-zaa

17. saku-saku

18. gucha-gucha

19. bosa-bosa

MATCH TO:

a. the sound or act of dragging something

b. fluffy, cottony, light

c. a pounding heart

d. poke

e. crunchy

f. a frog noise (or the sound of throwing up)

g. messed up or ruffled hair

h. sparkling, as with cleanliness, or like a shining star

i. boing

j. ripping (paper or cloth)

k. squishy, soft, like a gummi bear or a ferret’s belly

l. a bicycle bell’s sound

m. exciting

n. rushing water or heavily failling rain

o. a grinding sound

p. messy, as in a room

q. slimy, or stretchy like gum

r. rolling around

s. the sound of sticking a sticker on something (oh, really?) i.e. “stick!”

Please write down your answers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~

No cheating!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Answers:

1. tsun-tsun: poke

2. biri-biri: ripping paper

3. zuru-zuru: dragging

4. neba-neba: slimy

5. munyu-munyu: squishy (when poking)

6. fuwa-fuwa: fluffy soft

7. guru-guru: rolling around

8. pika-pika: sparkling, clean

9. boyon: boing!

10. waku-waku: exciting

11. chirin-chirin: a bicycle bell

12. petan: the sound of sticking a sticker on something

13: doki-doki: pounding heart

14. giri-giri: grinding

15. gero-gero: a frog (just “gero” is how you puke)

16. zaa-zaa: rushing water or rain

17. saku-saku: crunchy

18. gucha-gucha: messy room, things out of place

19. bosa-bosa: messed up hair

TGS Update: Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Last Guardian, MGS Rising

2011-09-22T13:53:00.001+09:00

See that blonde girl in the middle of the games journalists? That's my buddy Keza MacDonald, whom I met here in Nagoya about three years ago, at the Pokemon Center. Japan has Pokemon Centers. It's mostly a Pokemon store, but where you can download stuff for your Pokemon game, they have events, etc.... anyway, I never EVER speak to strangers--as you know-- and I even more do not speak to other foreigners in this country, for fear they will be idiot tourists, drunk college kids or non-English speakers.

But I saw this blonde girl in the Pokemon store holding a Mudkip Pokemon, and I thought, "go on, make an ass of yourself, this is your only chance to use this line."

She kind of glanced up at me sideways and saw me looking, and I got up the courage finally, walked up and said casually, "So I see you like Mudkips."

She immediately laughed and said "Actually yeah I do!" and just very affably started chatting with me. Keza was a student at Nanzan University here in Nagoya at the time, learning a decent bit more Japanese, but she was also a contributing writer for many video games magazines (since she was 17, I think). We exchanged information, we hung out a bit (and played video games and acted very silly) when she wasn't busy, and two years later--this March--she came back to Japan for travel and for doing interviews.

My couch was occupied for three weeks by this nuclear-and-beer-powered Scots Fun Machine, and we had a thoroughly good time. If you've ever drank with someone from Scotsland you know how good I mean.

So last weekend was the Tokyo Game Show, where they release all the new video game previews, talk about new hardware etc., and Keza was flown back in for a week to do tons of interviews.

May I mention that she's just become IGN's UK branch Games Editor? Yep. That's my girl! :D

I went up to Tokyo to see her Saturday and Sunday, as she had to leave Monday. boooo. All Saturday night was spent doing karaoke with Keza and my roommate and me and 5 other UK games journalists from various countries around the Kingdom, and everyone was incredibly kind and cool and incredibly trashed and more 80's music came out of that room than ever has, since the actual 80's. We wobbled home via taxi around 5 am.

Sunday I only got to see Keza for dinner, she got pulled into going to a meeting/game demonstration and then had to do another surprise interview. But I think she lives in London so I could go visit her if I ever had any money. So all of Sunday my roommate took me around Ikebukuro in Tokyo, with his friends Jenny and Thad who live in that area. It was overall... ok. Too crowded.

Sadly, Keza left on Monday so I wandered around Akihabara with my roommate for a few hours (I was pretty exhausted from being in Tokyo in general), then we got the Shinkansen home. I didn't really find anything worth buying in the biggest city on the planet except some gifts for a friend.

2011-08-26T17:39:00.001+09:00

Oh my god
Oh my god oh my god
You know how you hear a mosquito directly in your ear, or see the end of a centipede come down the wall and disappear JUST behind your bed and your mind just goes WHITE with a freakout rage and you are ready to destroy your bed, punch holes in the wall, to find and smash that bug squirming around, nothing matters to you but the intolerable disgust and crushing the juice out of that horrible, horrible creature??

If this woman does not remove her crying toddler from this shop I am going to start throwing chairs

I swear to god

Nothing in all of god's creation makes me rage like babies crying. I cannot stand it. I want to rip my own face off. If you locked me in a nursery with screaming babies I would punch myself in the head until I gained blessed unconsciousness. If I accidentally had a kid of my own someday it would last about fifty seconds before I throw it in a bear pit to SHUT IT THE HELL UP.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Painting Kimono

2011-07-25T14:14:00.001+09:00

When I started this project my roommate said "How long do you think this'll take you?" and I joked "at this rate, six months" but that's looking realistic actually. Bleh.

Oh look a cute weasel on my bed. He looks bored and overheated. Sorry, weasel.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-07-17T11:29:00.002+09:00

Okay, regarding questions I suppose:

How’s the new roommate working out?
Jon and I get along fine, so there's not much to talk about. He's in America at a wedding this week. He and Yakkun get along.

How’s the Japanese language coming?
Uh, slowly. I should be studying again but I just haven't been doing that. I've been running a kimono blog and working on art and my friends have been making a lot of demands on my time. I was never taking private lessons... it was a volunteer-taught group class on Wednesday mornings. I gave that up because it just made me too tired to work on Wednesdays.

Do you still draw on people?
Yes, of course. I have a desk now. I want to work there more than one day a week but my English teaching schedule is kind of prohibitive. The theory is that I'll keep building up a customer base so I can teach English less and work at the tattoo shop more, and switch over when I can pay the bills with it.

How about school at headquarters? How’s that going?
Yeah, it's fine so far. I'm trying to keep my head down. Teachers have been fired for talking about the companies on their blog before and we're obviously not supposed to take photos of our students or the materials or anything else copyrighted or privacy protected. Some days are easier than others, is all.

Where do you travel now? Or is your time that restricted?
More like I don't like traveling. I will probably take a trip down to Osaka to see my friend Stephan some time next month but first I have to get in contact with him and he's notoriously slow about emails. Other than that I stay in Nagoya, usually stay in my neighborhood. Traveling is too stressful and makes me uncomfortable.

2011-07-15T20:12:00.001+09:00

I'm keeping it "business casual" around here

And here's me petting a bunny in a pet shop

And here's me holding some kitty who crawled in my lap at the train station late at night. I don't know. Kitties just sit right on me.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-07-15T20:08:00.001+09:00

Lady in
Kimono at the train station

Old man arms

Yakkun spelling "f" for ferret

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Rainbow cupcakes

2011-07-15T20:05:00.001+09:00

Successful and tasty. Everybody likes eating rainbow food.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

This was too sweet and wonderful NOT to share.

2011-05-23T14:07:00.001+09:00

"Support George! Fight back at http://bit.ly/dontsaygay

George Takei takes on the Tennessee Legislature and its "Don't Say Gay" bill, in the way only George Takei can!

A bill now pending in Tennessee would prohibit teachers in that state from discussing homosexuality in the classroom. The so-called "don't say gay" law is premised on the misguided belief that, by not talking about gay people, they can simply make us disappear.

George is here to tell Tennessee, and all the LGBT youth and teachers who would be affected by this law, that he is here for you. In fact, he is lending his name to the cause. Any time you need to say the word "gay," you can simply say "Takei."

You can buy T-shirts and other items that say "It's OK to be Takei", to wear and display with pride and to show Tennessee and the world that you're against censorship and bigotry....

All the proceeds from the sales of these items will be donated to charity. Have a TAKEI old time!"

I LOVE YOU GEORGE TAKEI
I LOVE YOU SO HARD

Active Hate Groups in SC: 30

2011-05-19T13:31:00.004+09:00

The Southern Poverty Law Center (Click here to see what Hate Groups operate in your state)
counted 1,002 active hate groups in the United States in 2010. Only organizations and their chapters known to be active during 2010 are included.

All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

This list was compiled using hate group publications and websites, citizen and law enforcement reports, field sources and news reports.

Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing. Websites appearing to be merely the work of a single individual, rather than the publication of a group, are not included in this list.”

SC:
Neo-Confederate (7 chapters) (Abbeville, Laurens, Clemson);

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (4) (Warrenville and Undisclosed areas);

White Nationalist (9) (Charleston, Summerville, Greenville, Columbia);

Neo-Nazi including Aryan Nation (5) (Lexington, Charleston, Greenville, Spartanburg);

Black Separatists including Nation of Islam (3) (Charleston, Columbia).

To clarify:

SC has 30 active hate groups in a state of only 4,500,000.

New York has 31 hate groups with a population of 19,541,453.

I have driven through Greenville, Warrenville, Columbia, Spartanburg, etc. with TJ and I have actually stopped to eat at these Aryan Nation BBQ restaurants with the literature all over the table. We were curious. We sat in silence and ate the BBQ the wicked old white lady served us. We ate at that place that, one of the years I was in high school, was finally told by the State govt. that they must allow black people to be served there and it was NOT the right of the owner to deny service to customers who were behaving within the confines of the law. Don't act like this kind of group activity doesn't affect you just because you're white, middle class and educated. I sat in Social Studies with a 14 year old Neo-Nazi white trash girl who drank vodka out of a pocket flask with a Confederate flag on it.

South Carolina is the festering blister on the ass of Hell itself. You try waiting tables there for a few years and see what kind of comments come out of peoples' mouths.

Beetle

2011-05-17T21:38:00.001+09:00

Touch!

New beetle. I grew him, a P. tityus. It took two years of grub-in-box to produce this beetle that will live, eating jello, about 3 months. Did I mention TWO YEARS of having a small plastic case of dirt on my dresser? That is a boring pet. A grub in a box of dirt. This is the level of my dedication.

Note his eyes are on his head, not those eye-looking black bumps on his thorax under his big horn. Very sneaky...

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-05-17T21:28:00.001+09:00

Sakura tree in the rain, 2nd floor

I thought I'd been here long enough that Engrish didn't faze me any more. But this one is actually beyond me. And the imperative "please understand it." was the final blow of this incomprehensible missive.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-05-14T08:50:00.001+09:00

Kaori working on this lionfish on my leg (finally, after starting it a year ago!).

Peonies at Nagoya Castle:

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-05-14T08:43:00.001+09:00

I'll try a photo. It is taking a long time to post... The internet is slow.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-05-14T08:42:00.001+09:00

It looks like this app doesn't want me to post photos. This is very annoying

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-05-14T08:38:00.001+09:00

Test post?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-04-15T15:03:00.001+09:00

Looking hazy today. And it's kind of raining. Rainy season is in June so it might be gearing up for that. I have a crushing headache.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-03-10T14:12:00.001+09:00

"A grave is the story of a human life."
I stood on the platform in front of this billboard for a whole year and never bothered to read it because I figured the bright fuchsia orchids were for a dental clinic or something. When I actually read it I burst out laughing in disbelief. There's a cheery one for you. Wow. Hahaha

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2011-01-04T23:01:00.001+09:00

Atsuta Shrine, one of 3 most holy shrines in Japan housing sacred relics. Thousands of people come on New Year's, an auspicious time to pray.

Huge sheet spread out to catch cash offerings.

Rabbit manjuu will eat you

New friends from Tokyo... "Toshiya" and "Shinya" with me in kimono at a matcha cafe.

I said matcha!!

After kimono shopping, we went out for burgers.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

For ever ever ever

2010-12-21T15:05:00.001+09:00

While at karaoke .....

Tom: “Well, I think I’m gonna stay another year.”

Me: “Me too.” :)

“…. V, of course you are.”

“Yeah?”

“…. You’re gonna be here forever.”

“Hee.”

“You’re gonna be here til they drag you kicking and screaming onto a plane.”

“… Yes.” :3

How can people tell so easily?

2010-12-21T15:02:00.001+09:00

So I come home and find my tabs, iTunes etc all in working order as I left them, but there are now two new Firefox Help tabs open. Two?

SOMEONE also did a Ctrl+F search for “4444444444444444444444444444444444444444444

44444444444444444444444
44qwwwwwwwwwwww wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwqZZR3”.

Now I know it was Yakkun. This is definitely ferret code, and he always opens Help when he can’t find it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2010-12-21T14:35:00.001+09:00

Two weeks ago.
Polyester kimono with vintage silk obi. It's short, so I tied a single bunko bow instead of the usual taiko. Bunko takes less obi.
I wore this out downtown with Tom and Tommie. We went to lunch at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant which had exceptionally good lunch at normal Nagoya prices (about $12 a plate) which lunch would cost anywhere.
We also got hit up by some roving Australian church people with fliers, who saw my kimono flanked by two tall guys in jeans and said "you three look like you're going somewhere important."
Heheheh.

I might also add that we got a great table downstairs at Wolfgang Puck's, under the chandeliers. Tom blamed this on the kimono. I tried to explain that's par for kimono and THAT is why K and I wore them every weekend. Preferential treatment. Duh

This is one of my tattoo client/friend, from Philly who now teaches at public schools in the country about an hour north of here. She normally wears baggy jeans and hoodies. This particular kimono seems to please people who haven't worn one before, and she took my color suggestions happily and picked "totally obnoxious colors" with my enthusiastic encouragement.

We wandered around downtown for several hours and she said she'd do it again. It's easy to get art majors in kimono. She said "I like it a lot better than yukata. It doesn't feel nearly as much like a teenage girl dress. And the colors are better." truuuue.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:３丁目,Nagoya,Japan

Test post

2010-12-21T14:06:00.001+09:00

Been having technical difficulties here so I re downloaded this app. Maybe now it won't say "this network is not ready".

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

birthday cake

2010-11-17T01:18:00.005+09:00

All right, I didn't make the whipped cream frosting, but this birthday cake, for my roommate, was from scratch. Carrot cake. Four carrots, four eggs, chopped almonds (200 yen for half a cup), chopped pecans (250 yen for half a cup. This country is insane), cinnamon, nutmeg. I even bought allspice for this beast. Do you know how EXPENSIVE allspice is?! I'll tell you. A can of it was 980 yen. That's $11.78 USD. This damn can of allspice had better last me the next 4 years.
This cake had slivers of golden apple and honey drizzle on top. I know carrot cake is "normally" a spring/Easter cake, but there are no good baking apples in this country and my oven is actually a microwave with an "Oven" button. A small microwave. I had to bake each layer separately. In Celcius.
Pie is unheard of in Japan. UN HEARD OF. They've heard of Apple Pie because McDonalds has "apple pies", but I say "pumpkin pie" and everyone goes nuts. "EEEEWWW! Really?! Pumpkin pie?! Did you say CARROT cake? It tastes like carrots?! EeeEEEWWW!"
sigh.

Anyway
This was deemed "oh my god, real cake" and "I LOOOOOVE CARROT CAKE!" by Tommie and Miguel respectively. Tommie also asked me to marry him "so I can chain you to an oven." I told him "that might work out."

Mig is actually moving out next week into his new apartment, and Jon will be moving in next month. I'm a bit worried that Yakkun will be super depressed when his 'dad' is gone forever. He does notice when Miguel disappears on vacation, and looks for him in his room, and reacts with euphoria when he comes home. Miguel doesn't feed or care for Yakkun's cage at all, but he's always been here for Yakkun's whole life so it may be hard for him to transition. Poor little monkey. :(

uh

2010-11-16T00:20:00.002+09:00

I'm trying to post photos from my phone, but it keeps messing up. I wanted to post kimono photos here but I may have to do it the hard way.

email reply

2010-10-15T14:34:00.003+09:00

Letter from Nana:
"It's been a long time since we've heard from you. Are you OK? Will you be staying in Japan? Have you found a friend to talk to in English? How is the Japanese language coming? How about that art exhibit? How about school?"

Hi
I'm doing fine. I've been very busy. The last couple of weeks I've been working without a day off. I still get Fridays and Sundays off from teaching English, but happily I've had several tattoo customers as the season picks up. Fall is a busy time for tattoos, as it gets cooler and people are more inclined to get out of the house. Every Friday I'm working from 1 to 10 pm at the shop, and if I have a customer who wants to come in on Sundays, I go in by appointment. So last week I had a woman come in around 6 pm. We didn't finish til closing time at 10:00. It was her first tattoo and she wants a big one, so it took a lot of preparation, she brought friends and she had to take a lot of breaks. I had to work hard to keep her on schedule...
Physically, tattooing is somewhat demanding, it's physically harder to control than drawing. I'd say it's about as strenuous as lino carving or woodblock carving which you know isn't exactly soft work. But I also have to control the customer, keep them from wiggling too much, get them into convenient positions so I can reach their body, and monitor their reactions and mood as well as handling the technical aspects of the machine tension, depth, ink etc. So although I enjoy doing it VERY MUCH, I am tired afterward. It is definitely work.

So yes of course I'm staying in Japan. It would take a lot to drive me out at this point. I'd have to lose my job somehow and not be able to find another visa sponsor.... unlikely, because a person can be a sponsor. It doesn't have to be a big company. So even if The Big Earthquake comes and flattens all of Nagoya, I'd probably be able to stay and help pull body parts out of the rubble. So no need to leave. This is my country now.

I have more than enough friends to talk to in English... I'm more concerned about finding friends who will talk to me in Japanese.
One of the guys at the tattoo shop has a girlfriend who's going to NYC in December for a short study-abroad program. Not sure what kind of thing she's studying though. But she wanted me to teach her English a few sessions before she has to go. She turned out to be very cool but barely knows a single word of English.
All right... so I talked with her for about 3 hours at a restaurant, using some grammar materials and vocabulary lists, and I think we spoke about 85% Japanese. She's smart enough, and I was able to speak enough Japanese, for us to bridge the gap in explanations. I taught her some basic grammar such as greetings and phrases ("what's up", "nice to see you,", "How are you"), "very, kind of, really" and "it's not/it wasn't very [adjective]."

The really astonishing thing for me was that I was able to SPEAK JAPANESE FOR THREE HOURS!! It was grammatically unsound and probably only half right, but I was able to help her, get my point across, entertain us both, and understand the majority of what she said to me. It helped, of course, that she's smart and could dial-down her Japanese level, and see on my face when I did or didn't understand, and explain with her hands, find other vocabulary to explain it to me, etc. I'd absolutely adore having her in a "real" class (at work). I've had students who've studied English for five or six years who communicate less meaning than this girl did in four words of English and a bunch of facial expressions. :)

I'm setting up for the Foreign Artists' Exhibition on October 31, so I have a couple of weeks left to mount and title my pieces and get all my junk together. I have ridiculous busy weekends coming up, though, and I definitely need to sleep in because I've had nasty pollen allergies for about four weeks now with no sign of letting up. It's the rice pollen. I'm not amused. Of all the things to be allergic to... RICE. In JAPAN.
REALLY now.
The exhibit will run for a week and I'll have to take it down the next weekend. On the 31st, besides being a Sunday and having to set up my art exhibit, I also have a tattoo client in the early afternoon.
Yay
But jeez I need a day to lay around on the couch and drink cocoa and squeeze Yakkun, who is terribly neglected these days.

On 10-10-10, I had a tattoo client, so I didn't do anything for the day (I was tracing a tattoo stencil. A waterfall). Why was it special? Last year had 09-09-09.

The next week is normal, but the week after that I am doing Halloween lessons in school and will be wearing a costume to work all week... then that weekend (Saturday) after work (get home at 5:30) I'll put on my BETTER costume and go out with my friends to a couple of Halloween events at the clubs downtown, but I have to be awake by 10 am to set up my art show and then do tattooing at 1 pm. Then, teach kids on Monday. I hate having every day on my calendar have something on it. :(

gracia

2010-10-09T13:31:00.002+09:00

(click for big pics)

Wha-BAM!

Well, that’s what I did on Friday.

Colors: 11 (2 black, white, red, 2 yellow, 2 green, blue, brown, pink)
3 hours coloring time
No English
Got paid for this one! :D

new vocab

2010-10-06T13:26:00.000+09:00

This is how I learn new vocabulary.

Me: Everyone, open your book to page 90.

Kids (junior high): chatter chatter

Me: NIiiiiiiiiinety.

Kids: ok.

Me: please repeat. “Who’s your math teacher?”

Kids: “Who’s your” mumble mumble?

Me: Ok. Taro, point, who’s YOUR math teacher?

Girl: お、先生、つめながい。 (eh, sensei, tsume nagai.)

Me: eh?

Kids: つめ、つめ。ながいそれ。 (tsume, tsume. nagai sore.)

Me: eh?

Kids: つめ。(tsume.)

Me: (following their eye-lazers, I find my fingernails.) Oh! Nails? Huh. Yes. Anyway, who’s your math teacher?

Taro: My math teacher is Mr. Yamada.

And then I know a new vocabulary word. By the way, the kanji for つめ looks cool: 爪。

ha.

2010-10-03T13:14:00.001+09:00

Teacher: This student I have is such a great girl. She wants to get into Waseda or Kaio University, top universities in Japan. She studies sooo hard! On the weekends she goes to school, like from 7 am to 5 pm...
Me: oh my god. I couldn't do that. I would die.
Teacher: Really? :)
Me: I don't have that kind of stamina for studying.
Teacher: Well, but, when you were young...
Me: heh. I was a C student. [except in art and English and science.]
Teacher: (uncomfortable silence. Moves away.)

So this illustrates a major theme in the psychology of education in Japan. Someone who studies 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, is great. And someone who didn't, can't possibly be a professional holding down a job just the same as someone who DID.

Getting IN to a high profile college in Japan is notoriously more difficult than STAYING in or GRADUATING from said college. Most students only go to class 2-3 days a week and live with their parents. They rarely have tests and spend all their time galavanting about, doing month long homestays in Canada and Australia. They are not required to attend class. It's all a huge, expensive joke. It's hilarious.

tatami

2010-10-01T13:16:00.002+09:00

Thursday I was wondering aloud to my Japanese staff girl whether tatami “also” came from China. It’s an undeniable but oft-denied fact that everything “dignified and cultural” about Japanese culture was thrust upon us by the civilized Chinese nobles when they wandered over to this lumpy island to see wtf was going on. They found (Ainu) women with heavily tattooed faces, people eating raw sea urchin and sea slugs, and suspicious-looking animist pagan rituals that may have involved human sacrifice. Of course this would not do, so the lovely civilized Chinese guys came bustin’ in with guns, horses, chickens, bonsai, chopsticks, kimono, kanji (PHONETIC writing?! What are you people, 4 years old?!), painting, Confucianism, papermaking, astronomy, astrology, herbology, chemistry, mapmaking, big ships and ye olde pillage. What was never mentioned was whether they also brought in tatami mats. So, as I continued to my staff girl, I was reading some Heian (~800—~1200 C.E.) poetry, and…

This is where she should have stopped me abruptly and accused me of being a flaming nerd. You were READING HEIAN POETRY? That’s something high school kids are forced into doing, at knifepoint I presume.

No! But, see, he was saying something about sleeping on the floor [watching the moon or something equally manly] and there was a little translation note that said in Heian times, floors, even in the palaces, were only made of wood. No tatami yet. So I was wondering if China invented them. Because maybe not, if they hadn’t brought them over by the year 900 or so. They’d already invented everything by then.

…. You were READING Heian poetry… On purpose. :{

Blue, Green or Grue?

2010-09-29T13:10:00.000+09:00

Blue, Green or Grue?
--link above to Wikipedia

I noticed this in Japanese— a green traffic light is called “ao”, blue, and a green apple is known as “ao ringo”—a blue apple. What’s with this lack of distinction between green and blue? The wiki knows.

“

The English language makes a distinction between blue and green, but some languages do not. Of these, quite a number, mostly in Africa, do not distinguish blue from black either, while there are a handful of languages that do not distinguish blue from black but have a separate term for green.^[1] Also, some languages treat light (often greenish) blue and dark blue as separate colors, rather than different variations of blue, while English does not.

According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, distinct terms for brown, purple, pink, orange and grey will not emerge in a language until the language has made a distinction between green and blue. In their account of the development of color terms the first terms to emerge are those for white/black (or light/dark), red and green/yellow.^[2]

Many languages do not have separate terms for blue and green, instead using a cover term for both (when the issue is discussed in linguistics, this cover term is sometimes called grue in English).”

“The Japanese word ao (青^?, n., aoi (青い^?, adj.)), the exact same kanji character as the Chinese qīng above, can refer to either blue or green depending on the situation. Modern Japanese has also adopted the Chinese word for green (緑, midori^?), although this was not always so. Ancient Japanese did not have this distinction: the word midori only came into use in the Heian period, and at that time (and for a long time thereafter) midori was still considered a shade of ao. Educational materials distinguishing green and blue only came into use after World War II, during the Occupation^{[citation needed]}: thus, even though most Japanese consider them to be green, the word ao is still used to describe certain vegetables, apples and vegetation. Ao is also the name for the color of a traffic light, which is bluer than in English-speaking countries. However, most other objects—a green car, a green sweater, and so forth—will generally be called midori. Japanese people also sometimes use the word guriin (グリーン), based on the English word “green”, for colors. The language also has several other words meaning specific shades of green and blue.”

The kids are serious victims of this. When they ask me to color something “blue”, sometimes I’ll grab the sky-blue crayon, sometimes a royal blue. They throw a total fit if I grab the sky-blue.

“That’s not blue! THAT’S MIZU-IRO! I SAID BLUE!” They screech, stabbing a finger at the blue-blue. Mizu-iro means literally “water-colored”. They sometimes ask me how to say mizu-iro in English, and I say it’s “sky blue”. Using this logic, they hold up the yellow-green crayon and ask, “sky green?”

“No,” I have to tell them, “it’s yellow-green. Or spring green.” They use “ki-midori” in Japanese as well, yellow-green. So this seems normal to them. If I explain that Spring Green is haru-green, they seem to like that.

They don’t really believe green apples exist, although there are occasionally green-apple flavored candies or what-not in Japan. To them, ao-ringo is as believable and lifelike as a “blue raspberry” to us. I guess there’s no market for Granny Smiths in Japan… these guys have Oreos, and on the package it describes them as “Chocolate!… Sweet!…and Bitter!!” and if they think an innocent Oreo is bitter, they’d think a Granny Smith was the acid of Satan.

I’ve been in a car a few times since I’ve been here, and this “blue” traffic light thing has cropped up. They do say ao shingo, lit. a “blue light”. I point out that it’s green. They pause for a second and say “….ahh.. so it is. Huh. I wonder why we say ao.” I wonder why it takes them a thousand years (Heian period: 794 to 1185) to stop using a particular terminology.

Pokemon

2010-09-22T13:28:00.000+09:00

I donno, what are YOU doin today? I’m playin Pokemon Black. This set of Pokemon games (Black and White) are not yet released in the States. All my friends are sooo jealous. I told them the game is fabulous and sooo good and it's soooo much fun and hahahahaha don't you wish you had it.

(addendum: I’m playing it slower than Christmas, I’m illiterate, and it will probably take me three months to get to the next city and/or figure out the trading system and what a “Battle Box” is. But I will ganbatte mitte [try to try]. Seriously I can barely read this thing. It's giving me a literal headache.)

My friend bought this game for me, saying "You need to study, V. If I buy this game for you will you play it? You can learn a lot of Japanese. Even if you don't remember the vocabulary, by exposure and repetition you will remember it."

I said "eeeehhhhhh..... yeah.... fine... thank you."

Impulses

2010-09-14T13:09:00.000+09:00

You ever immediately regret a decision? There’s a teeny tiny sugar ant doodling around the desk here at work, so I thought, I’ll give it a little drop of my latte. It tasted the drop but didn’t seem enamored. But 30 seconds later I realized, if this ant decides she DOES like my latte, not only will she bring a million of her sisters, but they’ll all be caffeinated as well. What has science done?!

Ryoma tea

2010-09-09T13:03:00.001+09:00

「龍馬のように強く自由に生き抜くために、ちょっとここらで一休み。」 Point of fact: Ryoma tea was delicious. I'm deeply impressed. All the history I've read about Ryoma Sakamoto said he was a completely rude and inappropriate and notoriously unwashed anarchist who caused a boat load of trouble for the govt. in the 1800's. He also got thoroughly assassinated in the head. He switched sides about four times between foreign sympathizers and the daimyo lords, but generally it's accepted that he kinda helped a LOT with the downfall of the samurai ruling class and the Imperial rule. He saw Admiral Perry come blasting into Yokohama and was really impressed with the "black ships"--the sight of all this foreign technology scared everyone, but Ryoma was the one who said "With that kind of technology on our side, some day we could rule the robot industry".
As we all know, people with ideas tend to get swords through the forehead...
(It’s appropriate that the Meiji company is selling Ryoma Sakamoto flavored tea, because he was all “Hey guys, I've got a great idea. Let's Meiji Revolution”.)

I admit, I like hands

2010-09-05T13:00:00.000+09:00

Boys in this country have a higher percentage of beautiful hands than anywhere in the history of ever. It makes me want to paint again.

swallow and peach flowers

2010-09-03T13:01:00.000+09:00

My customer, of long suspense, turned out to be a very cute Japanese girl who saw my page on the shop website and wanted one of my birds.

Dude, for reals?!

So she came in and Ryuji was busily talking to one of his business associates right beside me. I prepared my bird designs and my Japanese.. and to my slow amazement, I didn’t make a complete blithering idiot out of myself or chase away my customer.

Our conclusions:

She wants a bird with peach flowers (white), holding a ribbon that says “gracia”, on her front left side, beside her navel. So I need to design it going ‘whoosh’ down from the lower rib area.

She wants the bird itself to be forest green with gold and red in its wings, specifically. She will come back to the shop next Friday early afternoon. I told her it’ll take about 4 hours, and we can just do the line work first, and do the colors in another session. That seemed to relieve her quite a bit. Me too.

I penciled in an appointment for us and she left and I was sweating in terror of speaking Japanese, having a REAL LIVE CLIENT, and not making an ass of myself. It was incredible.

I might have done some things wrong—I didn’t have her sign the tattoo appointment paper form, I didn’t write her an appointment card (but then, I don’t have one that says my name on it)—but she’s coming Friday and I think I’ve got her design worked out.

Ryuji was concerned that doing small flowers in white is kind of impossible. I agree. He suggested making the flowers a lot bigger to show the negative space more easily. I tried this in three different incarnations, even enlarging the bird by 10% to create more negative space and bring the focus back to the bird (it was getting chunky), but I don’t think it’s working. Enlarged peach flowers just look like camellias. It looks like a totally different flower. Peach and plum flowers look almost identical, and the size is key. A five-petaled flower with fluffy stamens is just so basic, you need the size to be correct in order to identify it. In the end I think I’ll go with my original design and consider outlining the flowers in grey instead of all black. We shall see if this is a huge mistake later.

I’m so psyched though. I’ve been dragging through a 3-week depression and suddenly, effortlessly, the prospect of tattooing has brought me right back out of it. I guess that’s how you know what “one’s calling” is.

communicating?

2010-09-02T12:57:00.001+09:00

I have a customer today at the shop. I think it’s a real customer this time, not a prospective one, maybe. Three different coworkers have contacted my phone to tell me about it. This must be them getting serious. I hope it’s not the Filipina chicks who were so difficult and picky a few weeks ago. They didn’t believe anything we told them about, you know, doing what we’re trained at (It’s very difficult or impossible to get that level of detail at the size you want, which is 2” square… black and purple will fade, yes, especially if you tan it a lot. No there is nothing I can do to stop it from blurring, that’s dependent on you taking care of your skin. If you want the cheap price you have to get the younger artists, not the boss. He’s not gonna work at that size for that price. Etc.) … but I wonder what they’ve got set up for me?

As I posted last Saturday, Ryusuke sent me an email about “you maybe have a customer!”

Then yesterday at work, K-chan sent me another email (this time in English) that said “Please call Ryo when you get a chance. He wants to tell you something about your customer tomorrow.” This threw me into a bit of a panic, because Kaori didn’t tell me what the Something was, and directed me to the ONE GUY who doesn’t speak a lick of English. On the phone!! まじで？！

Ok… I called him to prove I’m taking this seriously, and if he told me something pertinent I sure didn’t catch it.

[the following discussion is all in Japanese]

He told me “You have a customer tomorrow!”

“Yay,” I said. :)

“You’re going to the shop tomorrow, right?”

“Yes I am coming.” Oh god, conjugating Japanese verbs in between teaching kids’ classes is horrifying. I can feel my neurons shriveling.

Then he told me a few more sentences and I was like ....??.........?? I let the Japanese text wash over me like gentle ocean waves of —-Oh, was that a question? Uh… … forty-two?

So I asked “From 1:00?” and he replied he didn’t know what time… and Onegai Shimasu, see you tomorrow. I really hope he didn’t give me some vital briefing because you SHOULD LET K-CHAN HANDLE COMMUNICATING THAT BECAUSE I AM DUMB.

Awesome

2010-08-28T12:56:00.000+09:00

The best email Ive received in a while:

来週の金曜日にビクトリアに彫ってもらいたいって言うお客さんくるかもしれないからよろしくねー。 (from Ryusuke at the tattoo shop)

English: “This Friday, a customer will probably come in to get tattooed by you. Thanks!~~”

2010-08-28T12:54:00.000+09:00

A dance festival! Boys in ninja shoes!

Rock jumping?

2010-08-27T00:02:00.002+09:00

*Japanese dialogue has been translated, but put in Bold.*

Me: okay, let's play Charades. Come up here. (the word is Rock Climbing).
Boy: -does motion of climbing, rather lackluster-
Girl: Rock... what is it... Rock jumping.
Me: no.
Boy: No.
Girl: Jump... Hiking.
Me: no.
Boy: no. What are you doing?
Me: - writes C on board- Here's a hint...
Girl: Rock... Rock c... can you can? No! I dont. Yes! maybeeee...
Boy: Can you, should be "no I can't."
Me: no. -writes C-L-I on board- Cli. ("cly") Rock cli---
Girl: kulai... Kulai... Diving. Cly diving.
Me: what?
Girl: Cly book.
Another boy: SCUBA diving.
Me: no.
Boy: -getting bored-
Me: -writes CLIMBING on board- Climb...
Girl: Ku lihm buu... Rock diving?
Boy: no.
Me: ROCK CLIMBING! No points....
Gaaaahhh

All for the love of Tajima cows | The Japan Times Online

2010-08-26T23:14:00.001+09:00

All for the love of Tajima cows | The Japan Times Online

Click the link to read about Kobe beef cattle.

Excerpt:

Kobe beef: fact vs. fiction

Kobe cows are fed beer. False. Yoshinori Nakanishi says this myth started 30 years ago when a restaurant did a promotional stunt in which a Tajima cow was fed beer.

Kobe cows get regular massages. False. "If I massaged my herd of 170," says Nakanishi, "I'd have no time left for sleep."

Kobe cows listen to classical music. False. Nor do they listen to any other genre.

Kobe beef is sold outside Japan. False. No authentic Kobe beef is exported, mainly because of limited supply. Some restaurants abroad offer a cross between Wagyu and Angus cattle, which may amount to a Kobe-style beef.

There is no way to be certain that a piece of Kobe beef is genuine. False. This can be checked, using the 10-digit serial number that each animal has been issued, which can be checked on the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association's Web site: www.kobe-niku.jp

U.S. basketball player Kobe Bryant is named after Kobe beef. True. (And not vice versa.) The story goes that Kobe's father saw the item on a menu, thought it sounded cool and gave the name to his son. That has not, however, stopped Bryant from suing the city of Kobe because he feels the beef's name harms his own brand.

artists' exhibition

2010-08-25T13:32:00.000+09:00

“The long-running Nagoya Foreign Artists Exhibition, now in it’s Silver Jubilee year, (yes, that’s FAE 25) will be held from November 2 to 7 at the Nagoya International Center. Organized by the Central Japan International Society (CJIS), with support from the Nagoya International Center (NIC), this ever-popular show continues to attract a diverse range of artists. Hopefully, the 25th exhibition will reach new heights of variety and quality. Please note that FAE 24 participants will be sent an application form automatically.”

http://www.nic-nagoya.or.jp/en/mailmagazine/issues/2010/august_2010.htm

Last year this show was interesting… not nearly as good as the Japanese shows in terms of quality and avant-garde-ness, and comprised of two main groups: total amateurs (I can say that when they’re displaying pencil drawings on notebook paper) and 55-year-old art professors. There were a few stragglers, like myself, but overall it was… well, yes, we all tried, but some people tried harder than others. And as long as I can’t get my work shown in the underground halls of Sakae with the other semi-professional Japanese artists my age, I’ll keep submitting it here.

Happily I have two months to figure out how i want to display my drawings and get that all arranged and printed out. I kept the black display board from last year. This year I think I’ll make a little cardboard comments box too.

Coin Dog

2010-08-21T23:19:00.001+09:00

I had to teach the vocabulary word “corn dog” today to a bunch of excited 6 year olds who haven’t seen me for nearly a month and apparently missed harassing me.

(Japanese dialogue has been translated, but left in bold to show you how nonsensically mixed Japanese and English this conversation was.)

Me: “Corn dog.” *with flash card*

Kids: “Cone dog…”

Me: “CORN dog. Corn.”

Girl: “COIN dog? Coin game?” *making a gesture with her hand to indicate a coin*

Me: “No, CORN. Corn dog.”

Girl: “Those coin games at the game arcade? Coin? Coin dog?”

Boy: “It’s called a CORN dog, but it doesn’t have corn inside it. Inside it is a sausage, isn’t it? It’s not corn. So therefore, it should be called a sausage dog, not a corn dog. There isn’t any corn inside it.”

Different girl: “What’s that black stuff on the picture? What is that?” (It’s a poor black-and-white drawing of the outline of a corn dog with a black squiggle down its middle, probably intending to be ketchup.)

Me: “The corn is on the outside. Come on, guys. Corn dog.”

Different girl: “It’s an American Dog, right? Is that what it is?”

Me: “Yes. Hey, guys, let’s go! Come on! CORN DOG!”

Boy: “Corn dog.”

Girls: “Coin dog.” (one girl making an OK gesture to signify a coin.)

gaaahhh

From my Balcony

2010-08-15T18:52:00.003+09:00

May 11th

May 23rd

July 8th

August 5th

August 8th

August 12th

Nagoya Matsuri part two

2010-07-26T14:48:00.000+09:00

I like going to this matsuri particularly because it's my hometown. I like the Nagoya people and their ridiculous sense of style. It's terribly crowded and hot, but it's Nagoya...

My friends are sitting on the white sheet there about halfway up the picture. Waiting for fireworks. It got more crowded than this.

A whole yukata family!

If you get tired, you can just lean on your girlfriend, I suppose.

This girl was flailing around on the walkway and I was trying to get a shot of the couple right behind her, and came out with this accidental picture.

On the search for some Nagoya fashion, I saw these two. This particularly California tan/bleach combo with American clothes is called "Yankee", here, derisively, but I support anyone who breaks out of the strict Everyone Conform society. You keep it up, Yankee kids!!

AHA!! Nagoya Jyo (nagoya girl) sighted! Big hair, big obi, cell phone, check. She's missing the high heels though...

And these Nagpya Jyo are opening their collars wide, totally inappropriately, but that's the kinda questionable Nagoya fashion I was talking about. Yay! I finally found some pure Nagoyaness!

Nagoya Matsuri Part one

2010-07-26T14:15:00.000+09:00

Last monday was a national holiday, "Umi no Hi", or Marine Day (technically 'Ocean's Day'). Nagoya Port put on a great fireworks show and I dragged several friends out in yukata.

New yukata this year!

Steph wearing a cool hippie yukata. Very fashionable actually!

Australian friend Ben

Super cute couple. I was walking and photoing.

This boy is wearing a jinbei, not yukata, because hes lazy.

Super obi!

- Posted from my iPhone

Atsuta Matsuri

2010-07-02T15:44:00.000+09:00

I coordinated her

And myself

Hooray complimentary color scheme

A shrine

Feesh

Candy grapes

Im not the only yukata here

A pair

Looks heavy

Light a candle

Put in lantern

Pick up dangerous fire lantern

Pass up to huge structure

Yay

More to go

Fireworkz

A little ferret

2010-07-02T15:41:00.000+09:00

He's possibly getting cuter every day, but I'm not sure.

- Posted from my iPhone

I caught a cold again

2010-06-21T11:43:00.002+09:00

Last Friday I made an appointment with a customer for Sunday (Yesterday) for a back piece.
I even carefully asked Ryuji if it was ok and he looked at the schedule and said "hmm, I think so, but you'll have to come in a bit later"... I wrote myself into the schedule and said "see ya sunday!"
Then the customer, because of busy scheduling, asked if we could do it next sunday instead. I said yeah sure.
Saturday I came down with a stupid fever and light nausea and was messed up all day at work (dizzy, thought I might throw up on the 7 year olds, etc.) , staggered home and slept. All day Sunday I was up and down--2 hours up, 3 hours down--and hungry and nauseous and feverish and sick.
This morning I realized I never canceled with the shop, so I wonder if they were sitting in there going "Where is she?" and waiting for the phone call that never came. They won't fire me or anything, but it looks bad, especially in Japan, to be unprofessional like that. I was just so messed up yesterday I completely forgot I was supposed to do anything beyond wobble to the sink to try to get water and eat a frozen pudding, then crawl back to bed.
I wonder if I should call today and apologize, though I don't exactly know how to say "I rescheduled with the customer late Friday night but saturday and sunday I was extremely sick and couldn't call anyone, including you, and I am very very very sorry and etc."

Today I'm going to work, because I have some delicate classes I'm pretty sure they won't send a sub for (one is a private student--her textbooks are at the school, so I couldn't write a lesson plan even if I wanted to. "Turn to.. the next page.. and... um... do the activity."), but this feels like the knife-edge of sickness where I could get better if I take it easy, or I could get worse if I push myself and jump around too much. Well, in Japan, if you can stand, you can stand to go to work.

I am not a fan of this policy but I can't even count on both hands and toes how many times I've been locked in a room with one or more students (both kids and adults) who are burning red and glassy-eyed with fever, coughing phlegm, or sneezing generously on everyone else. whee.
So I've been avoiding going to the doctor unless absolutely necessary, because my body just needs to make antibodies. Japan is obsessed with cleanliness and disinfectant and sweeping the street, antibiotic towels and pillowcases and picking up garbage off the sidewalks and little seat covers in taxis, but if you don't have the TB, you go to work and share it.

One of my adult students (businessman type guy, in his early 30's) told me he was informed by his boss HE WILL JOIN THEM FOR GOLF ON SATURDAY WITH SOME NEW CUSTOMERS so he had by god better practice before then, thank you, see you Saturday morning. So after work, for three days, he went to the practice range to work on his swing, with a heavy heart, because he hates golf very much.
On the second day he felt a terrible crunch in his ribs during some of these practice swings. eek. The doctor told him "You've cracked a rib, son. No more golf for you."
He went to work the next day with this cracked rib and his boss came up and said SEE YOU SATURDAY, RIGHT?
My student weakly squeaked, "I have a cracked rib... from practicing.."
The boss's reply was something like "FINE. SEE YOU SATURDAY."
How did Saturday go?
My student tells me he played golf, all right, and very very poorly. He admits he literally shrieked every time he took a swing and felt his rib grating together. "The customer probably thought I was crazy... ... ... I hate golf..."

Fruit project: Biwa

2010-05-27T15:11:00.000+09:00

Japanese: Biwa 枇杷

English: loquat, Japanese medlar, Eriobotrya japonica

Purchased at: grocery store
Price: about $4 for 5 fruits

I've never seen a biwa before, although I know a biwa is a musical instrument... Didn't know it was a fruit.

Outer appearance: a soft feeling skin with sparse and thin fuzz, not as dense as an apricot, but enough to make it a little cloudy in color. Color is close to apricot.
The skin is easily bruised or abraded and the fruit is heavy for its size, and as firm as a good kiwi. Outside has a little sweet smell.

Top has leaves and the bottom retained its flower-bud structure, like a fig.

Cutting texture: a large pit or seed is felt in the center, but the fruit cuts smoothly like a ripe pear. It is very juicy but the scent is mild and just fructose.

Inner appearance: the inside is lobed, with four or five acorn sized seeds and some underdeveloped seeds in a pithy envelope. This pith is soft and seems edible. The flesh is apricot colored and very juicy.

Too much seed for one fruit...

I was instructed to peel it (I asked my Japanese staff how to eat it), and found the peel comes off like a ripe peach, in one nice piece.

Taste: my first thought when I tasted it was "Pumpkin. No, canteloupe." but there is a definite gourdlike tang to it, and strong tannins that make my mouth feel dry after eating it. But after the first melony bite, the fructose of it is very mellow and pearlike. The texture is the same as a pear, with no fibers in sight.

Overall impression: a very agreeable, unimposing melon-pear that just wants to say good morning.

- Posted from my iPhone

Some photos again

2010-05-14T16:08:00.000+09:00

The males of the species are more colorful than the females.

Mmm, nothing like delicious Blux after a hard day!
What the heck is Blux anyway??

My modest collection of obi-aage. For kimono purposes. Secret kimono purposes.

I wish i could have gotten a better photo of how fabulous this guy's lime green tie was.

May 13, 1 pm, outside my apartment, 68 degrees and windy. I should have stayed home "sick" to enjoy it!!

He's fixing something down there...

Far far away, I can see mountains in the West! No idea what mountains they might be!

One of my students drew this picture of Ginsburg. She likes pets and cats and drawing, so I'm trying to corrupt her as far as possible in only an hour a week. I show her lots of Yakkun videos.

Put your feet down! Thats a chair, not a cushion!
I may add that my boss also sits like this. It might be a natural habit of badly trained Japanese boys (whose moms didn't slap em on the head enough).
Actually this class is quite good, considering what monsters 11 year old boys tend to be. They were enamored of my iPhone. Now they respect me cuz I'm cool. Dang right.

It's too cold to wait for the train without a jacket!

- Posted from my iPhone

TiltShift Photos

2010-05-10T13:26:00.000+09:00

Tommie recommended this iphone app called TiltShift Generator, which applies auto-levels of color and contrast, like photoshop, and allows you to apply vignetting, blur and manually adjust saturation and contrast. Good stuff.

Thats a guy in a cosplay dress. Not sure where hes going.

Waiting for foot tattoo...

This guy was getting a Japanese fox on his forearm.

A bear tricycle!!

Late night conversation

I found a chicken at Atsuta Shrine, but nobody seems to know why they live there...

True colors of the kimono I wore when I met Amano.

This app is cool!!

- Posted from my iPhone

Dinner

2010-05-04T09:58:00.001+09:00

I swear I never knew what a "hamburg steak" was until I came here.

Thats a hamburg steak with garlic sauce, burned corn and a single piece of broccoli, and two tater tots which they call "hash potato".
On the side:

"camembert fry"--- that wouldmean Fried Camembert, though it is barely fried mozzarella-- with dipping sauce. What sauce? Ranch? Marinade? Cheese sauce?
No. This is Japan. This is ketchup and ... Mayo.

- Posted from my iPhone

Vacation

2010-05-04T09:53:00.000+09:00

Ive had a pretty successful Golden Week so far, except yesterday was a little slow...

Wednesday: messed up with a wicked cold. Went home sick. Drank lots of tea and meds. Printed 4 of my "Ro" lino, to finally get a decent one for Amano.

Thursday: pounded full of meds. Wore kimono, met Amano、 ate decent cake w strawberries. Went shopping in Osu for fruit after this.

Friday: worked in the shop. Did a leg tattoo for Alex, using orange (a new color) and new technique. It worked really well. Yay!

Saturday: got up early and put on kimono. Went to Atsuta Jingu to watch Bungaku Shinji, 1000-year old Heian era court dance. Its less exciting than it sounds except for the costumes. Came home and ate, had coffee, took 1 hour nap. Went out early to the new tattoo shop branch to help with the party, but there wasnt much for me to do. Tried to speak Japanese in a club-type setting. Discussed employment with my manager (not the owner though). Went home at 3.

Sunday: met my friend Clover in the afternoon and shopped for new glasses, but was never satisfied. Went around downtown, ate at the tempura place, went to two game arcades and beat him senseless at Mario Kart.
Came home to find an invite to karaoke, so went back out for karaoke with the boys. Had a surprisingly good time. The place has free snacks.

Monday: waited for David to come fix my computer. He canceled. Waited for mig to meet me for dinner cuz we had a reservation. He canceled. Waited to go see a movie w Mig and others. It was canceled due to being full. Testy and frustrated. Spent ten bucks at the batting cage and then ate some beef.

Tuesday: today. Im going kimono shopping with alex, for his mom. We'll see how this goes...

Unfortunately im noticingva serious lack of making art in this vacation. I gotta get on that.

- Posted from my iPhone

Amano and Me

2010-04-29T23:44:00.003+09:00

Last year Amano Yoshitaka had an exhibition in Nagoya and he did this year as well. I went on Saturday and today, the last day, because I managed to read that Amano himself would be in-house from 3 pm.
Of course I have a lot to tell him--he's been one of my art heroes since I became serious about art, as he is for so many people who are serious about art, and even casual consumers who like Dali seem to like him.
He's an illustrator's dream story; a young kid from humble roots is working tough animation jobs in Tokyo until suddenly getting a lucky chance to do illustration work for a video game that nobody believed would have any sales.

Of course I decided to wear kimono, because:
-I want to wear kimono on my day off
-Amano has illustrated billions of dresses and kimono and I'm positive he likes and would appreciate it
-Other people are most likely NOT going to wear kimono, so I'll stand out
-It's an art exhibition, so it's appropriate as a semi-formal event
-I want to honor him by exerting myself and wearing a nice kimono and looking like I respect him as a person of higher status.

I chose my red cho-furi (half-long sleeve) because:
-It's more formal than a komon, but not as formal as an iromuji, which I thought would be too dressy for a room full of jeans
-He uses a lot of red in his works so I figured that Amano, like many artists, likes red :3
-this obi, which K maintains is a chrysanthemum pattern, I could argue might also be daisies. And the combination of brass and silver with pink and black (and spots of bright red in the middle of the flowers) was just SO beautiful with the cream and red kimono I couldn't think of using any other obi. My other formal obis were all too formal and full of gold threads.

So I tried to recreate Amano's art and colors in my kimono. I wish I had a picture of the back of it, but I didn't have anyone around to photograph me (Mig is in Wakayama ATM).
The obi-aage is one of the scraps K and I found and hemmed. It has rust, salmon, dark teal, white, pink, and many other crazy traditional kimono colors and patterns in it, making a wild contrast. It shows a little better in the second pic.
It's also very heavy silk or possibly polyester, so it is much bulkier than a normal obi-aage, which ends up looking younger and more fancy. Even better to advertise my singleness. Does Amano have any sons?

I got to Kanayama around 12:30 and found to my non-surprise that I am illiterate, and Amano is not coming at 1:00, but at 3:00. I met "Big Jon" for coffee and we walked around the exhibition. There were two originals there: Amano's two illustrations for Dissidia, labeled "Chaos" and "Cosmos" on the Potion cans, but called "God" and "Godness" (not goddess, but god-ness, as I said).
Imagine this painting about 3 feet tall and full of gold leaf on watercolor paper.
Oh finally, a good image of the other one!
Look at all the characters:

It loses a lot in translation here, but all those greys and blacks are mixed greys of watercolors, with lots of blue and browns in it.

So as I was standing in the entry of this show, someone comes bouncing up behind me and claps a hand on my shoulder and I turn around to find--Ryu! From the shop! He had two friends with him and said "HI!" and I said "Hi, what's up??" and he shook my hand heartily. His two friends caaaarefully floated away to a safe distance (6 to 8 feet) because their friend just went running up to a gaijin in kimono and started talking to her like he knows her. o_o

He said "This art is awesome! You like Amano?"
I said "Of course I do!" which made him laugh. "Which one do you like?" I tried to ask, and had to repeat because probably my grammar was destroyed under pressure.
"I like all of it. It's all great!"
Then he pointed to the Chaos painting, and said something I didn't really catch, but after a couple of seconds i realized he was saying something like "This piece as a tattoo, a back-piece".
"What? Cool!"
He gestured to his friend, then to me.
"Ooh, cool..." I said.
Big Jon said "He said You can do it."
"Eh? Oh, I wanna do it..."
The friend looked somewhat unsure and still watched me carefully, like a nervous dog. This friend was a guy about my age with a goatee and glasses. Nobody introduced us. XD
"Well you guys have fun! See ya!" Alice said, and I said "See ya tomorrow" and he bounced off. I'm glad he has fun on his day off. And now knowing he likes Dir en grey AND Amano, I wonder what can be done to become his BFF.

Big Jon and I penetrated further into the show to find this intimidating looking sign on the wall:

I took this photo and emailed it to four people demanding to know what it said. Within twenty minutes I got a reply: "Only people who purchased a work of art will receive a ticket to the autograph session."
GOD. MY DOWNFALL. Cash.
This was not just a show, as evidenced by a total of TWO original works hanging up. It was mostly a sale of prints--giclee, for the most part, which is Italian for "printed on a printer". And how much do you think a print of one of his Vampire Hunter D illustrations (and baby, he brought almost every single one) goes for (framed and signed in pencil)?

2,400,000 yen.
To put that in perspective, that's quite close to my yearly salary.
The cheapest print I saw was in the range of 850,000 yen and the highest one I saw was 2,650,000 yen. Take off two zeroes from those prices to find an approximate USD amount.
There were also a few tiny paintings (chibi things and "moogles"--they look like teddy bears--, painted on a stretched canvas about 4x4 inches) that were labeled PLEASE INQUIRE. And if the standard print was $25,000, how high is PLEASE INQUIRE?
Don't worry! They also have a payment plan listed on the price paper. A mere 18,000 yen a month for 59 months, for some of the middle-range prints (about 1,100,000 yen), plus 50,000 yen down. You're paying it off for five years.

I have never, ever been so close to buying a ten thousand dollar print in my life. Dangerous.

So the sign says only people who buy a print get an autograph which I think is some ol bull crap. IT'S ALREADY SIGNED! But reading between the lines I realize access to Amano sensei will be severely restricted and this is not going to be a hand-shaking type event.
Big Jon had to leave for another appointment so I was left to fend for my own with no Ryu, no Big Jon, just my very heavy bag and kimono and my determination not to pass out in the crowded, hot little room. My feet hurt like a horrible beast too because I was wearing the notorious black zori I wore in Kyoto. They are no more worn-in than they were when I pulled them out of the box. God they're like some kind of Chinese Water Torture Shoe.

So I spent some time walking around the exhibition and looking at every piece twice, looking at how he worked the solutions to backgrounds, hair, blending colors, water, shadow, hands, mixed blacks, etc. Eventually I pulled out my sketchbook and took some notes on how he draws birds, wings, eyes, blah de blah. It's bad form to take focus away from the artist at his own show, but a foreigner standing in front of a painting, in flambois red kimono, drawing parts of the art, got some comments like "wow, she's sketching it... amazing... look at that. That girl behind you is sketching. ooooh."

After some time Amano emerged with a thin, serious looking woman they said was his manager. The MC introduced him, everyone applauded, and Amano spoke very briefly and in a low voice about the Chaos painting. The MC then said "Everyone with a ticket for an autograph, please line up over here."
So he wasn't just signing stuff, he was drawing a character of your choice on a paper board and signing it. I saw a few moogles, a 'D', a Terra, etc. He was spending one to two minutes on each, but it still was a lot of people. To my surprise I even saw some young girls up there--a girl in a full pink dress with big scary hair, and two girls in pinstripe pants and hats who were squealing and sounded like they were sobbing while talking. They must have been college students. College students with ten thousand dollars to buy an art print? Did their daddies buy it for them??
The crowd was very close and very hot, and I realized that I'd never get a chance to give Amano sensei the present I brought for him (a freshly printed copy of "Ro", from my Nihon no Tenshi series) at this rate. So I took the opportunity to trot back to the front desk. If you don't know something, the best way to find out is to ask.

"Please excuse me," I said to the desk girl, "but my Japanese isn't very good, and--"
at this point she actually blinked and shook her head quickly, like when you have a fly on it. "Yes it is," she said in tones of astonishment, "It's very good."
"Not really, thank you. I'm sorry but, how can I give a present to sensei?"
"You have to buy a print to receive an autograph present," the other desk girl said automatically, because she hadn't really been listening.
"No," my desk girl said.
"No," I said at the same time.
"You want to give a present to Amano sensei. Okay, I think if you give it to the staff they can give it to him. Let me ask them about it."
Within seconds she came back with a young guy in a suit, about my age, who had been handling *security*, sales, gofering and all the other little odd jobs that came with the exhibition.
I pulled out my print and everyone suddenly went "aaaaaahh."
"Is this handmade?" asked the desk girl.
"Is this a block print?" asked the staff guy.
I answered that it is, and they called the other staff over to look at it, the staff guy told me my Japanese was good, he examined it carefully and asked me how to pronounce my name. He seemed genuinely interested in it. I was embarrassed, excited, overwhelmed, enthralled, and it all came out as shyness, which works well with kimono. :)

The staff guy led me back through the crowd, my print in his hands. My heart was pounding. He left me in a corner while he made some quick calls on his cell phone, talked to some other staff people, showed my print around and pointed me out, and all this while Amano was STILL signing paper boards for people.
After several minutes the staff guy zipped back over to me (I think they are hired for their prowess at crowd-penetrating speed), and said "When Amano sensei comes back this way, you can give it to him yourself. It's ok. Understand?"
I thanked him profusely because, obviously, nobody else could even speak to Amano without spending at least nine thousand dollars. In the few minutes between being abandoned by the staff and the end of the signing, I managed to get a single photo of Amano:
I see my genius assessment of color was dead-on. He is wearing a red shirt. XD
As he finished the signing, the staff people led him down the edge of the stage and against the wall, literally holding out their arms to block people from coming over. One clever fanboy managed to slip in--he darted in front of me with his own paper board and marker, and said "Please sign this for me."
Amano started to shake his head and refuse, and a staff girl put her arms against the guy to push him away, but with a resigned shake of his head Amano sensei took the proffered marker and scrawled his signature on the board, then quickly turned to leave. The staff girl was actually blocking other hopefuls from doing the same thing, when suddenly a second staff woman, standing beside Amano sensei, said over the crowd to me (in English!!!) "Did you want to give your print to Amano sensei?"
"Yes," I said, and the arm-wall melted in front of me and Amano turned around as the staff woman said something quietly to him as debriefing.

My perception of time slowed down and the noise and crush of the crowd disappeared, like they say happens to soldiers in battle. I was wildly concerned about the appearance of my kimono.
I said, carefully and clearly, "Sensei ni, present o agemasu" (I give a present to Sensei) which was actually a sentence I learned in Japanese class, and never ever thought I would have occasion to use. I held out the print, covered in tracing paper which is professional, and he bowed and accepted it in both hands.
"Arigatou gozaimasu." He said something I didn't catch.
"Hanga desu," (It's a block print), I said.
"What's the medium?" the staff girl asked me in WHAT THE--- HIGH LEVEL ENGLISH where did that come from?
Amano sensei had peeled back the tracing paper to look at it, and was nodding the *this is decent, Grasshopper* nod of approval that meant he wouldn't immediately chuck it in the trash. I understand that nod both from art school and from Ryuji's expressions.
"Giclee?" guessed the staff girl, looking at it.
"Chigau," (wrong), Amano sensei said immediately and positively, and showed her the texture of the paint.
"Iie," (no), I said at the same time.
"Hanga to... acryl," (block print with Acrylics) I said, feeling lame, and knowing my few seconds were closing.
"Ahh, Acryl." Amano sensei replied. He was satisfied. He bowed to me. "Arigatou gozaimasu."
This nearly gave me a brain aneurysm (he was being very polite, but YOSHITAKA AMANO WAS BOWING AND THANKING ME WITH MY ART IN HIS HAND) and I bowed carefully and said "Arigatou gozaimashita, sumimasen" (Thank you so much, pardon me).
He turned and left with the staff people and disappeared backstage.
I had meant to say "Itsumo arigatou" (thank you for always/everything) but my brain a-sploding.

I hung around for another half an hour, to see if he would reemerge, but he did not.
Eventually I left. I could have stayed later to see if I could get a signature out of him, and hung around the room more. I'd been there three hours which is not a long stretch for me when it comes to waiting for people (Yeah, I waited for over 6 hours in L.A. to see Dir en grey--and that was outdoors), but I didn't want to be the annoying weirdo who crosses the line from being eccentrically interesting (kimono and her own art, and she got to speak to Amano for free!) to stalker fangirl (who also demands a signature, and attacks him as he's trying to go home, destroying all ideas of her being polite and sane).

I do pat myself on the back for making the right choice with the print I gave him. It's not really inspired by Amano himself, more than any of my other work is. It's block print, so not ripping off his style and looking like fan-art. "Ro" is also a very accessible image, IMO-- flowing, graceful, a bit spooky with the floating skulls and branches, but balanced and edgy. I spent a couple of hours last night trying to get a good print off that block because of the heavy black background. In the end i had to do some repair brushwork, but it turned out all right--it's obvious to any artist where I did touchups, but it doesn't ruin the piece.

If you've forgotten him, here is Ro:
So I left the place feeling like I'd been crying, but in fact I had not.
When I got home and out of that kimono, I ate some strawberries and crashed for a couple of hours.
But basically, I've met the two people I came to Japan for--my favorite band and Amano. Incredible how this stuff works out if you keep hoping for it. I think I can go die now.

Weird shuffle

2010-04-28T18:09:00.001+09:00

My ipod is weird. I have it on "shuffle all songs" and it does this:

458 of 2698
The Nightmare Before Christmas: This Is Halloween

459
Van Halen: Drum Solo

460
Gorillaz: DARE

461
Gorillaz: Demon Days

462
Balzac: Out Of The Blue II

463
Balzac: In Your Face

464
Green Day: Hold On

465
Green Day: Nice Guys Finish Last

466
BOMB FACTORY: Holiday

467
BOMB FACTORY: CRACK

After that was katamari music. Okay, out of nearly 3000 songs, what are the odds that it would play doubles of 4 bands IN A ROW? That's staggering. Weird.

- Posted from my iPhone

Deep Sleep

2010-04-23T17:47:00.001+09:00

Deep sleep, as we know, is when the body does the most physical repair and rest. There are no dreams in deep sleep. The brain works out problems and cogitates in REM sleep which is not so far below wakefulness.

Since I downloaded the Sleep Cycle analyzer for my iphone, I've used it pretty much every night and noticed some fascinating trends.
This is a typical night of good sleep, with normal sleep cycles.

Here it took me a while to get to sleep (i had coffee after work) and then turned over a normal number of times at night.

This is a night of exhausted sleep after new kids classes, bowling and going out with friends, when i stayed up too late and was physically trashed.

According to this, i fell asleep within minutes, rolled over once, and slept like a dead man until Yakkun woke me up at 7:30 by beating on his cage to come ooouuutt. I gave him a treat instead and collapsed back into bed.

Last night I used the Binaural Beats app on my phone, which generates vibrations that affect brainwaves while listening to them. Google it.
The iphone can't multitask, so i can't use Binaural Beats AND the sleep analyzer, but because of the healing cut on my leg, I used the Beat for "Deep Sleep" and set it for 35 minutes.
I fell asleep immediately listening to the buzz-buzz and woke up when it turned off.
I scrabbled sleepily for the Sleep Analyzer, set it in my bed, and crashed again.
And as you see, I spent most of the night in deep sleep:

How cool is that?

- Posted from my iPhone

Goldfish self tattoo

2010-04-16T18:50:00.001+09:00

Today I figured it's been a while since I did a self tattoo so I got on that. I even took photos to show you. Isn't that nice of me?

I spent a while looking for photos of common goldfish, like the ones I had in junior high. They were good people. ;(
First, I draw the design, then trace it on purple carbon paper. That transfers onto my leg with Speed Stick deodorant. Specifically Speed Stick. I don't know why.

Cute.
I decided to put it on my calf, near the lil octopus, because I want to use white and that area has fewer nerves than the top of the thigh.
Next I prep my machine.

The needle itself is in the paper pack. The machines run off a power source connected by what looks like a teeny jumper cable. If my glove is wet I'll get a little zap from the cables. I only had to make that mistake once.

Slide the needle into the tube and make sure it's facing the right way or it'll spit ink everywhere...

Then put the tube in the machine and tighten the clamp really well, or the tube will slooowwwllyy slide up under pressure of my hand, lengthening the needle and scaring the bejeezus out of me.

when I push on the little arm lever, I can see how much actual needle will emerge from the end of the tube. This is correct--about 2 mm. This is the depth of the needle in the skin.

Damp paper towel rag for wiping and an array of inks. The second black there is 50% mixed with water to make a grey.

Ok let's go!

Starting the lines.
Because the machine is basically a fountain pen, it goes bbbllluurrbbbbllgh and lots of ink pools on my skin as I go. This is the main function of the wiping rag.

The lines are pretty good, but I'm all inky!

There. Cleaned with spray soap and water.

Ooh, now with greys! This is done with a stronger machine and a bigger needle cluster (14 needle tips instead of 5).

A little ochres and warm reds for a bit of tone...

And the whites! They're hard to see because of the skin irritation, so I'm taking a break to let this skin settle before I pack more white in there. White is a difficult color to use and takes a lot of patience and recoloring. Thats why I chose an insensitive spot to do this fishie.

- Posted from my iPhone

quick question response

2010-04-13T12:27:00.002+09:00

Questions from Nana:

How is your busy life going?
Oh.. it's busy. K is leaving tomorrow and I've been helping her as much as my schedule will allow. Currently several of her boxes are resting in my room. There have been meetings for teachers and many trainings/meetings etc. I had to hurry to finish K's back tattoo, and went to the "housewarming" party for the new branch tattoo shop that was just opened. Also various social demands like going-away parties.

Is Mig still there?
Yep.
If he leaves I either gotta get a new roommate or a new apartment.

Are you now employed by the tattoo salon?
No, and if I were it would be a breach of my visa. However, if i could get my boss to SPONSOR my visa and take me as a full time employee, I could quit teaching English.

Are you doing any other drawing?
Yes, but not a lot.

How's the teaching going?
I don't know yet. The new school year starts today. I have to worry about five new school directors and a thousand new kids, including several class levels I've never taught before.

When do you get a vacation and what do you plan to do?
I don't get a vacation til the beginning of May, when we have "Golden Week" which is actually seven days off. I plan to roll around slowly and die of stress.
Or maybe I'll go into the tattoo shop every day and mope until they sponsor my visa. ...?

Some sakura

2010-04-06T19:14:00.001+09:00

Click for bigger

Managerial Dog is managing.

Steamed po-tay-toes

- Posted from my iPhone

Saxophone

2010-03-22T00:47:00.002+09:00

What's special about this garage door?

About 10:30 at night, there's a guy behind it practicing the saxophone for the benefit of the empty street.

Yakkun and Ginsburg playtime

2010-03-15T00:12:00.001+09:00

Hope this HTML works.

I love watching these two flail around. :D

Three views of Handa

2010-03-11T19:50:00.001+09:00

All taken yesterday. Its almost spring now.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:１丁目,Handa City,Japan

I cant japanese

2010-03-08T17:13:00.001+09:00

Wednesday, i went to the mall in Kami Otai to get more ferret food before work. Its about an hour there, including train transfers and walking.
They didnt have tge brand Yakkun is eating, so i got another one that he used to eat as a baby.
No go. He sniffed it but wouldnt touch it. His favorite place to eat, currently, is off a paper towel in a corner of the kitchen where he can cram his butt behind a bookshelf and munch in seclusion.

I still had enough food for one or two days, but the girl at the pet store said they wouldnt have more of his brand until next week. Dang it all.

Friday i used my last recourse, the pet store at Nagoua dome (50 minutes each way, subway and walking). After getting allll the way there, i saw they'd rearranged and moved the pet supplies, and they also didnt have his brand.
I spent a minute or two hugging a ferret who woke up in the playpen (FERRETS 56000 yen please be careful of your hands) and tried to infiltrate my sleeve. First it was "pick me up pick me up pick me up" and after 30 seconds of "Im getting attention!!!" it became "put me down put me down but Nooooo NOT BACK IN THE PEN PUT ME ON THE FLOOR DAMNNNNN!!"
And he stood up against the playpen wall and stepped all over his sleeping cagemates and bounced around trying to get me to pick him up again and all the ferrets woke up and said "out! Out! Out out out out out HUUUMAAAN" so i quickly escaped.

The only staff girl in sight was feeding baby parakeets by eyedropper so we had the following very embarrassing conversation in Japanese. I had no coffee, not enough sleep, and i was worried about the food, so most of my Japanese was destroyed:
"Wheres the ferret food?" (i said 'ferret no gohan wa?' which also means 'Regarding the ferret food..?')
"Yes. Its out there, on the right."
"Yes, but..."
"Just go out there and its in the place on the right. We moved it out of this shop."
"I understand. But.."
(a pause)
"Red... There isnt a red bag." (huge embarrassment from being unable to prepare a sentence whatsoever)
"Eh? Ok..Let me see. " she sets down the parakeet who is still squeaking for food and rushes out to look.
She touches the brand I want..
"That brand. That brand, but, different one.. 'Performance'.."
"Ah! Just a moment." she runs off.
I spend an anxious minute or two looking at ferret treats. Finally she comes back with it in her arms and my Japanese improves dramatically.
"This one, you mean?"
"Oh, thank goodness! Yes, thats it. My ferret is a weirdo and only
wants this brand."

- Posted from my iPhone

Kyoto 3

2010-02-23T20:45:00.002+09:00

This is Mibu Dera (Mibu Temple) which houses the small teeny shrine/side building for the Shinsengumi (who lived in this neighborhood 150 years ago) and which is attached to the garden where the statue of Isami Kondo is. whew

It was starting to get dark and cold at 4 pm and it is not even funny how much my feet hurt at this point.

Right near Kyoto station we found this awesome lotus fountain, with a streetlight that was not really this green, but in every photo it looked extremely green. Nothing we can do about it. Green photos. We planned to come back in the morning in our second kimono outfits and take more photos here.
-

Did you know Lipton tea makes cafes?? Well you do now.
This is in the basement of Kyoto station, where the shopping is (just like Nagoya station, but with a modicum more good taste and less psychotic clothing...but that's why I like Nagoya better, always). It was weird enough to stop and look at.

But when we went around the front of the cafe, we saw they also make Lipton CAKES, and we paused for a second longer than we should have, and we ended up going in.
Japanese cake is like no cake I ever had in America. Of course, its not $5 a slice in America either.
I got the ５つのべーりタート。 (5 berry tart). I found raspberries on it. RASPBERRIES. You don't even know. I would non-lethally hurt someone for a raspberry at this point. That girl over there, I'd smack her right in the eye for a raspberry. Hooooly crap.

Or you could have parfaits? Only $9 each!

Posted from my iPhone

Kyoto 2

2010-02-23T20:41:00.003+09:00

In the Nishijin textile museum, you can try painting on silk or handweaving. There are some Master Craftsmen of Traditional Japanese Arts sitting around there painting cranes on silk or what have you. They all have a little sign in front of their tables proclaiming their Master Craftsman title. That's no joke in this country, methinks.
One of The Master Craftsman of Traditional Arts handed me a brush and a piece of silk on a stretcher frame and said "Oh, great kimono! It's very cute! Here, you can try painting something too. Go on, go on, anything's fine," so i painted a botan flower on this thingy. As you know, the motifs of traditional tattoo and kimono are the same. As you know, I've been drawing this stuff ten hours a week since April.

After a few moments the Sensei asked to see, and was floored by my botan (really? Lol) and then we had a great conversation-- (in Japanese--) "Why are you so good at drawing?! What is this?! Why can you draw like this?! It's a botan!! Why?!"
"Uh... I was an illustration student..."
"You're a student?! Are you a student of textiles and clothing??"
"Um.. um, no, I'm an English teacher. I live in Nagoya."
"WHAT?! ...Didn't you study textiles and clothing design? Only illustration? What?? eh... Ehhhh...."
"Um, I like kimono a lot, so that's why I can draw a botan."
"Ehhhhhhhhhh....!"
and he added a wasp to my drawing...

When I sorta finished (K was getting antsy), he stamped it with his hanko and gave it to me. Yay!! Now if I get an apprenticeship with him, I can quit my job and move to Kyoto!
No, wait, then I couldn't work at the tattoo shop. :( Oh nooooo~~~
-

After that, we.... Got lost.... In Mibu. Even asking a cop and an old man on a bicycle didn't work. Time for Google maps... Thank god we've both got iPhones.
Might I mention at this point my feet HURT. A. LOT.

So we crossed these loopy train tracks. This is what it looks like when you get lost in Mibu. Houses forever. K started doing the "this looks familiar" thing that always gets me so lost. But the temple we were trying to find is literally buried in the center of a big big block of residential buildings, and you just have to wend your way toward it through the alleys and gardens until you somehow stumble upon it.

Omg we finally found Isami Kondo! The founder and leader of the Shinsengumi (a sort of government-sponsored group of samurai assassins and "peacekeepers" and spies and what-nots in the intensely dangerous and politically chaotic period called the Bakumatsu, in the 1850's-ish. I don't know much about the history but K is a big fat Shinsengumi otaku.), known for his ironic eyebrow expression... (?)
I do desperately wonder why they carved him like that. It's really unlike the normal stoic expression in 99.9% of Japanese busts.
This guy accomplished SO much, they (the govt. I believe, unless it was mutineers. Or ninja. They had ninja.) murdered him in Tokyo, sent his head on a stick to Kyoto, and forgot where they buried the rest of him! That's accomplishment!

K had to buy some incense for him and talk to him a while, though her Japanese is not so great and I'm pretty sure Kondo didn't speak English. But the love is there.

Posted from my iPhone

Kyoto trip 1

2010-02-23T20:35:00.002+09:00

On the way to Kyoto, we stopped at this train station in space....

We made it to Abe no Seimei's shrine, at the site where he died almost exactly a thousand years ago (1008~1010, Heian period). He was a court astrologer and magician, which in those times probably meant math and science. I like to believe he could throw fireballs.
He seemed to have a sense of humor.

Seimei's sense of humor includes living at the ass-end of Nowhere, Kyoto (currently the shrine is situated between a parking lot and a gas station), engaging in magical battles with rival magicians (slapping each others' reflections in a basin of water to try to damage the REFLECTION--yes, these are nobles we're talking about, who had nothing better to do), and choosing this goofy koma-inu to guard his home...
If ever I saw a koma inu that says "durr hurr", this is the one.

possibly my ancestor??

- Posted from my iPhone

Emma by Jane Austen

2010-02-18T21:31:00.000+09:00

On my DS ive got a particularly educational software, "100 Classic Novels" which is a couple of steps above e-book reading (which i have on my phone). More than a year ago I decided to slog through all 100 of these novels alphabetically by title.
So far ive made it through about a billion pages of Dickens, a little Shakespeare, "The Black Arrow", "Call of the Wild", "The Count of Monte Cristo", etc.

I'm in the E's now with "Emma" and my god, Jane Austen is nothing like shes cracked up to be. Her brain-meltingly tedious transcriptions of conversations between middle-society "gentlemen" and "ladies", Emma's feeble and pathetic father and the way she dotes on his requests for gruel, and the general obsession with arranging marriages based on societal status, good breeding, manners, the methods used in polite conversation used to precisely ascertain just HOW genteel or gentlemanly someone IS, creating love in the bosoms of blushing maidens of "suitable" "temperament", the convoluted crap Emma gets up to in order to orchestrate meetings between compatable ladies of society, and the conversations about dresses, milliners, carriages, and the like, is like this sentence continuing this way for another 1300 pages.

Basically it has me wound up to a frothing bloodlust and aching for a good old fashioned Persian massacre with all the beheadings and stuffing.

I cant understand who can sit through all this repulsive aggressively idle femininity in order to determine that "Emma is a proud and outspoken independant and flawed heroine who has been a favorite in literature for many generations."

Classic literature is, yeah... I think i need a really different temperament to tolerate it. I lije Dickens well enough, but Ms Austen is making her way up my shite-list. :(

- Posted from my iPhone

A few more Polaroids

2010-02-09T13:07:00.000+09:00

I continue to use the Polaroid application on my phone, as it gives me great contrast and color effects. Heres a few more photos ive taken recently.

B2F of the skyscraper that houses my Monday workplace. Its got a cafe and some ramen shops.

Commute on the subway, last week.

Nagoya station column as seen from the yellow line train.

Coworker's kids class. These boys are notoriously naughty. They pull shenanigans every week.

The junior high class i split-shift teach with a japanese teacher. They are taking a listening/reading test now. Poor things suffer so much. :P

Happy Setsubun! The priest in the fancy kimono is tapping a gong, and the people in blue vests are tossing handfuls of dried beans into the crowd below, which is made up 100% of rude old people over 70. They are clustered together, shoving, holding up paper bags and boxes to catch the beans. By boxes i mean corrugated shipping crates, not shoeboxes. No, i had no chance to get anywhere near the beans themselves. I couldnt even get on the elevator at the station because i got an elbow in the chest from an old man behind me who COULD NOT WAIT to get on the elevator ahead of me, even though he'd been waiting four people behind me. By the eay, he wasnt the only one who bodily shoved me out of the way. I feel like i really should have slapped him in the face. Is that how your mama taught you to behave to girls??
Yeah, happy Setsubun.
If you get the beans, you can eat them as-is. Theyre dry roasted soybeans. They drive out illnesd and 'demons' and bring good luck. Thats worth pushing a girl against a wall for! Yay!

Sleepy couple on the train...
Everybody sleeps on the train, but you really dont see couples much. Its disturbingly Puritan in that way. Couples generally seem miserable or terrified of each other. And the newspapers are shrieking about the plummeting birth rate.
Its nice to see people smiling and obviously happy together. Seeing crowds of people pointedly ignoring each other every day gets old fast.
So i even feel better when i find the clots of giggling-drunk businessmen in the trains late at night. So long as theyre happy...

- Posted from my iPhone

"Polaroids"

2010-01-27T18:11:00.001+09:00

I found a new app for my iPhone that applies a frame and color effects to my photos that makes them look like old Polaroids. Im having a great time with this. For you with iphones, the app is called ShakeIt.

- Posted from my iPhone

New work

2010-01-27T17:00:00.000+09:00

This is on Jen's waist/hip. She has an interesting bit of old scarring that she wanted covered or integrated, from bone-marrow surgery, and I said why not.
The scar area was very strange to work on, texturally. Its very stretchy, but only in one direction. So the liner needle had a lot of trouble going through the corrugated texture, but the coloring needle didn't. My theory is that, the shader being a wide cluster of 14 needles, it stamped and held down the skin rather than trying to drag through it. In any case we worked for 4--5 hours on this piece and got it all done in one sitting. Yaay! My arms were SO tired after this...

Second: more work on k. Her backpiece is getting bigger and bigger...

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Handa City,Japan

Koto

2010-01-08T11:23:00.001+09:00

This is the kanji for "koto". I always think it looks like a laughing face.
Its written so big because its on a huge box containing a koto, which is standing (on its nose, presumably) in my entryway.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:My hallway

New Years snow

2010-01-03T22:55:00.001+09:00

New years eve it started snowing in the afternoon. I was so psyched. I went out in the evening to get some party food and found snow going on beautifully near the temple.

In a few hours, this place would be packed with people....

To kill time, first, we (mig, tommie and i) played with the new Wii. The boys played a kind of swordfighting kendo sports game first that had them flailing like idiots. I found this entertaining.
Click to play....

A bit before midnight we, and a few other buddies, went back down to Osu Kannon for midnight. It was pouring snow. Awesome!!

And crowded. And whats with the umbrellas?? Its SNOW!

Yaaay Happy Nuu Year! Its the year of the Tiger now.
After this we came back to my place, ate, played Pictionary, drank, etc. Most everyone went home around 3. Mig went to bed soon after. I stayed up til 6:30, reading, waiting for the First Sunrise. Its televised from various scenic places in Japan, like a helicopter over Fuji.
Yes i COULD try to see the sunrise from my apartment, smart guy, but my building faces South and theres a huge skyscraper to the east of me.
So i CANT actually see it. Ha.
I went to bed at 7 and slept in lik crazy. Heh.

Posted from my iPhone

Location:２丁目,Nagoya City,Japan

Three tattoos finished

2009-12-30T12:36:00.007+09:00

Well I've got three tattoos done on other people I can show you.

Hummingbird for Kaori, at the shop. She had a hibiscus with small tribal anklet on that leg, which she got in Australia, so she thought a hummingbird would match it well. I was ecstatic at how smoothly and easily this tattoo went. The skin there is very tight so I didn't have to fight with stretching it. The colors came out great and I could really relax into the process and judge my coloration carefully. This whole thing took about an hour.
I love this job!

This rather traditional swallow and set of three kiku (chrysanthemum) is the beginning of a mostly floral backpiece for my friend K.
The placement is high on the left shoulder.
She's thinking about also adding, underneath, ume (plum blossom) and some botan (peony) which I'm getting good at.
That lower kiku, apparently, was the most painful spot for her!
This tattoo taught me a lot about where skin stretches and how to control it. I had to fight with it a lot and there are some areas I want to redo the lines, and I want to do a little shading on the kiku, but she'll be around til spring time so I can drag her in to the shop any time. I've already drawn up the ume branches, so now I just have to get her back on that table. heehee.

I wish I had a later photo of this without the little bits of blood, because I put white in the ends of the petals that I think must show up now that it's healed. But I just have to trust to my modicum of experience because this tattoo has walked out of the shop and I haven't seen it since.

This sakura is on the upper left leg. The design evolved from a page full of falling sakura and petals, to the few done here. It was my first experience having a client walk in with most of an idea and walk out with a finished piece.

The adrenaline that pumped through me as I frantically designed, cropped, inked, colored and traced was enough to have my hands shaking. It was six parts excitement and three parts terror and one part glorious triumph: A feeling I haven't had since working in the studio in college and GETTING IT, really getting a good piece and KNOWING it.

I'm not 100% happy with the finished flowers because some of them are wobbly, and when I told her "let's let the stencil dry a few minutes, please sit over there" she pulled her woolen tights back up over it and sat down and the entire stencil smudged off and disappeared. o_o So I was kind of flying blind at that point.

I've got two more clients lined up--another teacher i know from work who wants a swallow and sakura on her lower back/side, and another coworker of my friend's (different company) who wants a coverup on her upper chest/collarbone that might reach up to touch her shoulder--another swallow, with sort of wind-lines. My birds are getting popular.
yaaay!

Of course, it helps that I'm giving them away for free and I'm a decent artist on top of that. But there is intense satisfaction in seeing notebooks and portfolios filling up at a steady rate even though I've left the college studios. As it should! I know. But it's satisfying to DO it.

Xmas kimono

2009-12-26T18:01:00.002+09:00

Ok, im dressed for xmas. Lets do this thing.

I love this obi!

But k is cuter than anybody...
And in the subway, Misa and -rakugoreport- are sleepy cuz they had to get up so early to come over. Sorrryyyy!

We took -nexocentric- in his fancy kimono with us, to the zoo!

Oh dear, looks like we're getting married. XD

Corrrrrnnnn dooooggggs! The nice old ladies at the zoo were so happy to see kimono.

K and -rakugoreport- toddled sweetly thru the winter dead rose garden.
Then we posed on the stairs.

Like good girls.
Or stoopid girls.

Heehee!

This little gazebo was begging to be used.... K's kimono matches very well!

I found tha window!

And the requisite animal-face photo....

Lols
When we got home, k and i decorated this spongecake we bought.

Yummmyyyy
And merry xmas from the delinquents at nagoya station!

Location:２丁目,Nagoya City,Japan

New Years Cards

2009-12-13T22:15:00.002+09:00

My back hurts.
This never happens. This is rare. But my lower back hurts and its a crampy, awful pain like my lower vertebrae are about to throw up.
Anyway today ive been printing up my New Years cards cuz i dont know when else ill really do it. I went to LOFT, the most dangerous store in the world. Six floors of "househood goods and supplies". But its as far from k-mart as Neiman Marcus is.
They have makeup and shampoo, but its imported, organic, brilliantly designed and packaged and /or aggressively unique. They have lamps, which are collapsible, goosenecked, made of recycled beach glass or teddy bears or shaped like Chinese flowers. They have a whole floor of stationery and stickers and day planners. They have hundreds of beanbag chairs in every shape from banana to jellyfish and covered in suede, velveteen, boingy lycra, vinyl, or canvas... And of course the best art supplies ive seen in Nagoya, with a very Japanese focus on woodblock printing supplies, origami, watercolors and comic artists supplies.
As i said its a very dangerous shop but i escaped with only one thing i didnt plan on buying and only spent about $18. I think i deserve a cookie for this.

Millions of rub on toner and pattern sheets for manga.

Premeasured manga paper, white ink, pens and templates.

Holbein artists dolls and Dr PH Martins colored inks in every hue named after flowers, mostly. Also sepia, grey and black pens and refills.

And of course Copic alcohol based illustrators markers, 399 yen each. Or a set of 12 for 4,788 yen. Or a set of 36 for 14,364 yen. Or hell, why not the set of 144 colors for a mere 57,456 yen??
In dollars, that would be...
1 marker- $4.47
12- $53.69
36- $161.09
144- $644.34

I recommend you watch for sales.
I went to LOFT for blank watercolor paper postcards and red ink (paint). Luckily i found it.

See, im printing like a pro. Go me. Ive done about 25 so far and another 10 sure wouldnt hurt. I killed two cards, one by dropping (smeared) and the other because the block was clogged with ink which absorbed into the paper and dissolved and tore when i peeled it from the block. Dammmmmnnnn. It was a good print too.

If you want one youd better make sure i know your address.

- Posted from my iPhone

2009-12-07T00:45:00.002+09:00

The vet on friday said Yakkun had no fever, ergo no infection, so no real reason not to eat (it seems). He got a booster pill of some kind which i think was supportive antibiotics.
Yesterday he was out of sorts and didnt eat well or even want soup. I was panicked until i remembered the pill, which might have been antibiotics, which might upset his tummy, besides his messed up sleeping schedule. This morning he finally ate food in the kitchen, without me having to feed him each piece and fight this brain-wrecking anorexia.
So in great relief i went out with K after waking her up via doorbell (id been calling and texting her for hours, knowing she must be sleeping, haha-- messages like "wake up wake up wake up wake up" and "bing!! Bing!! Bing!!") and suggested (i brought coffee over too, which smoothed negotiations) we wear our hakama sets we bought a month ago.
Its not cold particularly, but at night the temp drops surprisingly. So we were really warm enough in our several polyester and cotton layers.

Gee im so cute i could vomit. Click for bigger....
Heres k!

If youre wondering about the construction, its a regular kimono worn as normal, though pulled up a bit short- say ankle length. The hakama is a skirt split at the sides like the mens pants type hakama, and there are ties on the front and back waistbands which are tied on separately. The hakama are tied around the obi bow as an anchor. The obi cant be seen except a small slice of it at the sides.

My collar is giving me so much crap!! As usual! Its perfectly flat today, which seems dependant on luck instead of skill, but its wayyy too open! It should be like k's and come up to my throat. But when i tighten the under- kimono then the collar comes forward too much in the back or starts sliding down my chest and getting baggy which is probably worse. K is theorizing that our gaijin shoulders are too square and dont slope as they "should" to keep the collar placed right. Its the only thing we havent figured out how to overcome. The boobs, hips, waist, light eyes, height, all can be adjusted for if you just wrap and accessorize and pad and smash properly. We are considering shoulder padding along with the lower back padding we really should wear. :(
Its unacceptable to have a female figure in kimono... The PROPER IDEAL shape is a perfect column. Butts sticking out is bad, boobs falling over the top of the obi is very bad. The PROPER IDEAL womans figure is shown by her wrist, the movement of her sleeves, and the nape of her neck.

I like playing with the colors, but of course i have no patience for feminine ideals. My hakama pants are much more satisfying and comfortable to wear. I mean i can sit cross legged in them, and thats a selling point.

This is what jumped on me this morning:

- Posted from my iPhone

To the vet again

2009-12-04T11:31:00.002+09:00

Yakkun has been weirdly off his food for a few days, so hes been getting a lot of ferret-soup (his favorite. He begs for it now). But in the last few days hes been accepting his crunchy food if i put ferret-vite paste on each piece and feed him by hand.
However, yesterday and today he didnt take the food. He ate soup enthusiastically, so i gave him a fiber-capsule in the soup to pass thru any suspicious hairballs or what not.
I got nothing for my effort but an amount of poop and hes still not eating his kibbles. Because ferrets can develop bleeding ulcers within a day or two of not eating, he must eat something and stay hydrated.
So i called the vet, who speaks english, and got his staff, who do not. But we muddled through and eventually the vet got to me and asked me to bring him in.
So here we go!

- Posted from my iPhone

2009-12-03T19:42:00.002+09:00

This morning Yakkun woke up ridiculously early (like, before 8 am) when Mig got up for work. I didnt have to get up anywhere near that time, so i tossed Yakkun a treat and went back to bed. When i woke up much later, the ferret was deep in another sleep cycle and of course now he doesnt want to get up!
Yawwwwnnnn

Ahhg.... There he is!

- Posted from my iPhone

Day off

2009-12-01T20:52:00.002+09:00

My personnel boss called this morning to ask if i wanted to take a day off on dec. 24. That is supposed to be a work day, but a "buffer" day with no kids classes and no set schedule, just conversation lessons. Indeed, many schools outside the city will be closed.
We had the option, earlier, to take a paid vacation day (thus extending the winter break) or work that day.
It turns out, he said, that more teachers wanted to work than schools had requests for. So he was calling around to offer unpaid sick days or paid days (if you have any left--we get 5 a year). I decided to accept the 24th off unpaid and save myself the trouble of "off friday, work saturday, off sunday, work monday, work tuesday, off wednesday, work thursday, off friday and start winter break."
Geez.
The other brilliant purchase i made this month was a steam humidifier. They make ones that spit out cold mist, but they are a lot more expensive. Due to lack of outlets, my main concern is keeping the ferret from steam-boiling his little nose.

- Posted from my iPhone

Kimono sunday

2009-11-30T17:52:00.001+09:00

I only took a few pictures with my phone, but yesterday k and i went out to lunch in Sakae (downtown area of Nagoya) and i convinced her we needed to wear kimono for this. She didnt take much convincing on this point. She just bought two new kimono a few days ago that needed to be test driven...

K's cute outfit with ginko tree providing helpful contrast!
Heres mine, with new iromuji (no pattern, solid color) kimono:

Its a very pale yellow kimono. White is never worn, because its used to dress corpses for cremation. Ive heard that the condemned also wear white to the gallows.
Anyway we just recently figured out how to get a very nice fold in front without a bunched and lumpy double layer. It all involves origami.
Since k is leaving japan in the spring and i own 6 kimono, i need to practice asap.

- Posted from my iPhone

Breakfast

2009-11-28T09:01:00.002+09:00

This is my sad breakfast... 8:57 a.m. and dry soup. See how sad i am?

Boo hoo...

- Posted from my iPhone

Nagoya boys

2009-11-26T13:33:00.002+09:00

I found a set of pristine, mint-in-box Nagoya Boys at the train station. They are the paragon of Nagoya style, a sort of overaccessorized pigeon in full display, that is surpassed by the females of the breed, but not FAR surpassed.
This is an example of the fashions that have petered out in most of Japan, but are still preserved with tenacity in Nagoya. When I first arrived, i was stunned to see that all the boys look like Final Fantasy protagonists.

I briefly wondered if they're a band, but probably they're just going shopping. It's a real treat to see a boy-and-girl pair...i'll keep looking around.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Two photos of people

2009-11-25T23:29:00.002+09:00

Yes, i chased this woman down the street to get a photo of her cute kimono!

Photo taken in Handa city.

This happy couple was at the train station today. I like seeing the cuddling and giggling and poking. Theres not nearly enough of it in this uptight, paranoidly Puritan country.

Long update thing

2009-11-09T10:07:00.004+09:00

I got an email from Nana with questions about updates, so I'll see what I can come up with... this might be lonnnng.

"Did you get your contract renewed?"
I sent in my request for next year's schools, and told them I'd be coming back, but our contracts aren't renewed until April. So depending on what schools I like and what classes I'm assigned, I might get a good schedule next year.

"Did you enter the art show?"
Yep. It's non-juried and that shows. I tried to take some photos of the other submissions:

paintings by Alexndre J P Kochi

Paintings of Kanji by Hermann Pikus

Dinosaur/Modern movie pop art by Stu Nankivell

Photos of Brazil and Suica by Vanderlei Guedes

A huge painting made of all teeny little blobs of fabric paint or acrylic or something, by Kathryn Elizabeth Dewar

Red and blue paintings by Martin J Weaver

Photography by Susanne Bund

I tried to take photos of the good ones, and there was plenty of stuff there that was hobbyist or unprofessional or weekend-artist, and as I prophesied PLENTY of flowers in vases, photos of flowers, photos of Japanese people, and landscape paintings. Between my drawings and the clay/latex dinosaur, that was the most exciting art in the room.
K, my kimono friend, came with me yesterday to the closing 'party' at which I needed to take down my art. I wore a casual kimono for it, and she wore a black dress with a shawl, and a flower in her ponytail.
"Whatcha want to bet everyone will be in jeans?" I said as we were on the subway.
"Well, this kimono is the kimono-equivalent of jeans," she told me. But when we got there I saw one man in a suit, three skirts, and 30 pairs of jeans.
A couple of the jeans were paired with blazers, which I thought was acceptable. But the others had t-shirts and sneakers. K and I were wildly overdressed, but that one man in a suit nearly redeemed us. We got there too late for the food (they said the party was from 5:30 to 8, we got there at 7, and they were literally gesturing us off the tables so they could clean up and take everything away), so we drank the dregs of very cheap white wine and ate peanuts.
Yes, we went there for peanuts.
And to pick up my art.
heehee.

"What did you enter?"
Just my drawings...

Here's a couple of them:

etc. etc.! Of course they were very 'shocking' in that kind of environment (housewives painting sakura trees from the kitchen window), but... well.... deal with it.
The man in the suit kindly introduced himself to us--in fact, came right over to me and said "I've been enjoying your art all week" and introduced himself as Andy. Wait--he could pick me out of a crowd having only seen a tiny photo of me near my work....wow!
He said "The sophistication shows in it--did you study art?"
"I was an illustration major. thank you," I said. We shook hands and what-not.

After he politely left, K and I pow-wow'd that he probably also meant "the sophistication" of us in appropriate art-show clothing and not flopping around the room guffawing "I've had too much to drink!!!" in jeans like the other middle-aged white people.

Well, it sounds like I'm being slightly harsh, when in reality it was an un-juried, totally open, minimal cost show that was probably supposed to be more about making business connections and socializing with foreigners, rather than having An Art Show. I mean, it wasn't in the Matsuzakaya Department Store (they have gloved guards at the doors), it was in the cultural center.
But then again, the Embassy is also housed in that building, which we theorize is the safest place in case of zombie apocalypse. So for the sake of the Ambassadors we should conduct our Art Shows with a LITTLE decorum.

Anyway I went to art school and I know how to behave myself at a gallery opening and closing.

"Have you been very busy with tattooing?"
Yes!
This is the greatest and most satisfying thing in my life right now, apart from Yakkun, who is SO SQUISHY AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH KISS KISS KISS KISSKISS

This is a flat ferret. Sometimes after ferrets have been moving at a certain speed, feel bored, want water, need attention, or are trying to remember where they put something, they become flat. Nobody knows why.

Welll I finished my required self-tattoos although I would like to go back to them and add more and touch-up more as well. But it might be easier to get someone else to do it for me so I don't have to worry with stretching and holding the skin so much. :)
But since I finished those and Ryuji said "mm. good" I asked "Can I do one on Kaori?" she's another apprentice at the shop, a *real* apprentice who gets a uniform (I don't. I'm very sad. I'd have to work there every day, and I would very much LIKE TO work there every day, but Ryuji would have to sponsor my visa and pay me enough to pay my bills. I explained this to him so he knows I'm not being half-committed.).
But Kaori told me she'd like a hummingbird, which they don't have in Japan.

There are many kinds of hummingbirds in the world, but I told her I'd do the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird which I'm very familiar with. I was able to tell her some stories & descriptions of the hummingbirds I've seen.
So I was able to sit down with her and do this in an hour, start to finish, including cleanup:

It was easy!! :)
A week later it's healing well, peeling, and she said it was itchy, exactly as it should be. It looks like the color didn't come out, the lines didn't come out, and it's holding up well. My lines aren't perfect-they're a bit wobbly, but the colors are good and her skin was very good to work on. That area is easy, there's nothing to stretch. Yay!

And yesterday I brought K in to the shop to do one for her. It's her first one and she wanted a swallow with chrysanthemums. Here's a photo of it about 2/3 done:

It's blurry cuz it's my camera phone. Poor K was squeaking and yelping through the whole thing every time I got a good line (that is, a very smooth application of ink, into the proper layer of skin, without the needle skipping or going too shallow). It started to make me laugh because exactly as I could feel the proper texture with my hand, she would go "ow, ow oooaaaaaaaww" and I would get confirmation that it was a good line. So I got the giggles and she didn't know what was so funny until I explained it. :D

Here is what we accomplished yesterday:

I did the shading on the bird because it doesn't take long and doesn't hurt nearly as much as the linework. I changed to the shader-needle without telling her, and did one wing, the head, the body, and moved to the other wing before she said "Are you coloring?" hahaha

In three or four weeks we can move on to the color. The bird will be storm-blue with some ochre and purple in the wings, and the flowers will be red with yellow centers. I might put some white into the bird's lower face, just to make it pop a little, although white will fade within a few years. But K never gets a tan and always keeps her skin covered up from the sun, so it should be in excellent condition forever. Yay!!
We did this in about 2 hours. Those flowers took forever. heh

"Did you get a new assignment at teaching?"
No, it's the same stuff all the time. The classes go from April to April and it's just different combinations of the same stuff.

"How long is Miguel staying?"
I don't know. He goes back to NY a lot, which tells me he misses it. But he's got a Japanese girlfriend here and it's getting rather serious, so he's been talking about taking her back to America or Canada. Of course, no one wants to teach English forever.

" What do you do if he comes back to the US?"
I will extremely joyously get my own apartment or a new roommate.

I seem to be in an Art Show

2009-10-19T13:42:00.003+09:00

I forgot to mention I've been accepted to the "Nagoya International Center 24th Annual Foreign Artists' Exhibition". View at the bottom of this page.
It's hardly exclusive. Miguel encouraged/harassed me to enter, although I pointed out A.) I hardly have a body of work, and what I do have is ink drawings on paper that are A4 size or smaller, hardly gallery-size; B.) Real shows want your work mounted and/or framed, and the cost of that is extraordinarily prohibitive, not to mention once it's framed you'll never get it out, which leads me to B.1.) I don't have the space to store said framed art, it lives in a portfolio most of the time and nobody's buying it which would make up for the cost of framing and B.2.) I don't have any high-quality copies with which to replace my originals if they were framed and ergo restore my portfolio, or vice versa, and B.1.a.) The show instructions specifically say "all work must be originals".
And C.) Even if it's not a juried show it's gonna cost me to submit art.

Miguel ignored my totally justified reasoning and told me "just try it anyway" although I was already calculating how much mat-board and submission fees are going to eat my budget. I've done this twice already for Specialization Review (sophomore year) and making my portfolio (senior year) and it is NO fun at all. In fact I'd go so far as to say screw it. Purchasing, measuring, cutting, mounting and agonizing over mat-board is stupid stressful.

But I sent the email asking for an application, and when it came in the mail I filled it out. It only wanted my name, vitals, "Type of Art (required)" which meant media, and an "Artist Statement, please use space below". Okay, I made up some stuff and wrote "ink drawings and lino prints". I faxed it in. I waited a week. nothing. I waited another week, having given up.
Suddenly I got a big fat envelope of advertising postcards with a half-sheet of paper that started off "Thank you for your application to the Foreign Artists' Exhibition."
Yay, I've been rejected. I bet they were full up with landscape painters already.

"Please set up your work on November 1 between 10 am and 5 pm. No other time will be available. Your space is limited to *blah blah inches by inches*." Then a couple of other sentences about "please give these postcards to your family to get them to come to our 1 week show."
It's gonna cost me 2000 yen to set up, payable at setup day. I get one "panel" to hang my work on, and everything must be "mounted or framed" as I expected. I must also "provide my own titles". Nothing can be sold, they don't guarantee the security of the exhibit, etc.

What really surprised me was they didn't want SUBMISSIONS. They didn't look at portfolios or samples or anything. It was literally first-come-first-served.
I find this vaguely pathetic and kind of nice, but it sort of oozes desperation. Also the papers mentioned "artists participating will automatically be sent an application form next year" which makes me think it's been the same Foreign Artists for 24 years.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the store called LOFT that has everything (EVERYTHING) and they have some pre-cut pre-sized mat board in B5, A4 and A3 sizes, individually wrapped in plastic, priced really nicely at about $1 a sheet. As usual I find Japanese prices for paper are roughly half of American. So I got black everything and am concerned I don't have much to show. I don't do paintings cuz paint here is more expensive than good whiskey (it is!), and canvas is double the price of America's. Also I don't have space for all that mess. Also I have a naughty ferret who's figured out how to climb into the silverware drawer from underneath the counter. Nothing so surprising as opening a drawer to get a spoon and finding a sleeping weasel.

Balthus

2009-09-08T21:03:00.001+09:00

Remember my rainbow beetle from last year? Dori-chan?
She's still alive.
Yeah.
*waves at her*

I bought another larva early this spring, named it Balthus, and waited for eeeeevvvvver for it to grow up. About a month and a half ago it started pupating and I got all excited, hoping it would be a boyfriend for Dori-chan, who's going on 20 months old (plus however old she was when I bought her..).
Unfortunately Balthus also turned out to be a girl, which was a bit of a shame, but she's bigger than Dori-chan and has deeper color. I'm stoked.
I dug her out of her jar a couple of nights ago and plopped her in a nice bug house with a stick and some jelly, since her full color had developed and she was quite big enough to come out and eat some adult food, dang you. She immediately burrowed into the substrate in protest and didn't come out for a day. However, when I got home from work tonight I noticed she was standing propped up in a corner of her plastic box, just sorta lookin around at my room.
PHOTO OP!
So here is a portrait of my lovely girl Balthus.

Okay, for a beetle, that's a cute face.
It's actually quite rewarding to raise them from a horrible squishy larva into a gorgeous metallic green and gold and ruby colored beetle.

Movin on up

2009-09-04T13:11:00.003+09:00

Well, the doctor invaded Yakkun's poor little butt with a thermometer and a poop-sample-taking-stick, and cleaned his ears with q-tips and solution, and scared him, and we took him on the subway which scared him more, but it turned out that he's got the same problem as previous. I'm of the impression it's heat-exhaustion from long exposure to 90 degree apartment. The doctor said "yes, it could be." So we're back to sticking pills down his throat. He'll have his 3rd one when I wake up. He's bouncing around a bit but I haven't seen him eat since we got home from the vet when he ate a regular sized amount of food.

anyway, today at the shop was super productive....
I did the lines of another Botan (peony) on my leg, between a couple of other flowers, as I want to start filling in the spaces. This one came out really smooth and definitely better than my previous attempts.

After work I asked Ryuji, "Do we have an aftercare sheet in English for tattoos?"
"No..."
"Should I make one?"
"Victoria will make one? Onegai shimasu ('please do it', politely) :)" he said. So I was pleased to help out in this way.

"OH!" he said suddenly, after blah blah with Ryo for a while, "You have photos of the tattoos you did, right? How many?"
"About six," I said, cuz this other botan isn't finished yet and needs two more weeks.
"Bring me those photos, and I'll put them up on the website. Oh, and write yourself a profile. Oh, and write something in English, about the price for the customer, 1 hour with Victoria is half price, only 5000 yen." (this in mixed Japanese and English.)
":D" I said. But with bigger font.
"Oh, and these pictures..." he said, grabbing my book of tattoo designs and flipping through the flowers and butterflies, "Do each one, single, we'll put up some of these too, on the website."
"I'll bring it on a USB thing", I said, with the biggest happy face I've had in a while.

So it sounds like I'm about to make my debut. ON THE INTERTUBES!! Yay

Irezumi Origami

Yakkun what are you doing?

It's SNODoOooowsdyjzbkdh

In a world where 8.6 is higher than 8.9

RATS WILL HELP THEIR PALS GET FREE

Rats are wired to show compassion for each other and will help out their fellow rat rather than get a treat.

When Is It OK For Cops To Use Pepper Spray?

YES

Borrowed from public post on Facebook

Hello I am Yakkun

Japanese Onomatopoeia, or "Why it takes so long to learn to make conversation in this damn country"

TGS Update: Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Last Guardian, MGS Rising

Painting Kimono

Rainbow cupcakes

This was too sweet and wonderful NOT to share.

Active Hate Groups in SC: 30

SC:Neo-Confederate (7 chapters) (Abbeville, Laurens, Clemson);

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (4) (Warrenville and Undisclosed areas);

White Nationalist (9) (Charleston, Summerville, Greenville, Columbia);

Neo-Nazi including Aryan Nation (5) (Lexington, Charleston, Greenville, Spartanburg);

Black Separatists including Nation of Islam (3) (Charleston, Columbia).

SC has 30 active hate groups in a state of only 4,500,000.New York has 31 hate groups with a population of 19,541,453.

Beetle

For ever ever ever

Test post

birthday cake

uh

email reply

gracia

new vocab

ha.

tatami

Blue, Green or Grue?

Pokemon

Impulses

Ryoma tea

I admit, I like hands

swallow and peach flowers

communicating?

Awesome

Rock jumping?

All for the love of Tajima cows | The Japan Times Online

artists' exhibition

Coin Dog

From my Balcony

Nagoya Matsuri part two

Nagoya Matsuri Part one

Atsuta Matsuri

A little ferret

I caught a cold again

Fruit project: Biwa

Some photos again

TiltShift Photos

Dinner

Vacation

Amano and Me

Weird shuffle

Deep Sleep

Goldfish self tattoo

quick question response

Some sakura

Saxophone

Yakkun and Ginsburg playtime

Three views of Handa

I cant japanese

Kyoto 3

Kyoto 2

Kyoto trip 1

Emma by Jane Austen

A few more Polaroids

"Polaroids"

New work

Koto

New Years snow

Three tattoos finished

Xmas kimono

New Years Cards

To the vet again

Day off

Kimono sunday

SC:
Neo-Confederate (7 chapters) (Abbeville, Laurens, Clemson);

SC has 30 active hate groups in a state of only 4,500,000.

New York has 31 hate groups with a population of 19,541,453.