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Taking Lessons Again

Taking Lessons Again

I restarted Japanese lessons this week. Maybe that was a mistake, but at least they’re not that expensive. Due to a minor fortunate circumstance, I was able to pay off all my loans, thereby freeing up quite a bit of money every month to use for, well, stuff you’d spend money on.  I decided to spend it on education, because, let’s be frank, education is the one thing that can’t be taken away. Well, I spent it on that, and a kotatsu. Those seem great.  But we’ll see if that… Read More »Taking Lessons Again

Squarespace

I have quite a few domains.  Until recently, they were hosted on Google Domains, which I was happy with.  Today, I moved all of them to Dreamhost, which is the service on which I host this site. I moved them because apparently Squarespace, against my wishes and will, took over management of my domains and decided they were going to host them.  I guess they bought them from google or something. No, they’re not going to host my domains. I don’t have anything conceptually against Squarespace.  In that, while they’re pretty… Read More »Squarespace

Exotic

I order a lot of stuff from Japan. It’s mostly manga at the moment, but sometimes a few other things as well.  They have a lot of products that I want (and quite a few I don’t, but you can’t win ’em all). Today a manga arrived from Japan.  As I pulled it out of the mailbox, I noticed the Japanese name and address in the “sender” field, the customs declaration, and then my name and address in the “recipient” field. I wonder if the person who is taping the… Read More »Exotic

Eclipse

Earlier this week, I was fortunate to be in the path of a total solar eclipse.  It was, of course, the one that cut a line through the United States, starting in Texas and ending somewhere in the Northeast.  As you may know, I live in Central Texas, so I got about three minutes of totality, give or take. It was an amazing, and slightly terrifying, experience. It starts with the sun just getting dimmer and dimmer.  It’s still sunny outside, but the light levels start to look like it’s… Read More »Eclipse

Bocchi the Rock: Atmosphere

The first anime I ever watched (that I can recall) was “Bocchi the Rock”.  It was maybe a year ago, I had heard good things about it and saw some clips on YouTube, and thought “what the heck”. And I loved it. But it’s not really because “she’s just like me fr”.  She’s really not.  I mean, yes, she is a lot like me, but there are some significant differences.  I did identify with the social anxiety a lot, though.  I also identified with the way she kind of seemed to… Read More »Bocchi the Rock: Atmosphere

I had a Dream about Japan

Last night, I had a dream about Japan.  It wasn’t a nightmare.  It also wasn’t nice. This part of my dream started being in a van or something that someone else was driving, and being stopped by Japanese police.  It turned out the van had some kind of illicit substance in it, but none of us knew what was going on.  The police detained all of us.  I thought I could use my knowledge of Japanese to communicate with them.  I tried.  They kept responding in English.  They pretty much… Read More »I had a Dream about Japan

The Russian Terror Attacks

I want to talk about the Russian terror attacks that happened yesterday. So, I want to start off with a disclaimer:  I don’t like Russia (particularly its government).  I also don’t like terror attacks.  So my feelings are pretty mixed up and conflicted.  So let’s just stipulate that terror attacks are bad and civilians shouldn’t have to suffer because people are stupid.  Let’s also stipulate that Russia is a messed up country and stuff like this happens in a messed up country. (and mine’s not a whole lot better, but… Read More »The Russian Terror Attacks

Are Japanese Comfortable with English?

I won’t bury the lede:  no, but that’s changing. I’ve been watching a lot of anime lately.  An interesting thing about anime is that it is written by Japanese people for Japanese people, and the western audience is an afterthought and, I think, seen as unimportant.  That’s changing because there are a lot of potential fans in the west (the Crunchyroll awards seemed pretty well attended in Tokyo) but for the most part, that’s true.  So, by watching anime, you get a pretty good idea of not only Japanese culture (obligatory fireworks… Read More »Are Japanese Comfortable with English?

Writing my own Music

In my post, “The Music is Silent“, I wrote about my experience with the composer version of writer’s block. I’m pleased to report that I was able to write something.  I’m not so pleased to report that I probably can’t use it.  But the experience is still of interest. I ended up writing something that is very unique, at least to concert band repertoire.  It’s about a minute of tubular bells, timpani, contrabass, and trumpet, and sounds very much like the intro to one of the more recent Star Trek… Read More »Writing my own Music

Kanashii vs Sabishii: The Untranslatability of Nuance

Well, here’s an interesting one I pulled out of my “things to write about” hat, which is growing larger and larger. In Japanese, there are multiple words for “sad”.  I’m not going to pretend “kanashii”, and “sabishii” are the only ones.  They might be, they might not be.  But they are the words I know.  And they cause no end of grief for watching subtitled anime. The word translated as “sad” in Sound! Euphonium is “sabishii”.  That isn’t a word that directly means sad. In the tenth episode of the… Read More »Kanashii vs Sabishii: The Untranslatability of Nuance