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Anime

Anime

I honestly don’t have a whole lot of experience, or interest, in anime or anime-inspired things.  I have seen some anime, and I was impressed with it technically.  By which I mean, there is often a lot of care put into how the higher quality animes are animated.  I remember watching “Akira” and being really impressed by how well they animated it, and I also watched an episode of “Nodame Cantabile” which also really impressed me – those who animated it did their homework and actually animated the playing of the instruments… Read More »Anime

Tokyo

I’ve never been to Japan.  It’s possible I may never go to Japan.  Nonetheless, YouTube has many interesting videos about many interesting places.  Recently I saw some videos about driving through Tokyo. Now American cities, generally, are not very impressive.  Most cities – even large ones – have a small downtown core, and sprawl out with a large suburban footprint.  Tokyo reminded me of an American city in aesthetic – it could have been Dallas, or Los Angeles, or Houston, or New York. Except it just didn’t stop. It had… Read More »Tokyo

Always the Same

I am sitting here, in my apartment, which is neither expensive nor not, in a suburb of Austin, Texas.  I can hear traffic roaring by on the tollway outside, muted by the double-paned windows that the builders thoughtfully put in, when they realized that the noise would be otherwise intolerable.  Traffic is slowly picking up from where it was a month ago, as Texas is slowly letting up on the “lockdown” orders that have been plaguing us (pardon the pun) for the past couple of months. Maybe everything will be… Read More »Always the Same

Home

I am going to push through on a post here, and I’m not sure exactly what form it will take when it comes out.  I honestly don’t want to write it, and I’m not sure why.  Maybe it sounds stupid, or maybe it even feels stupid. I have lived only in America for what feels like a hundred years, but is really only somewhere around forty.  I have never been outside the country except for one very brief excursion to Canada, where my sole impression of that country was “someone… Read More »Home

The petals of our tears

Namida no hanabiratachi ga harahara The blooming of the sakura trees in Japan is a joyful, yet bittersweet moment, as they, in a very real way mark the passage of time.  The passage of time is both a time for new beginnings, and bittersweet goodbyes.  Sometimes goodbyes are temporary, sometimes they are permanent, and sometimes they are final. Goodbyes are often accompanied by tears, as tears are often associated with loss.  It is an unfortunate consequence of life that loss is unavoidable, but it never hurts any less, does it? In… Read More »The petals of our tears

空気

I’m going to try a different approach to posting today.  Let me know if you like it. I have never been to Japan, but many things come to mind when I think of it.  I imagine the crisp air of fujisan.  The roar of trains, such as the shinkansen, as they come whooshing by.  The fragrant smells of sakura petals as they fall to the ground in spring.  The greenery of a small island nation that gets more than its share of rain, and the fragrant smells of grasses and blossoms on… Read More »空気

Questions

Like in many places in the world, I’m not really able to go anywhere except for necessities.  This has given me a lot of time to think.  One of the things I’ve been thinking about is:  Why am I so frustrated with Japanese right now? I have settled on an answer:  because I do not learn things the way people like to teach them.  If I can find the underlying pattern to something, I never forget it – but if I have to memorize things, it never works. So with… Read More »Questions

Covidity

This blog is nearly always about topics Japanese, but not always.  Today, as with most people in the world, other things are on my mind.  And I think I’m going to post about that, today.  We can talk about Japanese some other time. The world – MY world – has begun to see severe disruption because of the spread of the Chinese Virus, also known as the Coronavirus, SARS-2-COV, or COVID.  In my neck of the world, schools have shut down, for some reason people are buying so much toilet… Read More »Covidity

Systems vs. Goals: Why I am Failing at Learning Japanese

A couple of years ago, I was watching a Morning Musume video and saw lots of strange characters flashing along the screen, along with a bunch of gibberish.  And then I thought to myself, “I would like to learn Japanese”.  And thus, a goal was set. Two years later, I am wholly unsatisfied with my progress towards this goal, and I’m not going to lie, I’ve been seriously thinking about quitting.  It’s still something I want to do so the odds are that I won’t, but it is currently a… Read More »Systems vs. Goals: Why I am Failing at Learning Japanese

Continuing Introspection

The past month or two has – whether I want it to or not – been a time for stepping back and reflecting on things.  Primarily:  why am I doing the things I’m doing in my life?  What do they accomplish for me?  With that introspection comes a lot of other kinds of introspection as well, and one cause for introspection is this:  what makes me uncomfortable with the Japanese culture? Because, I’m not gonna lie, I’m really freakin’ uncomfortable with it. After some thought, I think it comes down… Read More »Continuing Introspection