A Busy Day: Odds and Sods

THIS IS WHY YESTERDAY WAS LAZY. It's all happening today. Too much to do!

AKH I'VE GOT TO GO OUT IN A SEC. Got an appointment with a woman down a disused mine or somewhere. She's sorting out my paperwork re the council..? Something. If I'd been "all vague" like that a few years ago I'd have just not wanted you to know. Now I just do not know. Haven't a clue about any of it. Fed up of being an adult baby (not in the fetish sense though ~ you ever seen that one? I saw it on telly. Grown woman putting a man in nappies (diapers). Most hilarious.) Now what was I saying?

O yeah I've got to run out. Gotta go chemist. Gotta see this lady down a disused dripping mine shaft to sort out my paperwork. I can't remember where I actually see her. Somewhere I have a map, but it's gone... I can get their phone number. From somewhere.

By the way I must complain about the voices in the German version of ghost. Now either I was hallucinating floridly through the auditory "faculty" or these really were the voices coming from my telly. They all sound like TV presenters! With that Standard German Accent, which is like standard English from Britain or the USA. Whichever you think of, it's pretty characterless. I expected Whoopi Goldberg at least to sound like a True Berliner, but no! Sounds like she's just knocked off a shift reading the 6 o'clock news on ARD. Plus they didn't sound anything like the original actors. Whatever dubbed film you watch the actors always sound the same.

At least British dubbing has some character. Greatest dubbed drama of all time is the NHK-produced Monkey（aka Monkey Magic), a Japanese rendition of Chinese traditional Buddhist folk tales. It was on childrens' TV in the 1970s. It was on nighttime telly, where I was again glued to it, in the late 90s or early 2000s. My favourite characters where Trippy-something or other [Tripitaka] (young woman playing a little boy) and Pigsy who's more interested in eating magic dumplings than actually saving the day...(!)



PIGSY'S 10,000 LADIES 1/4 you can view the rest on my random blog here.




LYNN: i made a real hash of my answer to you last night. I meant to say:
~ sorry I don't know about GPs
~ supervised is not a good way of getting control over your dose
~ you shouldn't feel ill mornings
~ then again they want you not to do gear; you crave it; they're giving an inflexible dose, so what are you going to do except use on top...?

hey that's better!



AGE OF LOVE: AGE OF LOVE (SVEN VATH MIX)
this is beautiful, that tune that goes "come on dance with me, move your body..."
better mix than that long jam & spoon one, or the official video

The train to China!

THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT is planning a transcontinental high speed rail link that could take passengers from London to Beijing in as little as 48 hours!

Now I know where I wanna go by train next after Berlin!

When I'm in Beijing I'd love to take the Himalayan express to Lhasa in Tibet. At 15000 metres it's the highest railway in the world, with oxygen tanks on all trains in case passengers get altitude sickness!

As well as the Euro-route, the Chinese government are also planning a line via Korea to TOKYO.



The future's bright. The future's on rails!

Salad Anniversary

IN THIS future (I was talking of yesterday) I finally want to see Japan... then all those hours doodling mysterious characters shall finally pay off.

My Cambridge Encylopedia of Japan, picked up for £2 in a library sale, covers just about everything Japanese. Each section was written by an expert in the field ~ society ~ economy ~ politics ~ arts ~ geography and so on. The history section tells of fascinating encounters with Dutchmen in the 1600s and there are some beautiful landscape photos of Japan's mountainous interior.

The flora and fauna section even gives an oblique mention to Akita and Shiba doggies:

many family dogs are of a breed which has the dense coat and face of a husky...

the furry swines!

The literature section quotes excerpts from a 1987 haiku sequence by 26-year-old schoolteacher Tawara Machi 俵万智 entitled Salad Anniversary. The book was a roaring success, selling 2.6 million in the first five years:

"Call me again" "Wait for me"
Your love is always spoken
in commands

Glancing up at the falling rain
Suddenly I want
your lips

Escape from a shower into a street stall
and drink a glass of cheap saké ~
fun to be alive

The woman at the stall
calls me your wife ~
and so, for a while, I am

The encyclopedia is edited by Richard Bowring, Professor of Japanese at Cambridge, the man who replied to my email asking for titles of the best language textbooks. I was well flattered that a man of such accomplishments should bother with a nobody like me.



The only work of Japanese literature I've read from cover to cover is The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1702) by Matsuo Bashō 松尾 芭蕉. It is a travel diary illustrated with haiku, which are, in a sense, poetic snapshots.

It's a very Japanese thing to capture the essence of a moment. That's what that scruffy-looking calligraphy in the "grass style" is all about.

When I go to Japan I wnat to take the narrow road to the deep north like Bashō, and see what's there these days.

To the north of Honshu, the main Japanese island, is the hilly land of HOkkaido, which wasn'tpropely colonized by the Japanese until the late 1800s. The cultivated land has European-stylefields rather than tiered rice paddies like the rest of Japan. The island is known for its special Hokkaido inus. These doggies are a mid-size compromise between the giant Akita-inu and the tiny shiba-inu, which means "brushwood doggie".

Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido island is famous for its extensive underground shopping precincts, built to shelter the Japanese northerners from the Siberian-style snows of midwinter when the tiny shiba-inus have to wear little bumblebee wing-holder-style doggiecoats, despite their bushy fur, so as not to freeze into canine cobwebs.

Talking of furrydoggies, did y'all like my Hachi story? When I first read the story and saw the faithful furry and the kindly professor saying goodbye, and saw how the faithfull furry devotedly waited at the busy railway station hoping against hope for his friend's eventual return, all set to music, I was nearly moved to tears...

Anyway time's nearly up, I gotta go.


HAVE A CHEERY WEEKEND, Y'ALL!

Link: Narrow Road to the Deep North ~ full online text

Spring's A-sprung!

THE WEATHER here in London is beautiful, but I haven't got a camera. So here instead is the 日本の春 Japanese springtime!

Mount Fuji 富士山 through the famous cherry blossom...



Japan's interior images are serene and beautiful.
Taishō Pond 大正池 in Kamikōchi Valley 上高地の谷, central Honshu 本州. Mount Hotaka 穂高岳, highest in the Hida Range 飛騨山脈, also known as the Northern Japanese Alps 日本の北部のアルプス, is in the centre background.



Sublime cherry blossoms 吉野の桜, Mount Yoshino 吉野山 near Nara 奈良市, Japan's ancient capital AD 710-784:



Isn't this amazing!!