The Post

If I had to pick just one thing about the English novel, I don't think I could, but if pressed to pick five things, one of them would have to be the post. Much in the same way that cell phones are pivotal to contemporary plotting, the British postal system is essential to the 20th century Englist novel. As are teacups, spinsters, knitting, seaside B&Bs, and the vicar, or maybe I've just been reading too much Barbara Pym, but the mail is always coming and going-- have you noticed that? Someone is always going out to post a letter, or writing a letter that never gets posted, or a posted letter goes unreceived, or remains unopened on the hall table.

My day is divided into two: Before Post and After Post. BP is the morning full of expectation, anticipation, and (dare I?) even hope. AP is either a satisfying pile on the kitchen table, or acute disappointment with fingers crossed for better luck tomorrow. In my old house I was in love with the mailman, but that love remained unrequited because I was in grad school then and he only ever saw me wearing track pants. When we lived in Japan, I once received a parcel addressed to me with only my name and the name of the city where we lived (and humiliated myself and was given a sponge, but that's another story.) When we lived in England, the post arrived two times a day and even Saturday, but the only bad thing was that when I missed a package, I had to take a bus out to a depot in another town.

All of which is to say that I love mail as an institution, as much as I love sending or receiving it. I once met a woman who told me that her husband was a mailman (though she called him a "letter-carrier", I'm not sure if there's most dignity in that), and I think she was taken aback when I almost jumped into her arms.

So when I read this piece in the LRB by a Royal Mail employee regarding the recent British mail strike, I had mixed feelings. I was troubled by the bureaucratic nightmare that is the Royal Mail of late, the compromise that comes from profit as the bottom line, the explanation of how Royal Mail is part-privatized already, their focus on the corporate customer. "Granny Smith doesn't matter anymore," this piece ends with, and they're not talking about apples, but instead their Regular Joseph(ine) customers. Those of us whose ears perk up at the sound of mail through the letterbox, at the very sound of the postman's footfall on the steps.

I took some heart, however, from the article's point that it is a falsehood that "figures are down". "Figures are down" appears to be corporate shorthand to justify laying off workers, increasing workloads, eliminating full time contracts, pensions etc. Apparently the Royal Mail brass has no experience on the floor, they're career-managers (and they've probably got consultants) who come up with ingenious ways to show that "figures are down". Mail volume, for example, used to be measured by weight, but now it's done by averages. And during the past year, Royal Mail has "arbitrarily, and without consultation" been reducing the number of letters in the average figures. According to the writer, "This arbitrary reduction more than accounts for the 10 per cent reduction that the Royal Mail claims is happening nationwide."

So yes, none of this good news about the state of labour or capitalism, but what I like is this part: "People don’t send so many letters any more, it’s true. But, then again, the average person never did send all that many letters. They sent Christmas cards and birthday cards and postcards. They still do. And bills and bank statements and official letters from the council or the Inland Revenue still arrive by post; plus there’s all the new traffic generated by the internet: books and CDs from Amazon, packages from eBay, DVDs and games from LoveFilm, clothes and gifts and other items purchased at any one of the countless online stores which clutter the internet, bought at any time of the day or night, on a whim, with a credit card."

This is hope! I do love letters, namely reading collections of them in books (and particularly if they're written by Mitfords), but I'll admit to not writing many of them. My love of post is not so much about epistles, but about the postal system itself. A crazy little system to get the most incidental objects from here to there. I like that I can lick an envelope, and it can land on a Japanese doorstep within the week. I like receiving magazines, and thank you notes, and party invitations, and books I've ordered, and Christmas presents, and postcards. I like that in the summer, Harriet received a piece of mail nearly every single day.

And I really love Christmas cards. Leah McLaren doesn't though, because she gets them from her carpet cleaner and then feels bad because she doesn't send any herself. I manage to free myself from such compunction by sending them out every single year, and in volumes that could break a tiny man's back. Spending enough on stamps to bring on bankruptcy, but I look upon this as I look upon book-buying-- doing my part to keep an industry I love thriving (or less dying). Yesterday, I posted sixty (60!) Christmas cards, though I regret I can no longer say to every continent except Africa. Because my friend Kate no longer lives in Chile, but my friend Laura is still working at the very bottom of the world so we've still got Antarctica, which is remarkable at any rate.

I love Christmas cards. I send them because I've got aunts and uncles and extended family that I never see, but I want them to know that they mean something to me anyway. And it does mean something, however small that gesture. These connections matter, these people thinking of us all over the world. Having lived abroad for a few years, I've also got friends in far-flung places, and without small moments of contact like this, it would be difficult to keep them. It's impossible to maintain regular contact with everybody we know and love, but these little missives get sent out into the world, like a nudge to say, "I'm here if you need me."

I also send them because I've got these people in my life that I'm crazy about, and I want to let them know as much. Particularly in a year like this when friends and family have so rallied 'round-- let it be written that it all meant the world to me, then stuck in an envelope and sealed with a stamp.

But mostly (and here I confess), I write Christmas cards because people send them back to me. I've never once received as many as I send, but the incomings are pretty respectable nonetheless. I love that most December days BP, I've got a good chance of red envelopes arriving stacked thick as a doorstop. And if not today, there will be at least one card tomorrow. I love receiving photos of my friends' babies, and updates on friends and family we don't hear from otherwise, and the good news and the hopeful news, and just to know that so many people were thinking of us. We display them over our fireplace hanging on a string. It is a bit like Valentines in elementary school, a bit like a popularity contest, but if you were as unpopular as I was in elementary school, you'd understand why strings and strings of cards are really quite appealing.

I love it all. That there are people in places all over the world, and they're sticking stuff in mailboxes pillared or squared, and that stuff will get to us. That at least one system in the universe sort of almost works, and that I've even got friends. And then-- this is most important-- what would the modern English novel be without it?

Dick Bruna and Miffy

I've been a fan of Dick Bruna ever since a trip home from England in 2003, where I was up early mornings due to time change and watched Miffy and Friends on Treehouse. As Miffy is quite popular in England, upon my return I was able to indulge in what has since become a pasttime: purchasing Miffy-branded commercial goods of all kinds. This hobby became very well-practised after I moved to Japan, and consequently, my house is full of glimpses of "that fucking rabbit" (as a friend of a friend once referred to Our Miff). Our recent trip to England yielded more opportunities to Miffy-shop, as we had a layover in Amsterdam (the Land of Miffy). Certainly, I voted with my Euros, and Miffy-Chan won. My friend Paul just sent me a link to this "Dutch Profiles: Dick Bruna" video, presuming I'd like it, and he was correct. And indeed, there is more to Miffy than the shopping, and I think this video makes that quite clear.

RIPs

Must admit that fateful day that took Farrah and Michael had me rolling my eyes only, but it does seem a bit much that Wednesday saw the deaths of Ted Kennedy, Ellie Greenwich and Dominick Dunne, each of whom meant a lot to me. Kennedy by virtue of being a Kennedy alone, and there was a time in my life when I lapped up Kennedy bios like they were fiction (and they sort of were). I know Ted Kennedy was both a hero and a dastardly villain, but I'm most amazed by a story I once read alluding to about him having sex with a woman in a crowded restaurant. I could find no further details, but it's the best story I've ever heard. As far as I know, Ellie Greenwich got up to no such thing, but her music has been part of the soundtrack to my life ("I met him at the candy store, he turned around and smiled at me. You get the picture?" "Yes, we see.")

But since we're talking literature here, let's focus on Dominick Dunne. Which means we're not talking literature with a capital L, but I loved his books. When we lived in Japan, we frequented Wantage Books, a used bookshop in Kobe. Wantage Books was an English bookshop, which was rare and wonderful, and we'd buy at least ten books per visit. (It's odd to remember what a precious commodity readable books were then, and how easy it was to take them for granted again). It was at Wantage where I found Various Miracles, my favourite Carol Shields book, discovered Margaret Drabble, and bought up every Dominick Dunne novel in the store. Stuart and I were obsessed with them, and remember reading them on my train commutes to work, gripping mass-market paperbacks that fit perfectly into my purse. The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, and A Season in Purgatory (speaking of Kennedys), People Like Us, and besides, he was Joan Didion's brother-in-law, so I felt better about the whole thing.

There was something about the foreigness of our every day surroundings that made Dunne's novels like a tonic. American, and glamour, and scandal, and intrigue-- we devoured it like the books were bad for us, and perhaps they were, but they satisfied. They were delicious. And then I remember, after a string of Dunne novels, reading something else finally and being confused when there was no fil*tio by page three. I've since adjusted back, but I'll always remember how perfect his books were at the time.

Toronto Sakura

"Because We Want To" by Alison Smith

The few words that I learn
make reality. No, reality exists.
Words push me
into the moving water.

In the morning
I learn words for Lu Ling
while she brushes her teeth.
She's said that she laughs
because she is pregnant
and wants to be happy.
Me too, I've realised, I do
want to be happy.

Today, I say, are you busy?
She says my Japanese
is good, is good!
I say tonight? dinner? together?
She says pizza?
and I say hai.
This is our common language:
eat dinner tonight yes.
And because we've wanted to
we've learned how to say next--
these have become feast days
and we will not stop
until we are satisfied.

--from Alison Smith's gorgeous collection Six Mats and One Year, published by Gaspereau Press, which TSR has informed us recently entered the blogosphere.

Oishi-desu, ne?

In Japan, one lives to eat, or at least one travels to eat, for every city or region is famed for some kind of delicacy which must be indulged in on a visit. (In our city Himeji, it was conger eel.)

It is also important that when you do travel someplace, to bring back omiyage-- a (n often edible) souvenir-- for friends and co-workers back home. It is a slight not do so, and every city-- and the train station in particular-- will have numerous gift shops full of such delights.

When we lived in Japan, I had a co-worker whose boyfriend was working in the city of Nagoya, and she'd often go to visit him on her days off. And though her visits were quite regular, she never dared an omiyage lapse, and she would usually bring us back uiro-- the snack for which Nagoya is famed. Uiro is a sweet snack of pounded rice, loaded with sugar. It comes in a block that appears kind of waxy, has a consistency not dissimilar to cheese, and I love it. I am a uiro glutton, which was fine as most people were unable to get past its strange appearance and texture, so there was always plenty for me. I still keep an eye out for it in the Asian shops around the city, but not a sign of it have I seen.

Last month before our neighbours left for their trip to Japan, I'd asked if they'd be going to Nagoya. I was being a bit flippant-- their trip would be a whirlwind, wedding and honeymoon all in one-- and really I just wanted a chance to reminisce about the pleasures of uiro. But I should have known-- Japanese people take omiyage very seriously, and any kind thing a Japanese person has ever done for me has been mindblowingly beyond the call of duty.

They got back this week, and we were hanging out in the backyard last night when I was presented a box of uiro. It turns out that their shinkansen had passed through Nagoya, making a brief stop. My neighbour asked the attendant how long the stop would be, and she said one minute and a half. My neighbour tells his wife, he's going to chance it. He says that if he doesn't get back on, he'll take the next train and meet her at the end of the line. But he makes it. In 90 seconds, he managed to buy my heart's desire, get back on the train, solidifying all suspicions I'd ever had regarding his superheroism. As well as his wife's patience, their generosity and all-around infinite goodness.

So we're savouring the uiro at the moment. Tiny slices, we want to make it last. What a fabulous surprise! It's as good as I remembered.

Poem in the Post

Kawaii. Today in the post was a "Hello Kitty Everywhere! Haiku Postcard" from my sister. Haiku as follows:

Peeking through the soil,
The flowers shyly emerge.
I am their first friend.

A Nice Cup of Tea

My first tea ceremony took place in a crooked Tudor house in the English Midlands, a sign outside indicating which seventeen century king had once stayed there. The tea was simple, Cream Tea, pursued mostly for the sake of scones and jam. Made with PG Tips pyramid bags, the tea steaming in its pot and too hot yet to drink so I prepared my scone-- spread the Devonshire cream thickly, topped it all with a dollop of jam.

Such an initiation into Englishness was not at all lavish, would even have been austere if not for the jam and cream indulgence. But it was a sacred ritual undeniably, every element essential, from the currents in my scone to the teacup's rattle in its saucer. To the reverence bestowed on that steaming pot of brew, steeped to perfection. Poured to be admired: a nice cup of tea.

Tea in England is remarkable for its permeation into ordinary life. While I lived there, I studied the soaps and I soon learned "I'll put the kettle on" would be the first response in any crisis. I've always loved the news stories of power surges following pivotal episodes of Coronation Street or EastEnders, Britons rising from their sofas to put their kettles on at the very same time.

I was pleased, however, upon marrying an English man and becoming part of his family, to gain a view onto Englishness beyond the television's. And though the soaps' depiction of ordinary life turned out not always to have been accurate, the tea thing was spot on.

At my in-laws', we partook in the tea ceremony eight to ten times a day. Without ornamentation, of course (scones and jam are special occasions), but the steaming pot stayed fundamental. Each day was constructed around its tea breaks, a cup taken with meals and then to follow them. Tea was the bedrock of our everyday, plus a pick-me-up in a pinch ("I'll tell you what you need right now— how about a nice cup of tea?").

When my husband and I moved to Japan a couple of years later, I was only vaguely aware of the Japanese tea ceremony, a thousand year-old tradition rooted in Zen Buddhism that is, like so much of the culture, hard to explain. Practitioners enroll at Tea Schools and study for years to become proficient both in the actual preparation of the tea and in the ceremony itself. They must also study calligraphy, flower-arrangement, the art of wearing a kimono, among other things.

As tea lovers, we were both interested in Japanese tea and with great enthusiasm, we'd soon prepared our own ceremony. Purchasing a round Japanese teapot and a big bag of green tea leaves, and of course we knew how to brew it— pouring on the leaves (we do like our tea strong), adding boiling water, and we waited for it to steep.

When the time came, we poured our tea into mugs and sipped, not even tentatively. The bitterness was troubling but, trying for cultural sensitivity, we ignored it. And even after we realized the tea made us sick to our stomachs, we continued to make it. Reminding ourselves of the health benefits, that we'd get used to the taste, and as Japan was where we lived now, stiff upper lips would be maintained.

My Japanese tea experiences were an initiation into Japaneseness only as much as they affirmed that I'd never really belong there. Affirming that we were outsiders, for otherwise wouldn't we have known that green tea is to be prepared weak, with water past boiling to avoid bitterness? We should have let the tea steep for just a minute or two, consuming it in small quantities— in cups more like thimbles than our cocoa mugs.

This was all properly demonstrated when we attended an actual tea ceremony. Kneeling on the tatami mats in our proper places as guests, with our host dressed in a kimono, her quiet demeanour setting the tone. She purified the tea bowl with a special cloth, added green tea powder and then hot water, and stirred it with a bamboo whisk. No scones, we received a small sweet instead, the colour of cherry blossoms and made with pounded rice. We bowed as we received our tea.

But when I say that we didn't belong in Japan, I don't mean that it didn't become home to us. As in the tea ceremony, the two of us were guests taking part in a ritual we would never fully understand, but it was our everyday life for a while. That it couldn't have gone on forever doesn't mean we miss it any less.

In Canada, where we live now, our tea ceremonies continue. We put the kettle on first thing in the morning, and it's the first thing we do upon arriving home at the end of the day. We can do caffeinated or herbal, and we now know how to make green tea delicious. Our ultimate indulgence is High Tea at a posh hotel downtown, but we save these occasions for fear of spoiling ourselves.

And tea at our house is certainly not without its own charms— I can whip up a batch of scones in twenty minutes, and we eat them with jam made from strawberries we picked last summer. The tea brewing in our little white teapot, the very centre of our household.

Tea remains a sacred ritual, undeniably— the world stopping for pleasures we've come to know by heart. Linking our past and present, the places we've been to how far we've come. A delectable definition of home.

Remembering Days

The book I'm reading at the moment, which I'm absolutely in love with, contains that quotation, "We do not remember days, we remember moments." Which I don't buy actually, and I never have, because like Albert from Behind the Scenes at the Museum, I "collect good days the way other people collected coins or sets of postcards." I can remember so many glorious ones, right down to very details, and though today wasn't exactly glorious, it was definitely very fine.

The finest thing about today being happiness arriving in the post the very week I decide to stop looking for it there. And isn't there something about a surprise package when you're expecting nothing? The surprise turned out to be from Sayaka (who has a blog, by the way). She's our friend from Japan, she stayed with us for a few marvelous days last summer, and now she's seen fit to surprise me with a gift that blends two of my favourite things: tea and Miffy. Indeed, I do miss living in a land where Miffy kitchenware was so easy to to come by, but it's nice of Sayaka to ease my yearning. How positively splendid.

In other fortune, another friend gave us our wedding present a few weeks ago, nearly three years late but perfectly on time actually, as it was an HBC giftcard, and I have to buy wares for our new apartment. So I spent the early part of this evening buying new towels and bathroom accessories, and it was fun to spend spend spend (though not so fun to carry the bags home). And then I spent two hours with Rebecca, which is some of the best company I know.

The list goes on: that work has been good of late, but that today I left early, we move in a week and a half and a farmer's market is starting up in our new neighbourhood, our Easter treats from our English Mum and Dad, going home for the weekend to the Canadian ones, that tomorrow we're doing nothing at all, the stack of good books to be read, the one that I'm reading, that March sunshine, and that all I want at the moment is a cheese sandwich, and in a matter of moments I will have one.

Please walk on the grass

Take a Canadian, a Brit, and a Japanese girl-- all homesick for Hyogo, and throw them into Toronto. To Korea Town, the Annex, the University, Yorkville, Chinatown, Kensington, and home again. Feed with sushi, crepes a go go, good coffee, and then DIY okonomiyaki for dinner once we're home again-- oishi desu! Sunday afternoon on Toronto Island, and walking on the grass. Home once again, and tonight there's a bbq, topped off by very Canadian Portuguese tarts.

I am now reading Rosie Little's Cautionary Tales for Girls, and why aren't you?

Footprints

Oh, I do wonder. About my houseguest who comes from a culture in which bathing is a sacred ritual. Who comes from a culture in which the body is scrubbed clean before one steps into the bath water. Oh, I do wonder. About my houseguest. About what she must have thought this morning. What must she have thought about the footprints in my tub?

Shoes off in the house

The arrival of Sayaka, our Japanese houseguest (via Vancouver), has put me back in mind of those little cultural quirks we all possess and would never even notice were it not for someone different to reflect them back to us. Sayaka has been kind enough to keep my reflections to herself today, but I've been reminded of back when Stuart and I first met, and I would tell him to just leave his shoes at the door when he came over. And of course I'd take off my shoes when I went to his house, and it was only when his demonic landlady finally blew her top that I realized that my behaviour was considered strange. Not only was she fed up with tripping over my shoes inside her door, but she thought that I took them off in the first place was just bizarre. Stuart admitted he did find it a bit weird when I made him deshoe at my place, but as it was one of a million things he found a bit weird about me, he hadn't mentioned it. But yeah, now that I mentioned it-- English people don't take off their shoes in their houses!! It never even occurred to me, and I think it's only a Canadian thing due to climate. Let me tell you though, when we moved to Japan I definitely felt a little cultural affinity. And shoes-off-in-the-house was the only authentically Canadian ritual I could think of that didn't involve donuts or ice, which was sort of novel.

My Canada Day Pancake Nightmare

(In lieu of having celebrated this Canada Day in any particular fashion, I bring you a flashback to Canada Day 2004.)

Soon after I volunteered to work at the International Friendship Festival in Himeji Japan, I began receiving strange phone calls. The callers would inform me that they had passed my number onto someone else, and then that someone would call later with a similar message. Finally, a Mrs. Ito reached me and informed me that I would be cooking pancakes at the Festival's Canadian food booth. The Canadianness would be featured in that pancake accessory, I assumed, the old stand-by, maple syrup.
I tried explaining to Mrs. Ito that having me cook was a bad idea. I once messed up a recipe with three steps by doing them in the wrong order. I have a dangerous faith in ingredient substitution. My cooking is perfectly abominable in every single way. I did have other skills that could probably put me to better use. But Mrs. Ito wasn't having any of it. She arranged to meet me the next day back at the International Centre.
When we met, her smile was larger than her face, but she pretended to not understand English when I tried to protest the pancakes. There was no turning back, no matter how hard I attempted retreat. Mrs. Ito instructed me that I would face a "cooking rehearsal" on July 1st, the following week. That I was to come bearing ingredients. I left her that day, confused and annoyed.
I found half a packet of pancake mix left over in the cupboard from Shrove Tuesday, and I bought a cheap bottle of Japanese pancake syrup the morning of my rehearsal. I even remembered egg and oil, which I thought was impressive. I did wonder if I should have been making the pancakes from scratch, but I felt so concurrently coerced and put-out that I decided that if Mrs. Ito didn't like it, frankly, she could stuff it.
But I just had this feeling. A fear of a cooking rehearsal far too strong to be sensible. What could possibly go wrong— just me and Mrs. Ito in a little kitchen? However my apprehension was particularly nagging, so I asked my then-boyfriend Stuart to come with me, and because he feared I was having a nervous breakdown, he reluctantly consented.
Immediately upon arrival at the International Centre as scheduled, I seriously contemplated turning around and sprinting home, but we had already been spotted. We entered the kitchen where we were greeted by sixteen women seated waiting at a table, and they expressed their happiness at attending this wonderful Canadian lunch today. And I desired to be swallowed by the air.
I reluctantly took my "ingredients" from my backpack. "Mix?" they said, evidently a similar word in English and Japanese. Thirty two eyes examined the mix curiously. Much conversation ensued. Presumably about how half a packet of pancake mix would feed sixteen expectant lunchers. After a hasty conference among themselves, it was decided that everyone would have a tiny pancake. So there remained the issue of my inability to cook, but that was ok, mostly because Stuart did most of it. Chatter between the women continued throughout the cooking, and in spite of their big smiles, I didn't get the impression they were singing my praises.
And the worst was still to come. It was time for the maple syrup, freshly tapped from a Japanese factory. I quickly tore off the label, and when Mrs. Ito asked if it was Canadian maple syrup, I lied and said yes. Clearly the International Friendship Festival Committee were not convinced.
It was the wrong colour, they thought. "Is it honey?" the women kept asking me. That it truly was maple syrup was some form of rightousness. I retained my resolve and the women stopped questioning me. However their own conversation continued in Japanese, smattered with exclaimations of the word "maple" and several audible question marks.
When dinner was served and we all sat down to eat our coin sized pancake. The pancakes were good, and the women were very friendly and someone had found some cookies to make the meal go further. I told them that today was Canada's birthday, and their all applauded. And then I remembered a bag of Canadian Flag pins in my purse, like a treasure in my hold. I passed them out, and the mood softened a bit at that. The pins lent a certain authenticity to my act. Not only was I an authentic idiot, but a Canadian one too.
Conversation was awkward, mostly consisting of people pointing and laughing at Stuart and I. They talked to me a bit about the Friendship Festival, which I, miraculously, was still supposed to be attending. They asked if I could get some Canadian flags and various paraphernalia for the Canada booth and I told them I could find out if the embassy could provide us with something. Somebody translated into Japanese that I had many friends at the embassy who would supply us with Canadian things, and at that point I began to see how these sorts of misunderstandings get started.

Positively transporting

After Dark is the first novel I've read by Haruki Murakami. Previously I've read his short story collection After the Quake and his nonfiction book Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. And it's strange that it's taken so long for me to start reading Japanese fiction; while I lived there, I hardly read any, too busy overdosing on fiction from the Britain I had left behind. Sometimes, I think, reality was something too much, and I wanted something different. But now that that world is far away from me, I am turning back to it through fiction. Positively transporting.

"Our line of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it-- a sea of neon colours. They call this place an 'amusement district.' The giant digital screens fastened to the sides of buildings fall silent as midnight approaches, but loudspeakers on storefronts keep pumpingg out exaggerated hip-hop bass lines. A large game center crammed with young people; wild electronic sounds; a group of college students spilling out from a bar; teenage girls with brilliant bleached hair, healthy legs thrusting out from micro-mini skirts; dark-suited men racing across diagonal crosswalks for the last trains to the suburbs. Even at this hour, the karaoke club pitchmen keep shouting for customers. A flashy black station wagon drifts down the street as if taking stock of the district throuigh its black-tinted windows. The car looks like a deep sea creature with specialized skins and organs. The young policemen patrol the street with tense expressions, but no one seems to notice them. The district plays by its own rules at a time like this. The season is late autumn. No wind is blowing but the air carries a chill. The date is just about to change."

April can be so uncruel

We stuck close to home this weekend, which is natural as close to our home is a wonderful place to be on a weekend like this. Lots of indulgences: first ice cream of 2007, first outdoor patio supper with the first pitcher of beer. Today we partook in chicken wings as the street went by. I've felt mellow enough to be boneless, which is so nice (and rare).

I read Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto this morn, and I loved it. My problem with Japanese fiction in the past has been its weirdness (I'm a realist to the core) but I rode with it, and I enjoyed it. It's the first Japanese fiction I've read since we lived there, and it was nice to go back for an hour or two. Now reading Happenstance by Carol Shields, who I continue to be obsessed with. And then on to The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald who I've never read before, but is much championed over at dovegreyreader scribbles. I'm curious.

Tonight we're watching Notes on a Scandal (a bookish film!) in order that I can get through the evening without fretting to death about my thesis defense (!) tomorrow morning.

Woke up this morning feeling fine

Japan was in the news last week, mostly unfortunately through this murder which has been sensationalized by the red-tops in Britain. I appreciated measured responses to the hype here in The Guardian, and here inThe Times. (Judging from reader comments, clearly not everyone appreciated the first article as much as I did. The venom it unleashed was sort of baffling, but then a lot of people don't like to call racism by its name). More positively, Top Ten Books Set in Japan by Fiona Campbell who has just published Death of a Salaryman. (Incidentally, I've only read number 10 but plan to read Kitchen someday soon.)

Lionel Shriver happily reviews Nora Ephron. I want to read Julie Burchill's book on Brighton. Rounding up responses to Didion on stage. This review makes me so excited to read the new McEwan. I love this: Sunday Morning Music.

Now rereading The Realms of Gold by Margaret Drabble, for kicks.

I've marked thirty essays, and as I've only done four and three today and yesterday, the weekend has contained some aspects of nice. Yesterday we partook in lattes over the paper in Kensington, and today we ate our delightful M&S Easter Treats from England. But otherwise, yes, not much has occurred. Life continues on hold. The notable event of the weekend continues to be that I brought a very large object into our home, oh and mustn't forget the startling revelation (to the sound of Herman's Hermits) that I dance like my dad.

Carry my desk

Thesis=Submitted. Which feels much less exciting than it is. I have this evening for a breath of fresh air before tomorrow when 75 undergraduate papers to-be-marked enter my life, and then after that I have to find a job. But in the meantime, this evening at least.

I am so grateful to my friends Jennie, Britt and Bronwyn, as well as my husb Stuart, each of whom read through the whole thing during the last two weeks and alerted me to copy errors so numerous I am ashamed of myself. They are acknowledged in my acknowledgments, of course. And the book itself is dedicated to Stuart, naturally, reading, "This story is for Stuart, who carried my desk home on his bicycle." True story.


Once upon a time Stuart and I lived in a one-roomed box. This was not the first place we'd lived together, of course. Previously we'd spent six months sleeping on an inflatable mattress in a ramshackle house with holes in the roof. The box felt like luxury in comparison, and we were very happy there. Sunshine came through that window absolutely beautifully. And one day I set my sights upon a desk. A desk which we had no room for, but I needed a space to sit and write all the same. Such space doesn't come easy when you live in a box. And so Stuart agreed, and we bought a little desk at Muji. A little desk that weighed a tonne, and we didn't have a car. We lived about a half hour walk from the city centre, and my clever husband devised a method wherin the desk was balanced on the seat and handlebars of his bike, which worked perfectly unless we weren't going straight. But it was certainly better than I could have done, and I admired his might all the home, walking my pink bicycle beside his blue one. And the desk just fit, under the ladder up to our sleeping loft. And it was there where I learned how to sit down and write, which is 75% of everything. And it was then when I realized that here was a boy who would do anything to support me, and that I was tremendously lucky.

MaxValu

Quite

I tend to overuse the word "quite", which is probably apparent from this blog, but I'm not going to check to be sure because then I'll just be embarrassed. And so I've just gone through my entire story and removed most instances of the dreaded Q word. It really is the most ineffectual word one can use. In its ability to either intensify or lighten meaning, it comes to mean nothing. It's not so bad in speech I think, when tone can guide it, but in writing it just obscures the point. Or in my writing, at least.

Not so related, but thinking about this has made me remember the way students use to use "maybe" when we taught English conversation in Japan. "Maybe" preceded anything someone didn't feel quite (! but I won't backspace) comfortable saying.
"Why don't you love your boyfriend Yumiko?"
"May-be [drawn out long] he is not so handsome."
or
"Are you okay today Tadayuki?"
"Hmmmm. May-be, I am sleepy."
And most effectively:
"Gosh, it feels cold in here today."
"May-be there is hole in back of your trousers."

Other words I overuse: suppose, perhaps, so, bit, sure, fast, etc I am sure.

Joy

Joy was our dinner tonight with Natalie Bay at Okonomi House, where we partook in okonomiyaki-- a wonderful Nippon treat. Oishi desu! And now home, and since I worked all afternoon, now I get to have a bath and read Human Croquet-- which is brilliant. And then tune in to CSI Miami, where somebody gets killed by a bookshelf! How exciting.