More Drawers

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Now begins the Fourth Annual How to Japonese Murakami Fest!

With the goal of stirring up even more interest in Murakami between now and mid-October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, I will post a small piece of Murakami translation once a week from now until the announcement.

For those of you who don’t know how this works, check out the past three years:
Year One: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year Two: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year Three: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly

I thought I’d start with something recent. Murakami serialized another set of essays in AnAn over the past year, and the collected edition, Murakami Radio 2, came out in July. In the introduction to the collection, Murakami continues his recent obsession with the drawer metaphor for writing:

Novelists need lots of drawers inside their heads when they write novels. Little episodes, specific knowledge, vague memories, a personal worldview (or something along those lines) – all these come in handy quite often when writing novels. But if I go and dump all of that material into essays, I’m not able to use it in novels very well. So I’m stingy (as it were) and secret it away into drawers. However, when I finish a novel, there are always a couple drawers I didn’t end up using, and some of those can sometimes make good material for essays.

Drawer is 抽斗, which Murakami mentioned in his interview with Monkey Business before the publication of 1Q84. I noticed it a couple of times in 1Q84, and Matt over at No-Sword examined the origins of the character.

He goes on to compare the collection of essays to “oolong tea made by beer companies” – it’s not his main business, so he’s able to relax a bit (肩の力を抜いて) and write off the cuff.

This is quickly apparent, as the essays are all really short, have no connecting theme, and often start quite lightly with questions for the first sentence: Do you like to drive? Hello, runners – how are you doing? Are you the kind of person that angers quickly? Did you know there are some socks where the left and right are shaped differently? Do you read Dazai Osamu? Have you been to Ireland? Do you know about seal oil?

It’s really a shame that he doesn’t publish this material online – they feel much more like blog posts than essays (as he calls them), and he does have a history of publishing material online. Also, then it would have been free and not 1700 yen.

Speaking of writing off the cuff, for free, and on the Internet – that’s what I do! I’ve been busy with the start of classes and unable to prep my translations this year, so starting next week, I’ll be posting short translations that I pick randomly from 1Q84, an excerpt of which was just published in The New Yorker as the short story “Town of Cats” (arguably the best section of the book). I took notes, so hopefully I’ll be able to find some interesting passages. And if they suck, just remember it was all free.

Cool Kanji – 堅

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堅い (かたい) is a word I had a basic feel for long before I knew the actual English equivalent. I took an intensive summer class after my first year in university, and I have memories of the sensei using it all the time and me not exactly understanding what it meant when they used it to describe different words and phrases. I probably looked it up once and then just let it sink in. Unfortunately I can’t think up any specific examples of what was and wasn’t 堅い. It might have just been keigo variants.

Needless to say, having an understanding of 堅い is immensely important in Japan. The rigidity of your speech, your body language, your overall interactions with other people – these are all very important in Japan. Arguably more important than elsewhere. This isn’t to say that you should tense up like a plank when you talk with your 社長 (all 社長 should be lovingly referred to, behind their backs, as “the Shach” – let’s make it happen, y’all!). The most respected ability in Japan is being comfortable with your situation and knowing when and when not to dial up the intensity/formality/rigidity/堅さ.

Because this is such an important idea, it can be abused for humorous reasons, as I’ve mentioned a number of different times – most recently in my article in the Japan Times today about universal humor. Check it out!

My New Manga Reading Technique is Unstoppable

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That YOINK sound you may have heard earlier this week was the sound of Junji Itō’s “Voices in the Dark” and Naoyuki Ochiai’s “Crime and Punishment: A Falsified Romance” being licensed, ending Daniel Lau’s scanlation series. This is too bad because Daniel gave me the first three volumes of the latter before I left Japan. I’ve started reading the first volume and was looking forward to checking out his translations when I finished.

Everytime I go to Japan, I end up flying back with a lot of books and manga, but I find it hard to dig up the necessary willpower to actually read them. I’ve got reading for classes (that I’m both taking and teaching), writing for classes, too many blogs that I’m trying to run, and it’s hard to find that energy when I’m finished with all of that and taking care of my semi-feral cats.

No longer! This time I felt a little obligated to read the manga (anything a friend presses on me, I try to actually get through), so I needed to find a way to motivate myself. I’ve combined two strategies into an unstoppable manga reading technique – AJATT’s do something easy + Penelope Trunk’s if…then thinking = toilet manga:

If I am sitting on the toilet, I am reading “Crime and Punishment: A Falsified Romance.” Usually I can get through a couple pages in any given sitting, which is progress! And it’s easy. I don’t have to commit a half hour or an hour, but all the sittings do add up: I’m about halfway through the first volume. I’m not sure if this will work for novels or short stories (this strategy seems especially suited for manga with pictures that enable quick review of the storyline), but I’ll give it a shot when I finish this.

The only problem is that I’m out of the house so often these days, and it’s weird to carry reading into a public restroom – too weird.

How to Fly First Class for Free

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I have what my mother has described as “follow through issues.” No, this has nothing to do with my golf swing or the form of my jumpshot. I always find it easy to start big projects, but sometimes completing them can be an issue, and when something is a tedious task, I have trouble even getting started.

Schoolwork was never an issue, and real work hasn’t been either, but favors for friends and the little unimportant things like laundry, cleaning house, etc. always take me several tries. I’m almost never able to complete them in one go. I also find it hard to keep a budget and deal with number-based stuff. This includes joining an airline mileage program and racking up miles.

But I have seen the promised land, friends, and its name is first class on a transpacific flight. Yes, I was upgraded to first class on a LAX-NRT Delta flight when I flew in two months ago.

I’m not sure what your impression of the upgrade process is like, but I always imagined people in suits schmoozing their way from economy to business class or business to first. Well, this is a lie. The best way to get free upgrades to first class is to pick an airline, commit to it over the long term, and build up miles in the mileage plan. I wasted three years on JET by flirting with several different airlines (always the cheapest and most convenient), but not long after I moved to Tokyo, I committed to a long term relationship with Delta, and that’s been the secret. Delta has been a love-hate relationship, but she’s made up for her wrongs.

If you work long term in Japan, chances are you were like me and went home about once a year for a week or two. Tokyo to New Orleans is about 5000-6000 miles for each leg. That’s 10-12,000 miles per trip, and if you happen to take two trips in the same year, you can get close to the 25,000 miles required for Silver Medallion status.

I don’t care what Delta says, that Silver Medallion status is GOLD. Once you’re in to the medallion club, you get unlimited free upgrade requests. I’m not exactly sure if this is true for international flights, but when you purchase a domestic ticket, it will show you that your upgrade has been requested. I imagine that this enables the airline to sell more economy fares in the event that the first class fares don’t sell out; they simply bump a medallion member to first class and sell another (probably more expensive) ticket to Joe Schmoe (because he had to buy last minute).

Since last December, I’ve been upgraded to first class on four out of five domestic flights. For mathematically disadvantaged individuals, that’s 80%.

Most of these were short, one-hour flights, so the only real advantage was being first on and first off the plane. The MSY(New Orleans)-LAX flight was longer, so I got breakfast, which was great. The flight attendant came up to me and asked, “Will you be joining us for breakfast?” which absolutely killed me. Worth the price of admission to get Japanese-style attention in the U.S.

I don’t know how many of you have flown through LAX recently, but it’s a crap airport. Because of the construction and lack of speakers, I didn’t know I’d been upgraded to first class to Tokyo until shortly before I boarded. I got an email a few days before the MSY-LAX flight telling me I’d been upgraded, but the lady at the gate in LAX handed me my upgraded boarding pass a few minutes before I boarded. I didn’t have to ask for anything. It was automatic. Again, my guess is that this is because folks were flying standby and there were open seats in first class, and they start going down the list of people in the following order – medallion status, number of miles flown, price paid for ticket.

First class was great. I was used to economy where food isn’t served until an hour or two into the flight, so I had a meal at LAX before I left. Appropriately, my last American meal looked like a big, fat zit – clam chowder in a bread bowl:

In first class, they feed you immediately, and they take your order before take off. I only took pictures of the food, and this is what it looked like:

After we finished the meal, they brought out a dessert tray and started with the seats across from me. The desserts slowly started to disappear, so I resolved to go without the ice cream I wanted until another dessert tray appeared in my peripheral vision.

Cue tryptophan dream sequence. Wake up, breakfast like a boss:

The secret is, as mentioned before, committing to an airline, building up miles, and being a little lucky. I had a little luck myself. On my way home to Japan from the U.S. last year, my flight got canceled because the toilet was broken, so they put us all in a hotel for the night and gave us 25,000 miles on vouchers. Later they gave us an additional 10,000 miles just to apologize. I think these are what really helped bump me to medallion status, but flying a bunch of times didn’t hurt either.

A couple other notes:

– Book your ticket directly through Delta.com. Tickets booked via miles or a travel agent probably won’t be upgraded because they are special fares. Booking online probably won’t cost much more.

– Ask for the upgrade over the phone before the flight. I feel like this would probably improve your chances more than asking someone at the gate. Those gate people always seem to be incredibly stressed out. I’m not sure the people on the phone are any less stressed, so this might be the best idea.

– Enjoy the hell out of your first class experience! At first I was all self-concious, telling myself “Be cool, bitch!” but then I relaxed and said fuck it, I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this. I pressed all the buttons on the seat (there are a ton) until I figured them all out, despite the fact that it made me look like an idiot. I took pictures of all the food. I watched movies. I cracked some beers.

– Don’t get drunk and be obnoxious like the lady in front of me. She had something like five or six glasses of wine and then went on a toilet rampage. I waited for one to open and went in to brush my teeth and relieve myself. I had taken a little time, so when I heard a knock on the door, I assumed it was the flight attendant. I quickly finished and apologized when I got out. The flight attendant said, “Don’t be sorry” and rolled his eyes at the lady who was wasted and pounding on the bathroom doors.

– Always wear a jacket or something you can check just in case you get upgraded. They hang it up in a closet for you!

– I’m flying home in a week. I’m not expecting to get upgraded (because the service in Japan is horrible, according to some terrible documentary film asshole), but it would be a nice surprise. I’ll keep everyone posted.

white ≠ ワイト

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My first winter vacation living in Fukushima, I spent a week in Tokyo staying with my friend Thomas. He had come to Tokyo with his girlfriend shortly after graduating, and not long before I visited they split up, forcing him to move out into a guest house in Kanda. He was incredibly generous with his space (of which he had very little), and I spent the week shopping, drinking, and dancing.

When we were out one night, I helped a guy order a White Russian. When I walked up to the bar, I was standing behind the guy, and I noticed that he was having trouble communicating with the Japanese bartender. He kept on repeating “White Russian” over and over in a vaguely Japanese accent – ワイトロシアン, ワイトロシアン, ワイトロシアン.

Having been in his position before, I knew exactly what he was doing wrong. I leaned over, offered to help, and had the bartender reaching for the Stoli and Kahlua with a single extra syllable – ホ. The guy clearly expected the Japanese pronunciation of “white” to be ワイト, when it is actually ホワイト.

There are a couple Yahoo Chiebukuro pages that try to answer the question, but there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer other than ホワイト more accurately captures the pronunciation, which suggests that it may be an English pronunciation error on my part – maybe I’m not pronouncing “white” snootily enough? What’s certain is that the ホ-spelling is so natural and widespread – used in everything from white collar and white chocolate to Pokemon White – that the locals don’t think twice about it. Which means you shouldn’t either. Get used to it and you’ll save yourself time next time you’re at the bar.

Sandra Japandra‘s recent encounter with vermouth and its unexpected (from an English point of view) pronunciation ベルモット reminded me of this ホワイト incident. These are two good examples of another way that foreign loan words can be tricky: even when the Japanese word does equate to the object in the foreign language and not some other thing entirely, the pronunciation is not always exactly the same as in the English (unless it is…in which case I’m just a linguistically evolved youth and have shed this silly ホ in English). You can try to use the trick that some of my middle school Spanish classmates used when they “need-o to use-o el bano” and Japanify all the words you don’t know, but this is not recommended. Pay attention to yer katakanas and read all those syllables.

Baird Beer Taproom Pub Crawl

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Last Saturday I dragged four friends along on a tour of the Baird Beer Taprooms starting in Numazu. We had a miracle start to the trip. I’d planned on catching a 9:41 train from Yokohama, an express out to Atami, but we weren’t able to get through the gates until the minute hand was just about right on the :41, so I just kind of moseyed over to the escalator assuming that we’d end up on the next train and stood on the slow ride up to the platform. When we got to the top the train was still there for some reason, and the door-closing music had only just started playing. I turned to see where the four others were behind me. Teppey was close, but we shared a look – there’s no way we’re getting on this train, right? Slowy Rei, Junichi, and Adam ascended the escalator as the music continued, and we stepped slowly toward the doors as a group. Then suddenly we were on the train and moving to the West at 9:43am:

Baird Beer Taproom Pub Crawl from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

Numazu Fishmarket Taproom

The original Taproom. The brewery used to be on the first floor until they outgrew it. Great atmosphere, great view of the fish market from the counter along the window. And the pints are all 200 yen cheaper than the other Taprooms – your bonus gift for making the trek out to Shizuoka. The food was very impressive as well. I highly recommend everything we tried, especially the chicken wings which I don’t normally like. I was a bit disappointed there were no exclusive beers available – the first time I visited, there were a couple new selections and lots of older bottles available The beers we had were: Nihon Monogatari Ale, Old World Kolsch, German Summer Ale, Hop Havoc Anniversary Ale, Shimaguni Stout, Numazu Lager, Red Rose Amber Ale. We also picked up bottles of the Wheat King and Single-take Session Ale for the train.

Bashamichi Taproom

The newest and most well-appointed Taproom. Three floors of beer and barbecue goodness in a great part of Yokohama. I have to admit that I have been disappointed by the barbecue; what they offer is good – really good – but when I think barbecue, I think pulled pork, and there was none to be had. I was told, however, that they offer it occasionally. I think the chicken was the most flavorful of all the meat we tried, but I’d like to try the sandwiches at some point. Of all the Taprooms, this is by far the nicest space. There are tables on the roof, which will be amazing when the weather cools down a little, and the second floor is nice and open and surrounded by brick and wood. Free darts! The beers we had were: Bashamichi Ale, Rising Sun Pale Ale, Wheat King.

Harajuku Taproom

The third Taproom, right off of Takeshita-dori – quite a juxtaposition with the wacky Harajuku fashion scene. I love the food at this Taproom. It’s slightly upscale yakitori – everything is nicer than you’d find at a ガード下 location. Don’t miss out on the gyoza or the potato salad, and of course all the chicken is great as well. Also the smallest space of the four Taprooms, so it fills up quickly and seems more full than the other locations. We had: Harajuku Ale, Shimaguni Stout, Single-take Session Ale (I believe…this was the only location where I forgot to film close-ups of the beers themselves, so I’m forced to judge from afar.)

Nakameguro Taproom

The first Tokyo Taproom, second Taproom overall. They’ve done some redecoration since I last visited, and now there the vibe is much comfier – there are sofas in one of the corners and some smaller more intimate tables. The food is the least remarkable of all the Taprooms – unfortunately Nakameguro Taproom has been the big loser of the expansion (in my opinion). I’d choose Harajuku or Bashamichi over it, partially out of convenience but also because of food selection. Nakameguro does serve imported guest beers at decent prices, which offers a refreshing change, and they also have the very sessionable (3.7% ABV) Nakameguro Bitter on hand pump. We had: Naka-meguro Bitter, Old World Kolsch, Green Flash West Coast IPA, Caldera Amber Ale, Suruga Bay IPA.

Notes:

– Very impressed with the Single-take Session Ale as a new addition to the regular lineup. Great beer. Definitely my go-to Baird Beer.

– I’m disappointed we weren’t able to go (for Seishun 18 Kippu reasons) a few weeks earlier when the Cool Breeze Summer Pils was on. Nice beer. Also disappointed that the Sayuri Saison wasn’t available, although I managed a pint at Ushitora’s third anniversary.

– Other Baird Beers I miss: rauchbier he made back in fall of 2008 and the strawberry something in the summer of 2008. I haven’t seen either since, and they were nice. Don’t remember anything specific about the rauch, but it’s always nice to see that style. Hard to compete with Fujizakura, though. And the strawberry beer had this weird metallic aftertaste…not unpleasant after the first few sips…which I hope sounds like a compliment.

– I feel like Baird has done impressive expansion, but I’d like to see the beers available in more grocery stores and other easy-access locations. I guess this is asking the impossible, though: the latest macrobeer craze is beer that can be served on ice. Boo.

Collabo-Ramen – ほん田

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Brian and I thought we’d covered Tokyo Ramen Street last year when we finished Collabo-Ramen videos for the first four shops, but then they went and expanded this past April, adding four more shops which we felt the need to cover for completion’s sake.

We finally made it to the last shop this past Friday – Honda has slight variations on traditional bowls of shoyu and shio along with shoyu and miso tsukemen. Brian and I had the tsukemen. Afterward we went over to Kanda to have beers at Devil Craft, one of the newest bars on the Tokyo craft beer scene. The store is somewhat small but not uncomfortable – we made a reservation for five and were able to fit six at one of the tables upstairs. They also have a nice beer selection that isn’t monopolized by high ABV beers:

Collabo-Ramen – 本田 Honda from Daniel Morales on Vimeo.

I have to admit I was skeptical when Brian first suggested that we review the restaurants on Tokyo Ramen Street. I’d been reading his blog for a while and knew that he was the Ramen Adventurer: I wanted to trek out into shitamachi neighborhoods in search of Ganko-style secret ramen shops. But he had much more experience recommending ramen to readers of his blog, and he insisted that Tokyo Station is easily accessible for most tourists and that the stores on Tokyo Ramen Street have great bowls.

There’s definitely an extensive selection, and working with Brian has expanded my palette, which I think has enabled me to appreciate some of the bowls more. Definitely check out these stores if you have to be passing through Tokyo, especially Junk Garage, since that brings the Saitama-based mazemen into the heart of the city. Here are links to all the Tokyo Ramen Street Collabo-Ramen episodes:

The first four:

Rokurinsha
Hirugao
Mutsumiya
Keisuke Nidaime (lobster ramen, currently a crab ramen which Brian and I gave a pass)

And the new four:

Shichisai
Junk Garage
Ikaruga
Honda (you’re reading it)

サークル ≠ circle (Join my 会話サークル!)

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Well, I’ve been on Google+ now for a week or so, and it’s pretty cool. You can find me here, and my Public posts will probably be along the same lines as my Twitter feed.

I still haven’t made any major adjustments to my Circles just yet, but I’m about to start sorting them into Input and Output Circles, interest group Circles, ridiculous GIF poster Circles, et ceteraz.

I imagine that in the near future there will be public Circles or at least publicly visible Circles, so I’d like to create some useful ones for students of Japanese that I plan to open up publicly when/if that feature becomes available. One of the biggest problems for me back in New Orleans is that there are only just over 100 Japanese folks in the whole state of Louisiana, and only one of these 100 is willing to speak with me on a regular basis: I need Japanese speaking partners. The Google+ “Hangout” feature is a perfect way for groups to get together and practice speaking Japanese.

I plan on having three Circles at first – 日本語サークル初級, 日本語サークル中級, and 日本語サークル上級. I’m thinking this all up on the spot, so I’m not sure exactly how it will work, but the basic idea is to get a group of folks together who are at a similar ability level to speak Japanese. For the beginners, I’ll try and give explanations and keep things simple. Intermediate folks I think should focus on speaking more accurately and increasing the sentence patterns they can use actively. And the advanced folks can chat about whatever they want.

Maybe I’ll have set times during the week to host hangouts. Maybe I’ll just do it randomly (more likely). Who knows. So let me know if you want in to one of these speaking Circles, and if so, which Circle you would like to be placed in. You can either DM me on Twitter, email me, or leave a comment on my Google+ feed and I’ll sort you out. Ideally you’ll be able to add yourself to these Circles in the future.

I don’t plan on spamming any of these circles with anything except the actual Hangouts themselves, so you can join with the assurance that I won’t be overfilling your G+ streams.

And a wee Japanese lesson for you today as well. Did you notice the pun above? In Japanese サークル is based on the English word “circle,” but サークル ≠ circle. The Google images evidence is overwhelming: サークル, circle. サークル in fact means “club.” Schools, particularly universities, use the term to refer to student-run interest groups. When I studied abroad, I helped teach an 英会話サークル. Basically, I’ve made サークル Circles.

So, once again, mind yer inequalities.