I Hate Football

Our apartment is very near to the stadium and last weekend during the game my bicycle helmet was stolen. I was upset, but not too much because I hadn't locked it up, so it wasn't so surprising, despite the fact that it was oddly colored and child sized. However, what I realized later as I rode my bike to work is that someone stabbed my tire with a pocketknife! Why would anyone do such a thing? The impulse to steal I can understand, but I cannot understand the anger behind random destruction.

Eating Bull

A letter from Earnest Hemingway to Ezra Pound was found today in a laundry in Austria.

"Another lot of interest is a letter written by Ernest Hemingway to the American poet and critic Ezra Pound in 1925, explaining why bulls are better than literary critics.

"Bulls don't run reviews. Bulls of 25 don't marry old women of 55 and expect to be invited to dinner. Bulls do not get you cited as co-respondent in Society divorce trials. Bulls don't borrow money. Bulls are edible after they have been killed."

My mother comes to visit tomorrow, with her boyfriend. I somehow have to be a tourguide for Japan, but my Japanese isn't good enough for that. Wish me luck! I'm going to need a lot of patience.

Rock Star

Rock Star
Originally uploaded by Sophonisba.

I went shopping today in Nagoya and Michi and I stopped in the goth/gothic lolita stores. There was a 40-something businessman in a suit shopping with a lolita girl. At first we were creeped out at the idea of a ko-gal situation right in front of us. But, then the girl turned around and "she" was male, 30-something, and very very ugly. So, no young girls were being taken advantage of today in the Lolita store.

Marked

As we pulled into Toyokawa station yesterday we saw a burned out house. I stared at it a lot, but not as a house, as an artifact. The fire must have had really intense heat because it burnt holes in the ceramic roof tiles. In some places the clay tiles looked like they had melted. I thought about kiln temperature settings, the temperatures of different glazes I've worked with,and whether the tiles had broken from exploded air bubbles, something inside that exploded, and other sort of forensic questions. Then the train pulled away, and I didn't give it another thought.

It turns out, that house belongs to one of my students and her aunt died there on Saturday. She didn't even have a uniform to wear to school today, so her casual clothes stand out as a mark of fire and death in the sea of sameness.

Miko Monkey

Miko Monkey
Originally uploaded by Sophonisba.

That's right, folks! For just 400 yen you can get your picture taken with a money (baboon?) dressed as a shrine maiden. He will fondle your leg for no additional charge! It's a sakura festival special at the holiest shrine in Japan. Every time I think "holy" I think of shrine maiden monkeys, don't you kids?

Visit Ise! It's near the very tiny famous rocks that look very large in pictures.

The CSI phenomena

I know the US has changed a lot since I've been gone. All the way back to "Dragnet" crime shows have been popular, (hehe...the LSD episode is cemented in my mind) but when did all of these, 'investigate dead bodies' shows get so popular? It is creating a lot of confusion for me because of one simple word: forensics. In my day in ye olde school house, I was a forensics person. I prepared my little black script for oral interpretation contest. I debated. I acted. I was "a forensics person." No one seems to know that meaning anymore. The word has morphed into the CSI meaning of investigating dead bodies, even in the world of education. I was reading a New York Times article about failing schools. Surely the students' elective class in elementary school would be forensics as I remember it? No, indeed. It's forensic facial anatomy.