Durian, A Story (Part 3): Can You Keep It a Secret?

Mochi that Pecolin gave me when we had Durian feast...
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This story actually occurred before the second part of the story, but I'd like to use this to close the trilogy (starwars? Indy Jones? :-) ).

Like I had mentioned before, I was ‘magnificiently’ successful in obtaining Durian this year, and without waiting until my room became Durian-scented, I brought it to Pecolin house. For a particular reason (that you'll also know after you read this through), I remember the date: it was May 14th.

Pecolin was surprised when I came, and indeed looked happier than usual. I often visit the family and she's always looks happy, but I never saw her grinned from ear to ear like that before. Even after I gave her the Durian, the smell couldn't erase the smile on her face (well, she likes Durian anyway, so it didn't count :-) ). Sonoyo was not there at that time, therefore we kept some for her and three of us had the Durian feast: me, Pecolin, and Otoosan (my home stay father. Otoosan literally means father. May be you will consider it strange that I call Pecolin by her name but call her husband 'father'). Anyway, the feast went without any accident. Pecolin likes Durian (so no problem with her), and even Otoosan who had never eaten Durian before had no problem to finish it (he even didn't need to rush for toothbrush after that :-) ).

Several days later I met Yoshimi. It looked like she had talked with Pecolin because she knew about the Durian feast.

"You know, she was very happy that you visit her last week."
"I can see that too." Pecolin ear-to-ear grin was still fresh in my mind. "She's always cheerful, but I never saw her so happy before. Was there any particular reason?"
"You didn't know it?"
I shocked my head.
"Do you still remember the date you visited her?"
"May 14th"
"You don't know what date it was, do you?"
I shocked my head again. ('Ear-to-ear grin' day? :-) )
"It's mother day! You know that she always considers you as her own son, and it was very meaningful for her when you visited her on Mother Day..."
Suddenly everything became clear.
"Actually I didn't know that it was Mother Day..."
"But still, she's very happy because of that..."

Well, should I tell Pecolin the truth, that it was just a coincident that I visited her on Mother Day? I didn't intended to lie to her, and if I keep it a secret from her, it wasn't a lie either, was it? As long as Pecolin herself doesn’t ask about it, I don't have the need to tell a lie, and everybody’s happy...

"Yoshimi, could you do me a favor? I hope you don't mind to keep it a secret from her? That I actually didn't know that it was Mother Day? I don't ask you to lie, just don't tell her about it. I think it's better to leave it that way..."
"Of course! Leave it on me."

May be someday Pecolin will find out about it anyway. Still, I think it is best to keep it a secret as long as possible. And if someday she finally finds it out, I hope at that time I had already had the chance to show her in other ways that I also consider her as my mother...

Anyway, several days later, I received a mail from Sonoyo. (Actually it has nothing to do with the 'Mother Day' stuff, but since this story started with I promised Sonoyo to find her Durian, I think it is better to close it with a mail from her).

アワンくん、こんばんは。先日はドリアンありがとうございました。初めて食べました。匂いは本当に強いですね。びっくりしました。(@_@)
味は匂いとは違っておいしかったです。主人は一口いただきましたが、ちょっと難しかったみたいです。私はたくさんいただきました。でも、日本人にとって、食べなれない味ですね。きっとアワンくんにいただかなかったら、生涯ドリアンを知ることはなかったかもしれない。
本当にありがとうございました。また会いましょう！

(Awan-kun, good night. Thanks for the Durian you gave us the other day. It was my first time to eat it. I was really surprised that it smells that strong.(@_@)
However, different from the smell, it tastes good. My husband could only eat a bit and it looked hard for him, but in contrary, I eat a lot. I think it is difficult for Japanese to eat it. May be if you never gave us the fruit, we will never eat it at all.
We really appreciate it. See you next time!)

In my reply I can only pray that her husband won't get any nightmare about Durian... :-)

Durian, A Story (Part 2): I Told You Not To Keep It Too Long in Your Refrigerator...

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One year from “Durian Candy” affair, and May came again. This time I carefully marked my agenda for the Thai Festival, and I was lucky enough not to forget it or happened to have other plans on those dates. It was raining, but I still took my time to go to Yoyogi park (where the festival held) for that crazy little fruit called Durian (well, not ‘little’, perhaps :-) ).

The ‘fragrance’ (I think my lab pals won’t agree with this wording :-) ) quickly guided me to the right spot, and without further ado I started to choose the fruits. Wondering how much Durian I should buy, I began to think to whom I would give the fruit besides Pecolin and Sonoyo. The remaining members of my lab who witnessed “Durian Candy Panic” episode were Kurata and Makii, and I think both of them would kill me if I still dared to bring the smelly object to the lab. I didn’t want to risk my chance to graduate from my lab by giving the fruit to my professor, either :-), thus the option to bring it to the lab was out of question. After short-listing candidates for my next ‘Durian victim’ :-), the (un)lucky :-) person was Aki. Hippo members are always a good choice on something like this, for most of them dare to try new things. And most of all, Aki sometimes invited me for a dinner, and I think this was one of the way to express gratitude (honestly, at that time I didn’t reckon that Aki might not consider it as a gift, but as a disaster :-) ).

Anyway, I mailed her to ask whether she liked Durian or not. She said that she never ate it before, but, as I had guessed it, would like to give a bite. She also offered a pasta dinner for the exchange of the fruit, and we set the date to the next Thursday.

Thursday came and I brought the Durian to her place. This time I had already came to my sense (?) and realized that she might not like it, thus I also brought Azuki ice cream with me, just in case. Like I often said before, Aki is a good chef, and even though it was only two of us, she cooked pasta that enough to feed 10 hungry persons (exaggerating :-) ). Anyway, we started to eat, and it was really delicious that we (We? May be it was only me :-) ) ate a lot. Finished with the dinner, we were about to proceed to the long awaited dessert (yes, Durian...), when Aki said: ”Can we skip the Durian tonight? I think I prefer the Azuki Ice Cream...”

Well, I had no problem at all with that, thus we proceed to the ice cream. I told Aki before I left not to keep the Durian too long in the refrigerator, because the ‘fragrance’ would spread out (The Durian was double sealed, but you could still smell it. Even in the train back home from Yoyogi park to my home I started to worry when I could feel the smell creeping out of my bag. Accidentally, I was taking Toyoko line, where around a decade ago the Sarin gas accident occurred. I started to wonder whether people around me who could smell the Durian suspected me as a member of strange religion which planned to do a mass suicide in the subway :-) ).

The following Saturday Yoshimi and Aki invited me for a sushi along with Chesda (a guy from Kampuchea) and Akane (another Hippo member). At that time Aki told me that she still kept the Durian in her refrig and that all her stuff there seemed to have turned to Durian (well, at least the smell :-) ).

“I told you not to keep it too long there”
“I know, but I don’t have the confidence to finish it all by myself. Can we all come to my home and help me finish it?”

Yoshimi and Akane seemed interested with the idea, and I would be surprised if Chesda didn’t like Durian (he’s a southeast asian!) so after the sushi we went to Aki’s place to do her the ‘favor’. To make it short, we opened the fruit, and one by one tried it. As I already guessed, they found that it was more delicious than they thought before, but learning from “Durian Candy” affair, I prepared for the worst: their reaction for the “after effect” (when only the smell left in the mouth).

Well, may be because I had prepared myself for it, their “after effect” reaction were not as bad as I predicted. Aki and Akane did race for toothbrush after eating (literally :-) ), but at least they said that they would have no problem with it if the smell was not that strong. Moreover, Yoshimi was doing fine (and not reached for mouthwash :-) ), and thus we finished the remained Durian together.

“Is there any other way to eat Durian beside eat directly like this?” Yoshimi asked when we about to finish the fruit.
“Well, sometimes I eat it as ice cream”
Yoshimi savored the Durian taste in her mouth. “I think it suit a vanilla ice cream. I’d like to give it a try”

Well, now I know what’s my “Durian project” for next year: to find Durian ice cream in Japan.
And since this time the result was not so bad, I think it’s not a bad idea to test it again to my lab pals...

Durian, A Story (Part 1): Candy Frenzy

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(I don’t like writing a long blog neither reading a long one, thus I cut this story into (hopefully :-) ) 3 parts - if I have the time and the mood to write them all...)

The story started close to the new year of 2005.

Like any other new year during my stay in Japan so far, my home stay family invited me to a party at their home. Agenda: eating, eating, eating, (eating?), playing cards, and chatting (I forget whether we ate three or four times that time :-) ). Sonoyo (the daughter), asked me what kind of fruit that I like when we had the dessert, and after thinking for a while I replied without any hesitation: “Durian”.

“Is it delicious? I never eat one.”

“Well, I like it. I even like the smell, though lots of people hate it. If I can find it, I can bring one next time if you want to.”

“Really? I’m looking forward for it.”

In the following month I searched Tokyo for Durian, and I couldn’t found one. I also missed Thai Festival that year, where I should have been able to find the fruit easily. Anyway, in April, my family told me that Tina, a friend of mine from my childhood, would visit Japan in May, and they asked whether I wanted something from Indonesia that she could carry with. The same reply as my answer to Sonoyo’s question (also with no hesitation) came out: “Durian”.

May came, and because it was hard to find Durian in Sidoarjo (my hometown) that time, Tina couldn’t bring me one. However, she brought Durian candies instead. It was in quite an amount that after gave some to Pecolin (my homestay mother), many still left. Then, along came the great idea: “Why don’t I give it to my lab mates?”

Durian reputation really precedes it, and only by mentioning that I brought Durian candy to the lab, little commotion occurred :-). One by one my lab mates turned down my offer to try the candy: Kahara just laughed, Kurata and Makii firmly said “no!” Anyway, finally I could find four volunteers that boldly eat what no one had eaten before :-) : my professor, Kim-san, Chou-san, and Yanagita. Similar replies came: it was more delicious than they thought before (I told you so!), but (still), the smell is strong. I was starting to feel glad that four of them like it, until we (they?) realized that there was a small problem (well, small for me, but may be not for them :-) ): unlike the actual fruit, the candy was made from the essence of Durian which has higher concentration, which meant that the taste would stay longer in your tongue. Chou-san didn’t mind about it, but my professor and Kim-san said that the taste leftover was too strong. Yanagita even complained that the taste wouldn’t go even after drinking two cups of coffee.

Another problem came from the smell. Although less than half of the members of my lab ate it, Durian smell spread throughout the room, and like a very aggressive salesman, it refused to go. Yanagita happened to eat it in the experiment room, and at that time no one couldn’t tell whether the smell came from the candy or from gas leaking.

Lessons learned: (1) each person has different perception on anything given to them (I still can’t believe that one can ever dislike something as good as Durian! :-) ). (2) Never eat Durian candy in closed room :-).

Nice to Meet You

Picture taken from party at my professor home, where I can meet (and 'meet' :-) ) not only the current member of my lab, but sometimes some alumni too...
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Again, about kanji.

You know that there’re several kanji in Japan that have the same pronunciation and the same English translation, but they give different nuance to the sentences? One of them (well, actually this is the only example that I know... :-) ) is kanji for the word au (あう), which English translation is ‘to meet’ and it can be written by several kanji (e.g. 会う, 逢う, 遭う). The ‘normal’ kanji is 会う, and I just happened to run across the other kanji (遭う) several days ago, thus I quickly asked Makii the difference between the kanji (you know one of the great things being a member of my laboratory? It is easy to find a free good Japanese teacher... :-). After reading this, I think Makii will charge me the next time I ask her about Japanese...).

Well, while the kanji 会う and 遭う are both read au, and both literally mean ‘to meet’, the usages are different. While the 会う kanji is normally used when you meet someone, the kanji 遭う is used when you meet danger or bad thing (e.g.盗難に遭う(tounan ni au), which means being robbed).

And it was not long when I finally had the chance to use it. Yanagita called me to have dinner together with Saito and Konishi, and when I mailed Makii about the news, here’s what I wrote: 「今夜柳田と遭う予定ですよ」(“I’m going to meet Yanagita tonight”).
(It’s just a joke. Actually, the kanji cannot be used if you want to say that you meet someone, even if you think he is dangerous).

The mail developed into a short chat. Makii wanted to ask me about something, and we then said that we’re going to meet in the lab. When closing the mail, she wrote: “I’m looking forward to meet you in the lab”. You can guess which ‘meet’ that is... :-).

Get Busy...

Well, the picture has no connection with this blog (as usual :-) ), but eating that indeed can help you forgetting something (for the time being...)
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Sorry if this time my writing is a little bit cryptic...

I was about to start my doctoral course when I took Nia’s offer to help in PIEF activities. And now that I found I’m getting busy in my lab (really? :-) ), it looks like PIEF will also claim some of my time soon. Anyway, I didn’t regret at all taking that decision. PIEF helps a lot of kids out there, and it’ll be great if I can help them, even only a bit. But most of all, it’s not others that I want to help by joining PIEF. It is more to me myself that I want to help. If I’m getting busy, may be I can try to get over someone... well, no, I don’t want to get over someone so special, it’s my feeling that I’m trying to forget. The feeling that I (might?) still want to keep, but I can feel that it starts consuming me, and bit by bit the parts of me are dying... (did I sound too poetic? :-) ).

Well, anyway, I just want to enshroud that feeling, and when eventually it comes to the time when it uncloaks itself again, I hope it already ‘the right time’ to let it blooms. Or if ‘the right time’ never comes, I hope it has already evolved that I can let it flow to someone else...

I’m just trying to be positive, and I really need to be positive. Like Yanagita often says that I’m an enthusiastic and positive type of person, I think it is time for me to live ‘that legend’, and not let it become just an empty reputation...

I Confess I Had Lived My Master Years

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I think I don’t need to tell you that if you’re enjoying something, the time will flash by like the wind. Well, it’s true. It feels like just yesterday that I attending the entrance ceremony for my masters course, taking pictures in front of fountain in sakura namiki (the fountain had already gone now), and being anxious about what lies ahead in two-year time; and suddenly, graduation day had passed.

Well, I won’t write much here, and if I’m to sum up all the things that happened these past two years, the words is fun, and a lot more fun. Of course some troubles also got in the way, but with those around me who have special knack to lift me up when I’m feeling down, and also those who’re far but keep on sending me their prayers, there’s only fine memories that come up anytime I recall those days.

I’m glad that God had let me live my master years to the fullest, even beyond what I had expected before; and now as I enter a new chapter of my life, I hope there’re still plenty of blesses that I would find along my endeavor...

Because Gossip Travels Twice the Speed of Light...

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I was so busy in these past few weeks to prepare my master defense that I didn’t contact my friends from Hippo at all (the last time I met some of them was when I had new year party at my home-stay family’s place). Finally most of the works were done, and I casually sent mail to Akki (one of Hippo members) to say hi and tell her that I’ve done with my presentation. The mail developed into short chat (she wondered whether I was fine after hiking at mount Ooyama in January because the other members of hiking caught cold after returning) when she asked whether I fancied to have dinner at her place the following Sunday. Akki is a good chef and she likes experimenting with new dishes, so I didn’t waste much time to say yes, and my schedule for that day was fixed.

I was planning to call Pecolin (my home-stay mother) to tell her about the news too, but it seemed that I didn’t need to worry because she soon had heard about it.

“Congratulation!”, she said on the phone, and I quickly guessed that it was about my master defense. I was thinking that I needed to thank Akki for spreading the news (thus I didn’t need to bother to let everybody knew one by one and consequently saved my telephone bill :-) ), when Pecolin continued, “I’m glad that you will continue your doctoral course here.”

Doctoral course? Wait a sec, it seemed that something’s misplaced here. I quickly recalled whether I ever mentioned about doctoral course to Akki, and I’m sure I didn’t: so either my ear played trick on me, or the news that I told Akki was a little bit ‘modified’ :-) (By who, I didn’t know).

I quickly explained to Pecolin that I had passed my master thesis defense, but still didn’t know whether I will continue my doctoral course here or not (I even had not taken the entrance examination that time!). And even though I didn’t mind at all about the ‘customized’ news, I get a bit curious on who’s the one that ‘translated’ my news incorrectly. I was thinking to start the ‘investigation’ by calling Akki, but then I thought asking her at the dinner would be better (and would save my telephone bill again :-) ).

So, Sunday night came, and another surprise was waiting for me. When I get to Akki place, it was not only her, but Tomo-chan also there to help her prepared the dishes. Akki said that there would be some more to come, and therefore I asked whether there’s a special occasion that a lot of people would come to celebrate. And she playfully replied: “Well, I forgot to mention that tonight we will have a little party to celebrate your finishing of master’s defense!”

Well, I’m fine with that little secret, however, it reminded me about the gossip that had already spread so I asked Akki what did she told the others. What she said was a carbon copy of what I had told her (without the doctoral course part) so I thought the problem should be on the other ‘chain of communication’. And while waiting for the next ‘suspects’ to come, I helped them preparing the dishes.

Not long Yoshimi-san came with flower for me and congratulated me for finishing my master (well, she’s got it right, so she’s also free from all charges :-) ). Then along came Fujiko-san, who without much ado quickly congratulated me for finishing the test for doctoral course (well, now we know where the news changed... :-) ).

Anyway, like I had mentioned before, I didn’t mind at all about the ‘misinterpretation’. Fujiko-san didn’t mean to change the news, and by thinking that I had already passed my doctoral course test, it meant that she was wishing that I pass the test (and of course I’m glad to know that).

We had a good party that night, and Yoshimi-san even said that they will throw another party if I already settle with my doctoral course. When I asked what will happen in case I won’t continue my doctoral course here, she simply said: “We still can have a farewell party for you”.

Cool. Whatever waits ahead, there will still be a party to look forward to... :-)

Bizarre Love Triangle, Oops Rectangle

(Picture from: http://drawings.love.ecards.free.fr/)
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Everything started one week ago. Carmela wanted to buy a digital camera so she asked me to show her the way around in Akihabara (electronic centre in Tokyo). Because two other friends of mine also wanted to go there for computer shopping, we then went in group.

On the way, we talk about all kind of things. I forget how did the conversation flowed, but finally Carmela asked me whether Makii (one of my lab members) has already had boyfriend or not. She was asking that because she wanted to do a matchmaking of her with one of her friends. And my reply at that time was more or less sounded like this: “You shouldn’t matchmake her with anyone because I like her too” :-).
(That was intended to be a joke. Makii is cute and funny, and I think I like her, but Yanagita once told me that she has already had boyfriend so the option is off).

I thought that the conversation would soon pass and would cause no problem at all, but I was wrong. The problem occurred on the following Thursday, the day of the thesis defense for bachelor students. Tan-san, who actually wanted badly to go back to China (he was going to get married soon), postponed his departure because our professor asked him to help Makii preparing her presentation (they have similar research theme). And after her presentation, to express her gratitude, Makii walked Tan-san to the building door (Tan-san went directly to the airport after the presentation). Carmela saw them going, and she asked Yanagita where they went.

“Tan-san is going back to China to get married”

And Carmela reaction was: “They are going to get married in China? Won’t Awan get upset about that?”

And, as predicted, the rumor spread widely even beyond my lab (so far I know that Saito and Konishi had heard that too, and even my professor knows, too). And because Carmela also moved her desk away from my side to a quite far place (she did this because in the new place she can watch movie in her computer with less disturbance :-) ), additional rumor said that she moved her place because she was angry to hear I like Makii :-).

Anyway, since all members of my lab seem not to take this rumor seriously (even Makii laughed when I told her about it), I think I don’t need to worry too much (honestly, I’m easily get worried about something like this). But at least if one day you ever hear about all of this, you know how this all started up...

(Perhaps I’m not recalling some of the details described above correctly, but more or less that’s how the story was flowing...)

To Educatedly Say “Your Eyes are Beautiful” to Japanese Girl

I was planning to use Mouri Ran (毛利蘭) picture from Detective Conan (名探偵コナン), however it is hard to find her picture from net. Thus, I used Kamiya Kaoru (神谷かおる) from Rurouni Kenshin (るろうに検心) here...
(Picture from: http://sobakasu.free.fr/)

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If you’re not a native English speaker, I think you’ve ever been in a point on your English learning when you find that definite and indefinite articles (‘the’ and ‘a’) are extremely hard to comprehend, that it makes you think that unless you were reborn as a native, you will never understand them (honestly, sometimes I still feel so :-) ). Or, if you ever happen to learn German, you’ll know that its definite articles not only change according to gender, but also to the noun role in a sentence (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), and that they could fill up your nightmares, specially before your German test :-). Well, every language has their difficult part, and when I was happy to find that there is no such articles in Japanese when I started to learn it, I should’ve known that the ‘phantasm’ that would haunt me through the rest of my life like the crawling creature in “The Ring” had yet to come (Okay, I’m exaggerating here... :-) ).

Well, those ‘horrors’ finally came to me, and they are called particles. They are short, most of them are only expressed by a single kana, but they play an important role in Japanese. Using the wrong particle in a particular sentence doesn’t make the sentences wrong sometimes; but worse, it makes the sentence convey a message totally different from what you intent to say. I give the example below. (I got this from Makii. We keep a shared diary where I write in Japanese and she write in English, and then we check each other’s entries and write our correction there. I made so many mistakes related to the particles that now the diary is full of particles usage explanations from Makii. The good point is, I think our diary is qualified enough now to be used as a Japanese Particles Guidebook :-) )

Here's the example:

Let’s say that you met a Japanese girl with shining eyes, and you’d go to the center of the universe just to say that out loud (世界の中心で、「your eyes are beautiful!｣を叫ぶ <-- if you know the movie you’ll understand this :-) ). Anyway, you want to look cool while doing it, and you think by saying it in Japanese will do the trick. So you type the sentence in your favorite automatic English-Japanese translator and whisper the sentence that the translator gives you to the girl...

Well, at this point, I could only hope that either the girl realizes that you’re not native Japanese, or she has a good sense of humor to think that you were just joking when saying it. Most of automatic translators would translate the sentence into ｢あなたの目は美しいです｣ (Anata no me wa utsukushii desu), or if you want it in a more colloquial way: ｢目は可愛いです｣ (Me wa kawaii desu) --> your eyes are cute. (In fact, I tried 3 translators and all of them gave me the same results). The sentences are grammatically correct, but the girl will reckon you saying that only her eyes are beautiful (and other parts are not). The grammatically and ‘spiritually’ correct translation would be ｢あなたの目が美しいです｣ (Anata no me ga utsukushii desu) or ｢目が可愛いです｣ (Me ga kawaii desu). You can see that the differences are only in wa (は) and ga (が), and these are the horrors, oops, the particles that I mean.

The problem will also arise if you want to say “You look great today!”. You shouldn’t say ｢今日君は素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi wa suteki da yo!), but ｢今日君が素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi ga suteki da yo!). Actually, there’s another particle for this that will give a better effect on what you intent to say: mo (も). If you say ｢今日君も素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi mo suteki da yo!), it would translate as “You also look great today! (as great as usual)”.

To sum up, here’s the list of “you look great today!” translation:
｢今日君も素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi mo suteki da yo!) (highly recommended!)
｢今日君が素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi ga suteki da yo!) (okay)
｢今日君は素敵だよ！｣ (Kyou kimi wa suteki da yo!) (never ever say this unless you really really know what you're saying).

Well, either way, I hope the girl understood what you really wanted to say... (even if what you actually want to say was "you (only) look great today!" :-) )

The Second Sheet

I tried to find a picture of kabuki, but unfortunately I don't have it. This is the closest thing to kabuki that I ever took picture of, therefore I use this instead...
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Last week there was a thesis defense for doctor candidates in my department and, as usual, it was followed by party in the evening. I won’t tell how it all began (since it’ll claim too much space here), but after some chat, Carmela, UNESCO fellow who currently stay in our lab, said to Saito (Saito belongs to another lab) that she was lucky to had landed in a lab with handsome members like ours (ahem... :-) ). This reminded me to one of my earliest question for Japanese (and I almost always forget to ask about it): Why there’s no native word for handsome in Japanese (they use ハンサム, hansamu, which was adapted from English word handsome), while there’s a native word for beautiful (綺麗, kirei). And as you might well guess it, I wasted no time to ask about it.

To my surprise, all Japanese that surrounded me that night said that there’s indeed a native word for handsome. The problem is that just I never heard about it before. The word with the closest meaning to handsome that I often hear is 格好いい(kakkou ii), which more or less means cool (I hear this word a lot because a lot of people say that I’m kakkou ii :-). And before you send me any objection mail, there’re indeed some people who say that I’m kakkou ii, and most of them are kids :-). Anyway, you know that kids are still pure and won’t tell a lie... :-). Well, to this point I think I have made most of you throw up so I better carry on with the story...). Back to the main topic, the word that they meant was nimaime (二枚目). I rushed for my dictionary after I hear the word, since I get an impression that my ears played trick on me. Nimaime literally means ‘the second sheet’, and even with my absurdly entangled way of thinking I couldn’t see any connection between handsomeness and sheet. Konishi and Makii was about to tell me why, when Kim-san came and they let him explained.

Well, the word originated from practice in kabuki (歌舞伎: Japanese traditional theatrical drama). In the poster for the show, the first picture of the players would display the face of the leading role. For the second picture - I think it was in order to attract some visitors who would come for pretty faces - the picture of the most handsome player in the group will be displayed (here where the term nimaime come from). And if we go to the next picture, we’ll find the most entertaining player in the group.

Just to make sure, we (we?), search the dictionary for the first sheet (一枚目, ichimaime) and the third sheet (三枚目, sanmaime) terms. There was no word for ichimaime, but the entry for sanmaime tells that it stand for the word comedian or clown in English, which fits with the explanation of the word origin above.

By the way, quiz time: if you happen to be in the kabuki group, would you prefer to have your face in the first, second, or third sheet?

The Sloppiest Year of My Life

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I broke my glasses while I was in Vietnam. Actually it got slammed when I was trying to close taxi door, but so far almost nobody could believe it. Yanagita and Makii even accused that it was because I looked so much at Vietnamese girls that the strength of my sight crumped my poor glasses :-) (They said this because Yoshizawa-san, who was in Vietnam with me, said that I was taking some girls into my hotel room. Two girls indeed visited me, but they were my friend’s sister and her friend, and we did nothing fishy, unless they teaching me how to say ‘I love you’ in Viet could be categorized into one :-) ). Anyway, despite all ‘allegations’, without being asked Yanagita escorted me to an optic so I could make a new pair.

But back to the broken glasses, after giving a second thought, it might hard to believe that someone could be so careless to get his glasses slammed by a taxi door. However, I’d been careless in lots of occasions last year and looking back to all that had happened makes crushing my pity little glasses won’t look even close to an accident at all.

Well, my friends who know me well must’ve learned that I’m reckless by nature, but particularly for important thing, few would see me as a careless person. Even some of my friends feel save when they have me in the room while doing experiment, because sometimes I warn them if there’re something misplaced that could lead to danger (I don’t know whether they will still feel safe if they know how I had been last year :-) ). I should still be grateful that none of my recklessness led to any catastrophe; I was still able to deliver report on time and my research went close to as planned. However, I did most of the works on the last hours of deadline, which was not a good practice at all. And what happened last year was not just that.

To add up to the list: I showed up late in several party where I’ve been invited; rose late at the day of mount Fuji hiking (glad I was still able to catch the train); and forgot that I had already promised to see Star Wars 3 with Yanagita (we finally moved it to another day). Well, if I sometimes put off my works ‘till the last moment, it’s not big issue. Procrastination is nothing new for me; I sometimes exhibit that kind of habit when I get bored, and the things that I need to do is just getting new air and everything will come back normal soon. But if I forget to watch Star Wars, and that didn't happen only for once or twice, there must be a problem.

Anyway, it all had passed, and I won’t blame anything or anybody for what happened last year; it was all from me and it is me who has to do something about it (I even need to say thanks to those around me who supporting me the whole year thru’). I think it’ll be a good resolution for this new year: ‘To make last year the sloppiest year of my life’ (i.e. ‘To make the years to come far better than last year...’). All I need to do now is to find a way to make it come true, and I hope I’ll find it.

By the way, happy new year, and I hope your year will last as you wish it to be, just like I wish mine will too.

What You Can See When You Sit on Water Closet

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I was invited to the year end party at Ali and Kiki’s, and not long after arriving, Tita, who was also invited, told me that Kiki using her picture to decorate the toilet (?). I went there instantly, and found the wall inside being covered with lots of pictures (I also found my picture there). While Tita protesting to Kiki (not because her picture was there, but because “it won’t come out” for she’s too busy to look at all the picture while she’s inside :-) ), I think I could understand why Kiki doing that.

Even though I do “the thing that we do in toilet” fairly fast (I will call it “you know what” in the rest of this writing :-) ), my sister takes time to do it. That’s why she often brings book(s) with her inside the toilet, to kill time. Similar with my sister, Kiki decorated her toiler to help her spending the time required to do “you know what” (I also found some books there to support this 'hypothesis'). Since it seems that Tita used to do “you know what” fast, the picture seems to distract her ‘concentration’.

By the way, just curious: do you also decorate your toilet like the way Kiki did? :-)