Already June...

Wow, 2 more months.

I'm in the middle of midterms right now, so I've been tired lately. I didn't do too well on my last Japanese test, but besides that, everything seems to be going alright. I must really not be used to this schedule. I just wrote two papers in 3 days. That's a record for me, though I don't know how much I can say about the quality. I haven't written essays like those in a really long time. Japanese midterm on Thursday, Japanese speech on Friday, then I'm free of all the immediate stuff.

Anyway, school aside, I started reading Haruki Murakami's 'after the quake' in Japanese. =D It's a collection of short stories I read in translation about 3 or 4 years ago. I started reading 'landscape with flatiron' which was my favorite of all of them in the Jay Rubin translation. It's really good! I think it has a little bit of a different feeling in Japanese than in English that fits with the setting a bit more. It made me want to read the whole story at once. Hmm.. I got really into it when I was reading and tried to make myself stop around 3am when I was halfway through (it's about 30 pages), but had to get up half an hour later and finish it because I kept thinking about it too much. Hahaha. I started reading 'ufo in kushiro', but I'm trying not to get too into it yet because I have to still do work for class. Now that I finished my paper maybe.... =) Here's one of my favorite parts (I put the translation if you can't read Japanese, but I think the Japanese is more to the core. I also did not add the underlining, it's actually in the text):


そのとき順子は、焚き火の炎を見ていて、そこに何かをふと感じることになった。何か深いものだった。気持ちのかたまりとでも言えばいいだろうか、観念と呼ぶにはあまりにも生々しく、現実的な重みを持ったものだった。それは彼女の体のなかをゆっくりと駆け抜け、懐かしいような、胸をしめつけるような、不思議な感触だけを残してどこかに消えていった。それが消えてからしばらくのあいだ、彼女の腕には鳥肌のようなものがたっていた。

「三宅さん、火のかたちを見ているとさ、ときどき不思議な気持ちになることない？」

「どういうことや？」

「私たちがふだんの生活ではとくに感じてないことが、変なふうにありありとかんじられるとか。なんていうのか.....、アタマ悪いからうまく言えないんだけど、こうして火を見ていると、わけもなくひっそりとした気持ちになる」

三宅さんは考えていた。「火ゆうのはな、かたちが自由なんや。自由やから、見ているほうの心次第で何にでも見える。順ちゃんが火を見ててひっそりとした気持ちになるとしたら、それは自分の中にあるひっそりとした気持ちがそこに映るからなんや。そういうの、わかるか？」

村上春樹　「アイロンのある風景」


It was the first time that Junko felt a certain “something” as she watched the flames of a bonfire: “something” deep down, a “wad” of feeling, she might have called it, because it was too raw, too heavy, too real to be called an idea. It coursed through her body and vanished, leaving behind a sweet-sad, chest-gripping, strange sort of feeling. For a time after it had gone, she had goose flesh on her arms.

“Tell me, Mr. Miyake, when you see the shapes that a bonfire makes, do you ever feel kind of strange?”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, it’s like all of a sudden you get very clear about something people don’t usually notice in everyday life. I don’t know how to put it, I’m not smart enough, but watching the fire now, I get this deep, quiet kind of feeling.”

Miyake thought about it awhile. “You know, Jun,” he said, “a fire can be any shape it wants to be. It’s free. So it can look like anything at all depending on what’s inside the person looking at it. If you get this deep, quiet kind of feeling when you look at a fire, that’s because it’s showing you the deep, quiet kind of feeling you have inside yourself. You know what I mean?”

Haruki Murakami, landscape with flatiron
(translated by Jay Rubin)



The only other really interesting thing I can think of is that I ate pig ears yesterday. Nobuko and I were studying at a cafe and we had Chinese food for dinner. They didn't look like ears, so it wasn't that weird, actually, it tasted really good. XD

The weather here is also a little insane. I broke two umbrellas in the past week. It was also cold enough for one girl I know to wear a down jacket one day, and I also spent a day out wearing a tank top. If the weather doesn't start getting a little more consistent I think I might go a little crazy~