Thursday, December 31, 2009

i really think so: airing my clean laundry

happy new year! check it out: it's 1:01 pm on 01/01/10. it feels so...binary.

when i was a senior in high school, my AP english teacher brought his guitar to class one day and did an unexpected rendition of that Vapors song "Turning Japanese" for us. i had never heard it before, and i think most of us believed he had written it himself. ordinarily a slow-speaking, deliberate man (imagine a non-evil, rounder-featured version of alan rickman's severus snape), he put a lot of energy into his performance, leaving us overly-conscious highschoolers feeling a bit awkward. i mean, what was it supposed to mean? years later i realized he was only covering a song that had been out since 1980.
though i later discovered some less-than-savory things about this man (look at me being mature...i decided not to air them publicly), he was a creative and intelligent educator. i was in the theater troupe at my school, and during performances, we could always hear him laughing from the audience at the highbrow jokes no one else caught. anyway, this is all by way of introduction to this morning's breakfast...it pretty much couldn't have been more japanese; homemade miso soup, rice with pickled plums, genmaicha (toasted rice tea), and black beans with a chestnut. delicious!


snow has been falling steadily since yesterday. i met a friend in nagoya before it began...i hit the town in ruby red...


...and when i returned, i had to unbury my bicycle at the station. brrr!


back at home i faced the dilemma of a japanese winter: trying to get laundry dry...when it's freezing.



8 comments:

  1. cute story. you cooked all that for breaky???

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  2. It's auntie here again!

    I laughed so hard I had to stick a sock in my mouth, not to awaken the travelers who perch here on holidays and summer time,when I read about the teacher singing about being Japanese; how ironic YOU are becoming one....in temporaryness!! One of David's friends, who passed through here on Christmas Eve & Day (2 girls),has a brother who is in Japan teaching english also. When I showed her where you were, she didn't opper where her bro was. I should have asked. Normita

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  3. Your mom thinks this is soooo Japanese of you. (LOL).

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  4. Where are the veggies in that "healthy breakfast"??

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  5. Hee hee. I like your description of the aforementioned educator from high school. Glad I was not the only one screaming "awkward!" on the inside through all his random displays. I still see this person pop up on Facebook once in a while, from other people's pages, and I get that feeling back again.....

    Anyways, I enjoy reading about all of your little adventures. :)

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  6. haha, thanks jess! yeah i've seen him on the facebook too. ;)

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  7. me too! i can't help but want to suck on a red that saturated (like a cherry popsicle).

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