Fine Fare in Dull Surroundings

weird coming here tonight. i wonder if i'll come back here when i go to Japan for research in a few months. we'll see.

Kyle: But if we do that we'll be exposing our weirdness.

Christina: Yeah, but they'll think 'At least they found each other. It's the weird people who are lonely who are really sad.'

While I was in Matsuyama, I went to this club and guess who was there? ( Collapse )

I'm leaving on an overnight bus for Osaka in 3 hours. Hiromi will be home from piano lessons any minute now. Then we'll cook.

Tonight's menu:

Katsuo Tataki (seared bonito shashimi)
Shiraae (mushed tofu, greens and sesame)
Natsu Potatoes with Usuage tofu
Seaweed Salad

Leaving this place is always so difficult. But this time at least I think I've learned the joys of amae.

After almost two weeks hanging out at Hiromi's house, I leave this afternoon for the Nametoko English Camp. I'd much prefer not to. Life at the Kanatani house is heaven. When I wake up in the morning, Hiromi has breakfast waiting for me on the kitchen counter: a bowl of salad and a piece of fluffy homemade toast. We chat about the plans for the day and I study Japanese while she reads the newspaper and does random chores around the house. In the morning we usually go visit people or entertain someone here at the house. I carry about a miniature notebook and write down all the new words I learn during these interactions. In the afternoon, she teaches piano lessons and I play on the computer, reading academic articles on PDF and writing in my journal. When I need a break, I bring in and fold the laundry or take Sora-kun for a walk around the rice paddies. Inevitably, there's some visitor who stops by, a person from the neighborhood or one of the guys working on the remodeling. I invite them in or receive whatever message or gift they have. Hiromi loves the fact that no one is surprised when a foreigner answers her door. She introduces me to everyone as her oldest daughter.　I've heard her explain this a couple of times: no, this isn't a homestay experience; yes, she really is like a daughter. I just stand there and smile at the bemused visitor.

In the evening, as she cooks dinner, I sit at the counter and keep her company, with half of my attention on my Japanese textbook and half on her immaculate cooking skills. The food is wonderful: shashimi, nitsuke fish, grilled fish, black sesame tofu, Okinawan tofu, tempura, temaki sushi rolls, salad, pumpkin and eggplant stirfries with teage tofu and, last night, my all time favorite, shiraae, ground tofu with sesame seeds and spinach. She and Toshio drink beer and shochu on the rocks with the meal. I have a can of flavored chu-hai shochu. We always finish off with fruit and then Toshio turns on the TV and we veg out over silly variety shows and disturbing news programs chronicling the recent floods and murders in northern Japan. I help Hiromi clean up the dinner table and Toshio falls asleep on the couch. He always falls asleep on the couch and we always tease him about his snoring. It's become routine. We take turns going to the bath and, before we head for bed, Hiromi and I do some yoga on the new wooden floors.

Everything I do here feels like it's good for me. I'll have to get back to you on how the missionaries are fairing these days. I'll be up in the mountains with the monkeys and the Christians for 10 days. Wish me some Nametoko luck ne.

Over 250 LGBT activists and leaders, writers and artists, organizers
and lawyers, allies and celebrities have signed a document, BEYOND
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, which offers a challenge to the current strategies
employed by LGBT organizations that are pursuing marriage equality.

The statement can also be found at www.BeyondMarriage.org, where
others can sign on after reading a short Executive Summary, as well as
the full document.

Plans for the document began in April 2006, when a diverse group of
nearly twenty LGBT and queer activists - some organizers, some
scholars and educators, some funders, some writers and cultural
workers - came together to discuss marriage and family politics as
they exist in the United States today. We met over the course of two
days for lively conversations in which there was often spirited
disagreement. However, we do all stand in agreement with the statement
entitled "Beyond Same Sex Marriage".

We offer this statement as a way to challenge ourselves and our allies
working across race, class, gender and issue lines to frame and
broaden community dialogues, to shape alternative policy solutions and
to inform organizing strategies around marriage politics to include
the broadest definitions of relationship and family.

I was trying to write but then I looked out the window and saw the dragonflies. They are hovering together in golden swarms over the rice paddies. I took Sora-kun for a walk through them and now I'm back, eating a greenhouse-grown Ehime tangerine.

This is reminding me of meeting up with Scottish Chris the other night. We went to an izakaya and then karaoke. Natsuko, a girl from Tsushima, told a story about a beetle that she found on the sidewalk outside of her apartment. It was all tired and sad looking, like it was about to die. Feeling sympathy for the little creature, she went and bought a little beetle cage for it, gave it specialized pet store beetle food and water in an upturned bottle top. In two days time it was all genki again, jumping and climbing around in its cage. Then she felt bad becuase it was all alone, so, she went back to the pet store and bought it a friend. "I couldn't find the same kind of beetle becuase they don't sell the kind that come in nature. The new one's a little bigger but they still like each other."

A few weeks earlier, she went on a fishing trip with Chris and her boyfriend Brian. Out in the middle of the Seto-Naikai they passed four swimming baby inoshishi (aka wild boars). "They were so cute!," she said. "And I was worried about them--so far out in the sea and just babies!" When they got back to shore, Brian and Chris did a search on the internet and found an article from the BBC describing an inoshishi that survived at sea for four days after a typhoon hit the nearest island. Inoshishi are good swimmers, even baby ones. "Sore de anshin shita ne." Hearing that made her feel a lot better.

Me too. I like the image of four baby inoshishi swimming around from island to island together (genki, with their bellies full of food).

After nine days in Kansai, I boarded the ferry for Ehime last night. I checked into a nitei shitsu with a 9 o'clock meal of sesame spinach, salmon rice ball and burdock root. Then, at 9:30, I took a bath. Halfway through washing my hair, the boat turned up on its side. The steamy water from the bath flowed over the edge, into the washing area. At first we thought this was normal but it kept coming, more and more water cascading over the side. The little girl in the room started bawling--the water was scalding hot, all the way up to her torso. All pretensions of soapy cleanliness interrupted, we turned around on our little stools and looked on in confusion, then, worry. The water came up to our knees. The mom picked up the little girl to keep her out of the water and, without thinking, I stood up, ready to bolt. I had visions of the Titanic and me, running around half naked, fresh out of the bath, trying to save myself from a sinking ship. How much time should I spend opening my locker outside and putting on clothes? Will modesty cost me my life? To die naked, on a sinking ship, soapsuds still in my hair, would be absurd. The recovery crew would see us through the window, ten naked women and a little girl, suspended in a fish bowl. Perhaps the mom saw this image on my face. "Nami da yo," she smiled and moved her hands in a wave motion. Still, we all looked on in concern. Nami have peaks and valleys, not one uninterrupted crest for over 60 seconds. I sat back down like everyone else, amazed at my ability for passivity. When the water subsided, I looked around at the other women and laughed, "Kowakatta ne." Yep, that was hella scary.

I turned in my final paper of my first year in graduate school an hour ago. Since then I have been staring at the computer screen, completely baffled as to what to what I should do next.

An update for all you Japan-side. I will be arriving in Osaka on the Fourth of July. I'll be there for two months. When and where can we meet up?