I read somewhere that author Dan Brown has an hourglass in which the sand flows for one hour. He uses it when writing to tell him when it’s time to take a break.
Every morning I sit at my desk and get lost in the pleasure of exploring kanji Chinese characters. I knew immediately that a 60-minute hourglass was exactly what I needed as well. I ordered one at the hobby store Tokyu Hands (¥13,500/$150/100 euros/£.90). It arrived recently and has quickly become a fetishised object.
This precision instrument is a thing of simple beauty and perfect utility. When I look up and see that the contents have trickled to the bottom, I know it’s about time to stand up and do something physical before sitting down once again, inverting the glass, and diving back into the Japanese language.
--Julian
Nice to have the sporadically clogged conduit flowing freely again. I added three books to the "Books I Finished in 2009" folder today.
—David
In an old part of Tokyo in the late afternoon, I passed a narrow alley. The houses faced each other, almost touching, and pots of flowers and plants filled the available space. The sky behind had turned red, and I felt a sudden and unexpected rush of love for the density of human existence; so many lives being led so closely together.
Tokyo at sunset
chaos of humanity
ache of affection
--Julian
We go to the movies a lot here in rural Chigasaki, and usually stumble out from our aisle seats when the end credits begin to roll. We do it with no thought other than that the film's over, and there always seem to be others making a quick exit.
Yesterday we went to metropolitan Tokyo to catch a film that hadn’t made it to local screens. What astounded me was that everyone stayed in their seats during the end credits. As the names were slowly presented for minutes on end, I looked around at my fellow audience with growing incredulity. I noted that a few were quietly checking their phones, but otherwise no one spoke or moved until the lights went up.
I can only guess this was etiquette: a show of respect toward the film, any film. The one we’d watched had been a crime against cinema; Dave White deftly and accurately describes it as “a swirling suckpool of incoherence.” But no one moved anyway. I suspect this is uniquely Japanese behavior and, now that I've thought about it... I like it.
What's your end-credit behavior?
--Julian
The New York Times, along with much of the rest of the media, gave George W. Bush and his cohorts a free pass during the run-up to the Iraq war. They apologized for that lapse later, and seem to have learned something, too. They are not shy about criticizing Obama and company when they deserve it. On the editorial page today:
The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration’s expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush’s cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama’s cover-up.
Read the rest here.
--David
This is the latest in my series of unpublished letters to editors. This one didn't appear in the Financial Times.
Dear Editors:
Farhan Bokhari, in his article, "'Vikings' of the frontier land refuse to yield," quotes Hakimullah Meshud, leader of the Taliban, as saying: "First stop, an Islamic state in Pakistan, second stop, attacks on India." Am I the only one who, disregarding the commas, was startled, on first misreading, to learn that Hakimullah wished to prevent Pakistan from becoming an Islamic state and to end attacks on India?
—David
He's not one of these guys who just reads military books. He reads weird things, too. He's reading a book about Shakespeare right now.
—Major General Michael Flynn on General Stanley McChrystal.Quoted in this article.
—David
Unfortunately, I’m not very good at “explaining“ my work. I once tried to do this in a question-and-answer period with some students of my friend Richard Howard, after which he told me: “They wanted the key to your poetry, but you presented them with a new set of locks.” That sums up for me my feelings on the subject of “unlocking” my poetry. I’m unable to do so because I feel that my poetry is the explanation. The explanation of what? Of my poetry, whatever that is. As I see it, my thought is both poetry and the attempt to explain that poetry; the two cannot be disentangled. I know this isn’t going to satisfy anybody and will probably be taken as another form of arrogance from an off-putting poet. On occasions when I have tried to discuss the meanings of my poems, I have found that I was inventing plausible-sounding ones which I knew to be untrue. That does seem to me to be something like arrogance. In any case, as a poet who cares very much about having an audience, I’m sorry about the confusion I have involuntarily helped to cause; in the words of W.H. Auden, “If I could tell you, I would let you know.” I’m also mildly distressed at not being able to give a satisfactory account of my work because in certain moods this inability seems like a limit to my powers of invention. After all, if I can invent poetry, why can’t I invent the meaning?
The quotation is from Ashbery's book Other Traditions
—David
Outside its urban centers, Shikoku, the smallest of the four main Japanese islands, feels like a backwater. There doesn’t seem a lot of money away from the cities, and many older buildings have escaped being torn down and rebuilt. Shikoku is a treasure of history and natural beauty, with rugged coasts and offshore islands, towering central mountains, forgotten towns and ubiquitous pilgrimage temples. The highlights of a recent visit were
Dogo Onsen hot spring in Matsuyama. This beautiful 100-year-old building, immortalized in Natsume Soseki’s Botchan, was an inspiration for the great bathhouse in Ghibli’s Spirited Away movie. Spare and functional, spacious yet intimate, Dogo is a timeless wonder, with deep stone tubs, wooden changing rooms, and a glorious common room in which to rest and be served tea and rice crackers (Botchan used the private rooms upstairs).
The Iya Valley, immortalized in Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan, is a mountain fastness, much of which is accessible only on narrow roads better suited to two-wheeled vehicles. The deep gorges, Taisho-era villages strung along the narrow banks of rivers, and the isolated farmhouses on steep hillsides make you wonder how anyone can wrest a living from this inhospitable place. The oases for tourists offer rare pleasures. One was Iya Onsen, a sulfur hot spring beside a sparkling river. Another was the evening meal at Hotel Kazurabashi that was almost entirely vegetables, and some of the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted.
--Julian
