Because spring is the best time for poetry!

We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The "Treues Liebes Herz" of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smaoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then, turning to my love, I said,
"The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust."

But she--she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,
The shadows wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
- Oscar Wilde, "The Harlot's House"

I saw the first of the azaleas (tsutsuji) today, along Oike, and Kawaramachi, and getting started along Kawabata. Since the cherry blossoms are nearly done (and the tourists have gone home, it's the right time for them—they're an incredible burst of fuschia, right on the heels of the week of cotton candy bliss that is the main sakura explosion. They struck me so intensely the first time I came to Japan, and felt silly for not knowing they were azaleas, and now I'm incredibly fond of them. (Incredibly nerdy botanical/science note: "tsutsuji"/azalea is the best equivalent around for "erica"/heather in the Japanese version of the Linnaean classification system, so I feel like azaleas and I have a complicated and roundabout linguistic relationship.)

There are also little red field poppies, the kind I only ever saw growing up as reproductions in plastic, for Veteran's Day—field poppies not being at all native to Michigan. There are the yuki-yanagi ("snow willow", Spirea thunbergii) in white streaks along the Kamo, yellow spots of dandelions and now, yamabuki.

It is decidedly floral. Spring is not just here, it is firmly entrenched. And the banks of the Kamo are lined with musicians to prove it.

and that scream, "CIVILISATION!" to me.

When you order a package online, and you are not at home to receive it, often enough the driver of the delivery car will leave their number, so you can call them later and say, "Hey! I'm home now!" And then they can redeliver your package.

If you get home REALLY late, there are 24-hour automated reception lines when you can arrange for the delivery of your package within a two-hour window on a date and time when you will be there to pick it up.

Japan Post doesn't have quite this system, but they have online redelivery request options, which is ALSO completely brilliant and civilised.

And this is why I don't want to live in the US ever again! OK, maybe not just the fantastic delivery service, but I am super into the ethic of making everyday life as convenient as possible that permeates every little transaction in Japan. It, in fact, DOES make everyday life more convenient.

(If you were curious, I have a chair and a new pair of Converse on the way. WOOT.)

And it sums up everything I pretty much could think.

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Now more than ever, I feel an incredible lack of realistic and well reasoned perspective about Japan coming from abroad—more specifically, from my family. My mother emails to ask if I have potassium iodide. My sister IMs to plead with me not to die from radiation poisoning. This might be reasonable if I lived in the quake-affected areas, or in nervous Tokyo, but I don’t. What the hell are they hearing?

I live in Kyoto, hundreds of miles away from the quake zone, in one of the most geologically inactive parts of Japan. I didn’t even feel the quake. There are no blackouts, and no shortages—except maybe of hotel rooms, occupied by more moneyed refugees. I have few skills useful in a crisis, so I’ve stayed put. Those of us in Kyoto are charged with the strange duty of Kyotoites in Japan’s times of crisis: carrying out the important duty of continuing to live normally. I live in Japan, but this is not my tragedy. Japan is bigger than you think, and not all of it is on fire.

Of course, I am filled with worry for those up north. I am appalled by the numbers of dead. I am concerned for friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in the east, and their uncertain situation. But I am also trying to be as realistic and well informed as possible. Giving into sensationalism and disaster porn does no good. It encourages behavior that only worsens a crisis that doesn’t need worsening, and worse still, it takes our attention and care away from the people who really need it, instead feeding a strange paranoid narcissism. If there’s one thing everyone can do for the earthquake victims, it’s remembering who they are. (And if you are one, you probably know it already.)

I have always, IN JAPANESE, known the term "bukkake" as a cooking term, relating to sauces that you can just fling carelessly and in large quantity on to food. (Or that's how it seems to be used.) It's derived from the verb "kakeru," to put something on top of something else.

All that pornographic stuff is subsidiary, metaphorical.

On the way to a party at my friend H's house, an older Japanese lady stopped me and asked me for directions to Demachiyanagi Station. In Japanese. Without pausing, hesitating, sizing me up, or trying English first.

This has NEVER happened to me before. People who know me, know that they can speak normal Japanese around me, and I'll be OK, and understand, and be able to respond. But most Japanese people, when confronted with an unknown foreigner, freak out a little bit. They worry about language issues, they assume they'll be expected to use English. (Japanese people who speak good English are few and far between, but foreigners who speak good Japanese are even more rare.) I don't know quite what goes through their heads.

But you see, I'm used to this discriminatory process.

What on earth happened? Do I just look that much like a Kyotoite? (Partygoers last night said, "Yeah, you totally look like this part of town."—that is, like a total hippie. Oh northeast Kyoto. It's true.)

Here's what I did:

On the 23rd I became an official paid sexpert, giving Japanese women suggestions for how and why to masturbate. The women who've been to the talk keep asking me what I'm going to say next time, so let's mark this as the beginning of my career as a sexpert.

On the 24th I helped my Christmas-loving friend Ian cook vegetarian things and dessert, since I pretty much rock at both, and I was trying to let his enjoyment of the season infect my natively Grinchy self. We had some assistance from his lovely friend Carol and about three bottles of wine, and when we finally finished it was about 1am and Ian was kind enough to let me crash at his instead of sending me out into the below freezing night while dr0nk.

This meant on the 25th I got to wake up to slightly more Christmas cheer than a hungover person could handle, but I also had someone to bring me aspirin and water and granola and mikan, which made up for it. I chatted to my parents on the phone, I went home for a costume change, I enjoyed a lovely Christmas party, and then I helped run a Christmas Day matchmaking event for 12 thoroughly adorable Japanese singles.

And then on the 26th I RESTED, because I seem to have pulled a muscle in my butt somewhere along the line, and that fucking HURTS yo.

Did we all have similarly happy Christmases? I can only hope so. Either that, or I hope you had some really delicious Chinese food that I had to miss out on.

Your house is uninsulated. You may have to heat it with motherfucking KEROSENE. But when the corner store seems to be out of ethernet cables, you can reasonably expect to be disappointed, and the clerk WILL apologise.

ginapagott giggled at me yesterday morning for hurling curses at the oversized garbage truck that comes through my neighborhood every morning, listing off things that are large, in case we should need their help with them.

Since the legs gave out under my kotatsu and it collapsed on top of me in a heap of wood shards today, I guess I should not have laughed, because I will require their services. Shortly. And I shall have to take myself off to the recycle shop myself, for a new kotatsu. Because otherwise I will be rather cold.

So far this (fiscal) week has been (1) expensive and (2) pretty fucking shitty, on the balance, in between random illnesses and waaaaaaay too much fucking running around.

The week is, however, only half over, so it has some time to redeem itself. The collapse of the kotatsu is one of those things though that I am all too tempted to read as an omen. Fuck.

I have:
- an apartment in Kyoto filled with:
- more clothes and beauty products than anyone needs
- also: books, appliances, furnishings, kitchen equipment, etc.
- a pretty satisfying sex life
- 1" around my waist that I really want to be rid of
- utterly fantastic friends around the world
- no prospects, immediate or remote, for marriage or babies, accompanied by:
- a vague sense that I might want marriage or babies in the next 5-10 years.
- a wobbly nascent career in academics, which may or may not take off, depending on whether or not I ever finish my dissertation, which I may very well not do.
- a bucketful of variously useful language skills as a result of:
- a B.A. in linguistics and an M.A. in linguistic anthropology
- US $9000 in savings, give or take
- satisfying, if scandalous, side jobs
- a scholarship that expires in April
- a visa that expires in May
- a game plan for new visas and income sources which may or may not pan out
- a sense of unease and unplannedness that I didn't expect to have at this point in my life, which is probably caused by:
- my period.

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All I really want to do is live a life that matters, that regularly makes a difference to the people around me. I thought academics was going to be a way to do that. Now I'm not quite sure.

When I was 23 or so, I felt hemmed in by the choice to go to grad school and I felt like my future was set in stone. Now I see that I was very very wrong. Every day is a new time to choose, choose again.

Maybe that's too much choice.