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This is my life everyday. Sigh. I work 8 to 10 hours, then I come home, try to cook some dinner, and then sit down to face this: Trying to study for two major standardised tests while working full time sucks. I wish I was a college student again so I could just concentrate on studying. But alas, this is the way things are, so nothing to do but just suck it up and try...
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Posted on: 04/28/2008 08:52 PM
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It seems like such a shame to spend 30 minutes dressing up nice and getting ready for work in the morning just to head out the door and have it all ruined by the combination of wind, rain and heat which conspires to turn one into a wet, tussled, sweaty mess in a matter of moments. Even if one does miraculously manage to avoid all three of the above and make it to work unscathed,...
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Posted on: 03/24/2008 08:28 PM
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Sorry, there are not many interesting pictures in this entry, namely because people tend to freak out when you start taking snapping photographs in public bathrooms (you'll see what I mean if you read this entry) But don't fear! If you want pictures, check the entry right above this one, which I posted like 5 seconds after this despite the dates being different. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Well, not really a good morning....
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Posted on: 02/10/2008 08:35 PM
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So the other day I was flipping through one of my old boxes of letters and and pictures from years past (which reminds me that there are still some of you who owe me letters from the Great Michaelpanda Spring Letter Exchange 2007 *wink*) and I ran across some pictures of an old apartment I used to live in. This is my current apartment... read on for old ones This got me to thinking -...
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Posted on: 10/13/2007 10:14 PM
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There's still a part three to the Great Tohoku Road Trip 2007 (parts I and II can be found here and here, respectively). But it's taking me a while to get to it since I've been kinda down recently, and busy at work to boot. It was my birthday last week, the big 28, which means I've spent nearly a fifth of my life here in Japan. Kind of scary when you think about it...
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Posted on: 09/16/2007 04:59 PM
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So last Friday I found myself stuck in a meeting all day from 8 to 5. Now this would be bad enough, but combine it with the fact that it is the rainy season - and hence hot, sticky and miserable - and that a typhoon happened to make landfall that day, and you pretty much get a very unhappy panda. I think I have alluded to my dislike for my current job before on...
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Posted on: 07/15/2007 08:15 PM
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Whatever I thought it would be like, I'm pretty sure I didn't think it would turn out like it did - my mind going over the laundry list of things I had to do to get ready for work tomorrow, my heart heavy with the thought of having to walk to work in a wool suit in the hot sweaty mugginess of the Japanese rainy season, my eyes just moments prior flicking over train schedules to find the fastest route home after getting off at Tokyo so as to avoid time consuming transfers and giving myself a chance to catch a few precious hours of sleep before having to get up the next day. Here it was, my little moment which I had dreamed of long ago, and rather than feeling euphoric, or overjoyed with hope or optimism as I had expected, it instead felt oh so very... real...! But not real in that way that excitement tinges your tongue with feathery touches of alkali, or real in the way that hope swells your heart such that you think it will burst from your chest, but rather real as in the damp, sweaty, somewhat downtrodden leaden-ness of the everyday grind. Maybe not as real as waking up one day to find yourself a lonely bald fat low-level manager of a box plant and suddenly realising your youth is gone, but definitely real in the way that you realise you are now, at this very second and this very age of 27, engaged in a day to day struggle not to end up that way. It wasn't a sad feeling, the lack of euphoria, but just surprising that achieving one's dream - no matter how small - would feel so completely run of the mill. After all, what I was doing at that moment wasn't particularly unusual, and now that I thought of it, I had done this very same thing - eat an eki bento on a bullet train late at night - quite often in the past few years. I began to wonder: was this all there was to life? (silly I know, but I thought that). Were we lied to when told that achieving our goals was to rewarded with feelings of accomplishment, when in fact all it felt like was more of the same? Or perhaps, more disturbingly, had I set my dreams and sights too low?
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Posted on: 07/02/2007 08:20 PM
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Table cloths, placemats and varnish - these things are artificial filters that barricade the connection between us and the immediacy of the moment. Naught but the trappings of pretension, they defy the purpose of buying furniture in the first place - to use it and to let it serve its purpose. I don't want to stop to think to put down a coaster, or spend hours trying to lay down the perfect streak-free coat of varnish and stain - I just want to kick off my shoes, set down a plain white ceramic bowl filled with a simple food on the table, open my computer, or tear off a sheet of paper and just be. When the future is uncertain - when my future is uncertain - it is comforting to have this reminder of the my connection to the solace of an immediacy of moments spent in comfortable surroundings, in my little house right here in my little corner of my little city in this little chunk of this little island floating all along and bobbling in the wide vast swath green blue oceans of the uncertain scary world...
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Posted on: 04/24/2007 09:32 PM
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sitting, back primly poised, hair impeccably parted to one side, cream colored leather Coach handbag tucked to one side, keitai strap dangling loosely out one of the side pockets, makeup perfectly done, as always, beautiful lips pursed ever so slightly as manicured nails flicked pages of a book from one to the next, eyes moving ever so slightly through expertly applied mascara lashes, each iris twitch scanning top to bottom, right to left, page to page, ponytail bobbing slightly as each echoing shift of the train's bulk rippled through the ground, through the wheels, through the floor, through the bench, through her body before manifesting itself in one tiny quiver, momentary separation of individual hair fibers, rippling shine reflecting the brilliance of the azure and topaz sky flitting by in the rows of houses cycling by in the background, melody line of children's Doppler laugher fleeting by for split seconds as suffused imagery of suburban bliss melted into a motion streaked blur of background behind us, parallaxing through windows and the smell of earth and coolness of autumn air cascading down inverted metallic slats of the old fashioned sun screens pulled down over half opened train windows, and I remember ginko leaves - beautiful, gorgeous stunning ginko leaves swirling through the air, striking yellow against austere brown branches silhouetted against topaz skies
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Posted on: 03/09/2006 10:25 PM
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But what about the next one? And the one after that? And after that? I can't catch them all, and the knowledge weighs heavily on my mind. When we're young we can afford the luxury of constant self analysis and the comforting confines of reality, but the older we get, the more we have to accept the fact that an increasing amount of our world paradigm will be predicated not on fact, but on fictions we have unwittingly invented throughout our lives. I feel that disconnect from reality is endemic to the modern middle age condition and we can only hope to ameliorate its more vulgar excesses - however, we can never truly hold it off. One day we will open our mouths to speak something we swear is true, and it will be our children standing across from us, rolling their eyes and heaving an exasperated sigh at our ignorance and irrelevance.
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Posted on: 01/31/2006 04:49 PM
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What starts as a simple comparison of differences between cultures quickly spins out of control into a series of increasingly disconnected judgments, finally culminating in a bizarre tangent about the supposed submissive role of women in Japanese society! In the process a fully painted - yet completely falsified - picture of moral drama unfolds, complete with villains (Japanese teachers, "repressive Japanese system"), heroes ("I'm not going to sit down and do nothing"), treacherous deeds ("brainwashing"), and the archetypal damsel in distress ("this frail young girl"/ "timid and erased Japanese girl with no will to fight"/ "a good and submissive housewife").
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Posted on: 12/06/2005 10:06 PM
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I came home the other day to a suprise package at my doorstep - a big brown box from america, emblazoned with amelie mello's name in the upper left hand corner. Yes indeed, the international panda exchange was on. I love panda packages from overseas!!! Excited, since I had had a rather rough day, I rushed inside and tore it open to find...packing peanuts. Lots and lots of packing peanuts. Being the smart panda that...
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Posted on: 10/11/2004 02:31 PM
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[I know this is a really long post without a lot of pictures. If you do take take the time to read it, thanks!] I'm staring across the table at this man. the first thing that strikes me is his teeth - precarious, almost fragile looking. unlike many Japanese, they're aligned in a relatively straight row - the four I can see peeking out from the gap between his lower lip and the trembling twitching...
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Posted on: 04/14/2004 03:31 PM
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being busy is a curious thing. in some ways, there is a satisfying comfort to be constantly engrossed by various artificial tasks - arbitrarily determined scales by which you can measure your progress through life one goal or action item at a time, a little burst of endorphins every time you draw a line crossing off another item on your "to do" list. one of the things i miss most about college was this unnatural...
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Posted on: 03/23/2004 03:31 PM
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Four hot Japanese women. A killer, swanky, upscale martini lounge. Great music. Fantastic drinks. What could go wrong...? The day started out fantastically - hung out with some other cute girls I knew from school, did the whole "let's try new and fantastic ethnic food" affair in an effort to prove ourselves as cultured beyond that permitted by the Wisconsin boundaries, Afghani plates swarming with rich brown sauce, heavy lentils, succulent lambs and chickens...
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Posted on: 06/02/2003 03:31 PM
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