thoughts of a dry brain in a wet season

and is reading yet more Mirage - specifically, the Bakumatsu-hen and Hyouketsu Montou prequels. I swear in my obasan years (and obaasan years for that matter) I will still be thinking about this &^%$@# series when everyone else who liked it with me er FOUR YEARS AGO has moved on to bigger and better things. *facepalm*

Reading the prequels after the series, which I need to reread (esp. books 30-40) is an interesting experience. One gets the sense that Kuwabara's trying to make up for some of the ultra crack she threw out in the main series, both at N/K and at the readers, esp. in the Bakumatsu volume. If you read MoB starting from the prequels, you'd put down Shishi Kurau and go But So Why Are People So Depressed About This Series? (And then eventually you'd get to book 9 of the main series and have a flash of enlightenment like a brick house on your head.)

Highlights -

HM: Nagahide likes zenzai, gets a Sengoku-era rapper yakuza fanboy and gives advice about Love and Women. It is ridiculously adorable.

Bakumatsu (AKA Shishi Kurau): OMG sensei actually worked the Shinsengumi into this without gratuitous Hijikata/Okita! Young!Naoe and old!Kagetora have Moments; Haruie is with the sonno joi camp because no one really knows why question mark?? But it's all right because Nagahide is selling arms to the Satsuma clan and acting as an interpreter for European merchants XD XD I love this man so very much.

There may be more coherent thoughts later. In the meantime, off to order the prequel after Hyouketsu from Liang Court later this morning ahahahaha.

Breaking silence after some months. In brief these are the facts: half my classes are on the Pacific War this semester, one of them is an awesome film seminar, and HFA is showing an AMAZING retrospective of Oshima Nagisa's works *koff*ILOVEMYSCHOOL*koff*. (Plus, prof is introducing Realm of the Senses on Friday. Will I ever be there.) In line with fact #3, I saw Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence two weeks ago and fell for it as hard as I've ever fallen for any movie. Even with all its flaws, you really can't beat seeing it on the big screen, especially That Scene when David Bowie (Jack Celliers) gets up and does you-know-what to 80's-era-smokingly-hot Sakamoto Ryuichi (Captain Yonoi), a freeze frame of which is shown here:



And here is Tom Conti as Mr. Lawrence himself, the cutie, indulging in a Complex Moment with Beat Takeshi (Sergeant Hara).



(On this site you will also find a synopsis/review.)

My advice would be not to judge it as one-sided or surreal until you've read the Laurens van der Post books (Prisoner and the Bomb; Seed and the Sower). Seriously, do go see it. I didn't think anything would get me writing again (not even Brokeback Mountain...), but this movie pulled the following out of me. (And in time for Christmas, no less.) I'm shocked that I wanted to write it so badly, since I thought fandom was forever and ever behind, amen. Ghosts are hard to kill.

Have the soundtrack as BGM and appropriate Xmas music, courtesy of Sakamoto-sensei himself. Hands up everyone who knows the title track, and never mind if you don't, just listen. And now the story, if you care to:

( Ride, ride through the moonlight... )

and back to the Siberian slog that is senior year.Merry Christmas to anyone who's still reading this LJ! I don't know why you do it, you dear silly people. :)

Special shoutout to calintz for webspace! >3

Am alive!

Watched Yukikaze with kaze_no_ko before I left for Japan. Fell in love. Started reading the novels.

*two chapters into book one*

Me: OMG WHY IS THE ANIME SO DAMN GAY.

More comments later, p'raps. P.S. super mad props to petronia for the FST. ♥

Reading Mishima's Patriotism in Japanese (god that man was nutso), I am horrified to find myself assailed by flashbacks to pr0n a la Kuwabara-sensei.

I also have a Japanese midterm tomorrow, which is why I'm stopping the pr0n comparison here and going to sleep.

p.s. Kyoto trip from Saturday! :DDDDD

Chuugoku Bank replied = I am spending June-early August in Okayama doing not very much at the bank *but* plenty of running around southwest Japan, learning Okayama-ben, hopping ferry to SHIKOKU (hopefully will get to Tosa mwaha) - and if I have a long weekend we'll see how many places on the Koubou Daishi trail I can hit before I pass out from heat exhaustion. XDD

The other point of this post is: people should really meet me in Japan if you're, well, not in Hokkaido. People besides aatash, who is like a given. XDDD

Actually, let me just go off and XDDDD for the rest of today while trying to finish Adolphson's book (ARGH SO DENSE.)

p.s. finished Mirage prequel 1 yesterday. Sensei no atogaki = ♥

I don't know where I'll get the time to continue reading once classes get into full swing (taking five this sem, would have taken six but got yelled down by too many elders and betters ahaha), but.

( quick and dirty rundown on pages 1-73 of the combined version of prequels I and II, cut to spare the disinterested. )

Tangentially, Wikipedia JP tells me that there is apparently good evidence to believe that Kenshin was in fact a woman - it seems that at intervals of about a month he would complain of um stomach pains and withdraw from battles...? wtf I know but there we are. Before I go shrieking AUGH KENSHIN CROSS-DRESSED I will have to check to see if Yenching has a copy of 「上杉謙信　女性説」 if only because I like making my own head hurt.

(p.s. - happy birthday cirnelle! Wish I could have met up with your sister during intersession.)

Last day in Queens/NYC with nemesisstrife whom I have been suitably pseudo-lesbian with on the subway and streets. Did not buy any new clothes this time ahaha. Did, however, pick up IniD 32 and vol. 1 of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, plus ate too much as always (ice cream, cake, dim sum etc etc). Finally met serendip who sounds a lot more sober than she does online XDD and had her take me to brunch (mmm baked eggs and vanilla cream pastry), good Chinese restaurant locations (note to self: Shanghai Cafe and Sweet n' Tart on Mott), and Japanese food (croquettes!) + bookstores. Chinatown Manhattan today was insane even in the rain - lion dances, far too many people walking around to eat and get money, and the biggest amount of damp confetti I've seen in any one place. Have not walked so far in heels for so long feet are owie. Running up to Princeton tomorrow for more ice cream, Italian food and hasty sightseeing before taking bus back to school, sigh.

Would have finished Amazon JP shipment of Shiuko Kano manga except I'm not liberated enough to read bukkake pr0n between older man and younger subordinate when seated beside civil company. She's absolutely wonderful, though - met her through squidlet and I Am Not Your Stepping Stone and have not looked back since. XD I highly rec her Playboy Blues (P.B.B.) series - technically it follows Gaten na aitsu but the latter pales in comparison. Most of her works are this perfect compromise between OTP, chara/relationship development and pr0n, which combination is very hard to find. Plus, all men look like men. Plus, they're almost all working men and are teh smexx. XDD GO CONSTRUCTION WORKERS.

Spring term begins on Feb 1st *cry* spring trip to Kyoto with Adolphson and seminar had so better go through or else.

Happy birthday, sesame_seed! ^_^

45 minutes to splat i.e. samurai history final - in Yenching working out kinks in knowledge of Muromachi era and rebellions at end-Tokugawa. What better BGM than Mirage music, especially this current track. *wry*

Was good class - Bolitho knows all about getting his point across with eloquent efficiency - though I don't know if they'll take into account my lament in the course evaluation of NOT ENUFF SENGOKU WAHH. Too much Hideyoshi! Hardly anything on Nobunaga! Not even the reading on Esoteric Buddhist pederasty makes up for that! One of the results of this course though is that I now want to re-read Mirage so I'll actually process all the historical refs, dubious or otherwise.

...I didn't take this class just because of Mirage. (Seriously.)

*back to notes, weep weep*

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Jonathan Strange. (& Mr Norrell)

(Brit writing, Brit writing, how I have missed you so.)

Summary: waited 2 years to read 846 pages in 2 days - I'm going to bed after this with a headache and deliriously satisfied - and I should have read it so much sooner. It is sheer brilliance in storytelling, what are you doing if you have not got to it yet - in the meantime, since I think almost everyone seeing this has already read it, FIC RECS PLS. (....preferably not Stephen Black/Thistledown because it seriously does nothing for me.)

First Pullman and now Clarke. People in the UK, who's up to host me so I can fly there, poke around Oxford and haunt St. Hilda's and Exeter in fantasy author no alma mater no genba ecstasy?

p.s. - oh god cindyg your card finally arrived and shocked me into a good mood even before I picked up where I left off reading, thank you so much! ♥

(Yeah yeah, what was the post 2 posts down about me and fandom parting ways forever, you retarded young grasshopper, &etc.)

Haru/Kai. The ending of vol. 7 was impossible to let slide, i.e. spoilers. I also suspect this is the first English Switch fic posted. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'd love to be. XD

( There was no other conclusion - at this point - that could be reached. )

p.s. Suwabe Junichi voices Hiki-buchou and makes us think of Fuji x Atobe. I'm still waiting for him to be cast as Nobunaga in MoB, but in the meantime I'm already dedd enough from his first Switch character song called Believe In Love. (whyyyy god why.)

p.s. 2. Back in Boston tomorrow FINALS PAPERS DEATH.

WOULD SELL SOUL FOR:
http://www.mandarake.co.jp/information/2005/12/05/nnb08/

IS AVAILABLE AT:
http://item.furima.rakuten.co.jp/item/50796410/

and on Yahoo JP apparently, but May reminds me that Japanese sellers hate overseas shipping and I weep. Buckets. T3T No, really, anyone in Japan willing to help me get it from a Mandarake and ship it to me in the US, please please hit me up and we can negotiate moolah, my first-born child, etc.

I'm not sure why exactly I like Switch so much when it's pretty much just glammed-up structurally dubious drug police v. mafia hijinks with lots of dysfunctionally ghei charas - well, there you go. First week of school will be absolute chaos and am missing a day of classes as it is because of friend's airline miles thing, what can you do. Over and out.

( blah blah happy 2006 )

All this is as much to say that I've had a great if disgustingly short holiday, and that the future of this LJ seems more or less doomed to chronicling random events in RL and my crazy wonderful school - so people hoping for more, I dunno, PoT fic should probably look elsewhere (read: defriending me is perfectly fine.) Having lost pretty much all motivation to keep up with other people's LJs on a regular basis, it hardly seems fair to expect them to keep up with mine unless they've known me since before PoT fandom (and care), pretty much. Inertia x egocentrism = intense. I don't know how to cope with virtual lives when I'm struggling to keep my real one centered, grounded, because it's a new year and I'm still taking everything too seriously. A whole semester gone and too little accomplished; I swear the rest of my college life will be crush-free or death.

At any rate, saw Brokeback Mountain twice because it was absolutely amazing - Ang Lee's direction of Ledger and Gyllenhaal, all the extra scenes, Anne Hathaway's psychedelic hairstyle changes, Ledger's ending scene...it actually motivated me into getting off my ass and looking for fic, which *is* amazing considering that I haven't read fic for almost 4 months. And I'm currently into naked ape's Switch after only uh 4 months after Meia sicced it onto me, so have evil plans for HaruKainess (or vice versa).

I didn't make the Christmas cards, but belated New Year's/greeting stuff will be out as soon as I get back to Boston. Happy New Year, all.

Since I got here I've been losing scrunchies left right and center. All my favourite big velvety ones with the elastic bands, too. This is my own fault, since I tend to shove them onto my wrists when I'm not wearing them and then yank my jacket on over them, which sometimes results in them falling off when I take the jacket off again. One friend has suggested that squirrels have been strangled by these lost scrunchies. I angst, albeit mildly.

Just argh. Also, tutee is late again and I have too much work to finish before Monday what else is new. At least kaze_no_ko has taiga dorama loot for me to leech (eventually.)

My darling nemesisstrife magicked us $20 front-row orchestra seat tickets. For RENT. On Broadway.

AAAAAHHHHHHHH [/joy] TWO INCHES FROM THE GROINS AND KNEECAPS OF CAST, as Rose says AAAAHHHHHH [/joy/[/joy]

Considering that I've waited three years to see this musical and that I know every single song on the OST, I find this torrent of emotion not at all excessive. People in S'pore going to see the version with Karen Mok as Mimi? Maureen? do tell me what it was like, please. I'm just dying of bliss - the cast was wonderful overall. Roger, Mark, Angel and Collins were superb. I am convinced that Roger and Mark are the slash that never was, and Angel dancing with the drag and the drum was fabulous. Joanne had an amazing voice but uh she wasn't hot. XD; Which was sorely disappointing, because I'd hoped to see hot girl-on-girl action, and while there *was* action it wasn't, well, hot.

There's something special about watching a show you already know the soundtrack to - you watch me watch Mononoke or Phantom and chances are you'll be amused. XD Hence tonight I was singing right along with the cast and getting weird looks from the lady next to me, and it was you know fabulous (must stop using word in italics lest I sound like gay metrosexual.) It was just so. much. fun. The singing! (though personally I thought Maureen on the OST was better - the girl tonight lost control of her voice fairly often) The dances! The costumes! The fabulous wonderul ensemble! I RABU NOO YAWK IEI.

Since it still is, in my time zone: happy birthday, insomniac_od! ^_^

Almost didn't wake up in time when the train pulled in at Penn Station, and couldn't get to Rose for an hour, but but am in Manhattan in a charmingly cluttered apartment; am with nemesisstrife getting new clothes and winter gear and food. ♥ Had lunch in Chinatown restaurant where xiaolongbao are called Steam Juice Buns and am off for coffee in a bit - hope all the US people are having a great Thanksgiving! (Jae, will call tonight - are you free for lunch/ tea tomorrow?)

One of the best things that I'm experiencing here is networking with Japanese scholars. Of a sort. Besides Prof Jacobsen, who is one of the coolest profs alive, there's a lovely grad student doing gender studies at the RSEA, and one of my 4th-year classmates is married to an Asahi Shimbun reporter who's a current Niemann Fellow (and their kids are *adorable*.) So two months ago, in Lamont, I ran into this SDF lieutenant-general (retired) currently doing a dissertation in English on the Japanese constitution. We were both doing video worksheet homework for Japanese and English respectively, and my answer to his asking do you speak Japanese is obvious. XD Fukuyama-san is a darling who calls himself an old man from the countryside and reminds me of a modern-day Miyamoto Musashi, actually. So two weeks ago he introduces me to this female eye doctor doing research at a Harvard-affiliated opthamology centre, and she asks me to give her practice in English conversation, and we go out for dinner tonight (p.s. people in MA, the Izakaya BlueFin is good, and very reasonably priced. Porter Square, 1815 Mass. Ave. ♥) - and we have a very enjoyable chat.

The point of this entry is this: her great-grandfather was a member of Akechi Mitsuhide's council of elders. (a 老中) Who, in the Tokugawa period, moved to Edo and started a school (a terakoya, I think the term is) where he employed her great-grandmother as a teacher, and since then all the females in her family have grown up with this amazing sense of societal vocation (teachers, doctors.) As far as I am concerned that is just SO FUCKING COOL. [/dork] All of it, but especially the part about her great-grandad working for Mitsuhide. [/dork][/dork]

It grieves me greatly that I am too much of a wuss to tell her, casually like, and by the way, I'm a huge fan of this novel series where the guy your great-grandpa worked for is portrayed as probably having had a tortured homosexual liaison with the guy *he* worked for - you know, Oda Nobunaga?

(and she's also asked her cousin on my behalf to see if he can't get hold of taiga dorama tapes SCORE.)

I) ( Murakami Haruki talk summary )

II) Yoshitsuneki the PS2 game, designs by Obata Takeshi AKA the Death Note and HikaGo sensei. .....brainfuck. So damn pretty, but brainfuck nonetheless. Just go see the designs for yourself. Shizuka-gozen is a...h0, and WTF IS NASU NO YOICHI WEARING NOTHING BUT A FUNDOSHI besides being Raito II hahahaha. Just omgahhhh. I would kill to slash this Yoshitsune and Yoichi even though S points out that Tanaka Atsuko voices Yoshitsune and Ohtsuka Akio voices Benkei AKA Kusanagi and Batou in GITS h0mg the unrequited love potential kills again.

Going up to NY for 3 days to see nemesisstrife and Buttercup for Thanksgiving; also hopefully to meet serendip and tarigwaemir there. ♥

Had my first full night of sleep i.e. 8 hours yesterday for the first time in two months, w00t. (and at breakfast today I received hope that crushes needn't spoil friendships after all, double w00t.)

Sorry, just had to record this. Bonnie Pink coming up next!

Re: current mood - for serious I am, even with papers due in the next couple of days. Put another way, I've stopped doing this thing where I think about an unrequited crush in fangirl Japanese (and angst in pop Japanese, I may well add.) Perspective and youthful resilience, like. One piece of advice for all my single sistahs out there: stay away from math and science geeks unless you're a math and science geek yourself. Or unless you have a whip to ahem train him. But you know you are recovering when watching/writing ghei pr0n starts looking attractive again. SSBB issues, here I come! ...Etc. Have just begun catching up with flist, making plans to fit the latest IniD and Hachikuro eps into free time. Plus more Soshite Koi fic, just because. I have choir prac on Tuesdays and cannot watch House on FOX KEEL but Chrissie is amazing, wonderful, magnifique, and gives us eps to leech. THANK YOU I LOVE YOU SO.

Anyway. Tuna came down to Cambridge on Saturday and we went to do retail therapy I NOW HAVE MAKEUP including a compact of three shades of pretty earth-tone eyeshadow wahrg. On the one hand I feel like all my non-girly credentials are destroyed, though you may well point to my long hair and skirts and tell me that those never existed anyway. Also treated myself to a couple of pretty long-sleeved tissue-thin Club Monaco shirts to wear with spag-strap tops. The weather in Cambridge now is amazing - sunny, crisp and just cool enough that a jacket is all I need when I go out. It was *snowing* last Saturday, may I add - I kept telling Tuna she was Yuki-Onna (her: "Yuki-onna ja nai!")

Downloaded a bunch of Bonnie Pink albums (anyone wants? Sakkit? Kristin?) including Golden Tears and the whole of Reminiscence w00t. Is very pretty and poppy, in a non-saccharine Bonnie sort of way. And lecture in 5 minutes, so ciao, and I am meeting Prof H to discuss animanga warriors, thanks to people who offered suggestions and criteria-related clarifications. XD She's told me she's pretty much a blank slate where all this is concerned, so we're going to thrash out what she wants to call a warrior over victuals tomorrow.