今日の単語：やばい

Today's word: やばい (yabai)
Meaning: crap, lame, this sucks
Probably everyone in Japan already knows this one. やばい isn't quite as strong as 災厄--the former tends to be muttered under one's breath, while the latter is screamed and accompanied by wildly dramatic gestures. やばい is used when you forget your evaluation sheet for a speaking test or get so pumped for the test that you slam your textbook down on the teacher's desk and knock over all the evaluation sheets*, and figures heavily (along with 無理, "impossible") in the students' pre-test mumblings. Like many い-adjectives, the ending frequently morphs to create the even slangier やべ.
 
Example sentence: 教科書見ないで？やべ！ぜんぜん無理です！
 
*This happened yesterday and I couldn't stop laughing at the poor kid. Despite his pre-test nerves, he got a perfect score.

17. Paulo Coehlo: The Alchemist

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Harper UK (HarperCollins), 177 pages, 1988, translated by Alan R. Clarke in 1992

A while ago I was obsessed with asking people on Omegle to tell me their favorite book. 9 out of 10 people responded with some variation of "u r gay," and except for one, all of the rest said Twilight. The last person recommended The Alchemist.

So yeah, it's slightly above the intellectual standard of Twilight, but not by much. I can see why it became a bestseller, and it does have its moments, but I don't really have any patience for the kind of vague pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo it puts forth. I got fed up with it around the time Fatima appeared--nothing annoys me like a cardboard cutout love interest (whose love story with the hero is nevertheless supposed to be somehow significant) in a story where all the men are running around dealing with Important Life Questions. Bitch, please. C-- would not buy again

Next up: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

16. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin
Ace Books (Penguin), 301 pages, 1969

I inherited this book from my predecessor by default, and I honestly had no intention of reading it, but I picked it up randomly off the shelf after deciding I didn't feel like reading any of the (many) books I'd bought in Tokyo. I think I had a vague idea that I should try reading some sci-fi to fulfill my goal of reading a wider variety of genres; I don't know. But outside of the dystopian classics (Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451), it's the first sci-fi I've ever read, and I LOVED it. LOOOOOVED it. It was one of a very few books I've read this year that was completely engrossing (A Wild Sheep Chase was another, and maybe Revolutionary Road), and I know that's such a cliche, but I'm finding that very few books actually fit that description. For hours a day I just immersed myself in this world that the author created. When I finished A Wild Sheep Chase, I was overcome by the urge to see Hokkaido, and when I finished Montana 1948 I added Montana to my Epic American Road Trip 2012 itinerary; obviously no such thing is possible for science fiction, so I just found myself wishing the book would never end.

Since coming to Japan I'm finding myself drawn to stories of cultural isolation, especially if they involve an element of being unable to express oneself through verbal communication (which I think is why I was so moved by The King's Speech). It's kind of crazy to compare my situation to that of a protagonist in a sci-fi novel, but in a lot of ways I related to Genly. The idea of shifgrethor (遠慮？顔を立てる？) The inability of the locals to pronounce your name? The SNOW?? For a while I even wondered if Le Guin had Japan in mind as she wrote it, although I'm sure that's just projection. Anyway, I'll definitely be reading more of her work in the future.

Next up: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

15. Larry Watson: Montana 1948

Montana 1948, Larry Watson

Washington Square Press, 175 pages, 1993

Damn, I'm behind on book posts. I'm on book number 18 now, so I'll try to get through these quickly and get caught up. Anyway, I picked this up at random at the midyear seminar book sale, having never heard of the book or its author before, and was quite pleasantly surprised. The obvious comparison is to To Kill a Mockingbird: small American town, racial injustice, a father taking a difficult stand for what's right, told through a child's eyes. I haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird in about a million years (okay, I can tell you exactly how many years: eight. Oh God.), so I can't really compare the two in any significant way, but I did enjoy Montana 1948. Watson has that kind of writing style that doesn't call attention to itself; it's so easy and transparent that you almost don't notice how well-crafted it is. It's a short read, and suspenseful, but also a good and important one.

Next up: The Left Hand of Darkness by  Ursula K. Le Guin

今日の単語：災厄

Today's word: 災厄 (さいやく saiyaku)
Meaning: calamity, disaster
Commonly used in the following situations:

• Not receiving a sticker
• Being told "No" when you ask if you can wear the ALT's glasses
• Being required to write a sentence in English
• Taking a speaking test
• Breaking a pikopiko hammer

Example sentence: さいやく～～～～～～～！！！！！！！ (Okay, I've never actually heard this used in a sentence.)

I think I might start posting these regularly, using only words I've learned from my students. They certainly make up the most colorful portion of my Japanese vocabulary.

14. John Updike: Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run, John Updike
Fawcett Books (Random House/Ballantine), 264 pages, 1960

When I was about 16 and trying desperately to seem intellectual, I pulled this off the shelf at the Folsom Library, read the summary on the back, and put it back because I thought it was about basketball. I'm kind of glad I did because I don't think I was ready to read it then. It took me a while to get into it this time, despite the beautiful prose. What finally gave me an "in" was reading on Wikipedia that Updike wrote it as a response to Kerouac's On the Road (which was the first and only book read by the ill-fated Joetsu book club last year). I have no idea whether that's true, but having spent so much time dissecting On the Road, thinking about the two books together helped me realize what exactly the story was that Updike was trying to tell.

The stories are actually very similar--dumb, misogynist everyman decides that the tedium of American family life is beneath him and that he's meant for something greater, takes off on road trip, eventually is smacked in the face by divine retribution (Dean Moriarty goes crazy; Rabbit's wife accidentally drowns their daughter). But the writers take completely different approaches. Kerouac really believes in the lifestyle he sets forth in his books, and describes it with breathless joy; Updike is more cautious, and makes it clear that what he's describing is an attempt to escape from something that has no escape. There are so many late '50s/early '60s American novels on this theme--if you were a thinking person in America at that time, it seems, you were looking for a way out.

There is one more novel I've read recently that fits this formula: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I read Rabbit, Run the way you take medicine (it's good for you), and On the Road was like a trainwreck (can't look away), but I genuinely enjoyed Revolutionary Road, and I finished it in about 3 days. The difference, I think, is that it tells the story of a married couple instead of a single male protagonist, and so includes a female perspective. In fact, the wife, April Wheeler, is the one pushing for the family's escape to Europe--she's the smart one, the one who acts, causing her husband to react. Rabbit Angstrom and Dean Moriarty can go to hell, but I actually felt for the Wheelers as I watched their lives get torn apart.

Next up: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

Joetsu, one year later

It's that time again--JET placements are coming out, and in the next few days 11 lucky people will be frantically scouring the internet for information about Joetsu. I wrote this post a little over a year ago, before I came to Japan, and apparently it's come up in Google searches about Joetsu, so I figure this is as good a time as any to update those impressions now that I've been here almost a year.

(I also posted these pictures from Google Earth, which I now find hilarious because you know that "OMG, snow" picture of Takada? That's clearly beginning-of-winter snow. That's PUSSY snow. Two months later, shit gets real.)

Um... anyway, I may or may not continue to indulge in this kind of good-natured hazing, but the truth is that I love it here. I was more or less bang-on with my attempt to describe the layout in that old post: there's a town center (Naoetsu is north, Takada is south), and outside that, miles and miles of rice fields and some teacher housing. Joetsu itself isn't total inaka; there's a JUSCO, a Uniqlo, a movie theater, restaurants, a coffee shop, three McDonalds, a nice park, some okay bars (though the regular Saturday night crowd is nothing to write home about). There are also a ton of big box stores, which might surprise you if you've never been to Japan; apparently suburban sprawl and architectural eyesores are not unique to my homeland. It ain't San Francisco, but it has more or less everything you need.

And then there's the rest. There are still vast parts of it that I haven't explored (a project for an upcoming weekend, I think), but Yoshikawa, where I live, is a more or less typical example. It takes 30 to 40 minutes to get here from town. There are a few shops (conbini, pharmacy, gas station) within about 10 minutes' walk, and a bit farther out there's a 7-11, a sake brewery, and a nice little onsen with a restaurant (typical teishoku fare). There are two mountains, Yoneyama and Okamidake. The nearest supermarket is about a 10 minute drive away, in the next ward. Other than that, Yoshikawa consists entirely of rice fields. 

I probably haven't sold anyone on it with what I've said here, but Joetsu can be a great place if you let it. I was never a nature type before I got here but watching the changes in the rice fields throughout the seasons is an awesome thing (awesome as in "full of awe," not "totally tubular"). The mountains, the coastline, the snow--all of them are absolutely stunning. We're no more than an hour away from awesome snowboarding (by that I DO mean "totally tubular"), and Nagano City is a lovely little city (with real shopping, jazz bars, Starbucks, Thai food and a famous temple) that's about an hour and a half away by train. 

It has been a pretty intense year, but Joetsu has been good to me, good enough that I've signed up for another year. Bring on the snow!

Literary homesickness

Here in Japan I'm reading what I can get my hands on, which mostly consists of the piles and piles of books I bought indiscriminately in a kind of feeding frenzy the last time I was in an English-language bookstore in Tokyo. I definitely have enough to keep me busy until July when I go home, but these are the ones I'm aching to get my hands on once I touch down in the U.S.:

The Great Night

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas

Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Tales of the City

San Francisco, I miss you.

edit: and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I'm going to stop now before this gets out of control