This is my first journal for the year. If you are looking for something exciting to read, then you should stop reading here.
The weather recently has been very pleasant. The sky is completely clear, and it has been a little warm. There is a gentle breeze that blows. The sunlight is pouring into the old coffee house, onto the line of stacked books.
Yesterday I had lunch with Yuki, Karina, and Soichiro. It was kind of a random, but pleasant experience. I was going to watch a movie with Karina, and then we started talking about all of the other students who’ve had a lot of free time, so we called Esse first, but he was busy cooking Gyoza. Karina called Yuki, and he suggested that we all eat Sushi, so we decided to go there instead. The sushi was all really good, but the harumaki was strange. I also picked up a couple of books. Some were Bleach comics, and there was also some books written by Murakami. I think that the only thing that I remember most from tonight is that Karina likes Unagi best, and that Asuka’s favorite is Hamachi. I’ve gone to eat sushi with Yuki and Taka many times before, but I can’t remember which sushi they like. They’ve even told me without me asking them.
Ever since Yuki and Taka took me to Oton, the izakaya in Kearny Mesa, I’ve been able to eat anything. But that night was strange, because I decided to simply give up any discrimination that I had for strange-looking food. There was plenty of beer too. I stuffed the food into my mouth, and didn’t ask questions about the food. I remember though, that there was one dish that had chicken skin on sticks. I stuffed it into my mouth, and the texture was so strange that I couldn’t help but feel like everything was going to come out of my stomach.
I’ve found that there is a couple of ways to politely deal with these situations. You don’t want to throw up in front of your friends, and especially not in front of the Chef, right? So what I do is I take out a napkin, and pretend to clean my mouth, without making any expressions of disgust. At this moment, I’m usually dying inside. I take the napkin, and I set it to the side, crumpling it.
The other technique is a little more desperate. If I’m full, and then I eat something that I know I won’t down, I politely try to bow in front of everyone and excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Of course, I can’t open my mouth until I reach the toilet. In any case, the most important thing is to try everything at least once, and if you do fail, then fail with style.
I haven’t read much of Murakami before, but I bought Norwegian Wood the other day, and have really enjoyed reading it. This has got me into listening to the Beatles. So far, I have about five of their albums on my computer. I’ve tried playing a couple of their songs, but I don’t have a musician’s hands, so it’s difficult.
I’ve also been reading about Roman civilization, such as how they went from being a Republic to an Empire, and about Cleopatra’s relations to Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony. There’s a Mexican singer that’s also named Marc Anthony, so I tend to get both of these confused. There are so many parallels between Roman and American civilizations. Later on, if you keep studying American history, you will learn that the American constitution was inspired by the Roman constitution.
My good friend BK went back to Korea last week. I can’t believe that it’s already been six months since Jane also went back there, and about the same amount of time for Maiko. I do miss all of them. BK had a small party, and we played Street Fighter and Tekken in Han’s house. So far, I haven’t met anyone who has been able to beat me in Street Fighter, although I did lose in Tekken. However, I used Bear, so at least I lost with style. I completely destroyed Yuki in Smash Bros, using Peach and Donkey Kong. In that game, I’ve only lost to Asuka, who used Lucas, who is a cheap character because of the insane amount of damage his up smash does.
I finished reading Princess from Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs a couple of weeks ago. Burroughs also wrote the Tarzan novels, so his style of fantasy is interesting. I’d be lying to you if I told you that I can read Japanese. I can’t. But I feel that I can understand what happens in the plot, so this makes the novels enjoyable for me. Because of this, I usually carry two books with me at all times. One is a Japanese novel or comic, to improve my reading and understanding of Japanese. The other book is an English novel, to improve on my storytelling.
So I’ve been reading Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto, and I’ve also got a copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson. A couple of you may already know about Banana. Gibson is best known for writing Neuromancer, which marked the beginning of Cyberpunk literature, and also inspired Ghost in the Shell. Other examples of Cyberpunk stories are Robocop, Blade Runner, and Akira. I love this stuff. Blade Runner was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick. I read it about a year ago, and of course, I thought it was good. Don’t think that I enjoy every book that I read. I can’t stand Edgar Allan Poe, or Stephanie Meyer. Although I haven’t read Twilight, I heard that there are too many holes in the story, and that the characters don’t make sense. I also tried reading Harry Potter once, but the story seemed to move too fast and it didn’t make a lot of sense until I saw the movie. I bought a copy of the book the other day at a used bookstore for a dollar and fifty cents, so I’m planning on reading it soon too.
I went to court last week, for having run a red light in October. It happened just as soon as I had left the I-78. I was on my was to school, and so I passed during a yellow light. I saw a flash for a second, but I thought it was because something metallic had reflected the light into my eyes. One week later though, I get a letter by mail from the police, showing me inside of the car, smiling and flashing a peace sign. The picture was so good, it could have been used as the cover for Rolling Stones magazine. I plead guilty, and did my best to get by without having to pay the whole bill. I guess there’s only two choices. One is that you plead guilty and you do traffic school to avoid having a penalty point on your record. The other option is to take the point, but then you can do community service instead of paying, and you can also do your payment in very small monthly bills. Either way, this is an embarrassing thing for me, so I’ll avoid talking about it for now.
Yuki’s been letting me borrow his Bleach comics to read. So far I’m up to volume thirty eight. I know most of the characters now, and I’ve got an idea of what the story is, but I’ve only been paging through the books looking at the pictures. It’s kind of like when you pick up a playboy. You can understand what’s going on if you just focus on the pictures. My favorite character is Grimjaw, who reminds me a lot of Sid Vicious and Billy Idol. He’s probably going to turn into one of the good characters later, like Vegeta did in Dragonball Z, or Ikki did in Saint Seiya, or Anubis in Samurai Warriors, or the Bird from Samurai Pizza Cats, or Steve Hyuga from Captain Tsubasa, or Tenshinhan, or Yamcha, or Rei from Hokuto no Ken.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment