Letters unsent, words unsaid

愛しい君に書く手紙
久しぶりに手にとる筆　

いつか書いたあの詩
覚えてるかな

天から降り落ちてくる星
見上げる淡いブルーの空

君のために書いたつもりはなかったけど
結局はそうだったかもね　

君を思うと欠けたハートは
一昔に知っていた「愛」を思い出し

寒い星空の下でも
暖かく微笑んでいる

君におくる言葉
心をこめたこの気持ち

愛情ではないこの気持ち
それが君におくる言葉
それが君に書く手紙

Time comes in many forms

Why is it that when I have all the time in the world to blog I can't bring myself to do so? I think about posting but I never sit myself down to actually do it . . . strange.

So, what is new in life lately . . . knitting projects, moving to a new apartment, that's about it. Not too exciting. Actually I just celebrated my birthday over the weekend which was if not exciting at least pleasant. I went to a Japanese style bar called Wann with the girls from school for yummy drinks and tasty snacks that were nostalgic of Japan. I had a Cassis Orange, it's classified as an izakaya (a type of Japanese bar) classic beverage and although I've never had one at an izakaya before, just at normal bars, it is indeed a very typically Japanese girly drink and made me feel right at home. We ordered several of their appetizer items but my favorites were probably the tatsutaage, marinaded deep fried chicken, and the Brie cheese tempura with a raspberry soy sauce dipping sauce - oh so delicious! On a side note, the bartender was really cute. In the following days I also got taken to brunch - one of my favorite meals - and to dinner by various other friends. So, basically I had a weekend of eating and since I love all things food related that was quite alright by me.

I won't tell you how old I am after this birthday but in a conversation with my friend Rena I was told that I can now officially be said to be pushing 30. I don't think I like that, not that I have anything against being 30, but it's just that I still feel like I'm very much in my mid-20s. Age is really just a number though and I should pay it no heed.

Other things . . . I now have in my possession the final book in the Harry Potter series. I'm both excited and sad about it. I'm eager to read about the continuing adventures of Harry and his friends but it's sad knowing that this is the last book and that there will be no more after it. The same sadness has accompanied the last volume of other series too, such as the Anne of Green Gables books, The Chronicles of Narnia, the adventures of the Swallows and Amazons, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Obviously I can read the books again but I'll never have the same feeling as the first time I read them, that feeling of anticipation, of slowly pushing forward line by line into the yet unknown realm of fiction. I can't bring myself to start reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows just yet. It'll sit on my bedside table for a little while longer while I savor this feeling of ending and resolve myself to it.

And on that note of ending, a goodnight to you all.

I'm feeling peckish

My, my, I have been remiss in posting lately. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with school (and apparently I can't type either, I kept typing 'wchool,' 3 tries before I got it right!) at the moment and all I really want to do is sleep.

I've been thinking longingly of Japanese pastries lately. Two that stand out in my mind at the moment are the little manju shaped like chicks that are filled with sweet yellow bean paste


and dorayaki which are like little pancake sandwiches filled with sweet red bean paste and sometimes candied chestnuts.


They may not sound particularly scrumptious from that description but the thought of them with a cup of hot Japanese tea is making my mouth water.

Homework is the enemy

In this moment I hate Japanese, not the language itself but . . . well yes the language, but more my language class and even more specifically my homework. In other words I hate homework, big surprise. It's just that it's particularly difficult today and I feel like my head is going to explode. We have to answer some mock job interview questions. These are questions that I have trouble answering in English let alone in Japanese, where my ever diminishing vocabulary (use it or lose it, and I'm losing it) puts me at a huge disadvantage. Ugh! UGH!

I hate that this is what bilingualism gets boiled down to, or more precisely it's what my bilingualism gets judged upon. I can talk about random unrelated topics for days but when people ask me serious questions I'm stumped, mostly because I want to express myself in a certain way (it's the latent perfectionist streak in me) but get all tongue-tied and can't, which makes me frustrated, etc etc. You get the picture.

In my head I keep urging myself on by saying, "This will be helpful in the future. You'll really need this." Sadly enough that is probably true of this, unlike many of the other things that I study in school. But I still don't want to do it . . . can't I just say the dog ate my homework and be done with it?

The leaps and bounds of my brain

I forgot how dry the theory of social sciences can be and despite my best efforts to the contrary my mind starts to wander in class. We were discussing the comparison of nonprofits internationally through nonprofit organizations with worldwide chapters. Someone raised the example of Greenpeace and how it was started in the UK but spread worldwide through chapters in different countries. Since the course focuses on civil society in Japan, our professor connects the example back to Japan by saying that we could compare the Greenpeace chapter in Japan with those in other countries. Oddly enough this is where my mind went off on a totally ridiculous tangent. In my head, all I could think about was how in Japanese Greenpeace has the same phonetic pronunciation as 'green peas' which is what peas are commonly referred to there. Now, I can only imagine that the chapter of Greenpeace in Japan has to deal with a lot of miscommunication regarding it and the consumption of peas. Here my brain automatically connects the phonetic blip of peas with Pocari Sweat, a popular Japanese sports drink that they tried to launch in the US but failed miserably for what I would think are obvious reasons. I mean, who wants to drink anything called 'Sweat'? Although, people do seem to enjoy Pimp Juice and Crunk which sound equally distasteful to me. But what I really want to know is, how did I get from peas to Pocari Sweat?

PS - If you go to the Greenpeace Japan website, please know that when they say the "True Food Prize" went to Bourbon they are in fact talking about a snack food manufacturer, not the whiskey beverage. Though I'm sure there are those who would argue that bourbon is indeed a true food.