halfcactus

Reading The Tempest with yaaurens and company; I think it’s the first time I’ve read it through. I was Sebastian, who is a minor conspirator nobody’s ever heard of and gets some remarkably good lines (“He receives comfort like cold porridge,” “[in response to “He misses not much”] No; he doth but mistake the truth totally,” “Thou dost snore distinctly; there’s meaning in thy snores”). The play also inevitably brings to mind Jason of Jason and the Bard, dreaming up a quaint device to make the banquet vanish, and of course Antonia Forest’s production—Ginty finding Ferdinand interesting only when he’s played by Patrick (not unreasonably, I think), Lawrie relishing Caliban’s most colorful speeches, Miranda longing for Jan as Prospero and making Nicola laugh with her line readings, and then her eerie, wistful “…were I human.”

Went to graduation at the nighttime junior high (from which you graduate after you acquire a certain number of credits, not a certain number of years; many people take five or six years or more and that’s fine). Nine people graduating: a big cheerful young Nepali guy, an equally big cheerful fortyish Japanese lady, and seven middle-aged to elderly Korean ladies, at least one in her eighties. C, the Japanese lady, has a son in his late teens who graduated from the same nighttime junior high school the previous year; he was there to cheer his mom on, and she will be following him to nighttime high school, as will M, who is in her late fifties or sixties, quiet and modest and very bright. They were both in snazzy skirt suits; several of the other women had on glorious chima chogori. Lots of enthusiastic applause and speeches, singing the school song and also 乾杯, not to be confused with its Chinese counterpart 干杯 lol (although I think the Chinese one would work as a graduation song too!). Curiously, there were very few family members there apart from C’s son F; I wonder how many of the older Korean women were only able to start school once their husbands were out of the picture.

The nighttime junior high is in a neighborhood with a skyrocketing Vietnamese population (judging from the fact that every time I go there there’s a new Vietnamese restaurant or grocery); since I won’t be back there for a few months I took the opportunity to go into a little café and buy a couple of banh mi for dinner. Immediate positive impression because the song playing when I went in was 小幸运! (not Bai Yu’s version, but still). There was a bookshelf behind the cash register containing the complete Harry Potter series (I know, but) in both Japanese and Vietnamese. The sandwiches were also pretty good—one roast pork and one ham-and-fried-egg, with all the tasty trimmings (although my idea of a good sandwich is one with just barely enough bread to retain its structural integrity, the bread is always too thick for me regardless of what kind it is, oh well).

It's high school baseball time and I have been collecting the most remarkable names among the players, as usual; this season’s bunch includes 慈愛久 (Jake), 満詩 (Miuta), 空飛 (Takato) and his teammate 蒼海 (So), whose “sky and sea” combination I like; 覇 (Howl, I am not kidding, a) how do you get that pronunciation from the character, and b) are his parents fans of DWJ and/or Ghibli); 芽空 (Hisoka, God knows how), and 夢生愛 (Muua, poor kid), whose older brothers are 飛美希 (Hibiki) and 輝夢 (Kiramu). It’s not even that none of these are nice names, they’re lovely! If not necessarily what you’d expect from tanned crewcut kids whose main preoccupation is getting to first base. Just, parents all, please think of your kid having to spend his whole life explaining how to spell and/or pronounce his name!

Music for today: something I came across at random on YouTube, a concerto for flute and flute orchestra. The piece itself isn’t all that exciting, but the sound of so many flutes together is fantastic, mellow and melting and cool as water, why aren’t there more pieces for this kind of group?
Also listening to Seong-Jin Cho play the Chopin Scherzos, just dazzling.

Y’s project of getting me to watch 1980s anime movies continues; this time it was Oshii Mamoru’s Patlabor, which was really surprisingly good. Not as pretty visually as the Gundam ones, on the whole, but (except for some comic distortion here and there) realistic in a way that makes you feel you’re watching live-action postwar Japan with big robots, including wonderful visual scenes of ordinary-Showa-era downtowns and abandoned areas. There’s a lot less in the way of big robot fights than in Gundam, and the ones they do have are significantly plot-related as opposed to “big battle scenes are fun” (sorry, Gundam, I’m oversimplifying, but still); the whole thing is almost like a murder mystery in the way they gradually work out what’s happening and why and how to stop it, it’s fascinating. Also, nobody dies! I was sure Captain Gotoh was going to be a dead mentor guy, having made his stirring speech and gone off on his own into the storm, but nope, he was fine. Shinohara the male lead is actually not nearly as annoying as he might be, and again there are more women and less fanservice than I would have expected from the eighties—Izumi is fine too (and I do like it that she’s the pilot and Shinohara is the data guy), but I love Nagumo and her ponytail and her professionalism.

I finished reading The People at No. 1 Siwei Street (or rather I finished reading the Japanese edition; now I have a copy of the Chinese original from the library which I am trying to work my way through before I have to return it. It is mostly not hard to follow, except reading in 繁体字 gives me a headache; my brain has no problem reading 历史 as lìshǐ, but it insists on reading 歴史 as rekishi, and as for something like 號, my brain wants to know why I’m suddenly reading something published before the war (this book is from 2023). Oh well, if I lived in Taiwan for a while I’d get used to it). It was a lot of fun, with very memorable characters (including a Jiajia whom I keep picturing as the one from Guardian, since she’s happy and feisty, even though this one is explicitly described as strongly featured, beautiful, and very tall, plus she’s 家家 instead of 佳佳, but still). Happy ending allowing for a sad flashback which I still don’t understand in full, other than as a way to examine late-twentieth-century Taiwanese sociopolitical history through the relationship of two not-quite-cousins who hate each other but have a close bond). I would love to make an English translation and may play with one, but it really should be done by someone who can read the original fluently and really knows from Taiwan.
Also reading The Luka/Chika Sisters by Nagano Mayumi, an old favorite who likes to play around with gender and sexuality in interesting, weird, low-key ways; will report back.

Photos: Magnolia, forsythia, some things that are probably not pink lilies-of-the-valley, and some early cherry blossoms. The most unexpected vending machine I’ve seen yet, with flavors from dark chocolate to raspberry, pistachio, and yogurt. Scenes from a recent day trip, including three gorgeous vessels, holding respectively sake, abalone stew, and the most delicious yokan I’ve ever tasted, containing raisins, figs, and apricots. (One of the deer around here, not pictured, is recently said to have wandered about 30km to our city to prowl around eating people’s gardens; maybe even deer get bored in the countryside?).

Be safe and well.