A weekend

Friday (a day off) Edo Tokyo Museum: nice, too many models (of buildings, not people who wear clothes for a living), near restaurants where I spilled miso soup on a cushion and tatami mats like a pillock.

Saturday (a day off that I had to book) Shibuya: drank, got drunk, met Pete + significant other and friends. Unexpectedly met a workmate and former Japanese teachers (still Japanese teachers, former only to me and my friend Shawn I think).

Now. Oh, chocolate. And maybe a bit of reading. I finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro the other day and it made me cry, so maybe something different.

Something About Love

There are many great things about being in love. It's well documented, mainly in popular song. There can also be hurt. I'm writing about that hurt, but more specifically I'm talking about the hurt of over-analysis.



It's the self-centred point of view where you start thinking everything is related to you that causes it. The whole what-have-I-done question. But not everything is me, me, me. I'm getting to know that now, slowly. There are outside factors. I am not my girlfriend's entire life; though in my more egotistical moments I would love it to be so, I know I can never be her entire life and I know it would be scary if I were all she did with of her non-sleeping and non-working time.

Relinquishing responsibility is something I thought I wanted but now I know it is what I crave.

No Man's Land

I went to the French Embassy yesterday. Not because I am French, though I am called Marc. Nor did I want to practice my piss poor schoolboy language skills with a "Bonjour, pour aller l'exhibition?" No, I was there for art, darling.

They're going to knock it down, you see, so they've given it over to a number of Japanese and French artists. It's a full on two hour wander around the building, ducking in and out of rooms. It's 100 yen, so basically all but free in, with proper real artists exhibiting.

There was a bad point: a million middle-aged women shouting at the top of their voices at each other. What makes some post-menopausal women in Japan need to converse at ten decibels louder than even American tourists? Honestly! And it was inane babble, as in utter bollocks.

Regardless of harridans, you should go there. Highlights are Korean photographer, J.Jo, Christophe Valery and a lovely girl who makes tartan paintings but whose name I forgot. Anyway, it's near Hiroo station but head down toward Tengenjibashi on Meiji Dori and you'll be on the right track. It was a grand afternoon.

Varie

I'm going to be experimenting with different writing styles over the next while, I think. While it appears I may have gotten more misanthropic than usual, please allow me to tell you that I am very happy at the moment.

The reason I'm going to be experimenting is I was hit by this article about Boy's Own fanzine, and how they felt there was a duty to be critical of the house scene itself. That said, maybe I should be more critical of my social scene, and seeing as my girlfriend is perfect then that probably means basically myself (N.B. This is exaggeration.)

###

Here is New Year at Zojoji shrine:



###

Shoes say a lot about people. Everybody's shoes are different, even if they're the same. Example, my Converse have walked in different places, will be worn out in different places than yours. Shoes are statements, but sometimes questions, exclamations and explanations.

37.2 degrees from paper

I sat on Saturday and devoured the whole of 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo. It may be my new favourite novel. It is a growing up story set in Beijing. There are cursings, moanings and a youthful determination to succeed that cry out all the way through this book. I dare you to try to hate it: I feel it must be impossible.

My novel in progress

For those of you who follow my Twitter feed, it will not be a surprise that I haven't been posting anything of much substance recently.

The reason for this is because my novel has been gaining momentum, especially over the Christmas/New Year holidays. This has led me to ecstatic highs and I am writing this post to myself as a sort of challenge. So, laying down the gauntlet for myself, I think I may actually have the current fourth draft finished by the end of February and a final draft done and dusted by the end of March. These may be foolish words but unless I set myself some kind of deadline I will probably sit on my arse looking at Flickr more often than is healthy.

I would like to thank Pete for reading the first third with a critical eye, and giving me the encouragement I need to keep going.

I will keep going, and keep attempting to find the time to write some halfway decent posts for this blog (decent by my standards anyway).

Thanks for reading and keep checking. You can also subscribe by clicking the little orange square up top in your location bar too.

No Pants - No Thanks

From one of my Twitter contacts this morning, I found out that on the 10th of January there is to be an attempted No Pants subway ride (or rather Yamanote Line ride) [link cached on Google].

Clearly the people involved in organising this Tokyo ride don't much understand how totally freaked out a lot of people will be and that some people won't take it as a good-natured prank but simple see how juvenile white people are (and I can guarantee that around 80% of those taking part will be white males under 30). There is already an image of us as binge drinkers and womanisers. Is this really the kind of stereotype we want to perpetuate about ourselves?

I'm all for youthful hi-jinx but for goodness sake do we want to give the uyoko another excuse to ridicule us besides the Yamanote Halloween party?

Pax Americana

I went out last night with a fellow North-East Englishman and something about my time had me thinking about what makes English people English. I came up with a rough list:

1. Humourous dourness (think Douglas Adams, George Orwell) that gets taken for misanthropy.
2. A love of baked beans.
3. A belief that nearly all good music was created on our isle (especially The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, any good punk music, almost any synthesiser music, most good dance music).
4. We don't really like America, or we begrudge it. (It's no mistake that in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that Zaphod Beeblebrox seems much like a stereotypical brash American).

The American thing really got me thinking. Of course it's our English superiority complex built on the age of Empire and passed down to us, and now seeing all the cool shiny stuff that America builds we have an inferiority complex so dismiss it as plastic tat. We turn a blind eye to African Americans or see it as a different America, which is why many English people are willing to adopt hip-hop slang and arse about in baggy jeans and Stüssy T-shirts and sing along to songs about armed struggle against the corrupt police system while we drive through sleepy bed towns like Orpington, Godalming, Aylesbury and such. We blame Americans for McDonalds even though it's our own purchases that drive the expansion of the burger chain.

Anyway, by chance as I was browsing Google Reader I came upon a much better article than this by the much better and professional and older writer Geoff Dyer.

And also, Happy New Year!