Hiromi Usagi!

I haven’t updated my blog for a while, and I was reading a book and watching movies—taking in many things inward as oppose to letting out of my thoughts ourward.

Did I say that I finished “memoirs of geisha.” ? I enjoyed it a lot. I thought it was a very well done fiction and made me think a lot of things right before going back to Japan. Before I read it, I was sort of skeptical about a story of geisha done by a non-Japanese male writer, but women’s emotion was very well told and Japanese way of communication/ competition/ survival, its subleness appear very nicely. There were some parts that I was unsure about what were the original words or phrases in Japanese, especially the dialogues. Oh well, it was a good novel, and I am sure that those who read this book including myself learned a lot about geisha and its culture which is not about prostitution or shallow entertainment at all.

Anyhow, I just finished “The curious incident of the dog in the night time.” Oh Christopher, a main boy charactor, I felt for him… I am not a math person, but still enjoyed it, so people, like YOU who are into math would love it!

A few days ago, Marcia told me that I had only 4 weeks left before going back to Japan while she was thinking about her plans. OMG…I have a lot of things to do before I go, but I have just been taking sweet times reading books I feel like or taking a long nap or soaking into a bathtub for a long time or put a lotion mask on my face and read a health care brochur or other things that I don’t have to do. Oh well, I love doing stuff like these though.

So I went to the intonation music festival last weekend. It was fun! I liked Magnolia electric company, Andrew Bird, and the decemberist. It was very hot and I got bug bites on my left eye lid on Sunday, so I was not comfortable. It was nice to hang out with my friends. That Sat was Marcia’s b-day, and we all had a good time! I was supposed to go to work by 4:30, but I ran into Jeff who works with me at Wabi told me that I could come in later like 7, so I could see Magnolica electric company. That was very very nice of him. Later that night, Marcia brought her friends who were at the festival to Wabi. I think that they had a good time eating yummy sushi. What a fun day it was! I got to hang out with Luca who has been back to Prague. I hadn’t seen him for a while, so when I saw him at Lula which I didn’t know he was there, I was very surprised in a very exciting way! Marcia said that she had the best b-day, and I am very happy that I was a part of it. Josh was wearing a yellow bandana thing around his neck looking like a boy scout—cute… Harper was there hanging out with us and bringing different people to us all the time. I met several people whom I haven’t seen for a while, which was sort of perfect before leaving Chicago.

I didn’t do much today, but reading the book–the curious incident— hang out with haper who kept making a weird noise with his mouth while playing his new laptop. His time schedule and mine are kind of opposite, so I don’t get to see him much although we live in the same place. His parents sent him a cartoon book about suicidal rabbits. It was hilarious, but rabbit is my favorite animal! I think that somebody brainwashed me by showing me many cute rabbit goods when I was baby. Becca and I went to Baby ‘R’ Us the other day, and I saw many many stuff with rabbits like baby clothes, toys, shoes, and so on. That made me speculate why I liked rabbit so much…

What should I read next?

I finished The World According to Garp today. What a life…. It seemed real, I mean I hope it was real, maybe not. It is too harsh… I like that Garp’s family loves each other, although so many tragic accidents happened. I wonder what baby Jenny ended up doing in her later life…oh it is not real…..

I just started Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. One of the beginning scene is about my home town, Yamanshi, and the doctor’s last name is Nakazawa just like mine. I don’t know where the rice ball hill is supposed to be….. I like it so far. I want to keep reading and reading….

I want to finish my master’s thesis for real… I just need to revise it…I will do it tomorrow… I will, I said I will…. I love doing it, but I was doing other stuff, like jobs, scholarship, decision making, work. I need to be multi-tasking. I think that one course at a time at Cornell College was not practical in a real life. One course for 3 weeks and done! and move on to the next one… I liked it, because I felt accomplished every 3 weeks. Life doesn’t run this way though. I am getting better at it.

I am sympathetic to the main character of Kafka on the Shore. I should not talk about it too much though. You guys should read it and talk to me individually. But I just started, so don’t tell me the whole story if you have read it. Murakami is good at creating characters who are not fit in mainstream society. I think that whoever likes murakami sometimes feel this way–not quite fit in a society. I think that there are things that the society expects you to be doing certain things in certain points of your life. If you are not doing it, somebody punches you not physically, but psychologically. Reading murakami makes me feel that I am not the only one. He even makes these people look cool. He made me think I could be cool… Could I ?