Adventures in the Looking Glass

I'm back from Gifu, warming up my apartment, drinking beer and hoping my washing is going to dry.  I'm also raiding the recipe stacks of www.justbento.com to find things to eat for the rest of the month. 

I took the bullet train from Nagoya to Shinagawa and had to stand the whole way owing to it being the last day of the holidays.  The whole of Japan was going back to Tokyo in preparation for tomorrow it seems.  I've never had to stand for 90 minutes anywhere in recent memory, but it wasn't quite as bad as I was anticipating.  I had Cloud Atlas with me, which cheered me up, and was listening to MF Doom on my iPod (Laura in not-listening-to-heavy-metal shock antics!!).

Rachel put my dinner in a bag and stuffed it in my rucksack so I don't have to cook tonight.  Last Sunday night I cooked falafel for lunch on Monday and then forgot to take them with me.  I hope they're still edible!!

Things to write about:

1) Getting kicked out of the gym
2) Going to Osaka and having a fabulous time in a forest
3) Some thoughts on books and films and music
4) Err, other stuff - like crazy people on the train, how much I hate old ladies, and why old men love me.
5) Throwing myself down a mountain and bleeding copiously
6) Why being vegetarian in Japan is akin to living in the North of England, except there's no Quorn... or quiche. 

開けまして　おめでとう　ございます！(That mean's Happy New Year in Japanese).

No, not that Orlando, but Virginia Woolf's "Orlando".

I picked it up in my second-hand book haul in Tokyo and started reading it last week. I first read it when I was at university, I guess for my Women and Myth and course, or the other one with the git of a tutor whose name was John...something. Anyway, I have fond memories of reading it, and have always remembered the frozen Thames section with the parties and Orlando running off with his Russian princess.

However, it has taken me one week to read 100 pages - a woeful number - and it had much to do with the fact that I didn't seem to be enjoying it this time. Reading page after page of Orlando moping about his big house, musing on poetry and the like, was not doing anything for me. But then, yesterday, Orlando goes to Turkey as Ambassador, lives through a revolt and wakes up a woman. And that's when my interest was finally piqued.

Is it because I am reading it as a woman? Surely not, for I've read many an interesting book with a male protagonist and felt able to identify or sympathise with them. I'm not sure Woolf was as successful at writing the male Orlando as she was the female one. We seem to be much more inside Orlando's head upon the ship back to England than at any other time, much more able to break that barrier between the page and story.

Anyway, my little thoughts so far.

On a related note, I was discussing literature with our sub-teacher Lucas, who is going back to Canada to study for an MA in English Lit, and he asked me: "Which classic author do you wish to be wiped from the bookshelves?" Which got me thinking. I don't know. I have a mental image of the classics bay in Ottakar's and I'm trying to work through the shelves picking out the authors I despise. Stern's "Tristram Shandy" can happily be consigned to the depths, in my opinion; Bronte's "Villette" I hate with a fiery passion. So it's not authors, as much as individual books. I have a bad relationship with "classic" literature. I'm not sure where it stems from; maybe being surrounded by pretentious art students for three years?

I was listening to David Mitchell on Radio 4's Book Club last week, talking about "Cloud Atlas". An audience member asked him which authors inspired him. Up until this point I had a good feeling about him, he seemed like a nice guy. He paused, then said: " The Russians." Curse your fancy literary ways!I thought. How bloody pretentious to claim all of Russian literature as an influence. He did also cite Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, so I won't consign "Number 9 Dream" (next on my shelf) to the Tengu river just yet.

Do you have a book or author you would like to see removed? Lucas' choice was Hemingway. I will second him on this as I have only bad memories of reading him (again, I think it was the git-tutor's course). Apparently Hemingway pulled the trigger of his gun with his toe. At least he used an appropriately big gun...