Adventures in the Looking Glass

I'm waiting for my chickpeas to finish cooking, which means I have 30mins to do this.

I went into a stationery store in December, checking out the Moleskine notebooks.  Well, hell, it's a stationery store - I'd happily check out the paperclips.   While I was lurking about I found a little display toy cameras and started playing about with them.  I was particularly interested in the fisheye camera as I've been wanting a fisheye lens for my SLR, but cannot afford it.  Anyway, I wandered off into the bookshop next door.  However, I kept thinking about those cameras, so I had to go back and have another play with them a few weeks ago.  I checked the manufacturer and found that they were Lomography cameras.  This meant nothing to me.  Anyway, I looked it up and found that lomo cameras take some pretty good photos - the vignetting, colour saturation and hazy quality of the pictures rather appeals to me.  I can just see Shinjuku or Shibuya through one of these lenses.  However, as is my usual case, money does not quite allow this month.  However, next month I should be able to get my money back for moving to Yokohama last year (I had to pay for it, and would be reimbursed a year later), which means there should be enough to get myself a Holga.  And just to get even more excited about it I found a gallery shop in Omotesando, so you know where I'm going on February 1st!! 

And a thought - if wielding Marlboro Lights, a bottle of water and wearing a scarf makes you a member of the Drama Soc; and wielding bottles of water, brandishing pencils and clutching sheet music puts you in the Choir; what does scribbling in Moleskines, wielding lomos and drinking tea make you?  Equally as pretentious as the Drama Soc?

Moving on, I missed my last train on Saturday night and spent a fair few hours in a bar in Yokohama snuggling under a blanket and wearing the earmuffs they gave me.  I happened to accidentally steal the earmuffs when I left, which means I'll just have to go back and return them to one of the cuties who work there.  Damn.  I didn't get home until about 6am.  My knee hated me yesterday as it had been subjected to the freezing elements all night, and so it ached and ached all day, even though I put it under the kotatsu for at least 9 hours.

So far this weekend I have tidied my apartment, messed up my apartment, watched Criminal Minds, watched "Goodnight and Good Luck" (which has an excellent soundtrack) and slept alot.  Today I have to do something which doesn't involve sitting on my arse.  So, tidying, shopping, a private lesson, cooking etc.

I was visited by an Incubus on Friday night, and no, it was, in fact, quite frightening.

So a week of disturbed sleep was compounded this morning but being awoken by the town sirens going at 6am. What they were alerting us to, I've no idea. I got out my dictionary to find out what was being said, but had no joy. Half and hour later as I was finally starting to to the edge of my resentful wakefulness the blasted thing went off again. So I gave up, made a cup of tea and read greygirlbeast's "Bradbury Weather" instead.

I blame the incubus invasion on red wine and watching Hugh Jackman in a dumbass movie. I had little in the way of expectations when I sat down to watch "Kate and Leopold" (it was showing on the Movie Plus channel and I was bored and not in the mood for anything cerebral). My only point in watching (aside from thinking Hugh Jackman is pretty, though particularly in Wolverine mode) was to see whether the film would tick all the plot boxes for a love story. Which it did. Shame that none of the science behind finding cracks in time wasn't explained, but I guess that's far too much for the target audience to take in.

So last night I went to my favourite bar. I had been requested to go out to karaoke with Joe and few others but have taken a thorough dislike to singing in snack bars lately, so headed for the comfort of Yongo Yongo. It's not that I don't enjoy the singing. I am just quite bored with the number of requests I get to sing songs. People always make suggestions and I feel obliged to acquiesce. In some cases, people don't even ask me, they just give me a microphone when a song comes on and say: "Dozo". My annoyance at this behaviour is furthered by the fact that this is most often done with songs I hate - Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", Mariah Carey's "Hero". I've come to an agreement with Joe that the next time this happens I will inform the bar of my hatred of these songs, and give the mic to Joe, who will go on to sing on my behalf. That'll learn 'em.

Joe and I went back to Yongo Yongo for a private "mini-mini-live" with Mi-chan, back from a gig last night in Roppongi. Kumi brought her son Koki, who is 9 years old, but not much past a year old in mental terms (I can never keep up with what the "PC" term for this is). He was utterly ecstatic to meet Joe and insisted on crawling across us to get a hug. He was mesmerised by the guitar and enjoyed banging away on the bongos too. He's a very happy, if slightly anxious, kid and is good fun, though I guess extremely tiring to look after as he needs constant attention. So Koki munched on kombu onigiri while Mama cooked up a huge feast - egg and eggplant pizza, nama-haru maki, bagels, salad, accompanied by beer and wine.

As a result I'm been feeling distinctly off-planet this afternoon. However, I'm going to correct the situation with more red wine and a viewing of "Before Sunset", one of my favourite films, which I had the joy of tracking down in Tsutaya today.

Maybe I might get to sleep properly tonight...

I haven't posted properly for a couple of weeks, so we'll see if whatever comes out of my brain now will be worth the wait.
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This weekend, so far, has been a particularly productive one.

Saturday night saw us go out with a group of students for what they called the "High Calorie Party". This involved going to one of the more expensive yaki-niku restaurants in town, eating meat and drinking beer. Well, I ate, vegetables, salad, tofu and kimchi, and drank beer. Afterwards we went to a huge snack bar where I avoided being the first one to sing karaoke for once (the night's songs included: S.O.S -ABBA, Angel - Eurythmics, and Stay - Lisa Loeb). During my rendition of Angel I was brought to near hysterics by the sight of one of the my students and the other NET grooving along to the song in an Austin Powers stylee.

On Sunday morning I got up at 9am, made tea and toast for Saori, who had stayed over, and then staggered back to bed until 1pm. Then, after waking myself up and eating, I sat down and wrote a short story. It's been popping into my head repeatedly recently and I started making further notes on it last week. Yesterday it wanted to come out, so down I sat and it wrote itself. I have the final section to work on today and then that's the first draft done. It's quite an interesting story for me as it is written in the present tense, not something I usually do, and it's written backwards, so the start is at the end, again, not something I usually do. I found that I automatically slip into writing in the past tense so I very often had to stop myself and change sentences. It gives the story much more sense of immediacy, which is what I want for this one - a sense of confusion, that you don't understand what is happening until the very end. Then to work on the next draft and type it up.

After that I watched the "Devil's Rejects" and started downloading "Pan's Labyrinth".

[On an aside, I blasted my way through all 18 episodes of "Heroes" and and now can't wait to see the next ones. Why, oh why didn't I pace myself, as I was warned about the season break! Next to download is the second series of "Life on Mars" which is about the only show I've been missing from England.]

So far today I've been swimming, after having to shake off dreams about flying around England in a Mini Cooper (which was excellent fun) and watching motorcycle races across the Arctic. I now need to do some shopping, work on the story, do some Japanese practice and head out to meet my private student. And may I add that my student and I meet in family restaurants and cafes, NOT his apartment, and that he was passed on to me by his previous teacher who vouched for his sanity. So don't worry.

Good morning...

SO, this week has been quite a good week as far as film-type things go. On Monday I went to see Blade 2 with Gideon. I quite enjoyed it especially the SFX and the fight scenes. The only bad point was the stoooopid girly sitting behind us who kept saying: " Urrrgh that's sick" or "Urrrgh that's disgusting" throughout. Her only varitaion was " Isn't that the guy from Red Dwarf?". YOU MORON!!!!! SHUT IT!!! Why oh why do people insist on paying a fiver to have a conversation in the dark - you can do it in a field! I really think people should be tested before they are allowed into cinemas, but then I also think some people should be shot at birth - "Are THESE your parents? Well, sorry kid, we just can't let them breed." BANG.

Oohh, so tetchy. On the upside, Dave and I went to see Queen of the Damned on Friday night and the whole experience was a lot better - only about 15 people in a 300 seat theatre. QOTD is better than I expected. It's best not to view it as a sequel to Interview though, more as it's own film. My only gripe (well two) is that it ripped off cheesy lines from Interview and was too conscious of its soundtrack. The Crow is the best example I can think of with a subtle use of rock on its soudtrack. Having Marilyn Manson and Static-X screaming at full volume ruined some of the effects slightly - particularly when Lestat is climbing up the wall and onto the ceiling. That scene would have worked so much better had it been coloured a little more errily with the music; not " COLD WE'RE SO COLD!!!!!" from Wayne Static.

Yesterday I saw Jeepers Creepers (what a popcorn fest). I was actually a little spooked by it, but not as much as the creepy X-files I watched last week - I don't normally get the shivers but the 1000-yard stare on that kid did it!

Today is Sunday which means I am doing the washing, mending clothes (believe me this is a regularly event - I can't afford new ones)and getting some food. I still hold true to the idea that food is not necessary - someone put me on a drip please, then I can waste my time on other things.