All about Calendars

Since Mama is currently in Manila, I was left to my own devices. It was a pretty nondescript weekend spent walking around downtown, celebrating two birthdays, and dining at kaiten sushi (fast and cheap sushi, yum!).

1. Halloween is so over, and I guess so is Fall. The malls are in full-on Winter mode already. Coats, boots, different versions of Ugs, even Ugly-fied Crocs(take an oridnary croc, attach a bota-body to it), abound. And the weather seems to be cooperating (or is it the weather dictating the seemingly accelerated arrival of Freezy Winter?). Our Fukui Fall evenings have gotten as chilly as 5 deg Celsius (Lord help me in December!).

2. Japanese Christmas has begun to rear its kawai head. Adverts for Christmas cakes are everywhere. Families traditionally eat slices of pretty cakes on the 25th of December. No present-exchange here. Orders are placed at least a week ahead.

3. And speaking of cakes, I had a slice of one of these last Friday.

Yoshino and Keiko celebrated their birthdays (one day apart from each other) in our brand-spanking new school building:





At 32 years old, one could easily mistake them for 23 (okay, maybe that's stretching it, but they would each pass for 25 no?). And since Japanese women seem to be outliving everyone on the planet (an average Japanese obasan - grandma- reaches 86 years old), they both have a looong way to go (fifty years at least). I asked them what their wishes are -- Yoshiko wishes for more travel and Keiko wishes to get married. Sabi ko bata pa sya, and then that's when she said she's turning 32. Still young, I think. Pero sige na nga, I wish them both not marriage just yet kontrabida! :D), but wonderful boyfriends first. Ones they could travel with and celebrate happy birthdays til they reach their 80s. :D

3. Speaking of brand spanking new, yep, Will Be just moved a couple of blocks down Omiya road. It was a bit farther from my house (now it takes me 10 minutes by bike) but the new school comes with a bigger room for Grace, and a computer inside that room so no one's complaining -- especially since presumably I won't be around to complain once snow season begins. Hah! Score one for Grace. :D

4. Oh, if Christmas is not a big deal here, New Year is. It could be comparable to our Filipino Christmas. They have a host of traditions associated with New Year (it could merit an entire blog post). Upscale mall Seibu, aside from being Winter-crazy, is most definitely calendar and planner crazy! Andaming cute na calendars and planners swarming around, like this one:

pink goth calendars

Eyecandy talaga. It was fun just looking and watching shoppers furiously pick out their calendar of choice for 2009. I saw a Moomin planner I really liked, but managed to control myself (later you'll see why). However, I did fall in love with these:

Art-themed calendars printed on hemp paper.
They could be framed like that main display, made by a Russian artist.

This one, most especially:

I have an awww-spot for the Peanuts, lalo na yung vintage Peanuts where Snoopy looked more like an ordinary dog with really cute dog-antics. The vintage Peanuts calendar is also available in wallpaper format, yung pwedeng i-frame. I know I shouldn't even be thinking of getting it (if oggler's memory serves me right, it's about $20), but darnit, it's the Peanuts gang! Vintage Charles Schulz! Cuuuuuuuute!

5. So I wiped the slobber off my face and proceeded instead to the 100yen store -- yes, where everything costs around 46pesos! This reliable-looking 2009 planner included: AGENDA

Never go looking for trouble,
Seek and you shall find.
A near friend is better than
A far dwelling kinsman.

Let's disregard the proselytizing (and I kinda liked the screaming yellow cover and the word "agenda") since it can do this anyway:


plan, baby, plan!

Tsk. A sign of advancing years, the urge to make concrete plans and see your goals on paper. ;)


6. Speaking of advancing years, since my, uhm, boitday is coming up, I got meself this a month ago (yung sumisilip kanina sa ilalim ni Yellow Agenda):

Murakami Diary

Ordered it from Amazon (evil, evil Amazon!). The size was a lot smaller than I had expected and the price was like one Murakami book already. But it does have beautiful images like this:


First time I've gotten myself an expensive notebook, and it doesn't come without a pinch of guilt. So how do I justify this purchase? Sabi ko sa sarili ko, it will serve as an "ode to my more than 1 year stay in Japan"; para maalala ko yung buong Nipon experience next year (at syempre kelangan tunog-madrama. :p) Sabi ni Mine, gusto ko lang daw talagang i-justify yung purchase. :p


Haha, baka nga tama sya.

I know I've constantly complained about the loneliness, gig-lessness, lack of accessible friends, etc. that comes with life in Fukui, but I think I would sincerely miss living here - the solo apartment, proximity to my Mom, the Japanese city trips, fresh sushi, even my students (some of them especially ). So I'm resolving to just enjoy the remaining two months, biting weather aside. ;)

The Expatriates, p. 5

Five young expatriates hunch around an undersized cafe table: a moment of total insignificance, and not without a powerful whiff of cliche.

Unless you were one of them. Then this meaningless, overdrawn moment may (then or later) seem to be somehow the summation of both an era and your own youth, your undeniably defining afternoon (though you can hardly say that aloud without making a joke of it). Somehow this one game of Sincerity becomes the distilled recollection of a much longer series of events. It persistently rises to the surface of your memory - that afternoon when you fell in love with a person or a place or a mood, when you savored the power of fooling everyone, when you discovered some great truth about the world, when (like a baby duck glimpsing your quacking mother's waddling rear for the first time) an indelible brand was seared into your heart, which is, of course, a finite space with limited room for searing.

-- Prague, Arthur Phillips

Mark, p. 29

excerpt from Prague, Arthur Phillips,

Like a dying man railing against an unfamiliar God, Mark kept asking, "Why?" And every academic question was merely a restatement of a more pressing personal one, one he had been asking nearly as long as he could remember thinking, one he was embarassed to ask even as he kept asking it despite himself, one he would only share with a friend while drunk or laughing:

Why am I unhappy in the era and place I was given?

It did not take a very long acquaintanceship before Charles labeled Mark "sad beyond help, unfit even for commodities trading." Scott, in turn, had identified the Canadian as "prematurely elderly."