#fully felt like i just forgot the entirety of the english language for a second there

[cellgatinbo]

i was just catching up some more on ordem but i’m so sleepy rn i decided to stop before i fell asleep at my computer, only to take out my earbuds and hear my dad watching a video in portugese right next to me

it took me a second to realize that i couldn’t understand the words not bc i was tired out of my mind but bc it was in literally a different language, then the jolt of ‘why the fuck is my dad watching a video in portugese’ fully jolted me back awake

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of June

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton I bought the Penguin English Library edition of this book mainly because of a tweet that I saw slagging off the cover, saying that the sticks of dynamite in the cover pattern looked like tampons and that 'this could have been avoided if only one woman had looked at the cover’; this irritated me a lot because I know for a fact that the cover was in fact designed by a woman (Coralie Bickford-Smith, to be precise, an artist whose similar works I am also a good fan of), and I wanted to own this edition simply so that I could prove to myself and others that this is the case. However, whilst the cover of this book is indeed very pretty, the texts published in the Penguin English Library collection do not possess the handy introductory chapter at the beginning that the Penguin Classics include, and thus with no frame of reference, I was at something of a loss to describe this book. It is certainly an interesting read insofar as it seemingly refuses to stay as one genre for the whole book. The blurb describes it as a ‘strange and haunting novel’, and at the beginning, this is very appropriate; it depicts a sensationalist image of villainous anarchists and zealous unhinged detectives that is incredibly compelling, and I hold that the character descriptions of the members of the Council of Days (as introduced in chapter five) make for some of the best writing that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. By fuck is Chesterton great at characterising these dudes. The blurb describes the novel as a spy thriller, and all seemed to be going well on this front, with a melodramatic but consistent tone maintained for around the first half of the book, with some great twists scattered here and there for good measure. But then things start getting a tad daft, and I’m going to spoil a bit of the plot here because you need to understand how off the rails this shit gets. The adventure grows to involve much of the main cast of antagonists being revealed to be policemen in increasingly convoluted disguises, ridiculously overblown chases in different countries with the stakes being continuously raised in the stupidest and funniest ways, and the main antagonist, built up as a grand unknowable titan of crime and anarchy, escapes the protagonist by leaping over a balcony ‘like an orang-utan’, riding away on a rampaging elephant that he broke out of the zoo, and finally evading capture by flying away on a stolen hot air balloon. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of this sort of shit as a general rule, but by fuck does it seem incongruous in a novel such as this, that is so clever and so beautifully written and, whilst containing its few bits of sensational ridiculousness (as an overt parody of the genre or its tropes), generally quite a serious read. Similarly to The Heat’s On, if this book had just kept on the rails or channelled its madness into chaos that stayed within the genre’s boundaries, instead of just throwing its hands up into the air and screaming, ‘fuck it, put in an elephant chase scene!’, I’d have enjoyed it a lot more. As it is, it reminds me of the overblown nonsense of the 007 stories - this is a novel for dads, I reckon. After finishing this book I then found Beaumont’s introduction to the text, which describes the text as ‘antirealist’, and cites Chesterton’s description of ‘great works which mix up abstractions fit for an epic with fooleries not fit for a pantomime’. As a concept, I can fully get behind this - the juxtaposition of heroics and farcical nonsense puts me in mind of high burlesque, and I’ve always been fully against realism because fuck that noise. But you can’t stick with the idea of this book being wholly antirealist if it takes place in a world recognisable as our own and then suddenly changes to be ludicrous and laughable; that’s just inconsistent, and indeed mildly vexing when I was fully engrossed in the sensational spy thriller. Furthermore, attempting to justify this book’s content by saying that it is reminiscent of a ‘nightmare’ is a bullshit defence, because a) the word ‘nightmare’ could simply be used in reference to this book’s negative depiction of a world in which anarchists triumph in their nasty villainy, and b) it’s difficult to keep the idea of this book’s world supposedly being a dream forefront in one’s mind when it, as mentioned above, represents a view (albeit a sensational one) of reality, with dream nonsense hardly being a part of it at all. That is, of course, until the very end, when the book gives up all pretence of being a spy novel and instead wallows in metaphor and overt Christian imagery before ending abruptly. The ending is bullshit and I don't like it.

Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol I’ve often cited Gogol as one of my favourite authors, but for the longest time I stayed clear of this book, somewhat daunted by whether what I loved about Gogol’s short stories would translate well to a novel form. This is a different beast to his short stories, but no less interesting to talk about, and indeed possessing many of the short story’s positive attributes, for all of the excellent writing, characterisation, and understanding of the fun nuances of society abounds here as it does in his shorter works. Apparently Gogol was attempting to recreate the structure and overall vibe of The Odyssey and other such Homeric epics in prose form, and although the overall setting and storyline does not reflect the grand awe-inspiring epics of the past, I’ll be buggered if the story’s writing and tone doesn’t somehow achieve it. This is not, despite what some critics have said, due to Gogol’s tendency to ramble on about unrelated digressions (a device apparently comparable to Homeric epics), or at least it didn’t stick out to me as such when I read it - that’s just kind of what Gogol does. No, it’s the writing and tone, as mentioned above, that seems to ape the Homeric tone, in such a way that you wouldn’t notice its explicit presence until after you’d been informed of it, and yet when you are aware of the Homeric influence you see it everywhere clear as day; I’d call it an ineffable concept but that’s just me trying to cover up for the fact that I can’t find the words, because I’m bad at writing these things. But I digress. Gogol’s excellent means of conveying character voices shines as always in this text, but I can’t feel like I’m missing the extent of it because I’m reading it in English. The introduction by Robert A Maguire describes Gogol’s extensive research into ‘all the prosaic rubbish of life, all the rags’, and makes efforts to incorporate such minor details as regional slang, official jargon, outdated terminology, etc. into his characters’ voices, but I fear that I’m missing some of the nuances of these techniques by my lack of knowledge in these fields or that some of the subtleties in language don’t translate as well as they ought to. Of course there are some characters which exemplify Gogol’s skill at diverse voices, such as some of the peasant muzhiks and one of my favourite characters Nozdryov (who draws from a wide array of sources for his dialogue with hilarious results), but there are some instances in which the character voices seem somewhat interchangeable, especially considering how a lot of individual personality is often subsumed by the necessity of upholding social decorum, and thus there are many characters who only speak in refined socially acceptable manners. The characters themselves are all bloody great, be they individual grotesque landowners or incredibly detailed and often brilliantly satirical descriptions of wider groups or demographics. Whilst the writing remains as excellent as ever, the characters in the second part of the book lack the grotesque simplicity of those in the first part - indeed, efforts are made by Gogol to give them complex fleshed-out characterisation - and subsequently these new characters are nowhere near as memorable as the fantastic personifications of negative traits that we got in the first part. Yeah, I forgot to mention, this book is technically made up of two parts, the first part highlighting the problems of society and the second part intended to delve into the resolution of some of these issues; of course, the second part does not exist in its entirety, because Gogol was a great fan of melodramatically burning his manuscripts, but it’s not a major issue because what does survive of the full text is amazing enough on its own (specifically the entirety of part one). Plus, I’ve delved into my thoughts of authors trying to ‘change the world’ through their works (in that I think that it’s a fool’s notion and only really serves to exemplify the author’s delusion), so I’m content with this text only portraying the detrimental aspects of society, as opposed to trying to fix them. I am quite fond of the narrator in this book. Similarly to his short stories, Gogol employs a narrative voice that exists almost as a character in of itself, and I don’t just mean that in the sense of ‘it’s got a lot of personality’. The narrative voice apologises for the story’s content and makes changes in an attempt to preserve decorum, it makes excuses for the story’s characters (especially the protagonist Chichikov), it often reveals information at the same rate as the characters within the setting discover things and have epiphanies, and it even establishes itself as a character with a physical voice as it only chooses to speak of Chichikov’s past when Chichikov himself is asleep, and apologises all the while lest he somehow slight the man. Bringing up this also gives me an opportunity to briefly mention the 2006 BBC radio adaptation for this, which establishes the narrator as a physical character in all scenes to humourous effect (and what’s more gave me yet more reason to love Mark Heap, who makes for a fucking excellent Chichikov). But I digress. Part two of the novel, as mentioned above, does not possess the same sort of wonderfully grotesque characters as part one, and considering that this is a novel defined mainly by its characters, this is somewhat problematic. The plot of part two is perhaps vaguely interesting, even though it seems to shunt the titular focus of dead souls to the side somewhat, but all in all I found it difficult to be too invested in this new story due to its lack of compelling characters. In addition, the Homeric epic tone of part one is somewhat absent, and without a distinctive narrative voice, the narrative suffers. I feel bad shitting on part two, since it was everyone else shitting on part two that catalysed Gogol to burn the manuscript (again) and possibly starve himself to death. Honestly, the first part is bloody amazing, so just read that and then be satisfied with the knowledge that your opinion of the book overall has not been tarnished by the shoddy second part. Sorry Gogol.

Complete Short Fiction - Oscar Wilde I’ve been vaguely aware of Wilde’s short fiction for a while now, having read a selection of his fairy tales and ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ (a favourite of mine) for uni, so I decided to give his complete collection a shot. The Penguin Classics edition of his short fiction is separated into his different published collections, but can generally be categorised as either fairy tales or miscellaneous short stories. I’ve studied a shit load of fairy tale authors/compilers (Basile, Straparola, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Andersen, Wilde and whoever compiles the radical Russian fairy tales), and Wilde is certainly my favourite of the bunch. The specific blend of Wilde-esque traits incorporated into the fairy tale format make up my favourite fairy tales of any author - this is by no means all of Wilde’s fairy tales, but I’ll get into that. My favourite fairy tales of Wilde take place in a world vaguely recognisable as our own, or at least existing as an exaggerated facsimile of our own society, not just because the urban setting reminds me of Hoffmann’s ‘The Golden Pot’, but because such a setting allows for some heavy-handed but undeniably hilarious social commentary and satire. Such satire works especially well when juxtaposing the romanticised world of the fairy tale with the grimmer reality of Wilde’s society - the two tales that commence the collection, ‘The Happy Prince’ and ’The Nightingale and the Rose’, exemplify this excellently. Whilst I liked the satire attainable by setting the fairy tale in an urban society environment, similar levels of hilarity are obtained via Wilde’s satirical look at certain character archetypes (the titular character in ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ being my favourite example). The fairy tales obviously possess their morals and their teachings (though I was a fan of how this is subverted slightly by some characters actively avoiding, misinterpreting or arguing with the story’s moral), but the tropes that we’d expect to see in fairy tales - the morals from Perrault, the recurring overt ties to Christianity from Andersen, etc. - are not why I like Wilde’s fairy tales so much. The tales in the collection titled A House of Pomegranates are undeniably excellently written, and what’s more include some fantastic settings inspired by the Victorian obsession with the Orient that allow for phenomenal and evocative descriptive writing (the likes of which is not seen in any other of Wilde’s fairy tales), but they fail to capture my preferred positive attributes that the aforementioned tales possess. I cheekily skipped 'The Portrait of Mr W H' because I’d heard from a mate who had also read it that it was a long and dull read, and thus refrained from checking it out lest it tarnish my idealised view of Wilde. I’m sure I’ll live with myself knowing that I haven’t read Wilde’s entire body of works. Indeed, who gives half a toss about that when we’ve still got to talk about the last remaining collection contained within this publication: ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories’, which is not made up of fairy tales but other ‘popular’ genres of writing. Taken at face value, the stories’ content of murder, ghosts, and mystery slot in nicely alongside the fairy tales, in that they can all be considered, at face value, writings intended to appeal to the low-brow interests of the masses. They are, of course, more than that, possessing some great subversions of genre tropes and Wilde’s typical social satire, which all comes together to make the short stories (in particular ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ and ‘The Canterville Ghost’) hilarious and very enjoyable reads. The fact that these stories are written with the primary intentions of entertaining, rather than revolutionising the written form or making one think about grand philosophical themes, means that I can’t really offer anything about the stories other than that they’re fucking good and that you should go and read them.

Shit I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to write about: A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth (which I started back in December(?) last year, forgot about until now, and love immensely), and ‘The Penal Colony’ by Kafka (it was much more enjoyable than the other works by Kafka that I’ve read, but that isn’t really saying much).

[icesis]

A Trip of a Life Time

It has always been a life long dream of mine to visit Japan. This year, that finally happened. From March 23-April 2nd, I had made my way to and through Japan.

So I would like to walk you through my trip and what happened!

On March 23rd 2017, we left our house around 2:15am to arrive at the air port around 3am. The weather was terrible, we were having snow and ice at the time. Our travelling companion arrived around 3:45 am. We checked his bag, and headed through security around 4am.

Funnily enough, my great aunt was travelling on the same plane as us to Toronto, and we met up for a few minutes before boarding the plane.

We boarded our flight around 6:10am (on time!) for our departure at 6:50am. We were all seated and getting ready to go. Waiting to get de-iced, the maintenance folk thought they saw a leak. This caused a delay of over 2 hours, and we left after 9am when they determined it was just melting snow. During this delay, my spouse and I watched Doctor Strange in its entirety. Finally de-iced, we took flight.

We arrived in the Toronto Pearson Airport around 10am EST (2hours after our flight left Halifax). Many of those on our flight had missed connections and there was a lot of chaos from the delay. Thankfully, it just made our layover shorter. 

We were supposed to meet up with my great aunt and her friend for food, however, they were told they had a chance to make their layover and tried to get there. However, once all was done they sadly missed it and couldn’t get out of their section of the airport.

So we ate Pad Thai at Thai Express, and then made our way through security again, and to our terminal. It was pretty uneventful after this, and we boarded our flight to Japan at 1:50pm. Since our flight boarded quickly, we ended up leaving a little bit early at 2:20pm.

During the flight (which was 13 hours), I tried to sleep and watched movies. After awhile, you do get very uncomfortable, but don’t want to move and disturb those around you.I was excited, as the plane had Your Name which I had been wanting to see but hadn’t come out in North America yet. I also watched some episodes of the Big Bang Theory with my spouse. I don’t remember exactly what I ate on this flight, but I do remember really enjoying the chicken meal I had, and of course the best part of my flight was my Cup Noodle! I also watched most of Moana but fell asleep towards the end.

Since my spouse and I only took carry on bags, our moving through the airport and security was very fast and we were ready to go immediately. However, our friend had brought a checked in bag, which caused us a lot of delays with leaving. At the airport, we obtained our pocket wifi from Wifi Ninja and our Suica cards for the train.

We boarded to Monorail, and we were listening for our stop. A kind older Japanese man boarded the train and spent some time talking to us. It was really pleasant experience. We did, however, miss our train stop and had to get off and get back on the train on the other side.

We took in what we could as we boarded our next train towards our apartment we were renting. Once we found our way, we dropped off our goodies and went out to see what we could find.

We grabbed some drinks out of the vending machine, and headed to Lawsons and 7-Eleven to see what we could find. We then headed back to the apartment for the night.

For our second day, we got an early start and headed out. We stopped at McDonalds and decided to try a Mega Muffin (two sausages, cheese, egg, and bacon) which was a delicious greasy mistake. 

We walked around Akihabara and Shinjuku. Sadly, we didn’t realize most things didn’t open until later. So we didn’t do too much during this time.

We found our way to pick up our Japan Rail Passes while were out though!

We found tons of vending machines while we were out.

And we found a Square Enix Cafe! Sadly you can’t see how long the line was, but it was definitely a few blocks long.

We later made our way over to Ueno Park and Zoo. Where we saw a lot of animals and cherry blossoms starting to bloom.

We also got to see some great signs!

After this, I was exhausted and we headed home. I slept a long time this night!

The next day, we were just wondering around and taking in the sights. We checked out Taito Games and the Mega Tokyo Pokemon Center. I also tried some various foods, but notably it was some store bought dango!

Because of being so sore, we didn’t do too much else this day. However, we did eat at McDonald’s again and had a Big Mac! It was the most beautiful Big Mac I have ever had. 

That brings us to the 27th. This was Disney Day! We visited Tokyo Disneyland which was way more emotional than I thought it would be. I was stunned when I got there. I hadn’t ever been big into going to Disneyland or World, but since it was near us I wanted to go. 

I’m not one to be super corny, but it definitely felt magical. It also helped that it always smelled like candy in the park.

Once we left Disneyland, there was a crepe shop outside called Bell’s Crepes... and I knew I had to try one! I even ordered in Japanese! 

While we were in Tokyo, I got to meet up with one of the lovely girls I met when she was here in Halifax studying English. She took us to a great restaurant and we had a really good time! I can’t wait until I can see her next. :)

Then it was time to move on. We made our way to Kyoto to meet up with my close friend Yuuka, who I met while she was studying in Halifax. We visited the Fushimi Inari-Taisha shrine, which was beautiful. Those gorgeous torii will stick with me forever.

We ate at some of the vendors outside. We tried a mochi skewer, yakiniku and nikumaki! I think Nikumaki was my favorite. I ate it so fast I forgot to take a picture.

After this, we headed back to Osaka and ate at the restaurant Kappa Zushi.

We then headed to our capsule hotel in Dotonbori. The capsule hotel was beautiful, and outside of a bit of a language barrier, we got checked in and stayed the night.

My friend was busy the next day, so we made our way around to see what we could find. We visited an internet cafe, which was an amazing experience! I wish we had them here. It had a vending machine for hot food, and machine that dispensed free drinks for patrons! 

We also played in an Arcade. We played a Dungeon’s and Dragons game together. We then met up with a friend I had made on the app Hello Talk. He took us to this wonderful Tuna restaurant. We ate delicious fried tuna ribs, we tried sushi, and sashimi.

He gave us a beautiful gift each. They were chopsticks with our names and lucky animals. 

The next day, we met up with Yuuka again, and she took us to visit Himeji Castle. It was a rainy day, but it was still a lot of fun! We stopped at ate food on the way too!

After this, we did some shopping, and ate at Cafe de Miki. Which is a Hello Kitty themed Cafe!

We then met up with Yuuka’s mother, whom I had the pleasure of meeting. We exchanged gifts and they saw us off on our train to head back to Tokyo.

One of these gifts was this delicious unagi bento box that Himeji is known for.

The next day, we went out on our last adventure for the day. We visited Super Potato where we picked up some games and our traveling companion picked up a Super Famicom.

After this, it was time to get ready to leave. We packed our bags that night and headed to the airport early the next day. Everything went smoothly for us, and we got through quickly. It was sad to come home. I would definitely love to live in Japan one day!

Here is a bit more of Japan that I didn’t know where to squeeze in else where! I met a toilet I hate, and toilets I love while I was there. You have regular toilets, squat toilets and what I like to call super toilets. I love these fully loaded toilets. They have bidets, some have things to dry you, heated seats, and some make noise so others can’t hear what you’re doing!

I also took pictures when I found stores I recognized from home. Some won’t be surprising. However, I was totally surprised to find out Kumon was from Japan! I only ever knew it  from here.

That’s all I have for now! I hope you enjoyed my trip through Japan!