Today is Stock Footage Day! These are a couple more shots from when I went to that temple up in Gehoku. Party on, not taking any pictures of the boring things I do all day. Party on, Garth.
I went to Kendo practice for the first time today to see what it is like. The answer: it's like a bunch of people in armor screaming and hitting each other on the head with sticks. I was shocked to see that they don't pull the strikes at all - they just wallop each other's head, side and neck; they are all wearing heavy armor, but it still has to be hard to get used to. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen. I got to try it out a little bit, and the guy who was teaching me was really nice and exceedingly patient. By some miracle I could actually understand everything he was telling me, so that was encouraging. I'm going to try out Kyudo (archery) tomorrow, but I'm probably going to stick with Kendo.
I read another Murakami short story, this one taking his Unified Theory of the Plot (that is to say, he has one plot) and setting it in... shock of all shocks... Tokyo. Then the action moves to... shock of all shocks... Hokkaido. I really do like some of this guy's work, but whenever he's writing anything that's not surrealist, it's basically just boring trash. If he weren't so easy to read in Japanese, I would probably abandon my efforts. I know that after I've spent all this time degrading his style, I'm sure nobody will be interested, but I really do recommend "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." It's this incredibly surrealistic book about this data cruncher who lives in two worlds, and the strange confluence of the two. It's a masterwork of surrealism, and I highly recommend it. It was the first of his I read, and it was so good that it's carried me through some ten others that have varied from good to awful, mostly focusing on the awful.
Amazon.co.jp is punishing me for ordering American CDs by making me wait for like two weeks before shipping them. Every day I stare at the Where's My Stuff? page like a heroin junkie in need of his fix. I am about two days from grabbing the screen and shaking it while shivering uncontrollably and screaming WHERE'S THE STUFF, MAN? WHERE'S THE STUFF? I need my Michelle Shocked, and I need it now.
Talking with the Aussie girls is hilarious. They apparently view New Zealand very much like Americans view Canada - that is, The Colony That Never Was. They spend most of the time making fun of the New Zealand accent (apparently New Zealanders say "fush" instead of "fish"), but then in the few instances where New Zealanders become famous, Aussies claim them as their own. Crowded House is a good example of this, as all Aussies like to pretend Crowded House is Australian because they are so ridiculously good that it's hard to believe they came from New Zealand. It is also tons of fun trying to explain the American viewpoint on Canada - "They're kind of like the 51st state, but they're kind of their own country... well, they're mostly just the 51st state." Poor Canadians - they think they're people.
