I can't believe that its been a year and a half since I've written anything here. I think I've been watching too much TV. I really should focus on the act of writing again. It seems to me that everyone is into social media and other forms of instant information--which usually means something short and sweet a well--so I don't expect anyone to read what I write here anymore, but I will try to write something. 

As an academic, I'm expected to research and publish. Well, I do my research but I'm not very good at writing, so I think I just need to get into the practice of writing... just writing. I don't need to write a thesis here or anything heavy duty. Just the simple act of writing is what's important for me now. And with summer coming soon, I should get into the swing of writing so I can hit the ground running when I do find myself having to pound the keyboard and putting some scholarly ideas into text. 

But we'll see. Only time will tell.

I rarely post anymore, mostly because I'm too busy to write anything. But I did write a New Years greeting for friends and family--this in itself is rather amazing as I am very bad at sending Christmas/holiday/New Year's greeting cards. Not to make excuses, of course, but grading finals usually take me up to Christmas--depending on volume (and mood), it can take me until after Christmas. In any event, I'd like to share my greeting here with my fellow Xangans as well.

2012 is the year of the dragon and I’m sure many will associate this with an old Bruce Lee film. Personally, I prefer to relate it with something more representative of me, so I’ve added the Kirin Beer logo that I’ve conveniently—and undoubtedly illegally—copy-and-pasted from the Internet (how did I survive before Google?!?). It is based on the Chinese Qilin 麒麟, a Chinese chimera of sorts that is a combination of different animals—hooves of an ox, tail of a lion, scales of a fish (How did I survive before Wikipedia?!?). But its most obvious feature is the head, which is based on a dragon, and I have viewed it as such over the years. So fittingly, it is now my personal symbol for the New Year: The Kirin. It is, after all, the harbinger of good fortune, and I’m sure we could all use a pint or two of that, no?

Anyway, I just thought I’d jot down a few things to let you know what’s been going on lately, which is not much. But, of course, that might actually be a good thing
I’m still at the George Washington University, teaching classes on Japanese language and literature—both classical and modern. I’m still assistant professor and I’m working on an article to start the publishing record going. I’ve only written a chapter in a book in the past few years, so I need to get more research out. You know the old adage: Publish or perish.

Still, life is not so bad. I have a steady—if busy—job. I have a small home. I have my health… well sort of. At 56, I finally decided to get serious about my health, so I’ve been running pretty regularly for the past 6 months. Recently, I’ve been doing about 30 miles on the treadmill every week—I have hay fever so I don’t run outside so much. And while the treadmill is not as arduous as running outside, I still put in the miles. Like almost 900 miles since July! (No, that is not a typo.) Now, I don’t run fast, and I am not a marathoner. The treadmill is set at a low speed—between 5 to 6 mph—although with my short legs it feels pretty fast. As a result, this is the first year since I’ve been back from Japan where I’ve lost weight during the fall semester, almost 20 pounds! Okay, I confess that I’ve gained back about 4 pounds since Thanksgiving, but that’s still a net of 16 lbs. which is pretty good for me.
Unfortunately, being 56 also means having a less-than-cooperative body. In the last week of December—the 30th to be exact—I strained my left calf and I’ve taken a couple of weeks off, although I continue walking.

Musubichan—former aerobics instructor, now my “will-you-exercise-already?” motivator—is doing well, as usual, although we had a scare in September when she had an abnormal mammogram reading. After a couple of x-rays, a biopsy and a titanium clip implant, we learned that she is fine, thank God. Speaking of which, after about three weeks of waiting for this or that test result, and countless of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, I discovered that I may be more religious than I thought. I guess there’s nothing like a medical situation to test one’s religiosity. And as you might imagine, the semester started out rather hectic and kept me busy until the very end of the year.

Still, all in all we got through 2011 relatively unscathed and there is nothing wrong with that. As they say in Japanese: 体は資本. Your body is your capital.

So Happy New Years everyone. Here’s hoping that you and your loved ones have a healthy and prosperous 2012.

January 2012.

There's a song I can't get out of my head. It was by the Classics IV called Traces:

Faded photographs
covered now with lines and creases
Tickets torn in half,
memories in bits and pieces...

My first "real" girlfriend friended me on facebook. I hadn't seen or talked to her in over 35 years. Naturally, I didn't know her married name and didn't recognize her immediately, but after a quick Google search--since she friended me first, I don't consider this stalking--I realized who she was and was quite surprised.

Not a bad kind of surprise, mind you...

I accepted her friending and we've messaged each other a couple times since. I was rather blown away by her memory. She was mentioning things that even I had forgotten, and I consider my memory to be... well, never mind. Maybe her memory should be better than mine as my mind has gone into some kind of other worldly mode in the past few years. I think they call it aging.

In any case, I have the urge to write a whole bunch about my high school days again, but as I pondered those year--I actually should have been grading but this has been the best excuse to procrastinate without really realizing that I was procrastinating--I've come to realize that most of it is a collage of memories, no recollections of a string of events that might constitute a narrative. A kiss on the dance floor, an Japanese X-rated movie, her playing The Fish by Yes on the piano, giving each other the flu back and forth, Andy's Pool Hall, Sears, rabbit jacket, arguments, throwing up in her car after drinking too much champagne at the wedding of the band's drummer's brother... Geez. With all this, you'd think I could come up with something.

Well, maybe I just need to ponder a bit longer. Maybe she'll message me something I had forgotten and it will jog my memories more completely. Until then I will be satisfied with letting the bits and pieces wash over me and amuse me during the downtime of teaching and grading.

I haven't seen my daughter in a while--has it really been more than 10 years? I wrote about her a few years ago in an earlier post and am not inclined to write about our situation. To be honest, I'm not even sure there's a situation to write about anymore. But I do have memories and I thought I'd write about one that I recalled recently when talking to friends about Christmas.

Back in December of 1991, when I was in Japan for my dissertation research, my daughter, K, had serious doubts about Santa coming to visit our home. In the States, before we had gone to Japan, K spent her first three Christmases at my parents' house where there was a seven-foot Christmas tree set up in the living room near the fireplace. But in Japan, most houses--let alone condos--are small and do not have fireplaces. There is also little room for a ceiling high Douglas fir or Scotch pine, which they don't sell in Japan anyway. In our small, modest abode, we had a small artificial tree--the kind you'd see on a counter at a business office. This was the norm in most Japanese homes.

Well, you can imagine K's skepticism. She wanted a bicycle for Christmas and even wrote a letter to Santa asking for one, but was unsure about delivery of such a large present. It would be difficult enough for Santa to bring a bike down a real chimney. "How could he deliver a present to a house without a fireplace?" she'd ask.

All I could do was shrug my shoulders and admit, "Good question."

"He couldn't get through the mail slot in the door, right?" I had to agree. She even glanced at the vent over the stove. But then she looked back at me, and we shook are head in unison: "No way."

Of course, being the devious father that I was, I was simply setting up my daughter for the Christmas surprise.

I should note that K did not doubt the existence of Santa; she just couldn't figure out how Santa could get into our home. As for me, by sharing in K's skepticism, I had removed myself as a suspect in any phony Santa charade. If K did get the present she wanted, it could only have come from the real Santa, not the dad who seemed to doubt Santa could actually fit through a mail slot. So I bought a bicycle and kept it hidden in its box unassembled until...

Christmas eve: I told K to set out some milk and a cookie, "Just in case." K was still doubtful. "Do you really think he can come here?" she asked over and over. But she must have held out a sliver of hope because she set the treats with care on a table next to the mini-Christmas tree. By 9 PM, K was fast asleep, undoubtedly exhausted from all the hoping.

I assembled the shiny red bike, attached the training wheels and headlight, and placed it next to the table next to the mini-Christmas tree. I am no mechanical engineer so assembling it took me more effort than I want to admit, but I did an adequate job, accomplished after some trial and error over the course of a couple of hours. Exhausted bleary-eyed, I plopped down next to the table, reached over and took a small bite out of a cookie that had been sitting there unattended on the table for a few hours. I grimaced at its staleness and, still bleary-eyed, reached for the room-temperature glass of milk next to it. "Oh crap!" I muttered. A mouthful was enough to bring me to my senses. I'm lactose intolerant, you see, so I put down the cookie and milk, moved quickly to the kitchen sink, spit out what I could and rinsed my mouth with water. Without a thought of what I had left behind on the table, I trudged off to bed and fell asleep worrying that I'd get a stomach ache from the milk.

And sure enough I woke up with a sudden pain in my stomach. "Oh crap," I muttered again. But when I opened my eyes, I realized that the pain in my stomach was not from the milk. K was straddling my stomach, jumping up and down. With a fistful of my T-shirt in her hands, she shook me fiercely. "He came! He came!" she screamed. What are you talking about? I was so groggy, I don't remember if I said that or was just thinking it. But it didn't matter. K quickly jumped off and ran out of the bedroom still screaming. She returned in a flash.

"Dad! Dad! Come and see!" she commanded from the door.

"Who came?" I asked still trying to get my bearings.

"SANTA!" she screamed in that high-pitched voice that only a four-year-old girl can muster.

Ah, the bicycle, I smiled. When I entered the living room, she was sitting on the bike pretending to pedal it.

"Wow, did Santa really bring you this?"

"Yes!" she said beaming. "I know for sure he did."

"Oh? And how do you know that?"

"Look!" she said.

My eyes followed in the direction in which her finger was pointing and, sure enough, there was a half-filled glass of milk and a half-eaten cookie. K jumped off the bike and scooted over next to me. "Look at that," she said outlining with her fingertips a jagged semi-circle in the cookie. "You see that? Those are Santa's tooth marks."

My eyes widened as I slowly recalled the sequence of events that culminated in K's discovery. But I just smiled and nodded in acknowledgment. Who was I to question such irrefutable proof of Santa's visit?

I am a TV-holic. When I was a kid, my mother used to ask me what was on TV because I was the  TV Guy, her own personal  TV Guide, as it were. I knew the day and time of sitcoms and whiled away my youth on such fare as Hogan's Hero, Gilligan's Island and MASH. Around the 80s, I began to actually take academics seriously in college and coincidentally my viewing habits changed. No, I did not give up the boob tube for books, but I watched fewer sitcoms and took an interest in dramas.

But I didn't watch just any drama. I didn't watch too many police stories. Nor did I watch overly melodramatic programs. The dramas i watched had to have a "serious" theme, but it also had to have an element of the light-hearted, often witty, and occasionally funny, as represented in such favorites as Moonlighting, Hill Street Blues, LA Law and, of course, ST:TNG.

Then I moved to Japan to do my dissertation research. I ended up living there for almost seven years and during my time there, I watched my share of TV. The doramas in Japan were exactly to my liking. They touched on themes of everyday life with a touch of light-heartedness and seriousness. A dorama like "The 101st Marriage Proposal" was classic: a man who can't seem to get married because he is not the best looking guy, but eventually finds the right girl and wins her over with a sense sincerity and a touch of desperation. I also appreciated how dorama were aired. They are season long mini-series, each dorama runing about nine to twelve episodes over a three month period. Once the dorama's over, it's over. There are no cliff hangers that keep viewers in suspense for months, like the "Who Shot JR" fiasco of Dallas.

When I returned to the States in 1996, I was lost. Programming had changed so much that I felt like a foreigner. The Fox Network? Reality TV? There were, of course, some gems: The X Files and Law and Order. But by the 2000s, the X Files had run its course and Law and Order was getting old. The only show worth watching was CSI... How I longed for Japanese dorama.

Then my students led me to some sites that offered dorama online. Oh-My-God... I was in heaven. I watched everything from the silly--Gokusen--to the sublime--Nodame Cantible (okay, it was sublime to me). I found myself watching four, five, even seven titles a week. That's a lot of TV viewing. Then in the mid-2000s, I discovered that cable TV was also producing quality dramas: Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Burn Notice. These just add to the total number of hours I already spend on J-dorama.

So what does this all mean? I need to change. I have justified my J-dorama viewing habits by insisting that I learn Japanese. And I do. No, really. I keep a notebook next to the TV and jot down vocabulary I don't know, and there is now quite a list. Still, I'm not sure if that is enough to justify the hours in front of the tube. Indeed, I feel I was much more productive sitting in front of my computer, pounding out daily post on this blog, which I did from about 2003-06. I believe that all that writing--even the rather inane details of my life--allowed me to develop a style and an ability to structure a piece more effectively and efficiently. So maybe it's time to escape from the wasteland of TV and return to the blog... my blog.

Maybe...

I still have Final exams to make and grade, but at least classes are over. Whew! I don't think I've ever worked harder than this academic year. The Genji class was brand new so I had to start from scratch--re-reading each chapter, re-/reading secondary sources, drafting lecture notes, creating PowerPoint slides.

Beginning Japanese was another time consumer. I co-taught with another teacher and we split the duties: she was in charge of homework and special assignments--oral interviews, one short essay and a final one-minute speech; I took care of lectures, all quizzes and exams, and maintaining grades. We had quizzes twice, sometimes three times a week, and in case you're wondering, grading 45 quizzes takes me at least about 3 hours: correcting, grading, tallying points and recording grades. Also, since they put us in such small rooms and students sit elbow to elbow, I make two different quizzes in an attempt to discourage wandering eyes--I believe that a teachers should also be responsible for academic integrity by creating an environment that discourages cheating. In other words I was grading two different, albeit similar, quizzes. Fortunately, preparing for class was much easier as a colleague generously allowed me the use of her PowerPoint slides. I tweaked them to fit my own style/approach to teaching, but in general I used them as is and I think I would have died without them. (Memo: Send thank you card to TT.)

J-Lit in Translation was another time consumer. I hadn't taught it in a couple of years so had to re-read some of the material: I alternate books occasionally to break the monotony of teaching the same course each year, so it had been a while since I read/taught Enchi Fumiko's Masks and Kawabata's Snow Country. I also used the new abridged edition of Shirane's Early Modern Japanese Literature. Indeed, since it had been over a year since the last time I taught J-Lit in Translation, I felt a bit off balance. Also grading three essays for 35 students was not a simple task--especially when you squeeze them in between the 45 quizzes that I always seemed to be grading--even if I did limit them to 1000 words. Oh, and I made new PowerPoint slides for this course so it was almost like teaching from scratch.

Interestingly, the easiest course I had this academic year was Bungo, perhaps because it's my favorite class... although many students will easily and roundly express their displeasure: It's too hard, it's too fast. Blah, blah, blah. But it's not, I retort. It's a state of mind. At which I am usually met with blank stares. *sigh*

In any event, I have Finals to make and grade, senior theses to read, and three commencement (count 'em, 1-2-3) to attend, all leading up to... summer school, which starts the day after commencement. Will work never end?

Just direct me to a pillow. All I wanna do is sleep.

I've been talking about it on facebook and twitter, but we have a squirrel in our attic.

After the big snow storm in February. I heard a bunch of grating and scratching sounds above our ceiling. I went up into the attic to look but did not see anything so I figured whatever critters there were, they were outside on the roof. I was very wrong.

On March 30 I found a chunk of our soffit wall--the space between the attic floor and the top floor ceiling--laying on our back porch. When I looked up, there was a large gash in the side of our house below the eaves.

Oh great. Squirrels.

So I called our pest control guy as they were scheduled to come for their annual termite inspection anyway. He came last Friday, but he said they don't set traps on weekends because they are closed and a trapped squirrel will not survive in a trap more than a day. They aren't licensed to kill squirrels.

Say what?

Apparently, it's illegal to kill wildlife critters in Virginia unless you're properly licensed?

So what do you do with these rats with furry tails?

After trapping them, they take them 15 miles away and set them free. 15 miles seems to be the magic number for squirrel sonar. Any closer, and they will find their way back to the nest that they had newly called home. Personally, I wished they'd do something a bit more dramatic, like give it to a cousin named Vinny or Paulie, so they'd take care of the little pests more "permanently" if you get my drift.

Well, the guy in charge of wildlife came today, and it turned out to be our regular pest guy, the guy who comes quarterly to check our house. I didn't know he was in charge of wildlife as well--I guess he's a versatile guy--but it was a relief to know that the guy who will be crawling around in the attic is a guy I've known for about three years now.

He set a trap but said not to expect a catch on the first day. It takes a while for them to get used to a new contraption in their space. But once they start catching, and depending how many of them there are, it will take as long as a month to get them all--especially since they've been up there for at least a month. Only after they are satisfied that they have caught all of them will they seal the hole in the wall and I can finally get a carpenter to fix the structural damage. Geez, what a headache.

Anyway, I paid him their hefty $485 dollar--this includes all work and a one-year critter-free guarantee.  For that kind of money, I really wished the guy we were contracting did have a name like Vito or Sal, y'know what I mean?

My brother is art director at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. He came by in January to set up an exhibit at the National Archives called Fighting Democracy. My brother invited me and the missus to the exhibit's unveiling and soiree. It was a nice exhibit called Fighting Democracy. Apparently, it is a "traveling" exhibit that has been to New Orleans, Tuskegee, and soon to Memphis at the Martin Luther King Museum.

While the exhibit was nice and the food adequate--actually much better than most of the fare I get at school functions--the highlight of the evening was meeting George Takei. Musubichan was so excited to meet a celebrity. I have to admit that meeting Sulu was more interesting than addressing Senator Dan Inouye in the elevator: "By all means, after you, Sir." Yeah, that's all I could muster.

Anyway, it was a nice evening, but even nicer was getting reacquainted with my brother who stayed at our place for a week. Living out in Virginia/DC, you kind of lose touch of the people who are important to you, especially family.

You may have heard about the snow storms over the mid-Atlantic states, which would include my digs in northern Virginia. More than two feet in one week (two separate storms) and everything stopped--no street, no trains, and so no work. I think everyone was getting cabin fever.

The idea of having a snow day was so appealing, but believe me when I say that after a few hours of shoveling snow, I don't want to see another snow flake. Ever. I've had it with the snow.

Anyway, just thought I'd let you know that I'm still alive. A lot of things have happened since Christmas and I may try write a few lines here and there. Not that it would be interesting to anyone but me. 

Oh yeah... Happy Valentine's Day.

Peace and love, and
a Merry Christmas to all.