Check this is out! This is incredible!

WHY JAPANESE PEOPLE?!!

How to get your kid ready for school in five minutes [hahaha]

Japanese culture in my eyes

I spent my Thanksgiving break on campus. It was my first "stay-vacation". I was always gone during breaks before. I made a plan to listen to good music and read good books during the break. I read Haruki's Norwegian Wood, 1Q84, 100 percent girl and South of the Border. I like his books, because of the truthfulness and boldness in telling the truth. The characters are very self-reflective. It is as if they are examining every inch of themselves in front of a mirror with no clothes on. I appreciate this cruel honesty with oneself. They face their desires and weaknesses honestly without finding excuses for themselves.

This truthfulness is plain and natural. Even though I am still not very knowledgable about Japanese culture, I have a feeling that Japanese culture values naturalness and simpleness, as can be seen through the style of clothing and interior designs among many other things. If I were to compare Japanese culture and French culture, I would use the example of macarons. My favorite macaron store is Sadaharu Aoki in Paris, which is a Japanese style bakery. I like their pastry because it is rich in taste without the overwhelming sweetness like what is found in French bakery.

私はキャンパス内に私の感謝祭の休暇を過ごしました。それは私の最初の "滞在-休暇」でした。私はいつも前の休憩中に消えていました。私はよい音楽を聴くための計画を作り、休憩中に良い本を読みます。私は春樹のノルウェイの森、1Q84、100パーセントの女の子と国境の南をお読みください。ため、私は真実を語っにおける真実性と大胆さで、彼の本が好き。文字は非常に自己反射性です。彼らはありません服を着て鏡の前で自分自身のあらゆるインチを検討しているかのようにあります。私は自分でこの残酷な正直に感謝。彼らは彼ら自身のために言い訳を見つけることなく正直に自分の欲望や弱点に直面しています。

この真実は、プレーンと自然です。私はまだ日本文化について非常に知識豊富ではない午前にもかかわらず、私は他の多くのものの中で衣類やインテリアデザインのスタイルを通して見ることができるように、日本文化は、自然とシンプルさを値気持ちを持っています。私は日本文化とフランス文化を比較した場合、私はマカロンの例を使用します。私のお気に入りのマカロン店は和風のパン屋でパリの青木定治、です。それはフランスのパン屋さんで発見されたもののように圧倒的な甘させずに味が豊富であるので、私は彼らのペストリーが好き。

1Q84

I read Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 over Thanksgiving break. It is an amazing book and as always it is enjoyable to read his work. I saw this book review from New York Times and I am citing it here, hoping to give you a glimpse of the work.  

私は感謝祭の休暇中村上春樹の1Q84を読みました。それは素晴らしい本であるといつものようにそれは彼の作品を読むために楽しいです。私はニューヨークタイムズからこの書評を見て、私はあなたの仕事の一見を与えることを期待して、それをここに引用しています。

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/books/1q84-by-haruki-murakami-review.html?_r=0

A Tokyo With Two Moons and Many More Puzzles

One of the many longueurs in Haruki Murakami’s stupefying new novel, “1Q84,” sends the book’s heroine, a slender assassin named Aomame, into hiding. To sustain her through this period of isolation she is given an apartment, groceries and the entirety of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past.”

For pity’s sake, if you have that kind of spare time, follow her lead. Aomame has the chance to read a book that is long and demanding but well worth the effort. The very thought of Aomame’s situation will pain anyone stuck in the quicksand of “1Q84.” You, sucker, will wade through nearly 1,000 uneventful pages while discovering a Tokyo that has two moons and is controlled by creatures that emerge from the mouth of a dead goat. These creatures are called Little People. They are supposed to be very wise, even though the smartest thing they ever say is “Ho ho.”

Mr. Murakami is supposed to be very wise too. But “1Q84” has even his most ardent fans doing back flips as they try to justify this book’s glaring troubles. Is it consistently interesting? No, but Mr. Murakami is too skillful a trickster to rely on conventional notions of storytelling. Is it a play on Orwell’s “1984?” Vaguely, but don’t make close comparisons. Is it science fiction? Well, there are those two moons, plus several references to Sonny and Cher. And is it actually about anything? Don’t be silly. Mr. Murakami is far too playful and allusive an artist to be restricted by a banal criterion like that one.

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Haruki Murakami Credit Elena Seibert

A word about packaging: The three volumes that have been collected for American readers in the composite version of “1Q84” hang together about as well as the three parts of Roberto Bolaño’s similarly published (and far better) “2666” did. Each of these omnibus books has bright, incisive passages interspersed with abundant filler. But there is no overarching narrative idea to make either book more than the sum of its parts, although in the case of “1Q84” there is a startlingly clever Chip Kidd cover to create an air of the irresistible. The actual text? Not so much.

“1Q84” vacillates between two characters, Aomame and Tengo, who have a mysterious connection. Naturally Mr. Murakami will forestall explaining what the bond is for as long as he can. So Tengo is first seen being roped into a literary scheme. He knows an editor, Komatsu, who knows a 17-year-old girl who has written a remarkable story called “Air Chrysalis.”

But the story could be made even better if Tengo would agree to ghostwrite it. Then Komatsu will enter it in a literary contest, and the girl will surely win a prize and create a media frenzy. As Komatsu keeps pointing out with unseemly eagerness, “Air Chrysalis” will be very big — Murakami-type big — on the best-seller lists.

So Tengo meets the girl, who is called Fuka-Eri, although that is not her real name. Holding real names in reserve throughout most of the book is one of Mr. Murakami’s creative ploys. Fuka-Eri speaks in an odd, uninflected way and has nicely shaped breasts, which are frequently mentioned. So are Tengo’s mother’s breasts, which have left him with a strange fixation. Meanwhile Aomame embarks on one of her assassination assignments. (She specializes in killing men who abuse women.) And even though she is a killer, she makes friends with a policewoman, with whom she hosts “intimate but fully erotic all-night sex feasts.” Her nicely shaped breasts are talked about too.

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These elements are not necessarily indications of the book’s eroticism, which can be more than a little peculiar. (“It was like her pubic hair was part of her thinking process.”) They have more to do with Mr. Murakami’s determination to describe, inventory and echo just about everything that he chooses to mention. Characters repeat one another frequently, in a manner that can be seen as either incantatory or numbing, depending on your patience level.

We learn about Tengo’s pajamas, and we learn what Aomame eats to prevent constipation. We learn about goldfish and a rubber plant. We learn that the second moon, when it starts appearing in the novel, looks mossy and green.

The unconvincing longing between Tengo and Aomame is mostly left to simmer by Mr. Murakami. But there is a centerpiece when Aomame makes contact with the large, powerful and fearsome figure known as Leader. He is in charge of one of several religious cults that figure in the book. And Aomame is sent to kill him.

She has been told that he is a rapist, and that he abuses the preteenage girls who are cult members. But his real story is different, and it has to do with the powers of communication that keep the world afloat. In one of the many moments that suggest Mr. Murakami takes some of his cosmic rules from Kurt Vonnegut’s playbook, there turn out to be people known as receivers and others known as perceivers. The balance between them must be exquisitely maintained, or else — who knows? We never exactly find out what is at stake.

It used to be customary, in a book of this magnitude, to explain unanswered questions and tie up loose ends. Mr. Murakami clearly rejects such petty obligations, and he leaves many of the parallels in “1Q84” cryptic and dead-ended. He perceives, and we receive, and the reception isn’t all that clear. But 925 pages go by. And somehow, to quote Mr. Murakami as he quotes Sonny and Cher, for reasons that perhaps only he understands, the beat goes on.

きれいな音楽

I came across a piece of beautiful music yesterday. It is called Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence. It is so touching that I brought tears to my eyes when I listen to it. I hope you like it. :-)

私は昨日、美しい音楽の作品に出会いました。これは、戦場のメリークリスマスと呼ばれています。それは私がそれを聞くとき、私は私の目に涙をもたらしたことはとても感動的です。 お気に召してもらえると。