Those green specks coloring the nightscape - it's the first time I see them

Just watched Tae Guk Gi, a Korean movie with a predictable, bitter, and stimulating ending about the Korean war and two brothers who get caught up in it in the worst way. After it finished, Tareq gave me the update on the Iraq war, since I really didn't know that much about it. Simply put, there are about 5 groups who largely overlap in terms of one aspect (religion, ethnicity, nationality) but are opposed to each other in another of those aspects, and all of who are out to get control of the oil, so they all fight each other. Yay! In other olds, about 70% of the world population is opposed to 'the' Iraq war, Mugabe = sad, and it's cloudy with 18 degrees Celsius in Kyoto at 3 am.

Back to my daily life, everything is 'koek en ei' (literally, 'cookie and egg'; I really need to pick up on English proverbs/figurative expressions .. if anyone has any links or recommended reading, I'm all ears).

Thursday, my keyboard came back from Tokyo and in the same state as it was when I first bought it - working with old firmware. Waiting for the new firmware to be published before I update now, on the distributor's recommendation. Also played with an expression pedal for the first time ever, after having Ari and Tareq cut the cable and switch the red and white wires to fix the polarity (there is an occasional incompatibility between different brands of keyboards and pedals), and it is FUN! Friday, drinking tequila with mates in Sanjo, and then meeting Misa and a friend of hers in another of those Japanese restaurants I'd never find or enter without her expert guidance. I'm so grateful.

Yesterday morning I went to my lab to attend some lectures on conceptual issues in the field I'm specializing in, string cosmology. Among the speakers were Andrei Linde and his wife, who are kind of like celebrities in the field, so it was interesting to hear them speak about this stuff. Though the technicalities were way beyond me, it gave me a good idea of what I'm heading for with my studies, and I got a much-desired boost of motivation.

After that, I was quite exhausted (barely slept the night before) and just chilled at the riverside with Misa, eating Japanese and American-style pastries. Then to Ego (the dance circle), where I joined in the monthly battle for the first time. I was paired randomly to a guy who's more or less my polar opposite as a dancer, a guy who dives to the floor as soon as possible and does headspins or flares for the larger part of the duration of the battle. I suppose we were quite a funny team to behold. Anyway, we lost in the first round, but that was fine, because I had a great time in that round, and the response I got from the other dancers (especially the 20-30 people who know me by name) was REALLY great. I totally didn't expect them to be that excited, and at the end of the entire event one of the judges (the guy at who's place we always have afterparties) made a comment about how one of the things that people in generally need to focus on is their personal expression through the rhythm of the music, something which he apparently thought I was good at since he used my name as an example. I can't wait for my first show in two weeks!!

From there, about ten of us biked/ran to Shimogamo Jinja, where we drank beers and watched the fireflies (and felt the mosquitoes) on a bridge over a stream in the forest next to the shrine - a genuinely Japanese moment, and one of complete happiness with my fate. Misa also joined us there, and after an hour or two we slowly headed for Akio's place, where we made merry until around 4 am. Twelve hours later, I woke up at Misa's, went home, and that was my weekend. Very satisfying indeed.

One last remark: if you write me a comment/e-mail, you *will* get a decent reply. I value personal contact very much, and as much as I am enjoying writing this blog because I know some of you read it regularly, I will definitely get around to writing more personal things as well, to each of you individually. I miss all of you and am always very happy to hear from you.

Beheaded Comfort Dream

Before I forget, let me write down a dream I had today, which felt like a recurring dream (do you know that feeling?), though this is the first time I remembered it after waking up. I was in some house (feels like Transvaalplein now but might have been something else), had to get out of the front door, but I was too tall for it. So I just removed my head from my neck with my hands (sort of a click-mechanism), took my head in my hands, went outside, and put it back on (which came with the comfortable sound of liquidy goo being squashed). Inconsistencies with ordinary reality I felt I'd lived before: I could still see but I was worried about bumping into things because I thought I couldn't see; if I touched the beheaded part of my body I felt something like brains and not the inside of a neck.

Currently speculating about the meaning...if you have any suggestions, be my guest.

Fast Energy Flow

Recently, I've been using every spare minute in the rare boring class to study useful things, cooking most of my meals (saves money), listening to Japanese conversation podcasts instead of music while commuting, watching 2-3 episodes of One Piece/South Park/docu's per day, sending e-mails to my friends in Tokyo to find out about their summer plans (I have to start buying tickets if I wanna do anything cheaply), downloading a ton of old and new music (King Crimson, Nightmares on Wax, Voivod, Elephant9, Los Amigos Invisibles, Scott Henderson, Jazz Liberatorz, Bootsy Collins, Junkyard Scientists, Yellowjackets...), reading Digg regularly, sleeping good amounts (had a nap dream today involving the movie Top Gun, which I've never seen), making new friends, chilling with old friends, getting drunk with all of them at different parties and gatherings, gathering a ton of study materials (websites, software), indulging in 30-degree afternoons, worrying about the entrance exam, e-mailing my professor about the details of the entrance exam, choosing songs for my first dance show (in less than 3 weeks from today), planning a Gion Matsuri kimono date with Misa (I'm borrowing one from her parents, hand-made by her great-grandmother (who is obviously still alive at 93!)), and feeling slightly impatient with regard to the progress I'm making conversation-wise. I'm TIRED!

Here's an interesting article I found on Digg: Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

I also went to Osaka for the first time a week ago with Misa, to see a friend of hers and her Spanish fiance. Osaka has a very different atmosphere than Kyoto - more fashion-conscious, faster, bigger, less old people. Looking forward to going there again many times!

See How the Spiders of Jazz & Emoticons Weave Through Our Parallels?

First things first. In terms of the increase of my personal happiness, measured by looking not only at myself but also at the people who play a role in my life, the most important event of the past week was without a doubt Hiromi's show in Amsterdam. OK, I wasn't there, but I was delighted to read my friends' responses to the concert which, as expected, was completely fabulous. At the same time, her new CD was released in Japan last Wednesday, and though there are promos scattered around my mom's house in Amsterdam, I am in Japan, so I bought the CD, which is, as expected, completely fabulous. I don't think I need to stress my fandom of Hiromi much more, but if you're at all interested in the future path of music as it is being woven by today's young musicians, you have to check her out. On that topic, I wanna get a hold of Tony Grey's new album as well.

Still on the topic of huge amounts of happiness and music, I received my longed-for CME VX6 on Thursday night and was very happy to play around with it for an hour using various virtual instruments, until I had the relatively likely bad luck that flashing the firmware of the board went wrong: I 'bricked' the unit (from the single fact that that verb is in common use on the official CME forums I knew the risk was not small). But, I'm on good terms with Mr. Suzuki from Tokyo, the only distributor of CME in Japan, so tomorrow I'm sending the board to him by freight collect and he'll send it back, working, within a week. Frankly, the board has so much potential that I don't care if I have to send it to Tokyo 4 times before it works - it's going to be worth it for the SWEETness I'm gonna get out of it. (The pic is from before the bricking.)

Today was one of the laziest days so far. Internet addiction is a wonderful day-filler for the days after the nights in which you danced intensively for 6 hours, though I would've liked to study some more. Anyhow, last night I went to a club I hadn't been to before, Mojo West, up in Kitayama, which is slightly more north than Misa's place. Nice club, good music, and great dance entertainment from a bunch of shows and an awesome bboy team battle. The reputedly best bboy of Kyoto, one of the older guys around the scene who graduated from college and therefore doesn't hang out with the rest of 'em that much anymore, has a certain air about him that I find hard to describe but which had a profound effect on me. Dressed in black shoes, training pants and t-shirt and wearing an expression of relaxed arrogance, this guy managed to give me goosebumps during the battle. I'm pretty sure getting goosebumps from seeing a breakdancer is not a very normal thing, so he's obviously not a very normal guy. And a bunch of other bboys who I'd talked to while everyone was drunk at last week's dance circle drinking gathering were eager to repeatedly invite me into the circle - much fun. I want to focus more on floor moves for my house in the near future, so hanging out with bboys is a very good thing.

Twice during the past week I spent a large part of the night at Akio's place. He's a terrific locker and the guy I first talked to when I approached the dancers in front of the gym during my first week here (the guy on top on the pic with me and 2 dancers). Drinking and chilling with my dancer friends is one of the best ways to improve my Japanese; though I barely understand a quarter of what they say to each other for the speed and localized slang, it's a terrific aid in remembering everything I learn in class (since I'm really only learning useful, frequently used things) and catching up on the slang usage, as well as slowly catching on to the way sarcasm, boy/girl conversation and other subtleties are used in Japanese.

The first of these two times, Saturday night after the drinking gathering, I told them about what's going on between Misa and me. Finally! The reaction was hilarious; one of the girls immediately started asking me very detailed things about our sex life (and recently greeted me with "and, when have you last done it?" when I arrived at practice), and of course everyone was impressed by how the chance meeting between Misa and me on the very first day I went to the dancers (3 days after I arrived in Japan!) led to something like this. That night, about 8 people crashed in Akio's 1-room apartment, and we had a jolly good time. Around 1, I started feeling the effect of drinking too much random alcohol and eating a ton of different kinds of snacks, so I had some fun in the bathroom and actually passed out there for an hour (having decided that I wouldn't be able to make it to the club and dance after all, though I'd agreed with Ikeya to have some fun that night), after which I returned to the living room. At this point, most people were about to go to sleep, but fortunately they weren't very upset by me coming back full of energy and starting to ramble about all kinds of stuff, using words that were unintentionally interpreted as having a very sexual nuance and resulting in me being a Very Quoted Person at the subsequent dance practice. I did upset the cutest girl (who's one hell of hiphop dancer as well), but Misa told me that she always gets mad when people don't allow her to sleep and she gets over it fast.

Summer's approaching now! The days are getting longer, I spend most of the time in my room in underwear only, and I especially enjoy the warm nights. Sitting by the river, biking to the train station from the club or getting up in the early morning have become very pleasant. So what's the plan for this summer? Well, seeing as how I have a huge entrance exam directly after summer...I'm trying to find out when it will be exactly, and what I need to know in terms of physics. Though I'm going to sorely miss my Japanese classes once they're over (and will do everything I can do follow some more once I begin with the Master's, even if that means taking an extra semester or so for my Master's - hell, I'm *being paid* to study, so the longer the better), the extra time will allow me to get serious about revising all the physics I know (sounds scary). But I'm definitely going to Tokyo, probably at the end of August so I can catch a jazz festival (Hiromi!), for around 2 weeks. I need to visit Koki, Aki, Sono and Sonoe, and I can't wait to finally see the big city. Hopefully Mark will come to Japan around that time as well, and we can fulfill our promise of climbing Mt. Fuji together, for example. But other than that, I need to save a lot because I have to leave this dorm in September, and moving house requires a lot of money this time. Furniture, 3 months' deposit, key money...so after having bought my sweet keyboard, I need to save for that.

Alrighty, it's getting late and I need to be in good shape for my first karaoke session tomorrow, so I'm off to take a shower and chill. Catch y'all later ~ (and do know that your comments/e-mails are really appreciated).