mokudekiru

In the manga version of my life, things are a little different.
– I spend WAY more time doing karaoke
– All of my MPs are done as a montages, so they seem really exciting and all the 徹夜 (all-nighters) that are involved can be romanticized
– emoji float through the air instead of living exclusively on my iPhone/inside my computer
– The guy in the Take On Me video seems totally normal to me
– I never read manga, cuz that would be wayyyy too meta.

Today was a good day for a matsuri (Japanese festival). Aside from being transformed into a manga character (get it guys, karaoketure = karaoke caricature. Double Japanese bonus points to J-Net for managing to do a word split and abbreviation on that one, since abbreviating stuff is big in Japan), I also enjoyed some delicious Yakisoba, Ramune, and Taiyaki. I think that was the first time I’ve had taiyaki since getting back from Japan like TWO YEARS AGO.

It also smells like Japan today, mostly because it’s kind of humid and there are flowers everywhere, making it intensely fragrant if you’re just walking around.

Aside from going to class/doing homework and being at ACM, I don’t do… anything. In fact, sleeping probably doesn’t make the list of “things I spend a lot of time doing” right now. But tonight after spending hours at ACM with Majnematic debugging my code… I was feeling extremely crappy (I’m kinda sick) and actually turned down going out to dinner with the people remaining in the ACM office — somewhat of a rare occurrence.

I am starting to think I might need to stop emptying my bank account almost directly into my stomach. Yesterday bnooka2 and I determined a enforcing a weekly limit on eating at Cravings is necessary (he says 1 time / week… which seems reasonable). However, Cravings had been used up for last week and we didn’t want to go tonight. Instead we reflected on the mayhem that was this past week in terms of eating:

Sunday: was starving since dorm doesn’t serve dinner… went to Basil Thai by myself.
Tuesday: Zorba’s with icono and bnooka2 as we worked on lots of assembly code, and then Espresso
Wednesday: ordered Silver Mine Subs during the Conference staff meeting
Thursday: Cravings with bnooka2 right before ACM open house in order to avoid pizza
Saturday: Espresso with Noam (YAY!) during the day, Saigon Cafe with bnooka2 and icono, before working on more code for CS241, and then Espresso AGAIN with the whole gang.

Things were starting to get excessive by yesterday. Noam and I also went to lunch today and then Espresso again today, which was totally necessary. Dorm food quality is partially to blame, as well as strange eating schedules and peer pressure from other ACMers who don’t feel like cooking and don’t live in dorms. Also, eating is a really good excuse to NOT be programming.

Nevertheless, probably should try to cut back this week. sleep++; eating out–;

“If you look closely, you can see huge river crabs with hair growing out of their legs, frozen in place like stones.”

Ew.

In my mind, at least, hair and crustaceans should never mix.

This semester I’m taking a seminar-style class in Japanese translation. We’ve only met once so far, and we’re currently reading “Kinosaki Nite” (「城の崎にて」in Japanese) by Naoya Shiga, an essay/story from 1917, about him spending time recovering from an injury in Kinosaki, which is across the mountains on the north side of Hyogo prefecture:

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To summarize the essay, as I did in an IM conversation a few days ago, while I was still in the middle of reading it, it’s about, “this dude being all broody about how he almost died but didn’t, even though his grandparents did, and he sees a bee that lies dead on the windowsill for days even though all the other bees are busy working, and he sees these people kill a mouse, and then he accidentally kills a newt and he feels weird about all of this”

So in class, when we got to the line translated at the beginning of the post, 「そしてなおよく見ると、足に毛が生えた大きな川蟹が石のように凝然としているのをみつけることがある。」we discussed this image of hairy-legged crabs and were all presumably briefly grossed out, imagining this, but soon moved on with the passage.

However, when I went home to my RSS feeds, I was surprised to see none other than the hairy-legged crab itself!

Photo credit: Amy Nakazawa of Blue Lotus

These crabs were frozen in place, as well. More literally than the ones in the river though, I do believe. And more readily edible.

I think hairy crabs are out to get me. While I am hundreds of miles from any natural water, they have found me where they know I’d be waiting: in class, and on the internet.