mushin

hey guys, for those who missed it, here's a recap at ogden sensei's demonstration of mushin. it was pretty cool, and bless technology i was able to capture the moment! the one thing you might need to play the file is divx, which are files that helps your computer to view certain video files. the files are free for download and can be obtained from www.divx.com. alternatively, i'll leave the original 3gp file which can be opened via quicktime, which is another free player for download at the apple site under quicktime.

other than that, it was cool working with you guys, and i hope to see you around!

the file is called "ogden.avi" or "ogden.3pg". enjoy!


ps. anyone graduating this fall? just curious if i'll know anyone at the ceremony :)

Presentation

as per orla's request for the notes for the unacedemic presentation i did today, here's a link to them. there are two files, the document file contains the dialogue and lyrics and is named as such; the pdf file is a set of notes i didn't print out for everyone, as i was going to use it as my own set of notes. needless to say, i didn't really stick to my notes, but what can i do about it now.

for those interested, i've also upped the songs as well, so for those interested/curious you can listen/follow along with the translations.

like i said in class, i didn't really like "lies", but "feel" is good :)

hehe

Pics

hey guys, sorry for not being at class, but i've beena little down and out with a bit of a vius or some sort. i thought it was a fever for hanging around nitobe garden too much (when it started to rain pretty heavily) or food poisoning from kent's kitchen before work. either way, i'm paying for something... :S

anyways, here's a link to my school ftp. due to the craptastic weather i didn't really take many shots, or at least many good ones. i mean, you can see i started to get desperate for shots when you can actually see how heavily it was raining in the actual picture (that's how long i stayed). i uploaded some of the better ones from tuesday, as well as some from last fall, just to compare and contrast. i mean, since we are talking about seasons more this semester, it'll be nice to get a sense of pathos one gets from one season to another.

pictures

(let me know if the pics aren't showing and i'll try to fix it up asap)

hey guy and gals, sorry for missing class today.

anyways, i thought that maybe i could bounce some ideas off you about my presentation. now, i'll admit right now that my presentation will probably be the least academic one thus far, as it's really more about sharing japanese media. however, the way things work out, the media (3-4 music video clips) have a bunch of guys sitting together reflecting on women in their lives, a.k.a. Ch. 2 of Genji: The Broom Tree. Iim going over the song lyrics myself right now to find parallels between them and Genji, but for the presentation, i'll probably only show the clips of the guys talking rather than the music videos. fortunately i was able to find one site that had some translations for the lyrics i need, and i also asked prof O to help me translate the dialogues (which i still need to get from him).

rather than copying and pasting the lyrics, i'll make a link to the lyrics/translations.
Song 1 - You
Song 2 - Feel
Song 3 - Lies
Song 4 - Someday (not sure if i'll use this, depends on time...)

if you guys have a chance, just skim the translated lyrics and tell me what they remind you of :)

Omedetou oneesan!!! XD

just random posting, but japan just won its first olympic gold in figure skating, beating out the heavily favoured american and russian skaters! (more at the cbc website.)

hows that for taking something foreign and making it more japanese! i guess the judges weren't into the the american's or russian's sabi, but i guess in the olympics the judges share a similar wabi XD

did i just make a geeky, dorky (and pathetic) attempt at a japanese-acedemic joke...? oh dear... that's what happens after a weird shift at work... =.=

ps. with what little japanese i retained from jap 100 and 101 from capilano, the title says "congratulations (older) sister". i use "oneesan" as a generic, no relations honourific. to make it more slang/english, it loosely translates into: "congrats/you go girl"

new term :)

as i've been reading "obasan" by joy kagawa for my english 359 course, it's interesting to see what japanese aesthetics are in it in comparison to what we've read.

anyways, the term that i found in "obasan" is wagamama which means "selfish and inconsiderate" (kogawa 138). in other words, one should not be wagamama and thus should meet the needs of everyone else instead of seeing to ones own needs (which is bad).

in contrast to genji, can we say that genji is wagamama or not as we do see him pretty assertive in a few chapters in the book. one example maybe his meeting with fijitsubo, blatent wagamama. then there's the incident with murasaki, in which genji takes her away, but does give her a life that she might not have been able to enjoy. and later on (after his exile) he allows for other women to live in his palace/house.

i realize this leads else where, but what do you guys think?

To celebrate the new blog, and the re-mentioning of wabi sabi et al in class, enjoy. Hopefully I'll be able to take some different pictures during my second visit to Nitobe as it will be Spring and not Fall this time (so I won't freeze my hands off).

Anyways, to maybe put this into Genji-rial perspective... eh... his romantic excursions or moments of just relaxing.

First things first, there is NOTHING vulgar about this site, this is strictly about the women in Genji and those in other novels we read, in relation to those in Genji of course.

Example, the psychotic mother in "Masks".

And yes, I fixed my typo :P