It was a rainy and slightly muggy Tuesday evening as I caught up with Ken Tanaka in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. Amidst the neon blur of Shinjuku, we found ourselves enjoying Japanese “oden” and sharing some wonderful conversation. Thank you Ken for taking the time to meet up and converse.
I hope you will find the [...]
Today I observed two people playing the game known as “Shiritori.” I was not involved in the game, only an observer. Basically, the game known as “shiritori,” involves connecting words by their last letter. In this way, “snake” can connect to “elephant” and so on creating a chain of connected words. The two people drew [...]
“Three Questions” is a song by the Kentucky based musician Bonnie “Prince” Billy from his “Master and Everyone” album. This haunting and beautiful song has been with me since winter 2004 and today I would like to incorporate the idea of “three questions” into The Eyeslit-Crypt. It is really quite simple. I choose one person [...]
I move between two languages on a daily basis, English and Japanese. When I say that I “move between” these two languages, I mean that I dive into conversations, jokes, sarcasms, criticisms, small-talk and office politics in both languages throughout the day. I am surrounded by others who do the same. I am also surrounded [...]
One of my first impressions of Japan was the color green, but not just any kind of green. The green that stuck with me was the green glow of the city streets as captured through two dimensional photographs. That green like a seductive slime oozing from the streetlights catches me off-guard even now after all [...]
As stated on his Youtube “helpmefindparents” profile, “Ken Tanaka lives in a reality that is likely very different from your own. In this reality, rather unreal things can and do happen.” I have been fascinated by Ken Tanaka ever since seeing his first Youtube video last year. At the time of writing this, having achieved [...]
Image by seiho via FlickrMy first reaction to Masi Oka’s character Hiro Nakamura on the TV show “Heroes,” was, a phrase coined by a dear friend of mine, “ontological embarrassment.” Moreover, although I have only watched three episodes of “Heroes,” as it was only just released on DVD in Japan, I think I can provide [...]
Upon entering into a Japanese conversation with a native-Japanese speaker, one may find oneself at a crossroads of misunderstanding, incomprehensibility, extreme conversational nuance and tremendously polite speech. That this communicative mountain shall serve to block one’s attempts at deciphering the conversation or inspire one to imitate one’s Japanese conversant, depend on one’s capacities for minding [...]
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