Kafka, Dust, SION, Japan

Okay, hello hello. I have been reading and teaching English in Tokyo now for ~4 months. I joined facebook and friended Grant Miller which I'm super duper proud of. I didn't really like the idea of facebook but I guess it's growing on me.

I have not read any really mind-blowingly good books to be honest. I am mostly through my The Complete Short Stories of Kafka, which I've been reading between books, and am even not so impressed. Some stories are good of course. For example, how can you not get chills after reading:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

I feel that when he (Kafka) isn't on, he drags. Although, for example, the discussion of the relevance of tiny flying dogs to the rest of dog society should definitely not have been cut, the order and flow can be totally random.

Elizabeth Bear's Dust was good and also bad. I guess it sort of satisfied my curiosity about romance novels, which account for 30% of all book sales. I now know that I do not really care about pulp romance. The science fiction was perfectly done. No info-dumping. Just the great, gothic atmosphere of a defective generation ship and the AI angels that have been trusted to take care of it. Nano-symbionts, yes. In depth explanations, no. Perfect. Even the fact that it's Book 1 of a trilogy didn't affect the pacing, plotting or epic finale.

A little while ago I read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. All I have to say is, "no, there are no bad Vonnegut books."

Japanese Music? Here is SION. I found out about him when I asked a friend 'is there a Japanese Tom Waits? I think there should be.' She said, 'yes, his name is SION.' He even played recently but it was really expensive and I didn't go.



The song name means: If I have sake...

I saw Star Club a few weeks ago though. It was free because of a friend of a friend of the manager. It was cool, they played all new stuff and I didn't recognize any songs, but I was also moshing or being moshed most of the time so it's hard to say for sure. I also know now that for drink cheers Japanese punks say 'hey, ho, let's go!" A lot.