Summer's the Time for...

Horror.
Japan has a tradition for telling ghost stories in the summer to keep you cool - the scary stories that sends chills down your spine are supposedly effective to beat off the summer heat. (I don't get chills I get scared that's what)

I've mentioned a while back about the 'oh holy John Belushi on a pogo stick' levels of absolute NO I have towards the horror and gore genre.
I don't like scary things in general - I'm a real wuss, I know.

But I do have exceptions... sort of?
I love Natsuhiko Kyougoku's famous Hyakki Yakou series, which is a mystery novel series that's so thick you can hit someone on the head and probably knock them unconscious. It's not necessarily horror per se, but I think it somewhat comes close. It's definitely scary, deals with really freaky things. There's girls' bodies stuffed in boxes, a lady who's been pregnant for twenty months, a husband who keeps coming back alive no matter how many times the wife kills him, a mass murder in a temple... it's hard to explain, it's very Japanese in its sensibilities and aesthetics and sense of unease. And I love it.
As much as I can't do horror or gore, I love reading the spooky, eerie stories with crazy murder scenarios. I tend to deal better with horror/scary stuff in prose. I can't do horror films and such...
Hell, I even hesitated to watch Paranorman (which was awesome by the way).

I guess the point today is as much as I can't deal with one thing, there's always exceptions and specific boundaries.

Anna Finally Finishes Fate/Zero

(or: Anna Tries To Go See Pacific Rim But Fails Due To Bad Weather)

I actually finished S1 (the first 13 episodes) of Fate/Zero in mid-June.
Yeah. Mid. June. And after that, I didn't have the chunk of time to binge on the last 12 episodes.
The plan for Friday (yesterday) was to go see Pacific Rim with a friend. So we bought tickets, went to a diner to kill time before the movie, and then a thunderstorm came. Well, it wasn't so bad, but I was a bit worried of the off chance that it did get bad (Toronto got hit with a really bad storm just last week and that was still fresh in everyone's minds), so we got our tickets refunded and went home. So I had no plans for the night.
Why not finish Fate/Zero?

...I'm not going to spoil it, but holy crackers, it was good. The series was recommended very strongly by my writing teacher, and I am very glad that she introduced it to me. Because it's so darn good.
Why it was so darn good: The writing was definitely awesome, and each episode was really intense. There was no scene or action wasted, everything was thought-out and had a purpose. Plus, the characters were all fascinating. It was hard not to get invested in everyone, even the 'bad' characters, because they were all developed so well, with such distinct voices. Everyone had their story, their purpose, their throughline, and it all worked together so well.

Conclusion: I feel like I've burned myself out, it was so intense. But now I want to re-watch the entire thing and cry over it again.

From one to the other

As a part of the Children's Entertainment program I'm in, there's a course on children's books. I'm writing (well, writing samples of) a middle-grade fiction book, and it's really hard. Since I'm basing the story in Japan (that's no surprise), there are obviously many things like specific words and jargon and turn-of-phrases that I want to use to express something in particular. 

Today's theme is something about translation and expression.

I'm no writer, so I knew this was going to be hard, but not this hard. Whenever I write a sentence, I have to make sure I'm explaining things clearly when I could easily explain that in a single word (with all the specific nuances) if it were in Japanese. For instance, how a wall looks. "Plaster" or "stucco" just doesn't feel right for me, even when it's a direct (and correct) translation of shikkui.

This sort of "knowing what it is in one language but not the other" really makes it hard to succinctly express whatever I want to say or convey. Recently I've been lucky to have several one-off translating/interpreting gigs, but with every job it really hits me that languages and their subtleties are so different, and some things just don't translate well. I'm aware that I don't have the kind of mastery of a true native-speaker with either language (English/Japanese), so even when I see translations that don't correlate with the original text, I'm incapable of making a decent fix.

Well, this turned out kinda downer-y.

But I guess what I want to say is (a) translation is hard and (b) utmost respect to the professional translators out there because language is such a subtle and sensitive subject.

NATSU-BATE

Natsu - Summer
Bate - (rhymes with latte) a short-from of the colloquial verb 'bateru', to be tired and worn out

'Natsu-bate' - my current situation.

I've been worn down by the heat. I know it sounds like an excuse...
Since I grew up in Japan, people often point out that Japan is more humid and hot than Toronto "so summer here (in Toronto) shouldn't be that bad".
Wrong. Maybe it's because I was born in the winter-time, maybe it's not. But the thing is that I've had a tough time during summers in Japan, and Canadian summers are no different.

Natsu-bate is the phrase that sums up the general bleargh feeling and lethargy and mild unwellness that stems from the heat during the summer.

But there are things I'm liking about summer in Toronto, this year.
I went to the Gay Pride Parade (it was a great day, though I could barely see the actual parade from behind the huge crowd), I'm loving the sweetened iced teas, I love the long days, and my eyes have been opened to how awesome a sangria tastes in the outdoor patio (with a giant plate of nachos, please and thank you).

So yeah. Conflicting emotions about summer. But I hope my body will get out of the sick natsu-bate-ness anyway. I have a busy week coming up...