Sorry-ology

This is the second year for us to grow evening glory as part of the green shade for the house in summer. The seeds were collected from last year's glory . They made a beautiful start in April but have been since coping with the strange weather this year. It survived two strong typhoons and my week-long absence in August and waited long enough to bloom finally on comfortable autumnal nights.  The blossoms are gorgeous as ever, but I wonder if anyone in the neighbourhood has ever noticed their quiet presence. In contrast with morning glory which blooms at the first beam of sunlight, these white flowers are certainly shy of daylight and attention. Probably this reticence makes them a real philosopher in the world of flowers, a word that denotes a show-off of efforts and demand on gaze. 

I did not learn to appreciate the taste of perilla, or shiso, until I came to Japan. In my childhood, my grandmother would add shiso to homemade pickled plums, I remember, and those wrinkled leaves having soaked up plum juice were merely amazing. However, it was probably more to do with my passion for the thick sugary liquid rather than the herb itself, and embarrassingly I had remained quite ignorant about its usage in cooking.   In Japan, shiso can be tempura-ed (deep-fried), consumed raw with raw fish or rice balls. Fresh shiso is not cheap. 5 shiso leaves would cost roughly about 100 yen, 30 NTD, 79 pence, or 1 USD.  Given my fascination with its fresh and minty taste, the herb was invited to live in my garden. This summer, we had a nice shrub of shiso, despite that almost half of the harvest was nibbled away by gourmet caterpillars.  In addition to other experiments I did with the harvest, I also made shiso paste, which is simply a fine blend with extr...

Source of Image Japanese Title:  トテチータ・チキチータ Director: Atsushi Kokatsu Information about the movie in English at Asian Wiki . I watched this film, A Gentle Rain Falls for Fukushima , on my outbound flight to Taiwan.  Fukushima, a keyword to me these days, immediately caught my attention and triggered my curiosity. Before the play button was pressed, I knew well that it would be about the post-quake nuclear disaster as the production date suggested. There has been a lot going on to protest against the nuclear power plant issue, while no much progress has been made with regard to the problem. Apart from some documentaries that I had watched, it was the first time for me to see a dramatic reflection on the disaster.  The flow of the narrative and the art of narration remind me much of Ishiguro's novels. Much is implied, or suppressed, in a rather undramatic and slow story; sometimes tensions are washed away with comic reliefs.  I was struck by t...

I remember having a conversation with 2 young friends about nostalgia years ago. We wondered what we felt nostalgic about.  All of us felt attached to our birthplaces to a certain extent, but interestingly it was somewhere else that we missed.  I think, one would miss a place, or a period of time, in which he grows into himself or starts to understand himself, and this place or time is not necessarily associated with one's childhood. Honestly, for instance, I have always had an ambiguous feeling about myself during the years as a child and a teenager, and hardly can I say that it would be the time of my life to which I want to return.  During the conversation, I told my friends that I really missed York where I did my final degree, spent 4 years living alone, tried to figure out how human relationship works, and met my husband. There, with the assistance of my family far away in Taiwan, I lived a life free from many obligations and responsibility. The mem...

Thyme has had a constant presence in the garden and around the house since it was first planted a year ago. Its contribution to everyday life is not necessarily substantial but certainly non-negligible. I have used it in cooking and for tea. And this time, I wonder if they could make any good deodoriser. I wouldn't say thyme smells good or sweet, but it has a particular scent that could wake up a dull brain. After this year's blossoms, a bounteous harvest of intertwined thyme twigs was well dried in the sun for a couple of days and then rolled into balls. Every balls were loosely secured by iron wires and embellished with recycled ribbons of sundry colours. These herbal balls embodied a unique message of earthiness, straight from seeds and directly from the garden. It encompassed a year's time from its birth to death, a year's time in the house, and a year of wait. A true evidence of my own existence and labor. I allotted them to some neglected corners...

K is infected with a cold. Before he changes his mind to go to see a doctor, some herbal tea might help to reduce symptoms, I have decided. Thyme has a medicinal effect on coughs and sore throat as I heard. Therefore, I picked some thyme in the garden and brewed it with black tea. Thyme is characterized with a strong and unique aroma itself, but it does not really change the taste of the tea. Herbal therapies of this sort are becoming more and more interesting to me, probably because I am getting more and more secluded in my life and becoming a witch, or because there is a very practical need to consume the herbal produce in the garden. It is a romantic idea to me anyway though to make use of what is available in the garden in order to maintain a regular pace of life. Perhaps while I am growing taller and older, I also learn better the benefit of reaching down to harvest the wisdom of the earth.

Finally it is feeling like spring now, although the chill in the air still catches one off guard at times.  Tulips are in full bloom at the moment, and fortunately cloudy weather happens to extend their flowering period.  One of the beautiful members in the garden is forget-me-not. The tiny flowers have a voluminous presence that one can never ignore. The beauty and color that they lent to the garden last year were so impressive that I could never forget about them. In fact, they are one of those that I have anticipated most this year. They did not demand any particular attention or cultivation but sprouted everywhere around the blossoms last year. Skirting along the cement edge of the garden, these small baby-blue flowers soften the barren landscape in early spring. The delight and joy that they produce are certainly beyond their weedy origin and their humble name.

One of my recent favorites: Japanese egg rolls. This is a variation of traditional egg rolls in Japanese cuisine: stuff boiled asparagus into chikuwa (竹輪 made of fish), and cook it as one does in traditional style.

On March 11 2012, the first anniversary of the triple disasters - earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant meltdown - last year in Japan, we joined a demonstration in Tokyo in support of anti-nuclear campaign.  There were several events going on at the same time in commemoration of the earthquake in Hibiya park and across Japan. We marched on with other protestants, foreign and national alike, for a generally defined purpose of anti-nuclear policy in the country. Inevitably, in a big and crowded occasion like this, people came with a range of more specifically tuned sub-agendas. Some were more political than others, and some personal. It was impossible to agree with everyone on every single argument, but hopefully the general message for peace and a safe environment was carried through to the public.  There were other protests at the same time around the world, for instance, Taiwan, my home country, where people demanded a referendum on the on-going construction...

source Colm Toibin I started reading this book because of its title, The Empty Family , a topic in which an interest has been nourished and developed in me since my PhD days. And the title, as the combination of the words denotes, promises a heart-rending reading as I always like it, and so did it not fail my expectation. The short stories all develop around the theme of family, homecoming, home-leaving, home-abandoning, home-binding, home-seeking, etc., exploring every possible dimension of one's ambiguous feeling of attachment and detachment to the idea of and the place called 'home'.  I remember I was on the verge of tears several times on the train when I was reading it through.  It is the first time for me to read about same-sex love, too. I was ignorant about the fact that it is one of the featured themes in Toibin's stories, but the innocence has me  overwhelmed by the powerful emotion and unbearable afflictions contained in the author's m...

I felt quite at loss about the death of Professor Lee Wen-Bing (李文彬老師), my first professor of English literature in the department of English at NCCU, Taiwan. The news came a couple of weeks ago, the first piece of information about him that I got decades after graduation. I was never close to him as a disciple, but I truly enjoyed the first contact with literature that he initiated. He was never showy in his class, never explicitly zealous; however, his approach has been fundamental to my appreciation of literature. There will be a funeral service for him this Saturday. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend it, and I have also failed to send a message in time to express my condolences, just like that I was never quick enough to be in touch over these past years. Deeply regretful. Here is the short message that I intend to tell him. Dear Professor Lee,  I have always been grateful that you are my first literature teacher. Twice a week throughout my first year in the...

There was a protest against nuclear power policy in Yoyogi, Tokyo, on February 11. It was one of the numerous demonstrations against nuclear power plants since the catastrophe in Fukushima last year.  After the earthquake in March, I wrote about some solar energy gadgets that we acquired during a period of power outage in response to the crisis in Fukushima Daiichi. In that blog entry, I also mentioned our purchase of solar panels and a turn to solar energy. I haven't had time to write about it since, but it has been working effectively well.  After the instalment in March 2011, the house has benefited from the solar panels tremendously. Except on rainy days, the house was always fully self-supplied in summer.  It is the first winter that we have after the solar panels were introduced. I was a bit concerned in the beginning about possible high expense of electricity that we would face if the winter was too harsh.  This winter has been cold, the...

Communication: Visualizing the Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer Bunkamura, Shubuya, Tokyo  23/12/2011 - 14/03/2012 K and I went to an exhibition on 'communication' in Bunkamura last month. Honestly, to an audience like me who is not particularly interested in genre painting, the exhibition is not extremely exciting as a whole. Additionally, the level of painters in this collection varies too much that one cannot avoid feeling frustrated at times.  Yet, the theme of the exhibition -- communication -- really intrigues me. What engages me the most is the section on communication through writing. In the 17th-century Netherlands, letters, in addition to its communicative role in commerce and public affairs, became a popular form for private interaction.  Receiving, writing, and sending letters, cards, and postcards have been my long-term addiction. Even though I have been a heavy user of the Internet, a hopeless addict even, what this electronic invent...

A couple of weeks ago in an agricultural fair in Takashimaya department store in Shinjuku, we found a gem for Japanese cuisine - seaweed. I cannot quite recall whether I ever tried this type of seaweed before, but it definitely was never an ingredient on my shopping list for grocery. However, at the moment when the stall clerk opened a pack, I knew I would not want to miss it anymore. It has the most mesmerising aroma that I have ever encountered; the taste is amazingly distinct with its bitterness subdued.  At that moment I had an illusion that I suddenly became a gourmet capable of tasting good food!  We sprinkled it on meatballs made of of burdock roots and pork last night. It effectively reduced the greasy taste of pork .  For lunch today, I mixed two kinds of seaweed: sushi seaweed (commonly available every where) and this green hairy seaweed, on top of finely chopped bluefin tuna. The dish was only simply seasoned with soy sauce and spicy sauce, bu...

Exhibition in  Hara Museum of Contemporary Art  (原美術館), Tokyo 10/Sep -11/Dec/2011 This is the second half of my reflection on the exhibition on Invisible Memory. Koizumi's second video in the exhibition is 'Portrait of a Young Samurai' (2009). The artist's metafictional approach continues to characterize this work: in the video the director coaches a young actor to enact a kamikaze fighter at the moment before he departs for a suicidal mission. After several takes, the young actor's mild-manneredness still falls short of the expectation of the director who insists on seeing a more powerful outburst of emotion and a more compelling expression of physical response. The video documents how the young actor matures in his role as a kamikaze samurai and manages to cry out his valediction speech with tears and mucus all over his face. To foreigners, kamikaze samurai is probably one of the most distinguished forms of nationalism in Japanese history. They were tho...