The strangest thing happened to me while reading a book in my apartment at the end of a long day at work and perhaps one too many glasses of wine. I was listening to Spotify, a song I’d never heard before, and felt both new and vintage. Anyway, not old enough to fit in the … More The Strangest Thing
Working on another waka for kana practice. It goes kumo nakute, oboronari tomo, miurukana, kasumi kakareru, haruno yonotsuki 雲なくておぼろなりとも見ゆるかな霞かかれる春の夜の月 Which I think means Tonight the clouds are gone, haze covers the moon on this spring evening
This is my first publication in a professional magazine. And this is the physical copy. And it feels so… real. It’s finally tangible. And the feeling is amazing.
A short poem by Mantaro Kubota, who I’d never heard of till I tried to write his poem in my Shodo class. Pretty cool though. It reads: shiragikuno yuukage fukumi someshi kana しらぎくの夕影ふくみそめしかな -久保田万太郎の句 Do the white chrysanthemums, in the evening shadow, seem tinged red
Happy Year of the Mouse! Apparently in China, they call it the year of the rat, but I’m in Japan… and I like mouse better. Every year, I do a Hatsumode (pronounced hah-tsu moe-day ) , a little pilgrimage to the local shrine. Literally, pilgrimage is what the “mode” part of Hatsumode means. I think … More Japan is Awesome – Hatsumode
A short story I wrote was published in Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction. It’s called “You’ll Live.” The idea for the story came when I was thinking about self-driving cars, and it veered off from there. I think that when we have real self-driving cars our lives will be very different. Cars will become living … More Published – in Asimov’s
My kanji for the month is part of an 8 kanji phrase, like many are. See below for the whole thing. I wrote the last four. 天地玄黄 宇宙洪荒 But I’ll start with the first two. Tenchi means sky and ground, or for the poets out there, heaven and earth. It basically means everything and everywhere. Then … More Shodo – Universal truth (not a fortune cookie)
