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About meArchives for July, 2005
Another late-night train
Going home late once again. My brain doesn’t seem to fire up until about five in the evening most days. There’s a Japanese illustrator/author named Gomi Tarô who has an interesting work schedule: he wakes up at around noon, takes it easy for much of the afternoon, meets with clients and editors and such, drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes, and starts working at around dusk. He takes a break to watch the news at eleven and then goes into serious work mode in the dead of night. Watches the sun come up most mornings and then goes to bed.
There was this great profile of him on a show (can’t remember the name now; I should Google it and stick a link here, though) that detailed this daily schedule. He’s famous, talented, and in demand, and he makes people conform to his hours if they want a piece of him. Interesting stuff. Michael Staley, a guy who worked at Japan Echo for a summer and then went on to be an editor at Kodansha International (lived in my apartment for a while, too), was lucky enough to do a book with Gomi recently.
Anyway, I think that without the day job—if I went freelance and was left to my own devices—I would probably end up in a similar schedule quite soon. It’s almost 1:30 in the morning now and I’m feeling alert and ready to write. (I’m on the train, where I can’t spread out work documents and get down to them, which is why I’m writing fluff to go on the blog later.) I’m not a morning person. I do love getting up bitterly early in the winter, when it’s still dark, to get to the mountains and ski, but that’s the extent of it, really . . . Coffee helps me a lot before noon but it can’t make my brain fire on all cylinders like it needs to if I’m going to really get things done.
Almost at the station . . . Time to wrap this up for now and write more and post from home.
A stony gaze
Another quick photo upload. This fellow lives on a wall in the palace of the town of Ubud. Click to embiggen him.
Good news, bad news
The bad news first: During lunch today I walked over to Ginza and left the camera at the Canon service center. “Dropped camera? Probable water damage? You can just put that warranty card right away, sir, we won’t be needing it.” They’ll get in touch with a repair estimate one of these days. Wonder if it’ll be worth fixing, or if I should just go straight back to Yodobashi and get another one . . . grr. Should have spent the ¥18,000 on that waterproof case, too.
I might get one of those things anyway, come to think of it . . . Good down to 40 meters, so the camera could come along on snorkeling (and scuba, if I ever dig up my open water license and take a refresher course) trips. And ski adventures. And rainy days.
The good news: I got word that my book is getting reviewed in a journal that will get it some wanted attention. [I'm editing out some information here to avoid causing problems for the people involved with the not-yet-published review.] Could mean a spike in sales. Not that this would get me any money, since I got paid the translation fee all up-front, but it would be a chance to clear the first print run out and make room for a paperback reprint in which all the typos have been fixed. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
The Indian Ocean
Just a quick upload of one shot taken in Bali last week. (Click for bigger version.) This is Kubu Beach, where my skin was baked to a flaming red color. Beautiful sand and great water, though, and the guys who came by from time to time with chunks of chilled watermelon were also a nice touch. I’ve done plenty of the $5-a-night showerless bungalow style of Southeast Asian traveling in the past, but I have to say the luxury resort approach was a great way to go too . . .
夜中の二時
Once again . . . late in the evening. (Early in the morning?) It’s two now and I got home and showered a bit ago. I need to get through a bunch of annual report by the end of tomorrow, so I’m going to type up a bit of what I wrote in a notebook on the train on the way home. Then I’ll sleep.
Then I’ll wake up early. We have a person coming in at nine tomorrow for an interview. I believe he’s the youngest of the bunch that made it to this stage, but his test was also one of the best-written ones. We’re having interviewees do a very short (about 15 minutes) translation on-site before we talk to them, so we get to see whether their earlier trials were nicely written because they had countless hours to check terms and rewrite drafts or because they’re just plain sharp.
My sunburn doesn’t hurt so much any more. Look for a major post soon with plenty of pics from Bali, including, but not limited to, “the one where I’m pale and fat in the ocean, kind of like a dugong” and “the one where you can just see my thumb covering part of the lens because that’s when the timer took the shot after I picked the new camera up out of the wet sand when it fell off of the rock.” Yes it’s broken now. Crap. This weekend and next week I launch “plan convince Canon to replace this thing.” Hope it’s successful.
Tonight I was on the 12:40 from Yotsuya, a local train headed for Musashi Koganei. I got off one stop before the end. There was this girl (woman? I dunno, younger than me at any rate) who looked sort of Chinese, and was carrying a Tokyo transportation system map written in English. She gave several looks at me during our time together on the train, but I was wearing headphones—the iPod Shuffle is so choice, if you have the means, I highly recommend it—and she didn’t butt in to my aural soundscape. A seat opened up around Ogikubo and she sat in it and fell asleep. I always wonder if people like that will wake up in the middle of trainless Koganei at 1:30 in the morning and wish that dude who probably spoke English were still around to field their questions about where to go next. At least if his damn earphones weren’t in his ears rejecting all approaches.
The earphones are cruel.
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