Hello there,
After a hectic couple of months of travel, February has been a time to regroup. (Also, my Japanese visa is about to expire so I can’t go overseas until I get my new residence card in a couple of weeks 😅). But not being able to go anywhere has coincided with a bit if a breakthrough on the emotional front. The stormy seas of mourning and seemingly endless demands of estate management administrivia have subsided significantly. I feel like the spring sun has given me time to focus on my own stuff. This not only means I have been processing my back issues of the Literary Review of Canada and Mekong Review, but doing chores that have been on hiatus for months, catching up on my studies, writing some blog posts (see below) and spending some quality time with my family. I even got to see Phantom of the Opera! (which was creepy as heck!).
My impulse to explore has not dampened, of course. I have turned my attention to investigating the ancient sidestreets and back alleys of Kyoto, trying to find the best/weirdest coffee places. I successfully discovered a roaster in an old Japanese house, another in a stairwell, a cafe that sells vegan doggie treats at the counter, and a place that serves Turkish tea but is only open on Tuesdays (I need to write more about why he is only open Tuesdays). The weather is trending towards spring and I so enjoy walking the streets of this city.
As with all things, this calm will not last. Next month I am off to a remote island in southern Japan where firearms were first introduced in the 16th century, and since the 20th century has been used by the Japanese space agency to launch rockets into orbit! It'll be a blast!
Happy spring,
Chad
🖋 From the Blog
“Truly Asia” Pt 1: Kuala Lumpur
A short trip-report and accompanying photographs from my winter stay in Malaysia.
Twitter archived
How I am storing 15 years of tweets on my website after quitting Twitter.
Japan doubles its islands
This forced me to go back and make some edits to some previous blog posts about Japanese islands.
1 year an Upāsaka
Reflecting on my year of Buddhist study, training, and renunciation – and how I will continue this year.
🧭 Elsewhere
My wife and I visited a farm on top of a building in downtown Kyoto. We need more of this! Link →
Love this Microsoft rubric of inclusive design which illustrates temporary disability so well Link →
Why we all need subtitles now Video →
#bossgirl 🤣🦄 Image →
📖 What I’m Reading
The Hidden Keys by André Alexis (13% Complete)
I just finished Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel for an upcoming book club, so I won’t spoil my thoughts on that. But that put me on a Canadian authors kick, so I picked up the fourth in the Quincunx series by one of my favourite authors. André Alexis is a playwright yet these novels are almost entirely inside the character’s heads, with limited dialogue. It feels like these are a kind of director’s dossier for stage actors, diving deep into the personality and history of a character to explain motivations for an authentic performance. Apparently this is a “puzzle book”, but I find all of of Alexis’s books a puzzle: the various facets of the overarching theme he is exploring move across the pages before finally clicking together at the end in a most satisfying way.
Connect with me on GoodReads → or on Bookwyrm →