Keeping Up My Yamasa Momentum

 Japanese Language  Comments Off on Keeping Up My Yamasa Momentum
Jan 252012
 

I’ve been back from Japan for a month now, and I’m worried. Worried that my Japanese is going to rust and fall apart, because I don’t have much of a chance to use it here. So I’m getting into high gear to find a way to keep it going.

I’ve had some luck on that front. I got in touch with a local group that is offering a 書道 class. Turns out it’s just me and the teacher, and we can do the class in Japanese. Awesome!

I’m going to spend some time working on learning how to write hiragana properly in calligraphy, and hopefully learn some Japanese poetry along the way. I don’t know if it will be useful, but it’ll be interesting. Since I’m still studying Chinese calligraphy with my Chinese artist friend, I’ll have the kanji covered. It should be a lot of fun.

Now I need to find a teacher I can work with over Skype to polish up my business Japanese.

Not Rembrandt, But in America.

 Art  Comments Off on Not Rembrandt, But in America.
Jan 202012
 

I went out with my girlfriend to see the “Rembrandt in America” exhibit at the N.C. Museum of Art today. We were both excited, because we both like Rembrandt’s work.

We plunked down $36 to get in, and as we started checking out the pieces on display, we noticed something that was somewhat irritating. It seemed like every third piece was a fake, or “not attributable to Rembrandt.”

Look, I get that it can be educational to see some fakes, but when they make up a such a large portion of the exhibit, it stops being fun. Especially at $18 a pop.

A more accurate title for the exhibit should have been “Rembrandt and a Bunch of Fakes.” We probably would have felt a lot less ripped-off.

The few Rembrandts I saw were nice, but my irritation colored a lot of my feelings about the exhibit. Rather than mixing them in with the real works, it might have made more sense to stick them in a “fake” room.

Washed Out.

 Technology  Comments Off on Washed Out.
Jan 102012
 

Well, 2012 is off to an inauspicious start.

I got back from Japan to a dead washing machine. It made some awful noises when I was washing clothes for my trip to Japan in September, but I just figured it was being unruly. Nope, it was in its death throes. It stopped working completely.

Then the water heater broke. It’s in the attic (a stupid idea), so it dumped a bunch of water into the upstairs bathroom. Ugh. What a mess.

Happy New Year!

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