Making it Up As I Go

I realized today that we’ve only been here for 16 days. Somehow that was extremely surprising to me. No wonder it feels like we don’t have the house pulled together yet. (Duh.)

It is hot. Not as hot as it has the potential to be, sure, but hot and sticky all the same. The girls complain about it, but they do it in Japanese, so it’s not as annoying as it could be. (“Watashi wa atsui des”, if you were wondering.) We’re all covered in mosquito bites. Luckily mosquitoes are not on Tiny’s allergy list, which is a blessing since her poor little skin is so sensitive. Z, however, inherited my allergy, and she and I have huge nasty looking red welts everywhere. B found some mosquito repellers for the house that really work quite well, but if we go outside then we are a feast unless we remember the mosquito spray.

The cicadas are incredibly loud, and make an almost unreal sound. They sound like some kind of sonic machinery, and what I thought had to be a large number of them making noise is really just one. I can’t even imagine a swarm of them like they were supposed to have (did they have?) on the East Coast. They’re cool looking too, we found one today laying upside down on the ground. It was still alive, so I’m not sure what happened to it. We’ve found a number of other kinds of insects upside down on the ground, but they’ve all been dead and/or decapitated.

Here he is:

Isn’t he cool? I’m loving the bugs around here (except the mosquitoes). I can’t wait until our butterfly nets get here so I can hopefully get pictures of some of them. Tiny has decided that she would like a bug as a pet, and I told her that was probably just fine. 🙂

I’m listening to Back in Black by Amy Winehouse, which is one of my favorite songs ever. And of course now I will have to dip into the Great Gatsby soundtrack again. I can’t wait until it comes out on DVD, I definitely need to see it again, and I think I missed my chance to see it here- it was here when we got here but I think it’s gone now. I’m just glad that Baz made Young and Beautiful as central to the movie as he should have. It’s SO perfect for Daisy, and epitomizes her struggle as she’s portrayed in the film (I could, and would, argue that it’s a different struggle than that portrayed in the book). And it’s just a devastating song.

Today we went into Harajuku so that Z could get Tiny a birthday present, and we came across this decoration for an outdoor bazzar at one of the big shopping centers. We thought it was made of balloons, but it’s actually bouncy balls. There were stalls across the sidewalk and even a shipping stall so that you could have your purchases delivered.

 

 

At another of the shopping centers (not quite a mall, but kind of a mall) there was this display called something like Summer Cool. It was hard to photograph.

 

The girls thought it was cool though.

 

I managed to score one of these today. I’ve been trying to get one for quite some time.

And we stumbled across a tiny little art showroom with a darling exhibition by Haruaki Toku. The girls died over his work, and he was there and signed books for them. We got a bunch of postcards- if you’d like some mail, please send me your address. 🙂  (To those who have been asking for our address, we are currently doing a test to figure out exactly how mail needs to be addressed to be delivered to us. As soon as we know I will send you all our address. The girls would love mail, and so would I. 🙂  )

I also scored this chair earlier this week when we went to IKEA. Isn’t it just the muchiest? (My mom called it a Mad Tea Party chair when she saw it, so I’m channeling the Mad Hatter.) I love it so much I can’t stand it. It and the other things we bought (dining room chairs, a rocking chair for the back deck, a computer chair for me) will be delivered next Monday. Hooray for delivery services.  Now I have to figure out the perfect spot for it. It’s going to be my reading chair. Sigh.

 

Speaking of reading, I just finished Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol by Gyles Brandreth, which was extremely good, if quite sad. This series of books is firmly based in historical fact, and the historical fact of prison life in the late 1800s is terrible. But the story is excellent, and nicely twisty. It’s also sad because it’s the last in the series. I hate it when great series end.

Now I’m reading The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske, which is turning out to be a lot of fun. A circus strongman is framed for serial murder by a hired man intent on scaring a population out of their area of town, and it has to be solved by the circus ringleader. Not a shabby set up for a story. 🙂

On the other side of the whimsy scale, I’m also reading Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred by Mark Nepo, which is quite thought provoking, which means I have to read it slowly, with pauses to think those provoked thoughts. 🙂

It’s time for dinner. The 5 o’clock music just played, so off I go.