denbushi | blog

Friday evening I joined the Tokyo Professionals Association (TPA) for an evening of networking (?) in Ikebukuro. The TPA, as the name implies, is a rather loosely-defined group of “Tokyo Professionals” (e.g. - business people rather than, say, professional strippers) and strikes me as one of those groups that is primarily an income-generating vehicle for the organizers and secondarily a social/drinking forum for the members. Other such groups exist in this town, and I’m still not sure if the investment is worth the return.

At any rate, as these things go it was a pretty good deal at 5,500 yen for all you can eat and drink. The restaurant, 芋蔵 (Imo-zou) in Ikebukuro was very well appointed and offered a selection of over 300 shochu varieties. The menu consisted almost entirely of dishes from Kagoshima in Kyushu, including grilled gamecock (軍鶏, shamo) and black hog (黒豚, kurobuta), each of which was wonderful when paired with the assorted shochus we enjoyed that evening. I’ve been back once and wasn’t disappointed. Also, it’s very cheap, making it well-worth the trip up North…

I attended my first SWET (Society of Writers, Editors and Translators) event today, a brief talk by Japanese author Natsuki IKEZAWA (池澤夏樹) who was joined by Alfred Birnbaum, an American translator best known for his translations of Murakami Haruki’s work.

I first encountered Ikezawa’s work as an exchange student here in Tokyo, where we were assigned his collection of short stories 「マリコマリキータ」 to read one semester. The book, much like anything both written and Japanese, was a chore to get through, but the stories left a strong impression on me, and, as I would find later, were typical of Ikezawa’s work in that they explored the lives of Japanese characters living outside of Japan.

That was the last contact I had with his work until recently, when I discovered that one of the essays included in a translation contest I am participating in was written by him as well. So while I hardly knew him as an author or anything else, I thought it might be nice to meet him and see what he had to say about writing and current events.

I was also keen to meet Alfred Birnbaum, whose Murakami translations I am familiar with and much prefer to those of Murakami’s other translator, Jay Rubin. It turns out that Alfred was born in the States but grew up here in Japan, and has been translating Murakami (and others) since the 1980s. I didn’t get to speak with him as long as I would have liked, as he was cornered immediately after the talk by a very talkative Japanese fellow who had introduced himself during the Q&A portion as an employee of an American financial company. What relation that had to his question or the event I don’t know, but I suppose that when you’re work at a 外資系の金融機関 you like to tell people whenever possible.

Frankly, I was a bit irked by this fellow, who approached Birnbaum speaking–what else–English. I mean, we had all just sat through two hours of Ikezawa discussing a wide variety of topics in Japanese without interpretation, right? And Birnbaum is not just a translator but actually a very well-known one. He understands Japanese, and quite well, right? And, we’re in Japan, right? So what on Earth would make this fellow think he has to speak Engrish? This trend, not uncommen here in Tokyo, used to mystify me until I realized that it has nothing to do with any of the above. Mr. Banker simply wanted to speak English, and could care les about setting, tact, or the level of comprehension of the listener. Call me thin-skinned, but to me this just seemed, I dunno, just rude.

Alfred didn’t seem to mind, though, and responded to his curious questions (e.g. - “What do you think of the many recent Japanese movies like Kill Bill 2, Lost in Translation and Last Samurai?”) with only a hint of the irony they deserved. He seems like a really nice guy, but apparently translating literature isn’t the dream job I was thought it might be. It’s hard to find publishers for the work and they pay isn’t great. Well, now what am I going to do when I retire??

Anyway, the talk was good, and Ikezawa-san is clearly a very thoughtful and intelligent man. I apprciated what he had to say about Japanese literature (roughly divided into two types, “heartwarming” and “dokidoki-wakuwaku,” neither of which he finds terribly appealing) and also his recent leaning to the left politically. It seems he’s a vocal critic of the war in Iraq, and even travelled there in 2002 to photograph and write about the people he met there. He published a book based on this visit called On a Small Bridge in Iraq, and it’s available for download for free in English as well as French and German from his web site. It’s a moving portrait of the Iraqi people, and recommended reading for anyone, no matter what your polital stripe.

遅ればせながら、初めてブロガーのミーティングに参加した。彼らは一昨年から毎月東京の某所で集まり、夕食を食べながらブログの世界（ブロガーが言うには 「blogoshpere」だが）やテクノロジーの進行について熱く語る。去年の初めには「blog」という言葉は殆ど知られていなかったのだが、今では意味がわからない人はいるとしても、耳にしたことがない若者はかなり少ないだろう。

僕のケースではブログする活動―つまり、自分の日常生活について、ありふれた戯言をHPで連載すること―を、１９９７年から散発的にやり続けてきた。当初は、もちろんアナログでやるしかなくて、テキスト編集ソフトでHTMLファイルを作成して、FTPでサーバにアップするのが常だった。しかし、現在のHP製作法とは基本的には変わらないけれど、最近出ているツールを利用すれば、文書を書く作業以外の仕事をずいぶん減らすことができるし、オタクしか構築できなかった機能もすでについているので誰だって容易に「パーソナル・パブリシング」ができるようになった。

いずれにせよ、僕がそこで会ったブロガーは一般人ではなかった。勿論、プログラマーやエンジニアは圧倒的に多かった。その他には想像していただけるようにデザイナーや撮影者も多数いた。やはり、「誰だってできる」日が来たとはいっても、実際に「する」人の種類は限られていると思う。言葉や画像を元にして、皆に閲覧してもらう綺麗な何かを作成し、自分のHP上に載せたい人がブロガーになりがちだ。

「限られている」と言えば、メンバーの国籍も意外だった。「Japan Bloggers」と名乗ったグループだけれども、それは単なる地理的な定義のようだ。なぜなら、日本人は一人もいなかったからだ。非常に国際的な集まりではあったが、「Japan」なのに日本とは何のゆかりもないのは少し変だと思った。「外人ブロガース」に改名するように提案したら怒られるのかな。いや、無視されてしまいそうだからやめよう。

まあ、それはともかく、面白くて頭のいい人達ばかりだからこれからの付き合いがちょっと楽しみだね。

My hands-down favorite Tokyo event, Friday Bloody Friday, had become a thing of the past some time ago, no doubt to the disappointment of me and all the others for whom it was regular monthly affair. When I was going it was held in Mit-chans basement Gaienmae spot Viva le Vie, and always offered a great combination of art, music, and creative people that made it one of the most scenes going.

Yesterday we enjoyed an FBF reunion of sorts at Roppongi’s SuperDeluxe, gathering under the Friday Bloody Friday banner once again to celebrate the birthdays of the event creators, Adrian and JB.

SuperDeluxe was a great choice of venue, allowing plenty of room for a crowd which just kept growing from 9 till the doors were closed at 3 the next morning. DJs Sister Chill and Guchagucha handled the music early on, with DJ Ohming taking over later, while somewhere in the middle of it all dancer Yumi exploded out of a makeshift and into a wildly sensual dance performance.

Rie and I cut out of there when the smoke got to be too much for us, which happened to be long after the trains stopped running. Rare for us, these days, but a more than welcome diversion from our otherwise sedate baby-expecting lifestyle. Now, if we can just these things happening once a month or so…

This ad for the latest issue of the fashion magazine Spur entices with the following irresistable teasers:

• When choosing panties, go for that silhouette!
• I looked behind me and there he was, metrosexual male!
• Become the happiest woman in the world with a Rumiko makeover!
• Oh, if I could eat that!
• What is her scent?

…today, and we all turn out at Soho’s in Harajuku to shower him with gifts and praise for getting through his 20s in one piece. We take over the upstairs balcony, the 30 or so of us, and shortly after the sun sets we are treated to the lazy ascent of a giant, glowing moon over the not-distant buildings of Shibuya. A good omen, to be sure, and a nice decorative touch to mark the beginning of a dizzily raucous evening. We all get a bit carried away, bit none so much as 英ドン, who manages to jump squarely into the doorjam on his way back from… actually, I never thought to ask. Ouch.

The Thai Food Festival gets bigger every year and attracts all manner of people, Japanese and foreigners alike. I can only guess that this guy visited the White House recently, and stopped by the souvenier shop on the way out…