New Address!

Oops,  have moved a little!

My blog is now at: http://www.littlefireworks.com

It’s still pretty much the same so if it seems like I haven’t been updating, I’m sorry, please go to the address above!

Magical Pudding

Mug Cups. And biscuits.

Look at these adorable little mugs! One is from Sanrioland and the other is from 7-11. It’s a Kitty’s 35th Anniversary mug. Also, mugs in Japan get called mug cups! Why? I don’t understaaaand!!

The biscuits are little cute biscuits for kids. I say for kids because there’s a picture of a little boy on the packet (kinda like the Leverpostei kids, do they even still do that?!) and they are often a feature of kids meals in restaurants.

I don’t know why I like them, they’re not amazing biscuits or anything! It might just be cause they’re small and cute :)

Baby mugs

Mm, biscuits

Chocolate!

Strawberry!

Strange Moments in Time

Sitting here , listening to Disintegration and drinking red wine (on a Sunday, awful!), it feels like being back at university. Isn’t it weird how albums can do this?

The only thing missing is nag champa incense. (I’ve got vanilla and cinnamon instead).

So here’s a picture of me while I was at university:

See, no fringe!

This was taken at a Band of Horses concert. They remind me of university too but I still listen to them on a regular basis whereas I haven’t listened to Disintegration all the way through for ages. And considering how sad it’s making me feel then maybe there’s a reason for that.

Everyday Cuteness

It’s crazy how the tiniest cute thing will cheer me up. No wonder kids over here routinely say things like “I like Rilakuma because he heals me”. It may sound a little dramatic but that’s sort of what cute things do. Maybe they’re just a distraction made up by giant corporations like Sanrio to make people buy more stuff but..I’d rather not see them that way. I’d rather see them as things that spread joy even in unlikely places (like…on all packaging, on road safety signs etc.). So on that note here are some cute things:

Panda cakes (Apita)

So cute and also delicious

Bagpuss climbing a tree

Bagpuss contemplating cherry blossom

Bonjour Rilakuma!

Anpanman chokopan!

Bagpuss playing DS LL!

Tuxedo Sam!

Yes..I put Bagpuss in my handbag and carried him to a park and put him in a tree. Danny convinced me it would be a good idea..and it was!

Cuteness in Shibuya!

So Shibuya is fun but it’s also rather full of rather ah…dodgy places (which I’m sure are fun for lots of people but not me!!). And amidst everything, these. Smiley..things:

Sigh.. *smile*

Panda-cutes: Yokohama!

 

Kitty Panda!

Panda Scramble!

Panda spawn..?

They are everywhere! But it’s OK :)

Girl from back then

Ha. I said I’d write about Grizzly Bear’s and Camera Obscura’s new albums and I HAVEN’T.
Have I even listened to them yet? NO. I do want to! I seem to have had far less time  to space out and listen to music lately. When I do space out I fall asleep. That includes the 15-20mins I allocate myself for ‘music-time’ right before I go to work. That’s why I need alarms.
So lately I have been adopting my students’ hobby of: sleeping! Had a 4 hour nap the other day. That’s not even a nap! That’s a night’s sleep!
Since my last post I have…watched a few movies. Not new ones. Let me see… Can’t Hardly Wait, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, The Chronicles of Riddick, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Deadline USA, Saved! (for the 3rd time) aaaand Dazed and Confused. Clas-sy!?
I love Saved! I know, it’s silly.
I also loved Can’t Hardly Wait. It’s so…90s..
And it has the lovely Lauren Ambrose in it, being me in high school (but I bet eeeevery girl who watches it feels that way). I don’t know..it’s a rubbish film really but, it’s sweet. And it genuinely reminded me of high school. (OK, so the movie parties are always bigger and crazier but still…). Lauren Ambrose’s character going to the bathroom to space out, keeping her jacket on the whole time and the conversation with Seth Green’s character? Poignant! It’s weird how you leave people behind in high school sometimes without quite meaning to or at least justifying it to yourself the whole time. And it’s weird how bad being left behind makes you feel.
But why the obsesssion with representations of American high school?? I didn’t go to school in the US! And my high school years sucked! It’s a fixation though. I really need to see The Craft now, I was OBSESSED with that film!
 
OK, to change the theme: books.
I’m reading All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland at the moment. Before that I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (finally! Now I’ve read all of his novels except the new one and the ones that haven’t been translated) and Constance Ring and Foraadt by Amalie Skram. Both were compelling and horrible. When Constance’s husband (who she despises) has an affair and impregnates the maid she demands a divorce and is told:
 
‘Men si meg, hr. pastor’, sa Constance med dypere stemme, ‘hvis det nu var en mann, hvis hustru stod i begrep med aa fode et barn, som f.eks.hans kontorbud var far til, ville De saa ogsaa komme med dette: Ingen kristen mann forlater sin hustru?’ Hun saa paa ham med et nesten fiendtlig blikk. ‘Her er forholdet forskjellig. – Naar en kvinne faller paa dette omraade, rober det en saa stor fornedrelse, en saa dyp moralsk fordervelse at hennes naervaerelse i hjemmet maa ansees for besmittende’

(sorry, Japanese keyboard, too lazy to insert the proper letters!)

Which reads something like this (my translation):
 
‘But tell me, Mr. Pastor’, Constance said in a deeper voice, ‘if it were a man, if his wife were about to have a child fathered by, for example, his office clerk, would you also be so hasty to say: no Christian man leaves his wife?’ She looked at him with an almost hostile gaze. ‘Such a case would be an entirely different matter.- When a woman falls in this area, it speaks of such a deep degradation, such a great moral corruption that her presence in the home would have to be considered infectious’
 
Then everyone gradually wears her down until she goes back to him. It hurts just reading it. (I did the translation very quickly so it’s not perfect by any means, sorry!)
 
And one more about turn: Japan!
Haven’t been to many cultural things lately for various reasons. I went to a very lovely enkai, the best I’ve been to so far. I saw a giant loaf of bread (like, 3metres) being sliced outside a bakery. I have become addicted to melonpan (I always thought they were awful but actually they’re yummy). Aaaand..I learned the word for ‘clumsy’ in Japanese. And the word for ‘snail’. For unrelated reasons.

Books, art and plates

Oops again!! OK, I’ve been working.. these past few months have been more fun, but harder work, sortof.

And aside from work I’ve been…reading: The Moon and Sixpence and Of Human Bondage (Somerset Maugham), Travels with my Aunt (Graham Greene), Tender is the Night (F Scott Fitzgerald), La Den Rette Komme Inn (John Ajvide Lindqvist) aaand The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami, I’m reading this one now).

I read Lindqvist’s book in Norwegian..I didn’t want to read it in English but I think reading it in Swedish would have been a little difficult. It’s very good but very horrible. Reading it made me feel like I could smell dried blood or something. I was really hooked, I couldn’t stop reading but at the same time I didn’t want to. I felt like it was poisoning my surroundings. Reading it on the train, with the sun shining around me I felt like it was blocking out all the nice things in the world and when it was over I was grateful! I still haven’t seen the film so..I’ll coment on that when I’ve seen it. Pathetic as it is I’m almost happy to hear they’ve cut some things out as I’m not sure I could deal with seeing all the things described in the book on a screen!

Oddly I finished The Moon and Sixpence right before seeing the Gaugin exhibit in Nagoya. I never realised the book even had anything to do with Gaugin hahaha. The exhibit was…a little disappointing really. I’m no big fan of Gaugin anyway and Japanese galleries…are weird ! Everyone shuffles around in a queue, listening to the exhibit guide on their headphones and, in general, noone tries to break out of the formation. Then the exhibit will have it’s big ‘showpiece’, in this case Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? It was displayed in a dark room, with a viewing platform..and you can’t help but feel you’re staring at some huge stuffed animal, a dead thing. You’re meant to stand there and go ‘wow, amazing’ , because the positioning says ‘wow, amazing’, not the painting. You aren’t given a chance to think about what the painting could mean unless you can divorce it from this cynical set up.

Any-way..I sort of had more fun laughing at some of the rather hideous chinaware in the permanent gallery! The prints of the chinaware were really beautiful but the items themselves, especially the  table pieces just made me want to smash them all up!

Must go and make coffee now..I’v also just downloaded Camera Obscura’s and Grizzly Bear’s new albums so I’ll write about them later.

Delays..Christmas, red wine and The Big Blue

I sort of forgot I’d started a blog…

I’ve only written one diary entry in the past few weeks..I think it said something like ‘I am in a capsule hotel, I am on the woman’s only floor. I feel weird’. Then I fell asleep. Or passed out! It was very very hot and it made me feel a bit dizzy. Aside from that I would recommend capsule hotels! Unless you are claustrophobic and/or paranoid (no locks). I have tendencies towards both of those things but I was so sleepy I managed not to worry :)

The hotel was in Osaka. Awesome place! Perhaps more awesome at night..? Well, the inner city parts anyway. Mainly because I like neon lights. Preferably lots flashing all at once. And there were lots. There was a nice big billboard of The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I’m not a huge fan of the series but it looked fitting in amongst all the lights, like an advert for body modification.

Since New Year I have mainly been…sleeping, tidying, drinking lots of coffee, catching up on TV shows I’ve missed and reading The Guardian.  I didn’t have a single drink on New Years Eve! Wow…Perhaps I just couldn’t take it after the vast quantities of wine I managed to consume during the Christmas period.. It was lovely wine though :) Christmas was fun..had a great night out at Vamoose (Bergen) then generally sat around drinking and eating peppernotter and rum truffles..and those little melkesjokolade kuler..They are addictive and brightly coloured, making them festive and ok!

Watched a lot of South Park and fell asleep for two films, oops… Stayed awake for The Big Blue though! I finally found it (Book Off!) and bought it for my brother. I’d forgotten what a cool film it is! We were talking about whether our sympathies were with Roseanna Arquette’s character or Jacques..I remember the first time I watched it (5 years ago..?) I sympathised entirely with Jacques but this time I was a little more divided..I guess I was still mainly on his side but I could see that he was a bit of an arrogant asshole too! Especially the scene where he leaves her in bed and goes swimming with a dolphin all night while she sobs herself to sleep by the side of the water. I would not be happy competing with an obsession like that.. Reminded me of The Red Shoes a little…Should you have to choose between love and your artistic obsession..is it impossible to dedicate yourself to both..?

On that note..I’m off to watch some TV…rose wine later I think…mm…