Freelance Copy Editing - Purely By Chance.

Yesterday, Kato-sensei asked myself and two other American students (the ones she considered the smartest, or so she said) to look over a hiragana learning pamphlet the school is putting together and make sure the English is correct.

Well, in my natural anal-retentiveness about the English language, I began making various corrections (involving mainly commas and inappropriate instances of the word "which," but also including some word-order issues and instances of style-preference). After we'd gone over the pamphlet everyone departed for points West.

Cut to today, when Anraku-sensei came down to the class and asked me to go up to the fifth floor. At first, I thought she wanted to discuss the school BBQ with me. (Anraku-sensei was very worried about me carrying 3 kilos of meat from home to the park, despite my continuous protests that I was honto ni jyoubu desu - "really buff.") However, it turns out that the organizers of the hiragana learning pamphlet had gotten wind of my "mad English editing skills," and they wanted me to go over the pamphlet with them once again. I spent an hour changing word order, discussing various nuances of meaning in English, and struggling to properly identify the sound of the Japanese character "wa" in an English word. (Neither "wonderful" nor "wagon" were quite right. I suggested "watt," but how do you draw a mimetic picture with that as your basis?)

My fee? Two pieces of delicious Japanese pastry, including a matcha/red-bean-paste roll that I'm saving for later, and a cheese-cream puff that's already been devoured. The cheese-cream puff was not kidding about its description. It was a powdered-sugar sprinkled pastry puff with a light frosted cream and chunks of sweet cheese (seriously) on the inside. It was surprisingly delightful. I'd been craving pastry, actually, so their thank-you gift was timely and apropos.

After I got home, I headed out to the supermarket to buy the aforementioned meat, where I succeeded in amusing the living daylights out of the butcher who filled my order. I guess it's not everyday that you see a little tiny gaijin come in and buy over six pounds of assorted meat. At one point, I had to reassure him that yes, I really did want three kilos, and that yes, I really knew how much three kilos was. Now it's up to the kids in class to eat them - with seasoning and garnish, but of course!

In further BBQ news, today I got volunteered to be one of the eight people competing in the giant jump-rope contest. I'm not sure how it keeps happening, but I'm not complaining. As long as we don't get rained out, I expect the day to be a lovely romp.

And I'm off to chop some chicken.

Nerima-ku Museum of Art.

I got out over the weekend to visit an exhibition of contemporary Japanese art, entitled And Yet Men May Cross Over the 'Boundary', being hosted by the Nerima Museum of Art. The show was quite amazing, featuring works by a number of important figures from the last half of the 20th century and on. In particular, I fell in love with the art of Matsui Chie and Okumura Keizaburo. The link for Matsui isn't the most comprehensive collection of her works, but it gives an idea. I'm especially taken with her drawings.

Okumura falls into the category of nihonga artist, but an interesting article here details how Okumura's work fits in (or rather fails to fit in) with the new movement to abstract nihonga and refine it down to its theoretical description. Where once nihonga was bound by traditional Japanese themes and techniques (setting it apart from so-called yoga or "Western art"), it is now apparently being infused with modernity and revolution - and the idea of what constitutes "Japanese" is clearly shifting. Regardless, Okumura's work - of which there is an example on the page - is breathtaking.

I intend to keep my eye on these artists as much as possible in the years to come. There's fascinating work going on in Japan's contemporary art scene.