Thursday May 29

in which red and white striped paper lanterns fight an intangible gloom

listening to a glorious old track by count basie called how long blues, complete with dusty old vinyl sounds. love those old rekkids. there is a festival here this weekend, on chuo dori - the long street that the school is on. workers have been busy lining the street every 2 metres with long red and white striped paper lanterns lit by electric globes. it's amazing how some simple lighting can transform a place. walking at night has become a stroll through an asian wonderland. i am looking forward to checking out a little festival on my home turf! it's been a pretty quiet week here in ol' 'yoshida, after all last week's partying. the gloomy weather finally let go (tentatively) yesterday and we actually saw blue sky. there is a typhoon loitering to the south though, it apparantly plans to ruin the weekend's weather. i'm begining to doubt the existence of a japanese summer. it's been 5 months now, and all i've seen is cold weather, snow and rain with maybe 2 weeks of spring thrown in during april. even now, my gas heater is on and i'm wearing a jumper and thick socks. have not yet found a home for the kittens, the deadline is this weekend. we have put up posters at all the school branches and talked to lots of people, called city hall, followed up every lead we can. in my more desperate moments I do consider just taking them to a vets and putting them down. but then that would cost a lot of money plus i'd feel REAL bad for a long time. the latter worries me way more than the former. i just want to find them a cool, safe home where they won't go feral and piss off even more locals. it seems that cats here are more unpopular than the north koreans. been feeling as gloomy as the weather this week. it was nice to see the sun for a few days. maybe we'll get lucky and get a third day of sun before the rains come back. marc left me the "satanic verses" by salmon rushdie, i think i might start tackling it over the weekend. when i was in india a couple of years ago i read his book "the ground beneath her feet" and quite enjoyed it, especially since so much of the book was set in india. i think the book was pretty influenced by salmon's friendship with U2, and they ended up writing a song based on a song from the book. but i digress, as i often do. the satanic verses, some light weekend reading ( ! ) to distract me from the more burdensome tasks at hand. getting rid of the kittens and their mother. * sigh.