[ARTICLE] On Immigrants in/and Japan

"Outsiders waiting to be insiders"
Howard W. French
The New York Times
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Changes for Japan

HIMEJI, Japan With their tidy suburban home, a late-model Toyota in the driveway and two school-age children whose Japanese is indistinguishable from any native's, Akio Nakashima and his wife, Yoshie, are the perfect immigrants.

Though Vietnamese by origin, as fellow Asians they would be hard to pick out in a crowd. Through years of diligent study they have mastered this country's difficult language. Although they incurred the ire of their parents, they even adopted Japanese names in order to assimilate better.

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The Play: Post-Premiere Report

it was a great success. We made 202 dollar in ticket sales, and reaction from our audience of 36 people was uniformly positive. there was a 93 year old woman present who had met her husband when they acted in a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest more than 70 years ago. Apparently my portrayal of Merriman, despite a missed cue, met with some popularity.

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Via

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I've upgraded ...

... to a paid account. Now, let's see what I can do with this.

Another Successful Night

22 people came, paying large sums of money for the privilege of seeing MB Productions' performance of Oscar Wilde's 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest. All in all, the play went well; I didn't miss any cues, and my performance again seemed to be popular.

And:


The Eighties.


Which Decade Are You?
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A Poem Translated from the Dutch

Gerrit Komrij, "The Language-Forger"
Language's consonants and vowels portray
The orset and the flaccid belly's spread.
A poet's one who's able to display
An ease when boning them that seems inbred.

Obese or slim, his word without delay
Unite, in fluid couplets sweetly wed.
His secret's effortlessness, not to lay
A smoke screen. He takes language off to bed.

His flask is language--A to Z.
And when half-drunk--albeit just in play--
He spawns a child, an epic or quartet,

Or something in-between--a sonnet, say.
His fight with blubber, though, and whalebone stay
The reader never knows is left unsaid.

- Originally from All Poems up to Yesterday (Alle gedichten tot gisteren). Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1994. Trans. John Irons.

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Via Hostelworld.com, I've just booked a room at the Hotel/Hostel Inn Tourist, in downtown Montréal for the two nights of my Montréal stay.

This will be fun.