A few ramblings

Almost a week into my first blogging attempt, I think I've learned a couple of things from it. For one thing, I’ve come to realize how gullible I am, ----gullible in the sense that I don’t hesitate at all to buy just about any information that comes to my mind, although in many cases my bad memory has distorted it to the point that on second thought, it is just absurd. For example, in the last post I said something nonsensical that no one in their right mind would possibly believe concerning the delivery of laundry from Japan to Vietnam.

I read an article on the process of memory distortion the other day, that says it is relatively rare that information remains intact and undistorted in one's brain a few years after it was input.

In my case, I had read on a website about the place I paid a visit to that the cleaning service they offered in the US base, that I mentioned in the last post, was extended as far as Guam at times, but it didn’t mention at all that it stretched as far away as Vietnam or anywhere else in war situations. They would fly laundry from Vietnam to Japan after hell freezes over. That’s how the information was distorted by faulty wiring in my brain.

On the other hand, if one has the habit of seeing things from a different, more rational perspective before he/she dares to speak them out loud, it would be pretty easy to avoid making errors of that sort. The thing is, I'm not that kind. To put it differently, it’s called an “idiot,” “bonehead,” “moron,” or whatever.

Maybe it was just that I cringed at the thought of how much longer it would take to write all the stuff over again from scratch, so while knowing that it sounded too stupid, I didn’t do anything to make it right. Or I might have made up a story unwittingly to make it look more plausible. Having said that, I don't know which of the explanations is more true either, because I don't have a good short-term memory.

Another thing I’ve found is that it takes too much time for me to post anything. The easy part is coming up with a rough idea of what to write. Much of the time is spent making revisions by resorting to search engines out there, without which it is impossible for non-native English speakers like me to write in English.
In any event, one thing I’m pretty convinced of after a week of blogging experience is that it sure is good to have a blog of your own from the standpoint of practicing writing English. For those of you who happen to read this, I definitely recommend giving blogging a shot as a means of practicing writing.

The Remembrance of the Laundry Gate (Part 2)

Higashi-Nakagami turned out to be one of those towns in Japan that were left undeveloped in a way that allowed a few relics of the postwar period to coexist with buildings with the more modern appearance. The izakaya in the town I stopped by for another drink that night was one of the shabbiest I’ve ever seen, but that’s exactly what I crave most in a situation like that, or anytime for that matter. The inside of the place was as cluttered as one could imagine. It was being run by a woman who appeared to be in her 50s.
I was amused that when I ordered beer she said she was running out of beer and would go out to buy some if I really wanted beer. I said I would rather like to drink spirit with oolong-tea and the deal was made. Fearing she might see me as someone who escaped from a nearby mental asylum, I was reluctant at first, but being drunk as I was, I finally asked her about the laundry gate and I was relieved to hear she knew a lot about the place and she added that all her neighbors knew it well. There used to be a bus stop whose name was exactly “Laundry Gate,” or “randory geito (as pronounced by Japanese),” which has recently been changed into a more ordinary and boring “Nakagami-nichome” or something like that. The laundry gate was one of the gates of the US air base there that let trucks full of laundry for soldiers in Korea or Vietnam pass through. Once washed and neatly folded at cleaning facilities within the base the uniforms were flown back to Vietnam. So the story goes. The song, written and composed by a singer born in a nearby city in the Tama area, is about her relationship with a girlfriend who was a member of a family that got transferred to Japan to serve in the base. The song centers around the departure of the friend from Japan but seems to be more of a metaphor of the aftermath of the US base's withdrawal from Tachikawa city than a personal account of her friendship, with the last part of the lyrics going like this: “After she had flown back home, I don’t know why but the laundry gate became deserted.” Sure enough, after the base had been transferred Tachikawa was no longer as vibrant and energetic a city as it used to be. That’s what people say about it.

The best part of the night was that the owner of the izakaya was so casual and talkative she told me everything about the town and how she's been feeling about and struggling with things that were going on in and around the area that is somehow different from other parts of Tokyo because of the US presence there.

The Remembrance of the Laundry Gate (Part 1)

After a day spent trying to get the work done to meet the weekly deadline, this evening I headed to a nearby pub that I haven’t visited in a while. The place is a Western-style pub, that is, the one with no seats, the likes of which I see opening up here and there these days, and which is somewhat of a novelty in our country. But the kinds of dishes and alcohol they serve are no different from those you find in typical izakayas. So it's far from the one you might imagine from the word "pub;" it's more like the ones you'll find in shantytowns like Sanya and Kotobuki-cho, but not in a bad way. I had a really good time there with few people around me. I wonder why the place was so deserted considering how nice it was to stay there in a relaxing atmosphere and how affordable just about every dish they serve was. I was just watching passersby, most of them middle-aged salaried workers, walking down the street in front of its well-lit entrance without even casting a glance at the heavenly place I was in. Mildly drunk but feeling somewhat unsatisfied, I went out, hoping to satisfy a bit of wanderlust that had set in as the spring unfolded with a spell of fine weather, despite the “kosa” from the Gobi desert that’d been making the sky a bit yellowish in a weird sort of way. Not having any idea where to go, I got on a JR train and transferred at Tachikawa to another line that is bound for Okutama, the mountainous area of Tokyo that I thought would fit well with the euphoria I was feeling thanks to the Mother Nature. I got off at Higashi-Nakagami to have another drink. Then I recalled that there used to be a US air base in and around the city, which had been entirely transferred to Fussa-city long before and is now called the Yokota air base. One of the things I remembered in association with the area was a song titled “the remembrance of the laundry gate,” which I used to like a lot. The amazing thing about this age of the Internet is how easy it is to ferret out information on just about anything you like to know, and I’d already known a thing or two about what the laundry gate was after doing a few searches.

(To be continued)

Typing faster

When it comes to making typing easier and faster, there is a shortcut to do it, which many of you may already know. That is using the “Autocorrect” function of Microsoft Word. By listing lengthy words or combinations of words you’re likely to type frequently in the process of writing something, and coming up with their shorter alternatives, you can make typing far less time-consuming and grueling. For example, let the function change the “inf” you type into “information,” “bw” into “between,” “ot” into “of the,” “dt” into “don’t,” “sg” into “something,” “fe” into “for example,” “whr” into “whatever,” and so on. The catch is that you have to disable the function on those rare occasions when you need to type the very signs (not words) you chose to stand for the words. What I want Microsoft people to do in the future is that all the applications operating on the Windows system come equipped with the same Autocorrect function as Ms Word so each user can tailor them to their own liking, making whatever activity they do on their PCs much easier, or at least cutting down on the time it takes to copy and paste anything written on Ms Word to any other application. The best way to take advantage of this is by assigning two, or better yet, one letter to every basic word like "what," "been," "another," "however," "between," etc. I also think it would make things even easier if every regular verb plus –g and –d you type automatically morphs into verb-ing and verb-ed, respectively. Although the part of each word you’re allowed to leave out by doing this accounts for only a fraction of it, I guess this would add up to significant time savings in the long run.

fabulous weather

I don't remember the weather in April being as fabulous as this.
I think it has something to do with jet streams bringing in a lot of fresh air from the oceans. I've never felt this happy by just being outside...
I want to stay outdoors as much as I can.

Walk in the Woods