February 28, 2016 I woke up around 4:30am, prepped and headed off to campus for my 7am dissertation defense. Via the wonders of modern technology, I was able to successfully defend my dissertation research to my committee, who were attending in their time on February 27. My advisor was in Texas, my methodologist was in Indiana and the remaining two committee members were in Ohio in their respective homes. It seemed pretty apropos given my PhD is in Instructional Technology. Aside from one member whose camera pooped out on him, it was a technological win. It was nice to see everyone again. They asked great questions and indicated a genuine interest in the research, and in the end I was welcomed to "the community of scholars", which was funny because I thought I'd been a part of that for the past few years while working in academia...now I suppose I'm legit. I asked about a secret handshake, but apparently we don't have one. Overall, it was a gratifying experience, a relief and a pretty good time :)
In celebration, Pickle surprised me with a gift and yummy Japanese food! He custom-ordered a new bag for me on Etsy. My cheap, IKEA laptop bag recently broke, and Pickle came in and saved the day with the perfect thoughtful gift! He picked out the material, the yarn and the wooden buttons for my super cute new backpack, and a lovely woman from Israel handmade it and shipped it to us.
We were thinking of trying out a Korean BBQ place in Haymarket, but I found a little shop called Miso at World Square that was supposed to have great bentos, so we went there for lunch. By the time we made it through our bentos, we knew there was no chance we'd be hungry for dinner. They were sizable and delicious! We both got a milk tea; I had the Hokkaido Bento featuring ikura (salmon roe), and Pickle ordered the Miso Bento, featuring tonkatsu (fried pork). Each had an array of Japanese sides, including various tempura (Pickle's first soft shell crab experience), Japanese potato salad (I'm not a huge fan of American potato salad and had never had Japanese style - it's delicious!), salmon sashimi, mini spring rolls, tamagoyaki (little rolled omlette), fried tofu, kamaboko (a processed seafood product...like "krab"), tsukune (Japanese chicken meatball) and miso soup. The little shop was packed when we arrived, but we were the last ones left at the end of the lunch hours. We actually planned to try the Korean BBQ place again this past weekend, but decided to hit up Miso a second time (I may be developing a habit). This time, I had the sushimi and unaju (broiled eel over rice) set and Pickle had the chirashi sushi (salmon sashimi over sushi rice) and Wagyu beef set. It was equally as tasty and filling! This weekend, after shopping around awhile, we finished up the day with some dessert at Meet Fresh. I had the King Mango Shave Ice and Pickle had a salted caramel waffle with ice cream.
After stuffing ourselves to the gills last weekend, we headed out to walk off our lunch with some shopping. We'd planned to go to Paddy's Market, but Pickle tapped Paddington Market on his phone, so we ended up there. It was a fortunate error though, as on the way, we came across a T2 shop and stopped in. I'd been trying to track down a particular teacup and saucer that is no longer available on their website. We found one at this shop, and Pickle picked out a cute one as well. This past weekend, we shopped around a bit at The Galeries, where Pickle bought an awesome wallet at Monsterthreads before making our way to Paddy's Markets this time. The last photos are of the bamboo Pickle bought for me a couple weeks ago (as poor Wilson, our yucca plant, is not faring well) and the adorable keychain he sneakily purchased for me while I was wandering around the Glebe Market.
We'd visited some bookstores in Glebe a couple of weekends ago (we also found a vibrant little Mexican joint called Baja Cantina with some serious nacho goodness). I picked up a copy of Ruth Ozeki's novel A Tale for the Time Being, read it over the next week and loved it. The book flips between Nao and Ruth. Nao, a 16-year old girl who was uprooted from her life in California when her father lost his job and her family moved back to Japan, is bullied terribly at school. Her father has attempted (and failed at) suicide multiple times, and she intends to end her life as well. First, she decides, she wants to write about the life of her great-grandmother, old Jiko, who is a Buddhist nun. We follow Nao's story through Ruth, an author who has stalled out in writing her own memoires, living in a remote Canadian town. She found Nao's diary washed up on the shore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox sealed in plastic bags along with letters written in formal Japanese, a diary written in French and a watch, all of which we discover belonged to Nao's uncle, a kamikaze pilot (though not by choice) in WWII. In addition to the fact that I was looking for an approachable novel based in Japan, I was sold on the intertwining of Zen Buddhism and quantum physics in the description on Goodreads: "...deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home."
After our initial Miso trip, we decided to look for a book store in the area and found a HUGE one at The Galeries called Kinokuniya. Kinokuniya is the largest bookstore chain in Japan and this is currently the only one in Australia. I'd finished A Tale for the Time Being the week prior, and wanted to check out a Murakami novel. I was on the fence between Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. To be honest, the latter was last on my list, as I was leaning toward The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but when I got to the Murakami section, there was a note recommending the other two. When I opened Kafka on the Shore to the first page and read the opening conversation with the boy named Crow and "...the time being" in italics, I figured I'd better go with Kafka, as a Jungle Crow played a role in A Tale for the Time Being, and it all seemed a little too coincidental. This was definitely a different read: a teenage runaway, Oedipus-like premonitions, a villain named Johnny Walker who kills cats, freezing their heads and eating their still-beating hearts in order to collect their souls to fashion a magic flute, a childlike old man who converses with cats after never having recovered from a mysterious incident in which 16 school children lost consciousness simultaneously on a mountainside during the war, WWII soldiers standing guard at the threshold of purgatory, sexually active living ghosts - even an appearance from a Japanese Colonel Sanders (that's right - the fried chicken guy) who shows up as a pimp. While the book was an easy read (it took less than a week to get through the 500+ pages), it didn't exactly leave you with an assurance that you "got it". I didn't sweat it too much, as from what I've read, I don't know that Murakami "got it" all either, but it didn't leave me ready to sign up for another Murakami right away. Still, I might check outThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after a bit of a hiatus. If you're interested in finding out more, here's John Updike's review in The New Yorker.
After our initial Miso trip, we decided to look for a book store in the area and found a HUGE one at The Galeries called Kinokuniya. Kinokuniya is the largest bookstore chain in Japan and this is currently the only one in Australia. I'd finished A Tale for the Time Being the week prior, and wanted to check out a Murakami novel. I was on the fence between Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. To be honest, the latter was last on my list, as I was leaning toward The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but when I got to the Murakami section, there was a note recommending the other two. When I opened Kafka on the Shore to the first page and read the opening conversation with the boy named Crow and "...the time being" in italics, I figured I'd better go with Kafka, as a Jungle Crow played a role in A Tale for the Time Being, and it all seemed a little too coincidental. This was definitely a different read: a teenage runaway, Oedipus-like premonitions, a villain named Johnny Walker who kills cats, freezing their heads and eating their still-beating hearts in order to collect their souls to fashion a magic flute, a childlike old man who converses with cats after never having recovered from a mysterious incident in which 16 school children lost consciousness simultaneously on a mountainside during the war, WWII soldiers standing guard at the threshold of purgatory, sexually active living ghosts - even an appearance from a Japanese Colonel Sanders (that's right - the fried chicken guy) who shows up as a pimp. While the book was an easy read (it took less than a week to get through the 500+ pages), it didn't exactly leave you with an assurance that you "got it". I didn't sweat it too much, as from what I've read, I don't know that Murakami "got it" all either, but it didn't leave me ready to sign up for another Murakami right away. Still, I might check outThe Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after a bit of a hiatus. If you're interested in finding out more, here's John Updike's review in The New Yorker.
We basically deja vu-ed the whole weekend again this week and went back to Kinokuniya a second time, as I'd finished the novel I'd picked up the week prior. I went back for another Ozeki, this time picking up My Year of Meats, another cross-cultural story of two women. This is her first novel, and it focuses on an American woman who lands a gig producing a Japanese reality show called "My American Wife" sponsored by an American meat exporter. The woman crosses paths with a Japanese housewife attempting to escape her husband...this is all I know thus far. It's an award-winning novel, and I'm just hoping it's half as good as my first Ozeki experience. |
Between the food (though this is nothing out of the ordinary!) and the reading lists (totally new, thanks to the free time gained after completing my dissertation!), it's been a very Japanese-inspired couple of weeks. This is no coincidence - Pickle and I are heading to Japan at the end of March, and I couldn't be more psyched! We'll have 10 full days, and I've been busy researching places to stay, things to see (and eat), cultural insights and travel strategies. In fact, I'd probably better get back to work on this...I'll keep you posted!