Gigi!
How are you doing? Boy howdy, has it ever been a long time, I tell you what. It's too bad we couldn't meet up for dangerous largeburgers while I was in town. I now realize that 11 a.m. is the imaginary time for which, when drinking, I make plans that sober reflection would reveal as impossible. I propose a simple test. If I say it is a great idea to do X at 11 a.m. tomorrow and if, during the saying, there is at least one beer in my hand, please plan on the exact opposite of what I said. This problem came up more times than I could count (three times, so, basically infinity).
Your letter arrived! And I must say, it is wonderful, both as a message and as a thing in its own right. I do indeed like your new malachite pen, especially its grainy, semi-clear ink that pools in green feet at the base of each letter, where the tip evidently slowed. Also, I'm happy you did not write on both sides of the paper, a mean thing to do since no one wants to be all flippy-pagey when they're sitting down with a good cup of bad coffee for a nice letter-read. That is Fact.
Cheat sheet: 1. No one. 2. Flippy-pagey. 3. Fact.
In conclusion, going through your letter was like reading all 250 of Monet's Water Lillies four times, writ miniscule. Bravo. Therefore I would like to invite you over for dinner and vacation. Black tie, arrive at 7 p.m., sometime in May. There wil be sushi, matcha-flavored Kit-Kats, and (if you play your cards right) samurai slalom monster-truck battles. I don't think I have to tell you that you do not want to miss that.
Don't worry too much about the timing. I believe the Bible says "just do your best to show up and we'll figure everything out later." I guess it only implies that. But it does get pretty explicit when it warns that if you fail to show up, a five-headed dragon will rise from the deep, light nine seven-branched candelabras, trade five goats for six apples, be taller than Jim but younger than Sally, and eat the city of Smyrna. I'm pretty sure I got that right. Fucking Smyrna. Good riddance. Has anyone published a book of word problems starring John the Baptist? I'm betting there's a market out there.
Will you be bringing Byron, or is he too busy fixing his fancy computer machines? 'Cause if it makes him happy, he can fix my computer machine while he's here. The up key and onboard mouse no longer work. Lappy's fanciness is definitely on the decline.
I feel like I owe you an apology for taking so long to reply to your emails, letters, facebook pokes, carrier pigeons, shortwave broadcasts, and that message you burned onto the moon with a flamethrower (impressive). It's come to the point where you can actually hear the guilt flaring up whenever one of your letters comes. What I mean is like this:
COMPUTER MACHINE: You got an internet mail letter from Gigi.
ME: Noooooooooooo! (Exit, pursued by bear)
The thing was, I already felt so bad about not replying, that it seemed like replying would only draw attention to how bad I'd previously been about not replying, which would reopen all those old wounds, and that would be bad, what with all the salt. Yessir, I sure am a clear, concise, and fluent communicator, or at least that's what my
About the bears. Japanese people fear nothing, so bears here have evolved to smell guilt instead. It's working out for them.
One request: when you come, if you come, please bring me a full-size, never-surrender, get-outta-mah-way, North American god-damned stapler. A stapler you can drive railroad spikes with. A stapler of manifest destiny. In Japan, you are allowed to walk around with a honed, naked katana, but office supplies only come in toy versions. And their puny my-first-staplers use small, weak metal stock. So bring some staples, too. If it helps you shop, let's say I want something you could use to hang up some kids on a concrete wall. Or keep their hands nice and together. Or, thinking out loud here, hold their mouths shut. Also, when I print out booklets wider than five centimetres it would be nice to be able to staple them down the centre crease. These are all just wacky, random examples that popped up in my head for no reason. Have I mentioned my students? Because they are angels! You should take one with you. Wouldn't that be crazy? Okay, it's settled! I will help you pick one out.
Let me tell you something about staplers: "The first known stapler was handmade in the 18th century in France for King Louis XV, by an expatriate Norwegian. Each staple was inscribed with the insignia of the royal court, as required." That, my friend, is how it is done. So a Franco-Norwegian kingstapler will also be fine.
This is the part of the letter where I go from talking about Japanese stuff and the obligatory staplers to asking about you, because I'm curious and also want some more letters. What I want to know about, though, is kendo. Do you fight with the whole outfit and face-cage and everything? Amazing. My school has a kendo club, and two of my teachers are in it, although I'm sure the chance to beat their students with sticks on a regular basis was in no way an incentive to join. Actually, it seemed far from primal, at least for beginners. For the first year or so all they let you do is practice vertically chopping the air, then chopping and taking one step, then two steps, and so on until you've worked your way up to chopping and walking. Then you get to work on pivots. Eventually, some goddamned beautiful stick-fightin' artistry emerges, but for an impatient guy like me, a better choice is just going out to the backyard and finding some sticks for a bit of fightin', however tactically and aesthetically imperfect.
What is cool about it is that, the instructor tells me, much of the art is meant to do nothing but make you seem intimidating and break your opponent's nerve. Kendo teachers figured, after all, that it's pretty hard not to kill or maim someone when you're swining around a fine Japanese sword, so they put most of the work into teaching a kind of aggressive caution and some threat postures to keep you in the game long enough for your enemy to screw up or lose patience. The teacher who runs the kendo class has been a kendoka since she was 13 or 14 years old, and damn is she ever imposing. All those things I wanted a stapler for? She can do them just by looking at you. Plus, she can fly? I think? So yeah, you should stick with kendo for a while.
What are the haps, in terms of Gigi? You don't have to give me the whole rundown on Hugh! Psh, when I want to know what's up with him I just madlib his name into Victorian literature and pretend that brings me up to speed on the guy (fun target words: Christmas, hypnotist, importance, earnest, wuther). Or I check in via the webcam I installed in his hair. There is enough hair up there to easily tuck away a small server, cable modem, and grouchy system administrator.
I wasn't that big of a fan of Rosetta Stone when I tried it. Not that I paid for it, but for the same price you could get a month or two of in-class practice, which I did pay for, and that works better for me. Then again, I have this thing where when I sit down at a computer, I read the entire internet (thanks, Google, for making that possible) or sometimes write letters to people. That could explain why I hardly ever used the language-teaching program. You're learning two languages at once? I hope that hasn't disrupted your eight-books-a-week reading pace.
Any new tattoos? Fun fact: as you have no doubt heard, if you have a tattoo in Japan, you are automatically a loan shark—period. There is no wiggle room on this. You are permitted and expected to engage in the sharkery of loans, as well as any associated shake-downing, cigarette-flinging, and finger-amputation. This is fine, because everyone will pointedly ignore all the shady business so as not to force a confrontation. The exception is bath houses, which you will not be permitted to enter (because you are a shark and it is a public bath; not that hard to figure out). This is sad, because going to Japan and not trying out the onsen would be like if that guy from Avatar got his cat body and then just curled up in front of the oven and went to sleep for the rest of the movie.
But! Fortunately! Kobe is Mafia City. Everybody has tattoos here. People think you're straight-laced if you turn twenty and still have all the joints of your fingers. I shark loans by accident all the time. I'm just walking to the store to buy some milk and bam: loan. So it's all okay here, even in the onsen. Yep, the whole point of these two paragraphs is: don't worry about your tattoos.
Hooray! Alright, that is all for now.
Concisely,
- Andre
Shiny New Feature: Unreliable bio of the addressed!
If civilization were to end in a cataclysm, TV-style, having Gigi Inara in your ragtag band of survivors would instantly double your likelihood of living through the gritty first season and lasting all the way to the series finale. For one thing, she is great for morale. So catchy is her cheer is that she can boost a whole room's enthusiasm level while taking a nap in the corner. I have of course seen this. Furthermore, I was barely kidding about the eight-book-a-week reading pace. Girl will seriously outread you. She is the self-aware, blood-based equivalent of eighteen libraries and most of the good parts of the internet.A couple years back, she formally changed her last name in honor of one of the characters in Joss Whedon's Firefly. Inexplicably, she chose neither Hoban Washburne, nor Jayne, nor Alice in Killingsland, but opted for the companion. In any case, this alone would be enough to make her legally teh geekiest girl in the room. She also does music like crazy, and last time I checked she gave lessons on every conceivable musical instrument from voice to bowfridgeaphone at Elite Music Academy, which I can only assume is an upper-tier performance school for the well-heeled and above-average. In fact, according to my good friend Google, she wrote a weekly series on musical education called Gigi's Tips, which I believe has not required any updates in the past two years because she has fully explained music. Read Full Post
