Trawniki

Took the test on Sunday. Ooooh, to pass or not to pass!

Got my test voucher couple of days ago. Looking forward to December!

Or not.

ずいぶんと時間かかりましたけれども、今日の午後3時20分、やっと最後のページを読んでしまいました。

…ということで、このゴールは

完成！！！

ってことかな～

Finished reading “Byakuya no tabi” written by Higashiyama Kaii just today. Needless to say, I’m quite proud of myself.

I got the book from my Japanese teacher in July, so it is somewhat special to me. And what is more, the book is about the Higashiyama couple’s journey to the Northern Europe in the early 60s, and there is a couple of pages dedicated to my in-the-middle-of-nowhere hometown. It’s kind of amazing to think that such a boring place has had such an impact on someone.

Summer is a wonderful thing. Year after year, around May or June, I find myself taking up jogging once again, reading books I used to love back when I was 10 years old (and still do!), and starting a new story about neurotic gangsters, chivalrous captains of a spaceship or whatever happens to be the thing at the moment.

So, I’ve been writing. Nothing ambitious, nothing serious, but writing nonetheless. It feels really nice to write just because I want to and because I’m ridiculously fond of my stupid characters, and not because I have to.

I have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that I’ve been reading surprisingly lot lately. The bad news is that most of the books I’ve read can only be described as incredibly lame, as my inner scifi/fantasy nerd has apparently been awakened by the summer. But aside from re-reading some old favorites, I’ve also discovered some incredibly good novels, so I guess everything’s all balanced.

Sonja O. kävi täällä by Anja Kauranen

Dragons of the Fallen Sun by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

The Seventh Gate by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

To Green Angel Tower, Part II by Tad Williams

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig

It’s been a while, but I’ve made some progress lately!

1. The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan

2. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

3. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula le Guin

I read all the books mentioned above in Finnish, which would have been a nice change, as I read books in English more often than not, but quite frankly, the translations for the first two books sucked so bad. It was quite sad, because I rather liked the stories themselves.

On the other hand, The Left Hand of Darkness was made of all kinds of win and awesome and blew my mind completely. And the translation wasn’t bad either.

After a year and a half of studying Korean, I’m finally starting to feel I’ve actually learned something. I love our tiny group of five students and our teacher, who never gets tired of explaining the same things over and over again for the umpteenth time. There’s even this strange affection for dorky textbook characters who do nothing but go hiking and write letters home.

Of course, there’s still a million things I’ve never heard of, but I know the basics and I could probably make myself understood, should I ever go to Korea. The thing is, now I just have to learn a whole lot more.

I think I’m done with this. A little bit more, and I’m through with the 1,945 kanji for the daily use. Besides, how much is “more” anyway? I can’t say I’ve memorized enough kanji for the rest of my life, but I definitely know more than I did when I adopted this goal.

Oddly enough, Korean has been growing on me lately. The more I learn, the more interesting it gets, and watching Coffee Prince might have something to do with this strange fascination as well. And thanks to Han Kyul’s temper tantrums, I’m starting to get the hang of swearwords too.

I’m not very proud of the fact, but I’ve read The Redemption of Altahalus – once again.

I’ve come to believe there must be something special in this particular book, since I just have to read it at least once a year, no matter what. I know, I know, it’s full of clichés, the characters are a bit shallow to say the least, and the book itself is just made of lame. But I love it anyway. <3

Around five centimeters would be just perfect.

1. Juoksuhaudantie by Kari Hotakainen

2. Forbidden Colours by Yukio Mishima (a Mishima book I actually really, really liked)

3. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I’ve been a bit lazy lately, but right now I’m working on Ryu Murakami’s Coin Locker Babies. Now there we’ve got an interesting story, that’s all I can say.

Finished reading a Yukio Mishima Novel with Characters Who Leave You Completely Cold today. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to feel any kind of attachment to the characters, despite the promising setting of the story.

There were a few things that I really liked, though. For some reason, the novel made me think of Mojiko Retro Town, a wonderful little place near Kitakyushu full of old buildings and small shops that sell all kinds of curious items. My host family took me there a few years ago, and the place made such a strong impression on me that I’m definitely going to visit it again some day.

Secondly, page 143:
“Is there no way that I can remain in the room and at the same time be out in the hall locking the door?”

Yesterday something clicked in my head and told me to make pizza. I was in no position to object, as I was both terribly hungry and in need of a way to avoid studying. The kitchen was a mess after my experiments, but the pizza turned out to be quite good.

Today, I bravely continued fighting the temptation and made some real food again, this time some fried mushrooms and vegetables in Thai style.

Now that’s two days in a row! Definitely a level up!

Thus, I can happily go back to eating noodles tomorrow.

The results came today. I passed.

Stay tuned for the next year!

I’m quite positive cooking something other than noodles for the first time in weeks does not exactly count as “cooking more often”, but well, it’s a start.

Yesterday, I tried making a simple dish of vegetable curry. Somehow the whole thing got a bit out of hand when a friend came over and we ended up making bad yakuza jokes and swearing in Japanese. Are we the only ones who think something like “Oh my god! There’s a yakuza in my kitchen” would make a perfect cooking show? The possibilities!

Another novel by Haruki Murakami!

I have to say I liked this one a million times better than Sputnik Sweetheart for some bizarre reason. Admittedly, I found the characters a bit dull at first, but as the story progressed it got quite hard to keep disliking them. Hoshino and Nakata stole a tiny piece of my soul, and I don’t think I’ll ever get it back.

The test was yesterday, and I’m fairly sure I passed. Now I’m just looking forward to getting the results and then.. well. It’s still a bit too early to start thinking about next year’s test, isn’t it.

Took me a week, but I’ve finally finished writing my little Naruto x Sasuke fic that began as a short oneshot and somehow became a monster of 8000 words on the way.

It still needs quite a lot of work until I can post it somewhere, but I consider this goal achieved. It felt surprisingly good to manage to write something for the first time in ages.

Took me long enough, but I finally managed to finish Train Man by Hitori Nakano today.

Let’s just say I’ve never seen such a huge amount of smileys used in a book before. Also, the book made me want to go to Akihabara as soon as possible and kidnap an otaku. Everybody needs an otaku for themselves, right?