Grab-bag Post

It's been quite a while, dear hypothetical reader. I bring you a variegated bonanza, or rather bonazette, of things.
1. Bits and pieces from the Internets
-I've been loving a series of videos find-able on Youtube called "The Japanese Tradition." Some are subtitled, some not. Best ones I've seen so far: Origami and Hashi (chopsticks).
-If ever your feminist/reasonable side needs a good laugh/cry/fury session, view this little diatribe at your own peril. Apparently the young gentleman attends Columbia, which is horrid (the fact that he's tainting the university, not the university), but then again I can recall certain incidents from my undergraduate career just about as sordid...

2. Books I am reading, books I have read, books I want
-Reading: Changing Clothes in China (pretty sweet so far), A College of Magics (rereading. As Jane Yolen says on the cover of my edition: "A large step up...from Harry Potter.")
-Read: Red China Blues, China Road, Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction (Which one of these does not belong?)
AWK! AWWK!

-Should be reading: Pile of material for first week of class (aieeeeee), stack of two dozen books in the corner
-Lusting to read: Guyland, which seems fascinating, not to mention MANLY.

3. Other news
-Making headway in the fairly well-crafted PS3 game Folklore.

The significant other is playing Ellen (young braid-bearing woman whose lack of assertiveness is a bit annoying), and I Keats (spectacle man). It's very interesting how sometimes Europeanisms seems almost more outstanding in Japanese popular culture/imagination than American counterparts. Perhaps some kind of fairly reductive argument could be made about how Europe has more historical and cultural detritus and is thus more appealing to the Asian psyche, laden as the latter is with all that history and, you know, stuff. But it's also important to remember that, as crucial as the relationship between Japan and the US during and since the WWII era has been, that in the nineteenth century Europe was probably much more important as an Other for Japan, whether it be as a kind of enemy in sonno-joi (Expel foreigners, revere the Emperor) movements or as a role model of sorts in industry, government, and military affairs.