Flutterings

In the latest installment of "I am incapable of simplifying my life" (which this week has also involved accidentally poisoning two carnivorous plants and getting sassed by ducks), I tumbled into a rabbit hole yesterday that involved hunting for translations for K.J. Charles's Think of England, which netted the following:

The German title means "Meeting at Midnight" and was livetweeted at length last year by a bloke who came across it in a supermarket bargain bin: https://twitter.com/SerPadfoot/status/1276874929984675841
(I especially like him really liking Fen and Pat: "Ich mag die beiden Damen!" And doing so with some choice snippets from the book.)

The French title means "A Taste of England." Hmmm. Mm-hmm.

I think the Japanese title is the same as the English? What a fine cover.

Any of you know if there's a Spanish edition?

This NYT photo essay on wagashi is cracking me up -- elegant portraits of sweets with cats:

Sweets as Poignant as Poetry

... when you see a New York Times piece about the fish market's imminent move ...

... and your first reaction is, "Oh, saints and gills, that's going to complicate what I might yet get around to writing."

And your second reaction is to swat away the hordes of plotbunnies suddenly swarming around your ankles with each new paragraph.

Earlier this year, I visited an exhibition of works by and about Sharaku. I snuck a few snapshots on my phone (click the images to view larger versions):

From sharaku

From sharaku

From sharaku

I took home with me a brochure that listed all the items in the exhibition, but it's currently buried or misfiled under the other clutter in my "stuff to do something with" stacks, so I'll have to come back later to credit the artists.

There was also a playpen-like area for kids to draw pictures on the back of cards (to be delivered someday to kids in other countries):

From sharaku

From sharaku

In hunting around for a catalog of the original Mainichi exho, I came across a number of other allusions to Sharaku. Of particular interest to me:

Shigeo Fukuda poster (It's funny how many artists have done collages of a particular feature -- eyes, mouth, and now hair -- in their studies of Sharaku. I bet there's an essay about that somewhere...)

Korean movie proposal

exhibition history/details by the Japan Foundation, one of the sponsors. I'm impressed by where-all it's been (I nearly visited the museum in Haifa, but the timing didn't work out).

Life in Old Japan coloring book

Coloring Book of Japan

Lots of shlock on eBay, including chopsticks, tanktops, tea mugs, iPod skins, playing cards.

(I'm not doing anything with any of these just yet. Just stashing 'em here for later reference and to feed geri_chan's plotbunnies, heh)

(1) meretricula's
four reasons Roger Federer wished the Japanese Davis Cup team would fall into a really deep hole (and one reason they weren't that bad after all). Tennis RPS / Prince of Tennis crossover, 2800 words, absolutely hysterical, and with mentions of the Spanish Davis Cup team as well. Its opening lines:

To be fair, Roger actually liked playing Echizen. The kid was good, he was getting better all the time, and the stretch of trying to beat him was satisfying. The problem was that whenever he played Echizen, he would almost inevitably have to talk to Echizen, and as soon as the brat started speaking Roger felt an extremely uncharitable urge to punch him in the mouth. Since Echizen was seventeen years old and less than five and a half feet tall, Roger thought that this might be problematic for his reputation.

(2) There's a teacher in Nevada seeking donations in order to purchase a gyotaku (rubber fish) printmaking set for her students.

(2a) The anonymous donor from LJ's fandom-of-one comm is still making contributions to charity in honor of New Year's Resolution fic. She or he donated $5 to the rubber fish project in honor of Deserving. This has made me ridiculously happy, as did his/her earlier donation to a tennis-equipment-for-kids project (now fully funded) in honor of Interrobang.

(2b) [blatant hinting] There are still 3625 prompts up for grabs at the Yuletide archive. You do not have to be a previous participant to play. You do not claim a prompt - you simply submit the story when it is done. (You do have to write the story specifically for NYR, and it has to be 1000 words minimum.) The open prompts currently include one for Harudaki (*cough* - yeah, it's mine) and others for Three Investigators, Bujold, the a-ha "Take on Me" video, and a bajillion manga/anime titles I've never even heard of...

Title: Just Like Strangers Here (part 2 of 2)
Author: bronze ribbons
For: ymfaery, for the 2006 Fantasy Fest at lupin_snape
The prompt: "Post-War. S had fled UK to live in ancestral non-English speaking home country w/o knowing AD left behind findable evidence of S acting under orders. R finds him some unspecified time later--how/why up to author. Asian home country a plus. Smut optional."
Also for: sor_bet, whose response to "Stoppered" got me thinking...
Betas: aunty_marion and Gramarye
Primary pairing: Lupin/Snape
Words: This part 5K (around 9K total)
Rating: R
Warning: rape
Disclaimer: No malice intended, no profit expected.
ETA: Soundtrack



Prequel

Part 1

( Fourteen months after his arrival in Japan, Snape secretly began to study magic again. )