I opened this blog on 8/12/2007 to report my Princeton days and I went back to Japan in March 2009. I've abandoned it for almost a year. To restart the blog, I change the title from "matsutake: living in america" to "living in Tokyo."
It took some time to readjust myself to the life and work in Tokyo, but now I'm OK because I've established the rhythm of run, write, and bento.
I keep running and the distance I've run so far is 726 mi, I even tried a half marathon in February. The time was 2 hr 2 min but my wife ran at 1 hr 54 min. I'll beat her in the half in April!
I also keep writing a book, papers, abstracts for conferences, and grant applications. I found that writing was very similar to running as Haruki Murakami wrote in his wonderful book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Now in spring vacation (for students, not for faculties) I try to write four thousands characters a day. It's not easy but setting daily goals is the best way to achieve the big thing, which is same with running. Also, to my happiness, teaching, as well as writing, is a lot of fun!
I started to make bento (lunch box) everyday since January. It's very fun and need some intelligence and creativity to make beautiful and healthy bento box. The photo is today's bento. I always uploads the photos to Facebook. Some friends like them and that is a big motivation to keep making!
Running + Bento = losing weight and getting healthier, which create academic productivity. I'm happy about it and try my best to keep the rhythm!
3/01/2010
Run, Write, and Bento
2/22/2009
4 weeks
It's mid-February and that means I have only four weeks to stay here... I have booked the airticket and told the housing office the vacate day of my apartment. I hope to write up a methodological paper on using a content analysis of media discourse to analyze social meaning of consumption, and also finish a first draft of the book on the healing boom. Knowing that not so much time have been left, the list of things-I-wanna-do-before-leaving-Princeton have been longer and longer. That's why I'm attending the cooking class at the adult school to learn how to make bread and soup. I also see movies. Milk is the best movie I've ever seen in the US and Pink Panther 2 was just a garbage. I have collected DVDs such as the Office and 30 Rocks. I'll be able to enjoy them using a region free DVD player I got here.
I am also preparing the lecture that I'll start from April (In Japan, the academic and the fiscal year starts from April, the season of cherry blossom). Since I'll have three or more talks at academic meetings during the next semester, which is from April to July and is called "summer semester" in my home university, I want to finish every materials for the lectures in March. I haven't taught for one year and half, so I'm very excited to do it again.
Anyway, I should think I'm too busy to do any unnecessary things. But, you know, the more you are busy, the more you want to do unnecessary things. That's why I reorganized my website. OK, let me go back to work.