Colin Doyle

@nagaijin.bsky.social

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Teacher, writer, Osaka Resident, Freelance Canadian

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The Other Place now throwing up AI ads almost faster than I can block them.

Covid. Off work until the 14th. After two days of utter misery, I am finally well enough to feel bored.

Highly recommend Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto. Just finished the latter and am eagerly awaiting the third part of the trilogy.

WabiSabi

While out for an evening walk in Osaka, city of contrasts.

I can’t remember the last time I heard a shamisen.

Yesterday my friend in Tokyo told me a crow stole one of his coat hangers off his balcony and, no, it wasn’t an April Fools joke and that it’s an actual Tokyo crow thing to steal coat hangers. Life in Osaka just can’t compare.

Fairly old man seen pushing his wheelchair out of the Life supermarket, Nagai branch, the seat piled high with six-packs of Kirin Ichiban Shibori.

This morning I learned a local 50-seat art house cinema is having a Yasujiro Ozu retrospective (w/o subtitles because Osaka) and I’m all aflutter even though I’ve watched them all on DVD a million times. There’s something about a big screen.

¥300 from a secondhand shop in MinamiMorimachi. Hardcover, great condition. Wonder if it’s any good?

I took out an online subscription to my hometown newspaper the other month, and now I feel like Hawkeye Pierce reading the Crabapple Cove Courier every evening. In a good way.

I bought my summer ticket to Canada today because the price won’t go down before August (on the contrary) and the yen with which I’m paid won’t recover before then either (see above).

My last words in 2023 were a clearly pronounced “Fuck. You,” to the punk kid behind me snickering about the gaijin (i.e., me) in the hatsumode line at the local Shinto shrine just before midnight. I was hoping for something a bit more poetic, but it sure shut him up though. Happy New Year!

So much of history consists of people fighting shittiness by being even shittier.

Scrambled eggs need onions in them. You wouldn’t think that would be a very controversial opinion, but you’d be surprised how many people it sends to the fainting couch.

Middle-aged man in short shorts, carrying a teddy bear, tells me my hat looks funny. Don’t ever change, Tennoji.

The tree has been put up and trimmed, which sounds so much nicer than saying the tree has been taken out of the box and assembled and stuff put on it, which is what actually happened in the course of half an hour.

The neighbour’s potted momiji is looking good this morning.

This week, I’ve been listening to Les Cowboys Fringant, having heard that their lead singer has died, aged 47. To my shame, I’d never heard of this Quebec group until that news flash, although they were huge in the French-speaking world. This song is brilliant. youtu.be/sYRp8oP0yiw?...

LES COWBOYS FRINGANTS - L'Amérique pleureyoutu.be Extrait de l'album LES ANTIPODES - Disponible le 4 octobre 2019Paroles et musique : JF PauzéProducteur, réalisateur et directeur photo: Louis-Philippe EnoPro...

Until very recently, Japanese businesses and schools pretty much all changed over to winter dress code on Oct 1, but seeing it was 27°C (81°F) last week, it’s probably a good thing they’ve become more flexible.

Koromogae: the changing over of clothes. Don’t worry - it’s not one of those “ancient art of..” things. It’s just the day when you bring all your winter stuff to the front of the closet and shove all your summer stuff down the back. Still, notable that Japanese has a word for it and English doesn’t.

Cold, windy, rainy, November morning in Osaka. Just like November mornings in Nova Scotia, but not in a way that makes me homesick.

A good ¥100 purchase at a 2nd hand bookstore in Minamimorimachi: A Writer’s Notebook, by Somerset Maugham (1967 Penguin paperback- “6/“). Observations written over 55 years. Very uneven: so far (halfway), clumsy aphorisms in his early years, then gems of travel writing. Can’t go wrong for a dollar.

I’ve got a really easy hashed/hayashi beef recipe if anyone’s interested. I think it’s better with mashed potatoes than rice, although that is a heretical opinion in these parts.

I always thought they’d do away with the screechy adverts between the station announcements on the Osaka Metro when they installed the video ads over the doors. Nope. Tonight the conductor has got them cranked up to 11. Tokyo doesn’t do this, does it?

When I see men my age at the station, sporting stylish jeans and turtlenecks while I’m wrapped in an old coat, I have to remind myself that this is Osaka and they are also wearing long-sleeved undershirts and two pairs of long johns underneath.

First post on Bluesky