Ka!--DON--su

[muckefuck]

What an absolutely fucking awesome day.

I slept in. Kinda. I woke up, fell back asleep, and had strange dreams. I woke up again, monshu came into the bedroom, and we had super fantastic sex.I would've loved to have him ram me, but I wasn't up to it, so he offered his ass. In return, I offered to let him tie me down, which we haven't done in quite a while. He slipped into a black jockstrap and black armband and rode me like a beast--and didn't quite just because I'd lost my load. Afterwards, I felt truly exhausted. Not painfully so, but every muscle in my body felt like it'd been worked. I said, "They should make a machine that provides this kind of workout. We'll call it the 'Fuckmaster 450'." Then I fell asleep again. While I was napping--and monshu was out at the store--my Mom called and left a message.

Our plan for the day had already gone through many revisions, but when I awoke, I suggested another: Instead of going someplace fancy for lunch, why didn't we have dinner at Geja's, then continue on to the Ginza Holiday? He went for it and we spent the hottest part of the day hiding in his a.c. The only time I blew on practical crap was a half hour just before we headed south. Prior to that, however, he unveiled a trio of gifts: A bit of his "e-calligraphy" illustrating a couplet from the Shi jing, a fine art painting of a monkey stealing peaches, and then the topper: An original piece by Korean artist Park Kwang Jean. (It's a smaller version of the left-hand painting on that page.) I was stunned. I couldn't stop viewing it from all angles and speculating how I would display it in my new home.

After that, dinner was almost guaranteed to be an anticlimax. We had gotten the last 6 p.m. reservation, which meant a small table in the middle of the aisle near the kitchen. Waiters had less than two feet of clearance behind me, so I got bumped a few times. After a glass or two of light white wine, it ceased to bother me. The cheese fondue appetiser made me thankful I hadn't eaten all day (except for a few pieces of monshu's sourdough french bread freedom toast). The beef was very tasty, and the seafood was excellent. We lost only a baby potato in the hot oil. By the time the chocolate fondue came around, we could barely finish it. Overall, a very satisfying experience, but I also feel like I can say I've done the Geja's thang and don't have to return for several years.

On the way to the Midwest Buddhist Temple, the old man said, "If they have a seal carver there, I'm going to get [my special pet name for him] done." As fate would have it, they did. When we arrived, his was finishing up a pair of seals for a young sansei or yonsei. The customer gave his assistant a generous tip, which prompted her to hand him a blue ink pad for free. He refused it, which caused the seal carver to take it up and hand it to him. When he again refused, they bowed and thanked him profusely. It was all very charming.

He did the seals in front of us while we waited. I wrote out my Japanese name, 橋莊大文, and handed it to assistant. Then I wrote out monshu's pet name in romaji and waited to see what kanji she suggested. When she handed it back, I corrected 間 "interval" to 魔 "demon". She was a little taken aback--"Oh, ma as in akuma?" she asked in Japanese--but she didn't try to talk us out of it.

The seals are gorgeous--and at $25/piece, extremely reasonable. Regular, not seal script and a very soft stone, but I defy y'all to find anyone in Chicago who'll do them for twice that price (stone included). We made a quick dash through the exhibit hall--beautiful bonsai, same calligrapher who did a piece for me last year--and had time for a smoke before the closing taiko performance. They did my favourite piece, Rokudan, with a dozen performers. All in all, the day was like a typical taiko piece: Starting out leisurely, with bursts of activity interspersed with moments of relative calm, before building up to a tremendous finish.

Comments

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

That's what I get, I guess, for using Jeffrey's and NJStar; just checked my The Kanji Dictionary by Spahn, and sure enough, 3k6.12 lists both characters (the character you used as a variant, which would make more sense than it being a seperate character).

It makes me wonder how the character got all of these kun readings that are listed in the site I sent you (and thus the info NJStar uses, as it's the same info), as NONE of them are listed in here (SOU and SHOU on readings are the only ones listed), and it makes it much more of a curious thing; the REAL "houki" looks nothing like either of these characters, so graphic confusion seems rather unlikely, doesn't it?

Thanks for pointing out my blooper, hun. I would have still believed the two characters to be different had you not done so (and really, it's not like it'd be the first time a simplified character was taken as a unique character entirely and given different meanings; see 机 as a simplification of 機 that has a completely seperate meaning in Japanese, though there's clealy much more simplification here than with "villa"!).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Don't give up hope, Raja-chan! Morohashi's is thirteen fucking volumes. It's possible that all the funky kun readings stem from that. You don't have to give up on Jeffrey's or NJStar, just reat them like the secondary sources they are and don't be afraid to chase down their cites. (Assuming you can. Spahn is nice, bu if you don't have a copy of Halpern or Nelson, you really owe it to yourself to get one.)

I'm just relieved to find that my chop does, in fact, say what I intended it to. I live in fear of being led astray by dictionaries and giving someone a gift that says "condemened criminal spawn" instead of what I wanted it to.

And Morohashi sez:

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The entry for 荘 is a cross-reference to 莊. The on readings are sau [modern sou] and syou. Since this is a Chinese-Japanese dictionary, he doesn't give kun readings, only Japanese definitions and I can't read enough Japanese to make sense of them. I guess we've reached a dead end--and found an honest-to-goodness error. Since the online dictionary is a co-operative project, you might want to inform the editor(s).