Makeup or Make-Up?

I've been thinking about makeup (make-up?) lately. This "thinking about" has been somewhere between me thinking about donuts (e.g., "I wonder what flavor cronut I should get next time?") and me thinking about education reform (e.g., "What is appropriate teacher training for a 'liberal arts' education at the secondary level?"). As in, I wonder about the theoretical implications of choosing between new lipliner and new eyeshadow.

Hey, don't laugh. I only started wearing makeup when I started working, and only because my manager gave me samples that her mother sold through her work at a Japanese cosmetics company. Since then I've accumulated random makeup items, but mostly as gifts from other people. No joke, 90% of what I own, I never even paid for.

This wouldn't be a problem, except that that means I end up with a lot of things that just don't look right on my face. For example, of the seven lipsticks/lipglosses I own, exactly two are colors I actually feel comfortable wearing. That's 28.6%, which, the last time I checked, is an F.

But what can I do? I'm grateful that people give me all these things, and I'd feel bad not using them. And I'm not about to go spend $30 on new lipstick when I have various shades of rose and mauve scattered about my bathroom cabinet. Hence years of mixing colors and finding innovative ways to "use" makeup items.

Except that's just the donut side of thinking about makeup. The education reform side is that I can't quite come to terms with my own desires to wear makeup (except those days when I'm like, fuck it, all I need is sunblock), even with the understanding that "wearing makeup" is just another way for us to "fit other people's standards of beauty". Oh, come on—it's true. We can talk about all the ways makeup plays up our best features, makes us beautiful, helps us love ourselves...but please. What we really mean is, it makes us beautiful in the way Western (and thus most other) marketing has defined beauty, and it helps us love ourselves because we get that affirmation from others that makes us feel so good. (Sooo good.)

You want me to use lipgloss because it makes my lips look fuller (but not too full)? You want me to use shadow on the bridge of my nose so that it looks like I have a three-dimensional nose rather than the two-dimensional one with which I was born? You want me to change the shape of my eyebrows to suit this season's trend? Oh come on, now. I have books I have to be reading.

But still...if I want learn how to shade and highlight my face in such a way so as to make it look more like a white person's face...is that so bad? If I want to wear concealer so that my skin looks even, with no blemishes or pores (and thus biologically impossible), am I a sellout? It's so nice to look and feel pretty...and it's true, thinking that I look pretty makes me feel a whole lot better about myself than when I'm sitting there thinking, wow, what a mess. It's like a pair of good heels—height and longer legs, even if it's all an illusion. And if I'm paying my hard-earned money to get that illusion from multinational corporations, to learn how to do that in a way that suits my own face—is that so theoretically criminal?

To Apply, or Not to Apply

(Wait, didn't I have a post title like this somewhere else a little while ago?)

It's a funny thing trying to decide whether or not to apply to a particular job post. Last year it was like, "Anything with the word 'Japanese' in it, I'm applying!" but this year it's like, "OK OK, no need to be so voracious here." Like, like...

There are jobs that I clearly can't apply to (not my field, not my time period, etc.), and then there are jobs where I'm like...is this a job I want over the one I have now? And would I want to apply (ever) to jobs in particular geographic locations, when I know that my heart belongs in sunny California?

And what of the question of research vs. teaching? Why the valorization of research institutions over teaching institutions, when I'd much rather be in the classroom teaching than in my office writing? Or am I spoiled even to have such a preference?

上野千鶴子と林真理子と・・・

最近上野千鶴子と林真理子の本ばっかり読んでる。交互に読むと言う事、そして上野千鶴子が林真理子についても書いたり話したりすると言う事から、結構私の頭が混乱してきたりもする。何故こんなにも二人の本や考え方に惹かれるんだろう？とか。

先日は遥洋子の『東大で上野千鶴子にケンカを学ぶ』も読んだ。著者の視点から書く「学者の世界」の説明は面白かったし、そして上野千鶴子（何故いつもフルネームなのだろう・・・）が著者に対してとる態度の説明も読んでいてとても嬉しかった。

私は上野千鶴子にも林真理子にも会った事がないし、会うより本を読む方が好むと思うけど、上野千鶴子は私が聞いている程悪い人ではないと思う。遥洋子にとっての上野千鶴子は、私にとっての大学院の恩師に似ている。きつい人かもしれないし、暖かい人では無いかもしれない。気難しかったり、「それはないんじゃないのっ？！」と思わせる様な事をしたり言ったりするかもしれない。でも、彼女は彼女の考え方を持っていて、それを主張できるだけの地位に行き着いたんだ。彼女だったら、私が彼女の本と林真理子の本を一緒に読む事を批判しないと思う。

How to Eat Breakfast

Call me racist, but I think Japanese people shouldn't sit on chairs to eat at tables.

OK OK, it's not so much that I think Japanese people shouldn't own dining sets, it's just that I find it disturbing when I see a furniture catalog in a Japanese 7-Eleven that features "Western" furniture that just screams, "Hi, I just came out of a dining room in a country on the other side of the globe!"

I mean, what are you going to eat when you sit at these tables in your little island nation, people? Are you going to sip Earl Grey and eat spotted dick, or are you going to have your rice with miso soup and maybe a side of salted cod roe? Please.

And why can't we eat stuff that's grown in our locality, or at least within close range, rather than importing things using gallons and gallons of gas?

(Even in the States I am confused by marketing phrases like "urban chic" and "elegant classic". How can my style be boiled down to adjective + adverb?)

A Ph.D. Entrance Exam!

これ。これが好きなんです・・・！

This is the thing I love whenever we have an event in our building. The organizers put up signs everywhere that say "Do not enter"...like, ENTER AND YOUR HEAD WILL EXPLODE. I love it.

Today our department is having entrance exams for our Ph.D. program. I had forgotten that we had such things as grad school entrance exams, even though my parents had talked about them before. (Specifically, my mother talked about how my father had wanted to get into the grad program for a particular department but had to go into a different department because he wasn't smart enough to pass...while my father sat there looking kind of awkward.)

Oh, entrance exams. I'm so glad I never had to take them. I'm sure I would've failed them anyway, seeing as how I don't study and my parents weren't ones to send us to cram school. And the only thing that saved me in the States was SAT II Writing...

駅弁 ~ Station Meal-in-a-Box ~

I recently read a book about ekiben (駅弁, "railway boxed meals", according to Wikipedia—I'd always associated bento with lunch, but I guess you can have it for dinner, too). I was standing in the food studies section at the library and thought I'd pick something up.

The book was titled Ekiben Monogatari (『駅弁物語』, Stories of the Railway Boxed Meal) and published in 1979. Its author, Uriu Tadao (瓜生忠夫), was born in Taiwan in 1915 and worked later as a media critic while also writing about ekiben.

I admit I love ekiben—I get it every chance I get (unless I'm overladen with luggage), mostly when I take the shinkansen. I got one last at the beginning of August (pictured—though I threw away the wrapping and don't remember much about it, except it had something to do with being a light summer meal)!

The book was unexpectedly a great read, despite its moments of sexism. The concurrent rise of the ekiben along with that of the Japanese railway system, the relationship between ekiben and imperialism as the military purchased ekiben from vendors in exchange for supplying them with white rice (hot commodity during wartime), changing nature of trains (e.g., windows that passengers can't open) under modernization and the development of express trains and what it did to the economic structure of platform sales of ekiben... All really interesting and new to me.

In the book Uriu gives a recipe for making "Torimeshi" (「とりめし」), an ekiben he likes from Takasaki Station (高崎駅) in Gunma Prefecture (群馬県) in the Kantō region. Apparently he got the recipe from the (then?) owner of Budō-ya (葡萄屋) in Tokyo, a restaurant that specializes in chicken dishes and yakitori...and what do you know, they're still in business. I'm including a rough summary of the recipe below, just so I won't forget it.


The Meat Half of the Torimeshi Topping

400g ground chicken
8 T sake
4 T sugar
3 T soy sauce

Put meat into a pot, mix the sauce and pour over meat. Cook without stirring. When done, serve over half the rice in a bowl. (If you want to reheat, add sake or water.)


I love recipes like that. Now for

The Egg Half of the Torimeshi Topping

2 eggs
1 T sugar
Salt

Combine ingredients and pour into a pan with no oil. When it begins to cook, mix vigorously with chopsticks. Serve over the other half of the rice in a bowl.


He says torimeshi goes well with a simple chicken soup, made with ginger, garlic, salt, pepper...with a little bit of soy sauce, green onions, and some mitsuba (an herb, kind of like parsley or cilantro). Mmmmmm.

GSA #5: Things You Can Do Because You're a Grad Student

Actually, I'm talking about the things I did as a grad student that I hesitate to do now that I'm...not. This doesn't mean that I actually can't do these things now, or that I should have been doing them while I was a grad student, either...

• Reading stuff from the series A Very Short Introduction. I read the Literary Theory one for the first quarter of the theory sequence and thought, "How cool! I wanna learn about cosmology!" But now that I'm not a grad student, can I still read, say, Marx: A Very Short Introduction or Foucault: A Very Short Introduction? I suppose I can say I'm learning how to explain this stuff in clear terms to my students...
• Wearing flip-flops. A fellow TA once said to me, "You always dress like a businessperson!" (as if that were a bad thing). Turns out I also love wearing flip-flops. But am I allowed to wear this stuff around campus, at least on days when I'm not teaching? Or is that too...SoCal...?
• Bumming housing off of friends. Why not, I say. If I have friends living in whatever city I'm visiting (e.g., for a conference), why not ask to stay with them? Isn't that what friendship means?? But as a young professor once said, at some point you kind of have to start paying to stay at a real hotel.
• Eating while walking. This sounds stupid, but food always tastes better when consumed while walking. I'm drawing a line at eating while walking around the department, but am I allowed to eat, say, a Family Mart onigiri while taking a nice stroll around campus? Or is that taboo, too?
• Napping in my office. Well, as a grad student, I wasn't exactly napping, I was just falling asleep from simple lack of sleep. But if I at least close the door and turn off the lights, am I still allowed to do that? (Oh wait...I just saw a news story about napping at the workplace in Japan...and The Internship (2013) definitely said Google has nap pods...)

The fact that the weather is cooling down means I no longer have to arrive at my office just to take off my majorly sweaty shirt and sit there in a sports bra. But does being a non-student also mean I have to show up at work perfectly made up and wearing clickety heels, too? And where can I go to enjoy some quality music performance on the cheap, like I used to with ArtPower's grad student comp tickets??