Book meme

The top 100 books, as voted by the general public (not sure in which country, though...). I like the look of this because it involves hardly any thinking or writing. And I love lists! Saw this on Diapers, budgets & paint, and even though I don't know her, she was kind enough to tag "anyone with time to kill"! The ones in bold are the ones I have read, and I'm also writing when I read it...

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
(read recently - a perfectly good adventure story, isn't it?)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
(read this sometime around college years)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
(got it from my parents' bookshelf, while poking around there in my high school years, as with several others below)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
(read most of these after son no. 1 had had them for a while)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
(on my bookshelf in my room, growing up)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
(high school English class)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
(on my bookshelf in my room, growing up)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
(around college time?)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
(this was on my childhood bookshelf... I read it once quite young, about age 12, but appreciated it much more when reading it again around college age)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
(read these in childhood)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
(high school English class - also Animal Farm, and we used to go around in high school, singing the song from Animal Farm - this is from memory still now, to the tune of Clementine: "Beasts of England, Beasts of Ireland, Beasts of every land and clime -- harken to my joyful tidings of the golden future time. Rings shall vanish from our noses and the harness from our backs. Bit and spur shall rust forever, cruel whip no more shall crack... Soon or late the day is coming, tyrant man shall be o'erthrown. And the fruitful(???) fields of England shall be trod by beasts alone.")
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
(around college age, along with the next couple of books in the series)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
(not sure - after college?)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
(very recently - my husband got it from a friend who liked it)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
(high school English class)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
(high school English class - I wasn't sure, but looked it up on Amazon and saw something about the guillotine and Mesdames Desfarges or something -- brings back more memories of how silly my friends and I were in high school, running around laughing about these English class books all the time... )
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
(high school English class - involves a crazy lady in a wedding dress)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
(high school English class - I actually quite liked this, and ended up reading a few other books by him in college, and wrote a whole bunch in my diary about banana fish or something)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger) ** ETA: have now read this, as of May 2011.
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
(hmmm.. embarrassing, but I went through an "Ayn Rand" phase around age 16. I found this one and one or two others on my parents' bookshelf. I thought I had read Atlas Shrugged, but couldn't recognize the info on Amazon, so if I did read it then, it didn't stick at all, and is not in bold here.)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
(this was great!! One of my favorites, and I had expected it to be dry and difficult to get through, on account of the title and reputation of being a "big, serious book". Read it in my mid-to-late twenties I think)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) ** ETA: have now read this, as of May 2011.
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
(high school English class... for our class project, we made a stop-action film with a little doll, of the part where the little girl is forced to go out into the night through the village and into the forest, to get a bucket of water, and the hero helps her to lift the bucket out of the well. We only made the arm of the hero, though, and it looked a little silly reaching in from the edge of the frame.)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
(borrowed from a friend sometime after college, I guess)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
(on my childhood bookshelf... a lot of these were those nice old hardcovers that were made in the 1960's or before, and had every so often a special, thicker, page, with a full color illustration on one side, and the other side blank)
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
(had this as a child)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
(high school English class... gah, more laughing about the various characters...)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
(don't know, but I know I went through a Jane Austen phase sometime in college or just after)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
(from my parents' bookshelf, when I was in high school)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
(high school English class - I wrote a good essay about this for a college application)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
(high school English class... don't really remember much of an impression of this, except for the very exciting topic I chose for my project - kanji!! - chinese characters. I wrote a little report involving the kanji for white, tree, man, big, etc...)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
(read this in a semester-long class on this book only, second semester of my freshman year of college... I had gone through a big James Joyce phase in my senior year of high school, reading a lot of his other books, and talked my way into this class the following year, even though it was supposed to be for jrs. and srs. Well, at least I can say I did read the entire thing, but I don't remember much, and didn't understand much, despite having a whole book of explanations which had to be read alongside the main book. Why is a book like this up here, anyway... it's not like the general public are all reading this and loving it - or was it just me who found it too difficult? was I just too young?)

Other books from my parents' bookshelf... The Tontine, Crome Yellow (can't remember this one, but I remember The Tontine - it was quite exciting!).
Other books on my bookshelf, growing up... Lorna Doon, and a whole set of Mark Twain books that I never really got into.
Other books read in high school English class... A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Moby Dick, The Scarlett Letter.
First real books I read, after graduating from Dr. Seuss, etc... Jonathan Livingston Seagull and then Black Beauty.
Favorite series as a young child (around age 7-10) ... The Black Stallion series. I had them all in hardback, and loved every bit, along with some other horse books like Marguerite Henry's books (Misty of Chincoteague, etc.). Also James Herriot's series! ** ETA: have now reread the James Herriot books, as of May 2011.
Favorite series as an older child (around age 11-14) ... The Dark is Rising series, by Susan Cooper, and the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey.
Favorite authors not mentioned at all here... Nabokov, Proust, Thomas Hardy.
Biggest embarrassment when filling out this meme... I don't think I've ever read Tolkien's books, although I think my sister may have had at least one of them. Must read them.
Okay, I am no good at reading plays so I could never enjoy reading these, but Shakespeare was not mentioned. Maybe plays and poems were against the rules?

Oh, I almost forgot... I tag anyone!

Big 100 yen shopping trip!

I went to a big 100 yen shop today -- a different one that is a little further away than my normal one, so I enjoyed walking around on the various floors and getting this and that! 100 yen is about 85 cents, I guess, or around 50 p. I got (at 100 each, plus 5 yen tax):

1. a set of 3 sports-themed rocket pencils, each with an eraser shaped like a basketball, baseball, or soccer ball (for the kids)

2. an apple scented "nerikeshi" - a large, soft eraser, in a case decorated with apples (for the kids)

3. two packs of large lamune candies, each with a small plastic toy (I *love* lamune -- when we came back to Japan, I used to get a pack of lamune just about every time I went into any kind of shop. )(this was for me, but I gave 2 lamunes to each of the kids)

4. a set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads

5. a set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads

6. one more set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads (this was my official reason for going to this shop, since we needed these and they aren't available at our local 100 yen shop)

7. a sleek and super-modern-looking blue and silver solar-powered calculator, for son no. 1

8. a red decorative hole-punch (makes a heart shape)

9. an orange decorative hole-punch (makes a teddy bear shape)

10. a yellow decorative hole-punch (makes a star shape)

11. a green decorative hole-punch (makes a tree shape)

12. a blue decorative hole-punch (makes a large circle)

13. a pack of 3 rolls of yellow vinyl electrical tape

14. a pack of 3 rolls of black vinyl electrical tape

15. a roll of larger black vinyl electrical tape

16. a small green "cracked glaze" ceramic bowl decorated with a gingko leaf, to match the one my husband bought the other day -- useful for dipping sauces for shabu shabu, zaru soba, etc.

17. a colorful set of 3 packs of gummies - orange, grape, and apple flavored

18. a pack of 2 plain lined notebooks, for son no. 1

19. a B5 sized dark-grey plastic ring binder, for son no. 1

20. a clear plastic 30 cm ruler, for son no. 1

21. a set of two plastic lids for use when microwaving soups, etc... one large, one small

22. a larger domed-type lid, for use when microwaving plates of food - it is cutely decorated with pictures of various types of kitchen implements

23. a pack of two small sauce holders for use with bentos - one is orange, and one is red, and they're decorated with pictures of apples and oranges

24. a black stop-watch with neck strap (this was 150 yen)

25. (this was 150 yen) a large round sock-drying hanger, that you can hang on the laundry poles outside -- it's blue and white and has many laundry clips for attaching small things

26. hmmm... I know there were about 6 more things... a tape dispenser for use with packing tape and the like - to make it easier to tape up boxes. I used to have one of these in England, and they are a great help!

27. a small spray-can of pet smell remover

28. a large, furry, green polka-dotted, bone-shaped stuffed toy for little Toby. He used to have one just like it, and enjoyed snuggling with it, until he ripped it open and tore out loads of stuffing. I had kept it to one side and meant to mend it, but as they are only 100 yen, decided today not to bother!

29. okay, I'll have to go downstairs to check the rest.... a soroban! a large, black and tan colored, wooden abacus. I have always wanted to learn how to use an abacus. I don't see them used much anymore, but when I first moved to Kyushu, Japan, 16 years ago, they were still used a lot by shopkeepers. Now with my 100 yen abacus I can start learning!

30. a pack of 3 different colors of iron-on patching material. Black, blue and white. My jeans are always getting holes in them, and instead of buying new ones I've just been patching them. Must go and search for new ones soon. I looked all around England when we were there for Christmas, but unfortunately all the shops were selling hip-huggers only, and NO, I cannot wear hiphuggers!!! Muri!!! (impossible!).

31. Did I miscount? I looked all around but couldn't find anything else...

So, you can see that 100 yen is a wonderful idea in theory, but in practice you have to be careful not to go crazy with a big, 3300 yen (30 dollar or 15 pound) shopping spree!!! Well, on our budget this is the only chance I have to get that nice "shopping high" that many women love so much... ;)

Only in Hokkaido

A few days ago, as I was walking through a supermarket parking lot with my shopping...

Thinking to myself, "Oh, it's so springlike today! It's warm - I don't need to zip my coat up. The sun is shining! Spring is coming! What's that in the air... oh, it's snowing, too... well, anyway!!"

Things were looking really good, that day and even the next. A lot of roads and sidewalks were clear of snow, and I had switched from boots to sneakers. But unfortunately, spring has now gone away and we have had 3 days straight of snow, more and more each day. This morning I was out clearing snow from in front of the car, up to a foot deep in drifts. Everything is white again. It looks just like we've gone back to January. But not to worry! It can't be too much longer until spring, now!

Funny kids' language

I love the way my kids speak in Japanese now! They sound just like elementary school boys in Hokkaido. This is not the same as the Japanese you will learn in a textbook. Sometimes they say things I have never heard of!

I cannot translate for "sense", so I will only translate for meaning - sorry, but this means this post will not mean much to anyone who cannot speak Japanese...


Dio (now age 12, in 6th grade):

- speaking to his younger brother: "Sassa to ikeya, mireya!" (Quick, go and look!) - he said this so quickly I didn't get it at first (and I had never heard of this -ya), but brother understood, so I was surprised!

- when dismayed or sympathetic: "Arama..." (Oh dear...)

- after asking Daddy if he ever looks at Mommy naked (Daddy said sometimes), and asking Mommy if she ever looks at Daddy naked (I said I try not to): "Eroda! Futaritomo eroda!!!" (accusatorily) (sexy! both of you are naughty!)

- when told he cannot do something because of such-and-such reason: "Ii-ssho betsuni" (It's okay isn't it)

One of my Hokkaidoian friends who is my age heard him saying "Ii-ssho" and so on, and was happy that he is speaking in Hokkaido dialect (-ssho instead of deshou), and asked him if he ever says "Namara". Apparently when she was younger it was a trendy word for "very". I had never heard of it, but he said a couple of the boys in his class (a bit rougher boys?) do use it. After that conversation, he suddenly started using it now and then, too - a bit of posing? Like, "Namara hayee" (really fast), etc...

- To me when I was in his classroom and he wanted me to look at his football robot: "Mite mina." (have a look)

- When I mistook "Tonkatsu" on a bento-shop menu for something else, and asked the girl at the cash register if it was chicken - Dio said quickly, "Tonkatsu-tte kaiteattara, futsuwa tonkatsudesho?" (well, if it says tonkatsu, it usually means tonkatsu, doesn't it?) ...


Jiji (age 7, in 1st grade):

- "UssSO! UsSO ja nee ka kore!" (No way! What a lie!)

- (last year, learned in kindergarten): "Daamenanda, damenanda, sensei ni yuccharo" (in a singsong voice, "that's bad, that's bad, I'm telling the teacher!"). When he first told us this it was garbled and we couldn't make out what he was saying, but when we asked him about it he said he didn't know the words, but it is what people say just before they go to tell the teacher! So we worked out what he was saying.

- "SuggE! SuggEE kore wa!" (Wow! This is great!)

- to his big brother when big brother is posing: "Kakkou tsukeruna." (quit posing) He was trying to shout something like this down from the chair lift several times, when he saw Dio just nicely practicing his snowboarding turns, down below.

Anyway, I just get a warm and happy feeling when I hear them saying these things. It is just so cute that they have learned to talk like school-age boys. Dio gets plenty of practice in "official" or "adult" Japanese from Kumon, anyway (he takes "Japanese" for foreigners, mostly targeted towards teenagers or adults, not kokugo - the poor thing has to read these endless example sentences about "Smisu-san" - Mr. Smith - and his friends, who are visiting Japan for business and tourism. I think they are trying to make the foreign students feel more connected by putting plenty of nice foreign characters in the stories and examples, but it gets a little wearing because it is about a world of Tokyo "fresh-off-the-plane" Anglo-Gaijin that my son knows nothing about! Complete with sharp-looking noses and friendly Japanese helpers... he keeps plugging away, though - maybe it is entertaining for him to read about the adventures of the hapless adult gaijins... ?).

Odd dates

Younger brother Jiji (7) likes to write on our calendars when we put them up at the New Year. Last year we were surprised to see that he had confidently written "Critsmas" on December 5.

Today I just looked up at our 2007 puppy calendar (from the 100 yen shop), and learned that Feb. 28 is "Leap Year". :)

He has also put "Lucky Day" on every Saturday, and "RKT Day" on every Friday (well, up through mid-April on the calendar, anyway, when he seems to have tired of this project).

Saturday is the day of the week they sleep in our bed (one of us has to go elsewhere, as there is not room for 4 of us), and Friday nights if it is convenient, big brother Dio sleeps with Jiji in the lower bunk bed. I'm not sure what the "T" is for, but R and K are their initials. "Together" maybe?? We found it convenient to set a day of the week for these two special sleeping arrangements, because without a fixed day they were always asking just in case, "Can we sleep in your bed tonight??" and it was annoying being asked this all the time. They do well having a fixed day.

Baby's tooth

Jiji finally lost his first tooth! He's nearly 7 yrs. and 5 mos. old, and he is one of the biggest kids in his class. His baby teeth were looking smaller and smaller, and spreading out. One bottom tooth had become very askew, and stayed that way for a couple of weeks. On Wednesday he was eating some apple in his school lunch, and thought there was an apple seed in his mouth. He found it and it was his tooth! Then he got some blood on his hand, and went to wash his hand, and lost the tooth in the sink. So he came home and asked us for some money, since the tooth fairy wouldn't ever know he had lost his tooth. Then big brother told him point blank that the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny too are all Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy lied when they said it was someone else. We had been skirting around this issue for some time. He would say, "I don't understand. Magic isn't real, but Santa Claus does magic, and Santa Claus is real..." I would say, "Well, some people think Santa Claus is not real, either..." Reply, "Well, I know Santa Claus is real." "Oh, okay... but some people think he's not real." Etc... at least he didn't seem to mind finding out the truth.

Anyway, since he knew for sure that the money was coming from us, now, he spent the rest of the day reminding me periodically, "Mommy... money?", until I finally gave him a 500 yen coin. He was happy with that and went to put it in his Doraemon piggy bank, where it sits with a few 1 yen coins and 10 yen coins (he doesn't get an allowance yet, and we hardly ever give him money).

So the big question was: "Mommy, but why did you say that you saw the Easter Bunny?" Er, well, I always say I saw the Easter Bunny once, but what I really saw (or think I saw... it was so long ago) was a small gray bunny hopping around the back of the family student housing dormitory, in the middle of the night Sat/Sun. on Easter weekend, at the university in Germany I was attending for a few months when I was 19. The only thing weird about this story is: why would a bunny have been hopping around in the middle of the night? I guess that is why I always say it was the Easter Bunny. It is certainly appropriate that it was near the family student housing dormitory, anway.

Son no. 2 now talks with a bit of a lisp, and now we call him by a new nickname, "dunda-bora" (it means toothless in Punjabi).

Son no. 1 is going to have his graduation ceremony soon, for finishing his baseball team! He's in 6th grade, the season is over, and his team is just for elementary school kids. He will have to read out a 3 page speech that he has written in Japanese. Actually, I was surprised at how well he can make sentences now. It must have been the Kumon. I don't think they practice writing actual sentences much in school. We are so relieved that baseball is finally finishing, because it has been just work, work, work, 3 weekdays and BOTH weekend days every week, with no weekends off (except one for Obon in mid-August) from April to November, for the last 2 1/2 years. And around here, that pretty much destroys any chance of doing anything at the weekend, ever, except having dinner together or (in winter) skiing! It has been great for him and fun for all of us, but now we're really looking forward to doing some other things on the weekends (of course now winter is starting, but anyway... soon!).

To-by!

This is Toby.
Also Toby with his biggest brother!

He's our new baby, and is now 5 1/2 months old. He is a really good boy, who tried his best to hold in his peepee and poo until he is able to go outside. One thing that really surprised us is that he slept through the night on his very first night here! When we got up in the morning, he was quietly sitting in his bedroom area (a large cage under the stairs, where he can see through the door into our bedroom, and see us sleeping!). He had a habit of biting or nibbling at our fingers at first, but he seems to have learned not to, now. When we let him run around the house, he gallops (like a horse) around and around the table, and the children enjoy lying down in his path, so that he jumps over them. He's a Jack Russell Terrier, and we got him in early August, when he was almost 3 months old. The poor little guy had to wait in the pet store for us for 2-3 weeks, while we sorted out a problem with the paperwork and changed our guarantor for renting the house, since our old guarantor would not sign the paper for us to get a dog, although we had assumed that she would. We had already found him and put a small deposit down on him, and we didn't want to give him up, so we did a rush job and found another guarantor (our old guarantor had been asking us to find a new one, anyway). He waited in the pet shop throughout that process.

Our favorite song to sing to him is "To---by!" This is modeled after a song that is famous here, called, "Yuu---ji!", which is sung by a man who is apparently like a Japanese version of Bruce Springsteen. This song "Yuu---ji!" is from the 80's I think, and seems to be about a past friendship with a man or boy called Yuuji. This song is now sung at our pro baseball team's games, whenever one of our players (named Yuuji) comes up to bat! My older son goes around the house singing this song... "Yuu---ji! ..... kaeritai, kaerenai... dadada,dadada, etc..." "I want to go back, but I can't go back, .... "