Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

I downloaded my Twitter archive today for my main account @makiwi. In March 2011, I tweeted 7,041 times. Most of that were my desperate efforts to try to keep people updated with news regarding the earthquake coming from Japan. What a crazy, crazy month that was. But what a year 2011 was.

I am not well. There's no getting around it.

Radiation and me, and you.

I do not currently own a television set - or rather, I own a physical TV, but we still have to get it hooked up. This means that I can easily avoid the 24 hour news channels and such, which today I'm sure are being flooded with news of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (It's also the 6 month anniversary of the March 11 earthquake in Japan.) Still, it's hard to avoid all mention of 9/11 as long as I'm hanging out online, which is mostly what I have the energy for at the moment. And the phrase I keep hearing again and again is "Never forget". I'd like to know, what exactly are we not supposed to forget?

I've been debating with myself for a while whether I should make this public knowledge, but I've decided to go ahead...because you might see something is up anyway. It's hard to write about food, when food is such a part of your health and body. Besides...it's not like a dirty secret. It's part of what I am, in early September 2011.

I've been tweeting the news from Japan in English for about 13 hours straight. It's the very least I can do.

I've been following some Japanese tweets from ordinary people too, many re-tweeted by my Twitter friend @choytan. And this one by @resaku just struck me straight in the heart.

As I was walking for 4 hours from central Tokyo, I was thinking. The sidewalks were overflowing with people, but everyone was walking stoically, in an orderly manner. The conbini (convenience stores) and other stores were all open for business as if nothing had happened. The internet infrastructure survived all the shaking, and was fully operational. All around, emergency help centers (for people trying to get home) were opened, and the commuter rail lines were soon back in operation and said to run all night. This is a great country. I don't care what our GDP rank is.

都心から4時間かけて歩いて思った。歩道は溢れんばかりの人だったが、皆整然と黙々と歩いていた。コンビニはじめ各店舗も淡々と仕事していた。ネットのインフラは揺れに耐え抜き、各地では帰宅困難者受け入れ施設が開設され、鉄道も復旧して終夜運転するという。凄い国だよ。GDP何位とか関係ない。

偉いよ、日本。皆さん頑張って下さい。

I finally got to see the movie The Social Network about three weeks ago, on a transatlantic flight. (It's kind of hard for me to catch first-run movies in the original language in theatres.) Since then, I've been quite obsessed about it. I've been checking out all the reviews, analyses, and interviews of the principals that I can find. The movie itself is really well done, as mainstream movies go. There's nary a dull moment, the acting is generally terrific, the music quite fitting. I have mixed feelings about that snap-crackle-pop dialog style that is the trademark of an Aaron Sorkin script, but it did fit the feel of the subject matter. (warning: spoilers abound below.)

Aware of what? You and your awesomeness?

Besides that last blog post, something else that Satoshi Kon posted on his blog - on August 18th, just a few days before he passed away - was a list of the 100 movies that were "chosen by the Yume Miru Kikai team".

There may be some things about Satoshi Kon's last words that may be puzzling to non-Japanese readers, so I'm going to attempt to clarify some of them. Note that this is not based on any kind of personal knowledge of Mr. Kon or his family, but just on general principles that are _atari mae_, commonly held mores and principles, in Japanese culture.