Mainly, my father lost both his lower legs and nearly died.

It wasn’t diabetes, which is by far the leading cause of such things. For reasons that have not, in spite of a large and well qualified medical staff searching over weeks and months, been fully ascertained, my father’s platelets reached a point where he had blood clots all over the place. A large one in the aorta seems to have let go, disintegrated, clogged up his legs, and denied circulation to his lower extremities. Eventually both had to be removed, one above the knee and then later the other below the knee. After the second, he was in very serious danger from stress having bodyslammed his kidneys and so forth.

From this position, he made as big a recovery as you could hope for, and has been at home for two months.

For three months, I was ‘stranded’ with my father’s newer computer, without access to my old one and without easy access to things like cookies and passwords for certain things, and besides that, I was busy, distracted and stressed. It is only now that a great deal of the issues that were coming up – mind you, issues relating to his having survived, which was not always a certainty – like insurance paperwork, property taxes, and so forth. With help from the community and from family, it has been a little less painful, and as the insurance picture clears up, we’re getting on a long term path.

On Tuesday (6th of Nov), both my father and I were visiting our surgeons, though in wildly different locations four hours apart. He’s finally been cleared for rehab; it seems there was some miscommunication involved, but that hardly matters since he wasn’t healed up enough to do it until relatively recently anyway. He did have minor rehab for coming home (and it’s better to heal at home than not, mind you), but he’s a prosthesis candidate so that’ll be the star attraction. I hope for the best. Beyond that, it’s finally time to push his tool invention forward to the finish line… and in the midst of all this, he WILL get his patent. It’ll be on half the original claims. That’s not bad at all.

For my part, my healing process was drawn out by some tissue infection that has now been completely beaten down. The final issues are extremely small compared and the emphasis now is simply on making sure there is no backsliding. My surgeon is very happy and hey, so am I. But, I’ll still have very little time for blogging; one way or another my family needs me to do things in “real life”, so I’m approaching the day when I have my full driver’s license back after a long hiatus so that I can be my father’s proper errand boy, something he does need. At present he can’t drive; his newer, better car is a standard, a dying breed to be sure. I can drive standard, but with no lower legs, he can’t; automatics can be modified however. So, I’ll be doing a lot in the interim. Until now a cousin of mine has stepped up to be a gigantic help, but his availability is time limited by “life” and I need this and my family needs this, so that’s how it is. No complaints.

So that’s how it happened. The fact of the matter is, my legs are “better than new” due to a long-term imbalance being solved. A little conservatism won’t kill me. However, the fact is, even for the blogging and for my Facebook effort, English Idioms, I’ve plucked the low-hanging fruit already. There are many things in culture which are better explained holistically; I’ve done what I can for drive-by reading, but hey, there’s a lot I’m still appreciating freshly. There’s parts of Japanese culture and language that are inspired, and others that are just crazy, like most things in this world. It seems I am destined to live it more than talk about it for a while. Best wishes to everyone, thank you, and hey, if I actually have the time to comment on something current, I’ll make the effort. Thank you, and see you later – more “mata ne” than “sayonara”.

It’s been a while since I’ve been writing in this blog, but it’s not really because of anything bad. Actually, a number of minor and major problems have been fixed so I feel like I have the luxury of blogging a little more. Part of it is health related, and I’ll keep details private, but it is good to be on the right path when it comes to health. So, I’m more 元気 (genki) in the physical health sense.

Yesterday a power outage zapped my Windows XP profile’s user settings. I was a bit worried, but after taking a large chunk of the day doing long-overdue defragging and optimizing of my boot drive (my C: drive), it’s in far better shape now. Then, a reboot successfully brought back the old settings. I guess Windows realized it needed to take a step back. In the meantime, I fixed a huge ton of registry errors with the help of a free trial of an AVG-related program. I really can’t complain about the results so far.

Actually, most of what’s been killing my blogging time is practicing writing fiction. I wanted to get back to the level I was at before I began learning Japanese some fifteen years ago (!). Or maybe it’s 16, it’s hard to recall the exact date. Anyway, I had no prospect of finding a book agent. Frankly, I still don’t. But that’s not the point here: I’m older, wiser, and have a lot more experience to draw on.

The most challenging thing right now has nothing to do with skill. Due to a rather… embarrassingly extreme amount of experience with running role-playing games for close friends, I am accustomed to a lot of character creation and development, and I have always had a knack for dialogue and writing action. It’s setting up the scenarios in a way that satisfies my amateur anthropologist mind and having a plot worth pushing that holds a lot back… and well, time. Writing sucks up a lot of time, you see.

Having said that, I’m at the point where, if I had a clear plot to work with, I could crank out mini-novels in no time at all. My typing speed is ridiculously fast compared to a lot of people, and mostly, it’s about having ideas and flow. But since plot matters, it’s not as if I want to be a fast food writer, either.

In terms of anime, I’ve caught up on some things a little, but I’ve been enjoying things other than anime where I can for quite some time. Mainly, I’ve been getting really impressed at the fundamental beauty and meticulous story crafting for Guilty Crown, one of this season’s greats that looks every bit as good as a feature film should. Animation has come a long way, though my understanding is, right around where I watched the last episode, there is a switch from computer graphics animation to more cel-based animation for the mecha.

I will say this: today’s anime can come up with some truly spectacular background shots. This has CG assistance too, apparently, but it’s not really the same; when things aren’t in motion like a giant robot, you get to appreciate all the subtleties of the extremely detailed and high resolution art involved. The vibrancy is just incredible. People in centuries past had famous painters; I have my high-res backgrounds of vast flower gardens and bodies of water. My human experience has been enriched.

Now, I will say this: I don’t necessarily want to talk just about Japan stuff here. It’s just that I can’t really walk ten feet without bumping into something related to it. While waiting for my father’s business to finish setting up for manufacturing (and for me to play secretary/ customer support/ online marketing demon), I’ve been toying with the Japanese version of the RPG Tales of the Abyss, which has some of the most incredible character development for a main character ever seen or even heard of. Of course explaining it would spoil, but the bottom line is this: I am so glad I play these games in Japanese. The voice actor casting is often what you might call, well… absolutely perfect for a given character’s personality, and this game emphasizes the characters, the personalities, and it always comes back to clinging to hope for a better future.

Another anime I caught up on is “Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukinai“. The hiragana shortened version comes off as “はがない” , which is confusing because that’s not “ha”, it’s “wa” as pronounced. Anyway, “I have few friends” is one translation suggested to me. It’s based on novels, where some of the best stuff comes from (largely due to the extremely intricate plotting and dialogue; hey, if you don’t have artists cranking out every cell, your dialogue had better be good). It’s also notable for an “anime blonde” girl who is, well… let’s just say she is popular with the masses.

But really, I’ve been distracted by the writing and other issues. I don’t want to idly rant too much about the writing stuff (and the background research I’ve been doing) to any great degree, but I just wanted to let people know the broad outline. – J

This is the audio for a Japanese lesson I put together as a free sample for someone. It’s meant to show off what I can do while providing some basic assistance that will benefit most Japanese language learners for literally years. Audio below; slides after the break.

I set the rotate time to 60 seconds to put you in firmer control. Since you also control the audio, you should be in the driver’s seat. – J