The White Queen

Winter is such an unforgiving season whose beauty only seems to become apparent and appreciated once we are insulated and protected from it. A little like the girl you secretly admire from a distance but who you can never touch. The elaborate and labyrinthine snowflake, intricate and unique in its design becomes common water in our hands and evaporates leaving nothing behind but cold emptiness.
Winters icy touch entrusts her pains to me and where she gingerly touches my cool skin I feel the old wounds deeply hidden by the years open once more and cry their anguish. Is she the harsh mistress or is it I to imply that she is the sadness and the pain? I feel it is me when I see children laughing and playing in her virgin crispness. Is it the loss I feel now that her frosty fingers no longer beckon me to come and play like they did when I was a child? Futures fortunes would have me wonder if I may leave a mark in history and yet these children are awed by the simple mark their boots leave behind in the snow. What values did I gain becoming the adult and what innocence did I lose? Can I be the child again? I feel sure that if I can just let go for a moment I can remember and once more wear such simple wonderment. A graze by the white would have me pale and pulling back from some fear that I must have learned as I grew. How much do we let go to run under her shroud with eumoiriety. Bright eyes sparkle from young faces painted with winter rouge and the laughter they share dances between them in little vaporous clouds.
Oh paint me tenderly across the drifting barren white landscapes and frozen with such a smile so that in regarding it later during moments of sadness it may warm me once more.

The small cogs of the Universe have been oiled and the
smoothness of its great rhythms and motion returns. Hitmoi is back from her working away and a little more of the balance in my life has been restored. Today we cooked home made yakisorba (Chinese style noodles) with pork, cabbage, carrot and a little ginger. It went better than expected and we were quite pleased with the results. Our home made recipe beats the instant kind or the offering from downstairs in the restaurant because we made it together for the first time and the sense of achievement is a very valuable ingredient.

If any of you guys have a blog then I'm going to strongly recommend you install Outbrain's little widget. That's the nice little widget that I have just below each of my posts that allows you to give each post a score rating from one to five. It's not just the scores that you'll get which is some kind of feedback for how well your audience appreciates each post but it also recommends other posts of a similar theme to give your readers a chance to read media of a similar vein elsewhere. This is of course reciprocated by other blogs with the same theme as yours linking back to your blog. Isn't that also a potential way to increase your readership? I guess you could simply imagine it as one big search engine connecting 'like' content. The very nice people at outbrain even helped dear Ron Sparks fit it in to his temperamental template with a customized version and the response time was quicker than that of the arrival of emergency vehicles. How often do you get customer service like that on a freebie?
Oh come on, you know you want it!
Give yourself a five star rating and use this five star widget.

シド - ２℃目の彼女 (second time girlfriend)
by SID

I removed the YouTube since they deleted it and I replaced it from Dailymotion. {03-21-09}

I really enjoy the new song from SID, second time girlfriend. I must admit that their earlier stuff didn't really appeal to me but for the last couple of years they've become a little more 'mainstream' and have become appealing to a much more wider audience I think. They started off as 'glam-rock' but have matured and not only found their very wonderful look but more importantly are finding their own sound. Mao, the lead singer is very 'glam' all by himself and I'd even watch him with the audio muted (Laughs).

Edited this post 6 hours after publishing!

Jazzy Mail

I am wide eyed and my mouth is agape. A singular and succulent piece of orange rests between the fingers of my hand that has frozen half way between my bowl of citrus segments and my now drying mouth. Silently I watch the girl who stands rigid with terror as she in turn watches the door of her moonlit bedroom slowly and almost imperceptibly start to slide open... Then my phone rings ruining the moment and shattering the illusion cast by the TV.
Alternately I could be snuggled up in my huge soft chair, lost on some distant horizon and totally absorbed by one of those un-put-a-down-able books that we are occasionally fortunate to come across, or as in your case here and now, reading my blog! (Laughs)
But all of this is just one way traffic! It's either a stream of photons from the TV or a seemingly endless parade of words from our printed pages that holds our minds captive and chained to the author's fictional world. Thanks to the progress of scientific minds and other modern day magicians, a new entity joins the books and TV sets of our homes. The miraculous marvel of the home computer and its connections to the internet came along and rapidly took pride of place because of its wonderful and unique versatility that entertained us, informed us and helped us in producing our work entered our lives. At last we have two way traffic and we have access to a machine demonstrative of true interaction. We have access to millions and millions of digitally printed pages but no longer can we only read them but now we can write them too.
It doesn't matter who we are or how small and insignificant we appear to be when we stand in the gigantic shadow of the world. We can all give voice to our thoughts and offer our opinions. We can all stand up and have our say and even the mouse may squeak.
Yet it is only so few that desire to dance while many just stand on the edges imitating the beauty of the wall-flower. So few of us play the sports and reap the benefits of participation while so many others just sit around the arena and watch from a respectful distance.
Is shyness such dominant gene across the world or shall we diplomatically call them the strong silent type?

I used to visit yahoo chat-rooms on the internet and a full room would consist of fifty logged in names. From that fifty only six to ten would talk openly in the room, three of four others might 'Spam' and advertise net pages, another seven or eight males would advertise themselves as desiring a chat partner to talk about sex and offered the strange masculine driven incentive of telling everyone how much longer their penis was than their ability to reason. Five more would be sat in silence waiting for someone to privately message them and the rest did privately message everyone and demand exclusivity and variations on that theme with the seemingly required opening of "Hi, how are you and can you tell me your age, sex and location please."
My point being that even equipped with anonymity, many are just afraid to speak openly. Whether they feel inadequate or that they would open themselves up to ridicule or they feared that their individuality would cast them as a target for a mob mentality because individuals do stand out or they go to chat simply to read what others have to say whilst having an empty head, I don't know.
Perhaps such sites as facebook and myspace and the rest that fall into the niche of social networking, all of which I utterly detest, may help alleviate this dreadful disease that prevents people from sharing their thoughts.

My blog readership is growing all the time and that makes me rather happy. I can see what brings new people here through net traffic monitoring and even if I think I write a lot of rubbish most of the time, readers still come time and time again and yet fewer than four or five actually use the comment function. Do you all agree with me? Some may use the whisper box to greet me or ask something but the key point here is that they know that in those places the public can read their words too and this seems to be a powerful dissuasive factor. It is not surprising then that several readers here prefer the privacy of actually sending me messages in email so that the world won't judge them for their words. So much for the 'publish and be damned Sir!" (Or Miss). What you say in the privacy of your personal lives is private, but don't say it online and frighten or infuriate the readers! (Laughs)

So! Delving into my mailbox I find a short request from F of Australia who says:

"Jazz, I love the songs that you have in your head is there any chance you can make 'em downloads?"

Consider it done and enjoy!

P also from Australia asks:
"Did you ever think that being a les is wrong and that it's something wrong in the brain. I think you can get therapy to fix it like hormone replacements."
I think I saw a documentary on TV once giving us the cold hard facts of current scientific theory. But speaking to you as a real human being with feelings, I follow what my heart tells me is right. I am attracted to women the same way that I think you are attracted to women. I don't believe that just because a religious passage declares it to be wrong then it is. I would ask then why would that God continue to make people with these feeling? Those books and those ideas I tend to see as old and if they say that it's a demon or some other evil nature that pulls me away from the glory of goodness that makes me do this then I believe that what I do is just different from that particular writer's idea of what is good. I am very happy being who I am and what I am and without hurting you or anyone else I have found someone who loves me and who I love very much. Is a love that hurts no one wrong?
As for fixing it, I think the adage of 'don't fix it unless it's broke' applies here. If I break a bone I'll seek medical attention and 'fix it' but in this case, there really is nothing to fix.
Thank you.

... And the last mail was from...
J from the Philippines:
I won't write down what you said, but thank you so much for such a kind offer and I'm so sorry that I have to refuse you. Hitomi and I are not legally bound but we do wear each others rings.

Finally I'd like to say that yesterday I was quite devastated. I really didn't know how to feel or what to say and you all know it would take something huge to make Jazz lost for words! (laughs) I was having an early lunch because a looming long afternoon of meetings when my cell buzzed. I had been expecting a call from Hitomi who is due back home on Saturday morning. I was surprised to see Be-be on my caller ID.

Bebe is a really wonderful woman. She has a keen mind, a ruthless business manner and has such a kind heart. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away Miss Bebe managed a lot of my affairs and looked after all the intricacies of my little empire that involved such things as the legal aspects of my various contracts and stood for me and spoke for me in many situations. She hadn't always been so. When I first met her she was doing the same thing for another girl who shall remain nameless because I cannot say anything good about her. At that time I was under the wing of my mentor and I made the mistake of mixing business and pleasure. That spoiled it all for me because when it finally went sour, I was laying in the ruins of a broken universe. Bebe was one of so few who stood for me as a person and supported my frail ego and convinced me that I was not as worthless as I believed I was. Eventually she took his place professionally and we developed a friendly relationship on top of a working one but that's another story and simply my way of telling you who Bebe is.

"You will never guess what?" she shouted down the phone at me.
"What is it?" I asked slightly off balance.
"Your ex-mentor is in court on fraud charges!" she shouted enthusiastically.
Did I need the phone I wonder? I'm sure the whole world could have heard her.
I was shocked. This man was a genius, this man had a serious business mind, a rich life-style, a beautiful wife (OK, I did say something good about her but no more than that!) and doors opened for him that would be closed to many others. Yet here he was fallen from grace and reduced to the level of a common criminal.
This was my ex boyfriend, the man I'd met just three months ago when he presented me with an outstanding business plan that looked too good to be true and without any hindsight at all, I turned down because of how I felt about him and the feeling that I was extracting some form of revenge by looking interested and walking all the way to the edge before turning around to walk away with a polite refusal. Perhaps it was too good to be true but my reasons for refusing were not because of the plan of itself.
Oh my stars, I could have been in association with a common criminal.

I don't know what I felt really. I was not happy to see him reduced to this. He is guilty of trying to sell something he no longer had and he even accepted a large sum of money as part payment.
If he no longer has deep pockets to start paying the money back then its prison for him.
I actually laughed and thought about karma and then I felt bad because that was wrong of me to think that. I owe him a lot for all the good he did in my life and I forgive him for all the bad he did.
With an acknowledgment that when a phone rings moments can be shattered, I better remain neutral on this.

Back on the subject of traffic to this site: I am suddenly getting hits from many places in the world especially Hawaii, Mexico, Colombia, Italy and Bangladesh and all seeking out my brief post on seoblogreviews. I would guess that Giotto De Filippi is continuing this spam-scam!

Throwing Momo from the train

Being squashed onto an overcrowded train is not always an ideal situation and it makes me wonder in a scientific way about material density and the point where it reaches critical mass. Thankfully it appears rare that I ever see people explode and now that I've said that I'm contemplating retracting that statement. No! Let it stand while I sit down and let's not mention black holes here!
Anzu and I squeezed onto the train at Ebisu and she at once jumped into an empty seat. It was very nice to have a gentleman sitting next to her considerately stand and offer me his seat. I thanked him and obligation over. I casually regarded the advertising above the windows. Anzu made herself comfortable and her eyes closed and like so many in here, she decided to pass the journey in an unconscious state. I said goodbye to the prospect of conversation and any other mutual intimacy!
There are only so many advertisements and stored text messages that you can read before boredom starts nudging at the corners of your mind.
Oh I wish I'd picked up that magazine now from the vendor but I realize that if I did I would have missed this train and the advertising message saying how much apricot tea is so beneficial to me. That's funny really, you all know Momo is a peach right? Anzu can also mean apricot. All aboard the fruit salad train then! Would you like cream with that?

After a while you tend to forget how impolite it is to just stare at other people but I think it's natural that we do even if it's just to see how they seem to be coping with the boredom that quickly creeps along the train like a shadow of night chasing away the day. Of course should they be doing the same thing then I quickly look away! I hide behind my act of feigned interest in the contents of my iPod.
The man who stood up for me is reasonably smartly dressed in his light gray suit that's not quite of the Hugo Boss cut and has too many ironed creases running up the legs, but its ok. The suit ill matches his dark green tie and dark blue shirt. He carries a briefcase that could possible contain his lunch but not much else as it seems far to light in his hand. His other hand holding on to the strap seems encumbered by a gold watch of equal weight and probable value as his briefcase. His heavy glasses don't really hide the fact that he keeps glancing down the rather exposed neckline of the girl sitting next to me who carries a scent like the end of a rain-storm.
She has a magazine and is oblivious to her admirer and is more interested in Maybelline's define-a-lash volumiser and I must admit it does look attractive as I peek into her pages. I may have to try some and with that I feel the power of advertising tingle once more inside of me.
My feet are actually dancing to my iPod now so I must be happy but I accidentally kicked the man standing in front of me who appreciates plunging necklines.
Sorry I say and adjust my shoes as if I had temporarily lost control over them and sometimes I do! If only this place was a chat room on the internet, I'd soon have these people smiling. I'm a living dead girl in a train full of zombies!

The girl across from me is pretty interesting though. She is looking at everyone and writing down notes in her little Pucca notebook. She could be writing a shopping list or a secret love letter or anything really but from the way she looks intently at people and then quickly scribbles notes down and then back to an engrossed stare at the next person, it is almost is if she is noting down descriptions of people as if she needed to ascribe a set of characters for her up-coming new novel. I'd love to know what she wrote down about me! I like to think that she described me as a raven haired beauty with a soft sense of innocence written across my pale milk skin with deep and dark eyes in which you can peer all the way through to my soul. Hey I'm the one writing so I can say what I feel, right? Ha-ha!
I wonder if I will also be the heroine of her story with a description like that or the villain about to take control of the world.
I like writing stories myself and it is only because of an association with my old friend Ron Sparks that I ever tried writing little articles of fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. So I'd like to say many thanks to him for sharing his passions with me. Coincidentally I was also talking to another Ron last night I think I may have inspired him to create a little work of fiction again. I shall enjoy that when that comes along because I don't think that he's been inspired since he was created his story China Blue some time ago and that was due to the inspiration of another person. So I'm really happy that I see the desires to create burn within him once more. Although I'm a little disappointed that he won't get Bruce Willis to play the part when it hits the silver screen and he won't use my working title of "Try hard with a pension' but my mouth waters in anticipation of its arrival as much as the prospect of a date with Nelly Furtado.
And now that I've announced it to the world dear Ron, you have much more pressure on you, greater expectations and you'll need bigger excuses if you let me down Ha-ha!

The boy sitting next to her seems to be the lost type who lives most of his life in Internet cafes. He wears old clothes and he's unshaven and slightly trembling hands holding his Naruto comic book. His eyes quickly darting from panel to panel almost staccato like lends to a character more robot-like than human. He probably spends the rest of his money on games and action figures.

Yeah I'm probably cruel for thinking those things with no foundation or reason except its how I felt as I watched. I think it is a good thing that I'm not the psychic they visit or else my clients won't pay me for such dark and ominous feelings.
We and nearly everyone else leaves by the time we reach Ueno and so ends my minds insane attempts at easing boredom. What do you do on a train?
While 'Miss you never miss me when I'm here' is still away until Saturday I am like the robot man I saw on the train and cuddle up to something warm, soft and cute and something I can't get into trouble over! Teddy loves me!

Great news that I've finally had a quick word with my sister and how quickly the worries of speculation and idle gossip disappears once I talked with her and hear it first hand. She disappeared for a while and it was so out of character and unlike her that we did worry and we did wonder...
She is not the story teller but is a much more private girl and I believe she has good reason to be so because she has a lot of responsibility handed to her. As much as she wants to run free, sing and play, she knows her duty and accepts it with a maturity that would belie her young years.

On the day that the USA swears in a new President, there seems to be a great pilgrimage of Americans here heading out towards Nagasaki prefecture. I wonder why? Above and beyond skin color, which seems to be a large if shallow talking point about him, I feel that he is a strong and capable politician and America needs someone like that now, a man in touch with the hopes and dreams of the people who put him there. Mr Bush may have faded long before today but Mr Obama's strength has been there to give hope for the future.


Click this if you think it's sexy and want a better look!

I have decided to remove the encryption that I had installed here. The encryption and decryption algorithms were stored as a javascript routine on a separate, and it appears unreliable, server that made the overall loading time of my page unacceptably long. It is not that I use it that much or really have a need for it can be consigned to the dark and often forgotten drawer of ideas that almost made it.

I appear on another bloggers reading links: Thank you Sweet Vredinka

More from my notebook

Saturday morning we woke at 4am to get 'Miss have talent will travel' ready to go to Osaka on her early morning train and I just couldn't sleep after she left so I threw our laundry in the machine and hand washed other small items. A little determination and effort on a decision like that is sometimes regretted by the fatigue that was hiding all along. Halfway through I was wishing I had gone to bed and tried to sleep but you know how that is! Damn errors of judgment. Never plan or do things when you are really tired.

Eventually I did get to bed but the wakeful hours took a large part of my morning and so when I finally woke it was almost lunch time. The good news being that when I did wake I didn't have the laundry on my list of tasks! I made a point of tidying the utilities room where we keep so much in storage. There are so many boxes of memories that we perhaps we no longer need but they are all there and we are still reluctant to part with them despite what I said to myself when we saw Aya bag up her 'clutter' last year. I must be so sentimental that when it comes to the tangible connections and evidence of my memories, it is almost as if these things were a part of me. I found a box of CD's that belonged to my old flame, Tety, and as I looked through them I decided to play some on my portable player from the gym. Well I call it a gym but it once was a bedroom. One song in particular made me think of him a lot and I put it on repeat because it seemed to be all about us and how we were and what we went through but now it's stuck in my head and it won't go away. It's the current song in my head now and love sometimes really can be a four letter word!

I met up with Anzu, a girl from work, for a dinner date and a discussion of a project we are going to be working on together over the next week and everything was fine. Meal and business over, she invited me up to her home and we sat there with a chuhai (a fruit alcohol drink) and chatted for a while about work in general, the restructure and its possible consequences and of course others who work with us.
We stopped talking when MTV showed one particular video, a Chinese song called fairytale by Michael Guang Liang and as we watched and listened, it came to the part where they were watching love letter on TV and she cried in the video and I know that I had tears welling up inside me and I just began to cry too and once I started, so did Anzu.



The world forgets me, but you never did!
Translated lyrics

It was one of those moments where we just reached out and hugged each other for all of the comforts that only the close touch of an empathic embrace can offer and I am such a sucker for the closeness of a human touch, especially of a lovely girl like Anzu. Sigh! The things that I began to think about do not warrant me writing them down here. I can only say that while I do acknowledge being human with all of my emotional frailties and my unruly feelings I have to be strong and remember who and what is important to me. It was warm and comfortable there in that place and that moment but that's another girl and she's on another planet...
She's not even that way inclined and there I am with most of my fantasies flashing through my mind like a thousand DVD players screening ten thousand 'what if scenarios' on a continual play loop!
I just went home. There are no 'what if's' and journeys to other planets for me. What any of us do in our fertile imaginations never hurts anyone. Only when some of the things that we try to make real, things that should never be made real that can hurt others shows that some don't really care about others and they selfishly demand and crave constant self gratification.
Even if she was on my gurl planet, trying to make that fantasy real is not worth risking one evening of delight against the risk of losing my partner for life. Short term can never ever compare to long term.
I'll just wait for her call and take strength from that!

I see that the talk is all about the ceasefire in Israel and all the good and all the bad and people outside taking sides.
Israel was meant to be the home for the displaced Jewish people and the Palestine area as it was then was divided in 1947 to create a land for both the Arabs and the Jews. Israel is surrounded on all sides by enemies who will persecute them at every possible instance and they always have been persecuted for centuries. They are in my eyes a very resilient, brave and strong people. I admire the Israelis very much. Hamas is an organization originally created by Israel to undermine its old enemy, the PLO but now it bites the hand that created it.

Where over strict and demanding religions become infused with politics is where problems can start, especially when there is little room for alternate interpretations. Any Muslim who loves Allah and takes to heart the holy words in the Koran can never accept Israel and this is why I look at the proposed ceasefire cynically. No Muslim can accept Israel as a Jewish state without going against the holy words of his Koran because the Koran defines the Jewish people as dhimmi and since the Koran is the perfect word by a perfect God there can be no contradiction contained within it. The existence then of a strong and proud Jewish nation is an insult to their hearts and makes a lie of one of their founding beliefs. For a non Muslim to understand this, imagine if the Bible said that dark skinned people were second class. Obama would have been lucky to receive an education in a Bible loving, God fearing nation never mind lead America if this madness was transposed there.
Hamas in my opinion follow the right tactic of hit and run against a superior military force if this was a war, but it is not a war in my opinion and I know that's open to question and interpretation. Hamas are without honor when they fire weapons from within schools and hospitals and hide behind innocents knowing that when retaliation comes, they can point an accusing finger at the horror of the atrocities caused by the other side. There could be a diplomatic solution that would save the lives of the innocent on both sides if only Hamas were not so proud, not so arrogant and inflexible and stuck to a page of ancient words without room for compromise.
I have no sympathy for Hamas or other groups who try to make Israel the villain and make their own pettiness seem like some heroic cause. These poverty stricken Arab nations are run by corrupt officials whose only concern is to remain in power and they care not for the people that they are supposed to govern. They allow radicalization to give their people an enemy and a target of their anger and frustrations away from the real cause of their fall from ancient heights.
Israel can not expect a lasting peace or a treaty or ceasefire to last long. This is merely the way of life they have to sadly become accustomed to. There is only one solution to this situation without intervention of outside nations. That solution is a Muslim voice crying out for an end to war and to point to a path of peace. Sadly this won't happen because he would be cut down by his own kind for being a traitor. They walk a path of death, destruction and eternal war and although many see the way out, it is a direction that they are not allowed to take. The common people of Islam can never be great again unless they rise up and remove their present style of leadership. Your glory gone, all that remains now is that you try to convince a world who is not as blind as your own people that you are the victims in the sorrowful affair.

I'll say 'Hi' to a new reader from the Whittier area of California and 'Hi' to you from Singapore who both call often. Thanks for enjoying my pages both of you and everyone who visits.

Scrapbook

Sometimes I feel as if I am an automaton with the way my life passes in routine format and another busy week evaporates with the sun being a stranger but I earned the right to get away early on Friday which is as a warm smile over and above the sense of achievement from a wonderfully productive time at work. I have heard of a questioning phrase which asks, "Live to work or work to live" and I don't quite understand it. Apparently it alludes to the extremes of how we work and stresses the first point of work as being almost your sole reason to live and then jumps across the range to its opposite of just going in and just completing your assigned task and then start looking forward to a time you can leave.
How would it be then if it was your own business? Would you increase your efforts and improve your dedication and you create a more positive attitude and would such positive results bring you reward and joy as you saw your business become a success? Does working for someone else then excuse you to make less of a contribution?
I love to give my best at work and I give that extra effort and that's just the way I am. I believe it's the way we all are in the office. I believe that this will not only benefit the company as a whole but will also benefit me in terms of being well thought of as a loyal employee and when we begin our imminent restructure I won't be lost in the background. Perhaps this had been in the planning stage for quite a while but the present condition of the global markets has accelerated the introduction. At the end of the restructure we should be more streamlined, more efficient and more profitable. When viewed analogously as the artist creating a carved sculpture from a piece of wood, I would like to be a part of the final masterpiece and not a shaving cast off upon the floor to be swept away later.
Why change something if it works?
A lazy thought offered by those who fear change. Change is imminent and we all undergo it all of the time and in all aspects of our lives, even aging changes us. But change does not have to mean dismantling what is there if it works. As an example, the engine in our cars works on the same principle has it has been for many years but today's engines are vastly superior in design, performance and efficiency than those of yesteryear. We are creatures of habit but we overlook how much we are also creatures of adaptability.
It could all change and in just a single heartbeat!

Hitomi was a little upset before we sat down to dinner and when I asked her why she remarked that whenever 'we' decide to do something it's always done 'my way' and I listened to her and I began to feel really awful too. I think that we naturally fell into the roles of one of us taking the lead but I admitted that I hadn't realized that this had included dominance over our decision making. I apologized at once and while wondering how long this has been in her mind, I also wondered how long I feel it had been this, always or recently? When we are physical she takes the lead and that is how both of us like it but now she says she wants to feel the equality in other areas of our relationship and also our decision making.
I at once hugged her and told her that I loved her. Is that reassurance for the both of us?
It's great she tells me her heart because she so easily sees into mine and I said to her, "You take the lead tonight, where shall we go?"
She looked in my eyes and smiled and said "I don't know Momo, where would you like to go?"
That made us both laugh but she decided on Advocates which is a popular bar on the corner just two blocks before our usual dive, the Mars. When we arrived the place was packed full and spilling its exuberance into the street and it's just too cold on the outside of the huddled penguin pack and too much more effort to fight your way to the bar past all of the distractions and stray hands. We backtracked a little and tried the tamago which is an exquisite girls only bar. This was our first time in there and quite a warm and serene atmosphere it was too. It's nice to check out new places and of course we had what we expected in that everyone gave us the eye as we made our way to the bar and they checked us out. The bar hostess was a very masculine looking girl but very appealing and friendly and after a little chat with her, Hitomi whispered into my ear that when we spoke of her we would refer to her as 'gentle-butch' ha-ha. It did not feel like the place where you can just let go and be the party animal like we do in the Mars bar but this place had a much more refined and subdued aura about it with a dressing of elegance of the corporate kind rather than the cocktail dresses and silver dinner service. We sank rather than relaxed into the soft comfortable chairs and sipped from our long tall glasses. I don't know what it is that I felt and I know I complain that sometimes the girls at the Mars go too far sometimes but here I definitely felt as if the girls looking at us had repressed frustrations and wanted us to join their assertion classes.
Oohh dominatrix! Tie me up and whip me where it won't show!
We stayed for two drinks only and then decided that this wasn't quite us in tonight's mood or clothes and headed out into the cold night holding each others warm hands. We ended up in the Mars after all and felt much better as we were greeted with the warm smiles from familiar faces and here we know that we could really relax and that my dear friends, is the purpose of a nice night out!

It's good that you occasionally see yourself though someone else's eyes.
It can be as shocking as hearing your own voice recorded for the first time and you ask incredulously, I don't sound like that do I?
Now it's I don't look like that in your eyes do I?
Every mirror I have seems to be one taken from the amusement park and distorts me in so many different and unusual ways!

I'm not straight and neither are my mirrors. How ironic! But having seen the image from the other side gives me something constructive to work on. Life is like dancing through mazes and we are led through it by many different ways. If she allows me the lead at the start do I lead on to the end? Of course not and I would go anywhere that she would lead me too! Taking the lead is not a bad thing for either of us in whichever situation that we feel comfortable in doing so as long as that lead is not an overpowering dominance and stifles the other.

After a visit to a new bar I ask, who likes my new title-bar? I said goodbye to the saxophone motif on the 5-line music paper background and made it look like a little more 'Jazzy' and aligned it artistically to how I feel. I think it represents me well!

Inside Jazz

What is important in life?
This sounds like one of those questions that you find in self-help books or perhaps your religious leader may ask it of you. It is of course natural to be obsessed with the present and in this world driven by economics perhaps the thought of making money would come to mind? Yes we need money to survive, to live in this world and to take an active place in it unless we decide to give it all up and live our lives in solitude, in a cave and become a reclusive hermit.
I have recently been talking with a few of my Chinese friends and I must admit that they as a group are typical of the business mind sets that see making money as a normal part of life. It is a legitimate goal for them to aim for and honestly I am not pointing at the Chinese race as a whole here but they themselves, my group of friends declare it to be an almost 'Chinese cultural thing.' I am not saying this is a right or wrong answer. I think it is very important to have some goal in life rather than none. Having money certainly makes our lives easier and when we leave this world, perhaps our children may benefit from all we have earned and amassed. I can testify to that by being the daughter of a man who spent a great deal of his life making his business a successful one.

But really how important is it in the list of life's priorities when compared to other aspects of life? Let me ask you the same question but in a slightly different way.
If next week you are on your deathbed and I sit next to you holding your hand and I ask you what the biggest regrets in your life are, how would you answer me?
Will you be sad at all the money that you now won't be able to earn?
Would you perhaps be sad at the friendships you won't be able to nurture?
I'm not going to preach to you and tell you how you should be answering. If you are not a person with an empty head then you may already have some idea of what is important in your life and your answer does not have to match with the next person to answer. You know your life and you know what opportunities you have already taken or lost and you may have a fair idea of where the path of you life is heading. If you truly don't know or can't bring to mind what is important to you and you want to know I only have one piece of advice to you. Ask an older person, your Grandparent or someone of their generation what was and is important in their lives. What about if you ask them 'what they would do in their lives differently if they had that chance?'
So back to the deathbed which I hope and pray that yours and mine are many many years away yet but it will inevitably come one day. When my day comes I hope that I can say I lived, I loved and was loved and I filled my life with many different experiences. I hope that people who survive me will remember me kindly and I hope to do that by the way I live my life now and in the future.

I am not perfect by any standard. I drink too much and waste my time in foolish pursuits and have done some bad things in my life. I can say that there are some people who don't like me for perhaps many reasons. Perhaps it is because of my nationality and my nation's history. Perhaps it is because I am not the quiet girl who sits quietly in the corner. I will speak out especially against what I judge to be injustice, ignorance or even arrogance. Perhaps because of my sexual preferences I may be declared abnormal. I am judged and found guilty by those who never look in the mirror at their own moral standards. I can't even begin to list the possible reasons why someone would like to resent or hate me but that doesn't matter to me at all because I can say that they are not so important to me and I forgive them and I hope that they will grow with understanding and tolerance. What does matter to me are the people who are now in or one day will come into my life.

How did I first find out about my sexual orientation is a question I was asked recently by a regular reader here.
WARNING:
Reader discretion required: What follows is an open and honest entry about sex.

I think really it was when I was sixteen and Erika came into my life. She was a girl that I had heard of to be "Onnabe" (a girl having masculine or lesbian tendencies) and some girls shunned her. Not many from my group did. I was aware of certain feelings within my own body, ones that we all develop as we grow and ones that strongly direct our interest towards certain people.
Terutaka was my sweetheart and best male friend at the time but he never tried to touch me or anything bad or improper. It took a long time for him to even have the courage to kiss me for the first time. It was a very awkward and clumsy moment. I think we had dated for five months before he ever tried being that close. Of course at the time I didn't understand the inner conflicts that he and lots of boys of his age had to endure. I simply thought bad boys wanted to have sex with us and good boys were polite, well mannered and respected our feelings and there was all kinds of in between situations across the range of that scale. Yes life was so simple, so uncomplicated and so black & white back then.
I think why I loved Terutaka was that he was so patient with me, so understanding and so gentle and he never pressured me at all.
But in secret I dreaded what would happen if he had ever tried to go further.
Lucky for me it didn't and because it didn't the world was to be forever changed. For my own strange feelings inside of desiring other girls led me to a great confusion and after hearing the stories about Erika I wondered if this was what I was? I wondered if there was something wrong with me or was I a man born into a girl's body? Even if that didn't make sense it was difficult for me to try to fit what I felt inside and to know my place, my identity and fit it all into the standard and normal model of life as I had been taught.

Back at school and lots of girls teased Erika and I really admired the way that she was indifferent to their taunting, it was as if she was invulnerable and nothing could hurt her and I really wanted to be like that. I had been in fights with some girls if they were unkind to me in a bad way. I was small but I was a pretty good fighter for a girl.

A year or two earlier I had been skipping with a rope and I fell over and cut my knee and torn my skirt. I did a bad thing because I took some of the blood from my leg and wiped it on my nose and mouth and went home. My Father saw me and was enraged and asked if some man had...
I lied and said that some girls from our rival school had seen me alone and after a difference of opinions they had attacked me.
The reason I lied was because my elder brothers were learning karate and when I asked if I could join them, my Father had refused my request saying that it was not something for a girl to know. He was very traditional and old fashioned in his ways.

I said I wished my brothers had been there to defend me then I would not have had to suffer this, or if I had skills to defend myself...

My father reconsidered and relented and I was duly enrolled into the school and I learned how to defend myself.

Where was I?

Oh yes! So one day the admirable Erika was again simply ignoring the wicked chants of the Obatarien, the girl with the loudest mouth, but this time she went to beat Erika as if to prove a righteous point from an aggressive move.
I was small in school, smaller than I am now and I wasn't a leader but I had many friends mainly because some of the girls had father's who worked in my fathers local business. Some friends were genuine ones and didn't befriend me for 'other' reasons and so I was not alone really when I told this big mouth girl to back away and leave Erika alone.
I am the heroine in my own stories you know.

But I learned many things on that day.

• When you challenge someone for whatever reason in a heated moment, it's a good idea to leave them some room to save face.
• Big mouth girls are sometime people who cannot physically enforce empty threats.
• When you protect someone they become greatly indebted to you.
• If you fight and win, you still get hurt.

During the weeks following that, Erika and I became closer. I still wasn't even sure if what was said about her was true but I knew that I had hoped to learn about myself from her and I secretly harbored the desires that I would like to try with her.

That fateful day came when I was in her room watching music videos on TV. I can't remember what we were talking about but I had this insistence growing inside to ask her and so I did.
"Erika, the things they say about you, is any of it true?"
She had never tried to touch me and I didn't really understand what signs to look for and so I had no other way of finding that truth other than to simply ask.
She replied something like "Would I be upset or afraid if they were?"
I laughed.
We all laugh defensively when we confront something that is uncomfortable but after I promised to still be her friend no matter how she answered, she had said that it was true. Because she had tried it with another girl and that other girl had told someone else and then the rumors had simply spread out until it was a complete set of total lies and nothing even like what had really happened. Rumors have a habit of growing out of proportion even if the seed of truth was never there to begin with! People rarely accept a good thing said about you but easily accept a bad idea.

So perhaps Erika wasn't really a lesbian after all but had simply tried and experimented. It took me another hour of talking with her for me to tell her that I'd like to try also. At first Erika thought that I meant a meeting with this other girl but was a little surprised when I said not with the other girl, but with her.
I wasn't sure if she was nervous or undecided but she looked at me for a long time and I remember because I though I had said something wrong and I was trying to think what it was?
But she came and sat next to me and asked why?
I told her that for some reason the thought of being close to a boy just didn't feel right.
I told her of Terutaka, but he had only kissed me three or four times and never even tried to touch me never mind to see if I will reject or accept him.

She put her arm around me in the friendliest of ways and asked how I felt?
I nodded and smiled and said that I was comfortable.
She put her hand on my thigh and I still nodded and it went up under my skirt and between my legs to the top.
I felt a rush of feeling and of growing hot and I put my arms about her and hugged her and I remember feeling so good about holding her close to me. It was the sense of relief and a freedom from a great worry. For some reason, most likely shame, I didn't want her to see my face as she was touching me down there. Her fingers moved inside my panties and gently stroked my flower in a wonderful way. It felt so good that tingles and shooting stars dancing across my spine. I am sure I had an orgasm right there in her arms and as she went to fully remove my underwear I stopped her.
So we just sat there and kissed for a while. She asked if I'd like to touch her and I said "No". I think it was because I was feeling very uncomfortable and guilty and I felt a strong need to go home and shower.

I didn't see her for a week after that because of school vacation time but she saw me in class the next week and asked if I was OK. I said that I was and she asked if I would like to come over again and I nodded eagerly.

The next time was better and mutual because I tried to do to her what she did to me and she removed her clothes and showed me what I was suppose to be doing. I allowed her to undress me once I had seen her and I really thought she was beautiful and I was greedy in wanting her to make me feel good all the time. It took me some time learning from her what I can do to myself and then do to her and then I remember feeling very satisfied on the day that I made her orgasm.

We'd go over to her house when her parents were out and we'd undress and lie in her bed just holding each other, often she would show me something new and each time I loved it. Licking and massaging and we used the handle of her dad's screwdriver as a toy because we certainly never had a real toy.

Damn! I remember sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and we were doing homework together. Her Mother was washing the dinner plates and her Father was mending a chair and using the screwdriver. We didn't notice really until he needed two hands to put the wood together and he put it in his mouth.

"Yuck!" he said "This screwdriver tastes funny!"
I think I went extremely red in the face.

I remember her saying to me that we'd be lovers forever and that we were only meant for each other. We promised ourselves to each other and never any boys! The school gossip never seemed to hear about us because Erika had learned from her lessons. In those days it was something wild but something hidden whereas today I am quite open about it but I don't flaunt it. The next summer she and her parents went to America and sadly I never saw or heard from her again.

It is my opinion that a lot of girls wonder what it might be like with another girl. I know some may reject the idea. Some will just wonder for a moment and then forget about it. Some may try it once. I tried it with males and I guess that just wasn't right for me. I also think that a lot of heterosexual people misjudge us, don't understand us, condemn us and have very distorted opinions of us. I say it's OK to dislike us if you want, but at least make the effort and try to understand what it is that you like and what it is that you hate. Never be driven by ignorance and sadly my friends, there is a world full of that outside your door!

Although I still adhere to my belief of what is right for me, I no longer practice Karate, even though I earned my black belt after eight hard years of devotion and leaning lots about myself on the spiritual side. Now I have changed direction so to speak and I now practice the harmonious and spiritual flowing art of Aikido, but I am still a novice. Aikido is circular you know while Karate is straight. Jazz is not comfortable being straight!!!

I'll say "hi" to another new reader and blogger from Poland. Thank you for reading me and I am very sorry but I cannot read Polish. Is the title of your page 'Twisted Ovaries?' That sounds intriguing!

Who stole the sun?

The scene opens in a darkened bedroom and I lay there in the night with perhaps only one eye trying to sleep but the other one was suddenly wide open staring out into the darkness desperately trying to detect and perceive what unexpected noise had awakened me. The heat of the previous day bleeds away and as reality around us contracts, it does so with its accompanying orchestral creaks, groans and bumps that a mind about to fall into sleep will instantly wake to with senses honed as it feels out another unknown phantom bumping in the night. I have tried to sleep and I cannot despite the fatigue of the day still aching inside my muscles and the liberal servings of hot chocolate before I hid myself under my duvet. Eventually as the bumping ghosts either faded away with heat loss and no more contractions or the distance of my slipping consciousness pulled me too far away from the noise, I fell asleep for a brief moment. A dream of distant drums!
I am almost instantly awakened by Ayaka Hirahara, singing ironically 'Nocturn' on the radio. I wonder where my ‘night’ went. Admittedly it is a sweet love song but I could so easily fall asleep in the arms of my love to this and I can't sleep now no matter how appealing the prospect seems to be.
With a great effort I make my decision and I get out of bed now and it is dark and far too quiet. Ssshhh! The city that never sleeps is dozing quietly in the corner.

The city is almost lethargic and we view it monochromatically to compliment the quiet and desolate mood. The windows in the buildings around me are as lifeless black and sightless eyes that remain unaware of the emptiness surrounding them. My taxi arrives and I am whisked through more of the cold endless night, past orange and white street lights that rush toward us. They bravely hold back the envelope of night that would swallow us whole should we off the headlights. Where is the moon? Who would we embrace if we could not see in such darkness? Hold high your lights to stay back the shadows.
How very different the world is outside your door when seen without assistance from a Google search!

The day slowly passes through monotone meetings and long hours staring at my monitor and the drumming of my fingers across this old bruised keyboard. My work slowly increasing in byte size which reminds me to eat and I do so to the music of my colleagues' stories but my mind sleeps past glazed but open eyes and the gentle consumption of pasta. A digest of the food order as I compose myself which is a wish I would gladly pass on to my work as I make ready to create order from chaos once more. And later as I get ready to go home I notice an apologetic note from the sun saying that he was so sorry that he missed me. It is dark once more but this time the city is awake and it pulsates to the beat of Shibuya with a Tsuyoshi Noguchi flavor and the rush home is slowed drastically by the vibrant but dense masses. The pre-dawn silence becomes the cascading waterfall of daylight and evolves into the thick viscous and tenacious goo of the shadow inked but well oiled city machine of the night.
The darkness of the early morning and the darkness of the living night hide away my sun and the short days in between remain unnoticed whilst I am cocooned within fluorescent corridors and the hum of the machinations of this modern world. The clockwork yields to the digital lifestyle but I'm not too tired to play with obscure references yet. 'An a log for the fire' if you please!

Here is something for you to try. How many songs can you think of that has 'the night' as part of or referenced by the title? On the way home last night I was amazed at how many of my favorite songs used that term as if the awe of the mystery of the darkness was something magical. Unilluminating times indeed!

So ends this acherontic entry. I hope to see you all soon beyond the Cimmerian landscapes.

Love, true love is to ask nothing in return
You are my destined soul mate
Your love, adoring eyes
We can see the light because we know the darkness
Everything has meaning, even campanula in the wind

Each one of us has pain and sorrow
Sheds a secret tear
But drops of your tears will fall to the earth and
Welcome new life into the world again and again with love

Love, true love is to ask nothing in return
Fated love that is meant to last
My love, your gentle gaze
A drop of your soul within me that I adore
Everything has an end, but we'll be united

My love, your gentle gaze
A drop of your soul within me that I adore
Everything has an end, but we'll be united

Nocturn

Additional:
It is Saturday and I go home at lunch time! I smile at the distant sun in the sky and the city now seems vastly different from how it wore its monochromes at 4am.
'Let there be light!' she said.

... And there was light.
And Jazz saw that it was good, so damn good!
Be gone creatures of the night.

Reduced by more than fifty percent!

Since I have been inundated by the sheer number of comments that my last post generated with all of you rushing to tell me what your New Year resolutions were, I have had to limit the space that I can devote to applauding your ambitions and goals. I guess any of us could make a determined attempt to change some aspects of our life-styles, which appears to be the main area of resolutions made, at any time of the year. But it seems a little more note-worthy if we make an announcement of intent on December 31st. It somehow lends an aura of a much greater authority as if our determination is somehow amplified and endowed with some consolidated strength. A few of my friends have chosen to lose weight or try to gain it, one is trying to stop smoking cigarettes and one even declares to get herself a better job. I am happy with my weight (yes I bit my tongue when I said that!), I don't smoke and I am very happy with my job. Instead I have chosen to improve myself and try to read more books and make sure that I find the time to share with my family and friends. Strangely enough I also feel that due to fate having a complete and utter disregard for all of our best laid plans and intents, that I could be writing these exact same promises next year.

Slowly but surely the stores here are reporting losses and reductions in their monthly sales of goods each month, which just proves that even we are not immune to such ills as this present economic climate brought down to its knees by the global financial crisis. January sees more massive reductions, especially in the clothing stores, which have unfortunately suffered the greatest trading deficits and loss of business. In an attempt to tempt us back into spending, prices have been slashed. Now is the time then, if we have the money, to pamper ourselves and take advantage of such huge price reductions. Of course the only problem is carrying it all, especially when you have just one overnight bag and one small suitcase and add that to the fact that you are three hours away from home. Nagahori-dori is a paradise and you just can't see it all in the space of a few hours. Oh I want it all and the little desire demon sits smugly on my shoulder and whispers into my ear that this lilac frill front chiffon blouse would look absolutely divine with my satin pencil skirt and the diesel rinse wash denim skirt will compliment my blues... oh and Hitomi loves these buckled pointed ankle boots with the 'V' style trim... you see how it escalates and with such appealing prices the desire demon almost falls off of my shoulder with hysterics at my undecided 'shall I' or shan't I' position. So in his distraction I just sit him on the stand next to the attractive mannequins and hope I can sneak away without him following me. It's a good plan until I get ten meters away from the store and then see what's on offer in the Avirapink promotional display and their mouth-watering reductions and of course my demon follows me in with a big smile on his silly face.

Three hours from home I just said and that's because I'm back in Osaka for a couple of days while Hitomi has a venue here and in her business, work is work and you take it when you can get it and I suppose that applies to any vocation. After our little shopping excursion she hurries off to meet with her appointment and I'm back in the hotel room and it's the same man who helps me getting on-line as it was the last time I was here in September as I try to connect to the internet.

After my unappetizing dinner for one, I sat in the hotel bar with a dry and nicely chilled Sauvignon Blanc and January's copy of 'Pinky' magazine. My head is pointing down towards my magazine but my eyes are staring up as I watched two girls across the bar have a massive argument in very hushed and subdued tones. Have you ever done that and peering over your eye glasses too? One shouts at the other in a barely audible whisper and then the other tries to shout whisper over the top of the first girl to dismiss whatever she might have been trying to say and try to impress upon her that her point of view is of greater validity. Then they both look 'round to see if they've disturbed the others in the room or if anyone is starring at them. I looked around too and not many were looking at them or if they were, then like me they were doing it in a discreet and surreptitious manner.

The problem with being a single girl in the bar is that I seem to be a valid target for the attentions of all the single gentlemen. OK that might be an over-statement because only three of the eight or nine actually approached me and offered to buy me a drink and chat with them and all of them were foreigners. One even having the fresh indentations on the skin of his ring finger of a recently removed ring! I just want to purchase a nice drink and sit with the soft background music and my magazine and enjoy the reserved but human atmosphere rather than sit alone in a deathly quiet, sterilized and totally impersonal hotel room. When I say alone, I mean by myself but not totally cut off from human contact so in the bar I can enjoy being alone and not feel like I have been separated from planet Earth. So after apologetically lying to them and telling them that I'm waiting for someone, I decide to go fill the bath with bubbles and relax.

Thankfully Miss 'Arrive-when-you-least-expect-me' arrives when I least expected her, which was halfway through my relaxing bubble bath. She was in a buoyant mood and smiling happily in that playful kind of kitten mood that I love and I could tell at once that her day had been good because she ran into the bathroom with her camera to tease me and I threw water all over her and that led on to an interesting evening that hotel rooms are either best designed for or they become the cure for the usual detached indifference of a cold, impersonal room.

So its a fruit salad and a Pinot Blanc evening and the promise of a honeymoon breakfast that stimulates the already tantalized taste buds and keeps us smiling warmly through the cold embrace of winter.

Minami rocks for shopping!

And so it begins

Happy New Year
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The office closed after work on the 29th and won't reopen again until the fifth. Our editor had us all meet her in 'Bois Cereste' bar in Akasaka. This was my first time there and it had a very European ambiance and made me feel and think of the Côte d'Azur style but I can't tell the difference between France and Belgium. My apologies to any readers from those countries, but it's my inability and not any disrespect to your individual nations. Apparently it is a Belgian bar and has 'Jazz' as it's theme and style since the owner, Masaharu Yamada (not the famous weight lifter) once played jazz Piano in Brussels and so that flavor is reflected all around us and even down to the glasses of 'Stella Artois lager. Ot-oh! Alarm bells ringing in paranoiaville. Are they hinting at the little fact that they know that I'm jazz on the internet?
Not really.
The boss was very nice to us and bought us all a drink and said wonderful things about us and inspired us towards greater things next year. I too want 2009 to be a good year and I hope it is for all of us. Perhaps the measure of it will be the open book review that I hopefully write before we welcome in the New Year 2010. Raise your glass in a toast to the hope of a better year.

Tuesday was just cleaning day as Hitomi and I made our apartment all shiny and bright as we clean out the old year and make ready for the new one. Wednesday night we helped out in the restaurant and made sure everyone had a good time before the countdown, which for us was on the red and white singing contest on the big screens and we watched the white team score a fourth successive victory! Well done again you boys. I predict 2009 to be a girl power year. Hiro and I phoned dad fifteen minutes before the year ended and Hitomi called home. I wished her father a happy New Year and he was kind enough to offer me the same acknowledgment.

After we closed our doors about 2am and cleaned up a little, Hitomi and I drove over to the temple to offer a few prayers. We arrived home just before six went out onto the roof garden and together we witnessed the very first sunrise of this new year. I don't know what time it was before we actually slept but lunch was almost ready when Rina called, we didn't want to miss that.

I hope you all enjoyed your New Year Celebrations and have made resolute your New Year resolution's that you will keep for a few days perhaps before some of you invariably fall back into your usual selves! Ha-ha.
Prove me wrong!

Currently fourth in our music charts, I ask you does the introduction to this song sound French...?



Ai No Mama De - Junko Akimoto (translated lyrics)