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Day thirty-five of the remote life. Yes, this does suck Mizuhara (Kanojo Okarishimasu 137).

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Sono Bisque Doll 38. Gojou and Marin at the fireworks. Who says jinbeis and yukatas are overrated?

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Day twenty-two of the remote. Rain fell most of the day, and we could find little sunlight to greet my birthday. We ordered takeout from one of the Mexican restaurants in town. A $42 cake had arrived earlier to add to the festivities. A burrito, beer, and a slice $42 cake and ice cream seems like luxury in our current state of shelter-in-place. The rain switched over to snow.

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Day 21 of the remote life. Issue 35 of Kanojo Okarishimasu released today. What is Mizuhara going to say? Maybe she’ll say Happy Birthday.

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Day eighteen of the remote life. The Japanese photographer Yukichi Watebe took this photograph for a book on postwar Japan. The image invokes a sentiment felt by many in these days of COVID-19. Tokyo is in lockdown. I can’t image Shinjuku devoid of people and bustle. Fall 2019, I struggled to walk to my hotel near the Shinjuku train station. The sidewalks were teeming with Tokyites and tourists six feet deep. How much the world has changed since last year.

The images from New York are sobering. Just this past November 2019, I strolled with my wife and friends through Central Park on our way to the Met. We walked earlier in the day through Washington Square to the Strand bookstore. We visited a pier on the Westside of Manhattan to see the Hudson at night. Real life is surreal.

Cultures around Zoom, masks, and social distancing permeate the media. What to do. What not to do. What to wear. What not to wear. Where to go. Where not to go. There’s no lack opinions.

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Day sixteen of the remote life. I took a hiatus from the blog just because. I know my interests drops when a tasks becomes too tedious. Writing everyday became tedious. I marvel at the social media influencers who write post after post everyday with new and fresh content. For us humans, there’s a limit to what you can produce before what you write becomes forced and stale.

I made an effort today to check in (text) with my friends who I’ve not contacted. How you are you?, I ask. How are you coping with shelter-in-place? I’m working remotely and teaching online, I say. Groceries are challenge, we agree. Oh, you have curbside service, you say. Not here yet, they reply. Take care, stay safe, we bid good-bye. That’s the gist of my text conversations.

Binging is now an acceptable behavior. Food. Beverages. Whatever your indulge. Binging is ok in our shelter-in-place world. My friend watched the entire new Picard Star Trek series; Trekkies are quite the dedicated, loyal fan-base. I binge anime. No English dubbing. Straight Japanese and subtitles.

@backsideworks created this silkscreen. Astronauts in art and media is a theme that perks my pop culture interest.

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Kanojo Okarishimasu 134. Yeah, what was she trying to say?

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Ziqian Liu, an independent photographer, posts these exquisite self-portraits on Instagram. Her compositions are mixture of still-life with surreal ambitions. The images aren’t meant to present a dream but rather a reality of staged moments. My love of 19th century Guilded Age painting instilled in me a romantic sense of the sublime. Painterly beauty and wordless fascination are notions perhaps too old fashion for the hip and acerbic. You like what you like. And there’s no hiding what you find sublime.

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Day thirteen of the remote life. The morning sun melted the snow that fell last night. We were left with a cool spring like day, blue skies, and fluffy clouds. Earlier in the month, I heard song birds. Today it’s quiet with the exception of the occasional delivery truck or car. The cats lounge and seem more content with their humans being more present. They seem not to understand that walking on one’s keyboard, standing on one’s chest, or jumping on one’s bed disrupts the efficiency of working remotely. I must have spent 4 hours on my iPhone texting, emailing, advising, scheduling Zoom meetings, design and publishing a website, and setting up a Slack workspace. Or at least that’s what I remember. The headlines present a country in the midst of a pandemic. You remember how inner-connected we are and how we must stay connected while keeping our distance. The hospital ship final arrived in New York, greeted happily by crowds of mingling onlookers.

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Day twelve of the remote life. Loughlove posted this photograph on Instagram of the surprise snow in Saitama, Japan. Cherry blossoms are the norm this time of year not snow. Maryland and Virginia just ordered shelter-in-place. In my old hometown of Virginia Beach, the oceanfront was just til recently full of beachgoers. “And she'll have fun fun fun ‘Til her daddy takes the T-Bird away,” as the Beach Boys would say.

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Day eleven of the remote life. HelloTalk is a popular app used for language exchange. I use it to practice my Japanese with native speakers, and return they can practice their English. We practice more English than Japanese since I’m at the level of a preschooler. Japanese is a difficult language more so to read and write. The spoken language one can manage with enough practice. But learning Kanji, written Chinese characters, is a lifetime endeavor. To be literate in Japanese, you must know at least 2000 Kanji characters. I know roughly 100. HelloTalk is helpful if you’re interesed in day-to-day life in Japan. An example, the governor of Tokyo just ordered a lockdown of the metropolitan area. One Tokyite posted this amusing and surprisingly serious “moment”.

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Day ten of the remote life. I’m astonishised by the number of out-of-state plates today. These cars come from states under a shelter-at-home order. The people seem like they’re on vacation or just out to lunch.

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Day ten of the remote life. I binged watched the anime WWW.WAGANARIA!!! It’s a corny slice of life, romcom set in a typical family restaurant in Japan. The story centers around high schoolers Hana Miyakoshi and Daisuke Higashida and their older co-workers, and follows the love arcs of all those concerned. Thirteen episodes of pure silliness — sometimes too painfully silly to watch. I wasn’t able to visit a family restaurant when I travelled to Japan in 2019. Someday I hope to try one; I just hope the staff isn’t anything like the staff of WAGANARIA. That although might make the visit more interesting and wacky just like the anime.

I did my first podcast interview for my class today. The audio recordings take far less space to store and far less bandwidth to stream or download. The interview was with my colleague who’s a digital archivist, and our discussion was about digitizing letters and diaries. Are digital copies better than the real thing?, I asked. No, she said. But a copy is better than no copy. I wonder if my students will agree.

I counted five online conferences today. It’s a new record. Can we make it to six, seven, or even eight. Just when I’m getting used to Zoom, a colleague wants to meet using Microsoft TEAMS. What the heck is TEAMS? I wonder if my college will start offering certificate courses on online conferencing in Zoom, TEAMS, Skype, and so on. I’m far from being a Luddite. But if this keeps up, blissful ignorance might be the path of less resistance. Or perhaps, resistance is futile. I should lower my shields and surrender.

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Where is Moomin when you need him?

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Day nine of the remote life. An ongoing challenge is how do you a convert course that focuses on examining and analyzing original, physical, historical letters and diaries into a 100% online deliverable course. How do you replace real, authentic with virtual, bits and bits, eye candy surrogates?

Interestingly, a lot of our students don’t have high speed reliable internet. Others don’t have PCs or laptops; their only internet access is solely through their iPhone or Android. There are some professors who are equally disadvantaged.

Zoom is the go to for face-to-face instruction. I considered my own background habitat (embarrassingly) and discovered virtual backgrounds. I found a blog post explaining how in Zoom I can appear in any virtual location as my backdrop. Perhaps, I’ll choose Paris, or Kyoto, or one of the fine breweries suggested by my friend Brother Jack.

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Day eight of the remote life and I have yet to start one book. I have a considerable to-be-read backlog. The books range from art, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and of course manga. Reading a book is a commitment that I want to make. Let’s see if I can read one before month’s end. stay in touch with friends and colleagues by text. And the consensus is that most are feeling stir crazy. Those who are extroverts feel the urge to socialize. Those who are introverts immerse themselves in their self-indulgences. All feel the need to stay occupied, stay distracted. Perhaps, that’s what motivated my close friends to drive to Florida during this pandemic, stay one week, and return to Buffalo, NY just today. Buffalo is known for it’s long winters, and my friends needed their winter holiday, warm weather, the beach. But who could have predicted the lockdowns, the social distancing, the food hording. To feel stir crazy is to be human.

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Kanojo Okarishimasu, 133. Yes, seriously.