It was brought to my attention that some people (my father) think I am too dreary and depressing on this blog! My life, after all, is not dreary nor depressing - it is actually quite great, if I do say so myself! There are things that bother me because the puzzle pieces in my life do not quite perfectly fit together; I’m still trying to figure stuff out, when I guess I stupidly had the notion that things would be easier from now on. And I guess I let that get to me some times, and my tone becomes that of a sad shrill who forgot her Prozac. I’ve never taken nor been described Prozac! So I’ll try to talk about things that are happy, things that make me glad I am here, not just MY LONELY LOVE LIFE!!

(I don’t want to propagate the stereotype that all artists (not that i would call myself anywhere NEAR skilled at writing the english language) are sad people - the tortured soul thing doesn’t have to be true! unfortunately it seems to be true that my best entries come out when i am a big ol’ mope, in general. Allow me to work on it! (and maybe I’ll keep inserting inappropriate exclamation marks, while I’m at it!))

SO: an interesting thing that is happy: The Olympics!!

It’s very interesting to be in a country that is not America during the Olympics - I’ve never been super into the games or whatever, but I just always watched the coverage assuming that the majority of coverage would be covering my country, America. That was the common thing. And as an American, of course I’d be rooting for America. We’re always the team to beat, so almost every sport was interesting because America always had a chance at winning. So it’s just really fascinating to watch it from another country’s perspective, a country that only had a chance of getting gold at a few events. A lot of their coverage ends up just covering their competing athletes, covering the backstories of athletes that may or may not get 21st place in the biathlon, or something.

To be honest, I didn’t see much of the games! And I don’t think the rest of Japan did either. You have to admit, Vancouver, being on the opposite end of the world, makes it quite difficult to watch anything live, so we were stuck with a lot of highlights and stuff from 7 pm - 9 pm every night (I’m sure there’s a channel SOMEWHERE in Japan that had more coverage, but I don’t have cable so I was stuck with trusty NHK and their mute squirrel mascot (?) to help me out). There was a ton of human interest stories on all of the athletes - from the one speed skater who was competing for her friend that died last year, to snowboarder who got reamed by the media for wearing his uniform “sloppy”, to the rivalry between Asada Mao and Kim Yu-na that was conflated as a symbol of the rivalry between Japan and South Korea.

There was also close to zero coverage of the other countries - even the ones that won. So: of course I rooted for Japan! It’s hard not to feel like they’re the underdog with all the nationalist reporting they’re doing! If you watch NHK you sort of just feel that America, Canada, and I guess Norway/Sweden/Scandinavia? are a bunch of bullies for being, you know, skilled at winter sports (NHK will have you know that it’s all because our bodies are “bigger.” Apparently, that’s to Japan’s disadvantage in every sport, unless they kick us out of the sport, like they recently did with sumo). And like I know I’m being jerked around but I kinda love the way they do it (as opposed to the way that the American media jerks people around). And just because I’m American doesn’t mean everything always has to be about America to me, you know? To be honest, I knew we were going to win a lot of medals so why bother getting excited? (ie, Japan sure has the underdog status down)

Anyway, I pretty much stared in a stupor at the men’s figure skating murmuring, ”Takahashi Daisuke is so my type” (as B and M can attest. I think I spent an hour watching the coverage while they were busy drinking) and occasionally caught the curling broadcast in the morning. Yeah, yeah, curling: enough people have complained about this weird sport that I’m not going to add to the fray. It was kind of disappointing that Japan didn’t win any gold, but honestly, does it really matter? If you think about it, the Olympics are kind of a dumb thing anyway. Still interesting as one of those few events that seems to rivet everyone in the world, I guess.

Incidentally, a long time ago, around the time of the bidding for the Nagano Olympics, Morioka had actually put in a bid too, apparently. Of course they didn’t get it, but it sure woulda been nice to think of this place as an Olympic town. Wouldn’t want to be around the prefectural office when THAT mess of a logistics nightmare came around, though.