Eccentricity: The Durian
Maybe because it's a Friday afternoon and Yahantei are feeling a bit fatigued, what with the relentless hot weather and pitilessly blue empty skies, but I started to think about durians.
The durian is a kind of fruit that is popular in southeast Asia. It has an odor that can politely be best described as "powerful"--well, okay, even its fans admit it stinks. Some people hate it, but others absolutely love it. People in the UK speak of Marmite, people in Japan of
nattou (smelly fermented bean product)--stuff you either crave or despise. I think that's kind of like the effect the durian has, although I believe it's far more fragrant than either of those things.
I can't help but think that early modern haikai poets would have liked the durian. It's got all the features of the haikaiesque--aromatic, slightly disreputable, questionable to the uninitiated but exquisite to those who've acquired the taste.
Here's a page by a deeply tragic durian fan.Wishing everyone a good weekend.
Podcasting; Asian Studies in Australia
Here are some podcasts for people interested in learning more about current events in Japan:
NHK News in English (via Radio Japan)
Yomiuri News in JapaneseThe Yomiuri one gets updated a day after the fact. It's interesting to compare these two broadcasts; Yomiuri is a bit more straightforward and detailed; NHK is a bit more sanitized but has better international news.
Weblog Yahantei was visiting Australia for the past few weeks. I gave a paper at the conference of the
Asian Studies Association of Australia. It was a really nice event; a lot more user-friendly than the AAS, maybe because it was on a smaller scale. I heard some very interesting papers and met lots of nice people. I've had good experiences with Japanese literature scholars in Australia--maybe it's because Australia's closer to Japan geographically than the US is. Well, in fact it's not that much closer--it's still a very long flight between Japan and Australia. So maybe it's because of being on the Pacific side of the world. It is not unusual for young people to study Japanese in high school.
The ASAA conference is bi-annual; next year is the turn of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia to have their
conference.
