Acetarium

Our living room has a few sturdy plants. Everyone says that it’s impossible to kill spider plants and that’s just not true — I’ve done it more than once. In this house, only the toughest plants survive. Our pothos has been with us for five years and its tentacles are getting pretty long:

–
One of the things I enjoy doing with my plants is propagation. For the last month, I have been propagating pothos, spider plants, mint, and basil.

The first time I propagated pothos, it took 1.5 months for the root to come out. I put 3 new cuttings into water 2 weeks ago and one has already started growing a root:

–
Mint and basil are good at propagating. I put cuttings into water 10 days ago and they started growing roots within a week:

–
And finally, this isn’t propagation but I have been trying to grow avocado trees from left-over pits because they have beautiful leaves. Only one out of five pits has cracked and it’s looking like a Japanese monster after 2.5 months:

–
A loong way to go before I see its leaves but it’s still fun.

The Acetarians went to see several movies at Somerville Theater for IFF Boston this weekend. There were a few movies that I very much enjoyed watching:

Two is a crowd: A very, very funny short documentary about a married couple in NYC who has been living separately since the beginning of their marriage but decided to live together for a financial reason.

–
I beat Mike Tyson: A story about a relatively unknown Irish boxer who beat Mike Tyson in 2005. He lives in Dorchester and was present at Q&A after the showing. He seemed like a very funny, sweet person.

Time Zero: the last year of Polaroid : A collection of interviews with Polaroid fans, former employees, and people from The Impossible Project. It brought me back some fond memories of Polaroid photos. I love using digital cameras but, after watching this video, I now see things that Polaroid can do which digital cameras cannot. I still enjoy being able to edit photos but I think I’d like to try using Polaroid again to see what more I could do with photography.

–
IFF Boston has been awesome. Maybe I will get a pass next year.

The Acetarium library has both the original and English translation versions of the books by some of my favorite Japanese authors. Kobo Abe‘s Secret Rendezvous is one such example.

We first found the English version while we were looking for Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes at Moe’s Books in Berkeley. Since then, I’ve bought the Japanese version of Secret Rendezvous (密会) and noticed that the summaries on the back of the books have slightly different focuses:

English:

From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters. Within a few days, though no closer to finding his wife, the unnamed narrator finds himself appointed the hospital’s chief of security, reporting to a man who thinks he’s a horse.

Japanese:

In the middle of one summer night, an ambulance arrives out of nowhere and takes his wife. The man, looking for his wife, reaches a hospital;w however every move is bugged there…With the man’s encounter with a horse human with two penises, a female secretary, a girl with Melting Bone Syndrome, , etc, the book depicts desperate love and pleasure present in the maze of this enormous hospital and, using an ambitious structure, reveals the “hell without an exit” in which all humans in the modern era reside.

—
A human who thinks he’s a horse and a horse human seem a bit different. I don’t know which summary makes the story sound more intriguing to other people but either way, like The Women in the Dunes, the book is a fun read.

–

The Acetarium has two fun annual events in April: Ohanami and Seder. We had our fourth-year seder last night, led by SJ, with Velveteen Rabbi’s Haggadah. We had a ton of fun as always.

This year, Noah and Molly planned a plague-themed seder dinner:

* Water/Blood: Spicy Shakshuka

* Frogs: Neapolitan stack with a tomato tongue, olive slice eyes, zucchini and cashew paste body. Cutest plague ever.

–

* Lice: Quinoa salad

* Wild Beast: Smoothie — the original word, arov, means a mixture.

* Pestilence: Sun dried tomato pestolence

* Boils: Boiled vegetables

–

–

* Hail: Cheese-filled jalapeno poppers — because the hail had fire inside, so this is the inside-out version of this plague.

* Locusts: Ants on a log with almond butter — because peanut butter can’t be used.

* Darkness: Dark chocolate

* Death of the first-born: Beaujolais Nouveau — because it’s an early harvest wine.

Every year, I learn something new about what not to consume during passover. This year, Noah taught us that soy, rice, corn, and marijuana are not kosher for passover, at least for some Jewish people.

I wonder what else I learn about this tradition next year.

(Photos by Danny Piccirillo)

Mito Komon was a very popular Japanese TV series that lasted for over 40 years. I believe that almost everyone in Japan can say at least one line from Mito Komon. Its cultural significance seems to be relatively less well known in other countries, so I introduced Mito Komon to the acetarians the other day.

Mito Komon is a former vice-shogun, Tokugawa Mitsukuni, who disguises himself as a retired crepe merchant. He travels around Japan with two very strong samurai, Kaku-san, Suke-san, (and ninjas and a few other people), trying to save poor people who are bullied by corrupt politicians.

The series produced over 1000 episodes. Every episode ends when Kaku-san or Suke-san reveals Mito Komon’s identity.

In fact, all the final scenes are so similar that, if you just look at the final scenes, you may not be able to tell that you’re looking at different episodes. Basically, the final scene goes like this:

1. Sword fight. Of course, Mito Komon can fight well too.
2. Mito Komon says “Suke-san, Kaku-san, that’s enough.”
3. Kaku-san or Suke-san takes out the inro and says “Can’t you all see this mark?” and explains who Mito Komon really is and tells people to bow down.
4. Usually, the opponents’ eyes get really big and then they sit and bow on the ground.

–
or
–

–
or at 6:40:
–

–
Good show. Now can you say all the lines from the final scene?

I read a neat short story called “Where the east ends” (東の果つるところ)　by Mori Eto (森絵都), which led to the creation of a mini puzzle on our kitchen board:

–
Every Japanese word and character on this board, except for 村上春樹, is “100%” according this rule in the story. 村上春樹 is the kanji for “Murakami Haruki” and his name would be categorized as “25%”. 三島由紀夫 (Mishima Yukio) would be 60% and 大江健三郎 (Ooe Kenzaburo) would be 40%.

The story is about this 草間 (Kusama) family, who are incredibly lucky and successful. The family believes that it’s because they have followed this “rule” for generations after generations. The main character decided to leave this town because she didn’t believe in this rule. In order to convince her parents, she told them that she was going 東(east). Her parents approved the decision because 東 is “100%”. They tried to send her to her aunt who lived in 東京目黒中目黒(Tokyo Meguro Nakameguro), a “100%” place. She almost married an actor whose pseudonym, 加志崎純也 (Kashizaki Jyunnya), was “0%”, but the real name, which she found out as they were filling out the marriage application, was　田中大吉 (Tanaka Daikichi), “100%”.

What’s the secret of Kusama family?

A cute little story. No need to know Japanese. In fact, I had trouble seeing the rule right away even after it was explained in the book.

Cooperation is a frequently visited topic at the Acetarium.

A few days ago, I was watching a video in which a diver got hurt while playing with a moray eel (may want to skip to 3:00):

–

–

It sparked my interest in moray eels, so I went on to read the Wikipedia article. Then, I learned that moray eels and grouper fish do cooperative hunting and that this is the only known interspecies cooperative hunting (aside from humans and other species). When groupers decide to invite moray eels to join the hunt, they give moray eels a “nod”:

–

–
Pretty cool.

We have been roasting our own coffee beans for the last few months. Green coffee beans are much cheaper and roasting with an air popper makes it much easier to roast beans evenly.

Since we had 8 different kinds of beans, we decided to do coffee cupping.

I was actually surprised by how different each coffee tasted. For me, I found it much easier to taste the difference in coffee than wines.

The winner of the popularity contest was #5 although #4 tasted great as an espresso and everyone liked it:

One of our residents this year, Mayo Fuster, came back from Spain on Wednesday. I woke up to find these guys on our dining table yesterday:

As I stared at el caganer during the dinner last night, I was thinking that it’s pretty surprising how such an odd item became embedded in a major tradition — and it probably was quite surprising to the inventor as well. The possible origin of el caganer sounds like a story that came out of 4ch. I always think of humans in the past being much less funny than the people now but things like el caganer or people like Decreaux make me think otherwise.

Welcome back, Mayo!