In the Kitchen

Just finished reading In the Kitchen, by Monica Ali. I absolutely adored her first book Brick Lane, so I had high hopes. If I could describe In the Kitchen in one word? Schizophrenic. I finished the book feeling very confused and unsatisfied and just kind of scratching my head thinking...huh?

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A Japanese co-worker invited me to a holiday dinner last night. Most of my interactions with actual Japanese-Japanese (as opposed to Japanese-American) people are limited to the hours I spend in the office, which always has a subdued tone and is marked by lots of bowing, sumimasens and arigato gozaimasus. So it was surprising to me that when you take the quiet, serious, polite Japanese attorney out of the professional setting, the things they like to talk about are pretty much the same as everyone else. Namely, gossip, who they find attractive, complaints about superiors, etc. And I learned interesting new vocabulary that I otherwise would never have learned from my Japanese teacher, such as nanpa, which was explained to me as "when someone asks someone out, usually a man asking a woman, in a way that is not so serious or good, for like a one day relationship."

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Buy/rent a robot girlfriend: http://www.cnbc.com/id/34447482/
Japanese man marries a video game character: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/16/japan.virtual.wedding/index.html
2-D love: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html