Redirect: Book Review: Fighting the Promise by F. Allan Roth

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Book Review: Fighting the Promise by F. Allan Roth

I've had to cut way back in my participation in the LDS Beta Readers group because of work, but F. Allan Roth was looking for someone to review his recent release, Fighting the Promise, and I had this feeling in my stomach that I should read it.

If you read the synopsis currently on Amazon, it sounds like end-times young adult action for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it really isn't.

It's a thought exercise or experiment:

What if one of the enemies of the USA found a way to bring the country to its knees, and the leader of your religious community, in a religious address before the fact, told members of your religious community not to fight it -- not because war is wrong, but because it was the righteous judgments of God being poured out on a sinful nation?

But if he writes that as the synopsis, who is going to want to read almost 300 pages of preaching about how evil the USA has become in XYZ religion's point of view? (That's not what it is, but isn't that what you'd think?)

On the other hand, the way the synopsis stands, it kind-of sounds like Mormon end-times paramilitary fantasy. And I definitely do not think that is what it is.

Conundrum.

Yes, he is preaching -- a little bit -- through a story that doesn't quite fit in any genre, although it brushes with end-times fantasy and paramilitary thriller. But, no, he isn't really preaching that way. No Nostradamus. No picking Isaiah's prophecies apart. No predictions of dates and such. No dystopian views of depraved society.

I think he wants the reader to think about a couple of things, and he buries his premise and hypothesis in a novel that brushes with and ignores all those genre and more.

There is preaching by allegory, but I think it is skillfully done. He doesn't waste the reader's time trying to tell us every little thing we should not be doing.

I think, if I were Roth, I'd have put in a preface, something to the intent that it's just a story, not trying to predict anything, especially not dates or specifics about which ally-enemy of the USA everyone should be watching. But such disclaimers tend to be read as irony in some circles, so maybe it's just as well he didn't.

The writing is still a little rough, but you should know I am not a fan of polished saccharine sweetness. (Should we call that Aspartame™ sweetness these days?)

The first three chapters made me roll my eyes. Thoughts on my mind as I read them:

That sounds strangely like something the president of the Church said recently. (Russel M. Nelson, at a temple dedication in Chile. But the message was not about the kind of war you fight with guns. It was about the better kind of war, where you struggle with your own tendencies to do the lesser things.)

No! Stop! Someone researching devices to detect the portable nuclear bombs that are the holy grail of terrorists everywhere would not let the border patrol agents demand that trunk to be opened!

No! The president of the US would not just roll over like that. And I don't want to sit through another top-secret action thriller tracking all the bombs down and kicking the enemy out.

Wait! When are we going to track all the bombs down and start kicking the enemy out? (Heh.)

After that, the delivery is something like what you'd expect from an old warhorse with war stories to tell. Parts of it even sound like war stories, how deep the snow was, how they got through the underbrush, how they took the helicopter down, ..., but now I'm treading on spoilers.

(If you can stand a little testimonial kind of thing, I find the portrayal of the main character and his wife encouraging and sort-of-applicable to my personal situation.)

I were the editor-in-charge, maybe I'd give it a preface, disclaiming intent to predict future events, etc., especially disclaiming intent to pick which of the ally-enemies of the US are most to be concerned about.

The story is a good story, there are memorable moments and gripping sequences. It's not a fun read, although it has fun moments and ends at an upbeat point.

And the thought experiment is a very useful one. Worth reading.

How many stars? Somewhere between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2, I'd say. YMMV.

Riding a Meme: Fairy Tale Accounting

Heh. Some finger pointing at fantasy budgets showed up on Basshook:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/20/budget-breakdown-of-a-25-year-old-who-makes-100000-dollars-a-year.html

(Thank you, Carlos.)

Yeah, it struck a harsh chord. Lots of posts ridiculing CNBC for publishing that as a budget of a young person who is "Excellent with Money". (Ahem.)

But I think I've learned my lesson about just sharing without thinking. So I went searching for and read the actual article. And now I realize just how ridiculous most financial advice is. And how truly ridiculous CNBC is for posting this kind of garbage. (The information is not ridiculous. The analysis and conclusion are pure fluff -- not even decent fantasy.)

The chord it struck was harsh enough for me to not just share, but to write this webrant.

This guy is doing what they tell you to do. Charge what the market will bear. Spend less than you earn. Save as much as is comfortable. Give some to charity.

He estimates his income this year at USD 100,000. Thats 8 1/3 K average a month, calculated naively. (The naive calculation is a necessary first step when you don't have a company and management to shield you from the vicissitudes.)

Last year was $80,000. The year before, he doesn't say.

Item	:	Amt (USD)	Notes
Rent	:	825	Four roommates
Groceries	:	400	Trader Joes, etc.
Health insurance	:	270	No explanation
Utilities	:	195	Shared
Transportation	:	130	Public and Lyft
House cleaner	:	30	Shared
Internet	:	20	Shared
Cell phone	:	40	Family plan
Dining out	:	250	Girl friend (No movies?)
Donations	:	615	Good for him.

Let's look at some of the things not mentioned in the pie chart:

Item	:	Amt (USD)	Notes
Coworking space	:	350	Sometimes he needs an office ...
Office (irreg.)	:	1000~2000	... only when he's really busy.
Google Sheet	:	???	A "financial app he's developing.
MCAT studies	:	????	What comes around goes around.
Video games	:	???	"Sometimes."
Roth	:	(400?)	(My estimate.) Good thinking.
Savings	:	(400?)	(My estimate.) Good thinking.
Other dating	:	???	I doubt they just dine out. Maybe Netflix? That might be a shared expense. Video games? That's their business, but he hasn't really budgeted it. (And is not budgeting it a bad thing?) Actually, I approve of not telling how much. That's between the two of them, really. Heh. Never mind.
Miscellaneous business	:	????	Some of these were mentioned in the article, but if you add up the math there were likely quite a few.

He mentioned having "about $43,000" in savings, part in Roth, about $20,000 of it "liquid".

Uhm, liquid is not really savings. It's business capital and emergency funds. Necessary to have, but not really savings.

Okay, for doing what he's doing, he's on a fairly decent course. All the finger-pointing and general gossip on FB tends to miss a lot of important stuff.

(Well, CNBC could clean up their analysis significantly. This topic is not perfectly justifiable, but it really shouldn't be so criticized, either. Just, CNBC bloggers, clean up the analysis in your webrants!

Other news linked from that page is the sort of thing that can really suck people's productive time and thinking energy down the drain. It shouldn't be suppressed, but it shouldn't be so actively promoted.)

Back to this guy's budget.

I would have trouble doing things his way. Why? I am not fond of teaching the test. (I need to put up a better rant on that subject, but not today.)

One of the reasons I haven't started "teaching English" independently here in Japan is that the parts of that I think are valuable have nothing to do with tests, and the parents who want their children to "study English", and the individuals who want to "study English", aren't really interested in learning English. They are interested in test scores. "Better schools." "Better jobs." More pay.

I am, however, interested in teaching people how to communicate in English.

My wife would laugh at this. She says I don't know how to communicate. She sort-of has a point. I haven't bothered learning how to sell my opinions so that people will be interested in paying me money for them. Like this webrant, too long, and too much time thinking about things no one seems to want to think about.

Part of communication is, in fact, raising the signal that something needs to be communicated, showing that the message has value. Part of it is communicating things others need to talk about. These are things I need to work on.

But teaching the tests, themselves, No!

Tests are necessarily performed only in a single dimension, or, at best, in unit vectors of two or three dimensions.

Linear.

Linear.

Linear!

(Yes, whoever uses "random" as an epithet, I'm answering you: Linear!)

Focusing on tests gets in the way of real communication. The tests themselves become the reason the average graduate of the Japanese school system studies English for six years and then feels like he or she can't actually "speak English".

They cannot tell us if the test taker knows the subject or does not. They can't even tell us whether the student studied for the test, because the test is supposed to be devised so that it can't be specifically studied for.

(Supposed to be. If the guy whose attempts at budgeting inspired this rant is not aware that he has essentially embarked on a game of strategy where his opponents are the testing companies, he needs to get his head around that. Studying for, and taking, the advanced tests is not just for a degree for him, it's a necessary business expense for him. And it may not be good enough -- unless he is already planning to retire from this game within a few years.)
And they do not teach how to communicate.

The only good thing about standardized tests is when the student lets the test motivate him or her to actually study the whole messy package. And doesn't get tangled up in the grade, as long as it's good enough to allow moving forward in school or the profession.

Please, can't we, as a society, graduate from one-dimensional views of knowledge, of the market, of politics, of economics, of life itself?

(Well, I should try to make my point here, but I really didn't have time to sit down and write this. Lots of other, more important projects waiting for me to work on. On the other hand, thinking about it might help me get the inspiration I need to solve my own problems, so ... . Well, I hope reading it wasn't wasting your time.)

Basshook Just Loves to Mess with You

On the train to work the other morning, I was scrolling through FB and noticed a message from FB themselves.

We decided to help you by changing all your groups to highlight-only.

We've Updated Default Group Notifications

We're working to connect you with the notifications you find relevant. You were receiving all notifications from these groups by default, but we've updated this to only show highlights. You can change this anytime.

Updated Groups

And then it listed all of my groups.

All of my groups. Every last one. 

So I hunted for the way to switch them back. I had to scroll to the bottom and click

"See all groups"

And then it gave me the full list, and I could click one at a time and restore to all posts, then save. Managed to restore about five before my station came up.

(Someone told me that there is a way to do this en-masse if you're on FB in a regular web browser. But I couldn't find it in either of the Android FB apps. And the only web browser I own, FB brings it to its knees.)

Then I read a post by a friend who was complaining that he wasn't getting posts. All he was getting was ads.

Cometh the dawn.

The ads weren't getting through, and they thought they had to get our attention.

So ... somebody give me a cool ten million dollars so I can build the start of a real social networking system that won't be just an excuse to shove ads down everyone's throats to get money from advertisers.

[Pre-translation] What Happened When Door Met Handlebar〜ドアとハンドルが当たった出来事

[Actually, a copy from 1st December 2018, when I had just started translating.] 

About this time last year, I was in the hospital, nearing the end of a month-long stay. This is how I got there.
去年の今頃は１ヶ月入院期間が終わろうとしてたところ。入院の由来を話そうと思いました。

Towards the end of October, on a night when I had planned on joining the ping-pong night at church, I was at home working on a distributor box for the receiver in a wireless mike system we use when someone translates at church meetings. Several of the solder joints were cold and needed re-flowing.
１０月の下旬、教会の卓球ナイトに参加する予定だったある夜、まだ家にいました。教会の集会のために通訳するときに使っている無線マイクシステムの受信機の配線箱を修理する作業にかかっていました。数カ所の目玉半田があって、付け直しが必要だった。

The job search that week had not gone well, neither had my writing, and I was late and frustrated.
その一週間の就職活動は巧く行かず、作歌のでき具合が悪く、予定に間に合わず挫折感が苦かったのです。

Finishing the repair work, I threw the box in my bag, threw on a hoodie and another jacket, put my shoes on in the genkan, and headed out the door in a minor heat.
修理の作業を終え配線箱をバッグに掘り込み、フードづきやジャケット２層を投げまとい、玄関で靴を履き、熱気を感じて急いで玄関から出ました。

We got rid of our car after moving to the city because we really don't need one. I dumped my bag in the basket of my bicycle and headed out of the bike parking area. I turned right out of the parking lot on into the chilly dark, but it isn't really all that dark around here. The roads are fairly well lit most of the way to church.都会へ引っ越してからしばらくw


About this time last year, I was in the hospital, nearing the end of a month-long stay. This is how I got there.

(I would have written this down earlier, but I've been busy, and it's been a little painful to write.)

Towards the end of October last year, on a night when I had planned on going to the ping-pong night at church, I was instead at home working on a distributor box for the receiver in a wireless mike system we use when someone translates at church meetings. Several of the solder joints were cold and needed re-flowing.

The job search that week had not gone well, and neither had my writing. I was late and frustrated.

Finishing the repair work, I threw the box in my bag, threw on a hoodie and another jacket, put my shoes on in the genkan, and headed out the door in a minor heat.

We got rid of our car after moving to the city because we really don't need one. It's often easier to get where you need on a bicycle.

I dumped my bag in the basket of my bicycle and headed out of the bike parking area. I turned right out of the car parking lot into the chill of the early autumn night, but it isn't really all that dark around here. The roads are fairly well lit most of the way to church.

I generally used to have a habit of accelerate hard on the bike. I just don't like wasting time. I think you can understand why I haven't been able to do that much accelerating hard lately, and maybe I don't want to any more.

I turned left at the intersection at the northwest corner of the elementary school campus. (There was a kindergarten there last year that the city has regrettably since torn down.) I think I remember a small van arriving at the intersection at about the same time. Anyway, I stayed on the sidewalk on the left side of that street, to let any traffic pass unimpeded, building speed. Apartments, and then houses, abut almost against the sidewalk to the north (my left as I went), and there are schoolgrounds with trees hanging over the sidewalk on the south, across the street.

As I approached the intersection at the northeast corner of the school grounds, near the pool, I eased back to check traffic. The stop sign is on the intersecting street there, but I didn't want to take chances.

When I was sure the intersection was clear, I accelerated again, and I was probably doing 30 Kilometers per hour (about 20 Mph) as I left the sidewalk into the intersection, probably over 40 Kph (25 Mph) as I entered the shoulder safety strip that replaced the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection.

I think I became aware of the car parked (quasi-illegally) in the safety strip in front of me as I crossed the intersection, but I'm human and react slow, so I didn't quit accelerating until after I had entered the safety strip.

I started moving right, toward the center of the road, but I was fighting momentum, moving too fast to swerve hard. There was plenty of time to avoid the car itself.

This is a fairly wide residential road for a Japanese city, but it is barely wide enough for two ordinary sized cars to pass, carefully. (Ordinary size cars in Japan are still compact in the US, if you are wondering.) On the north side of the street there (my left that night) is a rice paddy, and the south side has, in sequence heading east, a parking lot, an apartment complex, a couple of houses, and another apartment complex.

Not a lot of room to dodge a door if it opens at the wrong time, but the road is well lit, and what are the odds?

I was moving to the center of the road anyway. Just didn't have time to move all the way to the right.

Also, I was a little too close to brake hard. Even if the door had already been opening, braking hard there would not have allowed me to swerve, and I would have smashed myself and the bike into the door had I done so. But it wasn't opening. Not yet.

The police asked me later whether I was worried about possible vehicular traffic from behind. Of course I was. But trying, at between 40 and 30 Kph, to move out of the way of a door that could reach at least the middle of the street if it opens is not exactly easy, either.

You might say bicycles shouldn't go that fast. A lot of people I know will raise their eyebrows at such a suggestion.

Maybe I could've-should've braked anyway, but you don't get far down the street with your brakes engaged all the time. Anyway, I did try to move away from that car.

And the door opened just at the wrong time, just in time for the edge to catch my ring finger as I passed.

Well, I did get past the door, but my handlebar was jerked left. The door was swinging a bit, and I had to work to avoid putting the edge of it between my legs.

I put my feet down to try to balance the bike, but I was still doing at least 15 Kph, I think still over 20 (over 13 Mph).

My feet stuck on the pavement, then came unstuck, and then I was flying over the handlebars.

I thought I was dead. No surprise.

But then I felt like I should just relax, and leave myself in God's hands.

Angels stretched me out flat by the time I hit the pavement, and my hood flew up to cover my face. Probably an angel had a hand in that, too.

I didn't end up sliding very far. But I took most of the impact on one elbow.

There's still some blank space there, but bits of my memory of this have come back a little at a time.

I think I was screaming while I was flying, but I still don't remember. When I came back to myself, I was face-down on the asphalt, with my hood between the asphalt and my face, screaming. Maybe I screamed for fifteen seconds or so, but it seemed like a foolishly long time. It wasn't pain so much as frustration.

I know how to handle pain, and I had automatically began what I do to handle it.

I recovered my breath and started assessing the damage. The arm that had taken the impact was under me, and did not move without pain, but the other arm was free and useable.

There was sharp pain in my back, but I could feel my legs and move them.

I was worried about my neck and spine, but I was also worried about being in the middle of the road, unable to see around me. So I braced the arm that was hurt worst and rolled myself on my back.

And I was happy to be alive.

The driver who doored me came into my visual range, and I relatvely calmly asked him to call an ambulance. I might have grimaced or I might have been grinning ironically.

[A note here: Laughter is good medicine, but it can unnerve the people around you, and cause them to be suspicious. I don't think I actually laughed, but I was not really frowning most of the time, and I didn't scream or holler any more after the first scream.

Frowning makes you hurt worse. I hate that.

But smiling makes the insurance agent think you're cheating. End note.]

The daughter of one of the families who live near there is friends with my daughter, and she happened to be home. She ran and got my family, and the ambulance came, and the police came, and they were careful when they moved me, and I ended up in the hospital for a month.

Damage:

Hairline fractures in the toes in one foot, from when I tried to balance myself.

Severe strain in the inner thigh of the other leg, from the same stress. I didn't really recover from that strain until about a week after I was allowed to start walking again. Had to use the leg to work it out. Stretching it out in the air while I was lying in bed helped with the pain, and helped loosen things up so I could walk again. I think it was six months before I could sort-of run again.

Sprained fingers in the hand that took the edge of the door, strains in both hands and arms. Strains all over, really. Most of those, and the hairline fractures in the toes, healed during the first two weeks in the hospital.

My wedding band ended up squashed into a heart shape, and they had to cut it off at the hospital. But my finger was not broken. I guess it was supported during the impact by the handlebar, and protected by the ring.

Two cleanly sheared ribs and a greenstick fracture in my back, all near my spine. Those breaks probably protected my spine when my feet stuck and sent me flying, and again when I hit the street.

The elbow that took the impact was shattered. The doc described it as gravel, but she may have been slightly exaggerating.

I should get the x-rays from the hospital and post them. Heh.

Scrapes here and there, but my clothes took most of the abrasion.

And that was pretty much it.

X-rays and MRI both showed no damage to spine or neck, which is a great blessing.

And from there things got complicated.

There are many medicines that just don't work for me.

I don't handle anesthesia well. Don't ask. I just don't. It should be enough to say that I'd rather have a root canal worked on without pain-killers. (Literally. Did that three years ago. Would have had to take time off work if I'd let them use anesthesia.) It's that bad. That's part of the reason I've learned to handle pain without pain-killers.

And I don't handle antibiotics well either. They do things to me that go way beyond funny. Make it hard for me to work. Solve one problem, make three more.

The docs did not want me awake when they stabilized my elbow. Too much risk if I had spasms or something. No anesthetic, no operation.

Likewise antibiotics. Insurance problems there.

So I begged them to give me the bare minimum, and to let me choose whether I needed them afterwards, unless I developed high fever or something. They were kind enough to let it go at that.

Here's the brace in the elbow, just after the operation. It's faded and out of focus, so you can't see the breaks in the bone, only the shadows of the screws. I should get the electronic copies.

The screws, by the way, were not in there to hold the bracket in place so much as to be there for the bone to grow back around, and then hold things in place. At first, the bone wasn't solid enough for the screws to take hold of much. At least, that's what the docs said. Shattered.

I had my arm in a cast all the time I was in the hospital, and I wasn't permitted to use the arm until the X-rays showed the bone successfully growing back together solidly enough.

Below is the brace they took out after six months, with the screws, cleaned up and packaged for me as a souvenir:

I was beginning to have reactions to the metal -- cramps and sore muscles in my arm, neck, and back, and all the exercise I was doing wasn't loosening the shoulder up any further.

You wanted to see the hardware didn't you?

Fortunately, the other guy's insurance paid 100% of the hospital, so I had a nice month to recover from the accident, the operation, and the medicine. And they covered getting the brace back out. (In on a Friday morning, out Monday afternoon, just long enough to be sure there wouldn't be any complications. And I taught lessons that Monday evening. No big deal.)

I have to admit, I had hoped the insurance would also pay enough for time I couldn't be working, but, because I was in job-search mode at the time of the accident, they didn't want to give me any work compensation at all. The fact that I had to postpone a job interview because I was in the hospital, plus the fact that I had been working (and paying insurance) at the beginning of the year, did persuade them a little.

(I was ultimately turned down for that job. Something more than 40 other applicants, most of them half my age, higher level of education, not recovering from an accident. I have more experience, but at my age experience gets discounted a lot. And I really was still not at my best for the interview, two weeks after getting out of the hospital.)

Ultimately, they gave me 160,000 yen a month for a total of three months. That's roughly USD 1,600 a month at exchange rates, and just barely enough to cover rent, utilities and maybe a half-month's groceries.

So I didn't really get enough protein, calcium, and proto-vitamin Bs in my diet while my body was rebuilding the joint.

Partly because of that, I'm 15 degrees short of full extension in that elbow. Sure, I can use the arm, but I can't get the full range when I'm exercising, so I can't afford to cut the exercises short. That makes it really hard to put together a forty-hour week on two part-time jobs, with an hour commute each way.

Why didn't I get a temporary job as soon as I got out of the hospital? The insurance company wants to know.

I did get back to the job search immediately -- before I was officially out of the hospital in fact. The hospital is conveniently close to the employment center.

Some people thought standing out on the street eight hours a day with a traffic wand shouldn't be too hard, but I don't think they understand that, physically, it's just as demanding to stand in the middle of the street as in a store at a cash register. Some people thuought I should be back in the classroom. I don't think they realize that there is competition for those jobs.

It's also hard to describe how the medicine affects me. Sure, I was weak from the accident and the operation. And rebuilding takes energy.

But anesthesia and antibiotics just take it out of me, make it hard for me to think or move. Kill my immunities. And it doesn't just eventually go away. It was better during summer, but, winter, no, I'm still down as much as up. My sister brought me some stuff that seems to be helping me, but it's kind of rough on my, too.

And one of the part-time jobs I was able to get required me to be close-quarters with children four or more hours a day. I like kids, I love to teach. But without physical defences I tend to catch whatever they have.

I have to have sleep. I cannot get by on less than five hours. Not if I've got to be productive enough to keep a job. And the teaching job asked for "service overtime" -- reports and planning done off the clock, and only the most obvious (and least time-consuming) prep work would be paid for.

(The boss said, No! That's not service overtime! I'm supposed to have a habit of browsing through Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, etc., two hours a day anyway, looking for stuff for kids to do, just because. Even though I have another job. And I should have the persistent store in my tablet necessary to hold all those apps and their caches and databases. Just Because. I note that it's a trend these days for employers to demand personal time be dedicated to the job. Just Because. Even though it sucks the creativity out of both the personal time and the job. Even though the value of the work is in what you bring in from outside more than in what you pick up by staying effectively on-the-job unpaid too long.)

I still have to put in an hour of exercise for the elbow and the muscles in my arm and back, six days a week. I take a break more than one day a week and my back, shoulders, and sinuses get all tied up in knots. That makes it hard to work.

A year really hasn't been enough time to recover completely. What were they thinking when they claimed I should be recovered in three months -- because I wasn't working and making 6,000,000 yen a year at the time of the accident?

What, really, is insurance for?

Well, that's the short version of what happened. If you made it through this this much bellyaching, well, thanks for your time. I hope it doesn't depress you.

(My former boss at the one job tells me I'm being too negative. I think I'm being quite optimistic, all things considered.)

What Happened When Door Met Handlebar〜ドアとハンドルが当たった出来事

About this time last year, I was in the hospital, nearing the end of a month-long stay. This is how I got there.
およそ去年のこの頃、一ヶ月間の入院の最後、退院しようとしていた。この投稿がその入院になった理由の話です。

(I would have written this down earlier, but I've been busy, and it's been a little painful to write. [Updated Jan. 5 -- It really is hard for me to write this stuff down.][Japanese translation began Jan. 5.])
（忙しくて、文書に移すのがやや苦労のもので、もっと早く書き留めようと思ったんだけどできていない。[ちゃんと書いておくのがホンマに辛いのでまた１月５日追加。][和訳は同じ５日に開始。]）

A year ago, towards the end of October, on a night when I had planned on going to the ping-pong night at church, I was instead at home working on a distributor box for the receiver in a wireless mike system we use when someone translates at church meetings. Several of the solder joints were cold and needed re-flowing.
一昨年の１０月の終わりぐらい、教会の卓球ナイトに行こうと思っていた夜に、その替りに、家で教会の集会を通訳するときに使っている無線マイクの受信機の配信箱の手入れ作業にとりかかっていた。ハンダ接続不全の数カ所を溶かして流し直す必要があったのです。

The job search that week had not gone well, and neither had my writing. I was late and frustrated.
その一週間の就活も、文筆の（つもりの）作業も巧く行かず、卓球ナイトの遅れにも挫折感を味わっていた。

Finishing the repair work, I threw the box in my bag, threw on a hoodie and another jacket, put my shoes on in the genkan, and headed out the door in a minor heat.
修理を完成したらカバンに配信箱をほり込んで、フーディともう一枚のジャケットを纏って玄関で靴を履いて、小型の熱の勢いで玄関を出た。

We got rid of our car after moving back to the city because we really don't need one. It's often easier to get where you need on a bicycle.
都会に戻った時、車がもう要らないと思って廃車処分にしておいた。大概は自転車だけで充分行きたいところへ動き回れる。

I dumped my bag in the basket and headed out of the bike parking area. I turned right out of the car parking lot into the chill of the early autumn night, but it isn't really all that dark around here. The roads are fairly well lit most of the way to church.
自転車のカゴにカバンを漬け込んで駐輪所を離れて駐車場からは右へ、冷たくなりかけている秋の夕方に向かい出た。ただ、この近辺はそれほど暗くはない。教会に向かう道は殆ど街灯がよく設置され、夜でもまあまあ明るいのです。

I generally used to have a habit of accelerating hard on the bike. I just don't like wasting time. I think you can understand why I haven't been able to do that much accelerating hard lately, and maybe I don't want to any more.
以前は、自転車に乗って加速するとき、力入れて急加速をする癖があった。時間の無駄が嫌ですから。ご理解していただけると思うが、現在はそんなに加速したりは難しいし、しようと思うこともないかもしれない。

I turned left at the intersection at the northwest corner of the elementary school campus. (There was a kindergarten there last year that the city has regrettably since torn down.) I think I remember a small van arriving at the intersection at about the same time. Anyway, I stayed on the sidewalk on the left side of that street, to let any traffic pass unimpeded, building speed. Apartments, and then houses, abut hard against the sidewalk to the north (my left as I went), and there are school grounds with trees hanging over the sidewalk on the south, across the street.
小学校内グラウンド北西の交差点にて左へ。（去年、その角はまだ幼稚園があって、あいにく閉鎖になって潰されたのです。）ライトバン車がほとんど同時に交差点に入った記憶があるかのようにあるけど。とにかく、後ろから来る自動車などに絡まないように自転車を左側の歩道に走らせて加速した。道の北側のぼくの走る方向の左にはアパートから戸別住宅に替わっていって、それぞれ歩道に寄りかかるように建つ。道の向い側は学内グラウンドの木々の枝が南側の歩道を覆い被る。

As I approached the intersection at the northeast corner of the school grounds, near the pool, I eased back to check traffic under the street lamps. The stop sign is on the intersecting street there, but I didn't want to take chances.
グラウンドの北東角、プール付近の交差点に近づいていくと、街灯が照らした道の交通を確認するために速度をやや落とした。止まれの標識が渡る道にあっても、危険を冒すつもりじゃなかった。

When I was sure the intersection was clear, I accelerated again, and I was probably doing 30 Kilometers per hour (about 20 Mph) as I left the sidewalk into the intersection, probably over 40 Kph (25 Mph) when I entered the shoulder safety strip that replaced the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection.
交差点に車が入って来ないのがわかるとまた加速して、歩道から交差点に入るともう、３０キロ時速だっただろう。交差点を渡って歩道の代わりになっている路肩安全地帯に進んで、時速が４０キロになっていたに違いない。

I think I became aware of the car parked (quasi-illegally) in the safety strip in front of me as I crossed the intersection, but I'm human and react slow, so I didn't quit accelerating until after I had entered the safety strip.
正面のその安全地帯を防いでいた自動車に気が付いたのは多分交差点を渡っている間だったと思う。然しぼくは人間です。反応が遅いです。加速をやめるのは安全地帯に入ってからでした。

I started moving right, toward the center of the road, but I was fighting momentum, moving too fast to swerve hard. But there was plenty of time to avoid the car itself.
道の中心の右に寄ろうと、運動量の弾みがあって、その勢いとの遣り合い。急に向きを変えて避けるのが速度の勢いで無駄。でも、自動車そのものは問題なく、十分避けれるほどの余裕だった。

This is a fairly wide residential road for a Japanese city, but it is barely wide enough for two ordinary sized cars to pass, carefully. (Ordinary size cars in Japan are still compact in the US, if you are wondering.) On the north side (my left that night) of the street there is a rice paddy, and the south side has, in sequence heading east, a parking lot, an apartment complex, a couple of houses, and another apartment complex.
その道がまあまあ広い。日本の都会にしてはまあまあ。乗用車二台が通りかかるには、気を付けて行くなら通れる。（気になるなら、日本の乗用車って、米には軽型になる。）左（北側）には田圃、南側は駐車場の後アパートがあって、そのあとは家とまたのアパートがある。

Not a lot of room to dodge a door if it opens at the wrong time, but the road is well lit, and what are the odds?
車のドアが危うく開くなら、なんとか避けるほどだけど、ぎりぎりに近い。それに確率は少ないと思うやろう。

I was moving to the center of the road anyway. Just didn't have time to move all the way to the right, and there was always the worry about traffic behind me.
取りあえず道の中をと移動しよう。完全に右まで行くには間に合わないし、後ろの予期しぬ車も気になっていた。

Also, I was a little too close to brake hard. Even if the door had already been opening, braking hard there would not have allowed me to swerve, and I would have smashed myself and the bike into the door had I done so. But it wasn't opening. Not yet.
急ブレーキは近すぎる。ドアは既に開く途中だったとしても、急ブレーキすると避けるに必要な余裕がなく自分と自転車がドアに突っ込むことになっただろう。それに、開こうとするようには見えなかった。まだまだ見えなかった。

The police asked me later whether I was worried about possible vehicular traffic from behind. Of course I was. But trying, at between 40 and 30 Kph, to move out of the way of a door that could reach at least the middle of the street if it opens is not exactly easy.
警察さんは後で後ろから来る自動車などを気にしていたかを聞いてくれたんや。無論のこと。ただ、開くとしたら、４０から３０キロの間の時速、道の真ん中を超えていく開くドアを避けるのも簡単な制御ではない。

You might say bicycles shouldn't go that fast. A lot of people I know will raise their eyebrows in disagreement at such a suggestion.
自転車はそんな速度走るはずはないという人は確かに居る。私の知り合いの内、反対に意見に眉毛を上げる人が多いと思う。

Maybe I could've-should've braked anyway, but you don't get far down the street with your brakes engaged all the time. Anyway, there was no time, and I did try to move away from that car, for no reason other than a hunch.
申しかして全部[以上のこと]にも関わらず、ブレーキを掛けるべきだったやろうと言えるかもしれない。それでも、ブレーキをずっと掛けたまま道の先には進めへん。と言って、余裕がなかったし、感に促されて避けようともしていた。

And the door opened just at the wrong time, just in time for the edge to catch my ring finger as I swerved past.
避けて通ろうと、一番あかん隙、ちょど指輪の指に引っかかるところドアが開いた。

Well, I did get past the door, but my handlebar was jerked left. And the door swung out a bit, so I had to work hard to avoid taking the edge of it between my legs.
まあ、通ったのは通ったけどハンドルがグイに左へ引っ張られた。それにドアがブランとまた開けて、的間に股に受けてしまわないように力を使わなあかん。

I put my feet down to try to balance the bike, but I was still doing at least 15 Kph, I think still over 25 (over 10 Mph, probably over 15).
自転車のバランスをとろうと足を地面に付けたが、まだまだ１５キロ以上、多分２５キロの時速だったはず。

My feet stuck on the pavement, then came unstuck, and then I was flying over the handlebars.
足がくっ付いた。そして外れて、ボクノ体が飛ばされてハンドルを超えた。

I thought I was dead.
マジで死ぬと思った。

But then I felt like I should just relax, and put myself in God's hands.
とこれで、楽にして神様の手に自分の身を任せるべきだという感があった。

Momentum or angels stretched me out flat by the time I hit the pavement, and my hood flew up to cover my face. Probably an angel had a hand in that, too.
運動量の弾みだったか。天使だったか。体が地面に着くまでは平らになっていた。上着のフードが浮かんでぼくの顔を守る位置になった。それも天使の技だったかも。

I didn't end up sliding very far. But I took most of the impact on one elbow.
それほど滑らなかったけど、衝撃の力がほとんど片方の肘に当たったらしい。
[JMR: Translation to here by 17 Jan.ここまでの翻訳は１月１７日までです。]

There's still some blank space there, but bits of my memory of this have come back a little at a time.
記憶にまだ隙が出るが、少しずつ戻ってきている分もある。

I think I was screaming while I was flying, but I still don't remember. When I came back to myself, I was face-down on the asphalt, with my hood between the asphalt and my face, screaming. Maybe I screamed for fifteen seconds or so, but it seemed like a foolishly long time. At that point, it was more frustration than pain.
宙に浮いている間はもしかして叫んでいたかもわからないけど今は覚えていない。我に戻れば、アスファルトにうつむきになりフードが顔とアスファルトの間に挟まっていて、叫んでいた。叫ぶのは多分15秒ぐらいだったが、恥ずかしくなるほど長い感じだった。最初は痛みよりも挫折感。

I know how to handle pain, and I had automatically began what I do to handle it. Pain is how the body tells you there is damage, and if you understand that it isn't nearly as frightening.
痛みはどうやって対処するかがわかるのだ。もう、対処の手順に入っていた。痛みだって、怪我になっていることを知らせてくれるものです。こういうことすら理解しておくと、痛みの怖い感覚がずっとましだ。

Screaming in the early moments of serious pain can be useful, but after that it mostly just makes the pain worse.
ひどく痛くなる瞬間に叫ぶのは効き目があるにして、叫び続けるとほとんど痛みを悪くするばかり。

I recovered my breath and quit screaming and started assessing the damage. The arm that had taken the impact was under me, and did not move without severe pain. But the other arm was free and not in too much pain to move.
息を抑えて、叫び辞めるとすぐに怪我の状態を探り始めた。地面の打撃を受けた方の腕は体の下に、ひどい痛みなしには動かなかった。あまり当たらなかった方は自由に、それほど痛みなしで動かすことが出来た。

There were sharp pains in my back, but I could feel my legs and move them. But there was significant pain in both legs and both feet, especially the right thigh and my hips.
背中にきつい痛みがあったが、両方の足は感覚がわかり、動かすことも可能。ただ、両脚両足は結構痛くて、右側の太腿も腰も特に痛みが感じた。

I was worried about my neck and spine, but I was also worried about being in the middle of the road, unable to see around me. So I braced the arm that was hurt worst and carefully rolled myself on my back.
首や背骨のことのはもちろん、道の真ん中に転んでいて、周りが見えないのも懸念すべきだと思っていた。もっと傷んだ方の腕を何とか留めて体を慎重に、仰向きに直した。

And I was happy to be alive.
それに、生きていて嬉しかった。

The driver who doored me came into my visual range, and I relatively calmly asked him to call an ambulance. I might have been grimacing or I might have been grinning ironically.
ドアで遣っ付けたその車の運転手が見えるところに寄って来たら、何とか精神を落ち着かして救急車の連絡を頼んだ。苦痛で顔をゆがめていたか。それとも皮肉を感じて反論に笑っていたか。

[A note here: Laughter is good medicine, but it can unnerve the people around you, and cause them to be suspicious. I don't think I actually laughed, but I was not really frowning most of the time, and I didn't scream or holler any more after the first scream.
注：笑うのがよく効く薬だけど、周りの人間を混乱させ、自分に対して疑問を抱かせることもある。僕は大笑いはしていなかったと思うのだが、ずっと顔をしかめていたわけでもなかったし、一番最初叫びだした以降は泣いたり叫んだりはしなかった。

Frowning makes you hurt worse. I hate that.
顔をしかめてイタイイタイ言うのは痛みをもっとひどく感じさせる原因となっていしまうのだ。更に痛くなるのはお断りです。

But smiling also makes the insurance agent think you're cheating.
しかし、ニコニコして笑うのは保険会社の方にインチキの疑問を持たすらしい。

End note.]

The daughter of one of the families who live near there is friends with my daughter, and she happened to be home. She ran and got my family, and the ambulance came, and the police came, and they were careful when they moved me, and I ended up in the hospital for a month.
さて。その辺に住んでいる家族の娘は、家の娘の友達なんで、偶然に家に居てた。私の家まで行って報せて、連れて帰って来てくれたのだ。また救急車や警察が来て、僕のことを救急車に乗せてもらって、結局一か月の入院が決まった。

Damage:
損傷：

Hairline fractures in the toes in one foot, from when I tried to balance and stop myself.
自分と自転車のバランスを取り戻して止めようとしたところの衝撃から、片方の足のつま先に罅が入った。

Severe strain in the inner thigh of the other leg, from the same stress of trying to balance the bike and stop myself, and from the impact with the ground. I didn't really recover from that strain until after I left the hospital.
同じく止めようとしたところと、地面に衝突した衝撃力から、反対側の脚内に挫折や内部打撲。その足は入院の間、直ることはなかった。

It was a week after the surgery before they let me start walking a little, and I had to use the leg in order to work the pain out. Stretching it out in the air while I was lying in bed helped with the pain, and helped loosen things up so I could start walking again. I think it was six months before I could walk without pain and start trying to run again.
手術の一週間後やっと、歩くのは許されるようになった。しかし、足を使わずにはその打撲と挫折を解しだすのができない。まあ、ベッドに寝ていて上や横に足を延ばしたりすれことで痛みも筋肉もある程度和らげることができ、また歩けるようになった。でも、痛みなしで歩けるのはその6か月後だった。走るのも退院6カ月目から試みることができた。

Sprained fingers in the hand that took the edge of the door, strains in both hands and arms from going over the handlebar. Strains all over, really. Other than the thigh strain, most of those, and the hairline fractures in the toes, healed well enough during the first two weeks in the hospital.
ドアの端を受けた手の指が挫折。ハンドルの上に飛ばされたところから、両手両腕に内部打撲。真面目に言えば体全体が内部打ち身。太腿の内部傷以外は、入院中の最初の２週間の間にある程度治まった。

But I did have to postpone a job interview until after I got out of the hospital. (I was ultimately turned down for that job. Something more than 40 other applicants, most of them half my age, higher and more ostensibly applicable degrees, not recovering from an accident. I have more experience, but at my age experience gets discounted a lot.
そして、就職面接の一か所を入院のために伸ばしてもらう必要があった。（その仕事は結局、断られた。自分以外は40人が申し出て、そのほとんどが僕の歳の半分で、僕の学位よりも上、且つもっと表向きに応用できる学位持ち、事故から回復しつつではない。僕の方は経験を豊富に持っているとしてもこの年齢では経験が割引評価されるのだ。

And I really was still not at my best for the interview, two weeks after getting out of the hospital. I really haven't been up to a proper interview since the accident. Been turned down for every full-time job I've interviewed for after the accident.)
退院後2週目のその面接には中々、最上の面接できる状況ではなかった。正気に話しするなら、事故以来、正確に面接できるほどではない。フルタイム仕事ならの面接は全滅。お断りらしい。）

When you know how to handle pain, they say you have a high tolerance for pain. This is a good thing, but you don't know what to say when people ask if you're in pain. Scale from one to ten? I had to remember that sensations I no longer consider more than informational are what other people beg for aspirine or novocaine (procaine) for.
痛みの対処がわかると、忍耐力、痛みに対して強いと言われるようだ。悪いことではないが、痛いかと聞かれるときはどう答えていいかが分からなくなる。一から十の痛さ？情報と現在思っている感覚だけと、大概の人ならその感覚でアスピリンやプロカイン（ノボカイン）を頼むことを思い出さない、と。

If you call it pain, yeah, it hurts. I don't like pain, so I call it information.
「痛い」と言ったら、まあ、痛いやけど。痛みは嫌いので、「情報だ」と僕が言う。

My wedding band ended up squashed into a heart shape, and they had to cut it off at the hospital. But my finger was not broken. I guess it was supported during the impact by the handlebar, and protected by the ring. That probably should be noted as a miracle, too.
結婚指輪が潰されて、ハートの形になってしまった。病院でその指輪を切り離すことになった。幸いに指そのものが折れていなかった。ドアと衝突の際、ハンドルに支えられ、指輪に守れたようだ。それも奇跡として認識した方が良いだろう。

Had to use the money the insurance gave us for the ring for food for the family.
指輪が潰されたことで保険会社からもらったお金を家族の食べ物に回すしかなかった。

[JMR: Translation to here, Jan. 29. ここまでの翻訳は1月29日。]

Two cleanly sheared ribs in my back and a greenstick fracture in another, all near my spine. Those breaks probably protected my spine when my feet stuck and sent me flying, and again when I hit the street. The doctors had me in a corset, and wouldn't allow me to walk until those had taken hold and were strong enough not to break loose again from the stress of standing up.
背中の肋骨2本綺麗に骨折、もう一本が不完全骨折、それぞれの折れた位置が背骨に近い。足が路面に引っかかったことによって飛ばされたときに折れ目ができ、路面に衝突した時に更に折れたと僕は思う。折れたことによて背骨が守れたでしょう。肋骨がまたくっ付いてある程度接着するまでは医師にコルセット着せられ、歩くのが禁止だった。立つストレスに更に折れないほど確実に治るまでは安静の命令だった。

The elbow that took the impact was shattered. The doc described it as pounded to gravel, but she may have been slightly exaggerating. Slightly. Call it large gravel.
衝突を受けた肘は綺麗に砕かれた。先生は「砂利」と、多分少し大げさに言った。小石の大きさと言っていい。

I should get the x-rays from the hospital and post them. Heh.
病院からレントゲンをもらって投稿してもいいかも。（小笑）

Scrapes here and there, but my clothes took most of the abrasion.
遠近の擦り傷はあったが、擦れたところはほとんど服に守れたらしい。

And that was pretty much the sum of the damage. Sort of.
損傷は凡そそれぐらいだったと思う。およそ。

Except for the novels I was working on at the time. All of that has gone into suspended animation by now. Trying to get a "real" job before my body is ready leaves me no time to work on them, and no energy when I do have some time.
事故が起こった時点に作文に勉めた小説をおいては。その小説は只今冬眠している。体が治れようとしていながら「本当」の仕事と言われる仕事に就くように努力しようと、時間も消えるし、時間が取れそうなのがあれば力も尽きている。

X-rays and MRI both showed no damage to spine or neck, which is a great blessing.
レントゲンも磁気共鳴映像法のMRIも首及び背中の骨には害が無いような判定です。祝福です。

Why didn't I take more damage to my neck and spine? Good question. I exercise pretty regularly, so I was in fairly good shape to start with -- but not like when I was a college student learning jiu-jutsu. If I had tried to tuck and roll, I could easily have gotten tangled in the bike and broken my neck. Even if I had cleared the bike, I would likely have come down wrong on my back and neck. The way I hit the ground was either pure luck or the hand of God, whichever you prefer to believe in.
首及び背骨がもっと痛まれなかった理由はどうですか？どうでしょう？基準的に体操する習慣が昔からあって、元々まあまあの良い方の健康だった。（但し、大学生の時代、柔術を習ったとき程じゃない。）たとえ、前受け身で落ちようと、自転車に絡まって首を折れることは十分可能だっただろう。自転車の上に宙返りが出来ても下手に首にでも背にでも落ちることも考えられないわけでもない。安全に地面に突いて簡単に終わったのは、それぞれに信じ方によれば、純幸運と言っても、神のみ腕と言って間違ってない。

And from there things got complicated.
そこから物事が複雑に運んだ。

There are many medicines that just don't work for me, or work too well and wrong.
僕の体に合わない薬あります。効かないか効きすぎるか変に効く。

I don't handle anesthesia well. Don't ask. I just don't.
麻酔は苦手どころではない。説明しにくいけど、結果がまずいのが多い。

It should be enough to say that I'd rather have a root canal worked on without pain-killers. Literally. Did that three years ago. Would have had to take a week off the job I had then if I'd let them use anesthesia, because I would not have been coherent enough to respond appropriately in class, much less plan lessons. It's that bad. That's part of the reason I've learned to handle pain without pain-killers.
まあ、歯根管治療は痛み止めなしで受けたいほどです。事実文字通りです。3年前に痛み止めなしで受けたのです。もし、痛み止めを使うことにしたとすると、仕事の1週間休暇を取って回復することになっただろうが、無しでやって休暇なしで済んだ。どうしてそれほどの休暇と言われると、たとえ授業に出れても、辻褄の合う応用が全くできない。授業の計画なんかとんでもない。痛み止めなしで痛みの対処ができるようにならないといけなかった理由です。

And I don't handle antibiotics well either. They do things to me that go way beyond funny. Make it hard for me to work. Solve one problem, make three more.
抗生剤も変に効く。結果が可笑しいという結果ところではない。作業が完全にできなくなってしまう。健康の一つの問題を解決するに三つの問題を作り出す。

The docs did not want me awake when they stabilized my elbow. Too much risk if I had spasms or something. No anesthetic, no operation. Likewise antibiotics. Insurance problems there if they didn't use them.
肘を安定させる手術の間、先生方は起きてほしくなかった。挽きつけなどの反応は危険すぎる。麻酔無しは手術も無い。抗生剤も同様。使用しないと保険の問題が出る。

So I begged them to give me the bare minimum, and to let me choose whether I needed them afterwards, unless I developed high fever or something. They were kind enough to let it go at that.
したがって、手術は最低限度の利用で、手術の後は、高熱を出すことなどがなければ、必要かどうかをぼくに任せてほしいと嘆願した。その要求を受け付けてくれたのです。

Here's the brace in the elbow, just after the operation. It's a faded print on paper, and I didn't get good focus when I took the picture of the print, so you can't see the breaks in the bone, only the shadows of the screws. I should get the electronic copies so you can see all the gravel between the screws.
手術直後の肘に入った補強材の写真です。紙に印刷したもので色が薄くなっているし、写真を取ったところはピントが合わなかったし、砂利状の割れ目が見えない。ネジの影だけが見える。電子型の映像をもらって投稿すればネジの間の小石のように崩れた骨が見えると思う。

Most of the screws, by the way, were not in there to hold the bracket in place so much as to be there for the bone to grow back around, and then hold things in place. At first, the bone wasn't solid enough for the screws to take hold of much. At least, that's what the docs said. Shattered.
そのネジの大半は因みに、L型金具を骨に止める訳ではなかったという説明だった。そうではなく、骨が骨を作り直してくれることに何かを囲んで新しい骨を作るようにしないとダメだった。新しい骨が出来てからは骨を止めることになる。先ずは、ネジが捕まえるほどの強さの骨がなかった。一応、それが先生方の説明だった。粉々になった、と。

[JMR: Translation to here, Jan. 31. ここまでの翻訳は1月31日。]

I had my arm in a plastic half-cast (custom 1/2 circumferential resin splint) all the time I was in the hospital, and I wasn't permitted to use the arm until the X-rays showed the bone successfully growing back together solidly enough.
入院中は腕がずっとプラスティック製の半ギプス（カスタム合成樹脂製半周副木）に取り付けられ、その腕も、レントゲンによって十分くっ付いたとの判定が出るまで使用禁止だった。

Below is the brace they took out after six months, with the screws, cleaned up and packaged for me as a souvenir:
６ヶ月目で取り出してきれいに掃除してくれて、お土産としてくれた補強材とそのネジです。

I had them take it out as soon as possible because I was beginning to have reactions to the metal -- tight, sore muscles with cramps in my arm, neck, and back, and all the exercise I was doing wasn't loosening the shoulder up any further. (The metals don't help the immune systems, either, BTW.)
可能になって直ぐ抜き出してもらったのはその金属に対して反応が出始めてたから。
[Picking the translation back up on 6 October 2019:]
できるだけ早く抜いてもらおうと思った理由は、その金属に反応が出たのです。つまり、腕、首、背中などの筋肉が硬くなり、痛くなり、引きつったりし、あれほどの体操しても肩がもう、当時の程度以上緩むことが出来なくなったのです。そればかりか、その金属が免疫力に及ぼす影響が善くありません。

You wanted to see the hardware didn't you?
その補強材は見たいと思わなかった？
More than a year later, and the after-effects still make it hard to concentrate at work.
一年以上経ってもその副作用の影響があって、仕事に集中するのが難しくなることがよくあります。

Fortunately, the other guy's insurance paid 100% of the hospital, so I had a nice month to recover from the accident, the operation, and the medicine. And they covered getting the brace back out, too.
幸いに、入院費は相手様の保険会社が全額出してくれたお陰、一ヶ月ほどゆっくりして事故、手術及び薬からの回復するための時間が与えられました。肘の補強材を抜く手術も全額カバーしてくれた。

I went in for the removal on a Friday morning, out Monday afternoon, just long enough to be sure there wouldn't be any complications. And I taught lessons the evening after I got out. No big deal, other than the effects from the antibiotics. They let me do that one without painkillers. Not sure trying to avoid time off work was a good idea, though.
その抜く手術は金曜日の朝に入院、月曜日の昼から退院。

Maybe I can explain a little here about what the antibiotics do to me. I only had a part-time job teaching English, mostly to children, at a private juku, or tutor's school.

It was a new job, I had taken it because there was literally no place else that was looking like they would take me. It's not hard work, mostly just planning out simple activities where English is used, leading the students through them, and keeping an eye on them as you do so. For small classes, the planning is really something you can do on the spot, if you have experience and lots of tools handy.

When I was working in the public schools, I was handling classes of 30 or more students. At the juku, the classes were much smaller, from individual to six or seven students.

Both anti-biotics and anaesthesia make it hard for me to concentrate. They hamper my ability to think ahead, especially about things I can't see, and they make it hard for me to communicate verbally, especially when there are disagreements.

I couldn't handle making written plans, and I couldn't even really figure out why. And I couldn't handle discussing things with the other teachers.

They also suppress my immune systems, so I was spending a lot of time out of class in down time, recovering from sinus problems and other stuff.

One part-time job is not enough to pay the bills, so I picked up another translating. The translating job has worked out much better so far, mostly because my boss there has been very understanding. But that took pretty much all of the time I had outside of class, so there was no time at all to do planning. So I lost that job at the end of November, and am back to not having enough money to pay the bills, much less eat.

I have to admit, I had hoped the insurance would also pay enough to support me and my family for the time I couldn't really be working while I was recovering. That wasn't the case, and I haven't yet really recovered enough to hold a full-time job yet.

But, because I was in job-search mode at the time of the accident, they didn't want to give me any work compensation at all. No recognition of my efforts to write. The fact that I had to postpone a job interview because I was in the hospital, plus the fact that I had been working (and paying insurance) at the beginning of the year, did persuade them a little. They gave me enough to cover rent and part of the bills while I was in the hospital, and for another month after I got out, and then one more when I become incoherent on the phone trying to explain that it just wasn't enough.

(Incoherent. I tried to tell the agent he might as well be telling me to just crawl up somewhere and die. It might have come out like I was telling him he should die. Yeah, Japanese grammar is hard to handle, but this is also part of what the drugs do to me. No energy to know whether I have the grammar close enough to what I mean when I'm speaking Japanese.)

Ultimately, they gave me 160,000 yen a month for a total of three months. That's roughly USD 1,600 a month at exchange rates, and just barely enough to cover rent, utilities and maybe a half-month's groceries. And they deducted most of that preemptively from what they allocated to the final settlement -- you know, the one where they pay you for all the grief you suffered for it, after the fact. Except they don't, because there is no way to change things back, and because they have a bottom line they have to protect.

(That bottom line is the irony of insurance, by the way. Think about it. The guy that is supposed to be making sure you recover -- his real job is making sure you don't bankrupt the insurance company. That's the way insurance works.)

So I didn't really get enough protein, calcium, and proto-vitamin Bs in my diet while my body was rebuilding the joint.

So now I'm 15 degrees short of full extension in that elbow, with no expectation of improving. Sure, I can use the arm, but I can't get the full range.

That means I can't use full range when I'm exercising, so I can't afford to cut my exercises short. That makes it really hard to put together a forty-hour week, especially with more than an hour commute each way.

So why didn't I get at least a part-time temporary job as soon as I got out of the hospital? They said I could at least get work as a guardsman, swinging the red baton at construction sites, etc. The insurance company wants to know.

I did get back to the job search immediately -- before I was officially out of the hospital in fact. The hospital is conveniently close to the employment center, and when I was allowed to walk the two kilometer round trip, I went.

Some people thought standing out on the street eight hours a day with a traffic wand shouldn't be too hard, but I don't think they understand that, physically, it's just as demanding to stand in the middle of the street as in a store at a cash register. And the HR departments really don't want people who are still recovering from an accident. The guardsman needs to stay awake.

Some people thought I should be back in the classroom. I don't think they realize that there is competition for those jobs, and that they do actually take work, energy, and thinking.

It's also hard to describe how the medicine affects me. Sure, I was weak from the accident and the operation. And rebuilding takes energy.

But anesthesia and antibiotics just take it out of me, make it hard for me to think or move. Kill my immunities. And it doesn't just eventually go away. It was better during summer, but, winter, no, I'm still down as much as up. My sister brought me some stuff when they came to visit that seems to be helping me, but it's kind of rough on me, too. That's the way it is with these reactions.

It doesn't just go away after a day or a week or a month, and the person who needs the help is the one who gets blamed for not working hard enough, not trying hard enough.

The juku job required me to be close-quarters with children four or more hours a day. I like kids, I love to teach. But without physical defences I tend to catch whatever they have. I've had miserable sinuses all fall.

I have to have sleep. I cannot get by on less than five hours. Not if I've got to be productive enough to do a job. And the teaching job asked for "service overtime" -- reports and planning done off the clock, and only the most obvious (and least time-consuming) prep work would be paid for.

(The boss said, No! That's not service overtime! I'm supposed to have a habit of browsing through Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, etc., two hours a day anyway, looking for stuff for kids to do, just because. Even though I have another job. And I should have the persistent store in my tablet necessary to hold all those apps and their caches and databases. Just Because. I note that it's a trend these days for employers to demand personal time be dedicated to the job. Just Because. Even though it sucks the creativity out of both the personal time and the job. Even though much of the value of the work is in what you bring in from completely outside the work context, rather than in what you pick up by staying effectively on-the-job unpaid too long.)

I still have to put in more than an hour of exercise for the elbow and the muscles in my arm and back, six days a week. I take a break from the exercises more than one day a week, and my back, shoulders, and sinuses get all tied up in knots. That makes it really hard to work a full-time schedule.

A year really hasn't been enough time to recover completely. What were they thinking when they claimed I should be recovered in three months -- because I wasn't working and making at least 6,000,000 yen a year at the time of the accident?

What, really, is insurance for?

Well, that's the short version of what happened. If you made it through this much bellyaching, well, thanks for your time. I hope it doesn't depress you.

(My former boss at the juku job told me I was being too negative about life. I think I'm being quite optimistic, all things considered. I'm not dead yet.)

[I took a copy of this just after I started translating, here: https://reiisi.blogspot.com/2018/12/pre-translation-what-happened-when-door.html.]

Fortressing against Bad Education

I was informed that a companion to this post caused distress to someone whose opinion I valued. Initially, I removed this post to re-evaluate it, but I decided to put the post back up here.

I will likely revisit this subject, because the converse arguments also have value.

Things That Weren't Shiny

I was informed that the post I originally had here caused someone whose opinion I valued distress. I am not sure what distressed her about it, so I initially removed it to rethink how to express the contents in a better way.

I have come to no useful conclusion, so I have put the post back up, here, with the beginnings of a translation to Japanese.

The converse arguments have value, as well, so I will be revisiting the subject.

惣菜 (sōzai): Side Dish vs. Main Dish vs. Japanese Dishes

When translating Japanese into English, sometimes you run into some real puzzles, concepts that just don't map.

One of those is 惣菜、 or sōzai. (Also called おかず, or okazu, especially when you cook them at home.)

Conceptually, it's not hard. In traditional Japanese cuisine, the staple mainstay (主食のご飯 -- shushoku no gohan) of a meal is the grain -- usually rice, but possibly noodles or even bread in present Japan. Sōzai are the dishes that support the mainstay staple, so they should be called "side dishes", right?

That is generally what you'll see sōzai translated as.

Meat is the mainstay of western cuisine, so the parallels are there. It's one of those cultural differences. Problem solved, back to work.

Except, what should we call the shops, and the sections of the local supermarkets, where they specialize in sōzai?

And what if there are nothing but side dishes on the table for a meal?

Way too much is lost in translation.

Western style main course (courtesy of Wikimedia):

Would you call this the main dish? Or is the main dish the meat, and are the potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and spring peas or whatever the collective side dishes? Perhaps I'd call it the main meat item with sides of potatoes and vegetables.

You could buy every item in there at a sōzai specialty shop.

(Ahem. Okay. That steak is about twice the size, minimum, of what you'd find in a sōzaiyasan, and it would likely be minced, breaded, and contain soy filler. Soy filler is not evil, by the way, if you aren't allergic to soy. Soy is good protein, and both the meat and the soy improve in nutrition value because of the mix.)

Gohan Shushoku (courtesy of Wikimedia):

If you heard someone say "main dish", would you expect this?

(If you look closely, you will see there is barley cooked into the rice. It's not uncommon in modern households. My wife does it too, and I appreciate it. It doesn't really change anything I'm talking about.)

Western style side dish (courtesy of Wikimedia):

That looks like some good side items, side servings of side dishes collected in a single dish. Not much disagreement whether you are doing Japanese or western cuisine.

Okazu no Sōzai (courtesy of Wikimedia):

Would you call that a box full of side dishes? How about delicacies? What if, as is not unusual, there were a hamburg steak in that box? How about if there were a side of rice in there, as well?

What if you selected (separately, not collected in a box as above) items like these including croquettes, spaghetti and meatballs, squid, steak, chicken, or pork cutlets, etc., at the supermarket, or at a sōzai specialty shop, to take home and serve for dinner? Does the size of the serving matter? And why does a sōzai shop usually sell servings of rice, as well?

Lately, many supermarkets will label the section where they sell sōzai "delicatessen" or 「デリカテッセン」。 That sort-of almost fits in with current western supermarket practices, really. It seems quite a long time ago that delicatessens specialized in foreign delicacies, if they ever did.

And not a few American or European family meal organizers will sometimes collect the elements of a meal, pre-cooked, at a delicatessen to take it home and serve pretty much as-is.

But it doesn't answer the question of what a Japanese shop should call the items themselves as a group if they want to translate their ads to English and attract English-speaking customers.

I think, although for business reasons I haven't actually done this in my translation work, that, for myself, I would call them meal items or pre-cooked dishes.

Or, hey -- This is Japan. Latinize/Romanize it and call them "sōzai (pre-cooked meal items)" at the top of the page and just "sōzai" everywhere else.

Then the person who sets the table can decide whether they are side attractions or main.

Fortress against English

Recently, one of my private weekday students left this behind:

I forgot to clean it up, so the morning teachers had to take care of it the next day. (Sorry, guys. But thanks for the pic.)

This particular student regularly builds forts which he hides in while I try to engage him in English-related activities. Two weeks ago, I managed to interest him in a book of funny sentences and pictures (Cheese and Tomato Spider, if you're curious.) before he got started on his fort, and then got him to sit through a set of Halloween flashcards.

I thought maybe the monsters had his interest, and they did. Last week he brought a library book of monsters to read. Japanese, not English.

He sat down, opened the book, and dug in while I prepared for the lesson. Pretty soon he looked up and said, in Japanese, "See! Frankenstein! And Dracula! and Arachne! And Mummy! And Zombie! Werewolf!"

I argued with him (playfully, in English) about whether the ghost flashcard I had was a zombie or a ghost, so he had to look up ghosts. The book had a ghost ship.

I'm not sure wheher his thesis was that all those monsters were Japanese or that he didn't need English to learn about them. Both, I think.

Eventually, I just pulled out the jobs flashcards, and he had the patience to listen and even try to repeat about half, then play a game with me where I set about six of them out, then said one and waited for him to pick it out, replacing as we went.

Was I surprised that he had patience?

Not really. He's a smart guy. He doesn't want to be made to do anything, and he doesn't want to be drawn into anything that is not obviously going to benefit him. But if it's new and makes him think, maybe he's okay with it.

Letting him say his piece about English and monsters, even if I disagreed with him, gave him enough satisfaction to be a little patient with me and with English. And the jobs flashcard were new enough to overcome enough of his resistance to put up with it.

Why should he have such a strong resistance to English?

Well, ...

1. It's different.
   
   • He's only in the 2nd grade in elementary. He's finally getting the hang of hiragana, katakana, and numbers.
   • He wants to understand the world, and he is absorbing Japanese vocabulary. (He's actually quite a bit ahead of the median in 2nd grade in his mother tongue.)
   • All of that takes energy and work. He's working hard, and English rules, vocabulary and pronunciation are different and distracting.
   • And they confilct with the rules he is working so hard to learn.
2. He had a bad experience with a previous teacher who lost patience with his approach to learning. He has been hurt by English, as he perceives it.
3. I'm probably the first teacher who knows enough Japanese for him to be able (he hopes) to successfully negotiate the rules system with. So he wants to negotiate.

He is not a bad kid. He's smart. He wants to learn. But he wants to learn in a meaningful way, and that has been denied him so far relative to English.

So he's going to make an English teacher (me) work really, really hard, before letting English (back) into his life.

Or something like that. I don't know everything about the guy, but this is what I've pieced together from our lessons and from what his mother and other teachers have told me.

Why doesn't it worry me? I've seen it before, many times. I've seen young students who fought English when I started with them change their minds. And I've seen a few students I couldn't reach.

It's not my decision. Ultimately it's the student's decision. My job is just to give him the best opportunity I can to make a decision that's good for him.

Shiny Things (and Teaching English)

Several weeks ago, some of my Saturday students got busy during break. When I went to call them back to the crafts project I had prepared, here's what I found:
数週間前に、サタデースクールの子供たちが休憩の間に、遊びに夢中になってた。受業に呼び戻そうとしたところ以下の様子を目にしました。

If you have watched certain daytime children's TV shows in Japan, you'll probably recognize what they were trying to do.
ある子供向けの日本のテレビ番組を見ているなら、その子供たちがなにを企んでいたかがお解りだと思います。

Even if you haven't, you can probably guess that the ball on the left is intended to be rolled into the track formed by the chairs, and maybe caught in the baby rocker on the right, or to bounce over it, depending on how fast it is rolled.
その番組を見ていなくても、左側にあるボールを置いている目的は、イスの間にできている迷路もどきに入って右へと転ばしたら、転ばされた速度によって揺れかごの上を飛び渡るかすっかりとその中に入り込むかと、多分推測できるでしょう。

Sometimes, the students build forts out of carboard boxes, tables, chairs, and other pieces of equipment in the school.
時には、子供たちが学校に置いているダンボール箱やテーブル、イスなどを使って基地を作ったりします。

I generally let them do so. Children are more engaged in learning activities when they are having fun.
楽しくやっていると教育活動に子供たちがもっと集中してくれるのですので、大概は作っているのを止めません。

As a strategy, I can usually play the monster attacking their fort, and then bring the flash cards when I attack and show them flash cards while playing the monster, drawing them back into English and into games which give them more direct exposure to English.
戦略として、鬼になって基地を攻撃して、またフラッシュカードを持って見せながら攻撃して英語に呼び戻すやり方があります。だいたいその戦略によって、もっと直接的に英語に触れるゲームに戻ってもらえるのです。

When I use these kinds of techniques, things will usually click in the lessons, and (perhaps as their monster) I can speak English and get them to respond in English in their games of imagination. Role playing is a wonderful tool in teaching a foreign language.
こういう技術をレッスンの中に取り入れると、大概ですけど、レッスン中子供に閃きつき、たとえ鬼の英語としてでも、英語を耳にすることを我慢してもらって、その想像の遊びの中でも英語で反応してもらうことができます。模擬というものは外国言語を教えることに素晴らしい道具です。

Cardboard boxes.
ダンボル箱やな。

If you are a parent, you probably know the frustration of buying some shiny new present for your child and watching her happily pull it out of the box, play with it for maybe ten minutes, then spend the rest of the day playing with the box instead.
親として理解していただけると思います。何かの新しいものをプレゼントを買ってあげて、子供が嬉しく箱から取り出すのを、およそ１０分ぐらい遊んだら、その一日ののこりをプレゼントではなく箱で遊ぶのを見守ることがよくあります。

Why is that?
どうしてでしょう？

Easy. A carboard box is an invitation to dream.
かんちん。ダンボル箱は夢見る誘いです。

Dreams are shinier than plastic, metal, and glass.
夢なんてプラスッチックやら金属やらガラスなどよりもずっと輝くですから。

(There is a converse argument to this way of thinking, and the argument is not without value. I'll have to post that argument sometime.
こういう考え方に反論があって、その反論には価値がないとは言えないのがあります。というのでその反論を説明する投稿もしないと行けないでしょう。)

---

[1 December 2018:]

When I originally posted this, back in October, I was still struggling to get this approach to work at that school. Other teachers (not native English speakers) did not seem to know how to deal with it. And they would say things to the kids that, well, just didn't help.
１０月、これを元々投稿した時、その学校でこういう技術を適用としても効き目がさほどなかったのです。他の先生（英語を母国語とする先生ではなかったけど）私のやり方について納得してもらうことができなかったようです。子供にレッスンの（言っちゃて悪いかな？）応援にはならないことを言ってしまう傾向が多かったのです。

Posting this seems to have precipitated my being released from my contract at that school. これの投稿がその学校の契約から降ろされるきっかけになったようです。

Funny thing, during my last month at that school, the students settled down and the lessons started working better.
皮肉に思うかな。その学校の最後の一ヶ月の間、生徒たちの落ち着きが良くなって、レッスンがもっと巧く行くようにもなりました。

How I Learned Japanese, What I Recommend

I am sometimes asked how I learned Japanese.

The short summary:

I picked up the basics as a missionary in the Kanto area. Then I tried to continue studying it in America while trying to focus on becoming an engineer. Not having much access to real, modern Japanese, my modes of expression never became natural. (This was in the days before the Internet.)

In fact, after we were married, my wife told me my Japanese was pretty strange when we met. (I was a little disappointed, but not really surprised.)

I did study Japanese when I was a student at Brigham Young University, taking as much as was available at the time.

I don't recommend choosing a spouse just to learn a language. Marriage should be guided by higher things, really. But my companion has been one of my primary teachers. Unfortunately, I have not returned the favor.

After she brought me back to Japan, I was immersed in Japanese all day long, both at work and at home. And Sundays, at Church.

She listens to the radio several hours a day. Her favorite talk show host, Dōjō Yōzō, has essentially become one of my primary sources of patterns. Another is the collection of teachers for the NHK foreign language programs. I picked up a lot of Japanese grammar terms there.

We needed to listen to more English radio programs, for the kids and for her.

We occasionally watch videos. I try to get her and the kids to watch in English, and I find myself watching in Japanese. Newspapers, too. We sometimes take English language newspapers, but mostly it's Japanese. And I sometimes check Japanese novels out at the library.

There's a certain amount of sink-or-swim motivation, but, more than that, there is exposure.
Exposure is important.

You can't develop natural usage patterns without lots of exposure. You need good models, and you need many different models and you need lots of words and expressions from them to model your own language against.

One very useful thing is to read the scriptures in parallel. I have the scriptures in both English and Japanese. One verse in English, same in Japanese. Next verse in Japanese, and then English.

If you don't like scriptures, you can do similar things with Rowling's Harry Potter books, or Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

There are even some books you can buy with the English and Japanese in parallel, the English on one page and the Japanese on the facing page. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince is one that has been available in that format, I'm not sure if it is still in print. 

(One of these days, when I start publishing my novels, I plan on doing that with some of them. Some of my Random Eikaiwa scraps, I've either annotated or translated, and I've translated some of my posts here, as well. I don't guarantee my Japanese in those, however. Japanese to English, I'm good at. English to Japanese, I'm not quite as good at.)

Another thing that is helpful for students of Japanese, but not available for students of English, is books with furigana (振り仮名). This is the kana pronunciation of many of the Kanji in the book printed (as ruby) above the characters or to the right. It's very common in books printed for junior high and upper-elementary grade students, and it's very useful for foreign students of Japanese, as well.

For students of English, I don't know of any books that have such ruby throughout as it is available for Japanese. But it's not as necessary. Looking up Kanji words whose pronunciation you don't know requires dictionaries with stroke-radical indexing, and a modicum of familiarity with the radicals. 

(The Internet can help with that.)

With English, it's all in the spelling. Your ordinary pocket dictionary can carry you quite a distance. But that can be counter-productive, if you look up too many words. Be careful not to do that. That much, books oriented towards a younger audience can still help you in English, as well.

Grammar? Dictionary definitions? How do you know what it all means, so you can remember and use it?

Believe it or not, adults can pick up a lot of meaning from context and non-verbal cues, just like children. Mistakes, too, but dictionaries can also invite mistakes just fine.

Yeah, the bare-bones grammar I got from the Church's Missionary Training Center was important. So were the basics of vocabulary, pronunciation, and the hiragana and katakana. That was easily done in two months. Studying more at college was helpful, when I got there.

Buying a couple of semi-advanced texts to study before I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam was also helpful. But reading a couple of Japanese novels while I was studying the texts was what made sure the grammar stuck with me.

How much writing things down did I do?

There were some things that were important, but I found myself progressing a lot faster when I was not writing everything down. You have to pick things that are important, otherwise writing things down just gives you more ways to forget things.

If you're tempted to worry about losing all the words you spent all that effort learning, believe it or not, being willing to let a lot of it go is important. Being able to do throw-away reading, listening, and watching is important.

Why? It's a bit technical to really get into here, but, first, the things you let go do stick around in your less conscious memories. Second, what you are doing when you let things go, when you throw things away, is selection. Selection means you are dealing with meaning. Meaning is what helps you remember things.

You don't remember things that don't mean that much to you, and you (usually) shouldn't try very hard to remember them. You will, in fact, remember them better for thinking about them just enough to choose to throw them away.


So what about tests?

Well, tests can be useful as tools to motivate yourself to study.

Preparing for tests can be an excellent way to raise your game, as long as you are not studying the test itself.

Fluency building? Skill building? Evaluation? No, not so much.

This is another place where I could get lost in the technical details, but just think about it.

Say there are 1000 vocabulary words on a test. True fluency requires at least 10,000.

Say there are 100 grammar principles on a test. True fluency requires at least 1000.

Fluency requires being able to think about and discuss concepts in the target language. Say a test includes long readings and summary paragraph answers on ten topics. Real fluency requires being able to work with hundreds.

Getting the picture? Even the most torrid of tests can barely cover a narrow, thin, ridiculously one-dimensional piece of the target language.

Tests are a necessary evil. Use them, but do not let them rule you.

If you've taken a test recently, say in the last several years, it's likely to be more beneficial to use your time reading more novels and watching more movies in the target language. 

And don't forget to keep building your fluency with your mother tongue. Learning a foreign language does help your skill with your mother tongue, but only if you let it.

Book Review -- Diving for Love by Jenny Flake Rabe

Yeah, it's a quirky title. Not exactly the worst choice for the title, and I'm not sure I could have chosen a better title, but it might make you expect it to be about pearl divers. 

Or about snuba divers.

Oh. Wait. It is about snuba divers.

Or about one part-time snuba diver guide, negotiating deep and dangerous waters of personal and social relationships during one summer of high school. And about her summer job helping her uncle with his snuba business.

You can read the official blurb on Amazon or Goodreads or, say, the Balanced Writer. My summary follows:

Mariana takes us on a tethered dive through a slice of her life that skirts ethnic issues and plows through moral and economic issues as she solves several mysteries in her life, the most important of which is why her best friend doesn't seem to want to be her boyfriend. Most important, that is, until her uncle's busines and her grandmother's house become targets of sabotage and her own life is endangered.

Now, Jenny never took any of my advice when she was writing it. (Well, just once.) And that's actually a good thing. If she had written the first two chapters my way, the story would have been over before it began. The other young lady would never have had a chance with the best friend, and neither would the mysterious other guy with Mariana. And that unscrupulous businessman would have been dead meat within a week of Mariana's arriving at her Grandmother's house and her uncle's snuba outfit, I'm pretty sure.

So we get to enjoy watching Mariana solve her mysteries and untangle that very important tangled relationship, with the help of her grandmother, uncle, uncle's girlfriend, mother, and others close to her. And of course with the help of her best friend. And Abuela's wonderful cooking.

Fun reading.

Sad Pictures

This is a kind of sad picture. This poor girl is tired.

I'll show you why.

She needs a boyfriend.

She also needs a better place to lay her eggs.

But we can't afford to get her either.

Really need to do something about this.

(A second tub filled with decently clean dirt
would at least help a little,
but hot days like today, not so much.
She needs some shade, too.)

Book Review: Spinning Silk by Taya Cook

I'm on the train recently, and I have the remarkable fortune of sitting across from a youngish woman who could make the cover of a leading fashion magazine.

Courtesy forbids that I describe her makeup and the style of her costume in too much detail for the same reasons I shouldn't just take a photo and post it without her permission. Perhaps I can say it reminds me of some of the older traditional Japanese styles. Or it makes my think of a mythical Jorogumo spider-woman. I wonder whether she is on her way to some cosplay event.

There are such writing prompts on the train every day, really. But I don't dare use them, at least not directly in my writing. Too much possibility of causing someone harm.

Common courtesy.

But this woman who was sitting across from me that day makes me think of characters from another novel I have recently had the privilege of reading at beta through the LDS Beta Readers group: Spinning Silk.

In Spinning Silk, Taya Cook creates a mashup of the oriental Tanabata/Qixi Festival myths of the cattle-herder and the weaver with the attractive and powerful shape-shifting Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo, whose creature forms are arachnid. What she produces should be considered a love story similar in substance to, and borrowing from the Tanabata myth.

As a child, Furi, the protagonist, is a member of the lower castes of a kingdom that looks like feudal Japan. Think parallel worlds or alternative realities.

Her life is cruel in the way we understand life in those lower castes was; she exists essentially as non-family chattel, spinning and weaving silk for her masters.  And what passes for her daily happiness is constantly subject to the whims of jealous members of the households in which she lives, until a deadly epidemic completely alters the patterns of her life.

Her work is beyond exceptional, and provides her with opportunities for impossible upward social mobility, ultimately into deadly contact with levels of society she never dared dream of.

Her mobility also brings her into contact with a mysterious young man of obscure and dubious origin, and this young man informs her of the truth of her own unbelievable heritage.

Gradually she develops deep feelings for the mysterious young man as she is brought into an intrigue to reform the shogunate from within, bring the military and imperial seats of power together, and bring a new era of peace unknown in the history of our world. And those feelings bring her into conflict with her role in the intrigue.

Equally gradually, she discovers a dark and deadly secret about herself, a secret which both enables her part in the intrigue and threatens the relationship she desires with the mysterious young man, repeating patterns of her own heritage.

Similarly to most fairy tales in their more primitive forms, Spinning Silk contains elements which may not really be appropriate for general audiences.

In her tale, Taya demonstrates typical consequences of a society in which power is accepted as the underlying principle of relationships between sentient beings. Her conclusion defies that acceptance, but the cost of that defiance turns out rather violent.

There is also a sexual element integral to the plot. Taya does not indulge in direct depictions of the sexual element, but she doesn't hide it. And her use of that element could be considered an implicit argument that sex has never been, and should not be considered, a safe form of recreation.

I don't believe in the moral-age-appropriateness rating system, so I won't say you should consider this a PG-13 work, but I do think you should not give it to younger teenagers without reading it first. And it may provide a springboard into discussion of important and meaningful matters, even for adults. Real literature can be difficult to read at points, and many readers will find parts of this story at least somewhat uncomfortable -- and, equally, thought-provoking.

Did I enjoy the book? Mostly.

For me, it hits a little close to home. But the pain I feel reading certain parts of it is evidence, rather, that she has captured something deep, real, and hard-to-capture about the culture.

Well worth reading.