南向き翻訳事務所 岩渕デボラ ブログ

Just one of the ma-a-a-any hats she wears. I’d like to introduce you to her book review blog that she runs at Grinnell College in Iowa. Before anyone makes any Iowa jokes (when you’re done with the Maebashi jokes), let me mention that there is an excellent tofu factory in Grinnell… or a neighboring town. Lots of culture running up and down those rows of corn, just so you know!

Anyway, these are the sort of book reviews I can deal with (English-English translation: they don’t take longer to read than the book itself!)

I’ve got to find a picture of Iowa to put in here. But until then, here’s a picture of Rebecca and family plus me and mine-minus-one. This picture is also featured in Diversity in Japan, used with permission by Hikari Iwabuchi.

“Nobel winner reveals key to success” was the title of a 10/26 article in the Daily Yomiuri. It first caught my eye because the photograph of the 88-year-old author looked pretty much like an English version of my mother-in-law on a good day, including the hankie in the pocket, disheveled hair and cup of something in her hand. The front of her house with the bags and bins and overgrown vegetation also looked painfully familiar.

But my favorite part was her response to the question of whether writing was a necessity for her. Her response was, “Yes it is. I have always written, ever since I was a child. Writing is very essential to me and I think it must be some kind of pyschological balance…If I am not writing then I am very prickly and bad-tempered and awkward.”

And there you have it! I have an excuse for what my friends and family have to put up with when I’m between projects–I’m on my way to Nobel fame… as soon as they establish one for translating. Yessssss.

If you click on the pic, you can get it larger…

I’ve been trying to figure out how to run both English and Japanese blogs, and I think I may have figured it out! If you look at the categories, and click on English entries, that’s what you’ll get! As I go about my daily business (depending on the day), I come up with lots of things I’d love to put in a blog, and some of them are Japanese-appropriate and some are English-appropriate.

Certain “living in Japan” episodes are appealing to one side but not the other, and now I won’t have to pick and choose anymore.

I will be decorating the English blogs with some of my husband’s photographs. No outing is complete unless he has 200 photos to show for it. The person who created the digital camera saved my marriage–I’m no longer knee-high in snapshots and negatives. His collection now lives on his computer and makes occasional visits to mine.