Q2 Journal 4

For my last big reading session of this quarter, I read even more of A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.  This time, I read thirteen pages in about half an hour.  I am back in Nao’s section of the book in the middle of her explaining her life at home and at school, which certainly is not ideal.  I learned that Nao and her family used to live in the United States but had to move back to Japan after her father lost his job.  There, Nao was bullied at school for being a foreigner and for being poor.  It is especially in the bullying part that she uses Japanese vocabulary to give a better idea of what exactly she is called.  For example, there is ijime, a term that means “bullying”; Iyada!  Gaijin kusai, which means “Gross!  She stinks like a foreigner!” and Bimbo kusai, which means “She stinks like a poor person!”  The insults are combined with some offensive Engrish (misspelling intended), which I can’t help but laugh at because the bullies try to sound so cool but really just jumble a bunch of English derogatory terms together.

This part of Nao’s story is more exposition than any other literary devices, but it gives us as readers more information about Nao’s hard life.  She lives in an apartment where her family can hear everything from the rooms above and below them, and her father has attempted suicide after his return to Japan and loss of even more money.  It is hard for me to really identify with this because I have never been in such a tight financial or familial situation, but I am sure that some others who may come upon this book can relate better.  I also find it hard to see a similarity with, in Nao’s words, how the “Man of the House makes all the Big Financial Decisions” in America compared to how the woman takes care of the money in Japan mostly because my mother and father share that responsibility almost equally.  Nao’s section ends with how karma, according to Jiko, punishes people for bad things that they have done, such as in the way that Nao’s father ends up feeding crows in the park instead of having a solid job after he spent all of his money betting on horses.  Perhaps these crows will have a greater significance later on, but only time will tell for that.  It was interesting to learn more about Nao, and I hope to read much more of this book as my time frees up for Christmas break.

Q2 Journal 3

The third time I read for pleasure this quarter, I continued Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.  This time, I read about thirteen pages in half an hour mostly in Ruth’s section of the book.  It must have taken longer to read because to me, Ruth’s chapters proceed more slowly than Nao’s.  Here, we are introduced to a retired anthropologist named Muriel who helps examine the Hello Kitty lunchbox.  Muriel takes a very critical, scientific approach to the find, unbiased about how the lunchbox ended up in the sea compared to how Ruth almost automatically thinks that it washed up from a tsunami a few years ago.  It makes me think that perhaps the diary may not have arrived in the West Coast in dramatic circumstances.  However, after reading this part, I predicted that Muriel will not take on a major role later on in the story because she was so suddenly introduced and just as suddenly not in any more scenes so far.

The most important part of this section was probably when the watch from the lunchbox starts to tick again.  There are many possibilities for its meaning as a symbol because a supposedly dead watch starting to tick again is no normal occurrence.  It could have something to do with what has been said before about lost time.  Perhaps by starting to work after a long time of being stopped, the watch represents time being found again.  Nao seems to be communicating to Ruth, the reader, what Ruth currently thinks of the entire situation with the diary:  “I am reaching through time to touch you.”  As Ruth listens to the watch ticking near her, this moment makes it clear to me that Ruth and Nao are connected through the boundaries of time.  Ruth’s section ends with her having a dream about Jiko, Nao’s great-grandmother, saying something about things going up and down.  Currently, I am not sure what this means exactly, but I guess that it will have significance later on.  This reading session ended when I began a little bit more of Nao’s story, which starts to give us a better idea of Nao’s family and school life.  Overall, though I was not drawn in as much to this part of the book, I still enjoyed it and am willing to read and write about more of the novel again.