A Tale for the Time Being
Page 45
124. segaki ()—hungry ghosts; also a derogatory name for homeless people.
125. Baka ne, Chibi-chan!—Idiots, aren’t we, dear Chibi!
126. tengu ()—supernatural red-faced demons with long, phallic noses, often dressed like Buddhist monks. Tengu can be evil or benevolent and are protectors of mountains and forests.
127. Yasutani Haruki-sama de gozaimasu ka?—Are you the honorable Mr. Haruki Yasutani?
128. Jinsei no Itami —The Pain of Life.
129. It’s brave to live . . . ?
130. ihai ()—spirit tablet, a memorial tablet.
131. senpai ()—one’s senior at work or school, one’s superior.
132. Haruki Ojisama wa irasshaimasu ka?—Uncle Haruki, are you there?
133. Haruki Ichibansama?—Mr. Haruki Number One?
134. Meriken ()—Americans.
135. ikotsu ()—cremated remains; lit. “left-behind” + “bones.”
136. karaoke ()—lit. “empty” + “orchestra” (oke—abbr. for okesutora).
137. gyokusai ()—suicide attack, human wave attack. Literally “shattering like a jewel,” from a seventh-century Chinese saying, “A great man should die as a shattered jewel rather than live as an intact tile.”
138. ikotsu—remains.
139. Yamato danshi ()—lit. “man of Yamato.” The masculine archetype of a true Japanese man.
140. Sō darō na—Mm, you’re probably right.
141. burusera ()—schoolgirl uniform fetish; lit. buru (abbr. for bloomer) + sera (abbr. for sailor).
142. shibui ()—cool, chic.
143. moe ()—sprouting, budding. Slang for an adorable, crushworthy manga-type girl.
144. bishōnen ()—beautiful youth, beautiful boy.
145. A club or bar with bishonen hosts who serve drinks and entertain female customers.
146. Beauty, you walk on corpses of dead men you mock. / Among your stores of gems, Horror is not the least . . .
147. Tetsu no Ame ()—Typhoon of Steel (also Battle of Okinawa), which resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. More than 100,000 Japanese troops were killed or captured, or committed suicide. Allied casualties numbered over 65,000. Somewhere between 42,000 and 150,000 Okinawan civilians were also killed or wounded, or committed suicide (between one-tenth and one-third of the indigenous Okinawan population).
148. chikan ()—masher, molester. A man who sexually gropes a woman in public.
149. Sensei no saigo yo. Hayaku okaeri.—Sensei’s last moments. Come quickly.
150. kyakuhiki ()—a tout; lit. “customer” + “pulling.”
151. zangyō ()—overtime.
152. Yokkata. Ma ni atta ne.—I’m glad . . . You made it in time.
153. seiza ()—formal kneeling posture.
154. Hai, Sensei. Dōzo—Here, Sensei. Please . . .
155. matsugo-no-mizu ()—last-minute water.
156. sakasamizu ()—upside-down water. Normally a bath is filled with hot water first, and then the cold is added.
157. mu-mu (?)—not, naught, nothing, nil, non-, un-.
158. muyū (?)—nonbeing.
159. yū (?)—being, existence, antonym of mu.
160. Charles Bennett. Oliver looked up the quote later and found it’s from an article about quantum computing by Rivka Galchen, which appeared in The New Yorker, May 2, 2011.
161. For more on the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, see Appendix E.
162. For more on Hugh Everett, see Appendix F.
163. 1 fingersnap = 65 moments, and 6,400,099,980 moments = one day, so 6,400,099,980 ÷ 65 = 98,463,077 fingersnaps per day.
164. Erwin Schrödinger came up with the term entanglement in the course of devising his thought experiment. Einstein later called entanglement “spooky action at a distance.”
165. Schrödinger proposed his enigmatic cat as a challenge to this idea of observer-induced collapse. He maintained that physicists hung on to the notion of collapse because without it, all possibilities, physical and otherwise, would begin to propagate, and before long, “we should find our surroundings rapidly turning into a quagmire, or sort of featureless jelly or plasma, all contours becoming blurred, we ourselves probably becoming jellyfish.”
Table of Contents
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication page
Contents
Part I
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Part II
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Haruki #1’s Letters
Part III
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Haruki #1’s Secret French Diary
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Part IV
Nao
Ruth
Nao
Ruth
Epilogue
Appendices
Appendix A: Zen Moments
Appendix B: Quantum Mechanics
Appendix C: Rambling Thoughts
Appendix D: Temple Names
Appendix E: Schrödinger’s Cat
Appendix F: Hugh Everett
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
About the Author