Hanafuda

 So many rabbit holes, so little time. My fascination (thanks to the Criterion Channel) with Japanese film noir has not only led to a junior-level class that I'll be teaching next fall but also to a series of games based on the handfuda deck. I was telling Janet about Mirahiro Shinoda's great 1964 film Pale Flower, starring Ryo Ikebe and Mariko Kaga in iconic roles. This led to a screening and a tumble down a rabbit hole to figure out the gambling game played by the yakuza in the film. This led to to the handfuda deck - and the many different games that you can play with the deck (although we still haven't sorted out the actual gambling game they play in the movie) - and the purchase of several different hanafuda decks. Apparently I've found a good partner for rabbit hole spelunking. 

Pale Flower is highly recommended! It will be featured prominently in next fall's class.

Our initial hanafuda deck, which we tracked down, like everything in the universe, on Amazon. This also included the purchase of a couple supplemental books as we try and figure out what the hell is going on with hanafuda. Koi koi!!

I think this has turned out to be our favorite hanafuda desk (although, as a purist in all things, I have an affection for the original one).

I mean, with the exception of the extra symbols that would allow you to use the deck in a "regular" card game (again, as a purist I disapprove), how could you not love these cards? The Japanese love their supernatural.

O lobo nao fala portugues

 As part of the preparation for this summer's Portugal adventure Janet and I have been tackling Portuguese on Duolingo. She has a natural affinity for languages so she's dominating it, whereas, well, I'm championing on as best I can. I decided to just go ahead and buy a lifetime membership at Rosetta Stone (I've tinkered with a couple languages, mainly Arabic, there in the past) but for some reason their app is not interested in letting me pay - and I'm having similar issues at their webpage - so I'm experimenting with Duolingo (I'm so frustrated with Rosetta Stone's refusal to help me pay that it makes me think that the entire thing must be run by Vermonters, who, as we know, are oddly resistant to being in any hurry to take on business/money). Anyway, Duolingo is fun and sort of goofy and, to a certain point, free. It's sort of set up as a game, so it is fun, if you can get your mind around the absurdity of devoting your time to learning how to say things like "the wolf does not speak Portuguese" . . .

Lindoso

 OK, so I blatantly swiped this picture off of the Net, but hopefully I'll take a somewhat similar one this summer. This is the tiny village of Lindoso, tucked away up near the Spanish border in northern Portugal. Janet and I are headed there for seventeen days this summer, as part of a three week jolly in Portugal. A couple months back she texted me when I was sitting at the SJC with friends and said that she had found crazy cheap flights to Portugal, and what should she do. I said "Buy them, now, don't think about it. We'll sort it out later." Actually, we really hadn't been dating that long at the time, but it just seemed like the thing to do; to be fair, we discussed going to Portugal on our first date. Then later I was messing around on the Airbnb site and stumbled across a 13th century cottage on the grounds of a castle in Lindoso, a town of which I knew nothing. And here we are. The cottage actually holds six - our thought process was that our friends could come and go as they pleased - although, yeah, we know no one will show up, and that's OK.

Our plan is to just be for around three weeks, with side day trips and the occasional overnight. I normally don't like it when people say they "can't wait" for something, because, well, it's sloppy, because what they really means is that they're really urgently looking forward to something. Having said that, I can't wait until we arrive in Lindoso.