Japanese cast iron rabbit

Item description / significance
This is a small Japanese cast iron rabbit. The rabbit is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. It was the zodiac animal of the year 2023.

Bought where
on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app

Age and origin
new, Japanese

What I like about it

It’s a rabbit. I like all the Chinese zodiac animals… but some animals are more equal than others. In this case, the rabbits come out on top, not the pigs!

The material. Small cast iron objects are satisfyingly dense. There’s a typical “seam” around the middle, a result of the casting process, that gives the object a symmetrical front and back.

The shape and texture. Unlike porcelain, cast iron doesn’t really permit fine detail. The surface is coated with something smooth, but it’s rough underneath.

The color. Something has been added to the surface that sticks in the cracks more than to the other parts of the surface. This highlights the shape of the rabbit more than a uniform dark black would. This bronze green color is typical, but I’ve also seen white/grey, brown, blue, red, and yellow.

See below for information on Japanese cast iron and more photos.

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Purple and white crystal tower

Item description / significance
This is a polished stone tower/obelisk/point. Dimensions: 20.5 cm x 4.5 cm x 3.41 cm. Weight 700 g. The seller labeled it as fluorite; I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure it’s agate.

Bought where
on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app

Age and origin
new

What I like about it

The color. Maybe the purple color has been added, but unlike other dyed stones I’ve seen, the purple color has the quality of natural amethyst and doesn’t look tacky. There’s a possibility the stone actually *is* natural amethyst with agate; these minerals do sometimes form together, and that would certainly explain why the purple doesn’t look like purple dye to me. If that’s what this is, this is a real treasure. But in any case, it looks great!

The texture. The white part of the tower has the translucency of milky jelly. Never seen anything like it. So satisfying!

The size. A lot of crystal towers are the size of a finger. This one has a satisfying bulk. Large surfaces permit better appreciation of color and texture.

The metaphysical properties. Just kidding! I don’t believe rocks and minerals “do” anything, except maybe give me a small dopamine boost when I look at them—which is what any decor object does. I wish more crystal websites talked about the scientific properties of crystals instead of the imaginary ones. [Sigh.]

See below for photos from the seller.

Continue reading Purple and white crystal tower

Japanese green glaze dragon

Item description / significance
This is an abstract ceramic dragon with dark green glaze. The dragon is one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. It was the zodiac animal of the year 2024.

Bought where
on Xianyu (Chinese second-hand marketplace app)

Age and origin
Unknown age. Likely Japanese. The seller provided no information, but many of the seller’s other items are from Japan. Also, two similar dragons on Xianyu (one unglazed dark brown and one celadon) are listed as being from Japan. There’s a lot of cool stuff from Japan on Xianyu (including bears like this one).

What I like about it

The color. I like saturated colors, so this deep green is appealing. It’s the same deep green as some Chinese shiwan ceramics, like this rectangular pillow. Green is the color theme in my living room (at least in theory).

The style. Normally I like very realistic looking animals, and this one is not. But there’s something about the minimalist geometry here that I find appealing. Maybe it’s the semicircular snake bends in his body that contrast with the regular square scales.

See below for photos from the seller.

Continue reading Japanese green glaze dragon

Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

A Christian knight named “Dante”, freshly returned from the Crusades, journeys through Hell looking for the soul of his lover Beatrice after she dies in his arms, the last of his family to be slaughtered by someone unknown. Her soul is snatched away from him by the devil as she screams that he must have betrayed her; he denies this. But at the gates of Hell, his torso is embroidered with a red ribbon cross depicting, like film slides, his sins. He meets Virgil and travels through the circles of Hell, attacking monsters, protesting his innocence, and calling out to Beatrice, whom the devil intends to wed. Can he stop the marriage? And is he worthy of Beatrice’s love? (Or God’s?)

This movie is based on a game that is based on the actual Inferno. The episodes in this Japanese/Korean/American production are animated in slightly different styles, but the plot all hangs together. It’s a clever fantasy/action/horror adaptation.

See below for more details about the plot. SPOILERS.

Continue reading Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

This historic movie was controversial because it featured two cross-dressing male characters; they pose as female musicians because they need to escape the mafia. I didn’t find it entertaining, just awkward and silly.

Your mileage may vary! According to Wikipedia, it “opened to critical and commercial success and is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time.” That’s why it keeps cropping up on lists of “must-watch movies,” and that’s why I watched it.

Colossal (2016)

In this movie, Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, whose boyfriend kicks her out because she’s unemployed, broke, and out drinking with friends all the time. She leaves NYC, moves into the empty house her family owns in her hometown, and gets a job with the grade-school classmate who runs the local bar, which means she gets to keep drinking. Here’s the thing, though: she discovers that whenever she steps into the local playground, Seoul, South Korea gets attacked by a giant monster whose movements exactly match her own.

That’s the premise.

I think they mismarketed this movie as comedy. It’s really dark, actually. Okay, fine, it’s black comedy. I thinnnk I’m glad I watched it… but I wouldn’t watch it again. Yeah, she’s under the spell of alcohol addiction, but it’s actually a lot worse than that. You can shake addiction. What you can’t do is reason with a psychopath who has some sort of hold over you. That’s scary, man.

Anyway, the movie is a clever metaphor, and there are flashbacks that ultimately “explain” (not that it’s really explicable) the origin of the monster. So if you’re not afraid to see Gloria cornered by a violent psychopath in the second half of the movie, and you like black comedy, give Colossal a try, I guess.

Rotten Tomatoes currently says 82%; IMDB says 6.2/10; Google says 53%.

Ludwig: Season 1 (2024)

The show is about John, the extremely smart but hermit-like identical twin brother of a police investigator. John makes a living inventing puzzles under the pen-name Ludwig. John must assume the identity of his brother James in order to figure out why James has disappeared. (Don’t expect Season 1 to answer that question, though!)

The episodes, as you would expect, are a mixture of fish-out-of-water comedy, displays of intellectual brilliance that address some specific police investigation that “James” becomes involved in, and delicate attempts to pursue the dark secret of the disappearance of the real James. And is there a love triangle? Maybe so…

See below for a few more thoughts (no spoilers).

Continue reading Ludwig: Season 1 (2024)

Books I read in 2024

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff

The best book I read this year was Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff. Much as I enjoyed it, it took me forever.

The copy I read is printed and physically huge, so I didn’t carry it around with me; I had it by my bed. But it’s also an intellectually challenging book that requires concentration. So I didn’t really want to read it at bedtime. It sat there for months, until I made it a priority to sit down and get through it.

The truth is, my reading habits have changed. After I moved from Singapore to China near the end of 2022, I read fewer books overall, as part of the associated swath of lifestyle changes, and a larger proportion of my reading was ebooks in 2023 and 2024. I brought plenty of printed books with me, and I still can (and do) buy printed books in English (in China and when visiting the US), but I lost the habit of carrying a paper book around, and the habit of reading just before lights out. I almost stopped reading paper books in favor of ebooks: in 2024, I read 9 printed books out of 45 total.

In 2024 especially, I took advantage of free public domain ebooks after realizing that I was buying cheap ebooks even though I don’t much like the idea of buying ebooks at all—and I know darn well I shouldn’t be buying ANY books just because they’re a bargain price! So now my goal (again, still) is to try to do a better job following the last-in-first-out rule I made that I’ve been struggling with for a while.

See below for a complete list, book cover thumbnails, and thoughts on the quantity, length, format, and content of the books I read in 2024.

Continue reading Books I read in 2024

Places visited in 2024

Siqi and I visited 2 European countries and approximately 9 cities in China in 2024. I took thousands of photos on my phone! The road trip that Siqi and I went on with my parents was particularly special. See below for an illustrated summary of where we went when.

Continue reading Places visited in 2024

Movies watched in 2024

In 2024, I watched 50 movies (well, 46 movies, a miniseries, and three tv shows).

Part of the reason the number is so big is that I went on two international trips and watched 13 movies on planes. I try to watch foreign movies that I’d never even hear about, rather than Hollywood movies that I already know I want to see.

Siqi and I only watched 2 movies in theaters. China does screen Hollywood movies in English, but you kinda have to look out for them and plan to go when they’re available, and we didn’t pay that much attention.

We (re)watched 14 movies and shows on DVD. Sadly, most of my DVDs are currently in storage.

Luckily, Chinese streaming services are super cheap and have a ton of English-language Hollywood movies, and we have a big TV in our living room. So we watched 21 movies and shows online. (Still, like everyone who uses a streaming service, we had to go looking for things on multiple platforms because licensing.)

See below for the complete list, with comments and recommendations.

Continue reading Movies watched in 2024