I’m a bad person. I absolutely loathe The Matrix. While apathetic distaste of the sequels is a sure sign that your eyes are still working and that you’re completely sane, I even hate the first one (the popular one that made everybody think that they understood Descartes — even though the brain in the vat was Putnam’s idea, but whatever).

But let us not speak of that first one, and turn our attention to the third one (which was on telebox this evening).

Ignore the heavy handed Jesus imagery. Ignore the super annoying characters whom you could easily wipe out if given a million death drones. Ignore the dialogue which treats the audience as if they’re a bunch of stoner, undergrad Continental philosophy students (oh, wait…).

Why the McFlying Freak does Keanu Reeves have magical powers in the real world? Isn’t the whole point that he has some sort of superbrain (Keanu’s Super Brain is the most wildly improbable aspect of the first movie) which allows him to do ‘Woah’ superman moves in the virtual world? Isn’t he just a grown up version of Digimon?

When did he get the ability to make robot death machines explode with his mind? When did that happen? He seems to get a new superpower each movie; in number 2, he develops the ability to revive the dead (causing Trinity to spend the next movie as a zombie — a sharp change from the praying mantis she was portraying in the first two movies).

Oh, and if Keanu’s Super Brain was the most wildly improbable aspect of the first movie, then Keanu Rejecting Monica Bellucci because he really likes the aforementioned praying mantis was the most wildly improbable aspect of the second movie. On sober reflexion, it was the most improbable aspect of all of the movies.

So, yes. When did he get superpowers in the real world?

I said in my last entry that I wanted to buy a schedule book to keep myself organized. So last week, I went ahead and picked one up:

Ta daa! Isn’t it cute? And flipping through it, I see that it’s not just a monthly/weekly planner, oh no. This little guy has weight/diet charts, lists for shopping, financial tracker, and guides with heaps of useful information, particularly for me as a newcomer in Japan, I think. There’s lists of important phone numbers, postal rates, clothing size conversion charts, etiquette for exchanging gifts (I love this one so much! Although if even the Japanese in their crazy gift-giving culture need a guide in their planner, what hope do I have of getting it right??); proper letter salutations, manners for ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, maps of the Tokyo and Osaka train and subway routes, plus a lot more. This little book is amazing! And since they included calenders for October, November, and December 2009, it’s my early New Year’s Resolution. I want to try and keep up with everything in that book, beyond my day-to-day schedule planning.

While we’re on the topic of organization and self-improvement, what I also thank the heavens for existing is NON-NO MAGAZINE, which I also mentioned in the last entry.

Of course, like most magazines for young women, there’s endless articles about clothes (did you know you can put together a month’s worth of outfits with only 8 articles of clothing? The mix-and-match fashionista inside of me was highly impressed!), and how-to guides for hair and makeup. But beyond that, by some amazing coincidence, or act of God, or whatever, it seems like everything that’s been on my to-do list lately has had some article or feature in Non-no over the last few issues, and upon seeing them, all the cool tips and tricks end up getting me motivated enough to get it done.

The first example of this is cooking! Even though I’m going to school, I still like to cook something nice for Tatsuya and myself to eat for our dinner every evening. Non-no has awesome recipes that are really quick and easy to make, plus are simple enough for me to understand, even with my limited knowledge of cooking terminology in Japanese (or terminology in general, for that matter!) In any case it’s really good practice, and I can’t help but feel pretty gosh darn proud of myself when I can read and follow directions in my second language… and I know I did it correctly, because the end product is awesome, delicious food!

Every so often, Non-no will publish small recipe booklets that are included with an issue, but can be removed and are able to stand alone as a separate book. In October, they released one called “Become Beautiful: DIET*Veggie Recipes”. Ok, it says diet, but it’s all really delicious, vegetable-based dishes. The best part of it is that all the recipes are organized per type of vegetable, so all the spinach recipes are together on this page, eggplant recipes here on this page, potato recipes here, and so on. This has been really useful for Tatsuya and me, because very often we’ll buy a vegetable for a certain dish, like curry or mabo tofu, but then end up with leftovers that previously, would sit in our refrigerator until it went bad. But now it’s literally like, “oh we have an extra carrot sitting there… let’s flip to the carrot page and see our options! Look, one of them is carrot and spaghetti topped with cheese! I have all those ingredients already lying around…. INSTA-DINNER!” That carrot spaghetti was good, too… we ate it all up before I thought to take a picture, however :)

Here’s a couple more things I’ve made with this book.

With some extra moyashi (bean sprouts), onions, and eggplants we had lying around:

Chinese pork soup and sauteed eggplant with onion!

With extra Chinese cabbage and with somen noodles and tomatoes:

Rolled Chinese cabbage stuffed with salmon, and somen noodles topped with wakame seaweed, tomatoes, and avacado (that combination works amazingly, oddly enough!)

If anybody wants the recipes for this stuff, just let me know and I can post them (hopefully I’ll be able to manage to translate them, ahahaha.)

Now, here is a more telling example of how Non-no may in fact be reading my mind. One of the projects on my to-do list since we bought the closet from Ikea was to arrange all my clothes and get them all nice and organized and easy-to-find in our new space. As anyone who has seen my rooms in America knows, I used to like to shop for clothes in the morning by wading through a pile on the floor. But no more, I said! I love my clothes, so I might as well act like it! And then Non-no came to the rescue by challenging me to make good on my promises. Because the latest issue, which came out last week, has an entire article about CLOTHING AND CLOSET ORGANIZATION. HALLELUJAH! They profiled six different girls, who established their organizational philosophy, showed pictures of their closets, and made their own set of 5 “rules” to follow. There were tons and tons of good ideas, and it was enough to get me off my butt. So that’s what I did this weekend, and here is the result:

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The “denim basket” and the “winter-bottoms basket”, using cheap baskets I bought at Daiso

More baskets! You can sort of make out Tatsuya’s jeans in a pile on the shelf above. I guess organizing Tatsuya’s clothes is next on the list!

A basket for t-shirts and camis, a basket for shorts!

My sock drawer. Intimates basket censored because this is the internet, and no one needs to see my panties, lol :)

This was the best idea yet. A cute, cheap way to display all my accessories! Can I just say, thank god for Daiso! 315 yen for the cork board, 105 yen for thumb tacks, another 105 yen each for two kinds of ribbon that I can clip my hair clips, pins, etc. onto. Total: 630 yen. Awesome!

As a finishing touch, yesterday I went to Loft to buy a cheap fragrance envelope to hang on the inside of the closet door, so now our clothes can be nice and sweet-smelling.

So in more ways than one, Non-no has been helpful for me to get settled into my new routine and my new home in Japan. Thanks, Non-no!