playing hangman with mu_a_a_i

I took care of my 8-year-old niece today. I picked her up in the morning, and we meandered around town a bit and ate lunch at the fifties style diner (not my stomach's happiest plan, but...it's her fave). Then we came back to my house and played about a million games, including hangman. I told her she could pick any length word or phrase for me, but only if she was sure she could spell it correctly (a stipulation learned the hard way from a few disastrous games of third grade student-led hangman). So she decided to look around for a word. She disappeared from the living room and came back a few minutes later, ready to go. It was a two-word phrase. I immediately got some A's, and went for "I" next. I was surprised to learn that both words ended in "I." Anyway, I guessed a few wrong letters, then tried "R." at that point it looked like this: _ A R _ _ I*** _ _ R A _ A _ I. She hinted that there was another vowel. I guessed "U," and it got me to _ A _ U _ I *** _ U R A _ A _ I. "Haruki Murakami???" I said. "YES!" We both just doubled over laughing, although probably for different reasons. To me it was just so hilarious that she went looking around for a word, and that's what she found and picked. For her, it was sort of nonsensical, and plus she had probably had too much sugar from her fifties-style chocolate milkshake.

The book that she got that from was the one currently next to my bed, Underground. It's his interviews of people who were somehow connected to or experienced the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. I had read it before, but got it out again after watching a documentary about Aum Shinrikyo, the cult held responsible for the attacks. I first went to Japan a year or so after that happened, and I remember seeing these Wanted posters for missing key Aum members all over the place: The documentary (called "A," and randomly available at my library) followed Aum's naive and young official Aum spokesperson/follower as he tried to hold things together after the attacks. It was a very psychologically interesting glimpse of this one guy, but the film was surprisingly ambivalent about the cult itself and some of its stranger doomsday sci-fi beliefs. I guess it was intended for a Japanese audience that had already been beaten over the head with stories about those. Oh, but in one scene, the main guy, Araki, showed his oozing, nasty toenails and said that the pus was actually bad karma leaving his body. The filmmaker said, "Really? It looks a lot like a bad case of athlete's foot."

This scene was tremendously helpful to me, because the next day my mom and I went to get our first pedicures ever. Yes, you could say that we country mice finally visited the big city. I had a gift certificate and wanted to treat my ma. Anyway, as I settled into the aggressive yet pleasant massage chair and turned my feet over to a gentle-handed young dude with slicked-back hair, I felt a bit self-conscious about my flaked-off old polish, unmaintained cuticles, rough edges, etc. But after seeing those Aum Shinrikyo karma feet, wow. I knew mine looked pretty damn good. Now they look pretty damn great. Seeing as I will be on my annual beachy/small town up northy vacation within days, this is exciting!

Anyway, Underground is not my favorite Murasaki book by any means, since it's not enough of his own voice, but I'd still rather read it any day than something by, say, ne__on *_em___e or a__*__ul__r, for example.