Since this past weekend wasn't terribly exciting, I'll offer a past-due recap of my weekend from several weeks ago, which was quite busy.

That Friday night I attended the charter membership meeting at HacDC, a new "hacker space" in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of DC. I haven't been able to visit the space very often with my busy schedule and distance from it, but it's an exciting effort nonetheless. At last night's organizational meeting, a bunch of new members who weren't present (including me) were approved, which had the weird effect of suddenly meaning that a quorum was no longer present, and so the meeting adjourned. :) I'm just amused by that.

On Saturday morning I attended a taiko workshop held by Nen Daiko. Being totally new not just to taiko but to drums in general, I had some trouble understanding what forces to apply to the drumsticks at what point in striking the drum. Nen Daiko is holding a series of beginner taiko classes on Sunday afternoons in June, but even if I had an accommodating schedule, Fairfax Station is awfully far for me to drive on a regular basis. It's too bad, because they seem like really friendly, fun people, and of course taiko's a blast.

Next was tea ceremony class, just a normal lesson, although it was the last time I got to see one of my classmates before he began his year off to care for his soon-to-be-newborn baby. As a congratulatory gift I made him a chenille-backed baby blanket with a temple festival motif. And I just learned that the baby was born yesterday evening!

From there I joined a group of Japanese-language learners at a noraebang (a predominantly Korean karaoke box) for an evening of singing. The idea is fun, but I recognized very few of the songs in their catalog, which included some Japanese and English-language songs along with many Korean songs. The other people I was with found Japanese songs they knew, whether from anime or from a familiarity with J-pop, I don't know. They also introduced me to the Numa Numa song, bringing to four the number of languages sung in that night. If I go again, I'd want to find a Japanese song that I know will be in the catalog and study it beforehand.

On Sunday I visited a home in Chevy Chase where a Kyoto-based kimono retailer, Sōjuan (双樹庵), had set up a showing. Nearly all of my kimono are secondhand, and even when I've visited Japan I've felt unsure about being able to assess the condition (for used ones), seasonality, and appropriateness for tea ceremony of a given kimono. But when I showed up to this house, I was happy to see a senior fellow tea ceremony student who's a professional kimono dresser open the door. She was like a fairy godmother for this situation! I tried on a number of gorgeous kimono and eventually decided on two: a relatively cheap, washable komon with a contemporary sakura motif; and the pièce de résistance, a light-green silk homongi with an ivy motif. Since their silk kimono were in karinui (仮縫い) form (just basted together), I'll be receiving that second kimono after they tailor it, sometime next month.

Having rung up possibly the highest single charge on my credit card to date, I took the metro over to Artomatic, on the other side of the city, for my second visit this season. There's so much interesting art there that I wouldn't know where to begin writing about it. I could spend hours and hours wandering around there, and I did, but eventually I grew hungry, and since none of the venue's food vendors showed any signs of being open, I wandered around the neighborhood. That's how I learned just how deserted the NoMa neighborhood is on Sundays. It's a ghost town. The few eateries I passed were all closed. So I kept walking, eventually wandering all the way to Chinatown and dining at Zengo before heading home.

I'm taking a Japanese language class this term—the Intermediate 3 one that I enrolled in last term only too see it canceled due to low enrollment. So far, so good. The earlier time slot (17:20-18:50, as opposed to 19:00-20:30) means that many of the downtown shops are still open when I pass by, and I could even stick around for a bite to eat after class.

Last weekend I attended brian_252's beer-brewing party at Shenandoah Brewing Company and took pictures. I opted not to brew anything, since I dislike the taste of beer, but I can at least recommend their root beer on draft.

My parents will be visiting this weekend to help me plan a Japanese-style room (for tea ceremony) that I have in mind to establish in my living room area. I think it could be about 4.5 2 tatami mats (7.5 3.3 m²) in area and separated from the larger living space by shōji. The big challenge here will be figuring out how not to spend a fortune.

身に入む 【みにしむ】 (to) penetrate/sink/soak into (one's) body / (to be) deeply moved by [frequently translated as "pierce", the verb here more suggests the way dye goes into cloth; classically refers to an emotional response to the chill of autumn and associated aesthetics]
月見 【つきみ】 viewing the moon [I'd be tempted to attend the Kennedy Center's Otsukimi event if it involved some actual moon-viewing. If I lived nearer to Philadelphia, I'd be up for something more like Shofuso's Otsukimi event.]
秋の七草 【ななくさ】 the seven autumn flowers:

• 萩【はぎ】 bush clover
  
• 尾花【おばな】 miscanthus
  
• 葛花【くずばな】 kudzu flowers
  
• 撫子【なでしこ】 fringed pinks
  
• 女郎花【おみなえし】 yellow-flowered valerian
  
• 藤袴【ふじばかま】 boneset
  
• 朝顔【あさがお】 morning-glory or 桔梗【ききょう】Chinese bellflower
  

燈火親し 【とうかしたし】lamplight (is) intimate/familiar
夜なべ 【よなべ】 nightwork—not that this is the only time of year when people work at night, but that one is most conscious of it at this time
渡鳥 【わたりどり】 migratory birds / birds of passage
菊 【きく】 chrysanthemums
紅葉 【もみじ】 red (maple) leaves
柿 【かき】 persimmon(s)

And on the topic of that last item, persimmons—and, for that matter, the first—I just wrangled out of the Internet an explanation of that wax-resist design I used this May in Kyoto: it's The Hut of Fallen Persimmons.

(Credit for some of the above definitions goes to the Japanese Haiku Topical Dictionary.)

I like the seasonality of Japanese culture. I didn't have a chance to celebrate Tanabata recently, but here's a little list of summertime Japanese words/concepts that find interesting, in honor of the season (sorry, southern-hemispherites):

じめじめ damp and humid; sodden; wet; clammy
炎天 【えんてん】 blazing sky
朝涼 【あさすず】 morning cool
夕立 【ゆうだち】 sudden (summer) shower [literally "evening shower"]
雲海 【うんかい】 sea of clouds [in the mountains]
麦茶 【むぎちゃ】 barley tea [I think I'll brew some more this evening, in fact]
虫干 【むしぼし】 airing out [books, clothing, etc., after the rainy season]
端居 【はしい】 cooling on the threshold/porch/veranda [literally "being on the threshold"]
潮焼 【しおやけ】 sea-side burn [literally "tidal burn"; sunburn and windburn from being on or near the ocean]
雨蛙 【あまがえる】 tree frog [literally "rain frog"]
蛍火 【ほたるび】 firefly glow

I found almost all of these words at the Japanese Haiku Topical Dictionary. I'm currently taking a class at the Japan-America Society's language school, but we aren't learning such obscure words in class.

As weekends go, this past one was good preparation for my imminent Kyoto vacation: on Saturday I helped set up for my tea circle's Sunday tea ceremony event, and I dined with a local English/Japanese language club in between.

Here are my pictures from the tea ceremony event, which was held at the lovely Hillwood Museum and Gardens. I served as an all-around helper, doing things like wiping clean the tatami mats beforehand and things like serving the guests their sweets and tea during the three tea ceremony seatings. I'd definitely like to return to the Hillwood sometime to see their dacha and more of their gardens, but it would be hard to beat a day as pleasant and efflorescent as yesterday.

I'm taking a Japanese class again, starting last night. I don't recognize the instructor or any of the students from the class I took there last summer, but they seem nice. We're going to cover the second half of the first Genki textbook. My classmates range from a high-school student to policy wonks to a young woman who's Japanese and can speak the language comfortably but who grew up all over the place and can't yet read kanji.

The first DemoCamp DC has been scheduled for February 28. It's supposed to be a warm-up to organizing a full-fledged BarCamp DC. My enthusiasm for organizing a BarCamp has been waning, though, since I found the local dorkbot group and since I feel overwhelmed at the prospect of finding a venue and sponsors. I'm good at complaining about poorly-organized events, but putting on a good one would take more energy than I want to expend right now.

Every so often, Tornado Kitty receives e-mail from a random admirer. She's quite the popular cat. I've been toying with the idea of having a Tornado Kitty Fan Club with, I dunno, membership cards or buttons or something? Maybe that'd be a good excuse to order some Flickr Mini-Cards.

In fabric arts news, now that she has received them, I can show you the set of placemats I made for aitai for Valentine's day; they feature characters from the Naruto series. It was an idea that came to me in that half-awake state as I was lying in bed before the alarm sounded (or was it as I was falling asleep?), and it seems it wasn't too crazy after all. Now I'm into some other sewing projects (which I won't disclose yet because they'll be gifts too), but on the subject of making placemats, I'd love to make something along the lines of Syuzi Pakhchyan's (sparsely-documented) Technoplay placemat. It's a placemat with some LEDs sewn into it and some sort of pressure-activated switch that turns them on when a plate is on the placemat. Looking through the components at Digikey, I'm guessing what I'd want is a low-profile, non-momentary tactile switch—as opposed to what they call a "pressure switch". If you know anything about this stuff, I'd welcome your input.

Less than a month remains before the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which—unlike last year—I'll show up and take, ready or not. I've been relying on this JLPT study site to tell me which vocabulary, kanji, and grammar I'll have to know for level 3. Causative and passive forms are a struggle, but I can work on those; more annoying are the grammar points that don't appear in any of my books, like the ず verb ending. For vocabulary I'm making flashcards (or post-it notes where it makes sense to me to put them somewhere in my house), studiously avoiding any kanji I don't have to know for the exam.

I've been reading Making Sense of Japanese, which I recommend to anyone learning the language. The author's light style makes it fun to read; more importantly, he explains the precise meanings of various bits of grammar that most teachers of Japanese just gloss over.

I've watched several episodes of NHK's 日本語で暮らそう learning-Japanese program, but it's mostly over my head, as is Unicom's The Preparatory Course for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, 3 kyuu Grammar Book. I don't yet seem to be at a point where I can learn efficiently from purely Japanese-language source material.

I'm making some progress studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test I plan to take in December. The level I plan to take is a stretch of my current abilities with the language. I registered for last year's test but didn't study enough to be anywhere near prepared to take it.

I've got a lot of study materials, from a textbook to kanji workbooks to JLPT practice exams to Japanese children's story books to kanji flashcards. I've found that re-watching Azumanga Daioh and jotting down important words and phrases is a less efficient but really fun way to study, too. Now that I've finished re-watching all the episodes, it's time to move on to more serious forms of study.

I set up my ham radio stuff to listen to an AO-51 Echo pass last night. I heard people, and I was ready to jump in with my call sign and grid square, but there wasn't much dead air, and the pass was over pretty quickly (AO-51 is a low-earth orbit satellite).

Photos from my tea circle's spring chakai have been up for a few weeks, but I hadn't as yet posted a link to them. Speaking of seasons, I recently learned that the Japanese vocabulary I'd learned for spring, summer, autumn, and winter don't exactly match up with Western seasons. 春, or spring, includes February, March, and April; 夏, or summer, runs from May through July; 秋, or autumn, is August through October; and 冬, or winter, includes November, December, and January. And speaking of Japanese language, I'll be taking classes downtown this summer with elwing2000.

The Chesapeake Bay watershed has been interesting me lately. I've been looking into watershed management volunteer groups, like Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and my county's "stream team" and conservancy. ACB organizes kayak eco-trips along some of the Bay's major tributaries, though I'll be out of the country during this years'. It might be fun to go kayaking (independently) along the shores of the Bay.

I don't understand how Firefox decides when to ask users if they want it to remember a password. On a recent Ubuntu installation, Firefox 1.5.0.3 has been failing to ask at most of the sites where other installations of it (similar versions), on different machines, have recognized the password field and prompted the user about remembering the password.

I've decided I want to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test this year. It's an international standardized test given once a year, in December; students learning Japanese can choose from among four levels of difficulty. I think I could probably pass the easiest level (4) right now. If I'm diligent, I think passing the next level (3) at the end of this year is a worthy goal.