Saboten Girl

girlfriends

I like going to this saturday class when I can, because my friend goes and we sort of hang out and have a chat and catch up.

I need some more girlfriends. I mean, girlfriends I can go out with (this friend is sober, no going out for drinks). I can hang with another friend on sundays, maybe afternoon/evening after her hangover clears up, because she’s a hostess who works all night and sleeps all day.

That must have been what it was like trying to hang out with me back in the day…

tomato jam

Tomato jam. So good.

Everyone almost licked the jar last night.

I know it sounds weird but believe me, it’s awesome.

We hung out with this guy who we found out lives in the neighborhood, iraqi jew, family in israel, canadian passport, so funny. I haven’t hung out with another jew in ages, and it’s weird, but i realized i missed it.

in bed, falling asleep, I said to my man that I liked that guy. He got all jealous. “How much do you like him?”

Thanks so much! Choosing the Gaijin Card story!

Thanks y’all! That was so helpful, thanks so much!

4 and 5 were very close, but it was 6 by a long shot. And I think that’s great because in a lot of ways it’s universal and relevant today (even though it was written in the 1950s), and I think it would have meaning for people in the English speaking world too. Which is important for a translated work.

I like that one, personally too. I think because it felt so real to my own experiences.

And Adamukun, The writer’s name is 金達寿, I’ve seen it translated different ways, but I think I like it written as Kim Dal-Su the best.

AngryPolishGirl, hopefully you can read all of them soon! it’d be great if I could get them published!

help me choose please?

Trying to choose which story to send in to the university publication.

The author I translated was one of the first major zainichi (ethnically Korean) writers in Japan. He wrote about the early days, during Korea’s colonization and the days when Koreans were part of the Japanese Empire, to the switchover when suddenly they were “foreigners” even though they had nowhere to go and Japan was their home!

If anybody has the patience to take a moment, could you tell me which story sounds the most interesting?

1. Story written in the early 1960s, about how people in a small town outside of Tokyo have to build a memorial to the Koreans they massacred 40 years previously, so they can take part in the real estate boom. It’s kind of funny, even though the topic is heavy.
2. One of his first stories, a very short, from the heart story of the day he was taken away from his grandmother’s home in a small village in Korea, to join his family in Japan.
3. Story about a simple, hard working, slightly devious zainichi korean dude who just relentlessly fights against the odds to become a successful trash collector.
4. Story about an old school Korean “gentleman” who insists on wearing traditional clothing and keeping his hair up in a top knot, and his business partner, a modern looking Korean dude who is charming enough to be accepted by Japanese society, and they grift rich Japanese people by selling them “medicine,” which actually works, but it’s still illegal.
5. Complicated story about a complicated family and how the “repatriation” campaign to send zainichi Koreans “back” to North Korea (even most came from the same 3 provinces in the south) forced some of them to realize they were actually more Japanese than Korean, etc.
6. Story about a Korean kid who enters Japan illegally to join some family members after shit goes down with the Korean war, and then he has to get his fake gaijin card renewed. Actually, I really like this one.
7. Story of an old, old school hard working zainichi dude who just keeps working and not changing, despite things changing all over the place around him (growing north korean sympathy, civil rights changes, etc.)
8. Seriously depressing story of an old dude who’s “repatriating” to north Korean, but before he does, he goes to the grave of his fellow massacred Koreans, that he barely escape from.

So, which one???