the seven fathom deep hall in Chikurinan

This page has been brought to you by Noodle Shop Chikurinan, the speiality of Yoshiwara Oomon vicinity.

(Himajin) Welcome everybody. Here is the seven fathoms' hall at the second floor of the noodle shop Chikurinan. By courtesy of the master, we are able to open the homepage for the lovers of a crazy Japanese poem, a crazy haiku, an anecdote, etc. We are looking forward to your contribution.
Firstly, nonattendance report. Dr. Warui Shian has his chronic gonorrhea takes a turn for the worse and becomes a bedridden. In addition to that, he had eaten too much broiled wanton to have loose bowels. Now he can not attend the meeting as he is so busy with his treatment. Enjiroh of the Adakiya thought of going to a double suicide at the Mimeguri riverbank in Mukohjima with a close prostitute as today is such a good sunny day to die. Here is their printed swan song.

Nowhere to (let's) hide under the gate of Mimeguri sanctuary
Is the way to spread empty fame and frivolous romance
(inside of parenthesis is a pun in Original Japanese Text)

Is this Maekuzuke, a linked crazy poem? He is too self-conscious as usual.

Lady Sakenoueno Furachi informed me her husband can not come as he decided to start something like a fencing to keep pace with the times but he soon devised mysterious "parrot turn" as he has a natural aptitude and became very popular yet he had began receiving endless nagging from an acting master of Shirakawa school and so he was disappointed and retired to bed.
Miss Chihaya received an invitation from the ladies in the shogun's harem as a strange bug was found there. A palanquin had been arranged and she was very happy to go out and give an expert opinion with Rakuzendo (Lord Kuroda) and Rakuho (Sir Iimuro) of the Red Rod Club. Here is her Kyoka at her departure.

A bug of the castle with a halo inviting me
I can see the houses along the street before daybreak (the end of the contract)
(inside of parenthesis is a pun in Original Japanese Text)

So, unfortunately she doesn't come. Miss Chihaya makes a poem with Chinese characters and katakanas (the square form of kana) and never learn hiraganas (the Japanese cursive syllabary).
Probably you already know that our club has moved to the internet and now opened to non-members, too. Hereafter the contributions are published in colloquial. Please avoid an archaism. Don't say "Ich hae't colloquial. Suche lyke hath not refinements" please. A reader can not understand it. OK? Let's start.

(OJT 98/02/02 // ET 98/10/06)

(Buaiso) Lady Furachi is dutiful as usual. Anyway we lost a great man. I propose "a ready critic, a good scholar and a good warrior" as his posthumous Buddhist name.

How does a cheap novelist choose between two
and find risking (such or depicting) life
(inside of parenthesis is a pun in Original Japanese Text)

By the way, it is a real disappointment that we cannot see Miss Chihaya.

(OJT 98/02/05 // ET 98/10/06)

(Yuyaroh) Felicitations. Kyoka enters internet.

Happiness is average one, the prostitute is not here. <- nnnn, it's awkward. :-)

(OJT 98/02/09 // ET 98/10/06)

(Himajin) I had went what remains of Hachigata castle in Yorii, Saitama. That is a place of three months battle at the fall of latter Hojoh clan. The place is now forestry research center. It has many trees and they are opened for public. There are hanamizuki or flowering dogwoods of dogwood family which have autumnal tints of bright red. When I went there they were at their best with tinted autumnal leaves.

Flesh to perish (three months) though, Hachigata was true to its name.
But Hanamizuki (flower viewing month) blossoms in Shimotsuki (November)?
(inside of parenthesis is a pun in Original Japanese Text)

(OJT 98/02/15 // ET 98/10/06)

(Isohroh) Please excuse me for my long absence. Here is Isohroh. It's good to have the club moved to internet and became easier to access. While traveling (in south-east Asia), I stupidly staid at a hot-spring hotel (especially for couples?) with my male friend in one room because there is no other lodging.

At the wrong way up jellyfish (a symbol of hot-spring), two men saw the moon
what is it feeling, hid itself behind a cloud

(OJT 98/02/20 // ET 98/10/06)

(Yuuyaroh) I haven't seen you for a long time, Isohroh. I have felt uneasy (kidding!) as nothing is heard of you this 2-3 years. Probably our club have no choice but to go to high technology. Otherwise we can not keep in touch with all the members. I count on you, Isohroh, as you have travel stuff and so on.

(OJT 98/02/22 // ET 98/10/26)

(Buaisoh) Hey, you Yoshiwara nuisance, Isohroh. Welcomeback! Two men in one room? You lost a good opportunity. Gaiety has gaiety's good point. Matsuo Basho said;

A prostitute and me slept in the same house, but a man is better

(Isn't it true story?)

Beside that, the Club Membership List says that you've written a book "the last secret of Pol-Pot" and I tried to find it in bookstores but failed. Can't I get it except from publisher?

(OJT 98/02/23 // ET 98/10/26)

(Himajin) Welcome home, Isohroh. Let's us make Kyoka again. Well, you may be rather good at a story telling. By the way, as Mr Buaisoh had been asking, we can't find "the last secret of Pol-Pot" in a bookstore anymore, can we?

(OJT 98/02/25 // ET 98/10/26)

(Buaisoh) It just came to my mind when he came back. Isohroh can't drink. A long ago I went to a loach restaurant in Asakusa with him and a few others. I found that Isohroh is a non-drinker and he cannot eat or drink very hot things, too. It's pity to laugh at but . . .

You haven't touch a hot loach in the pot
alone you drink cold water

(OJT 98/03/02 // ET 98/10/26)

(Yuuyaroh) I started internet because the Club moved to here. I have something difficult to understand. That is so called "internet surfing". To sum up, it is to go here and there in internet using a link, isn't it? But if you know what information you want to get and which site in the net the information is, you do not need to see here and there in internet. You loiter on the net using a link to the direction which you guess the information is because you don't know where the information you want is. So, this is not surfing in the net but

LOST IN THE NET

Let's us to use a word collectly.

(OJT 98/03/07 // ET 98/10/26)

(Isohroh) It's late but to reply a question from Buaisoh and Himajin concerning my book, a bookstore does not have the book in stock. It's almost sure. I myself never see it. If you want, you need to ask a bookstore to order the book from the publisher, Sairyusha. Sincerely, the author. ;-)

(OJT 98/03/16 // ET 98/10/26)

(Isohroh) This is second late reply but, Buaisoh, that was a really nice meal. Thank you. This is not a food stuff but recently I went Sarajevo with a lovely condition of all expense paid including an interpreter. I give an account of my trip. A beverage stuff:

People in Sarajevo love coffee. And speaking of coffee, before everything else they mean time-honored turkish coffee. They drink it day and night as if they are chronic coffee addiction. Nowadays they drink cappuccino or espresso beside turkish coffee but instant coffee has not gain ground in Sarajevo yet. Though, some of other east Europian countries it seem to me things have come to alarming situation of treating instant coffee "classy" merely because it came from the West and in an ordinary cafe it is served in a pompous vessel and more expensive than the true coffee.

In Japan today coffee is served after the stock is separated from the powder by a filter or a siphon. But in turkish coffee both stock and grounds are poured into a cup and served. You cannot remove the grounds completely because you wait and see for a while till the grounds go down to the bottom and drink only the top clear layer. Whether you are willing or not, you suck small grounds in. You need a skill to grind coffee beans extremely fine so that the grounds do not give much uncomfortable touch on your tongue. Apparently the manner of brewing coffee vary from country to country even though they all call it turkish coffee. Here they say they simply roast coffee beans, and grind them, (till this point, it is just like making oridnary coffee in Japan) and roast them again, and grind them again. That is they roast and grind coffee beans twice. And the coffee powder becomes very much fine.

This extremely fine coffee powder is boiled in a dzezva or special pot with a long handle. You may put sugar in a pot before boiling coffee or you may put sugar in a fildzan or cup without a handle after you made coffee. You can use honey instead of sugar, and it is regarded as high-class. Sarajevan are fond of coffee without sugar but they have a sugar cube by the cup and nibble at it as they drink the beverage. This is, however, not considered well polished manners to have coffee though this is not really bad manners. They get foam upon the extract by boiling coffee. It seems to be also given special attention and each of them, or better to say, each family has peculiar method to deal with it. It may be spooned out and divided evenly among the whole party or may be pushed back by a spoon so that only smallest amount of it is filled in a cup with coffee. In the past they say a girl "you can get married to a man" when she learnt the art of coffee making.

A recent development is to change the name turkish coffee to Croatian coffee or Serbian coffee as some of them attribute Balkan stagnation to 500 years of turkish rule. As it might be expected, the most of Bosnian do not call it in different name Bosnian coffee. (Tough, a few does.) This type of coffee is called turkish coffee in Turk, Europe and also in Japan. But where it is swilled, in Arab, in Greece or in Cyprus, it is called Arabic coffee, Greek coffee or Cypriot coffee respectively. They change the name but the substances are very much alike. Arabs had taken coffee before Turks. So they can call it arabic coffee. But how about calling it Croatian coffee or Serbian coffee? This probably is a result of detesting Turks and adoring Europes. But to begin with, the very attempt to gloss over the fact merely by changing its name is, in my opinion and I had lived in the Middle East, very much like the Middle East.

Now, you can have one more delight after you drink turkish coffee with its grounds at the bottom of the cup. I don't mean a shabby trick of the second brew. You turn the cup upside down, put it on the saucer, wait for a while. The grounds get dry and make a dark brown pattern. By seeing the pattern, you can tell fortunes. Indeed you can't see a clear pattern made of instant coffee, so you need turkish coffee. The way to tell fortunes differs by the school. You may divid the coffee cup twelve and compare them to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Or you may see a pattern of stain made on the saucer as dregs of coffee drip (as a crescent pattern appears on the hem of the round coffee cup by itself, the fortune is told by the appearance of the moon.) If I were to mention the defect of this fortune-telling, however, I would say that coffee grounds is mere coffee grounds. Each time you drink coffee, the grounds fearlessly changes its pattern. Palmistry or physiognomy or horoscope do not change frequently. Time to time a supernova may appear. But generally speaking they are the same. The result of the fortune-telling do not have radical swing. But the fortune told by coffee nonchalantly changes from the extreme to the extreme. While a man drink a cup of coffee, it is not strange to see his fortune changes from the worst of ill fortune to the best of luck or takes the reverse course. At any rate you are dealing with coffee, merely coffee, if you do not like the divination, you can take second or third cup or more of coffee till you find the fortune likeable . . . so had I thought.

One day I was invited by my fat interepretor with a dinner by his wife. After the dinner and a matter of course, turkish coffee was served. (More precisely speaking, I took a cup of coffee in a cafe where Mr. Fat picked me up, another cup when I arrived at the house, few cups before the meal and a cup after the dinner.) There, the conversation touched fortune-telling by coffee. The wife is said to be good at it. Soon my french partner was amused and got his fortune told. His fortune could not be held very good but he had a decent divination sign. I ignored the topic as I was not interested in fortune-telling. My partner, however, turned my cup upside-down at his discretion and for fun. But the grounds in my cup had been dried already. The pattern could not be formed. The fortune could not be told. Hahaha, serves you right! But I was told I could dirnk another cup. I was not keen to have more coffee since I do not like coffee decide my fortune. But anyway I had another cup of coffee, turned it upside-down and let the interpetor's wife told my fortune.

The result was considerably bad. It was comparable to Daikyo or the worst luck in Japanese Omikuji, a written oracle. She looked serious with knitted brows and abandoned herself to grief saying she could see a misfortune. She was telling fortune and I was told. It's my bad luck. And I, with a bad omen, was indifferent. The fortune-teller's sorrow was no use. We were dealing with coffee, mere coffee grounds. How could I stand such stuff dictates my fortune. So I thought and I drank one more cup of coffee to change my fortune and turned the cup upside down to have my fortune told. But I was told that this could not be done.

According to the wife fortune-telling by coffee must be done only once a day. The due procedure is get up in the morning, offer God prayer, have a first cup of coffee of the day and you tell fortune using the cup. But if she is right, and I already had many cups of coffee since the morning, the very bad sign itself may not be trusted. In any case we do not do the proper coffee fortune-telling from the start, it is now nonsense to insist that we can do coffee fortune-telling only once a day. She said that you would be cursed by the god of coffee if you did have two or three coffee fortune-telling in one day. But this too is something I could not accept easily. I do understand that she is a Muslim. And I understand that a Muslim believe in one and only one God. It can not leave any room for the mysterious deity of coffee.

In the end she told me another fortune by another cup of coffee while she was miffed and said "anything good will never come of it". The sign was no good. We had repeated fortune-telling by the third and forth cups of coffee only to get worse luck, bad luck and worst luck. In short, the sign is always bad and I can not have a good sign by other attempts. I even had an unfounded suspicion that she might perversely tell the ill fortune. She denied of the doubt and gave me many explanations as she saw my signs. Even the poorest shot can hit the target if you shoot often enough. The opponent is mere coffee after all. I had a sign of the best luck before my belly was ripped apart. I said so, huh?

I returned the hotel but it was a bit early to go to bed. I droped in the pub where I found some of my friends having drink. I decided to be with them but had no intention to take liquor. I took orange juice and coffee. I was there till around one in the morning, went back to the room, went to the bed, and for some reason or other I stayed awake. I was thinking something like "but I have to work tomorrow morning", and then I saw daylight came. I was no better than carrying a pillow and standing a side up. I felt a little sleepy but could not seep. While I was slow on the uptake to understand the situation, and yet becasue the morning had come, I had no choice. I could not have enough time to sleep even though I could start to sleep now. I turned the radio on to listen BBC morning news. Nothing important went on. It was still early to have breakfast and I did not have a good appetite. I went the pub and ordered turkish coffee. Just like the way I learnt yestarday, I said a prayer to coffee god and had fortune-telling. I was not sure but the sign was the best luck. I do not need to have two or three cups of coffee. I can have it the best luck by the first one. It is good if the fortune-teller says it good. Hahahahaha, who afraid of coffee fortune-telling?

I was killing time a little while, yet I felt that it was still to early to have breakfast. I went back the room and decided to start reading a book. And then I felt sick. I felt like vomiting slightly. I went back to the bed with unsteady steps. I could comprehend the development coolly only after I came down to the bed. To cut a long story short, I had too much coffee last night, so I could not sleep by the stimulation and felt bad owing to insufficient sleep, and I poured additional coffee into my empty stomach early in the morning. All of these sat my nerves on edge and mixed my digestive organs up. Now I was in real trouble. I thought I would be well if I laid myself quietly down on the bed for some time. But it didn't work. My sickness worsened and I broke into a cold sweat. Momentary I thought of police news in the paper. There are headlines like "a freshman killed by an acute alcoholism" in April or May just after a new school term starts in Japan. Those are stories of children who have not know how to drink real liquor and drink it up in a single gulp. But "an old enough adult monitoring an election in Sarajevo dead of too much coffee drinking" is dumb at the best. Yet a toxin is a toxin, caffeine does have medicinal action. The nausea went from bad to worse and finally I threw up into a washbasin. My stomach had nothing but only one cup of coffee. And the most of it was spew out. The coffee was apparently mixed up with gastric juices or mucous membrane in the stomach. When came out, it had become like coffee jelly, glutinous fluid with brownish coffee black. The smell was that of coffee blended with stomach juices. The taste was . . . I couldn't bring myself to investigate it. I just stared vacantly to the coffee puke for some time and suddenly I wondered if I could tell fortune by the stinking liquid. But I didn't need divination. It was obvious. I had worst luck, at least on my health, today.

divinating (my) stomach (intention) was turned upside down, oh my caffeine
drips (suffices) too much for today's (bad) luck?
(inside of parenthesis is pun in Original Japanese Text)

Pardon me. I spent too much in preliminaries. :-&

(OJT 98/03/23 // ET 98/10/26)

A Kyoka (crazy Japanese poem), a Kyoku (crazy Haiku) or an anecdote can be sent to the club secretary Ryutei Kafunhiko. It will appear here if interesting; to be rejected if boring. A contributor is encouraged to invent a silly sounding pen name with a far-fetched excuse. A pseudonym alone can be accepted but a contribution with a secular name, which must be vulgar, may be treated anonymous. You will be a registered member if your pen name is appreciated.