Year of the Cock

Year of the Cock
Author: Alan Wieder
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2009-07-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0446550809

From a powerful new voice in nonfiction comes this electrifying chronicle of a married man who leaves his wife to pursue a carefree bachelorhood - only to plunge into an abyss of shame, regret, and penis envy. Thirty-year-old Alan Wieder has everything a man could possibly want: a nice home in L.A., a thriving Hollywood career, and to top it all off, a beautiful and adoring wife. Then one day in 2005 - the Year of the Rooster - he wakes up with questions: Have I settled down too soon? Am I consigned to a humdrum future of marriage, kiddies, home-cooked meals and hybrid SUVs? How the %&! did this happen to me? And just like that - after ten years in a committed relationship - Alan decides to walk out on his wife to pursue his fantasy of becoming a hardcore bachelor. Explaining very little, thinking even less, he dives into his exhilarating new single existence - buying a vintage Porsche, moving into a tastefully decorated bachelor pad, ignoring his wife, and bedding as many chicks as possible. However, to Alan's surprise and dismay, becoming a single dude also unleashes in him a torrent of crippling insecurities that he didn't even know he had. And soon, his would-be swingin' bachelorhood is cut short - very short - by a strange and shameful obsession that drives him to utter madness. Some men leave their wives only to discover that the grass isn't greener. What Alan Wieder discovers - about the perils of newfound freedom, and about his own fragile male psyche - is far more agonizing and wretched. In this riveting and brutally honest memoir, Alan recounts the true story of his impulsive, wild, and ultimately disastrous foray into bachelorhood. A tragicomic tale of betrayal, sexual (mis)adventure, and ultimately redemption, Year of the Cock marks the debut of a remarkably talented new writer.

We Japanese

We Japanese
Author: Frederick De_Garis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 611
Release: 2013-09-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136183671

'We Japanese', is a collection of answers to questions that the author as a hotel manager in Japan has answered for hotel guests over the years. He was the manager for over 28 years at the Fujiya Hotel at Miyanoshita. These are naturally questions concerning those things which are different in Japan from the countries from which the visitors come. First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

和英日本文化表現辞典

和英日本文化表現辞典
Author:
Publisher: 研究社
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2007-03
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9784767490533

かなで引ける日本文化和英辞典の決定版!

Asian Animal Zodiac

Asian Animal Zodiac
Author: Ruth Q. Sun
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2012-02-07
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1462903711

This guide to the Asian zodiac gives a complete history and explanation of the zodiac as well as detailed instructions on how to read one's own animal signs. In much the same way that Westerners analyze their personalities and predict their futures by studying the positions of the stars under which they were born, Asians use the ancient animal zodiac to explain individual personalities and predict their futures. Originally the Chinese zodiac, this custom spread to all corners of East Asia. According to legend, the twelve years in the Asian animal cycles were named for the twelve animals who visited Buddha on his deathbed: the rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, cock, dog, and boar. This informative and delightful book examines each animal of the zodiacal cycle and describes its history, its virtues and flaws, its "all-too-human characteristics." Traditional tales from China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, and Vietnam illustrate each animal's personality as the people of those nations see it. With carts, descriptions, and stories in this zodiac book, the Western reader too may find useful wisdom in the Asian animal zodiac.

Symbolism in Korean Ink Brush Painting

Symbolism in Korean Ink Brush Painting
Author: Francis Mullany
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2022-09-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9004213619

With more than 200 colour plates, and for the first time available as a study in English, this volume explores the vast heritage of Korean ink brush painting, providing a rich panorama of information that stretches across the entire spectrum of Korean art – including painting, pottery, calligraphy and literature, which will have wide appeal, not least to art lovers and students of Korean Studies. Part I presents the material in essay form; Part II, which uses a dictionary format, summarizes the information in Part I and highlights the hidden messages and symbolism inherent in literati ink brush painting in Korea. When China and Japan opened up to outside influence in the nineteenth century, Korea maintained a closed-door policy, becoming known as the ‘hermit kingdom’, only to be swallowed up in the struggle for hegemony between the Great Powers. Annexation by Japan in 1910 threatened Korea’s language and culture with extinction. Liberation in 1945 was followed by the tragedy of the Korean War in 1950. In the period of reconstruction after the Korean War, artists and scholars faced the task of retrieving Korea’s endangered cultural tradition. Ink brush painting is a unique part of this tradition; its history stretches back through the Choson dynasty when Chinese influences were assimilated and absorbed and made into Korea’s distinctive tradition.

Shanghai Diary

Shanghai Diary
Author: Ursula Bacon
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2008-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1621154327

By the late 1930s, Europe sat on the brink of a world war. As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open port available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But instead of a storybook China, they found overcrowded streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens, and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive.

Redemption and Regret

Redemption and Regret
Author: James Scarth Gale
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 681
Release: 2021-04-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 148752997X

Redemption and Regret presents two previously unpublished typescripts of James Scarth Gale, a Canadian missionary to Korea for four decades (1888–1927). During his time in Korea, Gale developed into the foremost Western scholar of Korean history, language, and literature, completing the first translation of Korean literature into a Western language, the first translation of English literature into Korean, and the first comprehensive Korean-English dictionary. In addition to these translations, the typescripts entitled Pen Pictures of Old Korea (ca. 1910) and Old Corea (ca. 1925), each presented here with introductory essays, contain Gale’s observations of various cultural artifacts, behaviours, and practices. Gale lived in Korea during a tumultuous and transformative period that witnessed the transition of the country from a "hermit" suzerain kingdom to an independent empire, and finally to a colonial possession of Japan. Pen Pictures of Old Korea and Old Corea preserve what Gale viewed as inevitably fated for extinction. This realization imbues his writings with a sense of ambivalence towards the "passing" of traditional Korea – owing to the conflict between his profound admiration for pre-modern Korean culture and his Western missionary identity, which demanded that the country adapt to a modern, Christian world.

The Leopard, the Lion, and the Cock

The Leopard, the Lion, and the Cock
Author: Matthew Stanard
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2019-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9462701792

Thought-provoking reflection on culture, colonialism, and the remainders of empire in Belgium after 1960 The degree to which the late colonial era affected Europe has been long underappreciated, and only recently have European countries started to acknowledge not having come to terms with decolonisation. In Belgium, the past two decades have witnessed a growing awareness of the controversial episodes in the country’s colonial past. This volume examines the long-term effects and legacies of the colonial era on Belgium after 1960, the year the Congo gained its independence, and calls into question memories of the colonial past by focusing on the meaning and place of colonial monuments in public space. The book foregrounds the enduring presence of “empire” in everyday Belgian life in the form of permanent colonial markers in bronze and stone, lieux de mémoire of the country’s history of overseas expansion. By means of photographs and explanations of major pro-colonial memorials, as well as several obscure ones, the book reveals the surprising degree to which Belgium became infused with a colonialist spirit during the colonial era. Another key component of the analysis is an account of the varied ways in which both Dutch- and French-speaking Belgians approached the colonial past after 1960, treating memorials variously as objects of veneration, with indifference, or as symbols to be attacked or torn down. The book provides a thought-provoking reflection on culture, colonialism, and the remainders of empire in Belgium after 1960.