This delicious stuff is called 湯圓(tang yuan), a dessert typically eaten during a holiday called 元宵(yuan xiao) for some reason I cannot remember. It has a chewy skin wrapped around a sweet paste that is traditionally either black sesame or peanut, and cooked in a sweet soup made of whatever your liking. In this version I used sweeten soy milk mixed with a Korean sesame and nut powder. Eaten this for breakfast tucked me in for a good six hours. Last night out of a reluctance to go to bed I decided to go on a site I used to frequent to read Japanese fashion magazines. Again I was reminded of the strange mix of anxiety and exhilaration I felt when I read those magazines during my many procrastination moments in high school. The girls in the magazines dressed so wonderfully that you cannot believe they could be walking on the street; they all had some sort of lightly dyed and neatly cut hairstyle, rosy blush on their pale cheeks, cute accessories that dangled in their hair, fingers, wrists, and necks, and clothes adorned with lace, frills, cute symbols,and cute patterns. The backgrounds of their photos are also as meticulously planned as their outfits, and often as cute, giving an air of nostalgia, coziness, and ease. Yet! I always felt discomfort while viewing these images because I felt like that I can never be in the same image as them. Why? The answer I only found yesterday in an assigned reading for one of my classes, an essay written by Adolf Loos, an architect part of the Modern movement who abhorred ornament, stating that they only provide comfort for those who do not know how to appreciate their work otherwise. Despite finding Loos a bit too extreme, I do agree that as we grow older, ornament becomes excessive because things we need to devote our time to becomes much more focused, hence the ornament that we are familiar with, the ornament that is obvious like hair ribbons and teddy bears on shirts, seem to become distraction; creating joy during times when one want to escape reality, and creating disturbance when one want to face reality. I guess this somehow explains my unease and simultaneous joy when I view images of those beautifully ornamented girls in Japanese fashion magazines; I enjoy dwelling in the momentary fantasy but at the same time I know that my reality is never thus.
