Episode 83: The What Is This? Book

2012-06-29

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Rather than name this book after its obvious origins (a beef curry package), I decided to go with What Is This? What Is This? is a B6 blank notebook with seven signatures of four sheets each for 112 pages. It is made of a recycled Beef Curry package. The cow the curry was made out of, according to the package, was raised by Miyazaki University students. Hence the name of the curry is MiyaDai Beef Curry. (Dai being short for daigaku - 大学 - which is Japanese for university.) Gee, free Japanese lessons with your bookbinding enjoyment. It's always nice to learn another language, isn't it?

Rather than name this book after its obvious origins (a beef curry package), I decided to go with What Is This? What Is This? is a B6 blank notebook with seven signatures of four sheets each for 112 pages. It is made of a recycled Beef Curry package. The cow the curry was made out of, according to the package, was raised by Miyazaki University students. Hence the name of the curry is MiyaDai Beef Curry. (Dai being short for daigaku - 大学 - which is Japanese for university.)

Gee, free Japanese lessons with your bookbinding enjoyment. It's always nice to learn another language, isn't it?

Actually, the curry name shows you three of the four written syllabary Japan uses. The MiyaDai (small, in white) is kanji; then in big English letters is Beef; following that is katakana which Japan likes to use for words borrowed from other countries. The katakana here is カレー - kare, pronounced ka ray - or, in English, curry. This might be one reason Japanese students are in school studying Japanese for twelve years, eh? I mean, they study English for at least six years (junior high and high school), plus at least one in college. And advertising uses all three or four syllabaries to an artful result. Sometimes.

There's another syllabary Japan uses called hiragana but we don't need to go into that here, do we? Nyah.

What Is This? has a red bookmark made out of a ribbon recovered from one present or another, and a yellow strap to keep the book closed during typhoon season, which is fast approaching Japan. The yellow elastic strap was 30 mm wide but I've discovered that 15 mm is a better width. I cut it in half and it slowly unravels as the book is used. This is known as Unique and Stylish. Or Planned Obsolescence. In either case, What Is This? was a quick book to make and will be fully used as a notebook by someone in the future.

What I am actually doing with these curry books is trying to perfect one or another skills. Attaching a strap or measuring the spine differently. Maybe even trying to improve my endpaper attachment technique. I haven't been working enough to improve as well as I want to so I thought more and more cheaply made books will push me up and over a plateau. Whether this is working or not isn't up to even a mild debate.

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