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I’ve been staring down one of those traumatic birthdays that zeroes out your age. Just as the numbers on a gas pump cycle through too quickly to comprehend, I’ve zipped through the past decade faster than I can grasp. I’m unwilling to leave this personal decade, but I don’t see that I have a choice. When I arrive at the beginning of the new one, will I even know who to be? I’ve never been able to imagine myself as quite that ancient, and yet I will be, nonetheless. How to adjust? How to forge a new identity (without the slightest motivation to do so)? I can’t seem to make my self-image fit my new age. Shouldn’t I be wiser or at least taller?

Whenever January comes around, the past year seems to wither into oblivion, as if it no longer matters. A whole year that once seemed vital and present suddenly appears unreal and hazy. That’s what this birthday threatens to do to the last decade. It’s a wiping clean, is what it is. Mostly, that’s a frightening thought, but it does have its positive aspects. I can forget about all the mistakes I’ve made and get a fresh start. But what’s the use in thinking that way? No one else is likely to wipe my slate clean, just because I’ve become horrendously old!

If I wanted to be optimistic, I could see the 0 not as empty but rather as full. It’s the start of a wonderful new decade, sure to be just as rich and rewarding as the last.

Pfff.

I’ve been wrestling with these issues for a year, and I’ve made little progress. Facing this new age is like looking into the sun. I can’t do it. I can’t make myself take in the indisputable, uncontrollable fact of what I’ll become. So I alternate between obsessiveness and this:

現状否定 (genjō hitei: denial of the existing situation)
     actual + situation + to deny + to decide

Good ol’ denial! Where would we be without it?

Ten days shy of the big day, my hard drive decided to die. It seemed to have no particular reason for doing so, or if it did, it left me little information about the motive.

All my data has disappeared. A wiping clean indeed.

“But,” people say, “surely you’ve got it backed up.”

Surely. If that were the case, would I look this miserable?

At first, I took the hard drive fiasco as some kind of 前触れ related to my impending birthday. The hard drive is the heart of a computer (isn’t it?). Should I read this event symbolically and get my heart checked out? Maybe that’ll be the next thing to go.

Or maybe this is the universe’s way of saying, “You thought the birthday was hard to take? I’ve got something that’ll cut that trauma down to size.” The universe has a point there.

Even though my computer seems to have zeroed out all my data, I know I could have worse problems. I think about the flood victims on the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. At least my home is intact. I think about my friend’s cancer-ridden dog. At least my dogs appear to be healthy. When I went to a Mac store for help, a customer entered in a wheelchair, barely able to communicate about what he needed. At least I don’t struggle with those barriers at the moment. I tried to count my blessings, and I felt a little more peaceful. That lasted for about 10 seconds, then vanished promptly.

The Mac store sent me to a data-recovery center an hour away, where I stood in line, staring at a wall. It was covered with documents showing the well-known companies that have hired DriveSavers: the Smithsonian Institute, Kodak, Apple Computer (really?!), Yahoo (!), ABC News, American Express, Harvard University, Yale University, the University of California, Los Alamos National Laboratory…. The list goes on and on. Apparently I’m in very good company—or else even cream-of-the-crop organizations hire blithering idiots like me, none of us smart enough to back up our data. Yoko Ono was a customer in 2000. DriveSavers has framed and mounted the check she wrote. But I guess she received a celebrity discount; she paid only one-tenth of what I’ll be paying if they recover all my data. It’s the same amount I paid two-and-a-half years ago when I went through the same painful, exceedingly expensive ordeal with another misbegotten Mac. So now you know the horrible truth: I’ve been a blithering idiot twice (at least).

As I waited at DriveSavers last week, I searched desperately for something to calm my racing heart and mind, and once I spotted a Japanese poster on the wall, I ceased to think about much else. After puzzling over the text, I copied a key phrase, hoping that the act of drawing kanji would soothe me. (It actually did.) Here’s the phrase:

データ復旧サービス

The katakana obviously said “data” and “service.” I didn’t know the first kanji, 復. But I did know the second, 旧, because eons ago, I mistook it for １日 (tsuitachi: the first day of the month). Here’s what the compound turns out to be:

復旧 (fukkyū: restoration)     to restore + old

Hey, should I take that yomi personally?! Sure doesn’t sound very friendly.

But look at the nice breakdown. Oh, god, that’s what I need! Restore me, now that I’m old!

Or barring that, please find my data.

I need to wait a week to find out if they can. My birthday anxiety has largely turned into data-recovery anxiety. And as with the birthday thing, I vacillate between obsessiveness and denial.

I thought of devoting today’s blog to characters about restoration, denial, or some kind of wiping clean. But I’ve decided that in light of both traumas (the birthday and the loss of data), this is a time to take stock and to review what I’ve scattered around without even remembering. (Such thoughts bring me hope. Now that all my photos may have vanished, I find comfort in realizing that if I emailed a photo of my dogs to someone a year ago, I may still have that image in my Yahoo account! Yahoo!)

I’ve been blogging here for 15 months, and the material has begun to spin out of control (like everything else in my life). I never expect anyone (including myself!) to remember the vast amounts of information I present, but I do hope that if I spend a few blogs on one kanji, we’ll all at least remember the meaning and yomi of that character. Doesn’t seem too ambitious, does it? And yet, I find that even after spending about 10 hours on each blog, I can’t recognize some of these kanji when I encounter them. Maybe it’s senility already.

Anyway, I figure it’s high time to review what we’ve covered so far (roughly 1 percent of the Jōyō set!). My quizzes are usually silly, but the ones below are more serious and diagnostic, testing your knowledge of 23 kanji that we’ve examined since the beginning. Each quiz will lead to an individual answer key. At any point, you can also access a comprehensive key, with yomi and meanings for the kanji at hand, as well as links to past blogs about those characters. Next week, you’ll find Part 2 of this review and can test your memory of the compounds we’ve encountered.

If you get a big fat zero on any of the quizzes, now you know just what I’m confronting with my twin traumas! Good luck!

For the Verbal Logic Quizzes …

Comprehensive Key to the 23 Kanji …