about the article
‘Pastoral’ is a word we associate with the countryside and farming – pastoral
farming is farming of sheep or cattle; or we might talk about pastoral scenes,
typically of idyllic rural locations.
Impression: This is clearly one of those districts where it always seems to be Sunday afternoon.
We are a petty bourgeois enclave (飞地) of perpetual Sunday wedged between two mega-highways.
sounds / smells / touch / sight / taste
好词佳句:
word choice — all work on two levels:Connotation
that Conjures up an image; Denotation that Denotes precisely what it means.
- effortlessly, peculiarly, perpetual , brisk swish of broom on tatami matting,
- raucous cawing (harsh cries), clickety-clackety of chattering housewives,
- briskly, rustic, tranquillity, picturesque, considerable, higgledy-piggledy (chaotic and in disorder)
- Frail, omnipotent granny who wields a rod of iron behind the paper walls
- we are a 60 yen train ride from…, and a 60 yen train ride in the other direction from…
- unabashed (not embarrassed), scrupulously (in a very careful and thoroughly)
- warped tomatoes (out of shape), knobbly (lumpy), malodorous belches from sewage vents
- s doft thunder of tiny footsteps
Imagery
- Metaphor “iron-grey hair”
Her iron-grey hair is scraped into so tight a knot in the nape no single hair could ever stray untidily out.
The color of an aged granny hair is compared to that of iron. The sense of smooth pieces of iron also helps bring about the image that her hair is scraped so tight and neat. This suggests that the granny is old while she is still very scrupulous and neat.
- Simile
“each berry red as a guardsman”
The man in the open fruit shop packs martial rows of berries the size of thumbs, each berry red as a guardsman.
The color of the berry is compared to that of guardsman’s uniform, which brings out the image of a guardsman in readers’ head. It not only emphasizes the bright color of fresh and ripe berries, but also the fact that the berries are in equally good conditions, like a row of standing guardsman.
- Personification
“occasional malodorous belches from sewage vents even in the best areas”
Tokyo ought not to be a happy city – no pavements; noise; few public places to sit down; occasional malodorous belches from sewage vents even in the best areas; and yesterday I saw a rat in the supermarket.
Belches means “burping or expelling gas noisily from the stomach through the mouth”, which is inappropriate in public, let alone the foul smell that comes with the noise. Here the sewage vents are personified as a burping human being. It would be annoying to notice a “belching” sewage vent in city just as it would be when around burping people, and it contributes to the summary that “tokyo ought to be not a happy city”. However, such belches are not frequent and are rather occasional, this suggests that the passers-by might be more surprised than annoyed because they wouldn’t expect it coming.
