a russo-japanese trade

"Because," the foreigner replied and, narrowing his eyes, looked into the sky, where, anticipating the cool of the evening, black birds were tracing noiselessly, "Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it. So the meeting will not take place."
-Woland in The Master and Margarita

When Nausikaa was stolen in August, I also lost quite a few sentimental items that were in her trunk, including my Kogepan doll.


(Mine was actually cuter because he had strawberries on his head.) Kogepan is Japanese for "burnt bread"; he's one of the lesser-known Sanrio characters. His mythology relates that he was meant to be a red bean bun, but after he was left in the oven too long, no one would buy or befriend him.

Kogepan was the last thing that absenceofwill gave me before we broke up, and I took to carrying him (the doll, not the boyfriend) with me everywhere. I had grown accustomed to holding him while I slept, and so when my grandfather died last December, Kogepan naturally came with me to Austin. However, upon checkout from the hotel, I inadvertently left him in the bedsheets and had to make a frantic call to locate him. I was (probably unreasonably) panicked, but housekeeping found him, and in gratitude I tipped the staff $20 when I picked him up.

I first learned about Kogepan while watching Joss Whedon's commentary on the Season Five Buffy episode "The Body" (which is, by the way, an unbelievably fantastic, if depressing, hour of television). While Willow has trouble deciding what to wear to Joyce's funeral, Anya sits down in the papasan chair, putting the plush doll that was on the cushion in her lap. Joss says, "My wife and I are huge fans of a little Japanese guy named Burnt Bun Boy, so when I got a stuffed figure of him, he just had to appear on the show."

I have missed Kogepan terribly and have been wanting something to hold onto again while sleeping. So, dogooderlawyer surprised me with a sea otter mother and baby from the Long Beach Aquarium. Meet Annushka and Ilya!


I gave them Slavic names because sea otters live in the Alaskan Pacific, and since they have the thickest fur in the animal kingdom, I think these two will make great Russians. Ilya is the Russian form of the Hebrew Elijah, while Annushka is a character in one of my most favorite books ever, Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Since I will probably end up writing about the novel for this blog at some point in the future, I will spare you my encomium; suffice it to say that I will never give my Annushka sunflower oil.