Whoa man. Some days it feels like the biggest thing I accomplish is folding up my futon and putting it away. I'm looking for something to keep this day from being a total waste, but the flesh is weak, and the mind unwilling.
I've just had too much vacation lately, and too much time spent in my apartment. You might have noticed the million words I've written in the last week.
But that brings me to something about momus' take on Japan. At every opportunity, he likes to point out how easy-going and relaxed Japan is. How the japanese like to eat and sleep and have sex and drink. Sure, all those things are true. But time after time he seems to be working very hard to ignore that most japanese head-of-households work a lot. Like 60-80 hours a week every week. They don't wear street fashions, they don't make dainty little crafty things, they don't have sex very often, they don't sleep enough, and they don't really watch the food shows either.
Momus' image of Japan, like an increasing number of westerners', is based on a highly-consumptive, non-earning class of youth. He, and lots of others imagine that Japan and the japanese economy simply function based upon some magical principle of shinto, that requires nothing more than a steady stream of pretty submissive girls.
Tokyo is full of suits for a reason. Business is still the engine of this culture. The common-man still leads a relatively miserable and unfree life, and it's his toil that directly subsidizes all of this indolence (my own included). It's his voluntarily-diminished humanity that enhances all of ours.
For me, this is why momus will always miss the mark. He may be very right about the nice-ness of the part of the elephant he's touching, but he ignores far too much. I love this place, probably as much as he does, but ignoring the mundane, and deliberately looking past the toil that has defined and will continue to define japanese life is "no good".
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3 comments:
i'm glad for your perspective.
oh! Hi Nina! Nice to see you around here. Sorry the place is a shambles. If I had known you were coming I'd have made an entry about tea and cake.
I don't know what happened to this perspective. In the 80's Japan was working itself to death, and that's all you heard about it. Now, even international financial papers are only interested in the Harajuku kids and loser anime freaks.
Both of those views were born of people (like momus) who don't speak the language, and don't have any intention of penetrating the society beyond the most superficial. Plus they're a lot flashier and easier to write about.
What's Berlin like? Is it as boring as momus made it out over the last few months?
oh nate. contrary to whatever momus says, berlin can be quite exhausting and is most of all filled with born-bitter germans, and not so many canadian artists and pretty japanese girls. not to sound like i'm dissing the city already (or burden japanese girls and canadian artists with being the golden calves they are made out to be). right now i'm just trying to make myself a home without caving in too much, missing my boyfriend, feeling uprooted and culturally confused.. trying to stay away from the real important debates as to what lifestyle is the thing, and people racing to polish their personas..
tea and cake would be nice.
i will ring back as soon as i've quit whining about. but thanks for asking.
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