Friday, June 30, 2006

2nd editorial response in a row...

editorial = sharp research for 30 years to bring their lcd tvs to market, but the market changes so fast now that its hard to recover all that research.
writer's implication = poor sharp

real implication = sharp spent too long getting this technology to market, and/or struggled too long in making it affordable (since they aren't especially affordable now).

the editorial's author is a hoser who thinks the industries should not have to deal with a change in the competitive global landscape. The market will ultimately determine for itself how much time and money can be spent on research without destroying the prospect of an actual profitable product in the end. I'm not one for free markets. I still think that complaining that industries with failing business models are the victims of free markets is gay (in the pejorative, grade-school sense).

the tokyo school of human rights.

Anyone else puzzled why Japan insists on treating the North Korea kidnappings as an international "human rights" issue? Normally in such cases, you'd expect to be defending the human rights of a group of people who are losing them as a consequence of belonging to that group, whether it be a race, creed, or political belief.
The only thing linking the kidnapping victims is their status as kidnapping victims. Of course, they are being held in North Korea against their will, but so is every other North Korean. What makes this a case if human rights rather than the simple criminal actions of a foreign government?

I try to cock my head to the side, and figure out why Japan insists on barking up the wrong tree, but I get nothing. Anyone got a clue?

density, speedreading.

I have always thought of myself as a slow reader. I'm not the fastest writer in the world either, but in the realm of writing, my pace is commensurate with the average college-edu-ma-cated joe, I think. My reading pace is just about high school appropriate.

That's why I have an undeniable interest in these speed reading courses that float around the web and through concrete space too. I've started up with them over and over again, only to abandon them quickly because they don't do shit for me. I pick a book off my shelf and give it a quick perusal, and no matter what, I pick up nothing. nuss-ink at all.
In the last couple days though I've realised what my problem was all along: my book shelf. It's filled with dense, intricate materials, written by writers richer in knowledge than expressive ability. The only piece of English language fiction up there is "labyrinths" from borges, and the rest are on either economics, philosophy, or the japanese legal and criminal systems.

So when the speed-reading teachers tell me to read the first sentence of the paragraph, and then "skitter" the body of it, and read the last sentence, I get zero from it. Adorno and Veblen and others have this charmingly anti-consumptive trait. They will not be swallowed in one gulp.
Lately, I've been reading a couple of other more simple books, aimed at regalurr folks. Shit flies by.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Add to inventory; Discard


In Metro City, they have the same sign about leaving "items" in oil drums.

(stolen von momus)
just finished up that "why I want to live in Japan essay". It's supposed to be over 500 words, so I was shooting for 650... and only came up with 522 in the final product. Still it's pretty tight on the whole, and well organized and filled with action verbs.
Now it's time to cook up a new resume.

btw, take a guess at what age amity starts teaching children. (answer in the comments)

freeter up.

almost every editorial I read makes me wanna say something here...

this time, there's some discussion of the new proposals to counter the decreasing birthrates. One of the strategies discussed is training aging freeters to get proper jobs, which would put them in a more secure fiscal position to have children.
But is there some surplus of proper jobs? I don't understand how this is anything but a zero sum game. More people being qualified for good jobs doesnt make more good jobs... at least not immediately or predicatbly.
In a different scenario: Drive more people into the market for jobs, and you increase the competition factor. This could possibly strip the proper jobs of some of their security. If people in the secure jobs or those on the track to secure jobs lose confidence in their security, wouldnt they be less likely to have children (based strictly on the stability factor)?

I still don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a population decrease. (though I'm growing more convinced by the day that Japan's current children are increasingly coddled as they decrease in number)

the least of my abilities. (english)

There was a rare comment on my post yesterday from someone who had been reading my previous (emozionale) blog. He said he skimmed my blog over the last several months (and hit counter logs bear that out), and concluded that I must be here in Japan for law school.

...which is interesting. I've made 332 posts on this blog as of this one, and not many of them deal with the aspect of my life which comes in second only to sleeping in terms of aggragate hours. I teach English, but I'm so dismissive of it that I seem to border on shame over being an english teacher. Not true, my friend. Not true.
Its just not what I write about. When I get together with my friends, we talk about it, when I'm at work, it always feels worth my time. It's just that in the circles I inhabit, teaching english to Japanese kids is utterly unremarkable. Speaking English fluently is (as I'm always saying) "the least of my abilities". I happily apply a huge amount of time to my job, but not so much effort, and not particularly much planning. At the end of the day, it doesn't feel like there's much to say about it that isn't either trite and obvious to the in crowd, or overly specific for the layman.

So, other than broad reflections on jet, or how the new one works for me, you still can't expect much talk about my work here. now when I enroll in law school, all bets are off...

Sunday, June 25, 2006

why do you want to live and work in japan?

So, with the tests behind me, it's time to think about work. Because I've got a great deal of other things on my mind for the next year, I'm probably going to go for the path of least resistance... eikaiwa. Either a job, or a job application process that requires a lot on my part is going to be incompatible with the huge amount of studying I've still got to do (see previous entry).

Before compiling my resume (which is gonna take some phone calls back and for to the home of the brave), I figure I'll tackle the ancillary application requirements first. My first choice eigogaisha request a single page essay in addition to a resume. The topic: why do you want to live and work in Japan?

Do you ask a bird why it swims, or a fish why it flies? I don't really know where to go with that question other than the honest route. I've long since decided to make a future here (because I like it here!), and eikaiwa represents the visa and pocket money I need to put the finishing touches on my language and legal knowledge of Japan before enrolling in law school here.
The thing is, every sentence of that essay I type, I feel like I've put an invisible phrase in direct address at the end: "you friggin moron". Maybe I ought to get really drunk before I write it, or try to imagine myself in the role of a person with no prospects (not that big a stretch), for whom the job isn't a step down. One way or another I gotta get into short-sleeve-and-tie-idealistic-youth-job-applicant mindset so that I can avoid having to enter that state physically back in the states.

90 minutes of kicking ass, then ninety of making an ass of myself.

So, I had you hold your breath for me while I took the last* test. Sorry about making you inhale the night before.
Things went well... kind of. The test was in two parts. Part one, deduction and analysis went rather fantastically actually. I think I got either 32 or 35 points out of fifty (the answers are already posted online). The average on the first section (again, this is among Japanese graduates of Japanese colleges, aiming for Japanese Law Schools) is 27. In other words, I pwnzored it.
But when it came time for the second part, reading comprehension and expression, the pwnzorer became the pwnzored. Here, where the average is 28 pts, I managed either 10 or 12.

I hadnt expected much on the 2nd part, but I really thought I'd get over 15. It would have been nice as well to cross the 55points total threshhold. Had I managed that it certainly would have been helpful in the upcoming admissions process. I could have claimed that despite only studying the language for 3 years and change, I had outperformed the average law school hopeful. Now that's going to be, "I performed nearly as well as" the average law school hopeful. I find it lacks a certain punch.
The horrible score on the last part puts me in the awkward position of having to explain that I still kind of suck without an electronic dictionary handy. I'll probably also have to ask for some faith that the next 9 months before school starts is ample time for me to improve.
Due to the vagaries of the system, I'll probably be taking the same test again next year, even if I do get the scholarship and admission at a place to use it. My money's on a 78 next time.


*probably not really the last test.
ok, let it out.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

ok, take a big deep breath... and hold it...

...

...

...

two unrelated things

from another editorial (I dont read the regular news): the whole kerpfiffle about livedoor buying up the tv stock was actually the handiwork of the famed murakami of the murakami fund. He encouraged Horie to buy up the stocks, mentioning that if livedoor took control of 1/3 of the stock, it could be combined with the funds holdings to claim a controlling stake in the company.

But then when the price soared as horie bought, murakami sold a good part of the fund's holdings for big gains, leaving Horie holding the bag. What a bitch!

also, "rock vapor" and a "tidal wave of earth"

japan and the deregulation blues.

I've been reading the editorials over at yomiuri.co.jp again... and all these months later, they're still telling the same story: Japan needs to deregulate to compete. Also just like when I was last reading them, a good number seem to be about how deregulated industries are failing in their duties.
Back then it was securities exchanges (horie) and earthquake-proofing (huser). Now it's non-paying insurance companies (mitsui sumitomo) and the unconsidered pitfalls of last years postal deregulation... it's going to be difficult to find private carriers willing to take the unprofitable (sparsely populated) regions of the country, at least for the same price as local service.

What's the argument? That these minimally regulated, or recently deregulated fields are exceptions?

Friday, June 23, 2006

dicksein, dickenhass. *snicker*

keitai on the bus.

It may have been a while ago, but I remember a small discussion over at momus' place about using cell phones in public transportation.

So, lets say a person is talking on his cell on the bus. Even if it is annoying, it's his right, no? Therein lies the biggest single difference between Japan and the US.

Regardless of whatever right you may posess, using that right to the detriment of all around you is not acceptable here. Granting the individual freedoms X,Y and Z is a long way from saying that he or she should be able to use X,Y or Z to interfere with the well being of a large group of others. But ask an american to be a little quieter, or not smoke here, or stop cursing around the children, and you will, more often then not, get an ill-informed lecture about this being a "free country", or perhaps about the first amendment.
I'm on board with Philip K .Howard here. In an effort to avoid passing judgement on anyone, americans have legislated "rights" well beyond their logical end.

These rights have utterly destroyed any sense of ettiquette and reduced all corners of the public sphere to the lowest common denominator. Worse, they've turn every American into an island, even unto his or her own family. It sucks.

I see this stuff in only one place in japan, the schools. The most aggressive asshole of a student sets the level of behavior for the whole class, and so long as he acts within the bounds of a very liberal frame of rules, the teacher can do nothing to change it. In that he has no restriction preventing him from being a disruptive prick he's within his right, but it's hard to imagine that anyone thinks he should have the "right" to prevent everyone else from learning.

Japan usually believes that groups have rights. Sometimes the rights of the group are superceded by the rights of the individual and often vice versa. America, however doesn't see any rights for groups that aren't actually the rights of the individual members (excluding those of corporations, which in almost all cases surpass those of individuals).

(zusammenhang mit Dickenhass.)(dickenhass is my new favorite neologism, please use it in english.)

Thursday, June 22, 2006

practice test results, good news.

I have the last of this wave of tests coming up on Sunday. Today, for practice, I took the 2004 version of the test, and actually got a score almost exactly equal to the average (but a point or two below the median). That's the average law-school-aspiring, Japanese-college-educated Japanese person with whom I'm standing sort of shoulder to shoulder.

So yeah, that's the good news.

Then there's some tenatively good news. I think the interview went reasonably well, and I'm pretty sure I was the strongest linguistically of the group. There were thirteen people in total, and I'm told 5 spots to be given away. I'm positive that one of those spots is going to a guy named Eric who's studying at the University of Beijing right now, but I'm optomistic about getting one of the other four. I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't get it, but I am optomistic. I should know by the end of next week if I made it through this phase.

Then there's the not so good news. The two tests that I took last week were baad. Fortunately, I think a good score on Sunday's test will obviate any need to draw anyone's attention to them.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

these things I believe.

(a treatise on beauty born of house-bound illness)

1. There is a happy medium between fat and skinny, but it's pretty skinny.
2. Most faces that aren't somehow broken, can be made attractive, with sleep, soap and self-confidence. This is doubly true for men.
3. Hollywood-pretty and TV-pretty don't compare to "normal people on the-streets-of-any-major-world-metropolis-pretty".
4. Beauty is not only skin deep. It reflects a pro-active interest in one's appearance, and as such one's personal beauty is also an indicator you one's own sense of beauty.
5. Constipation leads to pimples.
6. My own graceful aging is being sabotaged by my graceless balding.

something is green


something is green
Originally uploaded by notnato.

I'm home sick today for the first time in months. (I think it's no coincidence that I also haven't been going to the gym regularly for about 4 weeks now).

As part of my rehabilitation routine, I decided to download and watch an episode of London Hearts. That episode inspired me to write another blog entry "in defense of Japanese TV", but Firefox seemed to think it was a better idea to crash when I asked for a spell check. Suffice it to say, I like Japanese culture well beyond (and sometimes to the exclusion of) anime and J-pop. Japanese TV reflects some of the deep-seeded human kindness that exists in Japan, the absence of which has long been a theme of literature abou and cultural critique of America.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Q: how go the preparations for the very important test you'll be taking on Sunday?

A: I've learned a lot about Voltaire and John Zorn in the last few days.

Updated A: and Thomas Aquinas and I re-read the stranger.

(the test, by the way is the Japanese version of the LSAT, which has precious little to do with avant garde music, medieval or french philosopher/authors)

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

setsuko drops and auschwitz

boing-boing's daily "ain't japan crazy" entry is about these. Sakuma drops are "retro" a Japanese candy that's been around since before the war. (However the manufacturer underwent a fissure at some point so that there are now two "sakuma" companies, producing "sakuma drops" proper and these "sakumashi drops". )
What's "crazy" about them is that they feature an illustration of "Setsuko" from "grave of the fireflies". Without going into much depth, (spoilers ahead, yo) she starves to death in the aftermath of the war, and these sakuma drops (a non-fictional product) are a potent symbol for her.
Boing-boing and the site they link call them macabre, but I don't really like that reading. They're symbolic of her death to some extent, sure, but they're much more symbolic of her life, and the fleetingness of all life... and most especially of innocence. These candies, in their nostalgically over-constructed can, are perfectly on the mark for the nascent showa retro-ism that I see more and more every day.
Showa nostalgia is a considerably more dialetical nostaglia than "wally and the beav" American nostalgia. Like America, the sense is that Japan has, in the interim years, drifted from a more original (more japanese) morality and lost it's innocence, just as the children who grew up in the era did. (That is to say, a critique of modern capitalism, and consumerism hides behind the rather cynically capitalistic and consumerist repackaging of our memories... but that's another show.) However, unlike the American counterpart, it remembers that Japan was a nation of steel and labor. That they didn't enjoy the freedoms they do today, whether it be the power to travel the world, or the gradually developed canon of women's rights.
And unlike America, nostalgia means remembering a war as painful and not "glorious". Which brings me to the tangential point that I wound up at somehow:

What keeps Japan "off the march" is not the same as Germany, where the nation's attrocities themselves are the best evidence against any future war. In Japan, it's the death of Setsuko. And the death of the equally "macabre" folder of paper cranes, and a million more symbols of the pain that came to Japan as a result of the war.
This may not an internationally sensible way to look at the war, but it's a more potent, and, having lived in both countries I think, tangibly more effective approach. There's no turning away from orphaned children and razed cities and calling it "nothing to do with me".

That young germans can and (way too often) do say "my grandfather was never in the Nazi party/ never killed a Jew/ was only 12 when the war started" gives them every reason to forget and ignore the war. And why wouldn't they want to? It's only been taught to them as an enormous guilt trip, with the occaisional mention of the dangers of fascism. All the death that they're treated to in war media is "outsider" death, to the extent Germany is united as one nation.

holy crap, I can't write anything longer than a single sentence without losing focus, can I?

Sunday, June 11, 2006

I'm back.

By the way, I was gone.

Monday, June 05, 2006

brb.

nate is currently away from the country. please wish him luck after the beep.










beep.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

good advices:

following are excerpts from the two emails I received from acquaintances about the interview process for the monbushou scholarships:

Exhibit A: as regards the content of the majority of the questions, are they about the proposed "research" or about "you the applicant"?

Scholarship recipient A:
"you, generally."
Later he lists some questions he remembers:
"2) what was the most challenging experience you had on
jet? how did you deal with it?

3) why do you think your proposed research is
important?

4) if accepted, what do you plan to do once you
graduate?"

scholarship recipient b:
"
I remember talking almost 85% about my research proposal."

Exhibit B, regarding the formality of the interview process:

Recipient A:
"
the atmosphere was fairly jovial."


Recipient B:
"
Pretty formal."


Exhibit C, was the interview conducted in English or Japanese?:

Recipient A:
"
the interview was mostly in english,

but the japanese woman asked me one question in
japanese at the end of the interview."

Recipient B:
"
I
did mine in Japanese, but I believe that you are supposed
to do them in English. I think they started speaking to me
in Japanese as a test, and then we just never switched
over."

Well, they sort of agree on the English bit.
I'm very grateful for any advice from people with concrete experience, of course. There's just something comical about getting the opposite advice from two equally reliable sources. There is a tiger behind one door and a lady with a whole lot of scholarship money behind the other.

Friday, June 02, 2006

america, you are a bunch of liars.

from harper's index:

"Percentage of U.S. adults in 1985 who said they found overweight people less attractive than others: 55

Percentage who said this last year: 24"