what's news.

In my life:
the feller I know who had also been an alternate for the monbushou got upgraded to a proper recommendation.
i got my new computer in the mail.
i realized I have only 47 days left in Japan, and 14 in Aomori.
I managed 95% of my visa and travel worries, and about 70% of my money worries.
I watched the first 2/3rds of Gandhi and decided that it may be my favorite movie.
I found a disk full of photos from the 6 months or so before I came to Japan (I'll find some to put up soon).
i failed roundly to clean up my room for the 5th or 6th day in a row

eat that yasukuni assholes.

The Showa emperor never visited Yasukuni shrine again after the decision to honor Class A war criminals there was made. It was something people liked to avoid talking about... not unlike the fact that the current emperor has not visited the shrine since he assumed the throne.

People had held out that it was potentially a matter of complicating public obligations and private beliefs into one another... but the papers say otherwise. He disliked the Class A war criminals being enshrined there and did not want to honor them with his visit.

Why do the current ruling party leaders want to?

It's interesting watching a real election issue heat up that isn't just about believing one person's hypothetical economic model versus another, but a real american-style morality issue. Japan, say hello to an (even more) ineffectual, bickering era of government!

looking for a new place. 4 kinds of sakura.

In addition to the job search, I've also got to find a place to live in the short term. Leopalace, I learned yesterday, isn't so great for the foreign audience without a job. So, I'm probably going to wind up booking a place at sakura house. Try not to confuse it with this sakura house, even if they are similarly marketed.

Sakura in the sex trade are men posing as women via email or sometimes on the phone in order to entice customers into joining/staying with a subscription service by giving the impression that the place is crawling with horny chicks. I'm sure they've undertaken shadier and more illegal scams too.

The flowers are also nice.

I am a customer service nightmare.

I just had the funniest conversation with a customer service...

Imagine that you're going about your business being a Japanese person with a head set on, and a foreigner with occaisionally dodgy Japanese calls up... if you've imagined with any veracity, you're already shaking in your medium-high heels. This foreigner is going to be leaving the country and coming back and wants to know if he will need to close his account. The rules are pretty clear, and say "YES" this foreign customer will need to close his account if he's not resident in Japan.
Then the foreigner gets shady. He notes that he hasn't yet told you his account number, and begins to ask questions about whether his address and whereabouts would be verified if he were to simply leave this unknown account open...

That's right, I got help bending the rules! The conversation proceeded in fits and starts, but I actually got all the information I needed to know before she started getting insistent about my account number. At that point I said I'd rather not share that and that I was quite satisfied already before hanging up. I win!

pre-blog emo nate.

"the parents love to set the tone for a loveless evening"

I had been doing a bunch of brooding in my first year post college, and decided to again take up keeping a diary, like I had done in Germany. Today, I found the last jornal I kept, and it's kind of weird to see how much my head was swimming, and what was important to me then. Japan and the JET program really did change everything.

above is just one of the weird, self-consciously arty stuff written in there.

I am unsatisfied with apple.

I ordered a new laptop from Apple Japan on Sunday last week, and transfered my money which arrived on Tuesday, the 11th. Their set shipping date is the 25th... and the eta isn't until the 31st.

What is it that takes so long? Two weeks from payment receipt until shipping? That's "gay to the max".

what makes me laugh.

I'm just finishing up David Brancaccio's "squadering aimlessly". There's a situation at the end where he finds himself with a $42,500 check in his hands. He "knew exactly what to do next". He "would have to donate to public radio. The beauty of that strategy is that [he] could pledge to public radio at a level [he] was comfortable with, and still have $42,465 left over to build the portfolio of [his] dreams."
I don't know why, but hat shit cracked me up.

editorializing another editorial

here's an editorial chiding japan for not being net-savvy enough. it concludes on how dangerous the internet is, and that japan has to fix the internet so that it's safe enough for everyone. why do I feel like I'm getting advice on sexual positions from a preacher?

also included is reference to the winny virus that supposedly exposed all your files to everyone. I don't trust how the media and gov't treated that case. Along comes a virus that exploits a problem in the coding, and puts all of your files in the shared folder. The news tells stories of companies losing vital information and passwords, individual users getting their creditcard numbers lifted, the whole government on the verge of collapse. There's only one solution, they say: abstainence! that's right, stop all file sharing now to save your country.
What they didn't mention is telling. The fix could be downloaded long before any of the news stories actually aired. Any anti-virus software at all would have stopped the virus. With notable exceptions, you only get viruses from irresponsible downloading. Viruses cannot be transfered via any of the major media formats: mp3 avi etc.

Japan's clumsy "piracy = death" campaign is embarassing... and maybe just another sign of japan's not being net-savvy enough.

aaaahhhhh fuck.

I'm an alternate too.

I think I'll type a little more than that actually, there's a lot on my mind now.

So, yeah. There's no telling what that means, being an alternate. I've heard two other people's results and they are both alternates as well. Seems fishy to me... especially since one of them interviewed in the same location I did.

Upon closer inspection, the phrasing of the letter: "...we will reccommend you to mext as an alternate. should on of the selected recipients be unable to accept..."

Which means it's all in the hands of the Japanese gov't now? and that the consulate was able to reccommend some people wholeheartedly, but could not do the same for me and the other fella who interviewed with? The most troubling vagueness is that it's not exactly clear who would have to cancel to get me to go... the people from my consulate, or anyone in the whole wide world.

Other ideas:
is there such a thing as an outright no?
I've heard that we are accorded "points" based on our test and performance in the interview... is that all that will be considered from here out?
Could it be that we got alternated because our proposed schools were not in line with our scores?

I searched pretty hard for anyone else blogging about the monbushou money, but didn't find a single thing that seemed to be from this season other than talk about going to the interviews, etc. Some guy in china got accepted, I think. but the rest is mum.

also, a small silver lining. Now that this is fully out of my hands, and in proper limbo, I neednt feel so pressed by it. and worry about how to apply to schools and all that is now a much much lower priority. so I can get a bit more moving and job applying done in peace.

I don't get north korea.

reading editorials again. Not surprisingly a lot of the recent topics have been about North Korea and self defense. I made a slight realization just now though.

I really don't get North Korea.

What if the whole world gave them everything they asked for? They clearly don't intend to take over the world. (here I had intended to write more about KimJ.I. just being a nut, but thought better of it)

Later on, rethinking, maybe I do get North Korea. The only country that regularly funds them hates Japan like god hates sin. It's not much of a stretch to think that China has a lot to do with the NK foreign policy of causing trouble for the biggest rival in the region, and pissing off China's biggest rival in the world.

last time ever!

Today I had my last elementary school visit. A shame that it was so mediocre. I just wasn't much of a teacher today.

On Wednesday next week, I have my official going away party. I'll tell you about it afterward, I promise, but even beforehand, it's proving to be a bit of a hassle. I had to choose a teacher to deliver a speech about me, and one to accompany me to the stage. That was sort of a complicated matter for several reasons.
I've also got to pose for some photos so they can put xeroxed copies in the program, and I've got to write a 3 minutes plus speech for the fans. It sure would be a lot easier to think of what to say if my damned monbushou results would arrive.

"gay to the max"!

almost as good as this video is the comment relating to it "this is gay to the max".

nuisance news abounds.

today was just a bunch of bummers.

POINT: my friend who I was sure would get a monbushou scholarship got alternate status.

POINT:gmail's smtp is not working, on a day when I'm writing a bunch of mails

POINT:my score on the better of the two tests came in, and it turns out that the test was much easier than last year, so my expected "above average perfomance" was actually a hair "below average"

POINT:I paid 3000 yen for dry cleaning

POINT: the teacher I most want to deliver my going away speech at my going away dinner is too involved in the ceremony to do it.


There was a good point though... my plane tickets and such are going to work out advantageously for me. And seperately, I sort of balanced the books, and found that I'm not really so bad off come the end of my contract (though by no means well off)

this equals that

this equals that.

this is a guy proclaiming to have figured out an algorhythm for solving sudoku puzzles. It is in fact, the intuitive first couple of steps. Only low and mid level puzzles can be solved using it. That said, I still enjoy a low or mid level puzzle as a strictly analytical break for my mind.

that is a joke about those "anarchists" of the era when I first got online. They see through the system, and want to liberate the world... with totally worthless and meaningless tacts.

another excerpt from an email:

This is part of what I wrote just now, and concerns some of that same stuff I've been blabbing about for the last couple of days:

About Debito, I’ve read several pages worth of his site, and the more I read, the less I like him. He spends most of his time defending himself, a little less on defending his friends and his own race, and occasionally some time on the other much larger minorities in Japan. His points of contention are also suspect. How hung up is he on the mizushoubai? There are a lot more foreigners (russian, philippino, chinese etc) suffering a lot worse on the other side of that door, but he’s more concerned about his friends with crew cuts who can’t get into hostess clubs and handjob shacks, when they don’t speak much Japanese anyway.

Even if it is important for the individual to change the world in this way, setting up a website that subverts any public dialogue, and divides the gaijin community from the Japanese one (like his, or big daikon) is counter productive, and accomplishes nothing but stoking the fires of the “west knows best” westerners who exercise inordinate influence in the gaijin community.

When I call him a “white man”, I’m using (perhaps unfortunate) shorthand for a long history of Western Europe and America’s insistence on the governmental and individual level that Japan is backward, undeveloped, or wasting its potential on account of its national peculiarities.

In my worldview, if there are places where Japan does fall behind the western countries they relate to efficiency at the managerial and governing level. The most elite among the elite of western countries also seem to outclass their japanese counterparts. But the lumpen mass of regular folks that comprises 95% of the population tell another story entirely. It’s the sense of self-sacrifice that exists less and less in Japan today, and existed in FDR America as well, the sense that the nation has a purpose greater than the value of an individuals short-lived happiness that sets great countries apart.

What follows is a short account of my view of how things got so different: FDR’s greatest adversary (thanks to his populist, pro-gov’t, anti-business agenda) was big business. Business fought back hard, and with the help of Freudian techniques, worked to re-atomize the individual, and turn him into an individual consumer whose needs could no longer be met by the government.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Of_The_Self

The trust in authority that brought about unprecedented prosperity in America was slowly dismantled, as a belief in mechanical administration rose to power, and decayed into a governmental policy of distributing “rights” that have no basis in or connection to the functioning of the world, and work quite clearly against prosperity, justice and in the end, the freedom of the individual. A la Philip K Howard... http://cgood.org/

By no means do I think Japan is perfect, but almost all of the changes at the level of the individual being and many of the reforms in law and governance that foreigners recommend for the country seek to rush Japan down the same road that’s filled american convenience stores with 15 flavors of gatorade and american streets with drugs and violence.
There are things I’d like to see changed, and indeed, more humane working conditions for the middle class is on the list. What I really object to is the insistence that Japan is somehow uniquely burdened by especially urgent problems and that her people are profoundly unhappy with the status of their country. It’s just not true.

gaijin to shite...

This isn't something I'm gonna go to great lengths to develop, but this morning, as I was making my rounds on the internets, I peeked at the english section of the yomiuri website. While I was there, I figured I'd take a glance at the serialized autobiography of donald keene, and then there was an interesting story on citizenship appropos the immigration dust-up in America. You know how it goes, you follow links, you drift around, ultimately you get kind of a big picture feel for the 10 or so articles you read and their connections to one another...

So reading all these tales of foreigners qua foreigners, I little lightbulb goes on over my head. I am going to have to be a "foreigner" again soon. I hadn't really been thinking of myself as belonging to the set "gaijin", even if I was never thinking I was Japanese.
But with visa concerns, and the citizenship restrictions on lawyers and a bunch of other kitzelkleinigkeiten on the horizon, it's being pushed right back in my face.

Until now, I thought of gaijinhood as some compensatory skill I used to make my livelihood, not some fixed aspect of my existence. I go to school, I teach them some things I know, the kids flip out over my appearance, and I go home. I come home, and I feel "at home". I've got no sense of being in a foreign land anymore.
I can read reasonably well, and watch TV without missing much. The culture doesn't deal out any surprises. I know more about the way the government runs, and current events relative to Japan than a lot of college educated adults. Other than the "in progress" language ability and a lack of encyclopedic knowledge of the progression of Japanese history from era to era, I don't feel out of my depth here.
The image that keeps popping into my head is of a feral child.

But now I've got to fess up to being an adult, and holding a passport from a hegemon, and start negotiations from there. Wish me luck.

internationalization, the two way street.

Several weeks ago, I fired off a snobby little email to our local listserv in response to a couple of messages about "internationalization".

As a consequence of that mail, I was contacted by another monbushou recepient who was researching precisely that stuff, and who consequently shared a bit of useful knowledge about the application process.

But my real point: I also got a direct response from the person who wrote the original mail that triggered a lengthy one on one discussion (including an email of 2440 words) about some aspects of the program, and gripes back and forth and what not. I don't think the exchange itself is particularly remarkable, but as I'm working on writing another rebuttal for the japanese team, something occurs to me. There is some sort of communication breakdown occuring at a very fundamental level.
In the last couple weeks, I've been an apologist for Japan over and over, and on occasion, changed some people's minds... but how did that get to be my job? Shouldn't the jet program and the japanese community surrounding these jets be able to get the message through much more effectively? Why does it take someone like me to get people to shake off the fundamental attribution errors about japan?

It's cuz I'm american, and I have no special allegiance to the jet program... in fact I'm broadly critical of it. Because I speak, at least in part, from the gaijin's perspective, it's an awful lot harder to think that I'm one of those inscrutable japanese types who are just out to bilk the poor jet community for all of its 4 WEEKS OF VACATION every year.
I'm only ever making the same arguments that CLAIR does though. I'm not especially eloquent, and if you're reading this, you know that I'm not much of a sympathetic character either.

Why does the messenger change everything? Can't clair get their messages across more effectively, to cut off the continual bile of the jet community? If not, can I have some money to do it?

"by early july"

I'm still waiting on the results of my scholarship application. According to the much-lauded "pink memo", we should be hearing word on the results "by early july".

Now the grammar stickler in me feels compelled to point out that "by" implies before.... such that even if they did indicate as period of time rather than a set point, the results should be available before early july, clearly not the case. The kid in me likes the sweet frosting.

the country I left.

If you click this link you will see boobs, and the reason I am not at all eager to go back to the "land of the free".

who wants that shit? I know there are lots of other, more "mature" modes of sexuality back home, but girls going wild seems to be the dominant paradigm of sexy in the still young millenium. I'll take the retrograde sexual practices of japan over "'merricun sexy" in an instant. Happy fourth.

凸(｀Д´メ)FUCK YOU！！
(that link and it's text only good if you've got japamanese enabled)

how nate rolls, a pesto cream sauce recipe.

since I know you all be sittin around wonderin how nate rolls, let me tell you:

I melt 60 grams of butter over a low flame, and gradually add 30 grams of flour about a spoonfull at a time, stirring until it dissolves before adding the next spoonfull. Then I do the same with about 300cc of lukewarm milk. (This is where it gets a little crazy.) You know what I do then? I add as much pesto as I want, and let it all condense over that same low flame.

That's how I roll.