Saturday, December 30, 2006

I learn a little more about this country every day.

welcome to thunderdome labor policy!

Unless I've really really misunderstood this editorial, the Ministry of Labor wants to abolish the overtime pay system for all "white collar" employees. It seems also to imply that the way this corner of the government wants to pursue the matter, salaried employees (as opposed to hourly wage earners) who are much more common than back in the US, could be expected to work much longer hours without any sort of legal rights to compensation.
I think the term "white collar" would include John Q Eikaiwa teacher.

What a fucking brilliant idea.

Why do so many people have it lodged between their ears that the road toward technological progress and increased financial security leads away from increased freedom?

life is a checklist! ride with me.

Maslow, that son of a russian jew, proposed long long ago that humans had a heiarchy of needs. Regardless of the dubiousness of his little pyramid, it made its way into my intro psych class, and consequently into the vaunted "long term memory".
I bring it up because of the wonderful security I feel gazing at that huge pot of curry in my kitchen, and the growing stockpile of dry and canned goods I've begun to amass. Observe:



Down there at the bottom, you'll see breathing (check), water, food, sex, sleep, homeostasis, and excretion. Sex has been sorely lacking for a good long while now, but this is one that I can find the power to take in my own hands. To tell the awful truth, at the moment I don't really feel driven to leave the house and meet people, so a lady back in Aomori who's very nice but not the prettiest and isn't that important to me is fine for now. It's not very demanding and I won't be getting laid as long as I'm dirt poor anyway. Eventually I'd like a new ladyfriend, but right now, I've got other pressing matters like money, studies, and getting used to my new life. However, it wasn't until today that I really felt like I had a lock on the food thing.
Security of body (check)
employment, resources (eh)
of morality (huh?)
of the family (no, actually)
of health, property (check)

I, and pretty much everyone else are entirely dismissive of this thing as a rigid model. Even so, I guess I'm gonna have to get started making friends, and getting sexually intimate before long. Oh bother.

Friday, December 29, 2006

the country to worry about: america

I ran into this magazine while I was buying my new keitai. The cover story (with excellent cover photo) is about the most "worrying" country: America. A quick perusal of the story was pretty surprising. It was about fundamentalist christians, aimless wars, guns, drugs, prisons, etc. In short, it was like the Euro media.
Except unlike the Euro media, it was published in Japanese. Most discussions of America in this country center on bringing closer ties to the two countries, and how best to clean the underside of the American boot stomping on a face forever (with your tongue). This one was actually the story about my country that I know, the one that most of us middle class expats know. And it's really heartening to see this kind of media, because it feels like a sign that, at long last, Japan gets it. (I don't really read enough Japanese media for adults. It could be that I'm only just happening onto this well-established story.)

Speaking of getting it though, how about that America when it talks about Japan? They can't tell fact from fiction, can't tell extreme from mundane, can't tell when you're being sarcastic... They constantly talk about the news stories that would have been on japanese boing boing 10 years ago if such a thing existed. And then they laugh their barroom laughs about this backward country full of soulless people. Idiots.


like father, not far from the tree!

Something occurred to me.

My dad is well respected as a "smart dude" by all his friends, but never really found great success in life.
All my friends think I'm a really "smart dude", but I can't deny that I haven't found anything approaching a career path, even as I enter my "late late 20's".

BACK TO STUDYING!

Thursday, December 28, 2006

technology will save mankind.

witness: my new cell phone weighs 93 grams. I have installed as a potential ringtone a small snippet of "dick in a box".

there is no end to human potential.

Monday, December 25, 2006

year of the boor... bore... boar

I'm more in the mood to face forward than look back.

I don't have nearly so many reservations about the official mascot of 2007 as I did with the stupid dog. 2007 is the year of the boar. If you have kanji enabled, the character looks like this:



Since my 2006 was nothing to sing about, I wanna make 2007 a karaoke sing-along that we can all join in. I have some very concrete goals in mind for 2007.

1. I'm throwing down the gauntlet on the kanji kentei. I'll take the test twice this year. My goal is to pass level 3, and try to take level pre-2 by the end of the year. In a perfect world, I'll pass level 2 proper in february 2008.
2. money matters. When I turn 28 in April, I want to be debt free (excluding of course, my behemoth student loan debt). By the end of the year, I want to have a certain amount saved as well. I won't disclose that amount here because it's embarassingly small.
3. bigger stronger faster more. I'll be joining a gym very soon, and I don't want to go in there without goals either. This year, I'll set some mediocre ones as a starting point. Run 10k in 45 min; press my own weight 10 times.
4. a backflip. maybe a wallflip.

I don't think any of those goals is out of the question. I want to make this the year where I exceed my own expectations, so I have some "whisper numbers" as well.

Conspicuously absent from my list is the Monbushou scholarship. Although I'm going to throw my hat in the ring again this year, I'm not expecting results this year... not when I haven't made any personal, professional or linguistic progress in the last 365. Maybe 2008 will be my year there.

a dog of a year.

2006, huh?

Not really a killer. I'm sure lots of interesting and exciting things happened, but looking back now, it was a slow year.

On the good side, I got my results on the JLPT (pass), bought my lovely little macbook, and got myself started in Tokyo. The last of those big things was my only important goal for the year.

On the bad side, I didn't get the monbushou scholarship, I lost a good part of what I put into the stock market, and consequently, have come to tokyo under the shadow of a couple thousand dollars of new debt. I also let all of my minor goals slip. While I may be a slightly better cook, a slightly better japanese speaker and reader, a slightly more tidy guy, lots of aspects of my life are stalled.

I would call "getting accustomed to reality" the theme of my 2006. The missteps I made this year left me with a more realistic impression of what I need to do to get where I want to be (even if "where I want to be" has gotten a lot less clear). For more on where I want to be, stay tuned. A year of the boar post is coming soon.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

japan needs english.

Who better to tell Japan how to handle it's future than someone who's only lived here a few years, and still doesn't have a typical highschooler's grasp of the language? That's why I'm gonna take this opportunity to share my opinion on the world stage (aka blogger).

Japan needs English. By hook or crook, Japan should find it's way to speaking English as well as other developed countries.
Setting aside the reality that even the most English-positive of my educator friends don't think English is very important to the Japanese, there might seem to be a conflict of interest. I am after all, reliant on the English learners of Japan. But I fall squarely in the self-hating camp of English educators. I share my reason for disliking eikaiwa with a lot of teachers, in thinking we aren't very effective, but with the novel addendum that I believe we're failing them on a very important matter.

Having taught students from 5 years old to retirement, in the public and private forums, I've watched and taken part in the failure at several levels. Recently I delivered a sub-par lesson to a very serious student. She's a doctoral candidate shooting for a position with a global charitable organization. It got me to thinking, am I really the best she can find in Japan, even when money isn't an object? As a serious graduate student, why doesn't she already speak near-perfect English like my German friends?

She's not the only example either. I see people day in and day out who are studying English to speak to their French and German and Chinese colleagues. Professional, sincere, hard-working folks who studied for 6 years in middle and high school, and often in college as well. After their 10 years of ineffective study, we just don't have the juice to solve the problem in 40 lessons. I don't have even an inkling of how to remedy this systemic shortfall.

I returned to this thought today (as usual) after reading an editorial at Yomiuri. I agreed with the editorial for the most part, that Japan would greatly benefit from a stronger presence in the UN, and greater involvement in the international politcal community in general. Japan, being a resource-poor country, benefits from almost all strengthening of international ties, be they via university exchange programs, tourism, or business. Yet the de facto international language elludes them.
Especially as Japan moves away from being a sattelite of planet America and becomes part of the new league of semi-super powers, it needs to be able to take English ability in it's populace for granted.

(wow. all flash, no substance in this entry)

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

junshoku (caution, japan-love ahead)

junshoku (殉職): death in the line of duty.

Murakami uses this word to describe the deaths of two station attendants at Kasumgaseki station from unwitting sarin exposure. They had picked up and disposed of the leaking bags, and unwittingly saved a bunch of lives. It's not the same sort of professional heroism that we normally associate with "junshoku".
This usage seems very correct though. Even if they were unwise to do what they did, and didn't really anticipate the consequences of their action, they did their job. This juxtaposition of a word normally reserved for our mass-produced uniformed "heroes" with the dreary workaday life of the even-more-mass-produced working stiff, is wonderful. It's one of those things I really love about the country. A hero is a hero, death is death. No need to analyze the actor, no peering into his "soul" (no soul!) for his true intentions.
If the duty of shoving people into a train is potentially heroic, what duty isn't? You and I and everyone who helps keep the country safe, clean and well-lubricated are all heroes in that sense. We have duties to one another, and to the society (see my entry raving about the constitution), and they might one day cost us our lives. Thank god.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

how low can you go?

I don't think many of my readers will really know what this is about (not me), but:

An American refuses to fail. No matter what happens, an American loses only when he labels it a failure (see the unshakable American belief in the power of words). When it comes to protecting a fragile ego, and bullying those around you into accepting your worldview, this works in your favor, but when it comes to gauging your life, and living your day to day, it can be a disaster.

To wit: imagine you slip a bit, and have a rough time of it for a while. If you don't accept the failure as a failure and move to set yourself right, the bottom creeps lower and lower. Eventually even the most horrible things that happen to you and happen by your hand become just the lower end of "acceptable", and the old "failure" looks impossibly naive.

I've always thought the pleasure principle and it's inevitable diminishing returns was the heart of evil in humanity, but looking at it turned on it's head, I suppose it's really there to keep us afloat.

Friday, December 08, 2006

are you for real?

fees deducted from my international wire transfer to my citibank account:

Japan side: 2500yen (for something) + 1500yen (for something else, god knows)
America side: $16 (for something, even god doesn't know) + $10 (for "incoming wire transfer")

for those of you who aren't so good at math, that's just about $60 total at the going rate (over 7000 yen).

That is ridiculous. like "close my freaking citibank account because they charge fees that other banks don't" ridiculous.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

this is an email that i wrote to myself while I was sitting in starbucks a few days ago. I wanted to remember a couple of things I was considering writing blog entries about. I'm too lazy for that though.

"you dont need to emerge from nothing = starbucks

terror = the hellmouth of freedom

japan needs english."

if you have any questions about these three ideas, please ask. Otherwise, I'll be in my apartment waiting for my muse.