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:

亥

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

wait for it.... wait for it....

Hej. I'm back online.

I'm quite settled into Tokyo now. I'm still getting these moments over and over where I'm surprised at how good things are and how easy it all is. and this is against the backdrop of me living on an extremely tight budget (whittling down 52man of debt repayment in 4 paychecks while furnishing my apartment bit by bit). Imagine how I'll feel about the place when I own more than one pair of pants that aren't the bottom half of a suit, or when I buy a coat!


But like I parenthesized, the money thing means although I can enjoy the sights and sounds of tokyo, I can't yet enjoy the tastes, or the inside of many buildings. Life remains, as of this writing, on hold. I'll take this time to study, and lay out what I want to do and how to get there. When I figure that stuff out, you'll be the first to know.

first things first

I'm back in tokyo, and all kinds of stuff like that, but more importantly:

If anyone knows how I can arrange for the murder of those two very unfunny fatty twins that are showing up on every damned tv show in Japan, please comment below.
I think I may be able to justify killing them in self defense because in addition to the years they take off of my life by raising my blood pressure and forcing release of stress hormones, they also rob me of hope for the future of Japan and the world... pushing me perceptibly closer to offing myself.

more on tokyo soon. (sneak peek = tiny apartment, great location, pretty cheap, job from friday)

whats stranger than strange

Time's up.
Early tomorrow morning, I'll be getting on a train toward the airport. Leaving is a lot stranger than being here ever was. Because my folks are out of town for a couple of days, they won't be there to see me off. So it's just me silently creepin out of the house in the early morning, never to come back. Well not for a year or so, at least.
But really, it is like I won't be coming back. Thanks to some logistical things I've taken care of during this trip, and things that I'll be solving when I get back to Tokyo, several little threads that had bound me tightly to the parents are finally cut. For the forseeable future, even if I do come back here, it won't be back to the same place. This is sort of a farewell to indolence and immaturity and hello to owning a bed outright (for the first time!).

What's really strange though is washing the dishes and doing my laundry in silence, in American suburbia.

unrelenting.

I'm just about finished reading "The Cult at the End of the World". The story it tells of Aum Shinrikyou (these days known as Aleph), is shocking. Unrelentingly so. From kidnappings and murders to mining for uranium and stealing cutting-edge technologies for enriching it, the cult makes the last 10 years or so of anti-US terrorism look ameteurish.
Far from being a group of like-minded people with a political grudge, Aum was a world wide organization using shady business practice, intimidation, kidnapping, forgery, arms dealing, drug manufacture, and whatever other means they could to enrich themselves, and better arm themselves to kill every last non-believer in Japan. Were it not for a couple of poorly timed missteps, they certainly could have brought Tokyo and all of Japan to it's knees.

At the time, I wasn't especially aware of the news, or the extent of coverage that the US media gave the story, but I feel pretty certain that it wasn't nearly enough. Despite being likely the biggest terrorist threat that any nation has ever faced, in America, Aum remains largely unknown. Those that do know of the cult seem to remember something about a gas attack on subways, and a fat guy with long hair and a beard. (My dad seems strangely fixated on the idea that in his early career he sold his bathwater, for the purpose of drinking, and thereby attaining some extra degree of enlightenment.) But we're talking about an event with as much impact on the national psyche of Japan as September 11th has had on America.
Unlike America's run in with mass murder, Japan couldn't rally 'round the flag. Japan wasn't "under attack" from people it could call the enemy, or people of a different race, from different countries and societies. The worst of the worst at Aum were supposed to be the best of the best. They were graduates from the top of their classes at the best universities in Japan. They were rich, and successful people.
When, in the middle of a hard recession, and fresh on the heels of the deadliest earthquake to strike Japan after the war, Japan suffered this further blow, no one could feel very good about Japan and its future. I imagine this low point in early 95 was where a lot of the changes the last 11 years have brought Japan got their start, most especially, the renewed interest in Japanese nationalism (10 years later).



As an aside, reading a little of what the net has to say, I found something that feels relevant to me.

Jay Rubin holds that [Haruki] Murakami also had highly personal reasons for wanting to write Underground, notably that he wished to learn more about Japan after living almost entirely abroad for nine years and that he wanted to fulfil a responsibility he felt towards Japan's society

Having made a home of the country, I always feel like I'm woefully unaware of the history of the country, and most importantly, the history of the last 30 years... the world that my boss and my coworkers and my friends grew up in. The language is really only the tip of the iceberg.

Where I'll spend my morning tomorrow.

The naked lounge sits quietly on a corner near the R street light rail station. In a building that looks like a house with shop windows, and set in the ubiquitous sacramento jewel tones, it's hardly as enticing as it's name would suggest. My guess is that the name comes from the female nudes (paintings) inside. It would take an aggressively anti-porn lesbian to find the namesake artwork at the naked lounge titillating, but I did once have a disastrous fling with a member of the staff (prior to her employment there).
In any other town, the naked lounge wouldn't really stand out, but this is sacratomato we're talking about. Offering the right mix of aggressively indie and aggressively gentrified puts it in a market of its own in sac. Really, offering any mix of the two would put it in a market of it's own, seeing as the town's coffee market is owned by starbucks, with 4 or 5 reputable indie sellers, staffed by very pierced and very tattooed young people... (and java city, but they don't know ambiance or good tea from adam).
The interior features cozy furniture, attractive, friendly staff and a clientele that seems to have a lot of time to drink coffee. More importantly, it features cheap, delicious iced tea. At 1.75 for a big beer glass of properly brewed iced tea, and 1.00 for a refill, it's an easy place to
spend a morning, or and afternoon, or a series of them.
Tomorrow, I've got a bunch of business to take care of, and a bit of a yen to see "the departed", so I won't be wasting the whole day in a jade green armchair, just enough time to look cool for reading a book in japanese.

marketing success

1. last night's episode of south park was unexpectedly good, and about World of Warcraft in an unusually non-derisive way
2. Blizzard is running a 10 day free trial period. I was surprised too.
3. I'm downloading the client now (all 2.7 gigs of it)

4. (specualtion) my world probably won't be rocked, and I won't buy the game, but I think a lot of worlds are going to be rocked, and a lot of copies are going to get sold. Impressive.

UPDATE bastards wasted my time. It's not until after you download a 2.7 gig file, and install a 4.6 gig program that they tell you you'll need a credit card to verify your identity. I'm the last dude alive without a credit card, I guess.

just a thought about the "freedom tower" (s?)

The old building "the world trade center" was precisely that, a space occupied by people from all around the world doing trade. (about 10% of the victims were not US citizens.) It's identity was tied to it's content, and it's exterior was iconic, and free from the taint of a heavy-handed identity. It was long, hard, throbbing commerce.

So what of the new building? It reeks of america. The damned thing is 1776 feet tall (as though anyone cares about feet). It's called the "freedom tower". Who is going to occupy this jingoistic space? How can you locate an embassy in there? Looking at the outside, how can you locate anything but a web design firm circa 1999 in there?
The only way I can see the tower put to good use is if the government fills it up with all of it's domestic and international spying infrastructure. And that presumes that you think ironic tension between a building's name and it's purpose is "good use".

the way we were...

Since I arrived in Carmichael, my folks have been trying to put me to good use. Today I spent the day reaching over my head and leaning over backward on a poorly balanced ladder painting the undersides of the eaves... But that's not the story. My first weekend here, we cleaned out the garage, and we found 2 big boxes of the junk I left behind when I went to college in 1998.

So what was in my time capsule? Ephemera that I didn't think twice about throwing away, for the most part. There were some porn mags, that I gave a cursory glance. Sex is very trendy. 8 year old porn looks lame (as lame as the 8 year old songs that still dominate the radio). Most interestingly, there was the 13th issue of giant robot from sometime in the first half of 1998.

More than anything I found in the box, this piece of nippo/sino/korea-o philia shouts "how long it's been!". My minor interest in anime and games or whatever made Japan seem pretty cool back then, even if it was filtered through this poorly designed, poorly written rag. And here, in english for the Americans, little articles on sumo and iron chef, and a short, awkward interview with "dreams come true". Since I already had already been watching Iron chef on the local feed, and sumo is remedial (sub 101 level) Japanese pop culture, I must have really bought this magazine to reaffirm my own idea of myself as cool.
What's ironic is that 1998 was really the golden age of Japanese cool, to hear marxy or momus talk about it. We're talking fruits, cornelius, otaku killers, and on and on. Japan was the place to be, and the media I was getting was showing me all the stupid, old stuff that no one cool gave a shit about.
Then again, don't count on the modern media getting it any better.

translation and the sympathetic nervous system

I've been translating a bunch of recipes that I had collected in Japan over the last couple weeks (over 100 so far), and my body is starting to imagine that I'm dicing stuff and coordinating finish times and stuff. frankly, I'm exhausted.

on aging.

I don't like making posts just because I want to share links, but I'll bite the bullet here.

This post, and the article it concerns are both superb.

I'd been having a couple of conversations about "protracted adolescence" with my dad lately, but whatever I said was bullshit. These two pieces are what I meant to say, or what I should have meant to say. As a creeping-toward-30 American living in Tokyo, it seems almost like there is no other mode of existence but the "grup" way. I've met the woman who quit her high paying job to do something more fun, the 30 somethings who buy $500 jeans, the douglas coupland characters who revel in their own shallowness (here I cough in a way that sounds conspicuously like "myself"), all of the people who can't even imagine marriage. Toyko's not just full of these people, it manufactures them.

Here's my hangup though. Even if I am one of these people, and I live in the global epicenter of these people, I have one big reservation on the whole thing. This grup lifestyle is just what I'm doing because I haven't found a way to earn enough money to abandon it. I wanna be rich. I don't mind getting up at 5:30am if it means 50% more money. Hell, I look good in a nice suit, and I find them more comfortable and more "me" than the ubiquitous shredded jeans.

the last 2/3 of Jpod by Coupland.

Ok, I take it back, the book wound up being fun after all... and I'd like to be able to say that the plot is what helped it to snatch victory from the jaws of mediocrity, but I don't think that was it. It just managed to take some form, and actually start to feel a little more realistic, with the people acting a little more like people, and less like quick character sketches by the mid-point, and then things just shifted gears to a fun, quick, light-on-the-moralizing-but-still-relevant-to-urbanite-wastrels "jaunt".

his gimmicks are still a pain in the dick though, and I'd just as soon see the interstitials removed, espeically given how terrible they sound... they're no good for an audiobook.

Final score, 3.5/5
(because I still don't really dig light reading much)

money talks, or is talked about.

The secret haze on the horizon that was obscuring my view of everything after my return to Japan has lifted. Money ain't gonna be a problem, I think. I should be able to get settled into an apartment with a bit of liberty to buy furniture, but I'll be in a good sized debt for the first few months.
Family decorum had kept me from bringing it up, and kept the money discussion out of sight and mind, but it's pretty well all resolved now. Chintai + Ikea = my shining new tokyo life.

on your radio dial.

holy crap. With the exception of the 50% of content that sounds vaguely like Creed, I can sing along with modern rock radio. This isn't because I am aware of all the latest trends in radio freindly rock, but because I listened to contemporary music on the radio in 1996-8. The music hasn't changed!
I heard OMC's "how bizarre" and "the way" from Fastball recently, alongside that Everlast song from the nineties. I mean, I knew american radio was lame, but can it really be this bad?

Jpod by Coupland: 2/5stars (prelim score)

I'm reading (read: listening to) Jpod right now, and it's not very good... at least the first third. I'll push through the rest after I make my judgements.

This book, like a lot of ironic would-be hipsterism is the very definition of "becoming what you lampoon". Except, well, I think the lampooning is so half-hearted that he means it to ring somewhat true to life. Maybe if, as the book progresses, he stops leaning on his cleverness and the assumed likability of the narrator, and hands us a plot worth hearing (or reading, if you're so inclined), this book will gain stars. If I have to keep hearing about the everyday almost-wittiness of "ethan" though, there's another half star on the chopping block.

the sweet sound of a razor blade against glass.

that's how I capped off my day.

Now to think up a new back-up career, because painting doors is no good.

Japan is faggy. (an idea 1/4 developed)

Today I took a trip into San Francisco, and as you might expect, I didn't like it. Even in the financial district and the embarcadero, humans seemed incidental. The environment seemed more at peace with the trash on the streets and the graffitti on the walls than with the people crawling the streets. The most expensive stores were presented inelegantly, the communal spaces were unwelcoming, the trashcans dirty, the restraunts either fast and expensive or slow and more expensive, but by no means good.

If the city doesn't feel designed to interface with humans with a sense of beauty and decorum, what is it designed for? In the case of a city like San Francisco, it feels like the design of most spaces accomplishes only the convenience of those responsible for them. As small a profile as possible to prevent vandalism and excessive cleanup. One entrance and exit to keep people from shoplifting, or dining and dashing. no plants, nothing breakable....me = bitch bitch bitch.

Anyway, what was even more remarkable today than the unremarkability of SF, was all the gay dudes. Not that they were there, but that that they were eyein me up. Given what I was wearing, I realized that it's no wonder they were lookin at me. My pants were expensive and kind of tight, my shirt kind of expensive, with some pink in it, and my shoes, honestly they're pretty gay.

"But" I wanted to protest "these things aren't gay where I come from!" If anything, they're signifiers of youthful male virility. From my two undone buttons exposing a pretty skinny chest to my skin by clinique, my homo fashion statements are standard urban menswear in tokyo.

So if you put 2 and 2 together, Tokyo and Tokyoites come off as pretty gay. Or if you take 2 and 2 apart, Americans are unsophisticated unwashed heathens.

emperor of the gaijin

I haven't been following closely, but Yomiuri has been publishing a series of essays that amounts to Donald Keene's memoirs. Today I happened one entitled "Oe Kenzaburo and Abe Kobo", and as so many of the previous essays have done it sort of blew my mind. The man was everywhere, like the Forest Gump of Japanese international culture. Check this paragraph, especially the last sentence out:

It was thanks to Oe, however, that I first became friendly with Abe Kobo who became after the death of Mishima my closest friend in the literary world. I had met Abe in New York in the autumn of 1964, when his novel "Woman in the Dunes" was published there. He, Teshigahara Hiroshi (the director of the celebrated film made from the novel), and a young woman, their interpreter, visited my office at Columbia. I was annoyed by the inference that I needed an interpreter and paid no attention to the young woman. Only years later did I learn she was Ono Yoko.

I'm still trying to get all these little quips and quirks of Japan emerging in the world conciousness into my head. He was there.

Oh christ, not again.

I'm a few days behind, but it seems that the Tokyo Courts were forced to rule on a case regarding showing proper respect to the Japanese flag and being compelled to join in the singing national anthem. Here's an english version of the editorial where I got the news, but it's curiously toned down (おかしいwhich has much stronger implications than the English "strange" the way it's used here, and lots of dependent clauses are inserted to soften the message).

The case revolved around an edict of the Tokyo School board (which you may remember from such hits as making japanese traditional arts a required subject, and cutting the time for world history in half, while more than doubling the time for Japanese history), which stated that teachers were required to stand and sing at school ceremonies. The courts said the edict was illegal... but I fear there's a whole lot of politics behind this.
The judges said that the flag and anthem "cannot be recognized as being neutral in religious or political terms." And the writer counters with, "various opinion polls" suggesting that a great majority of the Japanese people "support" the flag and anthem. There is no attempt to suggest that the flag and anthem are without political and religious content, only that that political and religious content is popular. This could only possibly be a response to the Judges words if we understand "popular opinion" as more important than the law. Later "common practice all over the world" and cases where other people stand up and sing without any hassle are brought forth as further proof, hammering home exactly what the author has in mind. This article never explicitly draws out the long knives, but the intentions are clear. Divide those who disagree with government policies and label them as unpatriotic. Where have I seen this before?

Maybe there's some good in Japan arguing in courts and newspapers about issues of personal freedom, but not here. When these issues are brought up in relation to patriotism, no good can come of them.

greatest actor of all time?

you decide.
John Cazale's got to be a font of movie trivia. Everything (literally!) he's been in has been great, and they've all been nominated for best picture.

contra-momus.

I don't know what it is about momus' writings on Japan that makes me foam at the mouth, but something sure does. You'll see me commenting like the guy killed my father on that post.

The big irony is that I don't really think he's so far off base. He mentions that the girl reminds him of his "non-diaspora" J-girlfriends, and I believe him... to an extent. I don't think he's ever really known very well a Japanese person who speaks no english. I also can't help but think that that one constant in all of his relationships, "momus", is such an acquired taste that it's hard to take any girlfriend of his as "run-of-the-mill". That is to say, I think he's a priori excluded from Japan for Japanese people. Not the most fair way to think of him, I know.

Someone, in a fashion I think is truly american, comments that I'm so vitriolic because I'm "jealous of all the hot babes [momus has] probably nailed, while still remaining in the avant garde." Too right, but I've got another reason for being frustrated with him too. He's like a michael moore. He's fighting the good fight, and he's one of the heros on my side, but he's incautious and a bragadoccio, which makes him interesting, but also so easy to dismiss as an unscrupulous fabulist. While he convinces the choir, he sounds worthy of derision to the congregation.

That said, if I were momus in 15 years, I wouldn't feel too bad about what I'd made of myself.

the crowd you hang with.

I'm sure they're not all this way... very sure... but it seems that almost every gaijin I run into in Japan has it "together" in some way that makes me self-concious. They hella know this or that, or they're badasses at this sport, or they play a million musical instruments. One way or another they have some talent that they've really developed, and the confidence and pride to show it off genially.

Me, I'm unmistakably a jack-of-all and therefore no-trades. In the name of further dilettantery, I'm sitting around the house reading postmodern novels in Japanese, or biographies of despoitc leaders, or listening to Searle's objections to contemporary philosophies of mind. At the beginning of every new chapter, I sort of cringe in recognition of my recurrent and venial sin, knowing that I am building a sprawling ranch house in a city of skyscrapers.

Then I sit down with people who haven't gone to graduate school and I realize that I've got nothing to talk about with "the common people". What world am I living in where I need to be reminded that not everyone knows 2000 Kanji, not everyone can contrast the constitutions of Japan, the US and Germany, not everyone knew about Girl Talk or Ohm before me?

So yeah, I met up with my extended family today, and it were auk-werd.

the internet debates itself, courtesy of google

"worst fetish ever"

self criticism is the primary duty of the true bolshevik

I suspect that the more I use the word "I", the less interesting my blog is. There is a small set of people for whom my goings-on and whereabouts are interesting, but even they don't care about bagels.
I shall work harder to provide worthwhile content to the fearless brotherhood
we call the "Internet".

the 5:17 triumph

Last night I slept a full seven hours in rough unison with the rest of the time zone. I'm becoming more American every day.

Today will be the first in a series of history-making summits with family members. I have no idea whether it'll jovial after the hello, hugs and kisses or whether I'll be awkwardly trying to justify being a rootless cosmopolitan. Were I a bit more socially savvy, I'd worry less about this, and I'd stop hearing "why do you hate us?" when my friends and family ask if I'm "planning to be in Japan for the rest of my life".

I think we're meeting in a place called Oak Park, but to be honest I confuse the suburb names pretty often. "Tree Name" + "Glenn, Park, -dale, -ton, etc" = wide streets and single family homes.

quadruple cocktail for apartment searches.

hyperdia (pronounced hyper-DIE-uh, it seems)
+
Japanese Wikipedia
+
Google Maps (Japan)
+
Able (or whatever search site you choose)
_______________
an alright start.

If Japanese Wikipedia seems like the odd man out, look at this. Each train line (JR, metro or otherwise) has a wiki page, from which you can click each individual station's page. With that you've got all the links and some other useful info (like the continuity of train lines).
Knowing all the stations relations to one another lets you know where to search at Able, and Hyperdia will let you know the last trains, and any unforseen craziness to the commute (like interrupted lines, or express trains).
Google maps is just sort of icing on the cake, to give you an idea of the neighborhood.

I'm looking at kosuge and other places on the isesaki line, kawaguchi, and toda right now.

IIIII II

My first seven days in exile are passed. In case you haven't been following every exciting episode, here's a quick recap.

In August my contract with the Ministry of Education, X and T expired, and after a little bit of hopping and fooling around, I set out for the big time. I got to Tokyo on the 12th of August, and started looking for work. The first time was a charm, and Berlitz (wisely) snatched me up before I even managed to apply to a second mega-Eigocorp. After a week and half of all-day, unpaid training, I was set free to wait for my visa forms to come through. The way the calendar worked out, I had a week in Tokyo to kill, then it was Keisei to Narita to SFO, Bart to Oakland Colliseum, Amtrak to Sac and then to the proud suburban paradise of Carmichael via my parents' hybrid electric. And that brings us to last week.

This last week has been about as uneventful as I've seen. Highlights include moving the PPP authentication on my dad's DSL modem to the router so that I could get online, buying a bagel from Noah's and behaving embarassingly in an argument with a friend. Although I have a really strong urge to make something of this time, and not let it be a total waste, I can't seem to find a means to do that. The release of iTunes 7.0 gave me a reason to find album covers for the ~5,000 songs on my harddrive, but that only took about 8 hours. So far I've only come up with one bigger stopgap solution: reading.

3 physical books and 3 mp3 audiobooks later, I've resorted to making meandering blog entries.

Holy shit, man! IRISH SPRING!

Now, I haven't been an evangelical about anything (excluding Japan) since I gave up being a vegan, but Brothers, Sisters (but moreso brothers), I have to share this revelation with you.

IRISH SPRING IS FREAKING AWESOME.

I am a convert. One way or another, a small backup supply of IS is coming back to Toyko with me.

For those keeping tabs, my US purchases will be:
vitamins
motrin
folders (43 and then some)
Irish spring

about that bagel

I'm actually located very very far from the closest decent bagel. My sister was kind enough to drive me down to the local noah's in exchange for a bagel, my treat. Mine was good. She got a raisin bagel, and I naturally suspect that she's suffered some sort of brain damage somewhere down the line.

Since I'm trying not to take America to heart, I've been mostly hiding in my room, reading and listening to audiobooks. Since I got here, I've read Vineland (not good at all) and The Box Man (pretty good, but not really my thing), and a couple of self-helpy audiobooks. Am now in the middle of a lecture series on 20th C European thought, and a biography of Stalin. I've also just started on "Outline of the US Economy" a publication of the US state department... what can I say, I like my civics with a grain of salt.

I'm reading like a man in exile, which is what I am until that visa comes through.

日本は終了しました。

First thing that surprised me about being back in america: daylight savings time. Should it be dark at 6 in the morning in the middle of September? Evidently, yes it should.
It's about 6:30 as I write this (in textedit, because I still haven't arranged getting online), and the sun is on it's way up. In a few minutes, I think I'm going to set out for the "shopping center", in the hopes of finding a decent bagel. Japan, while having little lumps of dough that they call "bagel" does not have anything approaching the minimum standard of quality here.
The other product that Americans take for granted that can't be readily had in Japan, Mexican food is also on the agenda. I found time to get a $4 burrito yesterday, but it was "vegetarian" at a place that doesnt much care about vegetarians, so it was just beans, rice, cheese, and so on... not so different from a taco bell 7 layer burrito. I should be able to find something better than that next time I go into town.

Where I'm living now, by the way, is not "town". It's northern California subrurbia, on the perfectly regular sense. The street in front of the house looks 100 meters wide, and the yard is expansive. There are tons of trees of all different stripes, and lots of grass, but everything feels quite cultivated and discreet. The trees aren't a part of a former forest or, what would naturally sprout up in the local soil. Each is a conscious decision from 5 or more years ago that this specific brand of tree would look nice here.
It's really really hard not to be aware of your neighbors here, in the sense that there is nothing here but boring little box houses. Someone has to be turning the lights on and off, right?
But it feels like a shame that I'll never have to squeeze past on of them in a hall. They'll never need to keep it down a little in respect of their neighbors. We're all quite inviolate, and have nothing at all to do with one another.

I'm quite in the throes of reverse culture shock to be sure. Still let me run down why this all makes me sad. God died. The people came to appreciate this world as the only one that counts, and adjusted their lives accordingly. Mammonism was a given. Money, nor the love thereof, is especially evil.
But in america, the regular money-grubbing tendency of developed countries got swirled into deep-seeded mistrust of the community and a touch of atomic individualism, so that people started spending extravagant sums of money, not on pleasure or glory, but on fortresses.
The American reading on christs teachings say that "flossing" is sinful, but don't seem to speak of gigantic entertainment centers (!) filled with electronics that manage to alienate not only the view from the community, but from the other viewers as well. At least when the average Japanese woman blows her cash on Louis Vuitton, she's directing her money (and thereby her labor) toward a participatory community, and not selfish fulfillment of desires, and seclusion.

I'll stop there, and get out after that bagel.

(wrote that not long after getting back, have been back a few days)

"how are you, tokyo?"

tokyo= everything is great.

even without money, without a mess of friends, without a decent piece of furniture to my name, it's all great. I just keep bumping into sublime moments when the world is small and cozy. Whether that's meeting a great group of new people at my job training, speaking german for the first time in years, hopping off the train 4 stops early to get to know the neighborhood, happily waiting for the last train, hearing music again, or just building steam, it's all coming together, and I am where I want to be.

and there's the second earthquake in that last two days. so we've got the risk of death keeping us young and alive too.

starts with don't

don't even sing about it
don't dance her down
don't dress your cat in an apron
don't give into him
don't give up
don't go into that barn
don't it make my brown eyes blue
don't leave
don't let it get you down
don't let me be misunderstood
don't let me explode
don't let the sun go down on me
don't look back
don't pull your love
don't put me on
don't save us from the flames
don't stop til you get enough
don't worry about the government
don't worry about the government
don't worry about the government
don't you forget about me
don't you know I'm loco
don't you lie to me


(I've pared my itunes lib down to 25gigs, but there's a good long way to go)

little tokyo.

There should be a region inside tokyo called "little tokyo", and it should look like the "new york new york" casino.

So, me and Tokyo seem to have reached an agreement on terms and conditions. I'll be leaving town next month and coming back in the middle of October to start a new gig working at Berlitz. I'm filled with cautious optimism over the whole thing.

On the horizon is tons of freeeee time, and if I can use it with a little bit of discipline, things are sunny. Or I could waste it all and forget how to speak Japanese drinking wine in a gutter.

You're hired!

BTW, I got the job with Berlitz. I'd be sort of embarrased if I hadn't.

snakes on the internet.

If I were supposed to drink something every time I heard some reference to snakes, in all their ironic majesty, I'd be a millionaire (counted in mixed-metaphor dollars).

I haven't felt so eager to see the end of a trend since girls started peeing in my pornos.

words to live by.

Kissui's got a post today with a bunch of Japanese in it... cool, cool, I think. I'll just read along and see what's so funny. Au contraire mon frere.

What she wrote was basically a list of venerable historic names, and paired them up with elements of modern pop culture. Dictionaries don't have the names of Gods and emperors, nor do they feature such valuable words as エロパロ. The joke, I suppose is really limited to people with a damned deep knowledge of Japanese history and pop culture... or Japanese people.

I post, why? Partly out of frustration that I lack the knowledge to parse that paragraph out, but moreso because I don't know where to get it. Because of an errant [space] inserted in the middle of the next word, I had thought we were talking about エロパロニ. And googling had me a bit perplexified. After a while, I figured out, ero-paro = ero-parody, but I really don't know where to turn when I crash into a wall of slang (or names). Over time I've picked up some of the essentials, like paizuri and paipan (largely unrelated, believe it or not), still not near enough of the words I encounter pretty often on TV or in pop songs. What to do, what to do...

not an accident.

If it seems like I'm always angry at the editorials I read over at yomiuri, there's a reason. It's a right wing paper, full of right wing views. That means lots of nationalism, privitization, golden-age nostalgia, blaming thw worlds problems on the under-empowered, and very very cautious critique of the United States.

I still enjoy reading them, precisely because they give me something to talk about... but I think I might be better off with something a little more structured and reasonable, and some materials that won't change subject matter entirely every 1K characters. I just haven't yet figured out what yet.
One way or another, I need to shake the feeling that I'm not studying hard enough.

you're kidding right?

Japan, like every other country frets over what its kids are learning in schools. Just like in the US, you see article after article chronicling the descent into mediocrity of the average Japanese student. Among a number of other responses to this problem, the government has decided to give more leeway to individual schools and school boards by leaving several hours a week open to study what each particular school finds most relevant and pressing.

Tokyo and Hyogo Ken have got the same idea. They're going to take 2 hours of class time every week to teach traditional Japanese culture. This way kids can learn that certain aspects of manga and anime come from traditional Japanese drawing styles (no mention whether the origin of the comic book format, and 95% of the drawing style is essentially adapted from the west). They'll also get to study why Noh and Kabuki are relevant to our daily lives.

Why? Well, the article I read isn't really clear on why. In fact the only concrete benefit it seems to document is that they intend on teaching some English phrases about Japanese culture so that when these kids grow up, they can tell foreigners about tea ceremony and Noh theater. Another benefit is suggested, to tell the truth. I'm not following the calculus myself, but it seems that if Japanese kids knew more about 600 year old pottery, they would have more self esteem.

So you know where I'm coming from, I don't really think especially much of traditional Japanese culture. Yet, I don't think it's a bad thing to teach in schools, IN ART CLASS. I really distrust these people so eager to force Japanese-ness into the schools, by hook or crook. Sacrificing time (more than 7% of weekly class time) that could be used on something more productive than say, how many times it's appropriate to turn a tea cup when presenting it, is stupid.

This addition to the curriculum mirrors a national debate, as to whether "愛国心" (love of country) should be taught in schools. Here's an over-zealous critique by a foreign press correspondent, and here's a little bit about it (buried inside a longer, but worthwhile article) from Marutei Tsurunen, the first diet member of foreign descent. Ooh, this is really good, if you read any of my links about this matter read that one.

several dozen minutes of toil later...

I got me a job. now I gotta figure out how to get me a new plane ticket.

I think I'm gonna have to go into a little bit of debt to make this all work. "lame"

bachelor chow.

I don't have the money to eat out right now, so it's bachelor chow for me. For example:

4-500g spaghetti
2 onions
40-60 mukiebi
2 piman
200g ketchup
pinch salt/pepper
1T olive oil

boil spaghetti
wash+drain shrimp
cut onion into 1cm slices, piman into 5mm rings
fry the onion in the oil on high until transparent,
then add the piman and shrimp and stirfry over medium

when the shrimp's done, turn heat to low, add ketchup,
once heated through, add the spag and go!


Yes, it's ketchup based sauce, and with the low sugar ketchup I bought, it was surprisingly good.

let the freeters eat cake.

Japan's got a problem, according to all the newspapers and TV shows I've seen. The problem? Not enough young people are taking on proper jobs with long term prospects. It seems after generations their ancestor's hard work, Japanese youth are giving up, and becoming lazy and unproductive. So sayeth the Japanese mass media.

I know what you're thinking: Oh dear! That must mean that companies are having a hard time finding quality employees. Maybe it's a good time for me to try to find a job in Japan.

But you'd be mistaken. Firstly, by thinking that you can enter the Japanese job market and compete for positions with Japanese people. That's not going to happen. Secondly, because the companies are not having a lick of trouble. As the economy continues to warm up, the companies having trouble finding quality employees are those offering low paying, unskilled temporary jobs. There are countless young people eager and qualified to enter into the proper careers... but not enough hiring, and hiring and work practices so inflexible as the rule out a huge portion of the qualified society.

The media is trying to make a big deal of the small number of people who have shitty jobs and don't especially mind. If anything, it's an initiative to keep competition high for decent jobs so as to keep the wages in check.

freakin' awesome.

"Needless to say, we should not forget that Japanese were not the only victims of the Showa War."

8.8071万円生活

Can I survive 29 days in Tokyo (with rent already paid) on a scant 8.8071man en?

Well, yeah. No sweat. If Bobby and Thane can pretend to do it on 1man, I can make it on 8.8071.

That's the budget I want to keep in order to have a reasonable amount of money in hand when I get back home... but reasonable is in the eye of the debtor.

stay with me on this one...

New, "ultra-first-class" cabins
+
international waters (national laws need not apply)
+
tired, bored businessmen with money to burn
+
stewardess uniforms
+
+
+

Anyway, why isn't there an airline where you can "engage the services" of the stewardesses for a set fee? Sure there are some kinks to work out, but a couple of minor adjustments and it could be a winner, no?

OOOOOHHHH, I hate spiders!

Fuckin' good for nothing waste-of-legs spider's sitting up in the corner of this room, acting all nonchallant... man, fuck him. Here I go to the trouble of not squishing his plainly visible ass between my thumb and forefinger, and he can't even get his job done.
There's a damned mosquito that has bitten me about 10 times in the last hour, and Peter Parker up there can't be bothered to help a brother out.

Let me state this unequivocally for the record: If there are any spiders reading this blog, please stop. Your kind are not welcome here.

to the limit to the wall

The last couple days I've been packing boxes and suitcases with everything I own from here on. My goal was to get into a single suitcase plus one box of books. It's still a hell of a lot more than that. Subtract the books, and I've still got a pretty big box worth of clothes, electronics, papers and other lifestyle ephemera sitting beside my suitcase... and a back pack.

I've got about a month of bumming around at 35.716108 degrees N, 139.78795 degrees E during which I hope to get rid of most of that.

ridin dirty out of tohoku.

6 days and I'm on my way out.

Sadly I spent my whole summer eating conbini food and avoiding any activity at all. So I'm going to Tokyo fat and broke, with a wardrobe that I havent added a thing to since to snow melted.

But from blogging nate to real life nate: Good luck!

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.

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.

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...

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.

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?

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.)

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.

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.

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)

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?

I'm back.

By the way, I was gone.

brb.

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










beep.

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.

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"