On Vacation... See you again in mid-January

Hey, I need a vacation.

Yeah, so I'm taking one.

So see ya in a month or so, k?

And while your at it leave comments for me. Jokes. Meanings of life. Descriptions of where we go when we die.

The appearances of my home

Alas I have fitted you with the unsatisfactory pictures of an less-than-healthy looking home. As you can see time has not been all too kind to my house as the mold eats away at the outer walls.

But what I can say in its defense is that these are only the appearances of the place. Its heart, its innards, are nice enough to the eye (although exceedingly difficult to represent in photos; you'll have to take my word).

That said, there is a peculiarity of the culture of aestheticism here in Japan. That while beauty is such a highly regarded element, the towns are often sores to the eye. Thus the ideals of beauty that pervade the handwriting, the multitude of arts, the Shinto shrines, the gardens, have been lost somewhere to the bigger picture of the modernized civilization.

Do not get me wrong--the beauty still exists out there and within the peoples' practices. It is just not applied to the modern, social-centered things like towns as a whole.

Which tempts me to say that the ideal of aesthetics here may only be a surface-level of aesthetics. It is not the kind of ideal of beauty that pervades the more general parts of society. The local government does not, for example, seem to control development or architecture in order that it may be as pleasant looking as it could be. On the contrary: the land is stripped to its elements; trees are planted in rows, pulled out like weeds; dams intervene, roads cut through everything. The trucks spew out black smoke; electronics factories are notorious polluters of the most harmful chemicals and metals. Everything that cannot be easily recycled is burned. South American rainforests are mauled down in order that disposable chopsticks can be supplied for any small eating. Horses are turned into sashimi.

Thus the ideals of aesthetics do not necessarily penetrate the ethical integrity, the social projects, the local and national governments' planning, the economy as a whole. This should not be too surprising; there may be no civilization on earth that truly accomplishes those lofty feats. But maybe in local situations.

I've always believed that the highest forms of beauty in a human being do not exist on a visual level. Then again, the ugliest parts of the human would also exist in the mind, heart, and soul. Human eyes are pretty beautiful. But I guess I am trying to say is that I value kindness, ethical integrity, sincerity, empathy, goodwill. Those civil aspects of humanity, humanitarianism. In other words I think that it is a mistake to judge a book by its cover. Not only is my house nicer than it looks from the outside, but many beautiful things are less so when they are more closely examined (if you have that patience).


This isn't news to anyone. For some reason my tired mind, on this Sunday morning, wants to extrapolate, express, etc.. But at least I finally gave you the pictures that I promised.

In conclusion, however, I must say that the spectre of delusion goes in both directions. The one that finds beauty underneath a surface of ugliness and one that finds ugliness underneath a surface of beauty. Which is worse? They both have their vices and spices. It's just a good example of the many ways in which humans may only see just a couple sides of an exceedingly multi-faceted world.

The middle school next to my house:
And the construction situated next to it:
Our schools's special elephant statue (symbolzing the exchange program our town has with Satit Kaset School in Bangkok):

a word for my ancestors

photo by Wendy Grudin

In the past tens of thousands of years our forbears have done a lot that we have no idea about and probably never will. Long, long ago we were all pretty much cousins and we may as well still be. Saying that and feeling that are two very different things. Religious beliefs are enough to make two different people at odds. Language barriers, even small ones, are enough to create huge misunderstandings.

I think of my ancestral past from time to time. Sometimes they help me understand how I got so crazy. Other times they help me understand how my parents got so crazy too. Then, other times yet, by being aware of their own struggles and values, I remember to maintain my own.

Two of my ancestors come to my mind a lot these days. They are my mother's grandfathers, both of which she never got to meet. Hans and Kurt. One was a general of the German army from 1930-1934 who is remembered for his desire to take out the fuehrer, being "extremely hostile to the Nazi Party," so much so that he was relieved from duty.


Hans, my other maternal great-grandpa, was assasinated in 1920 by right-wing Germans because he fought for what he believed in during a time of extreme political repression. He was a conservationist, an internationalist, an anti-racist. Rosa Luxemborg was apparently a fan of Hans (see the link below).

Then my paternal grandparents and their parents who are less documented. My last grandparent, Abraham, is pictured above. He is a wonderful grandpa (in his nineties!) and lives with Wendy and Pat in Colorado (hey guys!). Someday I will write about that side of the family too, for there is a lot to be written, but now I must rest.

Link about Kurt

Link about Hans

German and Russian-Jewish blooded American in Japan

German-Russian American with (technically but not practically) Jewish father and Japan-born mother goes to small village in Japan to promote internationalization in 2005.

I hadn't thought of that headline for my job until today when I realized that with all of my different backgrounds I may as well be the symbol of some of the greatest massacres of the 20th century. It's not easy sometimes. Quite ironically, my maternal grandparents fled Nazi Germany (where they would have most probably perished, based on their ideology and blood, with the more than 6 million who died after they escaped) around about 1933 and came to Japan, Germany's soon-to-be ally in the war. They ended up staying for around 14 years until they found away to move to another country involved in the war (on the other side), America. It is simplistic to assume that a country's national government represents the whole country. I, for one, had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. I never had a choice in the matter.

To finish the circle my mother ended up marrying a nice guy named Robert while they were grad students at Berkeley. Robert happened to be from a Russian, Jewish family (who left Russia before WWI). Not everyone knows this but over ~27 million Russians died during WWII. That made Russia the country with the greatest percentage lost during the war (14%) according to http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7232-1.cfm.

So I guess I have to live with the fact that many of my "peoples" have killed millions of each other in the past hundred years. I guess that makes my genes/ancestral past either masochistic or just really confused. I am certainly confused. Perhaps many foreigners here in Japan are. We are attempting the tightrope-walk of moving beyond our pasts without entirely forgetting them.

and everyone please give a very warm welcome to...

Apocalypse!

Yes, my old friend. Scruffy-looking ball of love.

When I decide that society's ills have finally caved-in the goodness of life I remember that they are nothing compared to my old, good friend. All it takes is an article like this

http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,1660485,00.html#article_continue

to remind me that we are way 'overdue' (in geological time) for an asteroid as big as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Some people have noted that this simple fact is strangely relieving. It is also relieving that human time is on a completely different scale than geological time and 'overdue' may mean that it still takes 10,000 years to happen. Phew. That's enough time for a new religion to bud (Christianity only took a little over 2,000 years if you don't count its pre-cursors) and for bunches of civilizations to rise and fall.

Alienation, shapes and colours

Yes I may use the British spelling. Thank you. Sorry is my favorite word spoken in the British accent. Daijobu is one of my favorite Japanese words. And Kokoro. They mean alright and heart.

I had this idea to write about alienation a few days ago. But then I was in a car. And then I had another idea.

But I think I will at some point.

Alienation; from your work, from your society, from your body, from your emotions. What does happen when you can no longer relate to your own emotions? Sometimes alienation is a good thing. And what about repression of emotions, individuality, sociality? Alienation from the outdoors?

I may have had something to say before but now I don't. I ate a lot of spaghetti tonight. I need it for the long night of keeping warm in my -6 degree (C) house (well not quite, but may as well be as that's the temp outside).

Oh yeah, my car is back and is safe at home. I guess I won't be able to drive it much in the next four months, but at least my office can lend me theirs for the time being.

So be well and merry.

Oranges and Apples

Dear Reader,

I am quite sorry for not being a frequent writer as of late. You see, I was on my way back from Fukuoka City and rain into the year's first snow storm in the mountains near my village. So after making some delightfully acrobatic maneuvers (like an ice-skater on four wheels), I decided to halt my automobile and walk as the last light of sun peeked its way through the clouds overhead, which were still showering down the grateful hills. Then two cool guys helped get me back home in their trucks. It would have been a valiant walk though.

Furthermore I had a mid-year JET Programme meeting in Kumamoto City for the past two days. That is where I finally learned an important lesson (and with some help from a special person and some friends): that two extremely different cultures can hold such completely different customs and moral standards means that comparisons often fail us. Thus they are like apples and oranges. I cannot project my moral standards on the society and people here; it is not fair and does not see everything at work in the situation.

In many ways, my reasons for coming here were to find a safe-haven for building my dreams in a place that would challenge my ideas about the world. All of that has been accomplished so I am very grateful. I think many English speakers move here for the same reason. It is a wonderful way for budding artists to be able to afford their passions and explore the world at the same time. It certainly does not hurt that our jobs can often be inspiring and wonderful themselves even if they can also refuse to behave as one might so desire.

Here I should be teaching history.

Two examples alone are enough to merit these words.

In the very class where I read the story, from the English textbook New Horizon, of the tree who remembers people dying under her branches due to the bombing of Hiroshima (consisting of fourteen and fifteen year olds), I found a very alarming graphic on a student's pencil case. It was a swastika next to a skull wearing an army helmet with the words "destroy your pretty face" or something of that nature. I don't know what is more disturbing, the fact that this kid didn't know not to buy/use/have this pencil case or the fact that it is sold in stores here (or the fact that teachers haven't prevented him from using it even after I made it known in the office).

The other example comes secondhand, from my mom when she was here. My mother and I were at an enkai (drinking party) and my mother was talking to one of my favorite people from my office (who also speaks English). I was speaking to some Japanese men who were trying to tell me that they liked to suck women's nipples, but that's another story. I could almost hear the conversation of the other side of the room that my mom later recounted. They were discussing World War II and the Japanese popular reaction to the war. My mother had just told my co-worker that her family in Japan was, like many Japanese families, against the war from the get-go. This shocked my co-worker, who replied: "you mean there were Japanese who were against the war?" My co-worker, who had to have been a very good student and quite well-read, was not to fault for this, of course. For one, it is hard to say how many people were really firmly against the war. But it does suggest that Japanese history textbooks do not provide a very comprehensive account of the war to which their country was central. That, coupled with the swastika pencil case, is enough for me to want to be a history teacher here (and an English teacher as well, to help the Japanese converse with other cultures).

Something happened in the unhappy news that, despite its unhappiness or rather because of it, I wanted to bring it up here. Van Tuong Nguyen was hung yesterday for trafficking 396 grams of heroin through Singapore. Officials in Singapore decided, depite pleas for otherwise, not to let the condemned man hug his mother before his death, he only was allowed to hold hands. This all happened despite pleas from Australia's prime minister John Howard.

On a similar note, the U.S. just hit its 1,000th person executed since 1976. That is not good. Although many of these people were charged with crimes much greater than Nguyen's (in my humble opinion) many of these people may not have truly done the crimes of which they were pronounced guilty. Even if they had been guilty, killing is not right. For those who are not insane, something like shame and prison would be a much better approach. For those who are insane, then there are insanse asylums.

The causes of, and fixes for, the predominance of insanity in America is another problem that needs to be addressed, but I'll save that for another time.

The Land of Endless Self-Projections

You've probably noticed by now something funny about these articles here if you have been so patient as to read the words writ in them... That funny thing that may have been more obvious or less obvious than I imagine is that in my various musings, which range from human nature to the state of Japan, I have been guilty of projecting my own sentiments and emotions here on to them. In fact the ideas represented may be more a product of my internal states than of the states external to me.

Although it is exceedinly self-analytical, and perhaps self-indulgent, I wanted to be open about this fact. Sometimes, like right now for instance, I feel as though these entries are my confessions.

Perhaps this is why I am always so apologetic and this is why I named it all TedsTrips. I want to be honest about just how subjective this all really is. Just as the photos were taken from my point of view, from my exact points in space and time at the time of capture (or at least the camera in my hand's points in space and time), the words I write are similarly created.

To continue in this potentially uncalled-for, or even futile, honesty I will write that tonight I went to bed at eleven and could not sleep. Perhaps it was that my body was not tired (I had napped earlier sitting at my heater-under-the-table-with-blanket contraption that is popular in Japan (kotatsu?)), but I also has a strange notion/emotion come over me. The immense silence of being alone at night in my house, in this town can often create these strange emotions. The only breaks in the silence are of passing cars on the road just above my house, but they provide little in terms of company. This notion/feeling was one of a certain kind of fear, or at least it involved fear. The idea that I was only half alive had come over me. That in this silence and solitude I had felt the absence of friends and that made me feel as though I was floating and as though all my life here would float away just as my time in England, only about 15 months ago, has already seemed to have floated away.

So I called my dear friend Sam who is currently living and studying in New Haven. He has three really long essays to turn in by the 19th but he spared me the time as a rare friend does. Talking through the internet we chatted for a good half an hour (midnight here is morning on the East Coast so it's convenient). Now I feel at least not alone with this notion/feeling, although it still looms within me. Although I cherish this time of reflection, learning, and relative freedom, I yearn to not let me life slip away like this. I feel as though I should be older now, but something tells me that I'll be even less likely to want to be this isolated when I am older. So I wait, patiently, and I try to be grateful of what I have here while I still have it.

Soon I will post some photos of where I live, work, walk, etc. in order that you all can finally get a more realistic picture of what life is like here (not just for me, but on a more objective level). Then, in not so long, I will make another one of my life's small escapes - this time for vacation on my home island deep in the Pacific. I will be there for a month and that month will, most of it, be a break from this log of contemplation and self-expression. Soon after I get back after break I will be asked to hand in recontracting paperwork if I wish to stay another year. I surely welcome any advice from any parties who wish to give advice although I must say that things always seem different from afar. I am sure that when I do leave this town, for I will certainly leave eventually, it could be more than slightly heartbreaking. Not that there won't be things I am happy to move on from, but that there are things that I will never find again. Like the purity of heart in the kids here and the kindness of so many people and my first experience learning Japanese from scratch, much of it directly from the mouths of people here who are kind enough to help me along my way. Then there is the family that invites me to eat with them, to explore distant temples and shrines. These are things that cannot ever be replaced.