Nagasaki

Nagasaki City is not the easiest place to describe. Since the Portugese traders came in around 1570 the place has become quite an international hotbed. There is a cool China town and lots of Christian sites as well as some Mung dynasty architecture. It is on the water and hilly. There is a little river that runs through it. The north part of the city is all modern partly because it was demolished by an atomic bomb little more than 60 years ago.

South Nagasaki, the part of the city that remains intact, is so cool that it is my new favorite place in Japan. (I still haven't been to Kyoto, Kobe, or Nara, so I have some traveling to do.)

Many things have crossed my mind while in that city as well as after. There was the time that Aki and I went to this out-of-the-way restaurant that looked very decent and normal only to find that the family who owned the place may have been both on cocaine and part of the Japanese mafia. We figured this out because of a strange taste in the soup they served and by observing this family for a while. The grandpa was singing karaoke from the TVs behind the bar, but it was more than just singing--it was some sort of trance he was in and I don't know if alcohol could explain it. It was Sunday night, but that doesn't account for the fact that we were alone in there with this one odd family (supposedly the owners of the place), complete with a very peculiar 4-year-old and a grandma who could not really pronounce a full sentence. If the FBI or CIA is reading this then I think I can safely say that we've found one of the major trafficking nodes of southwest Japan. That place was not really a restaurant.

The city was shutting down early that night because it was Sunday and it was getting cold. It was a strange experience to walk down these streets where every little store had already put down its metal door. Whatever happened to nightime window shopping?

The next morning we made it to the atomic bomb memorial sites. First was the museum where relics were displayed, including a clock that had stopped at 11:03 from the heat of the explosion at that exact time 60 years ago. In the museum I realized that the American military had named their atomic bombs "Little Boy" and "Fat Man." Something is extremely disturbing about the amount of euphemism put into these names.

We walked over to the Peace Park where many statues were displayed as well as a sign telling people to lot let their dogs soil the garden. But before that we stumbled on a park where the epicenter of the bomb had been. There was a circle of places to sit around it and a strange black monolith in the middle. On the side a cross section of a damaged cathedral is standing straight up. It's strange to have this park in a place that has been completely made over. The whole northern city seems to have been completely rebuilt and what the destruction is replaced by are these two or three very pronounced memorials. The eyes of older folks in the tramcars, which settled themselves in a peculiar way on me, seemed to suggest that the tragedy was not well forgotten. One young Japanese man in the museum gave me a less than friendly stare as we passed each other. But I cannot blame him.

See why it's hard to describe? There are so many major aspects of this city, so many details, that they all get jumbled up. It's like a jambalaya or champon soup, only more odd, perhaps as if some ammonia was added to the champon soup. Very intense, slightly discomforting, but still somehow perfectly capable of beauty and joy.

I found the photos I thought I had lost. Human error. Perhaps the picture can speak better than anything I could write about women in Japan and the familial bonds that exist here.

Last night I watched the second of my two Ali G dvds (thanks Nick!). It's really good, what can I say? Arthur Danto was pretty caught off guard, as was Newt Gingrich on the first dvd. The Kazakhstani lover may be my favorite role though, but I can't really choose between the three he does so well. I am also finishing up The Tipping Point today. It is surprisingly interesting and mind-opening.

I'm going to Kumamoto City tonight for my Japanese class then I am taking a bus to Fukuoka City, one of the biggest in Japan. Then, on Sunday, Aki and I are heading to Nagasaki City. It will be my first time there and I am very content to be going. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities in Japan (especially for its nightview) and has some European-influenced architecture because it was a major port town and one of the main links to the outside world for a long period of Japanese history.

friends make my life

My friend Amber really loves this format with two photos lined like this. Here is a poem by Walt Whitman that I memorized for a class in college. I always remember it when I am missing my friends the most and I need some sort of way of expressing it.

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,
Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,
But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there
without its friend near, for I knew I could not,
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it
and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away, and I have placed it in sight in my room,
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them,)
Yet it remains to me a curious token, it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana
solitary in a wide in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a friend a lover near,
I know very well I could not.

. . . . . . . .

It's strange how the same things that can give you so much joy can also give so much pain. Also the same things that keep humans so well populated and lively are the things that can bring our downfall (i.e. our passions). I am often shocked by both the apparent complexity and simple duality of life. It's absurd, breath-taking, frustrating, difficult, and yet so simple and easy at times. Haha. I need to make more jokes on this blog. I'll do that soon. But when I think about humor I realize that it involves sadness and despair. But instead of making us express that sadness and despair it is an acknowledging bypass of those feelings (most of the time, but sometimes the very funniest things can also make me sad). Laughing seems to be the acknowledgement of our often complete powerlessness in life's workings.

You don't have to look hard to find an article about the drastic changes that are happening on earth. Every week there is a new article about this glacier melting faster, a new discovery about how even more warming is expected than usual, or a report on some car bombs in the Middle East. Then you can watch the movies "Closer" and "Syriana" in order to get a nice cynical view of personal relationships and the current international political economy, respectively. These are all things to which I have been exposed as of late in my superbly isolated home.

It's amazing just how much perspective and attitude change life. If you were to only have access to those media listed above the world would have a pretty nasty taste to it. But with a different palette of colors the world, including all of your problems, can completely transform.

I speak for the people I know my age when I say that life after college is no fairytale. We are now exposed to just a little more of the elements, to vulnerability, and a much greater chance of loneliness. This is the time that we are really forced to grow. College was like a big all-day, all-night nursery school. We were never too far from our friends unless we locked ourselves up in our rooms and never came out (which happened to a number of us, especially during our senior year).

The common response seems to be to seek more of what we have lost. Law school or grad school of some sort seems to be a popular choice. With grad school you can hit three birds with one stone: a new community of young people, the feeling of being productive, and learning something new (and debt/poverty forces recent graduates to be productive even after grad school is finished). Friends of mine have accomplished some of the same things by moving to the same city together and working. Life alone seems intolerable, especially after we've been accustomed to just the opposite problem.

But maybe all we need is a little change in perspective. But I suppose that won't be enough in the end. Was it always like this for people leaving college? Why do they even have college if it creates such an emptiness after it is completed? I feel like no one warned me of these things. They don't teach us this at high school and they certainly don't teach us this at college. If we were lucky though, we heard it from recent graduates who dared to venture out of the grasp of their college friends. I guess I am one of them. But even if I warn you it will do nothing to prevent the loss unless you clutch to your friends and move to a city together. Run along!

Epiphany about Japanese Culture

After a day at work I finally decided to go and enjoy the good weather today. Getting my head moving brought forth a simple but very constructive understanding that I had not fully grasped before.

The understanding rests on the concept that in Japan society everyone is family. The individual is then affected not only by his or her family but by every member of his or her society. This accounts for the sometimes overwhelming friendliness of the people here (especially when accepting a foreigner into their group), the xenophobia (when not accepting a foreigner), the huge amount of stress to conform, and the sometimes unappealing ways that stress is relieved.

In my last post I mentioned how the desires in one's life are very much affected by their awareness of the regard of family, friends, and loved ones. Imagine if your whole society consisted of this group? All of a sudden each action in your life would be under much more careful scrutiny. You would be more highly rewarded for following the path that you are "supposed to" follow and you could be more damaged if you neglect that path. It is, in local Maui people's terms, "one presha cooka" (a pressure cooker). It is an extremely positive force that includes a powerful support structure for all members of society. But it also may be related to some of the less desirable sides of society here like the snack bars and the xenophobia.

All in all I am just happy that I have come to a much better understanding of this place, even if it is, necessarily, a bit of a simplification.

"My goal is to enter high school."

Hung above the chalkboard in the second grade class of the junior high are pages with one student's wish or dream written on them (much like you might find in a more decorative way at a Shinto shrine). Most of these wishes and dreams are extremely humble by American standards. One wished "to pass the second grade test," another dreamed to "be a police officer," and one simply wanted to become "a beautiful woman." Then one wants to be a nurse, another a lawyer. But of all, the most illuminating may be the one in the title of this post. For here in Japan one must test into high school, one is not automatically accepted. This is a rigorous process, more difficult in some ways than the entry requirements for American colleges which may only require that the student has taken an ACT or SAT and does not decline a student if his/her score is very low. Here students are completely sorted by their abilities on these tests. Their tests will decide where they can attend high school.

The two most unusal wishes to me are "to give people hope" and "My dream is to find the dream." I thought the latter, which was written by a quiet student named Ryuichi Hirata, is particularly clever.

This morning during a morning assembly where some students were handed awards for their good work on kanji proficiency tests I was reminded of another thing that I never had to do when I was in middle school. Here it seems like nearly every student takes these standardized tests (even in elementary school) and individuals differ dramatically in their abilities. It just shows that the language aquisition here isn't a gimme, it is something that takes hard work and dedication, and additionally, a system of institutional rites in order to encourage/support this hard work and dedication.

Now that I have finished, for the time being, my own formal education, has the structure of my changed so much? Do I still not work under the same assumptions and guidelines that lead me through every year at school? Do I still not function on a yearly/semester-long basis, always trying to plan and make something solid each time? Perhaps there are better ways to ask these questions.

"My dream is to find the dream" may be a good way to turn our heads to, although this was probably not the intended interpretation of the sentence, one of the most major questions that arrives to a thoughtful person. It is not good enough just to dream, one must search inside one's dreams for something deeper, for the reason why one dreams at all. Unfortunately for the thoughtful person, these answers don't seem to exist. They break down into abstract feelings, emotions, and social forces that, all together, can create the illusion that there are concrete reasons why you have certain dreams or goals.

Ask yourself the question "why do you strive for the things you strive for?" and perhaps you will see what I am talking about. If you reply, "because I want to," you are being quite honest. If you reply "because all of the forces in my life (including my friends, family, and loved ones) make me feel as though I want to," then you may be answering even more honestly. Ideally you would want to honestly be able to answer "because I want to help the world," "because I want to help people who are suffering," "because I want to save the environment." However accurate these answers would be in your mind, in the complex web of social interactions in your life, as well as your past and the memories thereof, the true reasons why you strive for certain things would be much more dynamic and multi-faceted. One would part would be to fulfill your commitment to your parents or guardians, one would be to impress/help your friends, another would be to be good to your dog or the person on the street you don't know. Then there may also be the simple desire to feel good, to feel happiness flowing through your veins. But you cannot do that without paying attention to those social responsibilities your life has accrued.

Probably Ryuichi's sentence "My dream is to find a dream" means that he wants to actually have a dream but he doesn't yet. I feel his pain. Life almost requires the kind of automation that is propelled by social institutions like schools in order for that kind of dream to be perpetuated and advanced toward, but even then dreams do not necessarily appear in our minds.

When the world starts to feel disintegrated and confused is when the dreams cannot find a holding place in the mind. This is a good argument for establishing social order (and personal order), but then you would still be faced with the philosophical unsoundness of dreams if you were willing to step into the disorder and look around for a while. Perhaps it is a matter of not asking too many questions.

What are your thoughts, dear friend?

Distant Exposures

I think that exposure to the world is one of the greatest factors in awareness and understanding. Of course I must be more specific if I am going to make such a claim...

It is perhaps not only the exposure but the desire to open your eyes and look at those things right in front of you. But if they are not there to see because they are somehow blocked from your view then you may not get to see them.

Living in the countryside in Japan is a challenge precisely because of what I am not exposed to here. When you are that much farther from things that drive you in life it is hard to be at your best. But when you remember them your eyes can suddenly be opened. What I am exposed to here is enough to be happy despite my quiet (inexistant) social life during the week, but it is not enough to lift me as high as I can go.

I assume that many of my friends feel the same way where they are now. What I recommend is to try to look farther out than what you can see now and perhaps you'll see something that you've been missing as of late.

memory lost, appearances changed, feelings

I had this photo that I had taken at the Chinese circus show in Ozu town. It was a crazy show and photography was forbidden for the duration of the show. I really wish I could show you some of the crazy stuff I saw. A woman standing on top of a man using only one foot to balance her weight on his head. Some other absolutely stunning balancing acts and some strange drama scenes... But this photo I speak of was taken before the act started and it was of two audience members, a mother and daughter, faces lined up with the mother slightly blurry in the backgroud. The mother being a kind of mimesis or echo of the daughter. I really wished that my SD memory card had not somehow erased it. It shows up now as a black image where the colors and light of the images used to be.

So I decided to change the appearance of this publication. Who knows, perhaps it will change what is written here. It is certainly greener, and green makes me feel good. It's almost like being outside amount the trees in spring being showered with sunlight through the canopy of trees above, isn't it? But mostly I feel like change is a healthy part of life and that's why it's important to be flexible like a cat.

I had another interesting trip into the city this weekend. Both Friday and Saturday nights. On Friday I ended up taking the train to Ozu and driving all the way home. It was nice to be relatively alone on the road. On Saturday I stayed at my friend Chris's. He is this crazy German-blooded Eureka, Californian. A good guy. He and his apartment mate (also a good friend--both of them are assistant language teachers like me), a South African by the name of Austin. We have great talks on the trains into the city while everyone else is silent or quietly chattering on their phones.

I did want to write about how women are the backbone of Japanese society. Perhaps this is true in every society but I think it is particularly true here. They really keep the country running even if most of the politicians you see on the tele are men. Just remember that behind every politician on the tele is a mother and/or a wife who cooked for him well past the age of 22 and without her he wouldn't be there. But that is also an understatement. You may have to trust me on this one until you get a chance to come and live here yourself. Perhaps it is a Kyushu thing, but I don't think so. And the reason why it is so emphasized to me is that I have noticed many times that women do not get equal treatment. The women in my office, for example, almost always are the ones who get up to serve guests coffee or tea. Even though they have the same workload they are expected to do more. I sense this norm is (slowly) changing though.

drink green tea

I've heard from reliable sources that green tea can actually sweep out some of the carcinogens that cause things like lung cancer right out of your body. Now that's a healthy drink if you ask me. It may be one good explanation for why Japanese people have a much lower rate of lung cancer than people in the US even though people smoke plenty here. But I ain't got the charts here so don't quote me. Just encourage your friends to go out and get some quality green tea (not the weak kind) and drink it instead of coffee (or with their coffee, probably an excellent mix too).

Maybe life should be that simple. You should do as many things that are simply good for you as you can. Green tea is simply good for me. So is exercise, unless I damage my body doing it. What else is simply good? Breathing fresh air. Feeling free to live the way you want to live without preventing others from doing the same. Living healthily and promoting others to do so as well.

Basically I miss you friends. I hope you're having wonderful times out there. I look forward to having a beer or a mango with you!


Your Buddy

now much of the world is like a house

Ponto Vechio nella citta di Firenze, Italia

Invisible shields meet visible walls in most of the modern world. The world I have lived in, other than the short excursions into the wilds, has been full of the made environment. The made environment is a place where you can pretty much just feel at home. There are benches to sleep on, places to roll around on the grass, boats to carry you, cars to travel by, trees to climb without worry of other animals attacking you. You could even say "it's not a house, it's a home!" That's how friendly and easy the made environment is for us humans (assuming no political/social upheavals, wars, repression, etc.).

In the summer this land of Aso county in Kumamoto prefecture felt a little different. Because I never knew when a deadly poisonous snake would slither right in front of me the land all of a sudden felt more alive than most of the land I've lived on. Now that the winter is here it feels more like a made environment. I am assuming that Australia feels pretty alive because they still have so many animals there (same for some countries of Africa, some parts of North America, and fingers-crossed for places like Brazil where the forests are disappearing way too fast).

I taught my little kids the "Row, Row, Row your boat/ Gently down the stream/ Merrily merrily, merrily/ Life is but a dream" song today and realized that in the made environment life is really much more like a dream. And dreams can be very beautiful experiences, experiences that are very addicting. The made environment is the environment of the imagination. It is where you can indulge in whatever fantasies you have about the way the world really is. You can believe that fashion is of the utmost importance. You can choose to worship any deity. You can safely forget that other animals than humans actually exist. Etc. Etc.

Why do I say this? It's on my mind. I have lived in Europe/UK for 12 months total and I loved that time. Despite and maybe because of the deeply embedded madeness of that environment I was able to experience special things. My time in the made environment has been very much like a dream. My only question is should I try to wake up any time soon(or is that possible?)? The dream continues in these made environments of Japan...

invisible mystery

There is a shield up all around me here. It is a very comfortable shield. I am very used to it. This shield blocks the world around me from truly being felt, truly being experienced and understood. Or, put another way, it makes the world too easily understood. It is, of course, one of the main contributing factors to sanity in life, but it is also one of the main contributing factors to certain kinds of ignorance. I think that I am not alone in having this shield. I think that is it nearly universal.

I am convinced that in life the things that seem least mysterious are actually the things that hold the most mystery. When life seems most uninteresting, empty, thoughtless, senseless, questionless is precisely when you are now being duped. It is precisely when your shield is up and blocking the world from your potentially sensitive eyes. As Leia says, "Luke, it's a trap."

Sometimes when your shield comes down you begin to see again all that you had been blocking. It is like when you finally realize how much you care for a group of people, how much you feel you will miss them; how much they mean to you. But it is more than that. It is recognizing the intricacies of the workings of life that surround you at every moment. Even in a quiet, empty, all-white room there is plenty of movement and interest not only of that very simple space but of yourself. Your complex bodily workings and the mind you carry with you. The intricacies of memories you hold and the patterns on your fingertips and throughout your body (like trees or geological formations).

But the shield does not only protect from the knowledge of the good, it also protects from the knowledge of the bad. It is a protecting force and does plenty of good. It means that you may function, that you may cook, that you may clean, that you may live in peace. For a too-active mind is a too-active mind. A too-aware person is, well, insane. So the shield will stay up.

I meant to say something about how technology contributes to this shield by its offering a sort of analog to it. Like the shield the technological device hides away the many ways in which it functions. We use the digital camera to take the picture, put it on our computers, and order prints online but we do this all, 99% of the time, without the knowledge/awareness of what is really happening within the gadgets and ciruitry. Of course it's just a collection of 1s and 0s but that is a vast oversimplification. The ability to mindlessly utilize hundreds of technologies everyday highlights just how comfortable we are with our constant unawarenesses. Contemporary Japanese culture is bathed in these daily technologies making life so seemingly unmysterious, and yet, in truth, so much more mysterious.

And yet what lurks within these mysteries? Potentially the simplest of answers however complex in their overwhelming vastness. Of course I do not think these ideas are original; but they may be to me and they may be to you, so I am content.

What is the mystery? What is the simple force behind every moment in every space? What makes the flowers grow and the leaves fall down to the ground? How constant is life? Where are we? It's nice to live in a world of unanswered questions.

here there everywhere

Isn't it true that right now you could be happy living in hundreds of different places? You could be living on the African continent somewhere in one of the thousands of amazing places it hides to most of us. You could be cross-country skiing in Vermont during your afternoons with a deep blue sky above you. You could be by the McKenzie river on your way to Bend. You could be swimming in a fresh water pool under a waterfall on one the Hawaiian islands. All of these locales could offer you meaningful work as well. Or maybe you feel differently, but for me I feel this way.

Alas as I know now that I will become one of Ubuyama's five JET alums I think that I could've been happy here another year, maybe even two. I could've watched the kids growing up, the trees getting taller. I could've learned Kumamoto dialect more thoroughly. But I also know that there are many other things that I would be happy doing. I could be in Europe teaching or learning something. I could be in Kerala or Patagonia doing some sort of project there, maybe even teaching little kids. The great thing about kids around the world is that as vulnerable and little as they are, they are also very resilient. So at least I know that the kids of Ubuyama will be fine without me. They may even be lucky and get another good foreigner living here after me (there were good ones before me so there is no reason to think there won't be good ones after me). It's hard to imagine someone not being a kind person to these kids. Anyone who comes here will, by nature, become incredibly nice just because that's what working with these kids does to someone.

I am also pretty resilient. I manage to be carried around the world and be fine. Saying goodbye is not always the funnest thing but it builds character. And today I learned that my bosses are not that mad at me for leaving after a year. I think they understand that I can only do what I can do and sometimes life pulls you somewhere and you can't really help it.

My journey/quest/chaos will be leading me to many more places. I hope that in the future I will be able to see the enchantment of the world. I think that it is impossible to always experience wonder but still important to remember to try. Sometimes the world may seem like a very dull place indeed. I remember countless hours of dullness in the world around me during my teenage years. But there is nothing as interesting as when you can look around at the plants, animals, and artifices around you and be in awe of them. They truly are bizarre happenstances. This all is. Sometimes it takes a bit of a jolt, a bit of a jaunt, or a bit of world traveling to see this. Sometimes, on the other hand, traveling can take the wonder right out of you. In any case, I recommend not forgetting its possibility in your life. If this makes no sense to you please email me and I will do my best to explain.

takin' it easy

Hey Friends,

I think I've decided that I'm gonna take it easy for a while. I disagree with the economic theory that growth is necessary for a healthy economy. Sometimes growth is destructive and positive growth takes careful planning. I wish that all people had the luxury to take things a little more slowly too. Let us munch on our thoughts a little longer, digest them, make solid next steps.

So next year I plan to go to northern Japan, to the city of Sendai in Miyagi-ken where one very special, rare person will be teaching high school English. I'll continue to promote internationalization in all ways that I can, including teaching English as much as possible. In the city of more than a million life will be moving along much faster and there'll be more to do. "More input" as Johny Five from the film Short Circuit would say.

I will surely miss the country air, the small village surrounded by hills carpeted with trees, the best kids in the world, the cows, the cats.

Speaking of cats I found a cat outside my house today that had just been hit by a car. Its body was still in tact so I picked it up off the ground just as its mother would have and brought it to the side of the road where it wouldn't be smashed and splattered all over the place. Before leaving it I pet it a bit and wished very much that it could still be alive so that it could enjoy my company. When I first found it a fellow cat was trying to stir it back to life. It was all very sad but it was also kind of "deep" for me.

My next steps in life will come in time. I will let my interests marinate until they are ready for the cooking and then I will grill them with the choicest pieces of wood/charcoal I can then find. I will miss all of you guys, of course, but I will eventually find my way back to you all. The good news also is that Sendai is much easier to get to because it's only a few hours on the shinkansen from Tokyo. So please visit! Or better yet visit me on Kyushu while I am still here (through July).

I miss ya'll. Have some nice red wine and grilled foods for me. Enjoy the big trees of California, enjoy the Pacific coast. Enjoy the road trips and the burritos. And the Oregon firs. And the organic beers at Sundance in Eugene.

The Synthesis: Rare Steak and Strawberry Milkshake

A cow ate some strawberries for breakfast lunch and dinner and now you are milking it to make milkshake. After you get the milk, though, you slaughter the cow in order to have steak as well. But intstead of having the milkshake separate from the steak you decide to blend them together. Yes, and you have already added the strawberries. Even though you thought it would be a gross mixture it actually tastes pretty good.

This is humanity in a nutshell. Take all the stupidity and violence, mix it with all the love and joy and you get this kind of concoction. And I tell you, in spite of your veganism/vegetarianism, you would dig this drink. It would be a profound experience I tell you. The cycles of life would be in your mug. But you don't have to try it; you know why? It's already you.

The Antithesis

Returning to the countryside I noticed how weirdly placed my life has become, floating around in this strange nether-world. It is a foreign place where the differences stand out so vividly, where the negativity projects through the confusion on a difficult day.

And through the confusion I turn to life goals and a drive to live a lively life. I come to see the depression in those around me as a factor, an outcome, of a life with no real needs. If their are no needs, no responsibilities, then there will be much fewer reasons to strive for anything. Simply finding something to strive for becomes a challenge.

Thus if we want to proceed well we must create responsibilities. These start with self and family. Having a family is perhaps the best way to create responsibility. But there are other, less serious ways as well (but probably also less effective; the less serious, the less effective).

I watched "Grizzly Man" and a Japanese film called "Suicide Club" that is way too close to reality for comfort. I saw Japanese high school girls in their school uniforms, hiking up their skirts as if to worsen the plight of women in Japan even more. I felt as if in an alien landscape driving home today, remembering the first time I took the 89 white Civic for a drive on the 57 highway, seeing the lights and wondering what everything was. Noticing the arrays of power lines and lighted signs and strange kanji on the signs. Being lost in translation is interesting. Ted Grudin becomes GuT riden or riden GunT or GrinTued or worse, Grinded Ned. Lost, lost, lost.

But how found? In the soil and in the ground. In the meaning found from new growths however bound. Perhaps the sound can make you astound all around so you must rebound like a hound that jumped from the ground.

Mindless Consumerism, Human Limitations; Frailty, Ignorance

I took a trip to the city this weekend.

I walked down the covered "arcades": the kamitori and shimatori of Kumamoto City. Filled with neon lights and chaotic pricetags, people standing outside the stores yelling about their special offers or asking for donations. Then in the night the side streets, the red-light district of the city spilling out of its seams with "snack girls." You can walk up to them and they will do their best to corral you into their "snack bar," a place where you will then pay outstanding amounts of money to drink in the company of other snack women. Mainly rich business men flock in like wolves hungry for a midnight snack but unable to feed (usually). I really have no idea what happens in these snack bars because I have never been in one. I've heard that the industry goes well beyond what it appears to be. But I can guess what there generally is based on my other observations of the consumerism here.

As a consumer here, more than anywhere else I have been (although America is not far off the mark either) you may go around and spend all of your money on things that do nothing. Not that things are that expensive but that it seems that most of what is sold has little or no use. Or it appears to have more use than it really does. Cars, for example, are certainly tools of transportation. But why must they be replaced so often? Why is style and newness so controlling of the consumer? I am confident that 90% of the people here have little or no idea of what's really under the hood of their car. That is a forbidden place reserved for the specialists. Just as if you are sick you must immediately visit your local doctor, the same might go for your can and the mechanic. Many perfectly good cars are scrapped and replaced; their engines completely capable.

There is a scene in THX 1138 where the man of the title's name, played by Robert Duvall, goes to buy a red plastic thing at a shopping area. He then brings it home and puts it in the recycling bin. The idea was that he bought something just for the pleasure of buying but it had no real purpose beyond that initial pleasure. I see a lot of the same things happening here. Electronics are a good example. At the electronics store in the city I spent 20 minutes looking at the dozens of varieties of electric shavers they had on display. A perfect gadget, completely and utterly unnecessary. Still I wanted one. I even liked the boxed they came in. It would mean that shaving would be just a little easier. I could also use an electric toothbrush.

My salary seems like it's about $50,000 if you consider the fact I pay way too little for housing and I have few other expenses. In real terms though it is a much lower figure. But this is my first time having a lot more money than I need. In the past I just had very little. Don't get jealous though because it won't last long and I have plenty of loans to pay off.

The fleetingness of the objects of our desire cast a gloom to my mind every now and then. I feel that it is true that holding on only causes suffering. It is when we apply the workings of consumerism to the human being, however, that things get truly gloomy. It is then that we must remember that people, although fragile, have worth well beyond anything that can be bought and sold. Snack bars disgust me. It is the extremely short-sighted ignorance, the myopia of believing that visuality is reality that propagates such narrow-mindedness. The dearth of critical thinking blares brilliantly in these kinds of situations (and they are, to be fair, all over the world). To understand me as well as you can you could open up one of the various sex-centered magazines in the local 7-11 and simply look at the 13 and 15 year old girls posing in their swimsuits. In a place where the male and female genitalia are always blurred out with what is referred to as the "mosaic," even in the most mature pornography, the sex-culture finds its ways in the most mysterious, awful, absent-minded ways. School girls are preyed on, cartoons are masterminded to fill in that which the mosaic hides and much more. Sex is driven to the unfortunate extremes and those extremes are not pretty. They represent the worst of what I deem the mindless consumerism, human limitations; frailty, ignorance. Short-sightedness, depression.

hello, world

I may be far out in the middle of nowhere, but maybe if I write these words you'll still here me. Sometimes I just want to send everyone postcards, but I can't be bothered. I mean really, who even wants a postcard? Well, I can think of maybe one person.

Every now and then I just feel like writing jibberish. Quanderies leading nowhere. Questioning civilizations. Questioning the belief in "God." Like why must people kill for cartoons? Why must people carry so much pride that they must shed blood for it? Then I get angry comments though (and I also remember the mindless violence of our closest relatives, the chimpanzees)(and the mindless sexuality of another close relative, the bonobo). And then there are the frustrated readers searching for their daily dose of something else. I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone.

Life in Japan is like another dream. Things are very peaceful and flowing here. Everything is as it should be. Things feel secure. And in a land of a thousand earthquakes that is pretty extraordinary. Things do feel harmonious here. I am starting to like the way the kids all stand up straight and bow at the beginning and end of class. How they truly try to learn more than any kids I ever knew. Of course I've heard it's nothing like this in the cities. School is a whole different animal there.

I am finally feeling as though I understand enough Japanese to almost always recognize some key words. Hearing it has become so normal to me. I hear it everwhere. Now I am ensconced in the characters. I found this program online where I can just quiz myself all the time. It's great. I can be online and study Japanese at the same time. I love it. And I have a class in the city on friday nights. For around $45 I am getting 8 two hour long classes. Now that's a damn good deal if I ever saw one. And these aren't just any classes, there's a 2-1 student-teacher ratio (or a little better). This isn't just for JETs either, it's open to the public.

So I continue to wander around here in this land and I intend to for many more months. And then maybe I'll wander back to more familiar lands (surely to wander back again into other, unseen lands). Being a wanderer is really quite nice. (Hesse, a good man, wrote a book about wandering complete with drawings. It's my favorite of all his work.) It's all a mystery at this point though; the wanderer will follow his/her feelings and they will show the way. Thoughts are just complex or confused feelings anyway. Let's face it.

友人。子犬。異常。花。火山。

友人。子犬。異常。花。火山。
Friend. Puppy. Insane. Flower. Volcano.

. . . . .


Ahoy! And if you thought the world was already crazy enough... You are in for some more surprises.


. . . . .


Characters take up less space.


. . . . .


Individualism is an illusion. It always has been. But it makes sense to assume that since we are so individual physically that we also be individual in other ways. But that forgets many of the ways that we are not even individual physically.


. . . . .


Puppies are cute, let's face it.


. . . . .

Theories of Japanese Society From Theodorian Eyes

There are two examples from my life in Japan that I wish to draw from. One is that even when making a left turn at traffic lights (the equivalent of a right turn in America since here people drive on the left) one must wait for the green light or it's illegal. The second is that I've noticed at work, and in general, that when someone has a problem with something here they never confront the person with it. Almost 100% of the time they will either be passive or act passive aggressively (like standing around awkwardly, waiting for the party to notice something is not right). Instead it is expected that individuals will figure things out for themselves. If there is something they are not doing right, or well enough, then they should be lead into the right direction by a sense of dedication to society/guilt. Very rarely will people ever confront people here. Confrontation is prevented by at least two layers of bureaucracy.

Here I think it is safe to say that individual subversiveness is extinguished well before it has a chance to breath. People adhere to rules here because that is one of the central pillars of being a human in this society. It is a law to not turn on a red light because social solidarity is valued over individual assertiveness. It's how to eat, how to work, how to write, how to communicate, how to generally function. Even at the kindergarten kids are trained to do things the "right" way in things like complicated performances, art projects like origami, and even eating. With eating every dish is carefully served, then everyone says their prayer, then they may begin (even with the one year-olds).

The places I have lived before--Hawaii, Oregon, and England, just to name a few--have never been like it is here. Also, they have never been such ubiquitous cultures. But neither have the societies in which I've lived before been through such cultural isolation like Japan has and still is (to a much lesser degree).

Japan continues to be a certain way because people reinforce various portions of culture through things like education and policy. It is certainly a changing culture and people like me contribute to that change. Just yesterday night Kumamoto City was crawling with American military men and women (mostly men). It made the whole city feel different. Even though they are only here temporarily I have a feeling that more and more foreigners will come here as jobs in parts of the English-speaking world become harder and harder to find (South Africa is a good example of this where the unemployment rate is extremely high) and because of Japan's population trouble the country will soon need more foreigners to maintain the workforce (unless people are replaced with robots--Honda has a pretty good new one that can run and communicate pretty well). Just recently it was announced that 1 out of every 20 marriages in Japan is between a foreigner and a Japanese person.

While I have much affection for Japanese culture I do not necessarily think that change is a bad thing. People will have to keep up their most cherished values as well as they can. The threat of loss is an unusally strong psychological motivator. When things are too placid and normalized may be when things tend to disintegrate. As it always must, time will test and inevitably change the culture and the people.

my first kanji

水 - water
火 - fire
彼 - he
彼女 - she
山 - mountain
木 - tree
森林 - forest
日本語 - Japanese (language)
日本人 - Japanese (person)

What a complex written language full of (sometimes hidden) meanings and history! Sometimes I think of it as the most complex secret code that is designed in order to be nearly impossible to break into. I am always impressed with the beautiful writing of my students and how swiftly they can write such complex symbols. But then I have also met Japanese people who are not all too fond of their own writing system and others yet who must practice in order to make them better. It truly is an entirely different form of written language than Romantic/Anglo languages. It's a whole different process in the mind and a whole different system of learning because of it (one has to be very dedicated and engaged from an early age to learn well)(you should see how easy learning to write English is for these kids--only 26 different letters and one of them is just a line: l and another is an o and another is a T and another is a y and another is a z...). I've gotten to know the roman alphabet very well while teaching it to all my favorite toddlers!

I should probably note that there are two readings of kanji, the on- and the kun- readings. So sometimes one symbol will be read completely differently based on if it stands alone or if it's with other kanji. The on-reading is for compound kanji and is adapted from the ancient Chinese pronunciation whereas the kun-reading is the pronunciation that is native to Japan. Kids generally learn kun- first then move on to on-. So 水 is "mizu" meaning water in its Japanese form but is sui (meaning something more like hydro or aqua) in its on-form. Just for those who don't know: there are two other kinds of "alphabets" that are used for writing Japanese. They are usually integrated with kanji unless the writing is for young kids or foreigners or if the words happen to be foreign words (one of the whole "alphabets" is used exclusively for foreign words and names).

beyondings

Notifying my favorite person here that I must leave is not an easy task. I wish there were a way of explaining that depite my love of the village and my students I must leave. Every sector of my life is pulling me out of the inaka and back into some form of larger society. But, alas, I cannot really speak his language, and, even if I could, I might not be able to calm the anxiety of those who are affected most. I do not think I am merely projecting my worries onto the town, although I might be. I am thinking of suggesting to the town that they look independently for an Assistant Language Teacher rather than through the JET program, but then they might run into the problem of trying to find someone who wants to live in this much isolation for a year or more. I think very few people would opt for this. That said, it is still an extraordinary opportunity.

But in the grand scheme of things whether I stay or go is not even a blimp on the radar screen. Things will turn and twist and the future will come and go. People will smile, sleep, drink, attempt to stay warm. And maybe now more Ubyama people will make their way to Maui for a little sight-seeing. They can even stop by and hang out with my parents (always an unusual experience). So enough of the anxiety and forgiveness; I say, let's celebrate! Get out the good red wine and natto, you're all invited. Let's be happy with what we have!

p.s. it's been a while since I have said hello to some of you out there, whether it be in Namibia or in Brooklyn, please be well and I look forward to catching up with you (and good luck out there! Remember to celebrate).

The Sacred Nene: A Retrospective

I may come back, from time to time, to the past; in this case to the recent past. I was on my home island of Maui for a month this winter and I am always nicely surprised that the same island never seems to get old no matter how many times I go. When I was a junior in high school I spent an entire 12 months on the island only leaving once (for a school trip to the big island). During this time I was won over by the place (although after a year I did get a bit of the old island fever, or maybe that was wishful thinking because I knew I had to go back to school on the mainland).

The Nene is a descendent of the Canadian Goose. It's fighting to hold on as some of its sister-species have already perished. To spend time near the Nenes is like being Charles Darwin in the Galapagos. It's really nice. The experience can, if you foster it, teach you about what it means, in general, to be an animal on this planet.

The most beautiful parts of Maui are the parts least often seen. This probably holds true for a lot of places.