It is no secret that contemporary Japan is barely the shadow of the cultural richness of Japan's past. Even that shadow, from the perspective my time here has granted, seems to be losing itself in the overwhelming process of the new culture. There may have been a well constructed, well traveled dirt path, but that path bas been almost completely covered by a brand new pavement road. Cracks in the road let you peer through the surface and into the past but soon they are re-paved to again hide the old-fashioned past and to show the shiny new present.

The Japanese city, if lucky, has a generous amount of its ancient heritage still standing for you to see (Kyoto, Nagasaki, Kumamoto). If unlucky, (and this includes places like Hiroshima City, Sendai, and Tokyo) then the old parts have been almost completely built over with what can be said to be just about the most steriized, sterilizing modern architecture that exists. What is left has, like the paved over dirt path, just a fragment of the richness that once was. And as people tend to become the things they do, people also become their environment. The rich cultural past is easily shed from most peoples' backs and replaced by a shiny and new, shallow one. Like the buildings that all look alike, people too tend to fashion themselves with similar styles (and this happens all over the world) and, because of the political and educational system in place here many people share similar behaviors and opinions (also like many parts of the world, let's admit). Fortunately the behaviors and characterisitics people tend to share here in Japan are mostly incredibly pleasant and nice.

Here in the coutryside I have the good fortune of seeing less of the paved-over Japan and more of the old dirt path underneath. Still, there is much that has been lost here as well.

The explanations for all of these occurences here appear as complex as Japan's cultural heritage. I won't begin to pretend that I could properly discuss them. What I can note is that when America forced Japan's unconditional surrender, and thus made the Japanese governement vulnerable to America's cultural influence, this country was given some of the tools that would help make it the second biggest economy in the world. Those tools would also contribute to the rebuilding of Japan after the war and thus the restructuring of the culture and government (education in particular).
The tradeoffs for achieving economic competeitiveness were huge. The electronic revolution has its side-affects as well. Let's just say they don't exactly help reinforfce, or even remember, the cultural ancestry of Japan. Just watch any TV channel in Japan and you'll see what I am talking about. Consumption, and the commodification thereof, are central aspects of most of the shows you'll see. Along the lines of obsession over subtle gourmet dishes tasted by the rich and famous as their faces are projected, close-up, to millions as their make their careful judgments of the foods. At least we can say that it is tantalizingly amusing how people can be so enthralled by this stuff. It is also mostly harmless. Harm is done though.

so much to say...

Today I experienced at times my favorite part of photography, the sunset rush. It can be as quiet as ever but the sun still makes it way down towards the horizon and you know the heat is on (and time is running out). You must chase to every spot you wish to photograph before it's too late, before the ideal light is gone (and the ideal light is usually only there for a very short time). But while in the process of this you often lose track of the time, new light seems to live beyond the estimated time of darkness and you lose the rush. You relax and in that relaxation you find your freedom. No one can stop the sun's everyday disappearance, but you can at least be grateful for how it reminds you how fast life can seem to run away from you and then also how forgiving life can be if you're lucky...

And in those moments you also realize that when you turn to examine one aspect of the environment around you you inevitably are missing infinite many more. For every place you focus you attention there are many more you are not. It is a tragic reality of life. And if you try to take too much gold out of the cave, you may wind up getting none, or worse, dying. Luckily I was able to take over 200 pictures today during this sunset rush.

regeneration renewal regrowth rebirth

I have a shirt that I got at one of the sweat-shop clothes selling clothes shops in the town down the mountain from me that has many "re-" words on it.

One of my favorite co-workers said today that "humans are the cancer of the earth" after I told her that sea levels may rise 20 feet in the next 100 years. It's funny how bad news like that can be both depressing and unusually amusing, funny, freeing. It's sometimes good to remember that one's life can be seen as very insignificant in the vastness of things even it it remains true that your own life dominates your perceptions and experience of life in general.

I am thinking about going to DC this year (August or September) and fighting the good fight. If there are any objections to that, or recommendations, please let me know.

As always, I hope you are taking care of yourselves and gathering hugs from loved ones. There is a picture above of the trees that are always green in my town to give you peace at heart.

deaths and births

Today things are converging and chaos is seeping into this foreigner of a town foreign to him. Today is the day that all the teachers of Kumamoto are told whether they will continue or move on. Yes, they are given almost no notice as the new school year starts in April; they do not know until the entire year here is finished--they may be sent to any other school in the prefecture. Also today there was the graduation at Yamaga and Hokubu elementary schools. I went to the bigger one (at Yamaga).

Spring is also well on its way here. The weather is much warmer now; it's even sunny.

The thing about graduations here is that they are more like funerals than weddings. The tone is very sad, very formal, and yet hopeful. Students, parents, and teachers often cry. Sometimes it is extremely cold in the gyms that lack proper heating, but this perhaps only contributes to the profundity of the event. Every person in the school was involved in today's ceremony. Younger students stood up at designated times and praised individual students. They had memorized their lines and their time to stand and it was seemless. Even second and first graders were fully involved. Then the fifth graders all formed an orchestra at the end to see the sixth graders out the door. The whole school of kids sang for the graduates as they walked through student-held arches with colored tissue paper wrapped around them. They were wearing suits and presenters would bow a total of eight times (four as they approach the stage and four as they depart it).

You may think that these ceremonies are ridiculous and overdone. They certainly seem so at first. But after being here for a while and becoming part of this town I have come to appreciate these events, even in their tedium. I think that they are one of the few, rare ways to show people that their lives are taken seriously: that they are so important that a whole school, including all of the administrators, will take an hour or two in all seriousness to show their respect. Even if it is a required, annual event it still seems to get the good message across. All too often in America people are only shown this kind of respect once they are already unable to hear and see it, once they have already died. Perhaps it is good to give respect while one can still benefit from it.

I've noticed a few times that culture here sometimes mimics the processes of nature. The students who leave every year are like the falling leaves that then become replenished. Like the leaves the teachers have no choice when or where they will fall. So in about 40 minutes the teachers in my office will know if they have fallen off the tree or if they have remained attached for another year.

And here is a poem sent to me by a former student of my mom. It was sent to her by chance and she noticed that I too like to relate things to leaves and trees and stuff so she sent it to me. (thanks Beth).

The Trees

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Philip Larkin

Life begins in darkness.

While working at the nursery school this morning I thought about the fact that when you are born the world is almost completely imperceivable and then becomes increasingly perceivable as the months and years go by. I realized that it's like a sort of hypnosis because as your ability to percieve the world increases, the numbness to and normality of the world around you also increases. You become more and more used to your human life. So once you are all grown up you may have your full capabilities of perception, but your full abilities of wonder, awe, and amazement at the absurdity of life have been decreased substantially throughout your development (supposedly). I always wondered how it is that adults can be more blind than children so much of the time.

If this all seems a bit crazy than it's probably because I too am a bit numb to the world. But alas, I am aware of it, so perhaps I can fight it off with some vitamins and vinegar!

Many movies and books suggest that life is like a dream. While I tend to think that they are pushing it a little I can also see how a very numb person's experience of the world could be very much like a dream. Things are fuzzy and simple. Time passes almost imperceivably. Years, decades go by with the blink of an eye.

...

I'm tired today, and drowsy. I watched Vanilla Sky last night and I think that it was enough to give me a number of unpleasant dreams. In one dream I watched a friend jump off of a balcony to her death. That was pretty awful. But that film ended with the main character jumping off a skyscraper, so it is understandable.

Yesterday I happened to be in the Sendai airport in the afternoon. People were huddled around one of the high-definition flatscreens in the departures lobby watching Japan play Cuba at baseball. People clapped together when Japan scored. It was pretty clever. I will continue to be amazed by this place.

Forests, Trees, Invisibilities

When you focus on the details you often lose sight of the forest. When you focus on the forest you may often lose sight of the trees. But some things you still have not seen. There is the earth on which the forest is only just a small lining over portions of the landmass. Then, on the smaller level, there are the microorganisms that nurture and sustain the tree. My point is not to show the obvious limitations of a popular metaphor, but rather to suggest that even when you try to keep the bigger and smaller pictures of your world active in your mind you are still missing the bulk of it. Just as much slides past the notice of your eyes, ears, nose, and tastebuds, much also slides past the notice of your mind (and then there are things that are simply imperceivable).

I think that maybe it’s the things that an individual cannot see for her-/his-self that often control/define/betray that person the most. Likewise, it is the stuff that thinkers do not see that often leads them astray into focusing too much on trees or becoming too infatuated with the forest to notice the inner workings of the trees.

I have been trying to understand my life recently and it’s not an easy task. I sometimes wonder why it seems that I have never done any hard work and that I may never have to (even though I have done certain kinds of hard work if you call thinking hard work (and a few months of shoveling cow shit early in the morning). Maybe it’s that I have learned how to prevent most stress from infiltrating my life. Somehow I know how to avoid living in hell, so to speak (and I am, at times, pretty good at finding heaven, or at least a kind of Eden). But maybe it’s also due to the fact a lot of the work in our society nowadays seems predominantly mind-work, paperwork, and softer-labor such as serving in restaurants or working as a Subway Sandwich Artist (a job I wasn’t bad at).

When I have a lot of free time I tend to labor myself with a lot of a certain kind of mild stress: the mild stress of trying to plan a future that cannot yet be planned. It is a future of almost complete unknowns. The only known, if it is one, is myself and who I am. But somehow I cannot keep a complete picture of myself in mind. It always darkens in one place as light is shed on another. And perhaps it’s true that even with someone else’s perception engaged, a clear image of myself is impossible as of now (and maybe always will be). So I am fighting a losing battle in trying to visualize myself, but that won’t stop me from trying. There is always the fear of finding something I don’t like the sight of (perhaps that’s what keeps me from seeing my whole self).

You may wonder why I write all this here. It’s because I have no one else to talk to in my house and I think that maybe you out there are the best people I know to communicate with. Maybe someday we can talk together about these things for surely I am not the only one with these kinds of concerns. I also have this funny idea that trying to understand peoples’ basic limitations may help me figure out what I would like to do with my life after I leave Japan (probably in August).

Until next time.
p.s. of course it's not just what we are and are not aware of that makes us who we are, but how we respond to those things (emotions, sympathy, empathy, lightly, heavily, carelessly, caringly) - and there is no one best way to be, of course.

Mortal In Ubuyama

The days here have increasingly reminded me of my own mortality and the evanescence of the world around me. The teachers in my office are dear friends that will all be moving around schools eventually as it is custom to switch every three years or so and I will be leaving come August. The winter lingers in the form of a day long snow storm, but even that melted away almost completely by evening. Then there are the third graders that have seemingly become adults as they have crossed the line between student and peer in the office. Even though they came back the day after still wearing their school uniforms, there was a different energy they now held. They had worked very hard for three years and now they will move on, some of them to schools that are two hours away from their homes and families and they will stay there during the week.

These pictures I took on the day of graduation really get to me. I think in many years tears will come to my eyes as I look at them. I have spent so many hours in a small office with these people. No matter how annoying it sometimes has been, how oxygen-less because of the kerosene heater in the room, I cannot help but feel endlessly attached to these individuals. The principal and vice-principal with their desks together set up so they can always see their inferiors. Every person's face is within me now.

Being here for only one year has made everything that much more intense. No longer have I the emotional luxury of just feeling like I am tired of my job. As much as it has not been perfect for me here I have become irrevocably attached to the people here and I think I always will be, as long as I have my memory. And it's not like this happens to me every year, no no. No, I think this one's special so I will have to be sure to tell them this in my farewell speeches. Maybe I will even be on the local tv.