The Hired Tongue

Onward!

2009-02-27T05:45:00.002+09:00

I'm not done yet!

The Hired Tongue is finished. This was my Japan blog, and I'm not in Japan anymore. Time for something new, something that's not necessarily about where I am. I've got a new blog for my continuing adventures: http://connectedthings.blogspot.com/

Check it out. The adventure doesn't end.

Unhired

2009-02-18T12:46:00.003+09:00

As I write this, I am no longer an English teacher, no longer a Hired Tongue, no longer in Japan. I'm uhired now, cut loose to pursue other things, and presently in the familiar setting that is Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. My time in Japan ended with fireworks and music, a fitting ending.

I met my students in front of the school, and we went off to a local restaurant where we'd reserved a huge table. We ordered various bits of food, drank, and I proceeded to get peppered with cards and gifts. One student, I noticed, had a rather awkward and bulky looking package. She opened it up, and announced that she had fireworks. She looked quite pleased with herself.

Fireworks. Fireworks in freezing February. There was a park, she said, nearby. A suitable place to set them off, to set them all alight and aflame. All the while, one of my students was insisting that we sample different varieties of sake. Another bought me an unasked for gin and tonic. Another, a beer. We were all drunk, and I more than most, when we stumbled out of the restaurant and ambled through dark Narita to this suitable park.

The student with the fireworks laid them all out, handed out sparklers, got the rockets ready. We held the sparklers three at a time and lit fuses with their orange and green fires, causing the sky to pop and fizzle in a way that it never does in the winter. The smell of powder in the winter, I found, was odd. It's such a summer smell, but I'd never thought about it as such before. The cold and the smell juxtaposed oddly but not unpleasantly.

I said goodbye to my students and went home feeling wonderful and a little sad about it, and I hoped that they'd be nice to the new teacher. The next day, I woke up with a horrible hangover from all of the sake, but was fortunately able to shamble my way to Chiba where two of my good friends were going to be getting behind microphones at a local bar. It was, I think, a fitting last night. I was pleased to be there with my various teacher friends, though I drank only oolong, what with the previous night's activities and all.

Two of my friends saw me off at the airport, and one of my students who worked there surprised me by showing up and announcing that she'd gotten me a cushy aisle seat. I really didn't want to go. Coming to Japan was the best decision that I've ever made, and I know that it's over now, but I had a lot of internal resistance going. Sure, there will be lots of things I won't miss, and there are lots of things that I do miss about Portland. But, I fell in love with Japan. I loved the landscape and the people, I loved the weirdness of it all and life as an alien. I loved the simple pleasure of reading labels in a foreign language, and the experience of life as a perpetual puzzle, challenge, and adventure. I loved what the experience of Japan and teaching did for me regarding my own confidence and sense of self. I loved being able to express myself, even badly, in Japanese, and, above all, I loved the camaraderie of the expat community. As I was moving away from all of that on the airplane, in the cushy, front-row aisle seat that my student had gotten for me, I broke down and cried. I know I'll be back someday, in some way. The place has been too good to me to leave forever.

I'm in Portland, now, and I know already that I won't be here for long. Hopefully I passed the Foreign Service Exam, and that will pan out. If not, I may very well join the Peace Corps and get involved with international aide and politics that way. In any case, I know that I'm not settled. I'm not stationary. I've looked through my old boxes in storage and plan on selling the contents- I don't want stored objects to hold me back. I've got a bit of money saved and I know that I can save more, because I'd rather have experiences than things. Later this summer, I'm going off to Mexico just because I can.

I thought that this would just be for a year. I thought that a single stint as a hired tongue in a foreign country would get the travel bug out of my system. Just the opposite. The world is too big not to see. Japan was a wonderful beginning.

Tested

2009-02-10T11:15:00.003+09:00

I took the Foreign Service Exam yesterday. If it's graded like a university test is graded, I know I passed. If they decide to take only the top 20% or so, then I don't know if I'll go on to the next round of selection. The material was unsurprising and straightforward, I'm reasonably proud of the essays I wrote. Additionally, I couldn't help but size up my fellow test takers. While I didn't get to talk with any of them in any sort of in-depth way, it was nice to see that I wasn't out of my league at all. These were people with similar interests and temperaments to myself. If they are what the potential "best and brightest" or whatever are like, then I think I have a good chance (though not a sure chance) at being granted an interview.

Mainly, though, it was great to finally do something that I'd been preparing for for so long, and its completion has helped me mentally sever myself from my current situation. Goals and such seem less amorphous and hypothetical, and the possibilities are moving me towards activity. As I said in my last post, it's a very nice feeling.

I'll know if I passed in about nine weeks. In the meantime, I'll look for other options, wander about, and see what other ins and opportunities I can find that interest me.

Despite the morbid predictions on the economy, I'm sure there's something. There always is.

The Next Part

2009-02-07T09:00:00.006+09:00

All week, I've been telling my students that I'm leaving, and I've also been telling them why. I've told them that I am indeed going back to the U.S., and hope to get a job with the Foreign Service. I've told them that I'm taking the test tomorrow, have been studying for it for months, and that I find this path a fitting one for me. I majored in political science and have always been consistently interested in politics, international relations, and world affairs.

It's been a mixed process. My students are not happy to see me go, which is a nice ego boost. After I explained that a new teacher would be coming, one of my kids wrapped herself around my torso and said "You're teacher. I hate new teacher." I've also started getting plenty of presents and knick-knacks, which is sweet, but right now I'm trying to get rid of stuff. Best, though, was what one of my older students said to me:

"I studied engineering at university," he said, "and now I'm an engineer. Every day, I make machines, I do what I love, and I'm happy. I understand why you're leaving." He smiled at me, said "see you next week!" and left.

I found this very encouraging, and as I've been articulating my reasons for leaving to my students, it's put into perspective what I want to do as a more long-term career. Even if I don't get into the Foreign Service, I'm going to pursue work with other government entities or with NGOs. I am determined to become a part of that which interests me the most.

To be sure, I can be interested in just about anything. There are few things out there that, when you really stop to appreciate them, are inherently boring. But, it is the system of human societies which I have found regularly fascinating. Since I was a kid, in fact. When I think of childhood reading material, I think of Encyclopedia Brown and Newsweek.

All of this, really, is a relief. A relief of a jarring sort, really. When I first decided to do this, months ago, I spent a couple of hours walking around by myself in the Meiji Jingu with an "oh shit..." sort of feeling. I had decided to act in accordance with what I wanted, and found it wonderful yet disorienting. Now it's mostly settled in, and I've become much, much more calm about things in general. I'm even managing to control my stress about the upcoming exam fairly well. In fact, I'm surprised at how unpanicked I am. I think this is a good thing.

To see one's area of passion and interest as something of value is a wonderful feeling. In 24 hours I'll be at the U.S. embassy, trying to get my foot in the door with a politically-oriented career. I've done quite well on the practice tests, and hope that my performance is competitive enough to be selected for an oral assessment. Even if it's not, though, I know what I want and where I'm going.

At Yasukuni

2009-02-06T09:02:00.008+09:00

Last weekend, I finally made my way to the Yasukuni Shrine, the Shinto shrine dedicated to memorializing and deifying those who have died in the name of the Emperor. It was an absolutely pleasant day in Tokyo, and I met up with two of my friends for a fine day of gallivanting around town. Our first stop was Yasukuni, the most controversial place in Japan.

The central walk of the shrine was fairly nice, a broad avenue under a pair of fairly impressive and iron torii, one of which is the largest such arch in Japan. I was surprised to see a bunch of food stalls and a flea market off to one side. I really didn't expect a ramen shop and flea market at such a place, but it lent the shrine a certain approachability I wasn't expecting. There was also an old guy playing the shamisen, lending the morning strummy soundtrack.

The outside of the shrine features the oldest Western-style bronze in Japan, much to the delight of one of my friends who is something of an art geek. "Hey, never mind the politics," she said, "that's the oldest Western-style bronze in Japan!" It's quite nice seeing smart people get excited about their areas of expertise.

We strolled around the central area, but refrained from directly approaching the altar. I've done so at other Shinto shrines, and have no problem with Buddhist temples, but here I felt that it would be a bit ideologically weird to go up to the main site at such a place, to become a participant rather than an observer. I left the wooden steps untrod.

The shrine has a fair bit of statuary in it, most notably that of a kamikaze pilot. Also depicted are a military dog, horse, and a carrier pigeon. I was most fascinated, though, by this portrayal of a warship, lording itself over a stone map of Asia. It seemed imposing and, despite the shrine's reputation, brutal and artistically honest. But who knows? I couldn't read the inscription. It might be about how cuddly warships were, for all I know.

Before going to the museum, I'd mentally prepared myself for the worst sort of revisionism so as not to turn into some rage-spouting history geek decrying the lack of truth upon my exit. I didn't get angry or have much in the way of emotional responses to much of what was in there other than a weird sort of amusement. Many of the historical lies were so downright bullshit-laden that I found them hard to take seriously. For instance, there was an item about how Manchukuo was apparently formed by five of China's northern ethnic groups coming together of their own accord to form a new nation, with the administrative help and support of Japan. Also, according to the Yasukuni museum, Korea was an independent state after the first Sino-Japanese war. I'm sure that's news to a lot of Koreans. Japan was also forced into WWII. I was expecting that bit, though.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The early parts of the museum were all about early Japanese warfare- samurai and such. I and my companion spent a fair amount of time looking at the various swords, naginatas, old style guns, and other sundry implements of destruction. It was a fairly kickass panoply of lethal shit, to be perfectly honest. "Hell yeah!" said a certain part of my brain, "motherfuckin' GUNS 'N SWORDS! Rock!"

The various labels and whatnot all extolled how glorious it was to die in battle for the Emperor and such, with various poetical odes to mortal selflessness and anologies of slain warriors falling like a thousand sakura petals. It reminded me a lot of 300, to be honest. Sure, it was a bit more subtle (and a lot less homoerotic) than that movie, but it had the same general ethos: "Isn't this all great and glorious? Isn't it great to utterly abandon yourself and give yourself over to death and battle and blood? Doesn't it sound absolutely glorious to go and kill a bunch of dudes and then eventually get killed by some other dude? Awesome, Right? SPAAAARTAaaa... I mean... JAAAAPAAAN!"

Basically it was kitschy death porn, and I'm sure it would have given Yukio Mishima a raging erection. This sort of militaristic ideology is indeed dangerous and in reality does inspire people blow themselves up on a fairly regular basis, but in sunny Tokyo I found it hard accept as very real. I had much the same attitude through the more contemporary exhibits. "Does anyone," I thought to myself, "actually take this stuff seriously?" I knew the answer was yes, but I wondered anyways.

To be fair, not all of the exhibits were complete bollocks. There war just a significant percentage of bollocks. The museum's biggest flaw was that it often said that certain things happened, but didn't say why. Many of the timelines and displays made mention of the movements of Japanese troops and ships in various parts of Asia, but it didn't say what, for instance, the Japanese military was doing in the Philippines. (Answer: Invading and setting up a puppet government.) It just mentioned that they were there. There was a lot of facts, but a dearth of analysis.

This happens in the U.S. too, though. I recognized a lot of the sins commited by textbooks and national monuments as described by James Lowen in Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America. A lot of it was the same sort of revision and omission that one can find in the good 'ol U.S. of A. I'm pissed off by such behavior in the U.S., and pissed off by it in Japan as well, but such symmetry engenders a kind of understanding.

The last part of the museum was a fairly impressive display of military hardware, which, again, tapped into that part of my brain that actually likes looking at guns 'n swords. It was diverting enough.

Japan has every right to memorialize it's war dead, and private organizations, such as the Shinto group that runs the Yasukuni shrine, have every right to practice their religion. As a foreigner and one who has not extensively studied this matter, I'm not in an expert position to offer recommendations. But, here's my unsoliscited advice.

-The most obvious objection is the inclusion of 14 class A war criminals in in shrine's register of names. The people memorialized in the shrine are considered not only fallen, but deities of a sort. A good solution would be to simply strike the name of the 14 offenders.

-Likewise, there are several people, particularly those of Korean descent, whose relatives object to their inclusion. Inclusion in the Shrine should be with the consent of the family of the deceased. That way, it would be a voluntary honor, rather than something foisted upon people who have ideological issues with the place. An option for de-listing should also be included.

-Yasukuni specifically enshrines those who have died in the name of the Emperor. Since WWII, several members of Japan's Self Defense Forces have died in international conflicts, and they are not included in the Shrine. If Yasukuni were to change it's criteria from those who died for the Emperor to those who died for the people and nation of Japan, contemporary members of the armed forces could also be honored, thus secularizing and modernizing the place.

-Lastly, at a certain point China and Korea really ought to stop complaining. Yes, Japan did absolutely horrific things to them, but that was a generation ago. Nearly all of those people are dead, and arguing over who did what to whose parents and grandparents is something of a childish exercise. Of course Japan should apologize, but as wronged parties China and Korea can't just bring up wartime atrocities whenever it's convenient. Such complaining does not effective diplomatic relations make.

Not that any of those are realistic. More realistically, the veterans and their children will someday all be dead, and hopefully it will all be an unemotional historical abstraction.

Yasukuni did not offend me, nor did it make me angry. I don't think it's a symbol of hate or aggression. More than that, I think its inaccuracies represent a certain immature desire to believe that our forbears were better than they really were. Columbus was a geographically incorrect murdering jackass and the U.S. committed genocide on the native population, yet we still have a national holiday commemorating those three ships landing on Hispanola and romaticize western expansion. There is a compulsion to apologize, to pretend that there was neither sin nor unwarranted blood. Such historical revisions can't, to borrow a phrase, handle the truth. They suffer a poverty of ideas because they feel people can only be inspired by a sanitized version of history, even though the flawed and tragic truth is often more fascinating.

Things I'll Miss, Part Two

2009-01-28T23:06:00.004+09:00

A few more parts of the landscape that I'll miss...

The Metric System
The metric system wonderfully intuitive, and it's absolutely ridiculous that the U.S. doesn't use it. Here in Japan, I've gotten used to thinking in terms of centimeters, kilograms, kilometers and the rest, and have found it all far more understandable than the imperial system. I really couldn't tell you how many feet there are in a mile, for instance. But, I know how many meters there are in a kilometer and grams in a kilogram- 1,000, easy as that. It's great! The metric system an intuitive, user-friendly and global set of standards, and the U.S. would do well to abandon it's clunky and ill-conceived proprietary set. I'll miss you, metric system. Maybe one day you can come to America.

The View From My School

From my classroom, I can see Narita-San temple, Mt. Tskuba, a constant stream of airplanes, and lots of trees. The school is on the sixth floor of an office building, and from the balcony one can see Mt. Fuji on a clear day. What's more, it's a westward view of Fuji, so the sun sets nicely behind it. No, I don't have a picture. Just trust me that it's awesome.

Clubbing

Yes, there is clubbing all over the world, I know, and occasionally clubbing just hasn't worked for me. But all in all, I enjoy getting assaulted by the blaring rhythms and beats, feeling my sternum vibrated by the sound system, navigating amongst the milling crowds. At clubs, I've mostly considered myself an observer- I'm still not "good at" clubbing. Apparently one can meet people at these places, but I don't really know how you'd do that if the music's too loud for conversation.

I suppose what I'll miss, though, is how clubbing facilitates unselfconscious revelry. There is no form or steps to the dancing- one simply moves how one pleases, often while drunk. I appreciate the otherworldliness of it all, the feeling that one is in some sort of suspended place, and techno often brings with it a kind of looping mindlessness that I've come to appreciate. A well places sample or hook coupled with the freedom to jump around as one pleases lends itself to a certain abandon. I know that that much can be said of a lot of music, yes, but I won't forget Tokyo's immense, dark, smoky chambers.

The Tokyo Skyline

I'm from Oregon and a nature lover since childhood. I love trees, mountains, and all of that wonderful green stuff. My own hometown, Portland, is dotted with greenery in a lovely way, and I love it for that. However, there's something undeniably sexy about the busy, neon-lined machine city that is Tokyo.

I can understand how it could be stressful, or someone's idea of an urban hell. I can see how it could overload the senses or tire people out, and if I had to live downtown during the work week, maybe it would exhaust me as well. But I love how inexhaustible it feels, how in the innards of Tokyo there doesn't seem to be an end to the wonders of civilization and technology, and it all makes me wonder what comes next in terms of technology and civilization.

Among the crowds, even when walking alone, you feel part of something, part of something that's much larger than yourself. It's as if you're standing on some sort of hub or axis and watching the world's gears click and spin around you in a colorful panoply.

I don't want to romanticize it too much, the crushing crowds and the noise. The movement and the light make it a place without peace. The sensory saturation of it all, though, is a certain kind of wonderful. In Tokyo, your eyes wander over more objects than you could hope to contemplate and more people with whom you could ever hope to talk with. The world magnifies itself in unquiet motion, and stretches in all directions.

Things I'll Miss, Part One

2009-01-28T10:26:00.013+09:00

After that little bit snarkiness, a few things I'll miss about Japan. Not big things like my students or friends, but little things about the landscape itself.

Temples and Shrines

Sure, a lot of them look alike. But I like them anyways, especially my local, massive Narita-san. It's nice to see these buildings which are characteristically Japanese nestled amongst all the modernity, reminders that modernization need not mean complete westernization. Here, temple attendees read New Year's fortunes in Asakusa.

Trains

Japanese trains are wonderful. I wish I could uproot the train system here and take it back with me to the States. With them, one can go most anywhere rather rapidly and affordably, and I've hardly missed having a car.

Kaiten Sushi

Proper sushi bars, the kind where you sit at a table and order items individually, are fairly expensive. While in Japan, though, I've been to such a place all of one time. I'd rather go to kaiten sushi, the restaurants where cheap sushi revolves around the counter on a conveyor belt, with the chefs often standing in the middle of it. At their best, these places are crowded and raucous, with customers yelling orders at the chefs, and the chefs yelling right back. There's the constant sound of clinking plates and chatter, and the whole place is infused with the distinctive smell of fresh fish. I usually have to limit myself to about seven plates or so, otherwise I think I could devour the contents of the conveyor belt.

The Tone and Edo Rivers

These two rivers have awesome bike paths, and I've quite enjoyed riding along them. The Tone is near my apartment, and it's wind-buffeted bike path is part of my regular cycling loop. The Edo stretches into Tokyo from the suburbs, and down into the Southern coast of the metropolis. I've zoned out on my bike quite a bit on these waterways, and will miss my river-lined cycling sessions.

Yoyogi Park

I've mentioned this place before, I know, but ever since my first day in Tokyo Yoyogi has consistently been my favorite place in Tokyo. On Sundays, all manner of people come out to play. The place is filled with drummers, dancers, jugglers, and, of course, the Elvis-like Tokyo Rockabilly Club.

It's been cold lately, but on warmer days Yoyogi Sundays are virtual outdoor concerts. All manner of bands and musicians are out there, playing for whoever passes by. Here, a solitary trumpeter braves the cold.

The flea market is considerable. Here in Japan I've tried to limit my intake of stuff, given that I'll just have to move it or get rid of it later. Back in the States, though, I would have had a field day with all of the LPs and vintage jackets for sale.

And of course, there are the goths and weirdly-attired youth. Once, I was having a class with an older student, and the topic in the textbook was clothes and appearance. The Harajuku/Yoyogi goths ended up coming up in class. My student said "I think they look stupid, but that's okay. They remind us that we are free."

Things I Won't Miss

2009-01-22T11:09:00.002+09:00

One thing that I've tried to avoid doing on this blog is bitching about Japan. I'm sure I've done it a bit, but foreigners who constantly complain about this place annoy the shit out of me. There are lots of them, and they pop up all the time in bars and gatherings where a significant percentage of expats gather, and I usually want to say "Look, no one forced you to come here. If you don't like it, leave. The airport's over there."

But anything you love- any friend, lover, family member, place, or institution, will have a few qualities that drive you up the wall. Nothing is flawless or aggravation free. Here are a few hopelessly irritating things about this place that I love:

"Nihongo jozu!"

In almost any situation where I'm speaking even a little Japanese to someone, there is a high probability that someone will say "Nihongo jozu!" meaning that "Your Japanese is very good!" I've gotten this after all I said was "konichiwa." That's how reflexive it sometimes is. I understand that some people may just be trying to be nice, or don't know what else to say, but I really don't like being patronized, having my ass kissed, or recieving insincere compliments. It's embarassing for all parties involved.

I often just say "Nihongo jozu!" right back.

ATMs That Close

ATMs usually close at night and on holidays. Over New Year's, they were closed for four days straight and the one nearest my apartment is closed on Sunday. This is especially annoying in a cash-based society like Japan. Why do the ATMs close? Why? They're machines. The whole point of machines is that they mindlessly and tirelessly slave away for us humans. Why on earth do they need time off?

"Maybe."

In Japanese society, "maybe" often means "no." It also means "maybe." I've gotten used to it, but still prefer blunt answers.

Talking Machines

I don't need vending machines to say "thank you." I also don't need the escalator to tell me to hold onto the handrail because it's dangerous. A simple sign will do, thank you very much.

Overpackaging and Overbagging

I'm sure America is guilty of this too, but it seems that convenince stores and supermarkets use way, way too much plastic to package and bag stuff. The toothpaste and onigiri can go in the same bag- that's fine. They don't need to be separate.

Come to think of it, it is always plastic. Where are the more eco-friendly, biodegrable, recycleable paper bags? What's up with that?

"That's Dangerous!"

Japan is very nice, safe comfortable country. Which means that, by comparison, the rest of the world seems dangerous and scary to lots of the people here who haven't been abroad much. I get a little irked when I hear America (or anywhere else) described as "dangerous." Billions of people live abroad, and every day billions of them manage to not die.

To be fair, though, I do have some pretty badass, world-wise, globe-trotting students, and I suppose there are naive homebodies in every country.

The Lack of Dark Beer

This is the second largest economy on earth with an enormous population, yet somehow porters and stouts haven't caught on. I don't have anything against Asahi or Ebisu, they're great. I'd just like a bit more variety. I guess I've been spoiled by Oregon's myriad microbrews.

"Do you like Japanese girls?"

This is one of the most asked questions that I get when meeting new people, a bit after "Where are you from?" and "How long have you been in Japan?" I know that the guys who ask me this are just trying to socialize and find common ground, but when I first got here I heard the question as "Are you one of those Orientalist perverts who irrationally fetishizes Asian women?" I know, I know. I overanalyze this stuff way, way too much. Now I'm just sick of the question. Especially because the answer is mostly "No."

And the thing that I'll miss the least:

Naive Assesments of Japanese Uniqueness, Specialness and Isolation

Lots of people here, both foreign and Japanese, have this image of Japan being this unique, special, magical place. It's an amazing place, yes. But so are many places. Japan is one nation among many, one culture among many, and there are many things that it does well and many things it does poorly. In many of the conversations that I've had, Japan's supposed "isolation" is often cited as a factor in this. But, it is not a utopia, nor is it cut off from the world at large. There is a huge, messy, international and intercultural system out there. Japan is a node on the network, a participant of the system, as vibrant and flawed as any other.

In Which I Learn to Snowboard

2009-01-20T23:11:00.002+09:00

I'd never snowboarded before last weekend. Never skied, either. Despite being from Portland and within driving distance from Mt. Hood, I'd never once strapped things to my feet and slid down a mountain. I'd simply never had the money to do so.

On Sunday, though, I found myself in Nagano with a bunch of students and a coworker, surrounded by awesome looking snow, and with a board strapped to my feet. I tried not to go in with very many expectations. To be honest, I didn't really think that I was going to be able to do it. One of my more annoying demons is that I persistently underestimate my physical self. I often think of my body as a carrying case for my brain, and an awkward one at that. (This is all despite the fact that I actually enjoy a number of sports and exercise on a regular basis.) Snowboarding, I thought, is something that athletically able sexy people do. Not me.

Anyway, I often have to put a fair amount of concious effort into kicking my bullshit hangups in the teeth, and was able to do precisely that while I was attempting to stand up on the damn board. When I first strapped it on to my feet, I couldn't stand up at all. I fell onto my ass multiple times, and heard the annoying voice of personally produced bullshit ringing in my brain, telling me that I didn't have the innate ability or the prerequisite physical training to do it. I told the voice to go fuck a weasle, and kept trying, bucking my body forward and then attempting to balance on the top of the board. Besides, I was with students. There was no way I was going to crap out on anything in front of my students.

I got it eventually. I fell on my ass a bunch more, but I was able to stand up without too much of a problem. I was also able to slide about on a small slope, and when I got the hang of the basics of control I climbed onto the lift.

The lift was quite a show in and of itself. Nagano was white and tree-studded all around. The slopes were abuzz with sliders and I wafted quietly above them. When I got to the top, I slid down, fell, slid down, fell, slid some more, fell, and eventually slid for a long stretch where I felt, for the first time that day, speed and adrenaline. I felt the pleasure of a newly acquired skill, the excitement of it, and understood why the sport was popular in that instant. I fell again soon, but laughed and smiled after my back hit the snow.

I loved it. I loved it even though my skill was incomplete. I went down the same run a few times, and a larger one as well. I slid and tried to turn, I feel again and again and got sore because of it. I got snow in my gloves and my goggles fogged, I marvelled at Nagano's snowy awesomeness from the lift and tried different ways to shift my weight and change direction. I enjoyed futzing with and experimenting with my weight and the board, even though most of my attempts ended with me on my back. It was great, and I'll gladly go again.

I also had a great time with the students. I've too often seen them simply through an academic lens, and it was fun to do something that had nothingwhatsoever to do with English learning. They were as green as me, though, and we had a great time falling about on our asses together. By the end of the day we were a tired and bedraggled lot, but happy for it. In a bar back in Tokyo we got to talking about how I'm leaving, and my last day at work is Feb. 14th.

"What will you do," said one, "if we give you chocolates on Valentine's Day?"

I smiled. "I'll eat the chocolates," I said. They laughed at my mock callousness.

She punched me in the arm like my little sister sometimes does. "No," she said, "you'll stay! If we give you chocolates, that means you have to stay!" I was touched. The whole group of us got on a train back to Narita, and exhausted we fell asleep in our seats.

In Which I Drink Overpriced Coffee in a Pink and White Room

2009-01-12T23:51:00.004+09:00

If you walk around Akihabara for long enough, eventually a girl in a maid costume will try to hand you a pamphlet. It's a pamphlet all about her place of work: a maid cafe, an establishment in which girls in ornate pseudo-French maid costumes will serve you overpriced coffee and sweets for about an hour.

Until this weeken, I'd never been to one of these places, but two of my old friends from Okayama were in town. Somehow when making the itinerary for today the idea of going to a maid cafe in Akihabara came up and stuck. I'll admit, I was curious. These things are something of a phenomenon, I wanted to see what all the hubbub was about. One of my coworkers went to one earlier in the week, and described it in positive terms.

So, we go into the place, and the decor is dominated by pink and white. I was pleased that the first thing that we got when we entered was a list of rules, printed in Japanese and English, not to be lecherous dicks while on the premises. That's good. Lecherous dickery is bad for the world, and I was happy to see that the customers were asked to touch with their eyes, not with their hands. Again , I looked around. The place was pink. Pink with shots of milky, unthreatening white. Soft and harmless like a marshmallow peep.

The maids themselves were all done up in piles of ruffles and lacy things, with various geeky flourishes thrown in. The one that served us had a fox tail sticking out the back of her skirt, and several others had plastic charms and bits of flair hanging from their uniforms. To be honest, a lot of them looked like they'd put a lot of effort into personalizing their costumes, which is cool, but they looked far too harmless and fluffy to be called attractive or interesting. I suppose that's all relative, though.

What I thought was kind of funny, was that this fluffy, cute place was in Akihabara, a place redolent of bizarre pornography and stale testosterone. A very solid majority of the customers and denizens of the place are male, and are very obviously the target demographic of maid cafes. Yet the inside of such a place (at least the one that we were in) looks like some sort of adorable Disney pink-princess room. It's all about cuteness, pinkness, ruffles, hearts, and bunnies. When I think of places designed with guys in mind, I think of pool tables, strippers, and beer. Not hearts and bunnies. Hearts and bunnies are for nine year old girls who think that "princess" is a valid career choice.

But apparently for quite a lot of guys hearts and bunnies scratches some kind of itch. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying it's not my cup of tea. I sort of wondered what my reaction was supposed to be. Was I supposed to be getting off on it, was I supposed to find it amusing in a novel or ironic way? Was I just supposed to sit there and drink coffee like it was a normal cafe, except more expensive and with a cover? I didn't really know what an appropriate social reaction would be, so I just chatted with my friends and ate an ice cream sundae shaped like a rabbit that had little hearts drawn on it.

Eventually, one of my friends (a married woman, funnily enough) told me. "It's okay to stare. You can stare. That's why we're here." I feel sort of bad staring at people though. I mean, really. You're just staring at them. You're just watching them do stuff. That's really weird. At least with, say, strippers you're watching them dance. You're appreciating something that's halfway aesthetic. There's music and performance and that's socially acceptable to look at, even if the performer is only wearing a soon-to-be-slid-down thong. But staring at people serving coffee and working in a cafe just seems kinda pervy.

It didn't help that most of these girls looked like they were about sixteen or so. I'm sure they were probably older than that, but still, it was weird. Really, I think that's the crux of it. I can't really see girls who look like that as anything other than overgrown kids. I guess all of my teacherly/fatherly instincts are in place- when I see girls like that, I don't want to stare at them, ogle them, or leer at them. I want to teach them how to write a five paragraph essay and use Mace. You know, the normal sort of stuff adult males do with young women.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not condemning any of this. Japan has a right to it's maid cafes, and people just like what they like. It's cool. The general populace of Akihabara enjoy different things than me, and that's perfectly alright. Viva la difference and yay pluralism and whatever. But, it's not for me. I like women, not girls.

As we were leaving, we noticed that in the same building there was yet another maid cafe in the same building. This one, though, advertised ear cleaning. Oh, Akihabara...

Ice, Ice, Meiji

2009-01-12T00:12:00.010+09:00

Earlier today I went strolling through a display of ice sculptures in Tokyo's Meiji shrine. It was crowded and highly neat. A few pictures:

Several of the statues had limbs and bits falling and melting off. It was cold, certainly, but still above freezing. This lady here is just one arm and a head away from becoming a Samothrace. Well, almost. Maybe she could be a Samothrace groupie or something.

This is a dragon. Dragons are fucking awesome. This dragon has three heads, and therefore rocks all the harder.

This is Thunder Chicken. He is swathed in majestic sunlight.

There seemed to be a an overabundance of birds in the shrine. Birds and wings. About every third figure was either a bird or some kind of naked lady with wings. Now, I like both birds and naked ladies with wings, and I didn't really notice at the time. But going through the pictures I couldn't help but think "Damn, that place had a shitload of things winged."

See! Look! It's another bird! The place is a veritable frozen avian convention.

"I'm melting! I'm melting!"

I like the sunlight on this one. That is all.

A Small Bit of Self-Promotion

2009-01-09T23:47:00.002+09:00

I've started another blog, one that has nothing to do with Japan. It's in its infancy and I don't know what will come of it, but you should definitely check it out.

"You said it, Chewie."

2009-01-07T09:45:00.003+09:00

Every kid who grew up with Star Wars has either wanted to either be or sleep with Han Solo. That's just a fact. If you're between the ages of 18-35, no other figure has demonstrated all that it means to be interplanetarily masculine. Look at what this guy's got- looks, charisma, a spaceship, a giant furry sidekick, a laser gun, and a spunky galactic princess for a girlfriend. Pure awesome. I'm happy to say that here in Japan I've achieved Han-dom in one small way- how I talk to my manager.

My manager understands English, but doesn't bother to speak it. I can understand a lot of Japanese, but, knowing that she understands English, I often just speak English to her. So, she speaks her language and I speak mine. This is the exact same thing as "RAwwwRRAwGWR!"
"You said it Chewie," or "RWAggRG!" "Yeah, I've got a back feeling about this."

I'm not unique in this. Back when I lived in Okayama I was surprised to see lots of conversations where both participants mutually understood each other's languages, so they'd just each just speak their respective mother tongues at each other. At first I thought it was because people were just lazy, but the fact of the matter is that language learners can usually understand of a foreign language far more than they can produce. So, in that sense Star Wars is a completely and utterly accurate picture of intercultural communication.

So anyway, I've achieved one small bit of Han-Solo-dom. Now I want a spaceship.

Welcome to the Year of the Ox

2009-01-05T10:30:00.009+09:00

After being up all night on New Year's Eve I boarded a train home to Narita on the morning of the first. It was a mere six hours into the Year of the Ox and car was already crowded. The vehicle only proceeded to get more crowded as the thing went on down the line, accruing bleary-eyed commuters making their way to my suburb.

They were going, of course, to Narita-San, the gigantic temple about a kilometer away from where I'm sitting right now. As one of the largest Buddhist temples in Japan, it is very well-trafficked in January, filling my town with people eager to receive New Year's blessings, get their fortune told, and to go through the rituals surrounding another trip around the sun.

When I got off the train, the normal recorded announcement as to how to get to the airport had been replaced with one welcoming everyone to Narita-San. The crowd got off as one at the station, and all jostled against all. I went back to my apartment, and recovered from the previous night's revelry. A few hours later I got up and joined the crowds. In the dark, the masses had thinned a bit, but were still considerable. A few pictures:

A hawker near the entrance to the temple, yelling out to the crowd about hot hazelnuts and sweet sake. Hazelnuts I've liked for some time, but I tried amazaki, the sweet New Year's variety for the first time yesterday while strolling with a friend. It's much thicker than the normal sort of sake, and somewhat on the lumpy side. Served hot, it makes for an excellent winter drink.

I am a bit unclear as to what, exactly, these things are. I've seen them in several places before, and given that many of them had the kanji for "luck" on them I'd assume that they were some sort of charm or something. Others simply said "Narita-san" on them, and a few bore the kanji for "construction," something that I couldn't really figure out. This was just one of the booths at the base of the temple were all manner of charms, objects, and trinkets were being sold. Not all of them were of traditional or religious nature- there were a number of ball-tossing and air gun games set up as well, which gave the whole place a carnival atmosphere.

The main building of the temple. I've been here a number of times, but mostly at night when it's completely empty, so it was a bit curious seeing the whole place filled with people. Another thing that was new for me, though, was that the main sanctuary was open. I'd only been into the antechamber from which one can view the inner room from behind a glass partition, I'd never gone in the main room of the temple. It was open, though, and filled with people so I thought "What the hell. Why not." So, I took of my shoes and went in.

At first I was a bit self-conscious about it. I was, after all, a foreigner who was not culturally or religiously affiliated with the place. I was also the only foreigner inside the sanctuary, and wondered if I was unconsciously doing something improper or disrespectful. However, I was able to beat such misgivings into submission and sat on the floor and took in the atmosphere of the place. People were sitting silently before the altar which was laden with candles. Incense burned in a few braziers and behind me several people were tossing five yen coins into the offering box and clapping as they made prayers for the New Year.

I stayed there for about half an hour, and did my best to meditate in my own unsupernatural way. Since reading a few sutras, I've actually come to respect Siddhartha Guatauma as a philosopher in much the same way that I've respect, say, Socrates- smart guy, brilliant for his era, and wrong about 30% of the time. But, that's another blog post.

After walking through the temple complex a bit I went back to Narita's main street, and the eel guys were out. Eel, for some reason, is the regional specialty of Narita, because here in Japan absolutely everything has to have a regional specialty. At this particular restaurant, the eel preparation is something of a street performance, and a bloody and smoky one at that. At a table on the street, two guys were grabbing live eels from a bucket of water, driving nails through their heads, and then splitting them open and pulling out their spines and guts in front of appreciative onlookers. Quite captivating to watch actually. The eels are grilled and served right there, at the apogee of freshness.

When I first saw this, I thought about how such a show wouldn't really go over so well in America. Americans (at least liberal city-dwellers such as myself) can be distressingly alienated from the meat they eat. Meat doesn't come from the insides of animals- it comes from packages and cans. A friend of mine even insisted on sitting with her back to the fish tank at a sushi bar once, as she didn't want to be reminded of where her meal came from.

Japan doesn't seem to suffer nearly as badly from this alienation, and I think that's a good thing. The New Year's crowd didn't seem repulsed or put off by the eel guys, at least not that I could tell. Instead, they eagerly bought up freshly grilled sea beasts, with appreciative exclamations of "oishii!"

Lanterns glowing on the main street. The shops and restaurants, even as they were closing, still bustled with visitors. And they're still bustling. I was out again yesterday in the daylight and the whole place hummed. Narita, yes, is always a bit active, what with the airport and all the tourists. But, it's nice to see it buzzing in a different manner. So far, the Year of the Ox is off to a good start.

2008: Most Awesomest Year Ever

2008-12-31T10:23:00.013+09:00

I've thought about it for a bit, and I really don't think it's an exaggeration to proclaim that 2008 is the single Most Awesomest Year I've ever had. Yes, it was so awesome it made English grammar contort itself.

This was the year in which I hung out in the biggest city in the world, made an eye-opening trip to China, took up cycling, hiked in Korea and saw the DMZ, saw Kabuki for the first time, learned tons of Japanese in an awesome class, took (and possibly passed) the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, saw snow-covered sumo wrestlers throw beans at people, saw more than a few giant Buddhas, played lots of frisbee, appreciated the giant temple that's right by my apartment, read a bunch of brilliant authors for the first time, made some awesome friends, and decided what sort of career I want later in life. All in all, it was exceedingly kickass. A few memorable pictures:

This statue of a wandering monk is towards the back of Narita-San, the temple I live near. There are myriad statues of monks, Buddhas, and gods throughout the temple, either on pedestals or worked into the rocks. It's the second largest Buddhist temple in Japan, and it's become a place I quite love, particularly at night when all of the shadows make everything look menacing. This picture was taken in March when Japan's iconic sakura were out.

Some rather enthusiastic participants at Kawasaki's annual springtime fertility festival.

Kawasaki's Buddhist temple on the same day as the Shinto penis festival. The Buddhist temple was a bit more sedate than the nearby Shinto shrine, but still bustling.

A view of Zhouzhuang, a water village just outside Shanghai.

Shanghai's unmistakable Pudong skyline by night. Seeing all of the newness, all of the development, commerce and newly built infrastructure was amazing. All the while, antiquated red flags flapped in the wind.

I took this pictures while surrounded by the noise, lights, and heat of Narita's summer festival. The wooden wagon, called a dashi, was pulled up the hill by a team of enthusiastic (and somewhat tipsy) Naritans, all the while cheered on by the crowds.

Things made by enthusiastic Japanese Star Wars fans have tons more life in them than anything made by Lucasfilm.

Seoul's statue of Admiral Ye Sun Sin, the man who helped to thwart Toyotomi Hideyoshi's plans for a conquest of Korea. And he did it with turtle ships, some of the first marine armor ever created. The whole of Korea was great. If anything, I got the satisfaction of learning to read (though not necessarily understand) Hangeul.

Unfortunately, I don't really have an pictures of the place that has meant the most to me this past year: Tokyo. I don't bother to bring my camera with me when I go into town, though I should probably get a few shots of the place before I leave. Admittedly, I love Tokyo so much mainly because I don't have to live there. I live out in Narita, an hour away from Tokyo station, and the Metropolis is mainly my playground on the weekend. But what a playground it is. Whenever I get off the train I'm enthusiastic about doing stuff, about not having to be a teacher in the suburbs anymore- instead I get to be a city guy for a bit. I've got a month and a half left of this awesome place, and I know I'll miss it terribly.

But missing it is entirely necessary. In 2009 I'm starting my career.

In Which I Get a Personal Stereophonic Device

2008-12-29T13:33:00.003+09:00

I bought an iPod yesterday. Not "a new" iPod, mind you- I bought an iPod for the first time ever. It's the first personal stereo that I've owned in twelve years. The last time I had one I was a black-clad, sideburn-sporting teenager equally obsessed with Kurt Cobain and Mozart. It was a battered up old Walkman, a taped together mass of black plastic that I kept stocked with classical mix tapes, Led Zepplin, and 90s alternative. I don't remember how I got it, the earphones were dodgy, and I had to sort of jiggle it sometimes to make it work. I either lost it or it broke- I don't really remember, and never bothered to replace it.

Not that I don't like music, mind you. I love the stuff, and in the intervening years have cultivated a fairly large collection of LPs, CDs, mp3s, and even casette tapes, the majority of which are stored back in the States. In my old demi-house (it was more of a duplex than an apartment) I was quite proud of my stereo with my shelf of nicely retro LPs, kept my CDs stocked prominently in my living room, and went to concerts often. But, I never got an iPod. Part of the reason was money- they aren't cheap after all. I also listened to a lot of music on cheap and easy-to-aquire vinyl that could never be stored on a digital device. Another issue, though, was that I never really thought of myself as someone who owned such a device. It was just an immutable fact about me- I have black hair, brown eyes, and don't own a personal sterophonic device.

Recently, though, I've been going on this tear of musical geekery. It's been great. For whatever reason, I've started aquiring new albums at a fairly rapid pace, and I'm quite simply not in my apartment enough to enjoy them all. I've also taken up jogging, and figured that music would be nice while I did that. So, yesterday, I picked up a silver iPod nano in Shibuya. I was weirdly reluctant for a bit to get one, but fortunately a friend of mine was on hand to goad me into it.

Anyway, these things are awesome. I guess everyone has known that for a while ago, what with the Walkman and its descendants being popular for something over twenty years now. You know that stock sci-fi scene where someone gets zapped back into the past and then impressed cavemen with something simple like a lighter? Well, right now I feel like that caveman- I'm impressed and awed by something that everyone else has been aware of and enjoying for quite some time now. But, it's great- I didn't have to listen to insufferable muzak jingles at the supermarket this weekend. Instead, I listened to Vampire Weekend while I picked out vegetables, and was completely exhuberant about it.

So, what are you guys listening to right now? I'm caught up in full on music fandom and would love some suggestions. Right now I've been listening to Girl Talk, Vampire Weekend (who I've already mentioned), the new David Byrne and Brian Eno album, TV on the Radio, LCD Soundsystem and Frightened Rabbit. I've also given Chinese Democracy a couple of listens, which I feel like I should be embarrassed about, but whatever.

So... suggestions?

Better Than Palanquins

2008-12-23T09:45:00.005+09:00

Palanquins are silly. Sillier even than the most outsized of SUVs. As much as one can display conspicuous consumption today with a stupidly large car, that pales in comparison to being carted around by two or more humans whilst inside a gold box. And, it was precisely these monstrosities of wealth that a friend and I were looking at this weekend, at a special exhibit at the Edo Tokyo Museum.

The whole display was a showcase of indulgence. What we were looking at were the playthings for the very rich, objects that only a sliver of the population actually utilized. I pointed this out to my friend and she said, "Yes, but the rich were the ones who made all the decisions and started all of the wars." I can't really argue with that. But still, looking at playthings and status symbols is not wholly satisfying. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy them- I did. Just that looking at such a tiny sliver privileged life for so long tends to provoke a bit of irritation at the decadence.

One amusing thing, though- towards the end of the palanquin exhibit, there was a showcase full of objects that belonged to a princess whose things were on display. Amongst them were a laquerware basin and towel rack which looked like, well, a basin and towel rack. There were also helpful little labels that said "basin" and "towel rack" in English. Nevertheless, this older woman decided to help us out by pointing at the objects, and mime washing one's face and using a towel. This was really rather endearing, her making sure that we foreigners understood what the objects were. On the other hand, presuming that we were ignorant of such basic objects such as a basin was a bit patronizing. It was sort of sweet of her, nonetheless.

We ventured out of the palanquin exhibit, into and through a gift shop selling bowls for over ten thousand yen, and up into the normal exhibition hall wherein I lots of stuff far more interesting that the feudal equivalent of SUVs resided.

Like books. Books that were printed with old style woodblock presses, books bound together with strings and lavishly decorated on the covers and inside with all manner of illustrations. These were the publishing products of a feudal society and a direct descendant of mass media. Also impressive were the woodblocks- mass produced bits of adornment and entertainment, made in great numbers and sold to the public. There was likewise a whole exhibit about coinage and currency, of which there were apparently several kinds in the Edo era, in addition to using rice as a currency. I wondered how inflation worked back then, and at what rates the different currencies were transferable to each other.

These things, books, prints and coins, were about ideas and communication, commerce and the popular sentiment of a place. Seeing these old examples of popular culture, the direct descendants of manga, newspapers, and publishing houses, inspired me far more than any relic of a gilded, idle life. These things were products of a vibrant society, not just a tiny minority.

The next day I got into an IM conversation with an old friend of mine, and he mentioned that he'd been reading up on the Heian period, and would have loved to have been a noble back then. I mentioned that I was far more interested in Japan's modern era, and studying the rapid rate of modernization in the Meiji period could be instructive with regards to the speedy modernization happening now in other parts of the world. He replied with something about the importance of beauty and poetry and whatnot.

I can't dispute that such things- beauty, poetry, adornment- are nice. I do, after all, rather like seeing temples, shrines, screens, and statuary, things which are hardly practical in the strictest sense. Yet, I want to look at history with a practical, not just an aesthetic eye. I want to see how problems were solved, how goals were persued, how technology was applied, how organizations were administed, and what the result of it all was. A book, after all, is just a book. But seeing the Edo era prints called into mind an entire infrastructure that would have to exist to sustain such things. If books were popular enough to be printed and sold, then that means literacy was widespread. It also means that the economic and agricultural structure of society (even though it's often called "feudal") had to be efficient enough to support sizable (albeit, still minority) non-agrarian specialist population. That is highly cool to find out about.

For better or worse, I've also started thinking about broad-based societal phenomenon in a professionally curious way. As I continue to review political science, I'm more and more seeing myself as someone who will be entangled with the infrastructure and workings of societies. And that means knowing about industry, media, and commerce. These things are sizable and engaging, and soon I'm hoping to see such things in more than just an amateur fashion.

Christmastime in Japan

2008-12-19T23:13:00.004+09:00

I like Christmas. That might come as a surprise to some of the people who know me, as there are lots of things about it that annoy the hell out of me. For the most part, I agree with everything that noted atheist/drunkard Christopher Hitchens has to say in this rather characteristic column. It is indeed a nightmare of consumerism, stress, religiosity, and vulgarity. But, on the whole, it's worth it. It gives everyone a few days off at the end of the year, drives the economy a bit, and gives us yet another reason to consume grossly obese birds. Also, I like the Nutcracker Suite and the novelty of having an indoor tree.

Well, it's more than that. I remember when I shared an apartment with an old girlfriend and we agreed to get a tree. Neither of us believed, and neither of us cared much for the family stress that we'd have to endure come Christmas Eve and Day. But still, be got ourselves a tree and set it up in our apartment, festooning it with a few ornaments and lights. Even though our relationship didn't last, I remember looking at that tree and thinking to myself "This is real- we actually have a connection. We got ourselves a goddamn tree." I remember looking at it and thinking "this is my home now." It was a feeling that was fleeting, but wonderful, and all because of something as simple proping up an evergreen in one's living room. In other words, I know I can't escape the emotional connection that I have with this holiday- it is something that is fairly ingrained in me, and I will probably acknowledge Christmas in much the same way that I acknowledge Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Indepedence Day in my own way.

Now, as much of a distaste as I have for religion in general, I tend to prefer the religious trappings of Christmas to the secular ones. Really- I'm not being ironic here. I'd take a nativity scene over Frosty the Snowman any day, and vastly prefer O Holy Night to any such dreck as Winter Wonderland. I suppose the reason for this is that the religious stuff seems to come from a real place on the part of the creators. This is not to say that relgious stuff can't be ingenuine or kitsch (it most certainly can). What I mean is that the non-secular trappings of Christmas are generally more real, emotion-laden, and unmediated than the non-religious kinds. And, even as a devout humanist I'm capable of enjoying such things on an aesthetic level. Much in the same way that I admire Dante, I also admire Adeste Fidelis.

Which brings me to Japan...

There is Christmas in Japan. Oh my, is there ever Christmas in Japan. But, Japan is not a Christian country. Nor is it particularly Buddhist or Shinto. Based on conversations I've had here, it seems that Japan has ceremony without devotion, and secularism without abstention from ceremony. A very intelligent and articulate student of mine said to me "When we are at the temple we are Buddhist, when we are at the shrine we are Shinto, and on Christmas we are Christian." I can't say that she speaks for the entire population, to be sure, but her words stuck with me.

I think that she's wrong on the last point, though- while Christmas is most certainly in the air here, there is nothing particularly Christian about it. It's a season and time of naked consumerism, a festival of lights and shopping that culminates in the consumption of fried chicken, cake, and subsequent sexual coupling. I'm not kidding- "Christmas Cake" is a popular confection here, and students are surprised when I tell them that it's utterly absent in the U.S. Likewise, KFC has somehow gotten itself brand-identified as Christmas food in Japan. I have to applaud whatever evil marketing genius is responsible for that. And, somehow, Christmas has turned into a popular date night, where young Japanese couples spirt off to love hotels and celebrate Jesus' birthday by fucking the shit out each other. While I think Jesus, hippy-type that he was, would probably be amused by this course of action, it is a little weird. There is a Christmas-themed love hotel near my apatment that is quite the sight to behold. The whole place, year-round, is decked out with wreaths, lights, candy canes, Santa, etc. And here, all that stuff means "let's do it."

In any case, it's a curious and obnoxious sensation, seeing all of this. I was walking today in one of the Chiba suburbs where I teach, and plinky, midi-like versions of Christmas carols were being piped through the street's PA system. I wondered how many of the bent old women actually knew the lyrics of, or much cared for, the treacle that was being pumped into their public space. I noticed that all of them were generic holiday tunes only about winter, snow, jingle bells, and Rudolph. Nothing at all religious or devotional, nothing with an emotional core.

Why? Because here Christmas is even more shallow, more consumer-oriented, more superficial than in the U.S. In the U.S. Christmas is a main festival of western civilization, and here it is merely an unofficial holiday that's all about shiny things and buying stuff. And Japan is nakedly unapologetic about that. There is no patina of devotion or meaning to it, no veneer of greater significance, no pretension of importance. Only lights, gifts, and empty adornment.

I don't disapprove of this, mind you. I believe that Japan has every right to adopt our shallow gestures and use them for it's own benefit. Yet, I feel a bit of nostalgia for the emotional core of it all, of seeing my Catholic father's genuine joy at the holiday, of hearing Linus earnestly intone the Gospel of Luke at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

To be sure, the nonbeliever in me can't complain- I would gladly see the entire relgion that venerates Christmas consigned to the dustbin of history. Yet, I balk at the emptiness of yet another repitition of idiotic non-songs such as Jingle Bells. Here in Japan there is a shell and surface, but nothing behind that blinking lights.

Knowledge is Nifty!

2008-12-15T08:22:00.003+09:00

For some reason, I sort of like getting up early. There's a sense of purpose to it.

Two weeks ago, I got up early and peeled myself out of bed to go to Nihon University to take the third level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It was quite the thing. I'd taken the test before, last year, and failed. But last year I really should have taken a much lower level. Last year was kind of like being trampled by an angry rhino that was made out of language. This year was much better, and I may have even actually passed the thing. Even if I didn't pass, though, it was an awesome experience because of the mental place that it put me in.

I've been studying for my entire time in Japan, but I been studied far more intensely than normal the week before the test, and loved it. Absolutely loving it. I studied so much that I got a sort of high off of it. Really. For the entire week beforehand I'd made myself do little else with my free time, and while I definitely couldn't keep up that level of work all the time, it was great while it lasted. Finding stuff out, seeing how systems work, looking at a pile of information and seeing how it all fits together is one of the most pleasurable sensations ever. To suddenly understand something new, to have a new skill or ability, to see the world in a new way- that is a niftier aquisition than any new object.

Seriously. Knowing stuff rocks.

Anyway, nerdy knowledge junky that I am, the test gave me a focus and reason for my studies. I'm fairly goal-oriented, and something like the test is just the sort of thing that can make me work and act in such a way that I wouldn't be able to under normal circumstances. Also, the experience of the test was wonderful compared to last year. Like I said, last year's examinating trampled me handily. This time, though, I actually understood almost everything that was on it. I didn't know all of the vocabulary, and on some of the finer points of grammar I had to guess, but even in questions where I didn't know the specifics of the language mechanics I was still able to understand what the sentence was about. That's a fairly big deal, and comparing that with last year's experience gave me an awesome feeling of progress.

Afterwards I joined a bunch of friends (several of whom had also taken the test) and we commemorated our academic endeavors by getting absolutely trashed on Brazilian sugar-cane booze. Fun times.

Come February, I've another test to prepare for- the U.S. Foreign Service Officer Exam. While I'm still studying Japanese for the fun and immediate utility of it, I'm also refreshing my knowledge of political science. Yay studying! Yay knowing stuff! Yay!

Aspiring to 61%

2008-12-03T10:45:00.004+09:00

I've been pacing around my apartment a lot, listening to Japanesepod101, sitting with my textbooks on trains and in coffee shops, and have given myself a temporary respite from studying political science. During my breaks at work I've closed the door to my classroom and am reviewing grammar and testing myself with flash cards. The primary forms of leisure that I've allowed myself are either reading Dragonball in Japanese, or watching Witch Hunter Robin (albeit with subtitles), so that I don't have to exit my Japanese brain space more than is necessary. Yesterday I tried to limit the amount of English that I used with my manager and coworker (much to their amusement) and have generally tried to soak my brain in the language.

Why on earth am I doing this, you ask? On Sunday I'm taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, third level. This is the same test that I took last year, and failed. Granted, last year I was biting off a bit more than I could chew- I really should have taken the fourth level, the lowest one. I'm a bit more confident this time around- hopefully my brain will be sufficiently marinated in Nihongo that I pass.

But, the test is a bitch. So much of what I know I've learned from context, and the test is entirely decontextualized. This is good and bad. On one hand, language is always in context, so the test (much like many English test) is very artificial. On the other hand, it really does test whether or not you know the language in and of itself, not just whether you can read situations and deduce stuff.

Anyhow, this has made having to teach English a little odd. I'd rather be a student now, and would like to selfishly refrain from having to teach my own language. But, my free time is packed with an intesity of study that I never had when I was a university student, which is a nifty feeling.

To pass, all I need is over sixty percent. Here's hoping for sixty one...

Book Rant: Samuel Huntington is Wrong

2008-11-21T10:18:00.004+09:00

Given that I'm taking the U.S. Foreign Service Exam in February, I've been devouring political science books for the past two months. Recently, I held my nose and picked up The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington. I read Huntington's original article in Foreign Affairs back in university, and found him to be a deplorable xenophobe. Nevertheless, he is widely quoted, refuted, and talked about, so reading what he had to say was important for my autodiactic endeavors.

To sum up Huntington's argument: The principal divisions in the world are now among so-called "civilizations." Huntinton names seven major ones- Western, Latin American, Orthodox, Islamic, Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese. He also identifies separate African and Buddhist civilizations, but does not regard them as of major importance. These divisions, says Huntington, will define the chief source of conflicts after the Cold War. The violence and competition of the future will mainly come from competition between Western, Chinese, and Islamic civilizations.

Back when I was a student of political science, I found his divisions to be curious and unecessary. Now that I've lived for over two years in another "civilization," I find his divisions to be not only odd, but actually destructive. Civilizations do not have clear-cut borders, there are divisions within civilizations, and culture is more changeable than he imagines.

To be fair, Huntington does have a point when he says that culture matters. Culture is important, and must be taken into account to an extent. However, Huntington seems to think that culture is both immutable and overpowers all other concerns. Japan in particular, I think, offers a nice refutation of Huntington's views.

A bit over one hundred fifty years ago, the spot at which I'm now sitting was a rural patch in a closed, feudal state. The U.S. and Europe had factories, industry, democracy, liberal economic systems, railroads and steam engines in the 1860s. Japan didn't. Japan had rice fields, swords, and a system of medieval patronage wherein the Shogunate hoped to keep the social order frozen in time. Had Samuel Huntington been around then, he would have written off Japan with the same sort of dismissal that he gave to Africa and Latin America.

Then, that whole culture was scrapped. The Meiji Restoration is really, really mind blowing when you think about it. The whole medieval system was scrapped, the entire country was industrialized, and the whole culture was overhauled. Of course, there were members of the samurai class who resisted, but the modernizers carried the day. The modernizers of the Meiji Restoration didn't want Japan to be a backwater, didn't want it to be controlled the way China was being controlled, and wanted to create a globally competitive nation. And they did, much to the peril of China and Korea. As awful as some of the things that Imperial Japan did, it is worth emphasizing that modernizers within Japanese society determined that economic prosperity, national security, and global competitiveness were more important than conservative notions of cultural identity.

This all happened again at the end of WWII. This time, the emperor system revealed itself to be an inefficient, dangerous, and unsuccessful model in the twentieth century. From what I've read, it seems that the American forces were extremely surprised with how little resistance and hostility they encountered when they came in and began the process of democratizing Japan. The reason for this was that modernizers within the society saw clearly that the prevailing cultural system had failed. Cultural systems, like economic systems, have to be accountable to their populations. They have to retain legitimacy, otherwise you get things like the Meiji Restoration and postwar Japan. Culture is not the unchangeable and implacable roadblock to global accord that Huntington imagines. It is something that can be altered, destroyed, upgraded and improved by determined liberals.

There will always be conservatives like Huntington who cling to antiquated notions of culture and declare them to be a fundamental truth. But, the fact of the matter is that Western society now is radically different from Western society even fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. Now, gay people can be happily married in countries like Canada and Spain. China is no longer really communist. Here in Japan, the generation gap is gaping. Huntington's notions do not stand up to the dynamism of the world today, where economic and technological trends chip away at old notions.

Some years ago, I read an interview with Marjane Satrapi in Salon. At the end of the interview she said something to the reporter that I thought nicely summed up their interaction and conversation. Speaking of the Iranian regime and the Bush administration she said that "The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same."

Satrapi's comment, while a little on the pithy side, accurately illustrates how liberal-minded, modern-minded and internationally people can relate to each other, especially when governments do not foster a mood of international cooperation or accord. Her insights are especially interesting given that she's from Iran.

Anyway, I'm glad I got Huntington out of the way. There's only so much of his doomsaying and xenophobia I could take. I'm reading Thomas Friedman now, and he's sort of obnoxious in the other direction, what with incessantly declaring how flat the world is and all. But, he's a nice antidote to Huntington's backward-looking cultural myopia.

xkcd: Font of Geographical Profundity

2008-11-13T11:19:00.004+09:00

I completely identify with this. Even more so because I live in "The East" yet I'm from the American west coast (which of course is east of here).

I also read somewhere that in Japan "the West" traditionally meant China.

(Un)Teacher

2008-11-12T22:09:00.002+09:00

I've been most successful as a teacher when I've stopped teaching. I know that sounds like some stereotypically "Zen" thing to say or whatnot, but it's true.

People don't learn English (or any language) to do grammar drills or rote practices. Those things are, at best, a necessary burden. At worst such blunt, direct means serve as dangerous demotivators. Language is communication. It is one human talking to another. It is not grammar or vocabulary. Grammar and vocabulary are tools that humans make use of in order to make communication better and more specific. They are means to a universal end.

One of the best ways to teach new language items is to expose students to the meaning and feeling behind them, to show them that there is life and verve in words and structure. I've started telling students that "grammar has feeling," and they tend to look at me oddly, but it's true. Consider the examples-

"Having done that task, I will do my homework."

vs.

"I'll do my homework when I'm done."

Tell me: which one sounds like something voiced by a normal schoolkid, and which one sounds like a precocious little poindexter said it? There really is a lot of feeling conveyed grammar, and it's cool to see when students realize that.

To say that I've taught best when I've stopped teaching, then, is to say that I know that I impart the emotional character and feeling of language best on students when they see me as an approachable fellow human rather who happens to be knowledgeable about a particular subject (English) rather than as a teacher. I've been least successful when I've tried to use my supposed authority to pound and drill language into other people's heads. When I've been the most honest with students, the most friendly, and the most genuine, I've also been the most successful as a source of English.

Funny, that.

Upon the Occasion of the Election of Barack Obama

2008-11-05T10:44:00.002+09:00

(Every so often I just want to use really flowery language. Today was one of those days.)

I woke up this morning, the morning of November 5th, crawled off of my futon, and began to check election results. The polls hadn't closed yet, and the various news sites were just flurries of speculation and unreliable exit polls. As I write this now, MSNBC has called Pennsylvania for Obama, and the New York Times, though not willing to make the same definite pronouncement, shows Obama in the lead in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. This election is over, and Obama has won.

My students, throughout the election, have had all manner of questions for me about it. Almost all of them know that I majored in Political Science, and when asked directly about my political beliefs I am honest with them. There are two questions that they've asked me at the start of conversations: Whom I support (Obama) and why do I support him. The answer to that second question is a bit more complicated. (I always try to turn the conversation around and ask them about the Japanese government as well. Most often, students lead in with a laugh about how the new PM, Taro Aso, is a huge otaku.)

Why do I support Obama? Why am I filled with glee and buzz as I'm reloading news sites in the other tabs on my browsers? I want the answer to be something more substantive and well thought-out than "because he's a Democrat." I am a Democrat, and a liberal one at that. But, I want my opinions to come from reason and discernment rather than an emotional sense of partisanship.

Why do I support Obama? One of the biggest reasons, is seeing how positively my students talk about him. I've seen several Japanese people smile and speak approvingly of the Democratic candidate, and what he represents about the U.S. One of Obama's greatest strengths (and perhaps a huge stumbling block to his presidency) is that he is a symbol as well as a man. This will undoubtably lead to a certain amount of disappointment from people who see him as the Second Coming, but this rare asset is also something that can help us (that is, the U.S.A.) in our dealings abroad.

Obama, as a symbol and an icon, shows two things to an international audience like my students. First, he is an obvious break with George W. Bush. The world at large has not been impressed with the current president, and Bush has done obvious harm with regards to our reputation and image in other countries. It is profoundly important that other countries like us. Even admire us. We are a military superpower, the biggest economy in the world, a mitigator of international disputes, holder of the most important currency on earth, and all-around superpower. With all of that ability and responsiblity comes a whole host of unique problems. We are also used as a scapegoat by ideological elites in less-well off countries, employed as a symbol by ideologues (like Hugo Chavez) who want to define themselves against us, and an obvious target for those who would seek to violently restructure civilization, such as Bin Laden and others like him.

To perform these responsibilities and combat these challenges we need legitimacy. Not only do the leaders of other countries have to agree with out official policies, but peoples in other places need to be comfortable with, say, American troops stationed within their borders and American diplomats and aide workers working on solutions to local problems. If we do not have support from the populace, if American troops, aide workers, etc., are seen as objects worthy of protest (protest which can potentially become violent) rather than as part of a solution, then our tasks abroad become much, much more difficult. George W. Bush has eroded that essential legitimacy, and Barack Obama, I hope, can restore it.

I have high hopes for Obama because people such as my students know that he is a profoundly different man than the current president. Not only in terms of his party and his race, but also in temperment and character. At one time I would have dismissed such things as emotional and unimportant, I would have only cared how a politican voted and decided on certain issues. Now, though, I can see how Obama's bearing has already benefited us a little in terms of burnishing our image. Hopefully, that trend will continue.

The second major way that the U.S. can benefit from Obama as a symbol is that he shows how a civilization can transform itself. Much has already been said about how the elction of Obama is the culmination of years of work regarding race relations in America. This is true, though racism and racial divisions will not vanish with his presidency. I do think, though, that it is extremely wonderful to see that a democratic, industrialized, economically liberal country can indeed actively move past divisions that were once seen as immobile and immutable.

Yesterday I was talking with a Japanese coworker of mine about Japanese attitudes towards Chinese. My coworker, who has traveled abroad extensively and lived in China as a child, mentioned that she feels odd when students say things that spring from obvious prejudice. She even went so far as to say that she herself even feels the pull of that prejudice, a whole array of social emotions that pulled her away from her better reason and nature. Obama, though, shows that one of the gifts of modernity is that it can help us pull away from ugly old tribalisms, and that divisions such as the one my coworker described need not be permanent. Through Obama the U.S. can show the world that such liberalization is possible and desirable.

I know that Obama's presidency will be as flawed as any other, and that his halo will undoubtably dim when his administration ends in (hopefully) eight years. However, right now, just for a moment, I'm delighting in a moment in history where a man who has become symbol of liberalism has acheived the presidency of the most powerful country on earth. The New York Times has called Pennsylvania for Obama. Ohio and Florida are still blue. Slate has just called the election. The world at large, I think, is looking on appreciatively.

Tick, Tick, Tick...

2008-10-24T23:15:00.002+09:00

I'm leaving Japan.

I'm leaving in the first half of February, and I feel great about it. I've had this planned for a while, but this past month I've gone through the official channels at my work, written a letter of resignation, and am prepared to leave my job behind in less than four month's time. This is happening, I believe, at precisely the right time. As of tomorrow I'll have been in Japan for two years. Over the course of my time here I've learned quite a bit, changed much more than I thought I would, and had a wonderfully unexpected experience. But, it's time to go. I find myself going through the motions at my job without passion or a feeling of being challenged. In some ways, it's great to not have to think much about my work. In other ways, it feels maddening to be underutilized. Arrogant as it may sound, I know that I've got skills that my current position will not allow me to use. At work I may be busy in a technical sense, but in more meaningful, intellectual ways I'm quite idle. I aim to fix that.

So, I'll be back in the States in February, though not permanently. At least that's the tentative plan. In February I'll be taking the Foreign Service Exam, and I hope to get a job at a U.S. embassy or consulate somewhere around the globe. I thought that a stay in Japan would get the urge to live as an expat out of my system. Instead, it just got it more into my system. What's more, I know that I will be continually unsatisfied if I merely read about, talk about, and think about politics and world affairs all of my life. I want to work with it in some small way, to put that political science degree to some measure of use.

I know I'll be out of Japan in four months, back in the States in five, and no idea where I'll be in a year's time. Right now, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Gyeongju: Hills of Tombs, Mountain of Buddhas

2008-10-24T00:32:00.009+09:00

I should have finished this up a while ago- this is my last post on Korea.

J and I grabbed Korea's high speed rail and zoomed our way South of Seoul on Korea's answer to Japan's Shinkansen. We pulled into Gyeongju, the old capital of the country, a place awash in all manner of outdoor historical curios. Many of them looked something like this:

That there is a tomb, an earthen encasement of the bones of someone who used to be rather important. Gyeongju has quite a lot of them, and they were about as interesting as earthen mounds filled with dead people could possibly be. Far better than the hillock-tombs was the highly nifty national park known as Namsan. J and I rented a pair of mountain bikes and spent two days in the place, a rather picturesque hiking are with stuff like this:

And this:

And this:

And this contemplative looking fellow, a rather large Buddha carving that we encountered at top of the mountain on our second day. It's exceedingly satisfying to sweat, huff and puff up an incline, and then find a nifty giant Buddha waiting for you. It's sort of like getting a message that the Powers that Be approve of your healthy, active lifestyle.

And, I'm going to leave it there. I'm sure there's plenty I've left out, but J has also recorded his take on the trip over at his blog. He's kvetched a bit about me scooping him, so I imagine he'll appreciate filling ya'll in on the stuff I've missed.

We now return to your regularly scheduled Japan blog....

The DMZ: Extra Special Dress Code Bonus Post!

2008-10-10T19:23:00.003+09:00

I wrote the last post in a frame of mind wherein I forgot the most amusing detail: The DMZ's dress code!

We had to agree not to wear any overly baggy, tight, or distressed clothing. The reason? To prevent the North Koreans from taking pictures of us that could be used in potential propaganda. Potential propaganda that would say something like "Look at the pathetic South Koreans/Westerners/Japanese! They're so poor that they can't even afford clothes that fit/don't have holes! HAHAHA! Communism and economic isolationism rules! HA!"

I certainly wouldn't want my picture on a poster like that. Anyway, J and I had to forgo our hot pants, ripped jeans, fishnet shirts, chain mail, and assless pants when we visited the DMZ. I'll admit, I had visions of myself posing in front of North Korea wearing spiked shoulder pads and platform boots, but it was not to be. Alas...

The DMZ: Standoff Tourism

2008-09-26T23:06:00.013+09:00

I majored in Political Science, minored in Philosophy, and dabbled in Economics and Sociology. I've heard the refrain before: Social scientists complain and kvetch that they can't do experiments, can't adhere to the scientific method the way "real" scientists like physicists can. It's not like they can set up similar societies with differing economic systems and see what happens. It's not like they can take areas of similar cultural backgrounds and observe the results when different political systems are applied.

To that I say: Korea.

If I were some kind of evil polisci supergenius with an infinite budget and bottomless ruthlessness, the Korean peninsula would be my idea of a pretty good experiment. Take a single nation that shares a common cultural, linguistic, and political background and spit it in half. Apply one set of political and economic realities to one half, and another set of policies to another. Wait fifty years, and see what happens. The result looks something like this:

You may have seen that picture before, as it's semi-well known. There it is, though. The area of the peninsula devoted to democracy and economic liberalism is lit up in bright technological glory, and the side of totalitarianism is literally swathed in darkness. You couldn't ask for a better illustration of the abject failure of communism, especially relative to the alternative.

We had some difficulty scheduling our trip to the DMZ. Tours weren't offered every day, and we had other travel plans as well. Eventually, though, we were able to secure a seat on a bus heading into Panmunjeom, the village that serves as the Joint Security Area between the two Koreas, and is where the two sides sit down to have occasional meetings. Our first stop, though, was at a couple of war memorials. I found them to be an odd mix of bland grayness and strange gaudiness. They were at once colorless and overmuch, triumphal and oddly unmoving.

After the monuments we made a stop at the Reunification Park near, but still outside, the DMZ. (This, by the way, was where J and I downed a few silkworm larvae.) The park itself was a bit more picturesque than the monuments. We climbed a green ridge dotted with pinwheels and white banners, all of which spun and flapped in the wind. Dominating the landscape was a series of wire-framed figures that abutted Moai-like from the ground and stared out into the borderlands.

We got on the bus, followed their gaze, and entered the DMZ. The Demilitarized Zone is, oddly, beautiful. The place has been untouched for fifty years, and the vast greenery of it all is sort of odd when one considers how densely packed the nearby Seoul suburbs are. The place's name is also something of a misnomer- it's easily the most militarized place in either North or South Korea.

The tour guide pointed out signs warning of land mine areas, areas of the road that were ready to be blasted apart in the event of an invasion, and sundry other things that all marked the place as tense and dangerous. Our presence there seemed extremely odd when compared with the gravity of the surroundings. The DMZ is tense, it is dangerous. There have been a number of incidents of violence there, and the two countries have never officially declared peace. However, it's tame enough to drive a tour bus through on a routine basis. Weird, that.

Unfortunately, talks were going on the day that we arrived, so we were not able to see the inside of the conference room, the thing that I'd been most looking forward to. We did, though, sit through a rather over-enthusiastically narrated presentation on the history of the DMZ. The man who got on stage and informed us spoke in a kind of English that I seldom hear in Japan: the bad, loud kind. What the guy lacked for in basic grammar skills he made up for in sheer volume and pro-South enthusiasm. He particularly emphasized how childish the North was for insisting on having a bigger flagpole on its side of the DMZ. It's the biggest flagpole in the world, as a matter of fact. A great, big, Communist, penis substitute. Here's a picture of it:

It's 160 meters high, 100 meters higher than South Korea's also-enormous standard.

After the presentation we took a few pictures at an observation point, looking into the distance at the above flag, and into the North Korean side of the peninsula. It was weird to think of myself standing about fifty meters away from totalitarianism. Not just authoritarianism (I've been to China, after all) but total dictatorship. Fifty meters away from me was somewhere where reason stopped working, where citizens wear pins on their clothes displaying either Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il, where the government has banished religion by becoming a worldly cult.

I'll admit that I'd love to go to North Korea properly, to see it. Me and my blue American passport (and prominent Japanese visa) probably wouldn't ever be allowed in, but I'm perversely curious. Of course I want things to change, of course I'd love it if Kim Jong Il choked on his kimchee tomorrow, thus bringing about the destruction of the North Korean state. Of course I'm for that. But that part of me that's a curious political scientist would love to see the inside of the enemy's lair. More realistically, though, I'll have to settle for this- me and the gigantic Northern banner in the distant background.

Suwon: Fortress and Sprawl

2008-09-25T09:34:00.007+09:00

We had at best a loose structure planned for our trip, one which was constantly revised and altered. Hostel reservations were canceled and remade, DMZ tour times constantly seemed to shift, and plans regarding trains were more or less fluid. Fortunately, J and I know each other well enough that we kept itinerary-related bickering to a minimum approaching nil, which was cool. On the second full day, we cracked open the guidebooks and wondered where to go. We were basically thinking "What the hell should be do before we can see the DMZ and then head to Gyeongju?" Basically on a whim, we and decided to head south of Seoul to Suwon, the site of Hwaseong Fortress, of which there are a few interspersed pictures.

It was only about an hour away on Seoul's exceedingly user-friendly metro. But, just about any train system would seem user-friendly when compared with Tokyo. Tokyo's train system is a fantastic mess of twisting, labyrinthine train lines, of different mass-transit companies swirling in and out of each other's way. The whole of the Tokyo train system seems like it was designed by stoned minotaurs who decided to take a crack at urban planning after blowing their minds on Jackson Pollack paintings.

Seoul's metro, on the other hand, seems to have been designed by actual people. The only issue I had with it was that the ticketing machines weren't consistently designed. The transport system itself, though, was superb.

Look! More fortress!

We got to Suwon, and made our way up the hill upon which the fortress rested, and got a full view of the massive sprawl just south of Seoul. In the downtown area where our hostel was situated and where we'd wandered around the night before, it was sort of difficult to get a sense of just how dense the Seoul-Incheon metropolis is. Granted, being in Tokyo has inured me a bit to density, but the sheer size of these things was amazing.

There they were, great stacks of concrete that proclaimed beigely how the city had burst its boundaries and outwardness was being supplanted with upwardness. Oddly, one of the colossal buildings had a gigantic cowboys-and-indians mural on it, a strangely outdated American cultural signifier that clashed with the distinctly Asian fortress upon which we stood. I didn't get any particularly good pictures of the sprawl, sadly.

More fortress, though:

We trekked over and around the walls, and were sort of astounded that the whole structure dated from the late 1700s to the early 1800s. By that time, Europe had abandoned castles and America had never bothered to make them. I'm at a loss to adequately explain the technological differential, and J reminded me that I really ought to read Jared Diamond.

More into town, more into the body of the fortress, there were people lounging about on the castle structures, myriad students and smokers sitting on the walls and in the shade of the roofed structures. It was heartening to see something so old and stylized used as a public space. It was nice to be reminded that the place were were strolling was not a static museum but a very real town on the outskirts of a booming city. The structures pictured above and below were, up close, filled with refugees from the sunlight.

More to follow...

Seoul: In Which I Arrive in Korea

2008-09-24T23:31:00.008+09:00

Recently, I took a very much needed vacation to Korea. I hadn't had a real break from work since China, and English teaching was starting to take up way, way too much brain space. I met up with J (my dear friend who goes by the rather inscrutible nom de net of xe.qon). It was good to see him again, and I was happy to have a travel buddy.

One of my first sights of Korea was a larger-than-life statue of Gandalf outside of a theater near my hostel. I'm pretty sure that the appearance of statues of English wizards in Asia means that globalization is more or less irreversible.

I met up with J that night at the hostel, and we got ourselves some of the famous Korean barbecue. I was pleased to learn that J had given up the untenable ideology of vegetarianism, and we ate with relish the fricaseed bits of beast and fowl. Then, during dinner, a dwarf tried to sell us gum. Oh brave new world with such people in it.

On our first full day J and I made our way to Gyongbokgun, one of Seoul's historical palaces. We were lucky enough to show up right when a collection of rather nattily-attired reenactors were performing a changing of the guard ceremony. It was quite the impressive crew of dudes spiky things and big hats. I really don't see that kind of thing often enough.

When I've been to palaces and castles and the like I've often wondered "Ok, this is a big space, but how did the utilize it?" Most of the places I've been to in Japan have not been furnished, and simply seeing an empty room won't tell you too much about how people lived or whatnot. Gyongbokgun did have a few reconstructed rooms, which was nice to see. I do dig the screen.

Another part of Gyongbukgun, an audience hall set upon a lake. I ever had ridiculous amounts of money, my place would probably look something like this.

Onto a totally different topic- I dig chick drummers. Lady guitarists definitely have there own appeal, but for some undefined reason, I find myself most attracted to XX percussionists. Make no mistake: I'd jump Joan Jett before the chorus of I Hate Myself For Loving You even got started, but Janet Weiss is my idea of Rock 'N Roll Fun.

This is relevant because near the palace J and I went to the Folk Museum and saw a rather nifty and random presentation of Korean folk music. The two dudes with flutes were, shall we say, calming. Calming enough that J fell asleep. Fortunately, the performance was capped off by the lady in the center leaping around in a circle, rocking out on a drum solo, and punctuating it with some well-placed yelps. It was pretty nifty. She rocked.

Away from the palace we found ourselves walking into downtown Seoul, modern Seoul, the part of the city that wasn't devoted to show and history. We wandered in and out of markets and commercial districts, and I was amused to find a statue of Admiral Ye Sun Sin, whom I'd never heard of. I had, however, heard of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and apparently this guy kicked his ass with some of the first ever armored ships. I get a daily diet of things Japanese, what with living in Japan and all. I do love it here, but it was nice to see a small bit of someone else's perspective.

More to follow...

Something Rich and Strange

2008-09-11T11:33:00.009+09:00

Why is there "C?" Seriously. Why? Three steps into the ABCs, one gets to an artifact of English that is seemingly odd and nonsensical. Three steps into the basics of English, absurdity abounds.

C doesn't do anything. The hard C sound like in "cat" can be duplicated by K, and the soft C sound like in "secession" can be duplicated by S. The only unique sound that C makes is "ch," and, really, that should be it's own unique phonetic symbol, given that it really has nothing to do with either the C or H sounds. (Someone a while ago did point out that C can affect word stress- that the stress on sounds in "school" is slightly different than in "skool," but this is a fairly minor advantage to be gained from this mostly vestigial letter.)

I know it's too much to ask for a language to be regular and logical. Languages evolve over time time, come from a variety of sources, etc., etc. But, I've been teaching myself Hangeul (the Korean script) in preparation for a trip to Korea next week. It's amazingly logical and easy. I was sort of surprised by how non-difficult it is to read. Granted, I still have to slowly sound things out a-la a kindergartener, but I know that there's no way one could read the Roman alphabet in the same way.

When I teach my kids phonics, or when I'm dealing with adults who aren't so hot at reading, I sometimes feel sorry for them. There's no good reason why "hyperbole" is pronounced with a long "e" at the end, and "cough," "enough," and "through" seem designed specifically to confuse learners. The list goes on.

Phonics is just the beginning. As others have pointed out, how can you be "disgruntled" but not "gruntled?" People can be "ruthless" but not really "ruth." What the hell?

But it's a beautiful mess. Aesthetically, I absolutely love the chaos that is English. I love the irregular verbs, weird spellings, and unregulated grammar, given that we mercifully do not have an academy. I love the regional irregularities and even the pervasive jargon. I love that there's a bunch of stuff that makes no sense and we use it every day. From all of this we can get some real gems of linguistic niftiness- two of my favorite exploitations of English are the stand up of George Carlin and the quirky dialogue of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both use the ideosyncracies of the language to wonderful effect, creating something rich and strange. I'm also reading Ulysses right now, and while it's plotlessness is sort of hard to put up with, it's dizzingly wonderful as an aesthetic object simply because of its use of language (it's still overrated, though). I pity any translator who would try to tackle Joyce- so much of his art and humor comes from linguistic oddness and the bending and folding of English.

In contrast, every past tense verb in Japanese (and therefore every sentence in the past tense) ends in "ta." How regular. I'm sure there's weirdness aplenty in Japanese, but I'm not there yet in terms of study. There have been plenty of movements to simplify English spelling, and I'm glad that they've consistently failed. In my heart of hearts, in what I truly, fundamentally, want and love, I choose the panoply of disorder and all of its accompanying beauty.

And yet...

I can understand that my students have very real difficulties and frustrations with the material at times. I wish that the connections were more explicit for them, the path better marked. I can understand (even as I disagree with) why someone would advocate linguistic simplification, or an easily understood and regular language like Esperanto. A pernicious and weird part of me does long for order and regularity, would love to see modes of expression as a beautiful machine. But we'd lose too much.

It seems cruel and selfish, but my students' frustration, difficulties, and confusion is all worth it. It's worth it because even though the system of English is disorderly, it is still a system. It's worth it because we, as native speakers, can indulge in something gloriously odd and complicated. We have an awesomely privileged, entertaining, and nifty position, and even though it causes my students to knit their brows in consternation, I wouldn't have it any other way. Ours is a fantastically labyrinthine means of communication, and we're lucky to have such complexity.

Of course, maybe the Japanese feel the same way about all those kanji...

Sayonara, Fukuda-San

2008-09-03T08:15:00.003+09:00

Yesterday, Yasuo Fukuda resigned as prime minister. Like Shinzo Abe before him, he was in office for less than a year and had approval ratings hovering at about 30%.

For decades, Japan has been run by the same conservative political institution, the Liberal Democratic Party. Over the past two years the government has led the economy into a recession and garnered apathy and dissatisfaction from the electorate. The opposition, the Democratic Party, did make some significant gains in the last election, but not enough to seize governance from the LDP.

Where, I wonder, is the outrage? Where, even, is the pissed-offedness?

Every student with whom I've talked about politics has said that they didn't think much of the current administration. They don't believe that they government can or should do very much, and when I've asked them to name a politician they really like, they've almost always named Barack Obama. I don't want to draw broad political conclusions from my own biased experience, but it seems that people here just aren't angry enough about their government.

The Japanese economy was called a "miracle" at one point- it went from a pile of rubble to the second largest in the world. Now it's in recession. Why aren't people more riled up about this? Why do they keep electing the LDP over and over again even after that party hasn't delivered? Why isn't there a more vocal opposition? Where is the discontentment that forments change?

As someone for whom politics is an addiction and passion, I find it all frustrating. I hope I'm wrong, that the next round of elections sweeps in some new coalition government. I hope that I'm misreading the situation, that there's passion out there and I've just missed it.

Sigh...

Sales: Sort of Like S&M

2008-08-30T08:26:00.000+09:00

A friend of mine recently described my blog posts as "verbose." I can't really disagree with that... This is another long one.

Last night, one of my favorite students paid the equivalent of over two thousand dollars to take more lessons. I'm happy about this.

When I was a kid, I'd mow lawns for money. My dad didn't give me an allowance once I was in middle school. Instead, I had to do yard work for people in the neighborhood, and they'd pay me for it. There was an older woman whose lawn I mowed every weekend, and whose leaves I raked in the fall. I took care of her dog when she was away, and helped her build a shed. For any given task, she'd give me ten dollars.

Being older, she occasionally forget to pay me. She'd just say thank you and absentmindedly start doing something else. It wasn't that she was trying to cheat me, she just really was old and forgetful. When she did this, I hated reminding her to pay me. Hated it. I'd shift awkwardly on her front porch like I was about to ask her something horrible, like I had some sort of confession to make, or was somehow in the wrong. I'd usually utter something like "So, ten dollars, right?" She would look embarrassed and come back with a combination of bills that added up to ten. I was happy to have the money, but I also felt oddly and strongly guilty after I had to remind her to pay me. I wished that the money would just show up, that I wouldn't have to vocalize my wants, that I didn't have to force this old woman to open her purse.

This weird and specific guilt took a while to dissipate, and it returned in an odd way when I began my current job. My job not only involves teaching, but also a bit of sales.

To be perfectly clear- I'm not a volunteer. I'm not working for the Peace Corps or CARE or some admirable international entity. My job is not at a public school or a community center. Students pay to be there, and we want them to come back for another round of lessons when their contract is finished. I'm working for a huge company (granted, one that sells something fairly worthwhile), and they want to make a profit.

When I started, I thought this was horrible. Sickening, even.

Why, I thought, weren't we a nonprofit? Why weren't we pure? Why were were soiling education with filthy, filthy commerce? Why did we have fixed tuition rates, and not sliding scale? Why on earth would we do something as vulgar as set profit goals to ourselves? The idea of asking a student whether or not they wanted to buy another contract for lessons, asking them whether or not they wanted to pay to take more classes with me, was something that filled me with guilt and revulsion. Selling, I thought, was something inherently sleazy, regardless of the merit of the product.

In other words, I thought that being a successful salesman meant you had to be something like this:

That was my vague image, and it affected the initial feeling of asking, and such a lack of confidence did not allow me much success in either my beginning teaching or sales experience. To learn a language, (or to make a large purchase) people must feel at ease, they must feel confident. How on earth can one instill confidence and ease when they, themselves, lack confidence and ease?

I'm now fairly good at my job, and my prevailing feeling at work is one of satisfaction. When students say "yes," when people agree to pay large sums of money to learn English from me, the sensation is one of confidence and pleasure. There is more than a little in the way of testosterone-fueled gratificating here, more than a little feeling of conquest and dominance. I have successfully made a person part with large sums of money. I quite enjoy persuading people, seeing people do what I want, affecting people's decisions and actions, and a successful contract renewal or new student sign-up feeds directly into that.

It was this feeling of dominant and controlling satisfaction, I think, that so frightened me and made me riddled with guilt about initially asking for money, or asking for what I wanted. From the beginning, I definitely wanted my students to approve of me by signing up for classes. I wanted them to pay for me. I wanted them to open their wallets and give me what they wanted. I wanted success and impressive numbers, and was intimidated by the supposed dauntingness of it. I wondered how on earthy my coworkers did it, how on earth they successfully took what they wanted from students, from customers. I very badly wanted to be successful at selling myself, and for most of my first year I was more or less a failure because in a certain way I've always been hideously afraid of what I wanted. I was afraid that my desire to control and influence people would mean, if satisfied, that I was some kind of bad person, that fulfillment of my goals would be coterminus with a kind of moral failure, that my fulfillment would necessarily come at others' expense.

Anyway, I realized three things that allowed me to revise my opinions on this, and I'm now much more successful.

First- Customers (in this case, my students) benefit from a successful sales transaction. People spend money on things because they believe they will derive a certain amount of utility from those things. A good salesman believes in the utility of his product, and connects people with that utility. Nonintuitive as it may sound, sales is a service. The common line in popular culture is that the greatest salesman in the world is one who could "sell ice to eskimos," that is, rip people off. I disagree with this. Such a hypothetical ice-peddler would not be providing his customers with any kind of utility. A good salesman is someone who connects people with the utility they need.

Second- I'm not a rip-off. I'm a good teacher, and actually worth paying for. Students do not waste their money or their time in my classes. They benefit from their purchase because I'm good enough to deliver that benefit. I deserve a salary, and I shouldn't feel at all guilty when students pay the tuition that make that salary possible.

Third- People have different definitions of utility. I know this is all very Econ 101, but it's true. While I think it's weird to pay so much for a native teacher, and wouldn't do so in the States, the fact of the matter is that the scarcity of such an instructor is very different here. In any given major American city you can probably find a native speaker of a major language. Not so in Japan. When I lived in Okayama, I was one of the very few people there who was able to, say, pick up something by Milton and get something out of it. In, say, St. Louis or Baltimore, though, you could probably find dozens of people who could devour Basho in the original old Japanese. The utility and scarcity of foreigners here is dramatically different than in the U.S., and thus, what people are willing to pay and what they feel they get is very different.

There are lots of situations where different parties can be mutually satisfied by fulfillment of their different definitions of utility. Take, for instance, S&M (you were wondering when I'd finally get to the S&M bit, weren't you?)

In a good S&M situation, everyone gets what they want. The doms, subs, switches, voyeurs, whoever. It's not like the doms actually rape anybody, or the subs actually get abused. Everyone agrees on what role their playing, and gets something out of it. Granted, the doms get something different than the subs and vice-versa, but everyone walks away satisfied and will hopefully come back for more later.

Likewise, in a good sales situation, everyone gets what they want. The sales staff, customers, managers, whoever. It's not like the salespeople actually rip off anybody, or the customers actually get taken. Everyone agrees on what role their playing, and gets something out of it. Granted, the sales staff get something different than the customers and vice-versa, but everyone walks away satisfied and will hopefully come back for more later.

My school met all of its monetary goals last month (this is not something that happens often) and is doing very well again this month (I can't take all the credit for this, by the way- my coworkers are also good at what they do). There's still a mushy, pinko, part of me that's scared of all that cash, but mostly I'm just pleased about it. I'll probably never work in sales on a permanent basis, but I no longer think of it as devil's work.

Not Again...

2008-08-29T23:37:00.002+09:00

Coming out of my apartment this morning I heard-

"Umbrella."

Did someone just say "umbrella?" I sort of wondered if I was hearing things, whether or not someone said "casa" and I had mentally translated it. After a few moments, though, it was apparent that two women were coming out of an apartment below me, speaking English. I walked down and saw that one of them was Western.

"Hi!" I said, "I thought I was the only foreigner here."

I had a pleasant conversation with the woman, and she had some questions about getting a job in Japan. I happily obliged her with some information and thought to myself "Maybe these people are awesome and we can be friends!" I'm occasionally starved for non-professional contact out here during the week...

Then her Japanese friend said to me, "We're spreading the message of the Bible. Are you Christian?"

Aw, shit. "Um... no."

"We're Jehova's Witnesses. Here, let me give you a pamphlet." She opened up a small book of pamphlets that looked to be printed in Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, and sundry other languages. She found an English one that bore the title "Can This World Survive?" I thanked them as politely as I could and went off to work.

This is the fourth time that I've been approached by Jehova's Witnesses in Narita. The fourth. Back in Oregon I had a grand total of zero conversations with anyone who tried to chat me up about the end of the world. (To be fair, though, Eugene had other, different types of crazies.) But here, across the Pacific, in the middle of a country where English isn't spoken and religion not generally ascribed to, Jehova's Witnesses are finding me at a pretty steady rate. Even now two of them are on the floor below me, with their multilingual pamphets.

What a small world we live in. Sure hope it survives.

I'm Exceedingly Mature. Really.

2008-08-23T09:23:00.003+09:00

I teach an advanced kids class, and it's one of the highlights of my week. The kids are all very high level, having lived abroad for a bit, and they're bright little bundles of joy. I'm not being ironic. They really do kick ass.

Yesterday, I was doing a class with them about describing past events, and everyone had to tell a funny story about something that happened to them in the past. The first kid mentioned that when he was three, he burned himself when attempting to grab a candle flame because he thought the fire was neat looking. We had a good laugh at that.

The next kid's story was a little different. "When I was three years old," she said grinning, "I touched poo."

"What?" I thought I misheard her.

"Poo. I put my finger in poo. When I was three."

"What is poo?" asked both of her classmates, almost at the same time.

"Poo is unchi." Immediately the two other classmates lost control of themselves laughing, doubling over with convulsions of hilarity. Even I started laughing. They were losing it, so I was losing it. The two students eagerly wrote down their new vocabulary word, with accompanying sketches of it. Poo is unchi! Really, how is that not funny?

The student who initially uttered the scatological syllable spread her arms of her head, and pixielike proclaimed "POO!" in a voice loud enough to carry outside the classroom. The absurdity of excrement dominated the air and it took a few moments for the students (and myself) to calm down.

I then had a choice- should I curtail this conversation, put an end to all this poo-talk? Or should I use this, milk it for all it's worth, really get the kids going? EFL experts recommend sticking to topics that students find interesting, and there is a part of me that likes being a showman, so when it was my turn to tell a story about my past I said:

"When I was a child, I liked to eat..." I paused for dramatic effect, "ice cream. Delicious, chocolate ice cream. Creamy, brown, delicious ice cream..."

"Chocolate ice cream looks like poo!" shouted a student. Hilarity ensued.

The rest of the class went great, and afterwards I was wondering what the lesson said about me as a teacher. Was I a great teacher for creating rapport and getting students interested in the lesson? Or, should I have nipped the poo thing in the bud, and not allowed shit talk to pervade my classroom. I'm sort of worried about whether or not the kids will expect shit-based humor next week as well. Gotta keep expectations in check.

Hehe... Poo!

Words on Loan

2008-08-22T12:25:00.005+09:00

My ketai died a bit over a week ago, and I had to get a new one.

Certainly, referring to it as a "cell phone" would be the proper, English way to say it, but since I've been living in Japan the word "ketai" has primacy in my mind. "Cell phone" is a sort of vague, secondary syllable. Granted, I most often refer to it simply as a "phone." But the two word term "cell phone" still seems strange. This may very well be because I didn't own such an object before I came to Japan. Since I've owned one, it has always been a "phone" or "ketai." "Cell phones" remain something else, conceptually, for me.

Life here has affected my language. That I use several Japanese terms in casual, otherwise English, conversation is simply the most obvious. I often buy onigiri (rice balls) or tea at a konbini (convenience store), a few weeks ago I rode on the Shinkansen (bullet train), I drink nama biru (beer on tap) and order nomihodai (all-you-can-drink) when out with friends, fret over the logistics at work of students with kyufukin (government sponsered) contracts, read emails from the kaicho's (the CEO's) office, and I've got nothing but sympathy for my kids who have to attend not only eikaiwa (english conversation schools), but also juku (cram schools).

And so on.

For the most part, this list only includes nouns, and that seems logical. When introduced to another culture, one can find a lot more in the way of objects and phenomena, but probably very little in the way of new verbs or adjectives. (Though there are few of those. Almost every expat living here will know kawaii, cute, and baka, stupid.) When presented with a new concept or phenomena, it's perfectly natural to use the native term for it, rather than contriving a new word in your native language.

Take for example the word "onigiri." Onigiri are rice balls often wrapped in seaweed and filled with tasty things such as fish and vegetables. I've eaten these things at a pretty steady rate since I've gotten here, and they seem to be a universally favored snack thing. Last weekend, out on my bike with Kori, had one in my backpack and mentioned that I was hungry and wanted to stop to "drink some water and eat my rice ball." I used the English term.

As soon as I said it I thought to myself "Why the hell did I call it a 'rice ball?'" It was as if I used some weird, foreign term for it, like instead of saying "cheese" I refered to the stuff as "fromage." I think I felt this way because these things have always been simply "onigiri" to me. When I first asked "What's this?" when I first ate one my companion said "It's an onigiri." They're labeled as such in stores, Japanese people obviously use the Japanese term, and they're not really shaped like balls anyway, given that they're often triangular.

It's remarkable to see how a well-established linguistic phenomenon, that of loan words, has so quickly played out in my own vocabulary and social environment. Thinking about it also offers a bit of perspective on the Japanese language's sizable collection of English loan words. Katakana words can occasionally be maddening (i.e., "mansion" means "apartment building" rather than "big, expensive house.") and there is, every so often the urge to say "Stop! You're doing it wrong! It's not a 'handle,' it's a 'steering wheel!' Get it right!" Such urges are not only impossible to satisfy, but also display a misunderstanding of how people adopt new words and concepts. I'm not going to go so far as to advocate "Engrish" as an English dialect, but I given my own borrowing and probable mispronunciation and misuse of Japanese terms, I can summon up a bit of tolerance for it.

As a practical matter for me, it is sometimes difficult to maintain "pure" English when I'm teaching in the classroom. A big part of my job is that I'm a native speaker, I'm not Japanese, and students are hoping that the English they're learning is authentic. I know that I've used several of the abovementioned terms at work, and when I do catch myself using such words, I worry about the level of authenticity that I'm providing my students. Granted, I like to think of myself as fairly good at my job, but I do have to sometimes conciously keep my vocabulary "natural."

Oh, the joys of language...

More Book Stuff! This Time, Shutting Out the Sun by Mark Zielenziger

2008-08-13T15:23:00.004+09:00

I'll call him Henry. Henry was a student of mine back in Okayama, a bright guy who lacked all manner of social skills. I would ask him something simple, something like "How are you?" and he would look around the room, quickly jerk his head from side to side as if searching for others and say "Me?"

"Yes. How are you."

"The Hanshin Tigers won." He was obsessed with the Hanshin Tigers, Osaka's baseball team. He would watch their games on television and, when they weren't televised, listen to their games on his radio. He also listened too NHK's regular English language programs, and bought the network's English learning publication with religious regularity. Often, he would bring it in to the school and show it to me. The only other thing that I knew he did was that listned to a band called B'z and bought everything they released. Henry was thrity one when I taught him, had no job, and lived with his parents, who paid for his television, radio, NHK magazines, CDs, and English lessons. I suspected then, and still do, that his fifty minute English lesson was the single longest conversation he had each week, given his extreme social strangeness. "I hate Henry," my Japanese coworker often said, "no job, not in school, nothing. He's a parasite."

Henry, though, at least got out of his house. Despite the fact that he had no job or friends and, at thrity one, still lived with his parents, at least he got out of his house and went to bookstores, CD shops, and English lessons. Across Japan, there are thousands of men (and they are mostly men) who don't even do that. They're known as hikikomori, shut-ins who simply stay hidden in their rooms, living with their parents, talking to no one. Compared to the hikikomori, Henry was downright sociable. These recluses are a departure point for Shutting Out the Sun, a book by American journalist Mark Zilenziger.

Shutting Out the Sun was something of a bait-and-switch, in that I picked it up thinking that it would be about a specific phenomenon within Japanese society, the tragic presence of the hikikomori. However, that was only the first few chapters. The time that Zielenziger does spend on the hikikomori, their parents' struggles, conversations with community workers and therapists who have worked with them, and a few interviews with recovering shut-ins themselves, is great. It's the best part of the book, and I do recommend Shutting Out the Sun for its illustrations of troubled youth within Japan.

But then the book's quality turns south and never recovers. After doing some interesting and probing work into the phenomenon of the hikikomori and doing a chapter on Japanese women who don't wish to marry or have children (a book topic all of its own) Zielenziger goes into a full-on anti-Japan rant. The book ceases to be about the plights of troubled youth (something I wanted to read about) and turns into an elongaged rant by a whiny gaijin who doesn't like the country he lives in (I didn't want to read that- I get enough of that at the bars). Ostensibly, he's trying to explain how Japan produced the hikikomori

Now, there's plenty of stuff about Japan that I don't like, and that does indeed need to change. The overworking, the inflexibility, the LDP, the consumerism, etc. This stuff is, indeed, uncool, and all worthy of coverage. However, Zielenziger hits the same note over and over again, bashing Japan for being a "collectivist" society that fosters codependence and discourages individual ingenuity. I don't think this is completely incorrect, but I do think that such an argument lacks nuance, and that Japan is a bit more complex than just that.

Something that I found especially aggravating was Zielenziger's glowing portrait of Korea. Over the past fifteen years South Korea has indeed done extraordinarily well and is worthy of all sorts of praise. It is not worthy, however, of the glowing and one dimensional lionization that Zielenziger heaps upon it, particularly with regards to Korean Christianity.

Rather oddly (especially since he professes himself to be a secular Jew) Zielenziger points at Japan's lack of a Judeo-Christian worldview as a source of its social ills. Conversely, he points to the presense of Christianity in Korea as a factor contributing to South Korea's economic success. Zielenziger's biggest target is always "collectivism" as a general idea, and holds up Christianity as something that promotes individual rights and responsibilities. As someone who was raised Catholic and since abandoned it, I believe that I can rightly say that Christianity can just as well degrade and impede individual rights. If anything, a friend of mine who used to work in Korea mentioned that the traditional, conservative Confucian values often work in concert with, rather than in opposition to, Christianity.

Zielenziger is correct when he characterizes Japan as being a largely secular country, however. But, he stretches too far. He criticizes Japanese for having no firm relgious beliefs, seeing it as a tragic cause of so many of the country's symptoms.

I was a bit personally put out by this.

Secularism, I think, is something that countries, communities, and civilizations in general should strive for. I'm not going to get up on a soapbox and give some sort of Christopher Hitchens style anti-theistic rant, but I do think that for the most part, we are better without religion. It would be a terrible tragedy if we ever lost philosophy, mind you, but religion really ought to be phased out. I would disagree with Zielenziger in that I don't think that Japan's problem is lack of relgion, but a sort of prevailing philosophical and political apathy.

But I digress.

Zielenziger also devotes a bit of time to Japan's relationship with the U.S., likening Japan, as a nation, to a sort of world-affairs version of a hikikomori, and painting the U.S. as the overly indulgent and enabling mother who lets her child keep up his isolation. I can see how one would draw this conclusion, but I think he takes the metaphor a little too far. I do agree with him on a major point though- during MacArthur's occupation, the U.S. did it's damndest to crush emerging, progressive Japanese political parties for fear that they had communist sympathies. America successfully propped up the old guard and destroyed the emerging competition, thus screwing over Japan's chance at an emerging liberal tradition. I agree that that has harmed the social and political life of Japan.

But, when Zielenziger points out things like this it seems that he's not so much trying to explain how Japanese society produced hikikomori, as the other way around. It looks like his primary ideological project is illustrating the ills of Japanese society, and then using hikikomori as an ugly example of how bad things are. This isn't a bad approach, necessarily, but the structure of the book makes the reader think that it will be the other way around.

The biggest problem with Zielenziger's book (other than his grating opinions about Christianity) is not so much its inaccuracy, but its hopelessness. Zielenziger paints a picture of a static and staid Japan that is unable and unwilling to change. He imagines the country sliding only further into it withdrawl and irrelevance, and offers almost no real hope for the future, presenting change and progress as something stifled by the choking conservatism of Japanese society.

I would describe this view as politically immature. I can imagine Zielenziger as one of those pontificators who takes a sort of perverse joy in prophesizing doom, who gestures with eagerness at the flawless canvas of doom. I remember political science classes from university, and I've seen the type. I've even been the type. The type that can only discuss problems as if they are all-consuming and insurmountable, relishing the accompanying hopelessness and angst.

Japan, I think, can change. Just yesterday two of my students said they think that Japan will have should have a female prime minister someday. I have another student, a young businessman who has described himself as a "feminist," and still another who (without any prompting from me) said that Japan really ought to officially apologize to Japan and Korea for wartime atrocities. I realize that the people who take English lessons may not be representatives of society as a whole, and are probably more progressive than a lot of people, but they certainly don't fit in the picture of gloomy, doomed conservatism that Zielenziger paints.

Somthing will change. It has to.

Favorites and the Opposite Thereof

2008-08-07T11:59:00.003+09:00

They are not all equally loved, supported, or even admired.

I'm a teacher, and as a teacher, I have favorite students. I had a hard time admitting this to myself for some time. For a while, I held onto the untenable ideal that a teacher should support and nurture students equally, like a parent or Jesus or something. You know- all that Good Shepherd type bullshit. But, this model and ideal, admirable as it appears, does not accurately describe reality.

There are some students who just get it, and I find them absolute joys to teach. I don't mean that they necessarily have high levels of English. What I mean is that they learn well. They use the English they have to communicate effectively, eagerly make new language items their own, and consciously find connections and links in the language. These are the students who can guess words from context, who use expressive (if inaccurate) language to communicate their ideas, and who are capable of quickly making the language part of themselves. I have several students like this, and I really appreciate them.

There are others, though.

I like to think of myself as a pretty effective teacher and communicator, and I think that I've cracked open a few hard nuts in my time. However, there are a few (I want to emphasize few) students whom I've had that I grudgingly must describe as "really fucking thick." A common thread, I've noticed, is an infuriating lack of confidence, a lack of creativity, and an ingrained belief that English is "difficult." Many of these students seem absolutely petrified of being wrong, petrified of sticking their foot into something so "difficult." They sometimes freeze to the point where they will stare at their text book, not talking to me, not talking to their classmates, and stay silent, afraid of mistakes they have not yet made.

I've told several students that mistakes are a natural part of language learning. Also, I believe that language is communication, not grammar or vocabulary. The primary purpose of English is to communicate your ideas. I tell them to concern themselves with communication in the broad sense first, and to make refinements later. I've gotten some promising results with this sort of explanation, but on a few, it just doesn't take.

By de-emphasizing the bugbears of grammatical perfection and rote vocabulary memorizatiion, I've found that I can boost confidence in people, but only to a point. I don't have some sort of magical Tony Robbins Success Ray that I can zap my students with and turn them into world-beating go-getters. I can only encourage them to the best of my abilities. And damn, does it suck when the best of your abilities isn't good enough. To try, and try, and try with a completely unconfident student is infuriating.

To be honest, I sometimes feel slightly cruel. Think of a P.E. teacher, looking at a track, admiring the fast students and thinking of those in last place as lagging losers. That P.E. teacher would be a real bastard, right? I've wondered if I'm any different, if I'm a sort of intellectual bastard for having my preferences. But I doubt if anyone has a big enough heart to escape that feeling, to be free of favoritism for the strong and lack thereof for the weak. I seriously doubt that there is a teacher out there who really does love, support, and admire all their students equally and benevolently.

Not only cruel, though, but I also feel slightly ineffective. Obviously, they were able to learn some English- enough to be able to have a basic conversation with a native speaker. I've wondered why, with these unconfident, uncreative students, I'm not able to duplicate or emulate the conditions in which they learned the basics of English. I strongly suspect that at lower levels they used Japanese as a crutch (which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing) and cannot adapt when that crutch is removed.

While I do want to help these few (yes, I want to reemphasize few- most of my students are just fine) students, my general sense of sympathy can only extend so far. I've found myself indulging in contempt for some of them, wondering how on earth they could exhibit such a sheer lack of balls and imagination.

I cannot pick and choose whom I teach, though. These people come to the school, pay for lessons, and I'm professionally obligated to somehow meet their needs. While my favorite students (the smart ones) and the average ones are no problem, my only choice is to reconcile myself to the fact that the "really fucking thick" ones are part of my routine. They exist, they come to class, and I need to try something with them.

In Which I Hang Out With Costumed Geek Types.

2008-07-25T00:57:00.009+09:00

I could have gone through life without ever hearing the phrase "sexy ewok."

But, there she was, all done up in a fur bikini thing, topped off with an Ewok cowl. The typically skinny Japanese girl strutted across the stage and shook her fuzz-bedecked ass at the audience, much to my surprise and bewilderment. Regrettably (?) I wasn't able to get a good picture of her.

This was on Sunday in Chiba city's sizable convention center. Another teacher from my company had gotten some students to go to a Star Wars convention, and I came along, camera in hand, hoping to get a few photos of enthusiastic geeks done up in their finest. The sexy ewok was strutting about in a fan costume contest, milking the applause of the audience for all it was worth.

I had a great time. A really excellent time, actually, but not because of any of the official Lucasfilm stuff that was on display. To be honest, most of that stuff was fairly underwhelming. A majority of the fun I had was thanks to the fans. The fanatical and weird fans who took time out of their lives to dress up as sexy ewoks and other sundry characters.

Like this guy, Barbecue Vader.

There was the requisite Slave Leia. She got a lot of attention. And yes, that's a chick dressed up as Luke.

And of course, tons of Storm Troopers. A few of them carried around a boombox playing the Imperial March.

The fans were more than happy to be photographed. Swarms of camera wielders walked up to them and asked for pictures and poses, and they were happy to oblige. What made it all the better, was that a lot of the costumes were obvious labors of love. When I could see the saw marks on a plastic Stormtrooper costume, I really appreciated it. Here were a bunch of utterly weird, dedicated people doing something that they loved. And they were being appreciated for it. It was a giant room of very geeky people being instantly validated. That was really something.

On a slightly weirder note, I did mention to one of the students I was with that my favorite character was Han Solo. He replied with a "Who's that?" and I said "You know, the pilot of the Millennium Falcon." He explained that he'd only seen the new movies, but really liked them. I think there was some proselytization on my part after this. We were cool, though. We agreed that Christopher Lee is awesome.

Of the official exhibits, the only one I really liked was a collection of differently painted Darth Vader helmets. Different artists offered their spin on the iconic headpiece, and the results were fun to stroll through.

The project, though, really illustrated why I didn't care for the Lucasfilm stuff there. Darth Vader and the rest of the established Star Wars characters are icons, archetypes. They're not going to change or develop much. What they do offer, though, is something that can be constantly reinvented without ever losing it's quintessential qualities. That's something that's awesome about icons- their inner core is so well established that their exterior can be modified over and over again.

It was this kind of modification and play that showed up in the verve and love of the fans. They riffed on and played with something they loved, and the crowd cheered them on. Seeing that was far better than a movie.

Also...
More fun with mispronunciation!

A few days ago the word "ashore" showed up in a textbook. A student asked what it meant, but, oddly, did not combine the "s" and the "h" into a "sh" sound. Instead, he pronounced them separately, and it came out sounding like "ass whore." It was pretty awesome.

More Misadventures in Language Learning

2008-07-16T22:20:00.003+09:00

So, I was teaching this lesson about complaining, and had the students naming common nuisances and one said-

"My apartment is full of cocktails."

What? "Cocktails?" I asked.

"Yes. Cocktails. Many. My apartment has many cocktails."

"You mean drinks?" I mimed sipping a martini.

"No, no. Cocktails." He drew something on the paper in front of him: A six-legged creature with two large wings and a set of antenna.

"Ah," I said, "you mean cockroaches."

"Yes," he said. "Sorry. My apartment is full of cockroaches. It's filthy."

I mentioned that cocktails were nattily-colored alcohol-laden drinks, and cockroaches were filthy vermin. The class got a good laugh out of it.

But I wish my apartment was full of cocktails...

Kabuki: Pretty Damn Awesome

2008-07-12T08:59:00.002+09:00

I saw Kabuki for the first time last Monday. Went to the Kabukiza in Ginza and got the cheap seats for whatever random play was going on at five, and it was well worth the 1400 yen I ended up spending, and I ended up wondering whether "realism" matters.

The particular play that we ended up seeing was shin-kabuki, shin being a common prefix for "new" or "neo." "New" in this case meant "1913," and the particular production that we saw combined conventional Western drama with traditional kabuki stylings. When the play began, I was a bit disappointed by the "Western drama" bits. I was wondering if we ended up getting a play that would be all about normal, boring people with normal, boring problems.

Nope! About fifteen minutes into the play, the puny humans exited and the goblins showed up in all their weirdness and finery. The play was pretty much gold from there, and weird shit was in no short supply. It was great! There were goblins! A talking hat! A horny, evil, underwater princess! Sacrificing of naked woman tied to the back of a cow! Suicide! Fog machines! A sumo wrestler! People getting turned into fish! Singing! Dancing! A watery apocalyplse!

It was great. I definitely wouldn't mind going again, and it remotivated me to learn about Japanese culuture, history, etc. I was also really charmed by the low-techness of it all. The fact that you could see the stage hands dressed in black and manipulating thing behind the actors wasn't really a distraction, but sort of a satisfying in a way. Oddly, seeing them didn't break my sense of disbelief. Nor did the fact that some of the actors playing chicks were in fact dudes. The whole thing was obvioulsy artificial, but I bought it and enjoyed it for what it was.

Which begs the question of whether "realism" really matters in art and media or not. A movie can have great CGI and still not draw you in. Likewise, Street Fighter II still holds up as a game even though it uses of dated, stilted 16 bit graphics. In either case the presence or lack of something that's "realistic" doesn't effect the viewers emotional investment in the finished product. Whether or not art or media "works" in the sense that it draws in the audience and gets them to care about its invented world has nothing to do with "realism." It's something else, something amorphous and undefined, and something that was very much there in Kabukiza on monday.

The Noise and Lights of Summer

2008-07-09T23:31:00.005+09:00

I was woken up by fireworks on the fourth of July. This was sort of weird, as I was not in America.

The fireworks were the start of Narita's annual summer festival- three days of pulling around wooden floats, eating street food, drinking, and general revelry centered around Naritasan, the town's famous and massive temple. I had quite a good view of it, what with my classroom overlooking central Narita's main street. On Sunday I and a few friends went out into the madness, and I managed to snap of few pictures of it all.

This is the view from my school's balcony on the second day of the festival. It's about 12:30 in this picture, and already the dashi, the big, wooden floats, were being pulled around by teams of people.

Several groups of kids were in the festival, especially during the day. They held these jingling metal instruments that clanged lightly as they walked.

A dashi. They roll through the streets accompanied by shouting and music. The blended noise seeped into my classroom. While this was not a problem with adult students, my kids kept rushing to the window whenever one would pass below us.

From behind a dashi on the last night of the festival. The energy of the crowd in the narrow and lowlit street was amazing.

Take That, Terrorism!

2008-07-03T09:28:00.002+09:00

Kori and I got stopped by the cops this weekend.

The cop was actually pretty nice about it, and obviously didn't like what he was doing. But nevertheless, outside a train station, we had our information taken down and collected by Japanese law enforcement. I found this a little funny, since all of my information is already registered with the Japanese government anyway. If they want my address and phone number, they just have to go to immigration and look them up.

The cop explained to us that the police were stopping all foreigners and getting their information because of the G8 summit in Hokkaido. It was an anti-terrorism measure. Now, I can understand why the Japanese government would want to do something, security wise, to prepare for the summit. I'm also utterly unsurprised that it's something pretty illiberal and ludicrous. (Another brilliant idea: removing garbage cans from train platforms because, you know, you could put bombs in one of those things.)

I also can't help but imagine how such a policy would be received in the U.S. Actually, I don't have to imagine it. Racial profiling doesn't really have any defenders in the U.S., and if a directive was issued to the cops that they should question anyone who either looked foreign or was speaking a foreign language, there would be a complete political uproar: Obama and McCain would be falling over each to denounce it. Politicians would evoke MLK left and right. Al Sharpton would get so angry, he would actually explode. The political policy that caused me to get stopped this weekend in Japan would find no quarter even in the right-to-center politics of the U.S.

It was a cold little reminder that Japan still has a bit of insular nationalism going on. And oh, how I can't stand either insularity or nationalism. But, that's another rant. On the other hand, governments and countries do some phenomenally stupid shit in response to terrorism. The color-coded terror alert system? Probably useless. And remember when tons of people in the U.S. were buying duct tape? Useless. As useless as taking down foreigners' info, and the U.S. is no stranger to racist assholery, either.

Sigh... At least the cop was a nice guy.

Through the Verdant

2008-06-27T23:00:00.007+09:00

I've often mentioned Tokyo in my posts. I do love Tokyo, but really, it's where I spend my weekends. My work week is spent out in Narita, a bit over an hour away from downtown Tokyo. The area around my apartment looks less like a neon labyrinth from the future, and more like this:

I've come to really liking the rice fields and the rural areas. In the mornings before work, I've taken to biking out among the fields, which are amazingly green right now.

The train looks sort of otherworldly, technology speeding through the green.

It goes on an on, bikalbe paths sometimes leading into another field, and sometimes terminating nowhere.

The rice itself. Insects and tiny fish swim in the water around the green shoots, and the whole sprawling mass of it seems immensely alive.

A darkened bamboo grove. Roshomon took place in a grove like this. I can see why.

I feel like I've got the best of both worlds. I've got this side of Japan at my fingertips during the week, and I can dive into the biggest city in the world on the weekends. Life is good.

The Other Side of the Classroom

2008-06-13T23:46:00.002+09:00

For the past month I've been attending Japanese lessons at a community center here in Narita. They're free, open to all foreigners living here, and have become one of the highlights of my week. When I first got there, I was a bit surprised to find that I was the only Westerner in the class- I sort of assumed that there would be some other English teachers, or people involved in international trade who work either at or near the airport. No such thing. The class is mostly Chinese, Fillipinos and Koreans, with a few other students from South America. As an American, I'm a curiosity.

Being there has been immensely good for my teaching. When I was taking private lessons in Okayama, helped me immensely to see things from the student's perspective, to suddenly see the format of an EFL lesson turned back at me. But, I was all alone there, with a teacher who could explain the finer points of grammar in perfect English. Now, I'm in a large group lesson entirely in Japanese and I'm quite impressed with how the main teacher organizes the class and is able to communicate to a variety of students in a second language. I see her using a lot of methods that I've learned- she uses pictures, speaks at a reasonable pace, uses a variety of examples, and puts grammar and even uses stupid jokes as a way of keeping things interesting. Fun times. She's great- every time I leave one of her classes I feel very, very good about learning Japanese, and I want to crack open one of my books and study more.

However, that's only the main teacher. There are a few others there, and they suck horribly. Really, really horribly.

The first time I was there, one of the backup teachers, this middle-aged woman, decided to hover over me and perpetually ask if I understood what was going on. For the most part, I was getting things fine, but I told her honestly a few times that I didn't quite understand something. That was a bad idea.

While the main lesson was going on, she leaned over my shoulder and started talking to me at a rapid-fire pace. I can only assume she was giving me some impromptu lecture about the finer points of Japanese grammar, and I didn't understand a word of it. I really, really wanted her to shut up so I could just listen to the lesson and figure out stuff on my own from context. I eventually told her that I understood just to make her go away, and I know sort of cringe when she starts talking in class. I doubt any of the other students understand her, either.

Two weeks ago, though, the main teacher, the good one, was gone. The class was wholly in the hands of the woman who I couldn't understand at all, and this old guy who, rather annoyingly, spoke a bit of English. I say annoyingly, because he translated just about everything he wrote on the board into English, and looked directly at me whenever he said anything. I was a bit uncomfortable with this- there was a whole room of Asian gaijin, and he was giving special attention to the lone white guy. I might have been imagining it, but I found it sort of squirmy in a racially weird way.

So, without the main teacher, class sucked. It was disorganized, the two backup instructors got almost nothing from blank looks from the class. They didn't contextualize anything- no pictures, not much in the way of hand gestures, no props, and not even very many simple explanations. Instead, it was very lecture-like and when they did ask for class participation all they got was uncomfortable and uncomprehending nonreaction. So, we broke into a bunch of side conversations.

I didn't pay any real attention to the backup teachers, and instead had an absolutely hilarious conversation with these two Chinese girls. I told them about traveling to China, and one of them happened to be from Shanghai, which was cool. They asked me about America, aboutbeing a teacher, and explained to me how they had to go back and forth from China to Japan fairly often for visa reasons (I don't think it's all that easy for Chinese to travel abroad) and all was going swimmingly until I asked one of them what she did for work.

She said that she worked at a minsetsu no tokoro.

I had no idea what the hell that was. Some kind of place, as that's what tokoro means, but I didn't know what minsetsu meant. I asked her and she said that "minsetsu is talking." Rather unfeministly of me, I assumed that she worked at a hostess bar, one of those places where business men pay stupid amounts of money to have hot chicks pour their drinks and chat with them. She was definitely cute enough to do something like that, and I began a line of questioning asking whether or not she was a hostess, whereupon he and her friend laughed, tried to correct me, and then called over this Fillipino woman, who kinda/sorta speaks English, to translate.

"How do you say minsetsu in English," they asked her. The Fillipino woman thought for a few moments and said to me.

"Doris."

What the fuck did you just say? "Doris?" I asked.

"Hai. Doris."

"D-O-R-I-S?"

"Hai. Doris." Either she'd studied from one of the worst EFL dictionaries ever, or she was messing with me. I really hope she was just messing with me. I told her that "Doris" was a woman's name and didn't make any sense. She looked at me incredulously, and knit her brow.

Eventually I figured out that minsetsu is a word for "interview" and that the Chinese woman called her work an "interview place" because she didn't know the word for "employment agency." As it turns out, she's not a hostess at all, but works at a place where Chinese people can look for jobs in Japan.

All of this confusion and chatting was far better than the lesson that the backup teachers were painfully rattling out, and ended up having a great time. It put eikaiwa (Japan's privately owned English conversation schools) into perspective for me, and I could understand why even if the teachers are utterly incompetent and the lesson makes no sense, people would still come for the simple pleasure of speaking a foreign language. In a foreign language, almost anything seems awesome. I recently did a rather negative sounding post about how my students always talk about the weather in English.

But, the truth is that, at least at the low levels, every bit of communication in an acquired tongue seems like you've unlocked something, like you've decrypted a secret code or learned a new talent. In way, you have. For example, we did it. Me and the Chinese woman successfully communicated in a foreign language, successfully cracked the code and conveyed the information "employment agency." We climbed up and over our own misunderstandings, and reached clarity and understanding.

At the end of the two hours, I leave Japanese lessons with a sort of high, a satisfaction of efficacy and ability. Even though there is still so much that I don't understand, I feel that the Japanese language is something doable and understandable, something that yeild to effort and reason.

When my students leave my own classes, I hope to put a similar feeling into their minds about English.

New Wheels

2008-06-10T11:07:00.004+09:00

For the past eight months, I've basically been living without a basic life necessity- a bike. I have had one, but it was an old, rusty thing that was a bit too small for me. Okay, way too small for me- it was designed for someone perhaps ten inches shorter than me and was a pain to ride.

This Sunday, though, I finally got a new bike. Not only that, but I bought a road bike for the first time in my life. I've owned mountain bikes and hybrids, but up until now I've always been sort of resistant to getting a road bike. It turns out, though, that they're awesome. It's responsive, you can feel yourself connected with the machine and the road, and much, much lighter than a mountain bike.

Kori rides quite a bit, and I can't keep up with her quite yet, but we went around this weekend in the suburbs, and later I did some night riding around the industrial area near Tokyo Bay. I'm hoping to eventually be able to ride from Narita to Funabashi (where Kori lives) and also from Narita to the Chiba coast.

I'm psyched.

Beyond Smalltalk

2008-06-05T10:05:00.002+09:00

This is an addendum to the last post.

Joseph had a good point in the comments- awkward silences do suck. I know that not all conversation can be high-quality conversation. Most of everything isn't high-quality. I guess my issue is having to intentionally and deliberately teach something that I don't care for. That's what makes me superconscious of it. I've also become aware that as an EFL teacher, I've acquired a certain amount of ease and comfort with smalltalk, and I'm honestly good at it. I feel very socially acute because of this, but it's without a certain feeling of shallowness as well.

I do have very real conversations with my students. Just yesterday I had a really excellent one about the comparable prevalence of non-traditional families in the U.S. and Japan. Another student also caught me off guard by asking me about the religious agenda of the Narnia books. That kind of came out of nowhere, but it was because she'd just seen Prince Caspian. Also, she'd read a translation of the series as a kid, and her mother expressed some unease about it, hearing that it was designed to teach Christianity to children. She asked me about all this, and I ended up talking about C.S. Lewis, and why the Screwtape Letters was one of the most infuriating books I ever read, to the point where I couldn't finish it.

As a teacher, I live for that kind of stuff. Getting them to honestly express themselves about really interesting matters is extremely rewarding, and I can definitely ask the right questions and run a stimulating conversation. I like to think that's why I'm a teacher- I'd rather that they learn English to talk about things like social issues and literature and such, rather than just about the weather.

That's probably a big part of my distaste for smalltalk. I might overestimate my students, but I think that if you have talent enough to be conversant in a foreign language, there's got to be something to you. There has to be something interesting, real and awesome about you, something more than the shallowness that smalltalk evokes. There have to be opinions and ideas about bigger issues than the weather in those English-learning minds, right?

I know there are, and I know also that quality discourse doesn't surface all the time. There are plenty of times where I just blank out and can't think of anything to say. That's not a bad thing, it happens to everyone, and I realize that it could very well happen more often in a foreign language.

Still, I know I'm going to hear about the weather today (it's sunny today, by the way) when I go to work later. It's part of my job to talk about it, and really. Still, I hope that the interactions that I have with my students rise above such things, and that we forget the obvious and use their newly acquired language for something honestly interesting.

The First Nicety

2008-06-04T00:53:00.003+09:00

"How are you?"

"It's raining."

and,

"How are you doing today?"

"There is rain."

also,

"What's new."

"Today, it's raining."

That is how several conversations that I have with students begin. They walk into school, and if I'm there I'll say hello to them in the lobby. I use the standard English openers ("How are you?" etc.) and they usually reply by telling me about the weather. Not all students, mind you. There are several who dutifully say "I'm fine," and a rare, advanced, few who give me a real answer. But most of them, especially those in lower level classes, respond to my initial question with an assessment of the perfectly visible weather.

Of course it's raining. It's been raining for a while now. Late spring and early summer is Japan's rainy season, the season of typhoons and downpours. The stuff collects on the windows of my classroom, and in the evening lull sticks to the glass like circular ice crystals against the bright lights. Or it runs down the window in rivulets, little rivers with a vein of neon in them. It's pervasive and obvious, and when I begin talking with students, they first mention the pervasive and obvious.

Some, though, especially kids, robotically say "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" But it comes out all wrong. It comes out as a single memorized phrase, a single chunk of information. Which is fine, I guess, because that's how they learned it. But both the robotic intonation of "I'm fine thank you, and you?" and the incessant talk about the weather reveals a lot about the rituals of starting a conversation.

When my kids say "I'm fine thank you, and you?" and when my students answer "How are you?" with "It's raining," both of them are taking part in a ritual, a formality, a bit of theater, a bullshit mantra. In English, we say "I'm fine," and in Japanese one obviously comments on the weather. In either case, the polite, expected way to start a conversation is to not exchange any real information at all. It's speech without discourse, talking without communication. It's the first nicety- saying nothing real.

Of course you're fine (whatever that means). Of course it's raining. The teller has revealed nothing, the asker has learned nothing- the only thing we've done is open our mouths in a simulacrum of real discussion. I tend to dislike smalltalk because of this. Of course, since I teach lots of people who can't express complex ideas in English because they simply lack the linguistic resources, I have to engage in and teach smalltalk as part of my job. I'm good at it, but I still don't find it as nourishing as real speech. I'd rather hear someone say "I'm hungry" than "I'm fine" any day.

It's the teaching part that's odd. To be effective communicators, to fit in to an English-speaking environment, I have to teach them new rituals, new formality, new theater, new bullshit mantras. And it can't be robotic or perfunctory, like my kids do it. If the theater looks like theater, if the ritual is revealed as a ritual, it loses its effectiveness. "I'm fine" and other smalltalk has to pretend, a little, to be something real. The intonation of it has to sound somewhat genuine, even if it's not. And it's almost always not, really. People tend to be happy, tired, depressed, annoyed, or bored throughout the day. What the hell is "fine," anyway? I guess it's some neutral, inoffensive state, an emotional Switzerland.

At least idle comments about the obvious weather don't do too much to mask the state of the speakers being. Yes, hearing "it's raining" is annoying. God, it's insufferable sometime. But at least it doesn't pretend that everyone is at some equilibrium of fine-ness. Still, I have to teach them, have to show them how to put a little bit of English language bullshit into their speech and tell everyone that they're fine.

I'm fine.

You're fine.

We're all fine here.

Also, it's raining.

More Movie Blogging: Bond in Japan

2008-05-28T17:40:00.006+09:00

Following up the Lost in Translation post, I decided to do the same thing with a somewhat less, shall we say, intellectually demanding movie. You Only Live Twice is the fifth Sean Connery James Bond movie, and the central gimmick of the movie (and it is full of gimmicks) is that it is set in Japan. I'd seen it before, in college, but I didn't remember it very well because my friends and I were drinking whilst watching it and commenting a la MST3K the whole time. I remembered that there were ninjas, and that's about it.

I have a difficult time categorizing the James Bond movies, in a lot of ways. On one hand, they're totally awesome- unrealistic swirls of gadgets and girls, orchestras of explosions, bullets and double-entendres. On the other hand, they're kind of a guilty pleasure for aesthetic and political reasons. And, as much as I'd want to be as suave as Bond, when it really comes down to it he's kind of a stuck-up priss. Think about it- would Bond be at all fun to have over to your place for game night? He'd just want to play baccarat the whole time, and would be fussy about the preparation/temperature of the various beverages.

I went into You Only Live Twice hoping for something of a massacre. I was perversely hoping for a wildly off the mark description of Japan and Japanese culture, a politically incorrect feast of inaccuracies. Almost. What I'd totally forgotten, though, is that the movie is absurd on other levels as well. My notes:

-In the opening bit Bond says Chinese girls taste different than other girls. I was instantly reminded of Shanghai's tastable smog.

-Ah, the Bond title sequences- a highlight of the series. The Nancy Sinatra title song is a bit better than the previous ones, I think, and the shots of the Asian women and volcanoes give a fairly obvious "Wow, this is all Oriental and shit!" feel.

-Holy crap! The screenplay is by Roald Dahl! Roald frikken' Dahl! Wow! He's my favorite dirty old children's author! Apparently he wrote not only kids books, dirty stories, ghostly tales and ribald nursery rhymes, but also a Bond movie. How awesome is that?

-The fake funeral and subsequent submarine setup at the start of the film are so ridiculous that the Austin Powers series seems superfluous. At this point, the Bond series seems to be its own parody, but I don't think it was ever intended to be all that serious anyhow.

-Bond says he doesn't need a Japanese phrasebook because he took a class on "Oriental languages" at Cambridge. Never minding the fact that Japanese is pretty singular as far as languages go. I guess I never need a German phrasebook, what with me being a teacher of Occidental languages and all.

-The first shot we see of Tokyo is a neon billboard for Asahi beer. Not too unrealistic, I guess. Advertisements for the stuff are pretty ubiquitous. It's kind of like the Budweiser of Japan, really, except that Asahi is palatable.

-Tokyo in the sixties. An older student of mine told me about Japan in the sixties, and he mentioned that it was fairly exciting, as the country was climbing out of the desolation of WWII, and finally, finally becoming a major world power again. It must have been amazing, all that development and rebirth- makes me think of China's position today.

-Bond goes to a Sumo match. Still haven't done that yet, but it's on the To Do list.

-I suppose the music is supposed to sound all "Asian" and such. It doesn't sound all that Japanese, really, but I sort of dig it for what it is.

-A continuity error: Bond says that he's never been to Japan before, but in From Russia With Love he mentions going to Tokyo.

-A big Japanese dude is attacking Bond with a katana. His form sucks. Bond totally KOed him with a Buddhist statue. It's like clocking someone with a crucifix! Huzzah!

-Now there appear to be a bunch of Japanese security guards with guns. I'm not sure about the sixties, but that wouldn't happen now. Guns are banned here. They'd have stun rods, at best.

-I've lost track of the plot already. Probably because there isn't much of one. Bond just fell down a trapdoor into a secret lair- this movie is utterly absurd.

-The head of the Japanese intelligence agency ("Tiger" is his nickname) apparently has a private train. This movie is utterly, utterly absurd.

-Bond says that sake is best served at 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Whatever.

-Tiger tells Bond that Moneypenny wants him because of his chest hair. Sean Connery does manage to look good whilst hairy. As a somewhat furry male, I can appreciate this. Then he quotes some made-up sounding Japanese proverb: "Bird not make nest in bare tree." Why the hell did he say it like that? It's not like he has a problem dropping articles.

-Tiger also calls one of his girls "sexiful." Often when my students invent words, they're so colorful I wish they were real ones. I wish "sexiful" was a real word.

-There's Tokyo Tower! Woo!

-Connery's pronunciation of Japanese words and names leaves much to be desired.

-There's a crane shot of Bond running from some sailor thugs on a rooftop at the Tokyo docks. I like crane shots a lot. This one is only okay, but still kind of nifty.

-Bond just magically seduced the evil chick. It was not convincing. Nevertheless, I wish I could do that.

-Bond just karate chopped a board in half! What can't this chest-hair possessing man not do!

-For the first half, this is easily the most absurd Bond movie. Then Q shows up, and makes it even more absurd. But, Q rocks, so it's okay. He gives Bond a miniature gun-laden helicopter, which is perhaps the most ridiculous Bond gadget yet. It's only slightly less goofy than the jet pack at the beginning of Thunderball.

-So, SPECTRE has a spacecraft that it uses to steal other, smaller spacecraft, which it subsequently hides within a secret Japanese volcano base. You'd think the nearby residents would notice all the spaceships constantly coming in to and going out of volcanoes. Now I'm just downright impressed with the audacity of this movie's absurdity.

-Blofeld just fed the evil chick to piranas. He must have a long line of applicants, what with all the SPECTRE members he's poisoned, set on fire, and fed to carnivorous fish over the course of the last few movies.

-An aerial shot of Himeji castle! I've totally been there! Himeji-jo has been in lots of movies, what with being big and impressive and all. I'm pretty sure that every time a director wants a Japanese castle in their movie, they get a few shots of Himeji.

-Ninjas! Tiger, the kimono-wearing head of the Japanese intelligence agency, has ninjas! So, I guess James Bond is going to team up with ninjas and attack the secret volcano base to solve the mystery of the missing spaceships. This sounds like something from fan fiction.

-Apparently Himeji in this movie is supposed to be a stand in for Tiger's ninja training school. They are very loud ninjas. A guy with a katana just hacked up some wooden posts and a straw dummy, then he flailed his sword around and screamed at the camera. His form sucked.

-Another katana guy. He subdued a bunch of dudes in a training battle. He's actually cool.

-Bond is going to "become a Japanese" and "become a ninja." Oh god...

-Bond is getting made up in order to pass as an Asian. I completely forgot about this, but the first time I saw this movie, I was drinking a lot. When all the makeup and stuff is done, Connery doesn't look the least bit Japanese. He looks like Sean Connery.

-An assassin just tried to poison Bond, but ended up killing the Japanese Bond girl instead. That sucks. She was way less annoying than the previous Bond girls.

-More ninjas. Being a ninja, according to You Only Live Twice, seems to be mainly yelling. Also, a guy just busted up a watermelon with his fist.

-Apparently as part of his cover, Bond has to go through the charade of passing as Japanese, and this includes having a Japanese wife. What the hell? Connery continues to look obviously non-Japanese.

-Bond and his "wife" seem to be getting along. 007 is breaking into the secret volcano base now. He just happened to have a special suction cup climbing suit on him so he can make like Spider Man on the walls. At first I was a little put out by this movie's absurdity, but now I just want more. I want it to be as ridiculous as possible.

-We finally get to see Blofeld's face in this movie. He's an ugly dude. Also, he'd sort of a unintimidating. Being short and having a high voice doesn't help his evil overlord image.

-Ninjas are storming the secret volcano base. Again, they are very loud ninjas.

-Blofeld just killed one of his underlings for no discernible reason.

-Okay the movie's over. Ninjas storm the base, shit blows up, Blofeld escapes, and the SPECTRE's volcano base explodes in a torrent of lava.

The movie was a bit of a disappointment for me- I wanted to watch it because I wanted to see lots of absurd depictions of Japan. There were a bit, but the Japanese absurdity was overshadowed by the general absurdity of the movie. This is a movie that includes space-based thievery, miniature helicopters, cigarette rockets, fake funerals, volcano lairs, secret, private trains, and pools of piranas. The politically incorrect cultural absurdity ultimately got buried under all of the gadgetry and genre ridiculousness.

I wonder how much of it came from Roald Dahl. The movie apparently has very little to do with the book upon which it's based, and I can imagine Mr. Dahl inventing all kinds of bizarre things (like carnivorous spaceships) with that wonderful, twisted mind of his. I wonder if he put it in just for laughs, throwing in the trapdoors and piranas just because he thought it was ridiculous. At least, I hope that's what happened.

A larger issue, though, is that I'm generally curious about how Japan is portrayed by and for Westerners. I've been away for a while, and I don't think I have a clear view, anymore, of this country's place in Western pop culture. It certainly does have a place- people think of Godzilla, manga, anime, and, of course, ninjas, all through a weirdly distorted lens. I've forgotten what the lens looks like, what the distortion looks like. Lover of pop culture that I am, I want to take another look at it with more accurate eyes.

The Inevitable Post About Lost in Translation

2008-05-22T13:22:00.005+09:00

Before I left for Japan, I watched Lost in Translation and loved it. After a year and a half of living in Japan and six months in the Tokyo area, I decided to give the movie another viewing. It's still good. What follows is a live blogging of sorts of me pausing the movie, writing something, and then unpausing:

-The film opens with Bob Harris (Bill Murray) staring in awe at Tokyo as he rides in the back of a cab. The cramped, huge neon walls are overpowering to him, and they are meant to be overpowering to us as viewers, as well. I can relate. When I first came to Tokyo, I shared that feeling of awe. I'm still in awe at it, really. But it's not alien. Murray sees it all as an alien landscape and it's shot as such. Even for many Japanese, Tokyo is an alien landscape. But it's amusing to see the place where I hang out presented in such a way.

-Murray in the elevator with the bored, tired, gray-suited salarymen is perfect in it's iconic-ness. There are plenty of times where I've been surrounded by gray-faced guys, all wearing suits, who are shorter than me.

-From her faxes, Bob's wife seems fairly passive-aggressive. I can't really blame him too much for cheating on her.

-Scarlett Johansson is cute as hell. Makes me wish she was in more good movies.

-Their hotel rooms are bigger than my apartment.

-Bill Murray's shower is short. When I first saw the movie, I thought that was exaggeration for comic effect. Now, I know that it's not.

-Oh, the infamous director/translator scene. I thought that knowing a bit of Japanese would make this scene more grating. Just the opposite, in fact. I've been told that what the director is actually telling Bob is that he wants him to imagine that he's in his house, he's with a good friend, and they're up very late. It's been a long day, they're having a quiet drink, and are letting all of the tension of the day go. At least that's what a friend of mine told me. The translator in this scene sort of comes across as a sadist, since she's obviously frustrating both the director and actor. Now I sort of want to try Suntory whiskey.

-Johansson is looking bewildered at the Tokyo train map. I've been there. There's a guy looking at pervy comics on the train! Happens every day.

-Charlotte (Johansson) says on the phone that she went to a shrine. She didn't. In the previous scene she's at a Buddhist temple. Shrines are Shinto.

-I forgot about the "Lip my stockings!" bit. I wouldn't have thought it funny two years ago, but now that Japan has turned me into a hollibre lascist, I can't help but laugh at L&R jokes.

-Charlotte is in Shibuya. Again, it's weird but fun to see my weekend meeting grounds portrayed as a psychedelic existential wonderground. Sure, Shibuya is precisely that, but it's sort of thrilling to think I hang out there! The crazy place with overabunance of overstimulation! That's where I do stuff!

-Bob comes across like kind of an ass with the photographer, and not too good at talking to people who have limited English skill. But, talking with folks who know only a bit of English is a skill in and of itself, and has to be learned. I remember learning how to do it, and the my own frustration at the process. I can summon up a little sympathy for Murray here, even amidst his ass-ness.

-The photographer tells Murray to act like 007 for the ad shoot, and says that prefers Roger Moore to Sean Connery. Didn't he like You Only Live Twice? It was the Bond in Japan movie, and it was a Connery film.

-It's sort of grating that the film goes out of its way to portray Charlotte's husband as whiny and stupid. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, per se, but his mispronounced and inappropriate "mushi-mushi" is hard to take. (Johansson kind of acts like a bitch to him, though, and in the next scene the self-help book she's listening to sounds like so much pablum, so she's not exactly a blameless wronged woman.) Same thing with the actress, Johansson's husband's friend, in the next scene. Coppola might as well have painted "This Character Is Stupid" on their foreheads and been done with it.

-I liked the ikebana scene. I've had plenty of moments where I literally didn't know how to talk to someone, yet they were friendly, helped me out, and showed me how to do something. The brief moment where the middle aged lady hands Johansson a flower stalk was really sweet, and reminded me of those moments where nothing is lost in translation, because you don't need translation.

-The taiko game that Johansson sees in the noisy arcade is actually a lot of fun. You get to bang on shit while listening to music, and I've honestly worked up a sweat and gotten blisters on that thing. The guitar game is less fun, I think. It's frustrating because actual guitar skills don't seem to play into it at all. The guy in the background with the light gun is overdoing it a little- his gun is recoiling. I've played plenty of shooter games, and none of the guns have kick to them, what with not being real guns and all.

-Are people really as dumb as Charlotte's husband and his friends? Please tell me no. Johansson, though, continues to appear on camera without pants. This pleases me.

-What does she want? What on earth does Charlotte want from her husband? Sure, he's kind of dumb, but where on earth does her dissatisfaction come from? Does she even know? Probably not. Painful to watch, really.

-Once Murray and Johansson get to the club with all of its attendant pyrotechnics and people, the movie does nicely convey the wonderful feeling that is an escape from ennui. Murray and Johansson have been puttering around their hotel for most of the movie, and Tokyo has, for the most part, been viewed from through their windows. They've been surrounded by the biggest city on earth, yet they've not done much with it.

-When I've felt depressed or whatever, it's remarkable how something as simple as going out can help out. Or, simply taking advantage of what's been there all the time. In the club, the characters discover that their ennui has been self-imposed, that escape has been available and outside their windows the whole time, and that they are allowed to be free of their unease. At least that's my reading on it. They cease grasping at their negativity and grasp the world around them instead. I'd call that a healthy and informed existential decision.

-I've never gotten chased out of a place and been pursued by a guy with a toy gun, but it looks like a lot of fun.

-I want the soundtrack to this movie. Especially if it has Bill Murray's karaoke rendition of What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding? The karaoke room they have looks ridiculously nice and expensive- I'd love to belt out some Elvis Costello in there.

-Tokyo Tower! Rainbow Bridge! Woo! Tokyo's neon lights are beautiful. They are hectic, chaotic, and consummeristic, yes, but flares of beauty nonetheless.

-Bob's call to his wife is painful. He obviously found joy in his new environment, found something with a spark of life, and wants to share it with the woman he loves. She could care less. Poor guy.

-The old guy (and the two ladies cracking up) in the hospital scene are obviously having fun at Murray's expense. Bob seems to be a good sport about it, and take it in stride. The old guy, by the way, is simply asking him how long he's been in Japan. Yes, stuff like this has happened to me. It's unlikely that the hospital wouldn't have an English speaking doctor for Charlotte, though. That part seemed a bit contrived.

-Cant' speak to the veracity of the strip club scene. I also can't say I'm not curious about them.

-Large, obnoxious trucks that roll through Shibuya carrying billboards and yelling ads- Yes, those are real.

-"The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you." Bob says this after Charlotte asks if "it gets easier." I appreciate this comment.

-I may be reading too much into this, but the two character's positions on the bed while they talk mirror their personalities and needs. Charlotte clings to a pillow, curls up, and looks for definition and safety. Bob splays out and turns his head away slightly, emphasizing that he wishes to know and care for himself, his body language mirroring his comment from a few moments ago.

-Fuji! For the second time in the movie, actually. It has to be damn clear to see it that well. Kyoto seems to be unusually empty when Charlotte visits, especially with the wide shot of the Heian shrine. But, I can appreciate what Coppola is trying to do, letting her character be alone and find herself amidst things of beauty. I regularly visit the normally busy Naritasan at night, so I can understand the feeling that she's going for, that feeling of discovery when you happen upon something larger than yourself, yet you are alone with it.

-Bob continues to suck at using simple English, but I can continue to relate. He also happens upon an obnoxious speaker truck for a Japanese politician. Yes, they are really like that and yes, they are annoying. Even Japanese people find them sort of insufferable.

-The TV program that Murray appears on is a real one, hosted by a real Japanese comedian who supposedly based his schtick and character on flamboyantly gay westerners. The same comedian, Takashi Fujii, is also something of a J-Pop star and appears in other shows, according to the ever-helpful Wikipedia. Yeah, Japanese TV is pretty much like this.

-It's interesting that Coppola paints the hotel singer, also, as sort of obnoxious. Bob again talks with his wife and fails to make an connection, and his morning with the singer seems to be somewhat empty and even irritating. Coupled with the "lip my stockings" woman from earlier, as well as the unsatisfying pieces of meat that are the strippers, all of the women that Bob interacts with come up profoundly short. Except for Charlotte. It seems that Coppola is saying that a truly good partner is one with whom you can share existential dilemmas with.

-Okay, I got a bit choked up at the end. Murray passes by the Tokyo cityscape, and we know that in a very real way the city has been good to him, and he's leaving it behind. When he says "okay," to the cab driver, we know that he's doing something difficult. He's leaving behind Charlotte and Japan, leaving behind an experience that has profoundly changed him. He's going to miss the place, and miss it badly, when he leaves. I got choked up in a sort of recognition, because I'm going to feel the same way whenever I leave. I don't know when that's going to be yet, but leaving behind a place of insight, leaving behind Japan, is going to hurt. It will be good, yes, but the ending of the movie just drove home how damn much I'm going to miss this place.

I didn't really expect it, but I actually liked the movie far more after I watched it the second time. I say this because the whole movie is about culture shock, the pain and awkwardness of adaptation, and the thrill and weirdness of being in a foreign environment. Sure, it's odd to see one's own neighborhood presented as that foreign environment, but I was able to relate extraordinarily well to the two characters. Their experience of otherness is something that had me thinking "Wow! That's totally me! Woo!" throughout the movie.

Something else that I thought about the movie, though, was what it says about relationships. I got a very strong message from the film that love relationships, for all their wonderfulness, are not existential panaceas. In so much pop culture and and whatnot, the appearance of beginning of a loving relationship is seen as, well, a "happy ending." The two lovers confess their love, kiss, and that's it. The end. Life is complete. It's the Disney princess view of the universe.

Lost in Translation acts as a rebuttal to that view. As apparently childish as the abovementioned Disney princess view of life and love is, it's a perniciously common outlook, and needs to be smacked around a bit.

Bob and Charlotte are not solutions for each other. They don't "complete" each other, and their encounter does not act as a cessation of personal struggles. They do help ease each others pain, but their departure at the end of the movie, particularly Bob's reflectiveness in the taxi, establishes that their issues are still individual issues, that they must still work on things internally. What I loved about the movie, is that Bob and Charlotte are excellent partners for each other because they walk along side each other, they each attempt to understand the other and make each other better as individuals. This is a very different view of loving relationships than the Disney princess view- instead, a relationship is composed of two already complete units who aide and struggle alongside each other.

Lastly, any discussion of the film would be incomplete without addressing the movie's supposed racism. As someone who lives in Japan, I can say that Lost in Translation is pretty spot-on for the most part. Yes, the director scene is over the top, but if a Japanese director were to make a movie about, say, two Japanese people experiencing New York as a foreign environment, and New York in that movie was portrayed as Tokyo is in Lost in Translation, I'd be fine with that. In fact, I want to see a movie like that. Japan and the Japanese are portrayed specifically as foreign, but they're not portrayed negatively. As I already mentioned, the experience of foreignness is a very real and important one, and in my own life I've come to see interaction with the unfamiliar as something of real value.

Anyway, I'm hoping Coppola makes another good movie. The Virgin Suicides was also quite good, but I heard that Marie Antoinette left something to be desired. Here's hoping she can pull it off again.

A Question For You...

2008-05-22T01:05:00.002+09:00

I'm contemplating changing the name and URL of this blog. I've outgrown the title, I think. Actually, I doubt that I was ever as caustic or mercenary as the title suggests.

So, I want to ask you guys who read this thing-

1- Should I change the name of this blog, or just live with what I decided on a year and a half ago? Or, would this just mess up people's links and RSS feeds?

2- If I do change the name, what should it be? I'm open to suggestions.

Looking forward to your input.

Tokyo on Any Given Sunday

2008-05-12T10:19:00.004+09:00

I get off at Tokyo station and look around for the logo, I know it's on a building somewhere, and get turned around for a few minutes because of all the construction. They're restoring the Marunouchi side of the station, the nice looking side, and I lost my bearings for a moment amidst all the white walls of construction.

There it is, a big M. I'd gone in the wrong direction. I turn around, head past the same stretch of construction, find the building with the big M on the side, and go upstairs to Maruzen, a store that I know has foreign books aplenty. I went there in Okayama, but haven't been to one in Tokyo. Other foreign stores, yes, but not yet Maruzen.

The inside is crowded and slick, like some kind of hybrid of a Barnes and Noble and a Fry's. The foreign books are upstairs, up four narrow escalators, up on the same floor where there's an overpriced cafe and a gallery of sorts, and the place is awash with foreigners like me and Japanese thumbing through TOEIC study guides. A few parents have kids with them, and I wonder if they have aspirations of making their offspring bilingual.

I wander about and take it all in, browse, consider some new magazines, and buy two books. I catch an express Chuo line at Tokyo, and get to Shinjuku in less than twenty minutes. The Yamanote line takes me one stop to Harajuku from there. It's sunday, and I wonder who will be out in Harajuku.

Not much of anyone. There are a few Free Hug people, a few people dressed up, but for the most part, there's not much of anything or anyone by the main expanse near Harajuku station. It's gray and threatening rain. Perhaps the goths are scared of rain.

At the entrance to Yoyogi Park, the Tokyo Rockabilly Club is doing what they do every Sunday- gyrating, breakdancing, showing off their moves and leather pants. As usual, they're being photographed and filmed. I respect these guys' tenacity and dedication. I respect that they're weird and tatooed in a country where it means something to be weird and tatooed.

Into Yoyogi park, the bands are spaced out. Every hundred feet or so, drum sets and guitars. One singer is wearing this green plaid suit that made me wish I had a camera, but I didn't have a camera. Instead I could only admire the perfect ska look this guy was pulling off, even though none of the rest of the band was dressed up, even though their music sounded nothing like ska. But this guy could have been in the Specials or the Toasters. I want a suit like that, but I'm not punk-skinny enough to pull it off. This dude was punk-skinny. Drugs are hard to come by in Japan, and it's amazing that he got that way without heroin.

Bands, bands, bands, each demanding and getting, for a song or two, my attention. One of them had a chick drummer. I kind of have a thing for chick drummers. Can't really explain it. I don't care if Janet Weiss is forty or fifty or however old she is, but she's the ultimate chick drummer and that makes her hot regardless of age.

One band didn't have a drummer, or guitarist, or singer, or anything. They had amps, though, and they had an air drummer, two air guitarists, and a lip syncher. And, they air drummed, air guitared, and lip synched damn well. Not because they were skilled, because they weren't, but, but because they gave a shit and enjoyed the hell out of what they were doing. They jumped around the played the fuck out of their nonexistent air instruments. They got a huge crowd, charming just about everyone with their lack of talent and excess of enthusiasm. They had lots of girls watching them, and I thought "These guys could very well get laid by not playing the guitar." If they did, that would be damn impressive.

Turns out there was a gigantic Thai festival going on that day. It looked cool, so I went in. At the entrance there were a whole bunch of people holding pictures of corpses and devastation. I wondered if they were protesters or something. I stopped for a moment, and tried to read their signs, which were all in Japanese. It's hard reading a foreign language when someone is waving it about and you can't get a good look at it, but I was able to recognize a few katakana words, and realized that they were collecting money for relief for the cyclone that hit Burma.

Going in, the whole place was a panoply of spicy smells, with all manner of curry and noodles being proffered by myriad stalls. I had a bite to eat, walked about, and looked into some of the shops selling batik and whatnot, and eventually found the main stage. I got myself an Asahi from one of the everpresent beer vendors, walked up a street bridge so I could get a look at the stage, and watched for a bit.

A solitary pop singer (whom I assume was Thai, since she was sining in a language that wasn't Japanese) was dancing about and singing to a backing tape. In her thigh-high boots and leopard print cape thing, she looked sort of like a dominatrix/superhero hybrid, but was somehow unthreatening. I guess she seemed unthreatening because she was all alone on the stage with her backing tape, and was trying, trying to get the crowd into it. I suppose that she didn't speak Japanese, because in between songs she talked to the crowd in English. She tried to encourage people to dance. She asked the crowd if they could dance, and said "raise your hand if you can dance." A few hands went up. She said that the people who could dance should dance. The pop singer went into a a song, and no one really danced. I felt bad for her. She was trying. She was really trying to get that sort of performance-energy going. She had a huge stage and sexy thigh-highs, and couldn't get it going. Elsewhere in the park, the guys without instruments were succeeding wildly at charming passers-by, and the pop singer's efforts were frustrated. The energy wasn't there. The energy was in the crowded stalls where people were ordering noodles and in the park with the ska-looking guy, and in the hands of the guys who didn't hold instruments, but it wasn't on the huge stage. There was no way that crowd would have started dancing, not even if they were encouraged to do it in Japanese.

Then I noticed that the guy in front of me had a rabbit. He was cradling it in his arms, just like it was a baby, and had dressed it in this little silk rabbit-shirt thing. He and a girl were trying to feed it a carrot. The thing was white and furry, and for all the world they looked like a mother and father fawning over and feeding a newborn. But the newborn was furry, white, red-eyed, and twitched its ears as it ate the carrot. The fact that it was wearing a silk shirt made the rabbit look all the more like a kid. Like a practice kid or something. They were feeding it the carrot just like you'd give a bottle to a baby. I was a little weirded out.

Continuing through the park the Thai festival thinned out and the park gave way to the usual Sunday crowd of drummers and tap dancers that populate Tokyo's weird, green living room every Sunday. The big clock said I had somewhere to be. It said I had twenty minutes until I was supposed to meet people in Shibuya. I was enjoying myself, with all the bands and the dancers and even the creepy rabbit guy, but I figured that I'd do what the clock said, move on to Shibuya.

Walking towards the station saw a pretty impressive goth girl. She looked like a pile of pink silk, like she was wearing eight dresses at once. Her whole form was a mountain of ribbons, bows, lace, and frills, all varying shades of pink and white, and her face was obscured by several bonnet/hat things that were pinned all over her hair. The whole form of her looked like some silken lump, as if Louis XIV had dressed up Jabba the Hutt. She didn't look good or attractive or any of that, but she was interesting and grabbed my attention. She must have been sweating horribly in that pile of clothing.

Met people in Shibuya, outside of the station, and we went to this basement type place and saw a metal show. They frisked up before going into the club. I thought that was cute- it's like they were trying to be really, really hardcore. We go in, the place is crowded, dark, and smoky, and we get drinks. I bum a smoke from someone and think to myself that I should really stop bumming smokes from people, but it's such an easy way to be social and start up conversations. I don't smoke, actually. Used to. but I don't, really, anymore.

Then a friend of mine and I notice that there are a bunch of kids up front. Before the show starts, the uncreative DJ is playing American radio songs from a few years ago fairly loudly, and there's a bunch of random psychedelic stuff being projected on a few screens. And, there are a bunch of kids jumping up and down, kid-dancing, right in the front. Who the hell brings a gaggle of kids to a dark, smoky, booze-filled club where they frisk you before you go in? The kids seemed to be having fun, though, jumping up and down while the DJ was spinning Limp Bizkit. Back in Portland, if I remember correctly, you'd get jeered by disproving hipsters if you played Limp Bizkit in a club. Here, I guess, no one cares about that.

The band starts up, and I think, what the hell, I'll go to the front and rock out. I'm up there with a friend of mine, another six foot tall white dude, and we end up slamming into each other and chest bumping while the band chugs away. This scraggly Japanese dude joins in, and we have a good, rocking, violent time of it. One of the singers (there were three singers) who looks like an emo/goth type says "I love you guys!" in English, so we say "We love you too!" in English right back at him, and the crowd seems to appreciate that. The band rocked. I'd seen them once before, and they were okay the first time. They were on this time. Really on. I was covered in stinky metal-sweat by the end of it.

Tokyo. An awesome place. An awesome place to wander about and ride trains in, to explore and see and peer into. At times it seems a random mess of chaos. At times it seems a giant, robotic machine. I guess both descriptions are right. On Sundays it's a riot, if go to the right places, a city bursting with things that are just downright wild and interesting. I couldn't live my life here- too overstimulating, too much. But for now, the rush of myriad sight and noise is awesome to behold.

Xian and Huashan: In and Around the Ancient Capital

2008-05-11T12:33:00.002+09:00

China, as you may have noticed, gave me a lot to think about. Don't worry- this is my last post about it.

Xian was the ancient capital of China, and is one of the few cities that still has a fair amount of old architecture about, in particular, a bit over fourteen kilometers of really impressive city walls. The city itself is accessible and nicely walkable, with all kinds of nifty things to see inside the main downtown area. The city is also home to the terracotta warriors, the immense clay army that was unearthed in the seventies.

I don't have any mind-splitting revelations to share about the city other than to recommend it as a travel spot. In the city center one can see the twin structures of the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, two wonderful older buildings. In each, we managed to take in some performances of Chinese classical music. In the Bell Tower there was a bell, zither, chime, and flute show, and in the Drum Tower (as one would imagine) we saw a percussion performance. Both were impressive.

We also walked around the city's walls, tried Tai Chi (which is harder than it looks), saw a Taoist temple, went clubbing, and strolled about Xi'an's Muslim quarter where we saw the city's large Great Mosque. The place was quite serene, and it was fascinating to see the various stone tablets that were a mix of Chinese and Arabic.

And speaking of stone tablets, I went to a rather nice stone tablet museum, and saw what was billed as the world's heaviest library (at least according to Lonely Planet). The place was nice, and included the breadth of what are considered the "must haves" of Chinese literature. There was Confucius, of course, and Mencius and a big stony copy of the I-Ching (complete with carved hexagrams). There were temple records, monks' narratives, historical records of China's interaction with foreigners (including Nestorian Christians- that was interesting). There were lots of commentaries and additions to Confucius, as well as plenty of poetry. Most interesting, there was a huge, stone dictionary, thought to be one of the first.

Walking about, I thought that the stone tablets were really cool looking, but really impractical. Like, if you wanted to look up a word, would you have to go to the big, stony dictionary and walk up to the place where it was? So, I was perplexed by their impracticality until I came to the middle of the museum, where one of the staffers had spread a scroll over a tablet, and was dabbing it with ink.

Then I realized they were essentially medieval printing presses. A scroll was spread over the stone and the paper was hammered flat onto the tablet so that the paper sunk slightly into the depressions, i.e., the carved characters. The printer then struck the whole thing with flat, hammer-like tool that had been covered in ink. The end result was that the characters were uninked, and stood out in white, and the rest of the page was black. Sort of like making a rubbing of a tombstone. It was interesting go from seeing the tablets as something interesting, but impractical, to then realizing that they were actually immensely practical. They were used for mass production of scrolls.

I walked around a bit more, trying to recognize familiar characters on the rocky surfaces. Every so often I'd see one. It also occurred to me there that the Chinese language has been deliberately changed in the 20th century. In an attempt to cultivate literacy, the government simplified many of the characters, making contemporary characters quite different from the old style writing that is still in use in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. Several people were milling about trying to read the things- one father appeared to be quizzing his daughter on the characters, and they both laughed in the face of the linguistic challenge.

We headed out and saw the famed and vaunted terracotta warriors, which were really not all that exciting. They were impressive, to be sure, but they weren't exciting. What was sort of odd, really, was that they were, as Kori said, "a fantastic waste of wealth." The first Qin emperor, the man for whom China is named, had them built for his tomb, the army with which he hoped to conquer the battlefields of the afterlife.

The construction of the army took thousands of people, tons of clay, gallons of paint, and years of effort. The whole thing was an immense undertaking of engineering and aesthetics, and when it was all finished the fruits of so many people's labors and the purchase of so much money was put into the ground and covered with dirt. The achievement was literally buried, serving no one.

The stony soldiers seemed the ultimate in decadence. The Roman emperors might have wasted money on feasts and orgies, but at least they had fun with their wealth. The Pharohs spent the gold of their treasuries and the lives of their citizens to make the pyramids, but at least those were something that all could see, that broadcasts their decadent achievement across the skyline. Louis XIV built Versailles, but at least all could see and perversely admire his gilded wealth.

The Qin emperor, though, bested them all. His immense, kiln-fired army was something that his corpse alone was intended to appreciate, mouldering inside his slave-dug palace of a tomb. Such opulence and selfishness, I think, hasn't really been matched throughout history.

Then, there was Huashan.

Huashan is billed as one of China's Five Sacred Mountains, and it was the literal high point of our trip.

(Oh god, I just made an elevation pun. If I were really, sorry, I'd delete it. But I'm not sorry. I'm just going to let it sit there, taunting you.)

Arriving at the base of the mountain at around eleven, I was already a bit tired. Along a few nifty people we'd met at our hostel, we intended to walk all night to the summit, and watch the sunrise, a rather popular thing to do. So popular, in fact, that the place was rather crowded that night with lots of shouting, grunting, climbing people, and various water/food stands around the way.

It was fairly boring for the first hour and a half. The sky was pretty (it had been a while since I'd gotten a good look at the stars) and the air was nice, but it wasn't particularly exciting. That all changed, once the nice, level paths of the mountain turned into these rocky staircase/ladder things with chains to hold onto the side. I felt myself waking up, energized and interested in it all. Then my energy flagged, then I was interested again.

One of our travel companions mentioned that at one of the more arduous bits of elevation gain, there were lots of people cursing in different languages. Apparently there was cursing in a few Chinese dialects, two people with us from Europe were cursing in their languages, and I was saying "motherfucker" with just about every step up the thing. It was awesome.

A detail of note about the mountain- the whole thing was covered in locks and red strips of fabric. The locks, apparently, have different sorts of messages written on them, and people buy them from vendors and leave them on the mountain as token of good luck and whatnot. The result being that several areas are festooned in metal and red, which is quite the cool effect.

So, we continued up various stairs, ladders, chains, paths, etc., until we got to the top a bit after four in the morning. At that point, my various muscles and body parts were quivering in interesting ways. We rested, and waited for the sunrise. It was really sort of anticlimactic. First there was some smog. Then there was bright smog. Then the bright smog had a little circular thing in it. But, the sunrise wasn't the point of the trip. The trip was the point of the trip.

Going down I felt a sort of high and awakeness. All of my tiredness was gone, for the time being, and I was sort of active and relaxed at the same time. We ignored the cable car which would have taken us to the base of the mountain, and instead made our way down on foot.

Descending was fascinating. During the night, we were not able to see much except the path in front of us. We weren't able to see, for instance, the huge drops, cliff sides, narrow paths, and immense steepnesses around us. So, as we went down, we thought to ourselves "Holy shit- we climbed that?" Personally, I'm sort of afraid of heights, but this particular excursion seemed to help a lot with that. I knew already that I was perfectly capable of climbing up the various ladders and stairs, so down wouldn't be a problem, right? In any case, confronting my own fear was a lot of fun, and the view on the way down was stunning.

We got back, and were too tired to sleep, too hungry to eat.

And that's it. I did have another day on my own in Shanghai, after that, and Kori went to Guilin for a few days. In Shanghai, I walked about, went to the Shanghai Museum (which had an ancient Olympics exhibit in addition to the obvious Chinese art), and did a bit of shopping. I'd recommend China. Obviously, your experience and such will vary, but I personally found it to be the most eye-opening trip I'd ever taken. I'd never been to a developing country before, and before this I'd only ever been to the U.S., Canada, and Japan.

I already have a great deal of wanderlust (that's how I ended up in Japan in the first place) but now I'm pretty determined to travel more. Later this year- Korea.

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Shanghai: Pictures of Dynamism

2008-05-11T11:49:00.005+09:00

So here, finally, are some pictures of Shanghai (see below). The smog was fairly incredible on our first day, as you can see. The bamboo is from a park we found in downtown Shanghai, and the traditional architecture is from a touristy shopping area in old Shanghai. There are a few pictures of the quite agreeable French Concession, and some night pictures of Shanghai's lit up downtown.

The reality of China's development didn't really hit me until I was walking about at night. Seeing the giant Gucci ads lit up in moneyed splendor, the neon of consumption glowing in the dark while red flags hung from every other lamppost was fairly incredible. It could have been Tokyo's Ginza or Chicago's Magnificent Mile. It could have been anywhere in the world where bills disappear into registers and luxuries are fitted into shopping bags. I don't mean that as a bag thing, at all. I'm all for the preservation of culture and whatnot, but the fact that those red flags were no longer a barrier to Pizza Hut and Dolce and Gabana gave me a weird sense of hope.

Let's face be honest here- We all, on a certain level, like consumer culture. We benefit from it, enjoy it, and pour money into it. As much as liberals like myself complain about it, I don't think that consumption is a bad thing. I think an excess of it is, and in America we see that all to often. But then, an excess of anything is a bad thing.

The point is, though, why shouldn't the Chinese enjoy what we enjoy? Westerners are all too happy to drink up Starbucks, and why shouldn't the Chinese have the same privileges? Who are we to deny them that or claim that the trade with or development of China is a form of destruction? There is far more to China than its government, and if the people there can't vote, then at least they should be able to get a latte and go to Hooters.

China does need to democratize. Unquestionably. The fact that over a billion people live in a totalitarian society is a travesty, but at least its a totalitarian society that has changed for the better. It's not like North Korea, a place defined by static. China, and particularly Shanghai, seems defined by dynamism. If the society, government, and nation can accept malls and McDonald's, then I'm hopeful for other changes.

Anyway, a few pictures. Right now, Kori (who gets more vacation days than me) is still in China in the south. But, if you want to see some really excellent pictures check out her blog, as she got herself a big, sexy camera before our trip.

I can't decide whether I take pictures because I think of them as worthwhile in and of themselves, or as illustration for what I write. Oh, the aesthetic ponderings.

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Shanghai: "I am not now, nor have I ever been..."

2008-05-08T10:41:00.005+09:00

Yes, that's a statue of Marx and Engels. It's in a rather nice park in Shanghai which we found around dusk. There were several old people doing Tai Chi, and it was threatening to rain, though it never did. A younger me would have called them heroes. Now, they seem to be only stone-carved failed romantics.

Back in high school, at the beginning of my political development, I got this notion that Communism was sort of cool. I think that lots of young liberals go through this. They are fascinated with the easy solutions that Marxism seems to offer, with the stark alternative that it gives in the face of American style capitalism. In my particular case, I remember that Portland schools were going through a spate of trouble. A series of ballot initiatives had cut property taxes, thus defunding education throughout the city. Teachers were laid off, programs were cut. I gave up playing the trombone (which I'd done in middle school) because my high school had cut its music program. My father, a teacher, was able to inform me about all sorts of very unjust cuts that happened throughout the district.

At fifteen years old, this was one of the first issues that effected me personally that I knew about. I already knew about nuclear weapons and global warming, but the directness of school funding was something new to me. I got angry. Very angry. I got angry at all of the people who could be so completely heartless as to cut property taxes. How could they? How could they be so selfish, so short-sighted? How could they be such, such...

(I searched for the word...)

Pigs.

How could they be such pigs. Selfish, awful, capitalist pigs. Pigs who want to take away my school, my teachers. Pigs who took away my trombone. Pigs who took away my father's coworkers. Pigs who did it to enrich themselves. If this was fruits of capitalism, I thought, then to hell with it as a system. Tax those fuckers. Take from them. Dismantle the estates. Break them apart. Give me my school back. Give me my trombone. Let my father's coworkers back in. If capitalism cannot offer those things, than surely, surely (so my angry young mind thought) than surely its opposite can.

Peace, land, bread.

I marched in a few different demonstrations throughout the city, and thought that our shouting and waving would change something. I likened it to revolutionary fervor, thought of myself as one of those lantern-jawed peasants following Lenin. No, I thought of myself as Lenin. He seemed to be able to turn personal anger, personal charisma, into waves of people and change. I wanted that power. I wanted to do what the Communist kitsch said Lenin could do. I wanted my emotions to break apart the estates, to give everyone peace, land, and bread.

Of course, intellectually, I knew that all sorts of awful things had happened in the Soviet Union, but I made the mental excuse of blaming them on Stalin. Stalin was never ideological. Stalin was about Stalin. Stalin would have been awful no matter what politics he employed. He was a corruption, an traitor, a distorter. I thought of the kitschy purity of Lenin, and imagined that as an ideal. If only Trotsky had succeeded Lenin, I thought. If only that madman Stalin hadn't ruined everything. But it would have been bad any way. Lenin was not a democrat, neither was Trotsky. There would have been corruption suppression no matter what.

Despite my mental excuses, blaming everything on Stalin, I continued to have a sort of Communist-lite streak throughout high school and college. My freshman year, I had a poster of Che on my dorm room wall. I'm not sure if that was meant ironically or not.

It was all a young man's attempt at radical chic. I wanted to be edgy, interesting, and passionate. Like so many others like me, I incorporated red stars and Mr. Guevara into that. There was a reason that Rage Against the Machine were so popular. I was part of that reason. I began to drift away from it in college. As a political science and philosophy student, I had to read more Marx then I really cared to, and thought that a lot of the systems he constructed were interesting, but not the most accurate.

Despite that, my attitude about "pigs" persisted. Cut up the swine, I thought. Bring to heel the rich, the corporations, the bloated oligarchs who are ruining America. Crush their gilded culture, and god damn anyone who tries to sell me anything. Money, the getting of money, the pursuit of money, the attraction to profit, the desire enrich oneself in any way, was a filthy, sick thing. Better to die for others than live for yourself.

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. But you get the idea: High school/college student liberal pretension, passion, and anger taken a little to far. Throw in my antireligious attitudes with that, and you've got the makings of an unreasonable young man.

My ideas have been changing for years. I'd thrown out the Che poster years ago, and at my current job I primarily teach, but I also sell things. I ask students whether or not they want to continue with lessons after their contracts are finished, and I also recommend textbooks to people. Initially, I thought that it was extremely awful that I'd ever ask students to spend money. I got over it, but that's another post.

Fast forward, years later, to the crowded streets of Shanghai. (This post is about being in China, remember?)

Everywhere, on the main tourist and commercial thruways, on the Bund, on street corners, people tried to acquire our money. Beggars did. Scammers did. But, most of all, hawkers did.

"Bag? Watch?" They said.

There they were, approaching us, using a handful of English expressions. Sometimes they held out a handful of watches. Sometimes it was simply a card with photographs of merchandise. Sometimes it was nothing at all, simply the cry of “Bag! Watch!”

"No thank you."

"T shirt? DVD?"

And so on. In the busiest areas, I'd put them at about three or so minutes apart. Walking by any shop, eager salespeople would try to get us to come inside.

Initially, I responded quite badly to this. I loathed it, in fact. I wished that the hawkers would shut the hell up. The latent anti-selling sentiments in me fired up. These people shamelessly attempting to get money by selling me (probably fake) stuff. God damn anyone who tried to sell me anything. Money, the getting of money, the pursuit of money, the attraction to profit, the desire enrich oneself in any way, is a filthy, sick thing. So said the unreasonable young man, still buried a big in my mind.

I talked about this with Kori. My emotional gut reaction, my gut reaction that had been shaped by years of radical chic and anticapitalism, my gut reaction that wanted to cut up the estates and tax the rich into oblivion, my gut reaction had came into being from attending Nader rallies and hanging out at radical bookstores in Portland, my gut reaction said this: The seller is a predator. They who would separate a person from their resources is a wolf. The companies, powers, and salesmen in this world are something to be on guard against.

Do I believe this? No. But I felt it. It's really annoying to feel things that one does not believe. It bugs the shit out of Kori. I try to, as much as possible, feel the things that I believe, not otherwise. It's difficult, but I consistently succeed at this.

"How disempowering for you you as a buyer," she replied.

I hadn't really thought of it like that.

When you grow up and shape your politics as devoutly anticapitalist, you don't think about buyers having any power. You don't imagine the spending of money as any kind of act of influence. Money, you think, is taken from the masses, not given by the masses. Money must be held onto. Money is the most coveted part of you, and must be protected.

How disempowering for us as buyers.

Her response prompted a great deal of introspection. These people were not pigs. They were not predators. These were people in a developing country, one that had been ravaged by Communism and suppression. Shanghai was allowed to develop in a fairly capitalist manner, and it had made the city rich. They were trying, as best they could, to make their own lives better amidst all the wealth that was around them, and would probably remain beyond them.

And, one of the most obvious signs of wealth around them, was us. Two white people, two obvious foreigners, traveling in China. Kori and I both make middle class Tokyo salaries, enough money to have fun on a consistent basis in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Enough money to travel to China.

These people would have been idiots not to approach us. We were the ones who could most easily afford their merchandise. Their prices, even if they were inflated, even if they were expensive by Chinese standards, were ridiculously cheap compared to what we would have paid in Tokyo. I bought two shirts in China, and paid less than ten dollars for each one.

Really, I was the one who was in charge in these interactions. I was the one with the money, I was the one who made the decisions about where it went. I was not being preyed upon, rather, I was being courted, and I was perfectly able to say "no," when I wanted to. After a while, these people just seemed desperate, and I tried to feel a bit of compassion for them even as they annoyed me, even as I turned them down.

The models of anticapitalism, anti-selling, anti-money that I'd had as an unreasonable young man seemed quite silly at that point. There, walking through a country that is still nominally communist, I made peace with the fact that I don't really mind capitalism at all.

The truth is, I like to buy things. I like it when things are sold cleverly or well. I like to spend money. I enjoy a lot of the stuff that supposed "pigs" would.

Now, I do generally dislike consumerism, and I'm in favor of stuff like socialized medicine and adequate funding for public works. I don't mind taxing the rich more than the middle class, and I still consider myself to be quite liberal. But, I'm not ideological anymore. The unreasonable young man is gone. The last bits of him, with red flags blowing in the wind, were left in China.

Kori asked me what Marx would have thought of the Soviet Union or China. I thought about it, and said that I thought he'd have been appalled. Marx was a privileged man, and had some fairly muddy ideas about human nature. He was a romantic and a philosopher, and I think his heart was in the right place. His philosophy was appealing because ultimately, it's rather simple. I think that calling Marx "wrong" misses the point. I prefer to think of him as clouded by emotion and shortsighted.

I wonder how the man carved into that statue would have reacted to the hawkers on the streets of Shanghai. I imagine him dismissing them as petty bourgeois or clouded by false consciousness. I can't imagine him seeing them as they are: People trying as best they can to get by.

It's a curious experience, moderating and changing one's mind. There's a sort of high to it, though, a sort of liberation. Why tie myself to, or apologize for, things I don't believe? The strictures of ideology are something that I'm happy to have left upon the streets of Shanghai.

Zhouzhuang: Floating Temples and the Laughing Buddhas

2008-05-07T18:20:00.004+09:00

The following day Kori and I made our way to Zhouzhuang, a river village about an hour away from Shanghai. We'd arranged to join a tour with our hostel, and it was nice to have transportation taken care of, but following around a tour guide who didn't speak English in a crowded area wasn't the most fun thing in the world. She showed us some interesting historical buildings, but we had far more fun (and saw cooler stuff) when we walked about on our own.

There was a French family there who didn't speak any Mandarin, and I was a bit glad that we weren't the only oblivious foreigners.

In the back of the village we found a rather impressive array of temples. They were built on the water and seemingly floating, connected by bridges and walkways. It was precisely the sort of thing that you'd put on a postcard advertising China. I was impressed.

Walking about, we unexpectedly happened upon a giant Buddha statue. My impulse was to call it a "Daibutsu," but that's a Japanese term. I sort of like devotional art, to tell the truth. I like finding the signifiers and repeated images that show up- the Amida Buddha (who's at Kamakura) usually has his hands folded a certain way when seated, for example. Sort of like how the Old Testament Joseph is usually depicted wearing his nattily colored coat. I like noticing that kind of stuff.

Anyhow, I got a huge kick out of the temples on the water. Later, our bus drove us to a park where there was both this creepy/cool side room with various statues of Taoist deities, and two larger temples that featured some extremely fat Buddha statues. The yellow paint was peeling, and the smoke of the candles added to the already dusty sunlight. In the leaves and the bright heat, it was quite serene.

I was sort of curious about this. Most Buddhas are portrayed as ethereal and skinny looking, but every so often you see one with a huge gut, man boobs, and in the midst of a belly laugh. He looks more likely to chomp down on buffalo wings and watch football than meditate. You'd think that Buddhism, being into the whole "self-denial" thing, would frown on the acquisition of man-boobs.

Anyway, I had no idea where the image came from until just now when I searched for "laughing Buddha" on Wikipedia and found this. I also wondered about the possible interactions between Taoism and Buddhism in China. The temples were really close to each other, so I wondered about crossover. People frequent both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples here in Japan, so I wonder about a sort of equivalent syncretism in China.

You may have noticed by now that I've developed an interest in Asian religion. It was sort of inevitable, really. I studied philosophy in college and am generally interested in belief systems, even those that I don't subscribe to. The sheer panoply of stuff that I've never heard of in Asia, the gods, holy figures, and other such phenomena that I don't know about is a veritable toy box. I have a whole new continent's worth of mythology and philosophy to find out about. Pretty sweet.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the village, surrounding town, and the temples on the water.

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Shanghai: First Impressions of the Middle Kingdom

2008-05-04T17:05:00.003+09:00

For Japan's spring holidays, Kori and I went to China. I'm still in China as I write this, actually, at a hostel in Xian. This is just my first post about the trip.

The street near our hostel was a well-used one. It seemed to be near a residential district and a local shopping area. The initial impression that I got was one that was in accord with my preconceived notions about what China would be like: Old motorbikes with bits and things tied to the back, vendors of street food with their stalls awash in smoke. A grey sense of smog, myriad smells mixing. And everywhere, the sound of car horns punctuating itself through a wall of ambient noise.

This was the China that I (I'm reluctant to admit) imagined. I imagined poverty, disorder, and an assault of sounds and smells. I imagined crumbling, Maoist era apartments and faceless bits of Communist style architecture. I knew, of course, that this was not all that China had to offer. I knew that the decimation of the Cultural Revolution was something of the past, that China is rapidly climbing out of poverty, that it is "Communist" now mostly in a nominal sense. But nevertheless, my expectations persisted, a bit. And, walking out on that first Shanghai morning, they were confirmed, a bit.

China is still, it seems, full of poverty and smoke. There are indeed crumbling apartments and Communist monuments. But I'd find far more than just that.

We made our way to the downtown area and began to stroll around a bit. Here, my preconceived notions began to fall apart. Of course, I knew that Shanghai was a rapidly developing city and filled with all kinds of consumerism. The main boulevard from People's Square was lined with all manner of stores and buyables, the trappings of capitalism extending outward from a park with an obviously Communist moniker.

Walking about, I was impressed by the number of hawkers and scammers who approached us. I'm going to talk about the hawkers specifically in my next post. The scammers, though, I was sort of surprised by. Not because they existed (Kori and I had done a bit of research beforehand on common scams in China), but because they were all running the same scam. Groups of young people would approach us and, in English, say hello, ask where we were from, and then announced that they were art students.

To the best of my knowledge, here's how the scam works: Seemingly friendly young people walk up to tourists, tell them that they're art students and are having an "exhibition." If you go along with them, they take you to a room where they show you some cheap reproductions, and then essentially hold you captive while they force you to buy a reproduction for some ridiculous amount of money.

This sounds like a viable scam, really. A few of the "students" really did seem like they were just being friendly, and had I not been acquainted with the scam ahead of time, I may very well have wound up in a dicey situation. One instance really surprised me: We'd gone into a department store to use the bathrooms. I was waiting on a bench for Kori when this girl started talking to me and about a minute later metioned that "art student" thing. I was surprised that even at department store bathrooms, these people are at work. I guess it makes sense- bathrooms are a high-traffic area. But again, I was seriously surprised that they all seemed to be running the same game. Surely enterprising scammers could think up something else.

We walked about, made our way to the Bund and back to People's Square, and I had bubble tea for the second time in my life and decided that, this time, I liked it. Inevitably, we couldn't help but compare the place to Tokyo. Shanghai is another large Asian city, and seeing the familiar, semi-readable Chinese characters on everything made the signage and labels of the place seem a bit less foreign. The city, though, seemed far more relaxed than Tokyo. Few places, can hope to match the hectic spirit of Japan's capital, and that's probably a good thing. The whole place was louder, dirtier, and for those odd reasons, seemingly calmer than Tokyo.

I can understand (sort of) why some Japanese claim that they dislike China. I don't want to give their ethnocentricism, however mild a form it might take, any credence, but Shanghai seemed like precisely that place that would intimidate and muddle many of the people I've met back in Japan. Kori told me that one of her friends called it the "home-schooled country," and I think that's amusingly accurate. Japanese seem very comfortable and safe inside Japan, where their own rules and language rule the day. The outside, though, is often referred to as dangerous or intimidating. And, it is. Shanghai did seem dangerous, and did intimidate me. But I liked that. Living in Narita is very comfortable, and sometimes I feel like I'm going a little soft. Being in Shanghai jolted me out of that, and I liked it. Stepping among dirt and noise and contradictions reminded me that I'm not soft, that I don't need or want to be coddled.

One of my favorite quotes (if you'll permit me a geeky moment) is from Star Trek. Q says at one point, "It's not safe out there, Jean-Luc. It's wondrous." Being away from the hyperconvenient, sometimes mechanistically orderly world of Japan, I was reminded how much I value that sentiment.

I'm not able to upload pictures right now, but those will be forthcoming, as will more about the trip.

In Sunlight

2008-04-26T09:36:00.003+09:00

Here are a few pictures from a recent day trip up to Nikko. The series of temples and shrines was built by the Tokugawa Shogunate as a show of wealth and power, and is the burial place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first Shogun of that line.

"Nikko" is Japanese for "sunlight." On this given day, it was a fitting name. The place was impressive, showy, gaudy, and gleaming, a medieval Vegas of sorts. The interiors of the buildings all had prohibitions against photography- I was disappointed that I couldn't get pictures of the large Buddha statues. All around, though, an awesome time. The conifers reminded me of home.

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"Never call a native speaker a 'skinhead.'"

2008-04-19T00:01:00.003+09:00

Last week I did two lessons on personal appearance, one about simply vocabulary and the other about tact (i.e, a "larger man," as opposed to "fat dude.") Today I answered questions about the homework for that lesson, and I had to explain for the ninety ninth time to a student that if someone has no hair, calling them a "skinhead" is not okay. In fact, very not okay. Simply referring to someone as either "bald," or having a "shaved head" is vastly preferable.

I'm suspecting that "skinhead," may be a katakana word (I know that "niga" is), as many students are genuinely surprised when I tell him that the term refers to violent white supremacists. (Blah, blah, blah, I know what S.H.A.R.P.s have to say about hijacking of the subculture. By now it's irrelevant.) There might also be pronunciation issues- the word "bald," packs a sort of double whammy for Japanese speakers. It's got a consonant cluster at the end, something almost entirely absent from Japanese, with its liberally dispersed vowels, and one of those consonants happens to be "l." I often sounds something like "barud," or the like. "Skinhead" is an easier pronunciation task, so I'm not surprised that students have tended to favor it.

Anyway, informing them of the connotations of the word is a nasty little culture lesson. But, I weirdly like it. I like it that it gives me a moment where I can let a little bit of politics into the classroom. Most students find the phenomenon really strange. I'm always tempted to mention that there are plenty of people here who are still frighteningly right wing, but I hold my tongue.

It's strange, though, hearing such a term bandied about, denuded of its history, ugliness, and violence. It's as if it had been emptied out and stuffed, and was now simply a bit of furniture rather than a beast.

The Rites of Spring, Part II: The Giant Cocks of Kawasaki

2008-04-10T14:05:00.005+09:00

I've decided to be somewhat crude in this post. Also, there are some mildly NSFW pics at the end. Just FYI.

First, though, a story:

Once upon a time, there was supposedly a young girl who got infected with a demon. A rather nasty demon, too. This demon didn't make her vomit pea soup or do any of that Exorcist type stuff, instead it just hung out in her nether parts and caused her vagina to sprout fangs.

This was a problem.

Anyway, the demon collected a few cocks, biting them away, and it was decided that the best way to solve this dilemma was for the local blacksmith to make a big steel phallus that would subsequently be used to smash apart the vagina dentata.

The plan went swimmingly, and the girl's lady parts were joyously teeth-free on account of the Best Dildo Ever, which gave her a good solid fucking and smacked out the Worst VD Ever in one fell swoop.

Anyway, this particular shrine in Kawasaki where said events supposedly took place was a place long visited by prostitutes where they prayed that they would not get VD. This is a very practical thing to pray for, I think- lack of VD. If I prayed, I'd probably ask the Powers That Be for that very thing. I'd also ask for a few dozen odalisques and a pony.

But I digress. The point is that there's a cock shrine in Kawasaki, and every year people celebrate the shit out of it at the Kanamara Matsuri, the Festival of the Steel Phallus. The festival, instead of cracking the teeth off of VD demons, now raises money for HIV research.

We got to Kawasaki on Sunday morning. The cherry blossoms were in bloom and spring was in the air. We met up with a few friends, and found the shrine, which was mobbed by people, many of them curious foreigners such as ourselves. Not only "mobbed," mind you, but absolutely packed. It was like a 6:00 Yamanote line train, except stationary, and filled with depictions of cock.

All kinds- cock lollipops, cocks on banners. Cocks carved from daikon, cock candles, cock hats. Sake jugs that looked like cocks, sausages (which always looked like cocks), and carved wooden charms that were little more than cocks on strings. There were big wooden cocks that inevitably got mounted, hugged, and caressed by the various festival goers. Most of all, there were cocks hoisted above the crowd on portable shrines. One was metal and one wood. The largest was huge, bright pink, and carried around entirely by drag queens.

Above the crowds the huge cocks traveled, the revelers chanting and thrusting the gigantic mobile members into the air- two or three dozen men all chanting in time, thrusting in time, and fucking the dome of the sky with the same enormous metal dick.

And there were the metal cocks that were part of the shrine. One was a good meter tall, thrusting from the earth, and the other was welded to an anvil. The anvil cock was huge, but of all the members on display it was the smallest- perhaps the size of horse's. It's smallness, though, it's supposed manageability gave it a pornographic presence that the larger members lacked. The anvil cock invited contact. Women straddled it and had their pictures taken with it, and I couldn't help but wonder if it had ever been mounted. In a shrine once frequented by whores, I got to wondering if ever one of them, after perhaps a glass too many of sake, decided to test her limits and see if she could handle the girth and length of the anvil's phallus.

I wondered if whores had straddled it on dares or out of curiosity, and I wondered if perhaps it was more than just whores who'd done it. The curious and aroused, perhaps, venturing to the shrine at night, testing their luck and the limits of their orifices on the rigid, steel approximation of manhood.

We milled about and drank. There was drumming and music of various kinds, and the smells of greasy festival food wafted about the air. It was absurd, all of it. Part of me reveled in the obscenity of it all, the sheer bawdiness and ridiculousness of the situation. It was novel and fascinating, and I couldn't help but think that such a thing would never happen in the States.

But another bit of me, perhaps a more reflective bit, thought about how absurd it all was. The cocks were somehow devoid of any real sexuality. There they were, isolated and alone, without even testicles for companionship. The countless members were so exaggerated and decontextualized, that they were without any sort or sensuality or maleness. The whole thing was bawdy, but it wasn't a bacchanal. Picture, for instance, a floating pair of breasts, entities unto themselves unattached to any sort of woman. It would be impossible to derive anything truly sexual from said orbs. Likewise, the multitude of dicks were without mojo. They reminded me a bit of men in pornos- formless, mindless things that simply stand erect and fuck without feeling or enjoyment.

This isn't any sort of condemnation, mind you. It is far easier to engage something complex (like sexuality) when you engage its gross caricature instead of the real thing. I think it's far, far easier to laugh and chant and mount a giant penis than it is to really think about the complexities and vicissitudes of sex. Simple and direct revelry isn't wrong, of course. I had a wonderful time, but it was a gross and bawdy time. As a celebration, it had more in common with making someone laugh by saying "penis" than with anything sexy.

But, I like dick jokes. I don't think that I'll ever reach some mystical point of final maturity where the human body ceases to be amusing. Despite the empty non-sexuality of it all, I could only approve of the thing in all it's simple, obscene glory.

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The Rites of Spring, Part I

2008-04-08T15:20:00.007+09:00

The cherry blossoms are a sort of holiday here. There is no specific holiday set aside for them, nor does anyone get the day off. But every year a substantial percentage of Japan's populations breaks out the tarps, packs some junk food and beer, and heads off to O-hanami, cherry blossom viewing parties.

Kori and I had a simple goal two weekends ago. We'd arranged to meet with friends in a Shinjuku park to lay about, eat lunch, and get sounsed while looking at the nation's most recognizable plant. And for a while, we did just that, before the various Shinto deities in charge of dumping rain on Japan decided that they were going to cut short everyone's revelry. We packed up, and settled for karaoke.

The next day was still rainy, and we strolled a bit in Yoyogi Park and in the nearby Meiji Jingu. Pretty much no one was out. They were all sheltered away from the rain, and remnants of hanami-goers hasty retreat from the day before were all around us. All around tarps, bento boxes, plastic containters, beer cans, boxes, and bags littered the scene. There were coke, wine, tea, sports drink, and liqor bottles cast about, and stray bits of food that enormous blue-black crows shoveled into their impressively sized beaks.

It looked precisely like what it was, the foggy and muted aftermath of a giant party. Yoyogi Park was waking up and it was groggy- Tokyo's living room had a bitch of a hangover. The Meiji Jingu was a bit light on blossoms, but I was more than a little amused at a few foreign guys who were ogling the gigantic torii at the entrance.

"They had to use a whole tree to make that thing," one said. Yes, yes they did. Telephone poles are quite the thing, too.

Anyway, the weather was clearing up by the time we got out of the Meiji Jingu, and Kori had a dentist appointment. I was off to Ueno Park. Kori was there last year, and assured me that it was quite the thing for sakura. It was.

I walked through Ueno, and wondered why on earth I didn't have a camera with me. The place was a veritable cathedral of pink. The trees arched over, enmeshing the crowd. The onlookers, in turn, had all manner of extra eyes at their disposal. Digital cameras and cell phones, immense things on tripods with priapic lenses, disposable cameras, iPhones, and a whole menagerie of visual recording. I tried, half heartedly, to snap some pictures on my cell phone. The quality was too poor for it to be worth my while, and I settled for simply looking at my surroundings.

I walked around the park, taking in the seasonal burst of color, looking as much at the people as I did at the flowers. They ogled the blossoms and commented on their prettiness, snapped photos and sipped beer. I went down to Ueno Park's lake and by the water festival type stalls were set up selling festival type food- things fried on skillets, skewered on charred bits of wood or wrapped in greasy paper. I bought a skewer of pork and asparagus, ate it by the water amongst the other onlookers, and strolled about the people as if I were a contented wallflower at a lazy party.

Quite nice, really. The pictures below are from Naritasan, Shinjuku, and a street in Narita near my school.

Then next weekend we went to a penis festival. More on that later.

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One Thing That Made Me Happy, One Thing That Pissed Me Off

2008-03-29T08:53:00.003+09:00

When American troops invaded Okinawa at the end of WWII, the Japanese army handed out grenades to the civilian population and forced them to commit suicide in the face of the invaders. It's a nasty incident, to say the least. My personal reading of it was a move on the army's part to stoke American perceptions of supposed Japanese fanaticism. If the residents of a small, southern island would destroy themselves in the face of a military onslaught, then the Americans would except the same, on a grander scale, if they invaded the home islands. Personally, I doubt whether this scenario would have ever played out, and I think that oftentimes the American military exaggerated the extent of Japanese nationalism.

In any case, though, talk about this ugly incident has been quite politically charged for the past fifty years. But, fortunately, an Osaka court just dismissed a libel case against Kenzaburo Oe, an author who wrote openly about the incident. This is awesome. I haven't read any of Oe's books, but now I think I'll pick one up the next time I'm in a bookstore. Apparently most of his books are about existentialism and sex. Sounds fun.

In other, less nifty news, one of Slate's travel correspondents has written an absolutely idiotic bit about Hiroshima. From the tone of the article, he seems disappointed that the city's citizens don't walk around crying all the time, and seems slightly indignant that Hiroshima (a modern city in a modern country) has a perfectly normal Kinkos and a perfectly normal Starbucks. He even seems put out by the Okonomiyaki, the fun, greasy regional specialty. What was he expecting? Atomic Sorrow Lattes? Kinkos All Night Nuclear Devastation Copy Center? Talking about the city's history is one thing- expecting that history to be hung around its neck is another.

Anyway, the abovelinked article wasn't awesome. In fact, it made me actively angry. I'd be interested to know what ya'll think.

On Kipling

2008-03-27T09:09:00.007+09:00

That picture's from last August. The statue in question is the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) of Kamakura, and that's me in front of it. I was a bit surprised last week when I found out that Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem about it.

George Orwell once called Rudyard Kipling a "good bad poet." I think that sums up the man rather nicely. His stories, the rhythms of his poems, the adventurous and exotic feel of it all are fun to read. But, his stories and poems are, ultimately, not really about the exotic places he talks about. They're not really about India or Asia or whatnot, they're about British people perceiving and interacting with such places.

Any way, here's the poem.

"And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura" 

O ye who tread the Narrow Way 
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when the 'heathen' pray       
To Buddha at Kamakura!  

To him the Way, the Law, apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat,       
The Buddha of Kamakura. 

For though he neither burns nor sees,
Nor hears ye thank your Deities, 
Ye have not sinned with such as these,       
His children at Kamakura.  

Yet spare us still the Western joke 
When joss-sticks turn to scented smoke 
The little sins of little folk       
That worship at Kamakura --  

The grey-robed, gay-sashed butterflies 
That flit beneath the Master's eyes. 
He is beyond the Mysteries       
But loves them at Kamakura.  

And whoso will, from Pride released, 
Contemning neither creed nor priest, 
May feel the Soul of all the East       
About him at Kamakura. 

Yea, every tale Ananda heard, 
Of birth as fish or beast or bird, 
While yet in lives the Master stirred,       
The warm wind brings Kamakura.  

Till drowsy eyelids seem to see
A-flower 'neath her golden htee
The Shwe-Dagon flare easterly       
From Burmah to Kamakura,  

And down the loaded air there comes 
The thunder of Thibetan drums, 
And droned -- "Om mane padme hums" --       
A world's-width from Kamakura.  

Yet Brahmans rule Benares still,
Buddh-Gaya's ruins pit the hill,
And beef-fed zealots threaten ill       
To Buddha and Kamakura.  

A tourist-show, a legend told, 
A rusting bulk of bronze and gold, 
So much, and scarce so much, ye hold       
The meaning of Kamakura?

But when the morning prayer is prayed,
Think, ere ye pass to strife and trade, 
Is God in human image made       
No nearer than Kamakura?

There are major problems with this poem. For one thing, I have doubts about whether or not Kipling ever actually saw the statue, even though he did go to Yokohama (very near Kamakura) in 1889. The Daibutsu is indeed impressive, and indeed made of brass, but he's a bit off the mark with the "brass and gold" bit. Can't recall any gold bits when I was there. Also, Kipling's a racist ass as always.

I could go on: Joss sticks are Chinese, not Japanese. The Shwe Dragon Pagoda in Burma is a Theravada temple, but Japanese Buddhism is of the Mahayana variety. The Buddha depicted in Kamakura isn't supposed to be Siddhartha Guatama, but Amitabha, a Buddha often described as being from a non-earthly realm and not in Burmese Buddhism at all. The statue isn't an idol, as idols depict gods, which Buddhas decidedly are not (the whole point of Buddhas is that they represent human potential for enlightenment). There are no "Thibetan Drums" in Kamakura. Those are usually in Tibet, thousands of miles away, and "brahmans" would have nothing to do with anything in Japan since they're from India, and a part of Hinduism anyway. And, given that Buddhism is so diverse and given to syncretism, claiming that any one image captures "the soul of all the East" is a bit of a stretch.

But enough. It's easy to criticize Kipling. This is the guy who wrote Gunga Din and The White Man's Burden, after all. He might as well have a target hanging from his moustache for pedantic liberals like myself myself to take cheap shots at. With all of the poem's flaws and stumblings, it would be easy to dismiss something like this. It would be easy to make fun of Kipling, write him off. It would be easy to get smug and self-satisfied, happy and full of ourselves at all the progress we've made since him. But, I like the poem despite its flaws.

Kipling is naive, more than anything. He doesn't go much beyond his preconceived notions, and pastes ideas of the "East" already rattling about in his head upon the Kamakura monument. But, despite that, I do think that the poem does convey some very really awe on the poets part, either at the statue or at the idea of it. Particularly the two lines "He is beyond the mysteries/But loves them at Kamakura," is an especially poignant bit. The idea that a monumental sites are a place where two worlds touch, a place that the things normally "beyond the mysteries" become more tactile is something very real, I think. For instance- I remember seeing George Washington's grave on Mount Vernon when I was a high schooler. Washington, like Buddha, is someone idealized and variously portrayed, mythologized and abstract. He is beyond knowing and beyond, almost, objective history, he is somewhere else. Yet, there in the rain and before a stone box that held his bones, he was no longer so "beyond." The ideal was suddenly made present and real, a thing "beyond" no longer. Some may call such a feeling religious (I don't), but I think that such a rush of perception is something that can be profoundly moving when the iconic becomes real.

Anyway, this is a sort of poetic niche that I tend to go for, actually- the romatical, exotic, and adventurous sort. Stuff like The Golden Road to Samarkand and Kubla Khan. Stuff that I can't help but regard as a bit of a guilty pleasure, what with it's idealization of things Asiatic, stuff that is before all else evocative. Stuff, in other words, that would piss off Edward W. Said. (To be fair, Said admitted that all cultures express some degree of exoticism when talking about others, and said it was harmless for the most part unless it got perverted into military or economic hegemony. But still, he remains an icon when it comes to discourse about cross cultural perceptions.)

This stuff is clumsy, I know. Clumsy, inaccurate, and immature. But, I think that the best thing to do, is to try to move culturally past Kipling et al, rather than condemning them. Just as modern chemistry moved past alchemy, so too should we see such things as immature attempts at cultural understanding, rather than something worthy of scorn.

And it's hardly unique to Western culture.

Last week I saw a Japanese guy on a JR line, decked out like he was an American rapper. He had the baggy pants, sizable jacket, head scarf and baseball hat combo, and sat with his legs splayed in front of him luxuriating in ease. But his clothes displayed an amusing and naive juxtaposition. His jacket was festooned with Gothic lettering, the design proclaiming "Los Angeles" or "LA" over and over again, like they were blue tattoos upon the white fabric. His baseball cap (worn, of course, over a headscarf) displayed the New York Yankees logo. To my American eyes, such a combination was quite absurd, yet this man was doing his best to revel in a foreign culture which he found fascinating.

He was naive, but like Kipling, I can't fault him. Kipling was naive and ignorant for coupling the Shwe Dragon Pagoda with the Kamakura Daibutsu, as was this man for mixing East and West Coast apparel. But both of them came from a sincere, yet ignorant, place. It is remarkably easy to cast this sort of behavior as idiotic, when in fact it is merely immature.

But immaturity is part of growth, of course.

Bent Words and Simulacrums

2008-03-14T09:53:00.003+09:00

Katakana continues to fascinate me. All over the place my native language is being changed and bent around me. Studying Japanese has made me think about English, and the wonderful, odd, and various meanings that words have.

Take the word "smart" for instance. It has the primary meaning of "being intelligent" and such, but it has other connotations as well. It could mean something is sharply painful as in, "Ow, that smarts!" It could be an admonition, as in "Don't talk smart with me, young man." One could say that a person is "smartly dressed," meaning that they have a snappy suit or such on, or are wearing a "smart, striped suit." In both instances, one gets the impression of a fashionable, thin person. So, in Katakana "sumato" means "thin."

Another example: Claim. To claim something means to contend that something is true. But, it's got other meanings as well. "To claim" something could mean that you take it as yours, as in, "she claimed her wallet from lost and found," or "I claim this land for Spain!" A pioneer's bit of land is called a claim. A "claim" could also be a presumption of time and space as in "back off, you're making too many claims on my time." A formal complaint could be called a claim and the person making the complain a claimant. And that last one, complaint, is was "kuramu" means in Katakana- a complaint.

In both of these instances it's rather dizzying to think about how a single facet of a word is held up and made to stand in for the whole, a simulacrum branching off and becoming a thing in its own right. I know that this happens all the time, with language and just about everything else. A little thing, a thing that's only a facet, comes up and becomes a representation for something far vaster and more complex. For instance-

When we think about Tianamen Square, we think about that guy in front of the tank.

When we think about the space program, we think of Neil Armstrong on the moon.

When we think about Richard Nixon, we imagine his fingers and arms splayed in branching "V"s.

When we think about Gary Coleman, we think of "What you talkin' about, Willis?"

A single facet of an idea, event, person, or thing is made to stand in for the whole. This is not a good or bad process, but seeing my own language subject to this via Katakana makes me acutely aware of this phenomenon of simplification, compression, icon-making, and representation.

Oh, Japan- you make my brain all tingly. I loves ya for it.

On Hesse

2008-03-07T10:24:00.000+09:00

I think the Buddha comes across as a bit selfish.

Really. Look at him. He's just sitting there all serene like, and then vanishes off into whatever Nirvana is. More power to him for being "enlightened" (whatever that is), for being at ease with himself, for knowing how to sit, think, be calm etc. All good skills. I wish I could do that.

But, you serene bastard, get up and do something.

Don't just sit there, satisfied with the peace and nicety of your own head and emotion. Don't just walk out on the world once you've become satisfied with the your neat mental state. Don't think you're done. You're not. And besides, why on earth are you so eager to escape from earthly existence anyway? Suffering? Yeah, it's suffering. It's also joy and exploration and learning and everything. If, after my death, some divine thing in the antechamber of non-existence asked me "Want another go?" I'd say, "Yeah! Get me out of this bardo and into existence again! Fuck nirvana, I want suffering, joy, fear, panic, learning, exhilaration and all of it! Keep your nothing- I'll be busy with everything."

Of course, there's a bit more to Buddhism than that, but those my thoughts on it in a nutshell. Not that I'm completely disapproving of Buddhism- there are too many varieties of it to generalize (like I just did) and some of it is quite intriguing, even to a nonbeliever such as myself. But, I think it overshoots in a few key places.

Which brings me to Herman Hesse.

I recently read both The Glass Bead Game and Siddhartha, both of which I liked a great deal. One of the reasons that I enjoyed them so much is that in both novels the characters do find a wonderful balance between contemplation and action, thinking and doing. The principal characters of each novel, at the end of each book, seem responsible. The Buddha may only sit there, reject the world, and do nothing, but Hesse's characters conjure up the image of one of those serene faces speaking, those lotus-position legs uncrossing and walking, those folded hands being raised to action.

The Glass Bead Game (which, it turns out, has little to do with glass beads) takes place in approximately the 25th century or so after modern society has destroyed itself. In the nameless country where the book takes place, a specific province, Castalia, has been given over entirely to art, academics, and study. Ostensibly, the purpose of the province is to act as a wellspring of knowledge and a training center for teachers.

In Castelia, the cloistered, privileged scholars play what is called the Glass Bead Game, an elaborate ritual and meditation that draws upon, organizes, and arranges all of the culture, science, philosophy, art, and knowledge that human society has ever produced. Throughout the book, the Game is variously and conflictingly portrayed both as the summation of all scholarship, and as a staid substitute for it. The Castelians produce nothing new. New art, new research, and new inquiry are all nonexistent. There is only the maintenance of things that have come before, meditations upon the past.

The main character, Joseph Knecht, rises through the ranks of Castalia, and his ultimate decisions strike a fine balance between repudiating and venerating the ivory tower. His experience of meditating on the past has value, but he realizes that it is not enough, that thought must be coupled with action, and that while one can learn much from withdrawing from the outside world, one must also slip back into it and help it.

In Siddhartha, the main character tries just about everything over the course of his life. He's raised a Brahman, and learns the conventional ways of the upper class. He follows wandering mendicants, follows the Buddha for a while, leaves him to have great sex with the best courtesan ever, becomes a wealthy merchant, ODs on vice, drink, and gambling, gets soft, leaves everything again, and finds value in all of his experiences. And that's what I really liked about Siddhartha- at the end of the book the character has a bit of debate with a Buddhist monk in which he explains that he loves the world for what it is, rather than what it will become.

The Buddhist monk describes himself as a seeker, Siddhartha counters by saying that if one is a seeker, one might do very little finding. Being focused on a goal can blind someone to finding the other things around them. They see only the goal and the things that lead to it, they miss the wonders and other things that the world has to offer (as an oftentimes goal-oriented person, this was a nice little reminder). If that goal is Heaven or Nirvana, one can miss the wonders of worldliness.

Rocks, for instance, are awesome. Not because they once were part of a mountain, or could be melted and made into tools. Sure, those things are cool, too, but a rock is nifty because of it's rockiness. Because of it's immediate being, because of it's apparency.

Same with people. People aren't awesome because they might go on to Nirvana or Heaven or whatever. Goodness and love aren't worthwhile because they'll lead to these ethereal rewards. This stuff is worthwhile because, like Kant says, people are ends in and of themselves. As a devoted non-nihlistic secular person, this is something that I find immensely valuable. It's a way of looking at the world, looking at morality, and looking at love that is free from the oppressive rationalization of heavenly rewards.

Such a world view demands engagement, demands action. Joseph Knecht decides that he is obliged to help the world, that satisfaction with his own private, academic Nirvana is not enough. Siddhartha decides that the sacredness he seeks can be found immediately around him, and that all the experiences of the world can lead to it. Experience and life are of immediate and apparent value, and such a world demands our compassion.

At least this is my reading of Hesse. My feeling of both of the characters is one of immense responsibility. They find the value in meditation, and when they wake up, they impart their knowledge on others. And, that waking is not a failure, but a part of the cycle. Interaction with the world is not something to be lamented or mourned, but something that is intrinsic to what could be called enlightenment. In other words, get me out of this bardo and into existence again. Fuck nirvana, I want suffering, joy, fear, panic, learning, exhilaration and all of it. Keep your nothing- I'll be busy with everything.

"You're motorin'! What's your price for flight?"

2008-03-05T12:13:00.003+09:00

I'm going to contend that I'm the first person ever who's broken into laughter while reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Blood Meridian is not funny. At all. In fact, it's the sort of book that makes you forget that good things exist. It's a beautiful display of ugliness that makes Diane Arbus seem downright glamorous, that's what how dark it is.

But, as I was reading it on the train last night, I couldn't help but laugh as I heard something a bit... familiar.

"Sister Christian oh the time has come..."

What the fuck?

"And you know that you're the only one..."

A gang of five or so salarymen (and one salarywoman) had turned the Kesei line into their own little karaoke box. This makes sense, as trains tend to be just like karaoke boxes, except for the fact that they don't have booze or music, and tend to be full of strangers.

I busted up laughing, forgetting the depressing, violent, dark book I was reading. Oddly, I seemed to be the only one on the train who found this funny.

Japan seems determined to sing at me. 'Tis nifty.

Disidentification

2008-03-01T09:49:00.002+09:00

Japan has stripped off bits of me. No, "bits" is the wrong word. Japan has sloughed off whole segments of my brain and personality, rebuilt them, and changed them. And, I'm the better for it. You know that whole thing about how you have to go off, go away from home and get into unfamiliar territory in order to find yourself? Well, it's true! Wow!

Specifically, I'd like to talk about two things: irony and geekiness. I've written a bit about this before. But, I'm more than a little further along now. Both of these traits are things that I value, things that I look for in people, things that I find appealing. But, they have not been unequivocally good to me or good for me. Self-identification can prop you up, give you an identity, act as set of struts upon which you can build yourself. But, it can only go so far before it becomes constraining. Saying something like, "My geeky identity allows me to enjoy this socially unconventional past time like D&D or SF" is all well and good, but one slides into a nasty little trap when you think "My geeky identity prevents me from doing such and such social activity."

Joseph's recent post reminded me of this. His opening description of clubbing being "not who [he] is" made me wince with identification. I've had similar thoughts about activities that I've imagined are outside my usual realm. But, I'd take issue with one word that he uses in his second paragraph: "concessions." I think that when you allow yourself to go outside your normal experience, you concede nothing. You have only the accumulation of experience, not the negation of any. (Joseph, when I finally get around to visiting L.A. you're going to have to show me some of the more eccentric clubbing sites.) But, I can completely understand his feelings and his use of the word. Stepping outside one's defined circle does, weirdly and viscerally, feel like a concession, when in fact expanding one's experience is just the opposite.

Anyway, irony. Or rather, the analysis and thinking that ironic distance lends itself.

Like I've said before, I like irony. I love it. The dry, acidic, cutting sort of irony that builds so much on itself no one can quite tell what it means. For instance: Are aviator glasses cool? Are they hip, fashionable, etc.? The answer is "Who the fuck knows?" "yes," and "not really," all at once. Ridiculing things, cleverly deconstructing things, stripping away the parts and understanding everything on various levels of understanding and obliqueness does something for me. No, more than that. It's a process that has made me feel easily intelligent. To simultaneously see something (a person, a book, a movie, a song) both from a distance and to gaze into its component parts is a wonderful, stimulating experience.

But this misses something. Examining something from a distance, seeing it in context of other, related things and examining something's parts, seeing the bits and guts of it misses something. It misses the thing in and of itself. It is like laboriously examining the sides of a razor, but missing the edge.

For instance-

I was clubbing out in Tokyo a few weeks ago, and thought, for a few moments, that I could think of it as an anthropological experience, watching the scene and the people and observing and noting everything around me. I did do that, a little, but for the most part, I just enjoyed the flashing lights, the clouds of dry ice, and the people.

This is not a new skill for me, I've always been able to simply enjoy things, simply be in the moment and such. But in Japan, I've been able to do it more. Here, in my relationships with students and such, I've had to speak and communicate directly, without subtlety or double meanings. I've had to let my communication be simply what it is, be direct, be straightforward. What follows, is that I've had to allow experiences be simply what they are, be direct, be straightforward. Going into a club for me was not a place where I would set my brain aspinning, analyzing social dynamics, thinking about anthropology, my head moving more than my body as music and light filled the atmosphere. Instead, it was what it was.

This can be a bit frightening, actually. Irony, distance, analysis, etc. can all be a sort of shield. To hiply/intellectually stand outside of something, take it apart, be with it without experience is a way of armoring oneself, of providing a sort of cool/smart excuse for self-consciousness and social awkwardness. This shield can be addictive, and not only provide an excuse for these things, but pile onto them.

Make no mistake, I'm still a sarcastic, analytical person. But as I said earlier, new experience is not a concession. It is an addition.

And, geekiness.

Geekiness, first off, can be great. It can provide a sense of belonging and inclusion, it can allows people to feel like they're part of some secret society where everyone knows lots of watchwords that come in the form of Monty Python quotes and Star Wars references. It's great. I've heard people make (completely sincere) comparisons of geekdom to gay subculture, and I don't think that such a comparison is completely unfair. Both cultures have an array of signifiers, rely on specific shared interests, and have behavorial patterns associated with them both by the observers and participants of each subculture.

This is all very useful for identification, but like all forms of identification, it can be constraining and sometimes infuriating, as it was last week. I was in a bar in Chiba listening to some live music, and the people I was sitting with were going on and on about video games and Star Trek. There were some Simpsons quotes in there, too.

And I just wanted to yell at them to shut the fuck up.

I didn't. I did the socially responsible thing and simply went to another part of the bar and talked to other people about other things, but I found it remarkable that I walked away, rather annoyed, from a subculture that I've so long embraced. I chose smalltalk over Star Trek, and loved it.

The problem is that identification of any kind can become toxic and constraining, can make new experiences feel like concessions instead of expansions, can become insular and twisting, a mobius strip of behavior and conversation.

Since coming to Japan, I haven't had a video game system, have not played in any RPGs, have watched very little in the way of TV or movies, and read only a few SF books. I haven't taken part of the cultural bits of geekdom for sometime, and I feel like I'm losing my identification with the subculture. I know that I'm losing my identification with the subculture. I still do things like watch anime and read SF, but now I seem to be enjoying those sort of things in the same way that I enjoy anything else. I don't feel it's connected to anything culturally, and I don't want that culture to dominate my interactions or conversations with others, which is why I became so annoyed with the geek crowd in that Chiba bar. Their conversation was culturally monchromatic, a staid, unlively thing that said nothing about any of the participants.

Anyway, my larger point is that the feeling of cultural disassociation that I've experienced over the past sixteen months has been liberating. I feel that my identifications aren't really being constraints any more. It's wonderful, weird, disorienting, fun, and rather exciting as well.

Setsubun

2008-02-19T09:51:00.003+09:00

"Hello," said the old man.

It was snowing, and I was freezing. Or, rather, I wasn't freezing. It was that particularly awkward coldness, just above zero centigrade where everything is cold yet still sloshy and wet. My feet were soaked, and rivulets of water and snow chunks ran down my umbrella, I was being jostled by the crowd, and white-clad policemen milled about, looking like yetis or stormtroopers.

"You are lucky," said the old man, "there will be Sumo players." He'd been glancing at me for a while, and perhaps got the nerve, after a bit, to try out his English.

"When?" I asked. He pointed to the twelve on his watch, and traced the figure of a semicircle with with his forefinger, stopping at the six. "Maybe here," he answered. I gathered that the term "one thirty" was beyond his English abilities.

It was Setsubun, an annual holiday that involves demons and the throwing of soybeans. As near as I can tell, it's of Shinto origins, but every year Naritasan, a Buddhist temple, has a massive setsubun celebration. The main bit of the holiday: People toss soybeans out of their houses, all the while saying "Demons out, fortune in!" Occasionally, a member of the family dresses up in a demon mask, and said beans are in fact thrown at them.

At Naritasan, people for some reason only shout "Fortune in!" They do not seem to be about demon expulsion there. Maybe the monks and whatnot have some cryptic pro-demon agenda.

Anyway, I stood there in the rain for some time, wet snow falling on my umbrella. The crowds grew, the police stood there stoically, and the umbrellas of all the other people formed a kind of multicolored chamber. It was like being under a shield turtle made of canvas. All around me people were declaring that it was cold. "Samui!" someone would say. "Samui!" "Samui!" It was like being in human echo chamber. It's a sort of cultural tendency here in Japan to always state the completely obvious ("It's cold!" "It's hot!" "It's raining!" "It's snowing!") but it did begin to grate on me a bit. "Yes," I thought, "it is indeed samui. We've established that. Now can we please, as creatures capable of observing outside stimuli, move on?"

"Samui!"

And eventually we did move on. The police barked as one for us to close our umbrellas, and soon we had no choice but to get soaked by the snow. But, with the umbrellas down, I could now effectively see the main steps of Naritasan, and there were, indeed, Sumo players.

Almost as soon as the umbrellas went down and the wrestlers and celebrities came out, the crowd went from a shivering mass commenting on the obviousness of the weather, to an enthusiastic, crushing, screaming mob. The crowd cheered, people crashed against me, and everyone was too busy making noise to comment on how samui it was. The instigators of the enthusiasm, the athletes and actors, were bedecked in day-glo outfits that simultaneously looked stupid and awesome. They were those Japanese robe things that have the big shoulder bits sticking out. Oh, just look at the pictures. You'll know what I mean. It's sort of ridiculous seeing Sumo wrestlers decked out in black and pink, but it's also sort of badass in a rather undefinable way.

In any case, they started throwing beans at us. Also, there were screaming girls.

The celebrities whipped out these wooden boxes filled with plastic packets of beans, and various aides were on hand to hastily refill them. They chucked handfulls at us, the crowd raising up their hands in order to catch them. Meanwhile, the people immediately behind me, a gaggle of Japanese teenage girls, lost all composure and volume control.

"Cho kakoi!" they shouted, "Cho kakoi! Eita! Eita!" They were shouting at a young, green clad male celebrity and exclaiming how cool he was. The girls jostled and pushed, pressing me chest to chest with the cop in front of me, greatly hindering my picture taking and bean catching abilities. "EITA!" My left ear hurt. "EITA!" My left ear hurt some more. Eita himself waved, and threw some more beans. "EITA!" It was like being in the opening scene of A Hard Day's Night, except it was stationary. "EITA!" The cop in front of me shouted at people not to push. This was probably because I was being squashed bodily into him and he didn't like it very much. "EITA!" Beans! Snow! People! "EITA!"

And then, after about ten minutes, it was over. The crowd dispersed, Eita and the rest of the VIPs were whisked away, and the umbrellas started to open again. I was no longer being jostled by the girls or chest to chest with the cop. The sudden absence of contact made the wind seem a little colder, and I walked as fast as I could to the station in order to keep myself warm.

Or tried to walk as fast as I could. The road back was packed. I was still with the crowd, and the merchants all had their shops open, hoping to reap the benefits of the festivities. In the street outside, people shouted about how it was quite cold, so they ought to come in and have some ramen. Have some hot sake. Have some hot tea. Merchants sold souvenirs and counted thousand yen notes with fingerless gloves, and the chorus of "samui!" returned.

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Absinthe Is Not Overrated

2008-02-15T23:34:00.002+09:00

So, I'm a bit messed up right now.

Drinking absinthe, watching Prince and Chicks on Speed videos at the bar I was at, talking to some guy about his taiko drum repair business...

Absinthe. That green stuff. That stuff that's unsellable in the States, yet quite legal here in Nihon. I'm a bit fucked on it as I write this. It's definitely different.

It's as if my head has sprouted diminutive wings and is fluttering perhaps eight inches over the rest of my body. Meanwhile, the front of my head seems larger than any other portion of my anatomy, and my hands appear to be moving on their own volition.

At the bar, whoever was in charge of videos was playing both MC Hammer and Chicks on Speed. For some nebulous reason, I appreciated this. When I left, it was cold enough to pickle the testicles of a racehorse, but I didn't seem to mind. My head was eight inches above my body, and my legs were on an amazingly efficient autopilot. Meanwhile, everything seemed shiny.

So, yeah... One of the benefits of being abroad. Legal absinthe.

God I hope I'm sober tomorrow.

Wheee!

In Which I am Forced to Put on Pants and Answer My Door

2008-02-15T10:25:00.003+09:00

Jehova's Witnesses just came to my door. They were Japanese this time. Why the hell are there so many Jehova's Witnesses in Narita? One of the biggest Buddhist temples in the country is here, you'd think that the place would be awash with Buddhist monks or something. I guess there are a fair amount of foreigners here, but it's like a bunch of Hindu missionaries decided to set up shop near St. Peter's.

They gave me a pamphlet in English. I've seen it before. Back in Eugene, my ex girlfriend got it and then ironically magneted it to our fridge. It's yellow, and says "Would you like to know more about the Bible?" ("Yes, but mainly from a historical/literary perspective.") This thing was one of the small bits of irony that littered our apartment, and it was just given back to me by an old Japanese woman. Weird.

In any case, this marks the first time ever that I've had to excuse myself from missionaries using a foreign language.

Dark Materials

2008-02-02T09:24:00.000+09:00

I wasn't initially going to blog about this, but after reading Sydney's Blog about it, I decided to throw in my two yen. I recently read His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, and I have a few opinions about it. I know I'm hugely late to the party with this one, but whatever.

I'm just going to say right now that I'm going to throw in lots of spoilers.

First, a bit of background. I grew up loving and hating the Chronicles of Narnia. I loved them because they were fun, well written fantasy stories that featured strange creatures, magic, talking animals, and exploration. My favorite was probably the Voyage of the Dawn Treader- as the ship went farther out, the nature and laws of reality seemed to change, and the scenery became more fantastic and strange.

However, I also hated the series, because I didn't like being preached to. The Lion the Witch, and the Wardrobe isn't really all that bad- sure, there's the big Jesus allegory, and one could argue that it's rather sexist, what with the good guy being a symbol of patriarchy (a lion) and the villain being a symbol of powerful femininity (a witch). But, on the whole, it's tame compared to the rest of the series. Later on Lewis gets his racism on with depictions of the Calormenes, stand-ins for Arabs and Muslims that he uses as enemies of Aslan later on. Their god, Tash, is depicted as tantamount to Satan. In The Last Battle, several people start saying that Tash and Aslan are the same entity. These people are depicted as either deluded, or as false prophets.

This was a major sticking point for me. My devoutly Catholic father made it a point of pride that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same god. Allah, Yaweh, I-Am-Who-Am, the Father, etc.- same thing. The Western monotheisms, he said, were more alike than different, and we should respect each other because of that. Despite my disagreements with my father, I'm still proud of his enthusiasm for religious tolerance and pluralism. So, to see such pluralism explicitly mocked in The Last Battle made me cringe more than a little.

(Then there's the whole bit about Susan- once a woman gets old enough to fuck it's out of the story for her. But, I didn't understand that bit until adulthood.)

I still love the Chronicle of Narnia, in a way. I'll doubtless read them again, and I'd doubtless read them again, even though I also sort of hate them.

But, I'm not here to rant about Lewis- I'm here to rant about Pullman. I loved His Dark Materials, and I also hated it, for reasons very akin to why I love and hate the Chronicles of Narnia. The central vexation that I have with His Dark Materials is that I hate being preached to, but I love being agreed with. Particularly in The Amber Spyglass, Pullman does both.

The first two books are fairly un-preachy, and quite good as fantasy/adventure stories. Pullman leaves the best bits implied- it's damn obvious that Dust is sin, experience, sexuality, knowledge and everything else that Eve got out of that apple. The message- that loss of innocence is a sign of growth, not a tragedy, and after we're done with the first apple we should reach for another -is left nicely shaded. In the first two books, Pullman's ideas are oblique and cleverly presented, his thesis an argument for adulthood delivered through his child protagonist.

But, in The Amber Spyglass, he abandons implication and dusts off the soapbox. One of his characters- a likable old ex-nun turned physicist- is basically his mouthpiece. The kids sit at her knee, and she regales them with all of the reasons why religion is bad. I found the moralizing to be sort of painful to read in a work of fiction, but the problem that I had with it was that I agreed with pretty much everything Pullman's defrocked scientist had to say. "Shut up and get to the plot!" said one part of my brain, "Hell yeah!" said another.

Part of my annoyance is that all of this preaching served as a sort of surrogate climax to the series. There's tons of buildup to the final battle, and when it happens it's a disappointment. There's very little in the way of drama or intensity, and I yearned to see all of the war machines, angels, bears, soldiers, and fantastical creatures that Pullman had been describing kick the shit out of each other. I wanted a dramatic final showdown with God or at least his second in command, Metatron. But the death of God is over in a blink, and the defeat of Metatron seemed bloodless and predictable, even though it did entail the noble self-sacrifice of two characters.

(Incidentally, where was Satan in all of that mess? How can you write a book about killing God that prominently features rebel angels, and not once mention the Morningstar? Maybe Pullman was a bit too squeamish to bring Anton Le Vay's buddy into it.)

Anyway, the book goes on for some time after the battle, wherein the physicist preaches on for several pages, and then two eleven year olds somehow save the world by shagging and proclaiming their love for each other. For a series that's all about how great maturity and experience are, I found Lyra and Will's expressions of affection to be somewhat naive. They did have the presence of mind to realize that they cannot, after all, be together, but nevertheless I found their "I love you"s to bee rather grating. Maybe I was just in a cynical mood at the time.

Also, eleven is a bit young, don't you think? Sixteen at the least.

I realized why I was reading The Amber Spyglass, that if I were not a nonbeliever, I would have hated it. If I were a Christian, I would have thrown it against the wall while spewing blood from my eyelids. And that's a problem that I sort of have with it- Pullman isn't going to make any converts with his work. It might jazz up the (un)faithful, but it's not going to be persuasive to the religious. That's an edge that C. S. Lewis has on him- Lewis at least wraps his Christianity in something palatable to those who disagree.

Pullman's sort of like Christopher Hitchens, actually. I find Hitchens immensely fun to read (mostly because he's batshit insane) but I don't pretend that he's going to persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with him.

But in the end, I loved His Dark Materials far more than I hated it. I'm mostly ragging on it here, but there were lots of things that kicked royal ass about the series: Armored bears, trans-dimensional travel, gyrocopters, flying machines that run on pure will, the daemons, specters, and cowboy aeronauts with bunny sidekicks. All that stuff was awesome. And, the sheer fact that someone's written a children's fantasy series championing rejection of religion makes me happy.

Perhaps someone else will improve upon Pullman's effort. Maybe, inspired by His Dark Materials, someone other writers will more properly weave secular values into their stories. Here's hoping, at some future point, for a proper nonbeliever's riposte to Narnia.

Naritasan by Night

2008-01-29T11:33:00.000+09:00

For the past few weeks, my morning commute has been full of old people. My hopes of getting a seat have been pretty much nonexistent, so I've been standing, a head and a half taller, on the train. Like so many others here, one of my hands is gripping a hanging support ring, and the other propping open a book.

Normally, I have a fairly easy commute- forty minutes, no transfers, and against traffic, which means I can sit and read for all of it. Luxurious by Kanto standards. Lately, though, I've had a bit of my luxury chipped away by the geriatric swarm that gets on in Tokyo and Chiba, and then gets off at the same stop as me- Narita. While others use commuter passes and cards, they clutch single-use tickets. Many of them take a few moments with the ticket machine at the gates, a motion that for others hardly interrupts a stride.

It's January, and New Year's festivities and prayers are still going on at one of Japan's largest Buddhist temples- Naritasan. My classroom is on a sixth floor, and from my window I'm fortunate enough to see two things. One is the multi-storied pagoda in the back of the temple complex, and the vast green roof of the main hall. They jut out of a sea of buildings and trees, and I have, very possibly, the best view of any eikaiwa teacher.

The other thing that I can see clearly is the winding street that leads up to the temple. The street itself is primarily for pedestrians, and lined with all manner of touristy shops and restaurants. You can buy anything that typically "Japanese" on that street- fake katana, minature Buddha statues, cheap kimono, etc. It edges toward kitsch, though it's not as extreme as Asakusa.

Recently, this winding, kitsch-lined street has been crowded with the same flock of seniors that ride the train with me. I can see them, the back of their heads making a gray winding sea, ready to clap, ring a bell, and throw five yen to the temple while praying for the new year. It's rained a few times, and that doesn't deter them- they gray winding sea was replaced by an expanse of umbrellas, their wet movement shielding the aged devoted.

Until two nights ago, I myself had not made it to Naritasan. I wanted to go, but I had little desire brave the crush of the crowds, and I've also been out in Tokyo and Chiba on the weekends. But the night before last I happened to be in Narita and, on a whim, I decided to walk to the temple. I had no good reason for this- it was something to do. At first, I thought I'd only walk to the gate, simply to see how far it was from my apartment.

The answer is, not that far at all. A bit over 800 meters, according to a helpful tourist sign.

I had assumed that the whole thing would be locked for the night, and that I'd be greeted by a sliding metal gate. Such a thing was conspicuously absent. The huge wooden gate was wide open. The wood, for the most part was a fresh looking brown-yellow, with various parts of it accented in gold. Not a bit looked worn, and I wondered if it had been touched up for the new year. Beyond the main gate, a courtyard, several statues, and a staircase were apparent. I looked around for security cameras, didn't see any, and decided that if I got caught trespassing I could just pass myself off as a foreigner who didn't know any better.

It was a real concern for me- back in Okayama some friends and I tripped a motion-activated alarm while exploring a shrine at night. We ended up sprinting away from the alarm and lights before anyone found us, but I didn't want to repeat the experience. It was exhilarating, but once was enough.

I walked through the gate, and was utterly alone. No old people, no umbrellas. Inside the gate was a stone avenue lined with statues and rocky monuments. I looked at them, looked for "keep out" signs, looked at the empty visitor information counters. Imagining the array of workers that would be behind them during the day, I looked into an open counter: chairs, boxes, and pamphlets. I imagined that the boxes were filled with even more pamphlets. Every historical place in Japan has a pamphlet to go with it. I've gotten so many, that I've stopped trying to save them.

The first flight of stone stairs took me to a pool in the side of the hill with a metal and stone bridge arched over it. The pool had a pair of fountains, one on either side of the bridge, each jutting water into the air. Around me the massive steps, the huge gate, the jagged rocks of the hillside, and several stone statues. The tiny drops sounded strange when compared to the huge visuals.

It seemed ironic to me that I would have probably walked past the statues and rocks had I been there in the day. During the day, when I could see them clearly, I would have shuffled along with the crowd, taken a nicely illuminated look at the statues, and walked upwards. But the half light forced me to look at the gods, pick out their shapes and forms. I felt something curious- the figures were fearsome. Even a little frightening. They were the same sort of roiling dragons, glaring dogs and lions, and open-mouthed foxes that I'd seen several times before, but now it was as if I was seeing them on their own terms. Whatever artist had initially carved an angry-eyed storm god probably didn't think of his work as something that would be bathed in sunlight and accompanied by a pamphlet- he probably thought of it as a figure of reverence and power, framed by shadows and night.

The context in which we consume art is definitely important. Galleries and museums serve not only as holding places for art and artifacts, but also as generators of atmosphere. I remember going to the Portland Art Museum, in high school, to see the Imperial Tombs of China exhibit. The place had been done up in red banners with Chinese characters festooned on everything. The inside of the place was dimly lit and supulchral, and what I Chinese-like music played on the headset. Had I seen the jade burial suits and ancient swords simply placed before me on a wooden table, they would have been interesting. But, in the created context of the museum and gallery, those things became even more ancient and inspiring in my fifteen-year-old mind.

The shadows and silence, I thought, was the appropriate gallery for the stone figures. It was not some created context that served them best, but genuine night and solitude that elevated them to fearsomeness. I continued upwards, to the main part of the temple, where I finally saw a security guard.

I decided to not do anything, and, if approach, simply comment on how pretty everything was. The security guard looked at me, grunted, made his way to a public restroom. Either it was okay to be there, or the guard didn't care about kicking me out. Either way, I was fine. I walked around the upper part of the temple for some time, seeking out the smaller buildings and out of the way statues. I found the pagoda that I can see from my classroom, as well as another that was bedecked with several gold dragon heads. They would have been gaudy by day. They were resplendent in the half-light.

I went into the main part of the temple that housed the Buddhist artifact around which Naritasan was built. The main part of the sanctuary was walled off with glass, and it was too dark to see inside- I could only glimpse the various gold implements- braziers, gongs, screens -that accompany the Buddhist services at the temple. The grunting security guard came back. He nodded to me, and grunted again. I stood there for a while, turned around, made my way down the steps, was passed by a huffing jogger making his way upward, and made my way home.

I have little desire to see the place during the day. I feel like Nartiasan is a night place for me now, the kind of place that one associates with atmosphere and solitude that would lose something if you saw it during the day. Setsubun, another Japanese holiday, is coming up soon, and I know that the aged devout will be making there way there. I'll watch them from my classroom.

The next morning I mentioned my trip to my American coworker who mentioned that the place is, indeed, open twenty four hours a day. "Yeah," he said, "it's really cool at night."

Indeed it is.

From a Morning Walk in Narita

2008-01-22T11:31:00.000+09:00

Two bits from my walk this morning before work-

The guy was skinny, white, and wearing an awful sweater. It was the sort that had a giant snowflake-like pattern on it, and I could tell that from his walk that he was going to approach me.

"Hello," he said. His accent was Irish.

"Hi."

"Have you been here long? On holiday?" He asked.

"I live here."

"Oh," he replied, "even better."

"Do you need some help?" I asked. "Lost?"

"No, I have this magazine..." He reached into his bag, and my first thought was that is must be some trade or networking mag aimed at gaijin. There are all kinds of resources for foreigners networking in Japan, particularly in Kanto. I wasn't opposed to looking at whatever gaijin 'zine he might have had.

But, it wasn't a gaijin 'zine. It was The Watchtower. I've seen Jehovah's Witnesses once before here in Narita, where they actually came to the door of my school. They left a few Watchtowers for the lobby which the manager rather naively left on display, as they were in English. I remember being a bit uncomfortable having them in my workspace, but they eventually vanished.

I told this particular Witness that I wasn't interested. He gestured to the cover of the particular Watchtower he was holding, which asked "Is There Hope For the World?" and asked me what I thought. I said that yes, there was hope for the world. He asked how it was possible for there to be hope for the world when so many people didn't believe in the Bible. I said didn't have any good world peace solutions on hand (which was true) and that I had to be going (which was also true).

Walking a bit further, I saw two guys doing sanitation work on a public toilet. They were decked out in all kinds of safety gear, most of it looking rather redundant. From behind his goggles and gas mask, one of the workers surprised me by gesturing and saying "hello!" in English.

"Konichiwa," I replied.

The other worker, though, raised a mass of wire and pipes above his head and sang out, yes, sang

"GOOD MORNING, EVERY-ONNNNNE!"

He wasn't wearing a gas mask or goggles, and if it weren't for his huge smile and the juxtaposition of his singing and sanitation gear, I would have found him a bit obnoxious. Instead, I was sort of pleased this random Japanese sanitation worker was singing good morning to me. I laughed, and was on my way.

Such are the joys of being obviously foreign.

Home

2008-01-09T12:14:00.000+09:00

When I returned to Japan last week, one of my Japanese coworkers said "Welcome home!" to me as I walked into work. She meant well, and was sincerely glad to see me, but nevertheless, it felt somewhat wrong. I'd just been home, my real home, and was wishing I was still there even as I got off the plane.

I'd briefly been back to the States in the summer, but that was only for a few days. I saw people for maybe an hour each at the most, didn't have much time to take anything in, and was soon back in Japan. This time, though, I was stateside for over two weeks, ample enough time to fool myself into thinking that I still lived there.

It was good, and also disorienting. Two weeks back brought to light how much Japan has changed me, if anything because I felt like I had a bowling ball in my gut from suddenly eating so much heavy American Christmas food. My innards, which have become used to rice and fish, were suddenly lugging around cheese, turkey, and meat, a gastronomic signal that I was somewhere else. Make no mistake, though- I loved every cheesy hors d'ouvres that I scarfed down there.

It was also bit odd to use English so much in the outside world. I use English all the time here- I teach it, I speak it with my coworkers and girlfriend, and I read English material all of the time. But the outside world is obviously different. It's as if there's a sort of barrier between my English world and Japanese world. I spend lots of time on little islands of English-ness that are surrounded by Japanese. The Japanese world is something that needs to be solved and negotiated, a place where I need to be conscious, listen, think, etc. This is not a bad thing at all- the heightened sense of awareness and such that I have being surrounded by a foreign language and culture is an incredible sensation.

So, it was strange to not have that sensation about me anymore. In the States, everything was suddenly familiar, banal, and comforting all at once. I'd stopped being conscious of always being in "Japan-mode." I'd gotten so accustomed to having to puzzle out what signs mean, make do with approximate meanings, and generally guess as to what was going on, that I had forgotten, a bit, the precision and sharpness that a native language can offer.

Everything was sharp and navigable- absurd as it may sound, "hello" is still more readily understandable to me than "konichiwa." This is wholly irrational, as "konichiwa" was one of the few Japanese words I knew before I got here, and it's a simple word that I use every single day. I even say it to my American coworker, just to be eccentric. And yet, to hear a clear, native speaker "hello," from strangers, one with rising and falling intonation, one with a perfectly shaped "l" sound, was jarringly wonderful.

What's more, much of the English that I use on a day to day basis is for the benefit of people who have a fairly low level when it comes to speaking. When I meet someone new, I have to feel out over the course of the first few minutes of the meeting how good their English is, and even with the most advanced speakers I can't whip out the advanced stuff. Even my most advanced students would have no idea what I meant if I said "Orwellian," "snobbish," or "verbose," for example. Knowing that I could say those things to someone I just met was a liberating feeling.

But of course, the best part of my trip back was seeing my family and friends. With my friends in particular, I was impressed that I'd been gone for a year and that hanging out was remarkably normal. I'd been gone, we'd been out of contact, and that didn't matter- I was at home among awesome people whom I know will still be there when I come back at some future point. The knowledge that I have such wonderful friendships back home put my mind at ease far more than being able to use my native language. You guys rock, I love you all, and I miss you.

Now, I'm back in Kanto, here for another year, and I'm wondering what I'll learn.

In Which I Resolve to Keep on Studying, Despite Having Grammar Destroy My Brain, and Subsequently Gaze Upon Impressive Wooden Contraptions

2007-12-04T00:34:00.000+09:00

At Nihon University's Funabashi campus, I realized that I've still got a long way to go.

At the store, station, or in small conversations I can usually make myself understood in Japanese in a broad, general way. Lots of hand gestures and grammatical approximations and such. In other words, I'm okay at communicating.

But this weekend, faced with the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, third level, asking me about the specifics and such of Japanese grammar, I had quite a bit of trouble. I could read everything on the test- oddly, I found the Kanji section to be the easiest. But when it came to choosing between subtly different sentences and properly using adverbs, I found myself at a loss.

I know I failed the test, and I stressed out about this for some time before hand, but oddly, now, it doesn't really bother me. If anything, I'm more motivated now to study and learn more, shoring up my grammar and such.

After having my brain liquified by the test, though, Kori and I headed out to Saitama Prefecture to the small town of Chichibu. We were meeting up with a few coworkers to attend Chichibu's annual winter festival, considered one of the best in Japan. And, it was indeed something.

We showed up in the evening, and already a bevy of stalls selling grease-laden festival food had been set up near the station. Fireworks exploded overhead at intermittent intervals, and as we exited the train platform we could hear the sounds of taiko.

But, the main draws of the festival were the floats.

Well, I don't know if I can really call them "floats," actually. When I think of a parade float in English, I think of some gaudily colored chassis that's been put on a truck. These floats were nothing like that. They were more like mobile shrines, some larger than small buildings, each pulled by a team of people in festive uniforms. The things creaked as they moved, the wood of the wheels squeaking and creaking against the frame, forming a creaking accompaniment to the sight of these huge, brightly colored vehicles.

All of this thrilled me. Not only the sight of the things, but the whole of it. The teams of people in costume pulling the things about, the fireworks, and the hugeness of the crowds. More than once we were approached by (to all appearances, drunk) Japanese people who decided that we'd be fun to speak English with. Normally, this sort of thing annoys me, but on that particular evening I was more amused than anything else.

We crashed at a coworker's place, and the next day saw it all again in the daylight. This time, the food stalls were out in force, I found myself freely indulging in eating greasy festival stuff. After sampling the street food, I now find the common stereotype that Japanese food is so healthy to be sort of laughable. Everything in sight (and smell) was something "yaki." That is, fried on a hot skillet. There was takoyaki (fried octopus), okonomiyaki (fried veggies and meat), yakitori (fried chicken), meat on sticks, sausages, sweets, and all manner of other decadence. Sure, miso soup and natto might be the ultimate in health foods, but Japan seems as adept as any place in terms of piling on the grease.

Even more people were out during the day, and the floats made an encore appearance. Convenient for me, as I'm not exactly adept at taking nighttime pictures. It was a blast, and after some time, Kori and I got back on the train for Tokyo, going through a landscape that, with its trees and hills, looked uncannily like the northwest.

Not a bad weekend in the slightest. It's not all the time that I get to have my brain melted by an academic pursuit, and then my senses overloaded with stimuli all in a 24 hour period. Life is good.
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Even Amidst the Millions, Routine

2007-11-23T17:14:00.000+09:00

I've moved to the Tokyo area, and this is what my life is like right now-

I wake up in Funabashi, Kori's town, most mornings. Funabashi is in Chiba, but is basically one of the several towns that are indistinguishable from Tokyo. It's a place where neon alleyways and the sound of trains are never far away, where the streets run thick with pedestrians even when I come back at nearly eleven at night, and where massive blocks of concrete hold up the various train lines that criss-cross Kanto like electronic blood vessels.

Every morning, I board one of those massive, noisy electronic blood vessels and make my way out to Narita, where I work. Invariably, the train is filled with dozing commuters and dozens of travelers, slumped upon rolling suitcases, ready to leave this archipelago in favor of a jaunt away. Perhaps others are Chinese or Korean immigrants, returning home. There are sometimes a few westerners.

I work with another native English speaker, so my schedule is lighter now. In Okayama, it was only me and a Japanese man at our school. He would teach the low level classes, teaching them “what,” and “who,” and “how,” and I would teach the advanced classes. Now, I work with another American man and two Japanese women, and my schedule is more cleared out. I have more time to read and study Japanese, more time to stare at the trees and sloping temple view from my classroom, more time to make lesson plans and be lost in my thoughts.

At night, after ten when school is over, I usually return to Funabashi. Kori, is there, of course. Even after ten the trains bustle with salarymen and sleeping pedestrians, suitcase carrying travelers and commuters. I wind my way through the dark, but hardly deserted streets, and walk along the tracks. All the while, trains blustering like Kanto's blood vessels beside me as I make my way back.

I'm enjoying this, and find it remarkable that even in the world's largest city, simple routines prevail. Of course, this makes sense when one thinks about it. On the weekends, we dip into the insanity and the bustle of the metropolis, and it's amazing. Perhaps irregularities will show up. But for now, my daily system is clear- teach, commute, and return. All the while, surrounded by the bustle millions.

In Which I Move. Also, I Mingle With the Myriad Freaks.

2007-11-19T15:59:00.000+09:00

About a month and a half ago, I was at a party on a boat in Tokyo harbor when someone, a guy in IT, asked me how long I'd been in Japan.

"A year," I told him.

"Oh," he replied, "so you must be getting pretty settled, then."

"Yes," I said, "which is why I'm moving."

He seemed puzzled by this, and I told him that I didn't want to be settled, that I didn't want things to become ordinary. I came here trying to get away from the ordinary, and early on in my stay I decided that if I were to keep on in Japan for more than a year, I would move to a different city. I considered Osaka and Kyoto as well, but when I visited Tokyo for the first time last March, I immediately fell in love with the place. Not only that, but I fell in love with Kori as well. The busy streets of Osaka and the temples of Kyoto were fine to visit, but I knew that I might as well go for the big one: Tokyo, a massive sprawl that I now live, comfortably, on the outskirts of.

Sayonara, Okayama

I hate, and sort of love, cleaning out apartments. On the morning of my move, the sun was brightly shining through the tower apartment that I'll probably never see again, and I was blasting Japanese hip-hop into the sunlight. The mix CD was a goodbye gift from my rap-loving coworker, and I found myself liking it a great deal. I'm continually fascinated by how Japan processes and then spits out other western, and was quite liking the bilingual hip-hop blaring from my speakers. I'd slept little the night before- partially out because I'd been out late, and partially because of excitement.

I cleaned out my place, packed up the last of my things, and sat down to way for my successor, who was quite late. When he did show up, he looked like the dead. The night before, my school's staff had thrown a goodbye party for me, and my replacement had a fair amount of booze foisted upon him. Having to move the next day, I was smart enough to avoid abject drunkenness. But, my replacement, new to Japan, seemed to have succumbed to the alcohol-soaked zombification that Japan can inflict upon foreigners.

"Here's the apartment," I said, showing him around and giving him the keys. He took in the place, and I packed away my things into a taxi. I'm actually quite happy with my replacement- I worked with him for a week, he observing my classes and me watching him teach, and I felt entirely at ease with his capabilities. My students, I know, are in good hands. However, the last I saw of him was as a bewildered, nauseous, and dead-looking foreigner. I'd been in his position a few times. It's part of the learning process, in a way.

I boarded the Shinkansen to Tokyo, and leaned back in my seat, sleeping intermittently. When I woke up, near Shizuoka, I could see Mt. Fuji massively looming up through my window. I'd never seen it before on any of my trips on the train before- it had either been cloudy, or I'd been asleep, reading, or on the other side of the train. This time, though, I woke up just in time to see the conical, snow-capped mountain looming over a bristling industrial field.

I was thrilled to be unsettled.

"So, what do you do?" "I work at the airport."

I live, now, in Narita, which is about 35 miles from Tokyo proper, and an hour away by train. It's a nice placement, actually. My school is right next to the train station, and my apartment only 15 minutes away on foot. Kori lives in Funabashi, about 45 minutes away from Narita, and fairly close in to Tokyo proper. My commute, then, is fairly good for Kanto- my work is 20 minutes away from my own place, and an hour away from my girlfriend's. I go against traffic both to and from Narita, so I can sit down and read on the train, which makes the commute pass rather quickly. Best of all, I don't have to change trains. This is the land of two hour commutes and train switches, so I have it quite good, actually.

My school overlooks downtown Narita, and from my window I've got a direct view of Nartia-San, the city's famous Buddhist temple. From my window, I can see the sloping green roof and the tall main pagoda with it's gold spire jutting from trees. It's an ideal sort of landscape view, actually. Almost all of my students are involved in some form or fashion with Narita International Airport, which serves as Tokyo's (and indeed, all of Japan's) main link with the rest of the world. Regrettably, I don't have very many kids' classes.

What I've found strange about Narita, though, is the sheer amount of foreigners. In Okayama, I did a double take when I saw another foreign person. In Narita, I can't seem to walk down the street without seeing non-Japanese people. I suppose this makes sense, what with the gigantic international airport and all.

It makes me happy, though, that my first year in Japan was in Okayama, a fairly English-free place. I was motivated to learn Japanese because of the undeniable necessity of it. Now I'm studying not only for pragmatic reasons, but also because I've discovered that I love foreign languages. I question, though, whether or not I'd have discovered this new passion if I'd initially been placed in Narita. My coworker seems to get by without speaking a word of Japanese, and that makes me slightly apprehensive that my studying may slacken a little. I don't think it will- I get far too much joy out of learning to stop.

In Okayama, I was one of two foreigners who didn't really speak Japanese. In Kanto, though, it seems normal for the westerners to not speak any Japanese. I find this really surreal, actually, the sheer amount of people who haven't really bothered with the language. So, I've gone from being the odd man out because I could only speak a little and could only have basic conversations, to being someone who's considered skilled because I can speak a little and have basic conversations. Two nights ago, a student asked me if I could read Kanji. I replied that I could read a few.

"How many is a few?" she asked.

"About 450 or so," I said, sheepishly, "But I don't know all the proper pronunciations and word combinations."

"What?! Wow!" she replied.

In Okayama, a foreigner who knew about 450 Kanji was illiterate. Here, a foreigner who knows about 450 is considered skilled.

Weird.

The Panoply of Incandescent Awesomeness: In Which I Peruse The Offerings of Tokyo's Hipster Population, and Am Pleased With My Findings

The Tokyo Big Sight is rather aptly named.

Going there yesterday for the Tokyo Design Festa, I sort of wondered how I'd find the place after getting off the train. There was no need, really. Tokyo's gigantic conference hall fills the skyline heavily, and in yesterday's sunset I looked to it eagerly, happy that I now live in the largest urban area in the world. I'd come to the Design Festa to visit a friend of mine, a ceramics artist, who had a booth there. I went for purely personal reasons, and didn't really anticipate or think about what the rest of the outing might entail. I was pleasantly surprised.

The Big Sight, of course, is huge, and the Festa, which occurs every six months, took up a good half of it. The other half was taken up by a Dentistry convention. In the convention hall, I had to spend quite some time before I found my friend's pottery booth, and was amazed at the sheer amount of artists and displays in the offering. After saying hello to my friend and buying one of her tea cups, I set out to the rest of it.

Here's a bit of what I saw: A booth with various comical depictions of snot, extremely intricate doll houses, several graffiti murals, innumerable t-shirts, lots of girls wearing cat ear hats, a guy dressed as a leather-clad panda, another guy dressed as Winnie-the-Pooh, some very loud, abstract heavy metal videos, stained glass depicting characters from Hamlet, a guy who seemed to paint nothing but skeletal samurai, a trio of folks dressed as long-nosed aliens who walked about the hall waving and shaking everyone's hands, several grotesque horror movie monster sculptures, caricature artists, breakdancers, poets accompanied by bass players, a giant pillow made to look like curry and rice that the creators invited people to take naps on, an S&M rope-tying demonstration, three girls wearing dresses made out of balloons (think of balloon animals, but in gown form), random paintings, installment-style sculptures, traditional Thai dancing, and more goths, gothic lolitas, punks, cosplayers, and random freaks than you could swing a cat at.

The whole thing was incredible. I'm definitely going to the next one in May.

I found this all especially refreshing because I just read a book called Polite Lies by Kyoko Mori, a memoir by a Japanese woman who has since relocated to the States. I hated this book.

She has a few interesting observations to make, but for the most part I found her monochromatically negative depiction of all things Japanese to be incredibly irritating. Mori obviously had an abusive father, a depressed and tragically suicidal mother, and a complete bitch of a stepmom. However, the logical leap that she seems to make in her book is "My childhood was awful. I spent my childhood in Japan. Therefore, Japan is awful." Japan, according to Mori, is a colorless conservative, repressive place dominated by etiquette and hierarchy. This is true in some instances, but there's far more to this country than just the conservative element. Had she written about having a bad childhood, that would have been fine. But she seems to use her childhood as a referendum on an entire country, and that's quite unfair.

Walking around the Big Sight, I wondered what Mori would think of the congregation of Tokyo's freak population, whether she'd dismiss them as an aberrant minority or brothers and sisters in arms. Or perhaps she'd take a uniquely negative position and say: "Look how repressive Japan is- it turns the youth into graffiti-painting hooligans who dress up as cartoon characters and animals!"

In any case, I thought, amidst the artists weirdos, that countries, like people, are complicated. Mori's nasty simplicity, I thought, had to be wrong. If Japan can produce the fantastically weird stuff that was invading my eyes, then there was no way it could be the bland country she described. True, Japan's corporate culture and gender politics still have a long way to go, but walking around the panoply of the awesome and weird filled with hope.

And now, I live in the place that produced all of this insanity. This is going to be fun.