The people have spoken?

Part of the problem of living in Japan for an extended period of time is that if you're not careful, you can be overcome by a feeling of 'dumbness' that goes along with speaking simplified English all day, being unable to read anything around you, and just being separated from everyday critical thinking.

To help get my brain/intellect/ABC's back into shape, I've started ordering some books online. I decided to jump into the MLA 100 best novels list (an idea I stole from Sarah) and so I've ordered a few of those. Here's the list:

http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html

But can I just rant about that MLA list for a bit? The MLA board seemed to go over the novel genre and pick out what they thought had outstanding literary value and quality, and those books made the Board's List. You know, your James Joyce and Hemingway and Steinbeck and Salinger (the list isn't perfect though, and it is short on female and non-American authors). But then for some democratic reason they opened up voting to the general public and allowed for a Reader's List, and guess what topped the list; 7 of the top 10 books are either by Ayn Rand or L. Ron Hubbard. BLAH! I mean, regardless of how you feel about their literary writing, the votes were obviously not cast on a literary agenda. Who did the voting here? Rush Limbaugh and Tom Cruise? Yah, real balanced voting, People. There's a reason why the public of today shouldn't be allowed to vote sometimes.

some more recent pics

chisenji temple's graveyard busy at obon


more fireworks


a local nakajo festival, local dancing


taking good care of the gravesite, this is yoshiko's great grandparents' 

some recent pics

miss hawaii 2006 at the hawaii festival in yokohama

i had a fun night of fireworks with some of my favorite nakajo kids

shrine during obon (japan's version of day of the dead)

ohaka mairi, visiting and praying at your ancestor's graves. this is yuko's grandparents' grave. 

Espanola is .... special

One of the positive - and potentially negative - parts of living in Japan is that you become somewhat sheltered from all the daily screwed up things that happen in places where people are less law abiding and more prone to violence (usually a bad combo). For instance, northern New Mexico, particularly the town of Espanola which is down the road from where I grew up. Espanola is not a big town, probably half the size of Tokamachi, but I would say it has 5000% the crime and drug rate (probably less alchohol though). I was checking out our old local paper, The Rio Grande Sun. Occasionally I read the depressing and equally amusing random police blotter. Some excerpts from this week:


• 12:47 a.m. - A Las Lomas Apartments resident said some children he did not know were getting drunk in his apartment and he was just trying to sleep.

• 10:58 a.m. - A very delusional bearded man wearing a blue sweater and blue pants was talking to the robotic horse in front of Center Market, a caller reported. The man was starting to scare customers, the caller said.

• 6:30 p.m. - A man said a couple of guys pulled their guns on someone at Wal-Mart. The gun-wielding men were driving a jeep, the man said.

• 6:41 p.m. - Two drunks were sitting near Calle Redondo with an 18-pack of Bud, according to the dispatch log. They were trying to stop vehicles and get inside, according to the dispatch log.

• 6:45 p.m. - A West Bond Street woman called dispatch to say she was bleeding from the head.

• 6:48 p.m. - A Calle Redondo resident said her neighbor stole $30 from her friend and threatened her friend with a crowbar. The victim said he had just wanted his money back, and he got it back.

• 7:06 p.m. - A Calle del Pajarito woman said her neighbors were sexually harassing her. She told dispatch "they want to sex their women."

• 7:37 p.m. - A woman at the Dollar Store reported another woman was calling her bad names and trying to start a fight.


I mean, huhhh? This is just daily stuff. I think I had erased all that kinda stuff from my memory. The Japanese are occasionally criticized for being afraid to travel to or live in foreign places, but sometimes I can definitely empathize...It's such a far cry from the coccoon of safety that is rural Japan (don't get me wrong though, Japan has its fair share of social problems, which I won't get into now. But never once have I had to worry about getting a gun pulled on me at Jusco).

Sorry, Shamu.

Yo Japan, you know I love you but you drive me crazy sometimes.

Will you please explain to me how, up here in my mountain town in my tiny local izakaya bar that only seats like 7 people, a bunch of whale chunks ended up in my miso soup last night?

How's that whale research program going?

Perhaps what I unknowingly ate was from one of the 1,238 whales taken under your scientific research permit last year.


The Japanese claim that whaling should continue because it is an important part of Japanese traditional culture (and it's tasty, they say), and that criticism is hypocritical coming from anti-whaling nations like the U.S. who allow subsistence-based traditional whaling in small Native populations.

Obviously there's a difference between a small isolated group of Inuits legally taking 5 whales a year, and a country like Japan who is taking 1,000 whales under a dishonest research permit loophole. Groups like the Inuit take pride out of communally hunting the local whales themselves, and using the whale amongst their own local population. Certain parts of the whale are given to elders of a certain rank and used for special ceremonies. And maybe is what whaling was in Japan long ago. But there is no tradition in the modern Japanese way of using commercial vessels to hunt whales 5,000 miles away, only to use commercial distributors to scatter whale throughout the country at high prices until it ends up in school children's lunches in the form of minced whale burgers, or in my miso soup at the izakaya last night.

But at least they're not wasting anything. As the old Japanese proverb goes, "There's nothing to throw away from a whale except its voice."

happy anniversary to me

Today marks the two-year anniversary of my first day in Japan.

Two years! And I'll be staying at least one more. A few days ago I signed my contract for my third year. I'm locked in.

-Warning, the following is just a personal statement of justification-

My feelings about the whole thing are mixed. The fact is, I would have to leave my job and apartment and life in Tokamachi today if I hadn't recontracted. And it feels good to know that I am not ready for that yet. Had I decided to stop JET, my experiences here would be cut short. I wouldn't have had that crazy weekend in Tokyo and Yokohama. I wouldn't have eaten that world class sushi for lunch today. I wouldn't have had a rural onsen after work. I won't have had all the awesome things I will do over the next year. I won't have had the opportunity to see the strange beauty and culture and language and humor that I see everyday. And my income would have stopped.

But of course I'm missing home, and it's been far too long since I've been home and seen that familiar beauty and culture and language and humor. I'll get home soon for a visit but my mind gets distracted with wanting another trip to Thailand or Hawaii or Okinawa where I can do the beach thing but see Tim and Susie and my sister and see Zen and Rain, or go somewhere new like China or Vietnam. By staying, I've given myself the opportunity to go all of these places. And I wouldn't be happy knowing that if I left I wouldn't have the money or location or job or schedule that gives me the space to do all this.

But of course my heart aches for things and people in New Mexico. The people and life and places back home haven't been forgotten. If anything, I'm more aware of them now than I ever was. In fact, I think people around here might be tired of hearing me brag about them...

But I'm really quite enjoying extending my young 20's as long as I can. Don't worry though, I'll know if and when my time is up. I won't be 'that guy'.

How long will I stay here though? Longer than one more year? Your guess is as good as mine. When I came, I only thought it would be a year. Now it's three.

Does this make me an ex-pat? I don't think I'm at that point...yet.

highway through heaven

OK, so it ended up being a 'leave at 11 PM, get there at 7 AM' trips, mostly because of the complexity of the sadistic gaijin trap that is the Tokyo expressway system, combined with sleep deprivation. we stopped by akasaka to pick up kaori about 3 AM and headed out to her place towards yokohama, but spent 3 + hours driving circles not only around and through tokyo, but slicing up up and away and above tokyo. the tokyo expressway system is an incredible magical hovering heaven-like concrete monstrous motor speedway jamboree that allows you to drive (hover, really) at high speeds within just a few feet of the craniums of sleeping tokyoites. as the sun started to rise, we had a beautiful view of tokyo tower. we absorbed the sunrise wandering lost through the world's largest metropolis, tightly packed with rows and columns of humanity-filled concrete. we saw bright lights, sea scapes and brick jungles, and sky scrapers. we were tired and delirious. i think lopaka started talking about rainbow monkeys.

we finally got a map, but it didn't help until i had an hour to process its info. the maps are useful to those people who can read kanji and what not, but to us single-alphabet lame-brain country-bumpkins, a map of any tokyo highway or train system looks exactly like a complex computer generated fractal pattern.






one of the the most entertaining and equally frustrating parts of finding your way around japan is asking the helpful locals, who should be in the know, but are either flustered by having to speak to a foreigner, or just flustered in general. each of the 6 convenience stores we stopped at gave us different directions, until they finally just told us to go to the police box where we found 2 of the most harmless looking cops standing out front, holding their flashlights and waiting for the phone to ring (probably with a report that another umbrella has been stolen from the train station). we asked them the way to shinmaruko (kaori's hood) and they giggled like my junior-high students. they conversed about it for 10 minutes and then pointed in one direction with a shrug.

when we finally got into kanagawa we stopped an old man taking out his morning trash and asked where shinmaruko was (it was just down the road at that point). the conversation between kaori and the old gentleman went something like this:

"excuse me, how do we get to shinmaruko? it's nearby here."
"shinamaruko? i think it's that way"
"really? we just came from that way"
"oh. wait, SHINmaruko? there's no such place called shinmaruko. it doesn't exist."
"yah it does, I live there!"

Anyway, the Hawaii fest was fun. pics to come.