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rinse and repeat

2012-01-14T09:25:00.000+09:00

Repetition is a fact of life. Repetition is part of the art and beauty of the cycle of life. But sometimes I want to break free and see life from an exochronic point of view. I believe exochronic is a made up word, and I read once that schizophrenics like to use made up words so I suppose I should be worried about that. But for what I am trying to express I can't find a word in English, so I just coined one. What I mean is that I strive to sometimes see my life external to time, a point of view unchained from the grim reaper. It is a bit hard to extract your thoughtstream from the flow of time though.

Another thing I have been thinking about is books. I have started reading a lot of books recently because of the convenience of reading ebooks on my smartphone. I've noticed an odd behavioral habit. I first started to notice with a paper book, named (if translated) Yellow Eyed Fish. I read through the book and suddenly slowed at the last few chapters. And even though I loved the book I suddenly couldn't bring myself to read more than a few pages at a time. I thought maybe it was because it was in a second language. But I have been reading endless English books on my phone with often the same pattern. I think now it's because I don't want to exit the mental cacoon constructed by the reading of each book. I don't usually reread books, and once I'm done, I'm done. All the thoughts with that book pulled out and put on a mental bookshelf. I think I am reluctant to leave behind the fascinating worlds of some books and so I am reluctant to finish each story.

dreams dreams

2011-12-25T09:31:00.002+09:00

This morning, I had a dream and as I was waking up I heard a good friend from America saying dramatically "if life had a GPA, you'd be failing". That really made me think hard. I stood in my morning shower, the cold brisk air mingling with the hot water pouring down, and couldn't get that phrase out of my mind. If I thought about it objectively, I would be flunking the "school of life" by traditional standards of success I suppose. But does that matter? I think one of the key things I learned at actual school is it is what you learn in the class that matters, not the arbitrary grade that you are assigned based on some external goal posts. I think that when the one you love fails to love you, people tend to inflict self hate. My mind subconsciously is focusing on typical social goals and noticing my utter complete failure to meet those standards. But does it matter? I think I don't mind being the F student in life, at least for the moment.

nakagin capsule tower

2011-12-01T15:01:00.002+09:00

I find it weird that I can relate to a tower. But there I was, staring up at the Nakagin Capsule Tower with some sort of radiating empathy. The once magnificent building beginning to show the signs of age. Decay beginning to eat away at the once high concept building. I don't want to pull the analogy too close to myself, but we all get old and lost in the waves of time. In any case, I just stood there looking at the urban beauty of the place, reflecting on everything and nothing at the same moment. Trying to hold on to tranquility, fighting against a storm of inner thoughts.

Each room of the Nakagin Capsule Tower is it's own encapsulated and contained room. A small bed, a tube TV and a reel to reel tape player in each room. This is a relic of the early 1970s, a beautiful movement known as Metabolism, something I wish had taken off in a big way. It really appeals to me, I've even thought of similar towers before I ever saw this one. Each renter in their own isolated unit, connected to the whole like a distributed network. Brilliant, self contained, compartmentalized. I find this building, and the hopes it embodied, fascinating.

But like all good hopes, it seems ready to be destroyed. The Ginza area is one of the most expensive areas in Japan and the land this old hulk rests on could be utilized in more profitable ways. So they might rip it out, destroy all that ws built for years, for no real good reason. I can imagine them cutting the cord on this building and the little pods floating off into the air, like castaway balloons.

about japan

2011-09-24T20:19:00.003+09:00

If you live in a foreign country long enough, you can hear a lot of complaints about the country from other non-natives. I do not really consider myself a "Japan Lover" by any stretch of the phrase, I think of Japan on pretty simple terms. It's a country, good points and bad points, just like any other place. However, I want to discuss some of the "Japan Hater" comments I have heard over and over in this country.

"Japanese food is gross/not delicious/I can't eat it."
This one mystifies me. Japanese food is some of the best food on the planet, and I mean that with all sincerity. I really can't understand people who spit out pickled plums or refused to eat fermented soy beans. Are western tastes really that restricted for the average person growing up? I grew up eating quite a bit off the normal chart I suppose (beef tongue, candied ginseng, bacon wrapped chicken livers, goat meat, and rabbit are just some of the maybe unique dishes I was exposed to as a kid, at least that's what comes to mind right now) so maybe I am a bit biased, but giblet stew and fried chicken ligament is some of the best Japanese food there is. It's really a shame that people only like sushi, if that.

"There are no trash cans anywhere!"
Another one that confuses me. I don't remember a bountiful never ending supply of trash cans back home either. And there are plenty of places to deposit trash in Japan, if you know where to look. Almost all convenience stores have several types of trash cans out front or right inside the front door. Most vending machines have a place to deposit used cans or bottles also, and etc etc.

"Japan is too noisy!"
It can get a bit noisy during certain times. Just a few minutes ago the "hi no youji" people came past my window screaming to "be aware of fires" to promote fire safety. A short repeated beat on wooden clappers--dun, dun-dun. I suppose I am slipping into "Japan Lover" here, but I loved it. The sound of those wooden clappers brought back so many memories, like a vocal bookmark. Maybe a slight annoyance that will be gone before you know it. Like many of the other annoying seasonal sounds. Cicadas (which even the Japanese are fond of complaining about) buzz loudly in the summer, making their insect chorus heard, and then they suddenly cut off. Their voice is the voice of summer, and it reminds you that you're here again--- for another summer. The election season trucks are quite noisy too, the politicians driving around screaming into bullhorns about empty promises, political change that might never happen. But they too are the pulse of Japan, the noise is part of the fabric. I don't know, I think the noises are just part of what Japan is and what it means to live here.

There are many other things people complain about, but these are some of the ones that come to mind now. I just thought I would rant about that, to get it out of my mind.

in search of a song

2011-09-04T22:31:00.003+09:00

A few days ago, I was thinking about my first time coming to Japan. I had been talking to a friend about the few things that have changed over these past 11 years. One thing I was thinking about was that the first time I came to Japan, the crosswalk signal in front of where I was staying played a song when the light was green. I wondered two things. 1. Why can't I hear that song anymore? 2. What's the name of that song? Well, I did what anyone does in that kind of situation. I googled it. It turns out the name of the song is "Toryanse" and apparently some people complained that it was a noisy song to hear every time the light turned green. So because of the complaints, most signals in Tokyo now just make a simple chirping noise when the light is green. That is if they make a sound, of course many crosswalks are silent. So all the new ones don't play that song, but luckily Japanese geeks had website lists of old signals that still played that song. So I googled a map of the ones near my house, and decided to find the one closest to me. It was only about 15 minutes from my house, near a station I had never really spent time at.

I got off the train and wandered around. I found a beautiful park, sunshine streaming through soft leaves. But I couldn't find the crosswalk! I walked around the park, and finally I could hear it echoing in the distance. It's weird how sounds pull at us from our memories, curl up into our mind and explode like a thought grenade. It painted vivid memories in bursts that quickly faded. I sat near the crosswalk and listened to it a few times, holding it in my mind just in case this crosswalk singer would also go the way of the samurai-cowboys.

Before I end this diary post, I thought I should apologize to myself for taking so long to update anything. I have been absent minded, and holding a lot of negative thoughts. Such problems will be my excuse for such a long gap since I have written anything. Also, I would like to share a poem (the poem will be written in English letters, so that anyone can hear the original, plus my horrible not 5-7-5 translation of this beautiful thought-signal) by Basho that really hit me tonight. (Today's silly task was to try to memorize three Basho poems.) It is interesting to know he wrote this while looking down at the gray hair of his mother. te ni toraba kien, namida zo atsuki, aki no shimo (It will disappear if you take it in your hands, like hot tears, autumn's frost.)

kyoto in spring

2011-04-12T20:17:00.007+09:00

This is a blog about going to Kyoto last week. Irrelevant or useless details have been redacted in the sake of brevity and laziness.

So I was supposed to go to Taiwan with my friend Yusuke, but his computer fell down in the earthquake so he didn't want to spend any money on travel because everyone knows a computer is an important window to the world. I understand, but was quite discouraged. Tokyo is shaking like a tamboruine, and I really wanted to get out of town for a few days. A friend suggested we go on a vacation in Japan for a few days and I immediately thought of Amanohashidate, one of the "three scenic places of Japan" somewhere I have been wanting to go for quite awhile.

To save money, we took a pass that can be loosely translated as the "JR Youth 18 Pass". If you are unfamiliar with this pass, let me explain that you don't have to be young to use it. It is simply only valid during school breaks, thus the name. It is quite cheap, but you can only take local trains. My travel companion is a quite relaxed lady, and so she mostly just looked out the window at the slowly rolling countryside. We left Tokyo station at about 8AM and got into Kyoto station around 5:20PM that evening. It was quite a ride. Right in front of Kyoto station is the aptly named Kyoto Tower, so we rode up the tower for a twilight view of our new surroundings.

Kyoto is a peaceful city, and a whole lot darker than Tokyo. Not a lot of neonlights, and a considerable less amount of light pollution. (Suppose if I had grown up there, my blog would have had a different name besides Neonvirus, eh?) In fact, we could make out pinpoints of major stars as we walked around the city for a bit (lost, utterly lost, never found our destination).

The next day, we did the tourist thing. We went and visited The Golden Pavilion, which is like the Eiffel Tower of Kyoto. Symbolic but as cheesy as you imagine. After walking around the gaudy temple and the beautiful Japanese strolling garden, we made our way to a local temple that was aflame with Cherry Blossoms. Wonderful tiny pinkish white blossoms against a stark blue sky. Cherry blossoms are a seasonal reminder of the always rolling wheel of time, I enjoy the evanescence of their beauty. It's good to remember that even beautiful things don't last forever, and yet nothing is ever lost forever in the cycle of life. Or something. Yeah, odd thoughts.

The next day, we made our way to my desired destination. Amanohashidate. That name is quite a mouth-full, eh? Amanohashidate is a land "bridge" that cuts across a bay, and it has been around for quite sometime. It was quite hard to get to it (took a 3 hour bus that cost about US$40) but it was quite beautiful and the weather was perfect.

Oddly, the preferred viewing of Amanohashidate is with your head between your legs. I am not joking. People get up to the edge of the hill above it, and tuck their head between their legs and look at the land bridge from between their legs. Oddest tradition I have heard in awhile.

We walked along the land bridge itself too. It was quiet and peaceful, not so many people. On the edges of the land bridge were soft empty beaches with emerald green water. The trees and the ocean were quite refreshing, a focal point of natural energy, so to speak.

And before I knew it, the next day was hitting me over the head with it's long train ride back to the constantly shaking Tokyo. Good memories last a lifetime, at least that's the hope. I sometimes wonder how long I can hold memories in my mind before they fade away like most things in life.

(This goes without saying, but click on the images for larger views.)

the wait

2011-03-15T01:16:00.006+09:00

A little like knowing a holiday is coming, but not knowing when, they have promised a magnitude 7 earthquake sometime this week in Tokyo. Combined with the waves of planned power outages, the continued aftershocks, and the almost collapse of the train system, and it is a bit of a mess in Town these days.

So I was told work was open. So I woke up as usual, headed to the office out in the countryside. The first sign of foreboding, was when my normal line wasn't running. I switched to a different line, and got to my transfer point. And then when I usually only wait 5 minutes for my next train, I waited for over an hour for a train towards work. But that train didn't even make it that far. Because of aftershocks or overloading or whatever reason, they stopped the train shortly before the correct station and unloaded us all. We were funneled out of the station. I was so close, but not there. I asked the local subway if they could get me near my work, and they suggested a stop. I waited again for a subway, and then used the GPS on my cellphone to find work, which was about a 10 minute walk away from the subway I rode on. I got to work and... no one was there. No students, and only one head staff. Empty. The others hadn't made it. I sat there for awhile wondering why I was there. A local unemployed student came by for a lesson, and it was surreal. Just the two of us pretending that I was working in a fully functioning machine.

After the student went home, the head staff got permission from his boss to close the school. I went back to the main station. But it was shuttered. Completely closed, with signs on it. I felt so weird. Exit blocked. I walked to another train line. Closed. This was like Escape From New York, or something. I walked with the head staff even further, and we found a running subway (bless the subways!) and I got back to somewhere that I had a running train to Tokyo.

The trains were PACKED, and it was surly not rush hour. It was so bad, that they actually had to have staff tie ropes to hold back people so they didnt clog the up and down flow on the stairs. The trains themselves were elbow to elbow, grumpy tired people.

Most of the food has been picked off the shelves of the local supermarkets, like we were visited by locus. Oddly things like instant noodles seem the first to go, but if an earthquake comes again I don't think we will be able to cook noodles. I didn't have a lot of supplies in my house before the earthquake, so I don't have a lot of food to make. I am eating up my emergency canned food, it was supposed to be for if a massive earthquake hit. But a hungry stomach tells me I can get new cans tomorrow. I have water filled up in my bathtub, just in case water goes out. A candle ready, for a power outage. I just don't want to experience that earthquake that they say is coming. Not really a fun thing to look forward to.

thus spoke the earth

2011-03-12T16:12:00.007+09:00

It started out as a fairly usual day, as the majority of days do. I woke up, showered, grabbed a bite to eat and rushed out the door to work. At work I exchanged the same typical banter with my coworkers and went to class. In my class there was a grumpy student, and I remember thinking about how I could try to change that. When suddenly the earth started to roll, like the deck of a boat. I have been in a lot of earthquakes in Japan, but this one felt different. I stood up, and said maybe we should do something. Some of the students looked scared. A very pessimistic coworker across the way laughed and said "It's only an earthquake." But the rolling continued, the walls began to undulate, and the pessimistic coworker kind of nodded and said maybe "Yeah, maybe we should get out." So we stood the students up and with the help of the staff up at the front desk, we evacuated with the neighborhood to a small park near the buildings.

There we were huddled in the park, shaking, most of us without coats. The fitness gym people only in towels, a small group of nurses behind them, and a group of apparent hostesses from a club behind them, a quite random group of strangers standing around in the park nervous. We didn't know if we could go back into the building, and there were already several strong aftershocks. Some of my students from the class I had been teaching had their books with them, so I sat on the steps of the park and taught half of the lesson in the open air. We decided to go back to the school, and tried to teach more but the aftershocks scared everyone. And the news of the tsunami wave warnings and what not began to filter in. The students found ways to get home to check on loved ones but the teachers and staff hung around the branch not sure if they could go. Some of the teachers decided to just go, since there was no point in staying in an empty school. But at that point we found out that the trains had been stopped all over Japan. One of my coworkers had TV in her electronic dictionary (what an age we live in!), and we started to see the destruction. A walk home would have taken me 6 hours or so, it wasn't an option. We got word that the company would pay for a taxi ride if we took one, so I went out and tried to find a taxi. The line for a taxi was hideously long, wrapped fully around the building and only slowly moving. The night was bitter cold. I decided to make my way back to my school where it was warm at least. I stretched out some chairs and tried to sleep. A few other coworkers did the same. In the morning, I got up early and tried to take the first moving train. I waited on the platform with a clog of other people, the golden rays of the sun seeming to offer symbolic hope.

The group of people (in the above picture the sun highlights the man's newspaper, and a headline that reads "What will happen to the water and electricity?") waited silently for quite awhile until a local train inched slowly into the station and dragged us in our direction at a snail's pace. I thought the platform at my first station was crowded, but when I got into downtown Tokyo it was mayhem. There was wall to wall people trying to get on trains. It was like a fireworks festival or new years in times square, but without the laughter, smiles and happiness. I got home finally, at about 10:30AM... a few hours short of 24 hours after the earthquake.

As I am sure you know from the news, this was an insane 8.9 magnitude earthquake that resulted in tsunamis and sadly loss of life. I suppose it should be said here that many of the buildings in Japan are designed so well to withstand earthquakes that this greatly helped to reduce casualties. The biggest destruction seemed to be from the aftermath; tsunami and fire. It is quite surreal watching such wild destruction live in places only hours from you, and I suppose my little experience of it was nothing compared to what others felt firsthand. (The above collection of pictures are from net streamed TV coverage I was watching live.) There have been many aftershocks, just had two while writing this. I am nervous but still very much alive. Life is a fragile thing.

The me inside the me inside the mirror

2011-02-26T09:43:00.002+09:00

This morning I stumbled onto the above picture on the Internet (I am on the train to work right now) and it got me thinking about life. I was thinking about how I am the same "me" I have always been, and yet externally I am quickly changing. Some gray hair, more wrinkles and a disappearing chin these days. This long strange trip of life is quite odd. I wonder too much about meaning, I wonder if I will ever stop wondering about meaning. Life has it's patterns, expected performance. I have things I have wanted to do and yet have never done. I have things I have done, and I have a collection of memories contrasted with my thoughts that make me who I am. Dust to dust, memento mori.

a new year dawns

2011-01-11T15:42:00.002+09:00

I seem to be a bit delinquent with the whole blog thing, so I am sitting down here to write something. The old and odd Stuck With You, by Huey Lewis & The News just popped onto my computer, which is set on loud to drown out the pounding sound of the workmen ripping the surface off the small alley behind my house. They are just going to repave it after they pull it up. Noisy thundering and machines blocking me in to my house. I am suppose to get out of here soon, so I hope they clear a way so I can get out of my house.

And now Basket Case by Green Day is on the computer (my collection is rather eclectic and random) and my mind is pulling me into a Geocities chat room from a million years ago, a long time before I ever heard this band live, chatting with someone who mentioned Green Day. I had no idea they were talking about a band. Naive innocence of youth, lost?

This experimental "mind flow" blogging is failing.

Now the computer presents me Love Love Show by The Yellow Monkey. A good song, also with it's connected moments and memories. Music is like that, a kind of mental bookmark.

I need to get ready to go out.

Hello 2011, I hope we can believe in the brightness of the dawn.

sad dream of the future

2010-11-05T21:57:00.001+09:00

This morning I had a tainted movie-dream. (It was a dream that was more like a movie for me, no active participation from me. I knew on one level it was a dream, but I just saw it like a movie. This is a common dream type for me.)

In the future, medical advances and social opiating megacorporations have reduced poverty and starvation to only a small percentage of the world. The greatest percentage of the world's population live in a media haze, their basic lives sustained by their networked jobs. Games, information, violence, and lust: piped into their field of view most of their waking lives. Somehow the mass of humanity decides that poverty is a way of life, a valued aspect of human nature. It is argued that eradicating the final slums would destroy the heritage and culture of generations of slumdwellers. The slums are relocated to socially convient places and the media fixates on the pain and suffering of the slum people. 24 hour cameras are installed on the caged in ghettos walls, the last remnents of days gone by. Starvation and manufactured drugs become the rabid entertainment of a painfully dull global society, sunk deep in their media feeds.

It was a pretty vivid dream.

sonic entertainment

2010-10-12T16:15:00.007+09:00

A Canadian coworker has a band and he invited me and a bunch of other coworkers to come see him perform live. In Japan, most bands perform at a "live house" instead of a bar or club. These "live houses" are specifically designed for the concept of performances by small independent bands. The band getting paid is apparently hinged on how many heads they can bring in. So as a show of support, many of us descended on a dingy "live house" on the fifth floor of a nondescript building. The floors were sticky with spilled drinks, the air a bit stagnate. A small horde of people gathered in the entrance room, huddled in protection from the sonic assault of noise booming from the performance room that was behind a double door sound buffer. My coworker didn't go on for another hour. I had helped a friend of mine move her stuff into her new house all day, so I was a bit exhausted, but I made small talk with coworkers for awhile. Then I decided to venture into the inner room to get a peek at the wall of noise.

The band had an interesting mix of wild neon fashion for the lead screamer, a trucker hat for the drummer, and goth hair for the bassist. The lead screamer hammered on his guitar in lush ear splitting glory, the wall of noise was literally ear deafening. I enjoyed their oddness, but my ears were beginning to wine from the assault, so I retreated to the other room. I wasn't the only one, a large contingent of the assembled crowd joined me in the waiting room. A few bands later, my coworker's band took the stage.

They had a way more (comparatively) mellow sound. Hard rock with synthesizers and love searching lyrics. And a drum machine. They had the rockstar vibe down, but suffered from the relatively small crowd. They were the most popular band of the night though, with many guys and girls crowding around the bottom of the stage.

I couldn't help but think they might have been even better with some theatrics of some sort, but I suppose straight up rock n roll has it's place too. So after the show I was a bit drunk, but found my train home. I was a bit surprised to be sitting on the same local commuter train as the wild sonic assault band from earlier. They were clearly bummed out by the crowd reaction. They voices down, bitter small talk about how the crowd had just been "wrong" for their type of music and what not. It was a bitter-but-accustomed sound in their voices, I couldn't help but feel they rarely got the recognition they were looking for. I felt a bit sorry for them so I turned (they were right next to me) and said,
"I know this is a bit sudden, but your show was really interesting, can I take your picture?"

The happy surprise on their faces was vibrant, "You were at our show?" the lead screamer said, his voice conveying they rarely heard anything from "fans" at all. I said yes, and told them honestly that I had enjoyed their energy, and that although I hadn't caught most of the lyrics, I had fun listening to them. They were quite excited to talk to someone who had actually seen them perform, and we talked for the next 15 minutes or so until I got to my stop. They had been playing together for about 4 years total, but they often fought about the band they said. ("It's kind of like families, we just fight a lot.") They dreamed about playing overseas, but had no money for it. They had a lot of time though, they all seemed to be burned-out regular people. I guess it could be said they were True Basement Rockstars. I enjoyed our conversation, but then I jumped off the train and returned to the silence of the night.

another day

2010-09-30T21:37:00.002+09:00

another day
like any other
today, yesterday and tomorrow

vines of sorrow
trees of quiet solitude

another day
of scorching heat fading
into a hollow night

winter wanders down from clouds of gray
slate, ice, cold mark, midday

one hour
and then the next

somewhere beyond my eyelids
i sense the crying of the solemn rain

jumping off point

2010-09-04T01:32:00.004+09:00

This entry should be skipped by the easily upset. I was off to work this morning, my mind lost in a fog of morning thoughts. I usually take the express train half-way in the morning because of the obvious convenience (the train doesn't run the whole distance to work though). Our train is speeding along somewhere between one stop and the next, the outside world a distant blur. My eyes scan a webpage listing something incidental about life on planet earth, my mind is distracted. Suddenly there is a thud, and the emergency breaks slam on. The video displays light up in vivid orange, alerting passengers that the emergency breaks have been applied. The train shutters to a stop at a non-regular station. There is a heavy pause, and then the young train driver gets on the intercom. His voice is shaking slightly, he sounds unsteady. "Due to a human body incident, the train is currently stopped. Your understanding is greatly appreciated." The euphemism is not lost on any of us, someone just jumped in front of the train. In less than a minute, the first responders from the station rush towards our train car. They are looking down below us. People start to stare in our direction. One train worker starts to put up "do not enter" tape to hold off the gawkers. An old lady next to me says to the air, "The body is under us." My eyes meet a young woman across the way as the old woman says that. The young woman begins to cry, upset and grossed out. Another old man sitting on the other side of me mutters, "No way he could have survived that. We are in an express train." The emergency workers have now crowded onto the platform, from various support services. Several of them hold a large blue tarp around our train platform to shield the extraction from the other people on the opposite platform. I am surprised by the speed of their arrival, but realize we have been in the train for quite awhile. The old woman gasps, "Here comes the body!" and I look away. I think about the axiom "what has been seen can not be unseen" and decide to not look. Most of the other people in the train can't rip their eyes away. We are still in the train. Workers with sponges and buckets arrive. About this time I notice the jumper's shoe on the platform, encircled by chalk. The emergency workers had circled it to better capture it in their digital documentation of the incident. The shoe, which had apparently flown off in the impact, stood alone with it's sole next to it. Alone on the platform, the last verification of the man's jump.

nakayama's wedding

2010-07-23T10:25:00.002+09:00

My Japanese friend Nakayama (who I have known since I was in my mid-teens) got married in Korea. Because she was going to marry a friend that I had introduced her to, they both invited me to come to the wedding.

Weddings are a funny cultural thing, and each country has it's own unique attitudes towards marriage. The Korean wedding was done in two stages, the first was kind of "Western" styles. Most Korean weddings are held in a Wedding Hall specifically designed for weddings. It was mostly in Korean, but occasionally heavily accented Japanese. The next was the "Korean" style wedding, held in the basement of the wedding hall. A lot of unique customs. Like the bride and groom holding a piece of cloth between them and the parents of the groom throwing walnuts onto the cloth bridge to determine how many kids the couple would produce. My friend got six.... goodluck! And the groom giving a serious piggy back ride in front of everyone near the end of the ceremony. Culture is fascinating.

transformation

2010-06-30T02:51:00.002+09:00

I often wonder how much a city changes me. How long do you have to live in a place before the place begins to live in you? I remember eons ago the moment when suddenly, like magic, I understood voices around me. It was like adjusting the focus on a camera lens, suddenly noise twisted into words. Recently I feel like I am hypersensitive to smells. Many foreign people complain that Japanese people are picky about the slightest of odors. And I am wondering if that is happening to me. Although as if I was blind my whole life, and now I can see a bit of light, this sensitivity is a bit bewildering. Intoxicating, confusing. Aren't my senses suppose to decrease with age? Or maybe this has nothing to do with localizing, maybe it is the last push effort of my sense before fading away into older age. Or maybe a momentary peak of my awareness. Who knows. Fascinating, none the less.

reality and what not

2010-05-27T02:08:00.004+09:00

I find myself wondering too much about things that don't really matter. I wonder if that is the nature of being human, to get lost in mental loops of disassociated reality.

A few days ago, I rode around Tokyo with a camera strapped to my neck like a reckless necklace made of string and ducktape. It wasn't the most stylish, but I was curious to capture the biker's perspective. It had been awhile since I road a bike, and I had expected the streets of downtown Tokyo to be unfriendly to bicycles. I was happily surprised that it was quite easy to glide along the streets, pavement sliding under me like a treadmill. Me and the companion that accompanied me on this adventure, must have snaked all over downtown. Pushed by pedal power.

Text messages blasting in bursts. Silence. Views. Thoughts. Disconnected.

In pop culture thoughts: I ended up seeing the final episode of the American TV show LOST. Being millions of miles away from America, I do not see most American TV. I think I saw the first episode, and maybe parts of other episodes since then. So it surprised me that I felt like I basically understood the finale. Does that mean that fans wasted 6 years of their lives? I doubt it, it probably speaks instead to the clarity of the authors of the show. Or maybe I just dig entertainment enough I could postulate on things I didn't know based on the language of drama. Who knows.

I somehow stumbled on someone describing an interesting meme they were trying to start. (Don't you love the chaos of the internet?) As you can see by the link it was a way to generate "your own" album cover. Click here to see the final result. I followed the instructions on that site in order to come up with my own "band" (named honestly and ironically "Gelotophilia" -- the pleasure of liking people to laugh at you) and "album" (which was the last part of the quote "Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."). The cover shot was acquired from this random user. Oh the internet, it is pure randomness fed into the brain in bursts.

the art of annoyance

2010-04-30T13:10:00.003+09:00

I am so pissed off right now. I was waiting for a train to take me to work and suddenly someone touched my shoulder lightly. I was surprised because people dont usually touch strangers in Tokyo. I look over and its this russian exchange student and she asks a question (in English) about the name of the line but she muddles the vowels and so I say "sorry where are you trying to go?" hoping she'll at least be able to nail the pronunciation of her destination. She pulls out an English map and says "here." I totally know the station and so just as I go to explain it to her this Japanese dweeb steps--literally-- between us and starts blabbering at her in Japanese about how to get there. Now there were tons of Japanese people on the train platform so she clearly had more confidence speaking English, thats why she picked me. But this was a nationalist geek (believe me, thats really a type in Japan) so he thought he would interrupt and "help" in Japanese but she didnt get it and his assumption I couldnt help her was uber annoying too. I said in English "Dude, she doesnt speak japanese. Let me finish explaining." She said in broken Japanese "Little Japanese speak" so I shrugged said "ok, he'll help you." and let the dweeb take over. She clearly didnt get it. He pointed to the ground and said in Japanese "Not this line, you should go down stairs." and she answered in English "Oh, take this line?" My train was coming and I would be late for work so I had to take it. So I said to the lady in English "Not this line, maybe get help at the station" (because they often have information centres, and I didnt have time to help) but the Japanese guy literally stepped infront of me to cut me off so I couldnt help her in English. GAAAD! And he got on the same train as me. As we were getting on the train, I said in Japanese "What the hell man? She couldnt understand your Japanese!" and he said "Yes she could." And I said "Huh? No she couldnt." and he replied "I was just being nice." and then we were in the train and pushed in different directions by the crowds. I was left with confused feelings. Yes, it is Japan so she should learn Japanese... and, yes its good to try to be nice to strangers. But darn it, he just butted in and made it so I couldnt help her and made her loose a chance to get help. And his attitude was so annoying. Gaaaad!

up up in the air

2010-04-27T22:09:00.004+09:00

I find myself currently torn behind trying out "new things" and avoiding anything new. Days like today, with rain quietly splattering outside my wind and cars running along wet pavement, I feel like I could stay in my room forever. Never call any friends, never go downtown, never do anything. But other days, I feel a desire to stretch myself out to do new things, experience new horizons. It was one of those outward bound moments that found me heading to Gunma. The prefecture of Gunma is only a little over an hour train ride from my part of Tokyo, and I passed the time with a friend (who might want to be left unnamed because of their fear to take part in the events of the day), talking in slowly rolling trains is a simple pleasure of mine. We get to Gunma, and the reality of it hits me. I had browsed a Wikipedia page on the origin of gliding in the olympics, and I had got interested in it a bit. A plane without an engine is tugged up into the air by another plane (with an engine) and then let go. The engineless plane is left to glide slowly in circles, with nothing but the sail-like wings supporting it. The day was beautiful, little yellow flowers poking out of the grass in green fields next to rural backroads. We get up to the field where the glider hobbyists are assembled in a circle. They all seem so intent on their hobby, and I felt like an outsider. The leader asks me to introduce myself and I get a little uncharacteristically short of words, stammer something about why I was there. The different characters waiting for a ride in the gliders are all chatty and unique. An older woman who owned a hang glider company; she defined her hang gliding service as local trains and gliders as bullet trains. In other words, this was the deluxe way to get up into the clouds. A female high school student from 5 hours away (there aren't many glider clubs in Japan apparently) who had met one of the pilots while on vacation by herself overseas. Suddenly a grisly old pilot called me over to his glider, and told me we were going up. He strapped me into a parachute, told me not to press the canopy eject button, and we were off. An old airplane pulling us up, up, up in to the air. It felt unreal, buoyant, and a bit euphoric. As we got higher up, and the rural rice fields began to blend together, I could see other gliders circling on the thermal vents. One came literally feet from our wings, and my pilot swore. But I wasn't even upset by the close call, I was already hurtling to the sky pulled behind another airplane by nothing but a thin rope. And then the rope was gone, disconnected, we were hanging on nothing but the wind. The air whistled past and the pilot banked in loops, pointing the shiny wing down towards the ground. The ground twirled around us, the blue sky danced along with it. It is hard to explain what it felt like, but I suppose if I had been born a dolphin it would have felt the same to swim in a beautiful ocean. And then we were landing again. Back on the ground, leaving me to search for words to explain those quick 20 minutes in the air.

three days in taiwan

2010-03-18T01:23:00.007+09:00

Most vacations just blur past, and my trip to Taiwan was no exception. I am sitting down here (kind of late at night locally) to confirm a rough draft of the vacation events so I wont forget quickly.

A Japanese friend of mine, who speaks fluent Chinese, invited me to go with her to Taiwan. I had never been, so I thought it would be fun. We get on the airplane and the first thing I think is a thought I have about how airplanes never seem to carefully screen the lyrics of their in-flight music. Through my headphones is Madonna belting out (in the song American Pie) "This will be the day that I die..." A quick switch of the channels provides Bon Jovi singing "Some dreams live, Some will die" Maaan. This doesn't help when you are on an old China Air flight that was stopped for TWO hours before take off due to "maintenance issues"! Oh well, at least it was cheap.

So we get to Taiwan, and the first thing I notice is the "living air" smell that is similar to Hong Kong. It's kind of hard to explain, but Tokyo has way less variety of smells floating around. But in Taiwan (and in Hong Kong) the air feels, hmm, spicy --for lack of a better word. Not a bad thing, quite a fun thing for the nose. The next thing I notice is how many mopeds and scooters are everywhere. Literally everywhere. And most drivers have a stylized smog mask over their faces, making the moped drivers seem like some sort of mass unified mob of some sort.

So when we get to Taipei, we ride the subway out to a suburb of Taipei named Danshui (which literally simply means "fresh water") and meet some of my Japanese friend's Taiwanese friends. They are all super nice, only one can speak Japanese though. And another one can speak some English, but other than that, only Chinese. My Mandarin Chinese is still way below rapid conversational, so I am mostly out of the conversations but I enjoy listening along and trying to puzzle out the meaning. They take us to a "Western style" dinner, and I am struck by how it was so close... but so far away from food someone would eat in America. Clam chowder... that isn't quite chowdery enough. Steak, with the wrong sauce. Salad with odd ingredients. And so on. I enjoy imaging that this is what a Taiwanese person feels when they eat Taiwanese food overseas.

The next day it is more walking around the city and meeting more of my friend's Taiwanese friends. We briefly go to a Japan Occupation Museum (always an interesting stop when in Asia) and then walk around Taipei 101, which is like the Eiffel Tower of Taiwan. It was the tallest building in the world until The Burj in Dubai took the "new" title of tallest. We walk around the glittery mall inside, window shopping, people watching, and whittling the time away. Sometime that day (hora! I am already beginning to forget details) my friend talks me into going to a foot massage. I had never gone to anything like that, and I suppose that is the fun thing about going on vacations with other people. You sort of get out and try things you would never try by yourself. I must admit, it is quite odd having someone rub on your feet and pull on your toes. The weirdest part is when the masseur literally punches your legs, as if he is angry about how his foot massage is going. It is a unique style massage, I must say. That evening I meet up with a friend from college who I haven't met in maybe about 7 years. Time is too darn quick, sometimes when we aren't paying attention we suddenly get a whole lot older.

The next day, we meet yet another one of my friend's Taiwanese friends (it helps to speak the language if you want to make friends) and go to his family's house for lunch. It is fun to go to someone's house and take a look around. His parents can't speak much English or Japanese, but they are nice enough. I find myself feeling a bit sorry for my friend, she tries to speak to them in Chinese, but because they seem to be nervous they give their answers to their son who translates into English and then I sometimes explain it in Japanese to my friend who answers yet again in Chinese. I know her Chinese is good enough to have a conversation with his parents, they must be just too nervous to speak directly to her I suppose. It is a weird loop conversation.

And before I know it, I am in the airport. I am in the airplane. I am rushing back towards Japan. I am at immigration. And then I am home in Japan again. From this moment, this vacation will become nothing more than yet another interesting trip abroad-- snuggled up into my mind with all my other memories.

think thoughts

2010-03-12T00:48:00.006+09:00

Wow. Just wow. That's a new low for my whole internet diary keeping thing. I skipped the whole month of February? Just nothing at all? That's bad! I really want to keep chronicling my life, but I have very little inspiration when I am living basically the same thing--day in and day out. And when I do think of something I usually forget by the time I sit down in front of my computer. Ahh, enough of the exucses.

Well, I do have a bit of news. My first vacation in a long time is coming up. Me and a Japanese friend are going to Taiwan. I haven't ever been there, and even though it is going to be a quick trip, I am looking foward to it. And if I am lucky, I might be able to use a word or two in Chinese.

In other news, I have 47 new photos up if you want to browse. Enjoy!
(The above picture is an attempt at a globe panorama, in Asakusa!)

politics of language

2010-01-29T01:44:00.004+09:00

A few days ago, I was walking to my train station. It was bitter cold and dark, but suddenly a woman asked me (in Japanese) "Excuse me, do you know where Komagome Hospital is?" I was kind of surprised. Often in Tokyo I get ignored because of the colour of my skin. I tend to complain about this with my friends while tossing back beers or whatever. But this felt like a beautiful colour-blind moment! Perfect except I wasnt sure where the hospital was. "uhm... i've never been there, but..." I began to offer. She looked right and left, and pointed right, "Well, do you think it's that way?" I was a bit late to meet my friend, but I decided to do my best to help this lady out. I thought I was being a little rude having a conversation with her while I was bundled up behind my hood, so I pulled my hood down and started to say that I thought she was right, but in literal slow motion I saw her see my face (why she hadn't noticed my accent I'm not sure) and her eyes literally go round with shock. She held up her hands, and said "Oh, it's OK-- I'm fine." and turned around and headed in the direction she had assumed. Oh. So much for a perfect moment.

A few days after that, I was standing at an intersection near my house. I was going to the laundry mat, and so I had my laundry bag slung over one shoulder. I was appreciating the glimmer of the cold sun (it's still winter after all!) when suddenly behind me I heard someone say in Indian accented English, "Excuse me, sir." I turn around and a kind of pudgy man sitting on a mountain bike is looking at me. I offer "Uhhh... yeah?" and he says, "Can you tell me where [midnight] is?" The word midnight was the only thing I could make sense of the word. It wasn't English, it was Japanese, but that was the only thing that registered. "Uhh, sorry, what are you trying to find?" I asked. He repeated the same thing, and I shook my head and said "Up there is police box, they might be able to help you." He looked up the short hill and said "It's too far away, and it's a hill so I don't want to go up there. I'll ask someone else." At that moment the pedestrian light turned green for me, so I wished him goodluck and crossed the street.

(Also, 88 new photos in my photo album if you wanna take a peek! Yes. I went mad. Tons of random photos [maybe too many red leaves!] from all over the place. And I haven't even finished uploading all the pictures I took so far! Anyway, enjoy.)

a year's final thoughts

2009-12-31T23:17:00.002+09:00

In about an hour, the local time flips over to another year. I cant help thinking I didnt do enough with this one.

A few days ago I met a friend's friends and we all wandered around town. It struck me how colorful this town tokyo is, and how I like sharing it with people seeing it for the first time. Pushing my way through crowded market streets, getting samples of whale meat on the street. Seeing sights and sounds... eating horse sushi at a small bar under a train line. Chicken ligament freshly grilled and tasty. Ah, this is a great city.

I met a different friend for only about a half hour a few days later. We didnt have much time to talk, but the topic shifted to how one's future shapes one's past. It felt important to yet again vent my grief for a passing youth. I can feel the next year approaching. Heres hoping its a good one!

inherent multiplicity

2009-12-08T01:29:00.004+09:00

Excuse me while I step into a useless linguistics-ish rant with no relevance to anyone beyond myself and the tiny corner of my brain I am currently occupying. I am thinking about the multiplicity inherent in related language groups. As I mentioned before in this blog, I am studying Chinese at work. A coworker (who assumed I study Japanese and knows I also study Korean, among others) recently told me that he thought I was damaging my linguistic progress by learning Chinese. I waxed on philosophically that learning multiple languages in related families actually reinforces the others because of inherent cross-overs. Beyond that, I assured him, the study of several language-systems was bound to do me brain a world of good--- mental exercise to the extreme, so to speak. A Japanese friend of mine recently wrote a book about studying Korean. I bought it today, and was flipping through it's pages casually when the word "umbrella" hit me as a perfect example. (Hope you have Asian fonts installed for this.) In Korean it is 우산 [usan] and in Chinese it is 雨伞 [yǔsǎn]　and in Japanese 傘 [kasa]. Korean although wrote in a different written system is startlingly close to the Chinese (which, in the quoted example, utilizes simplified characters. Traditional ones are the same as the Japanese character) and the Japanese is pronounced different but uses the same characters (although usually Japanese people just use the second character of the two, although the first can be read as "rain" in Japanese, rendering it easily understood as "rain Umbrella"). Thus knowledge of any of the three language systems supports acquisition of the other two. Now it's not usually as clean cut as this perfect example, there are endless words that don't correlate, but the fact that any of them do brings these languages into a sort of "family" so to speak. Fascinating, for me anyway.

pinnacle of civilization

2009-11-30T23:51:00.004+09:00

I was thinking about that famous fallacy recently, that perspective makes us think we are in the "modern era" when in fact (in some sort of way) we are members of a deep past. I'm sure the citizens of ancient Rome or ancient Yamato thought that they were the newest generation, and yet we can barely remember them now. It is thoughts like these that make me wonder why many of us think that we are currently near the pinnacle of civilization.

Many of us still sit above bowls of water to extract external food waste, after which we rub processed tree flesh on our rears. Is this the pinnacle of civilization??

Many of us are often still scared of other ones of us based on skin pigmentation or mating rituals. Many of us think others are somehow naturally unequal to us, for simple delusional differences. Is this the pinnacle of civilization??

Many of us still don't realize that many of us, is the One of us. The One of us, in a deep endlessly vast impossibly chaotic universe. We are but one minute dust mote floating through a brief fraction of infinite time. Is this the pinnacle of civilization??

unReality

2009-11-12T04:29:00.004+09:00

Reality by it's nature is unreal. (OK, I have been taking a healthy dose of Descartes mixed with a plump share of Buddha lately, but still they have a point!) I've been fiddling around with a scene modeling program I got for making matte painting for movies. (yes, I am insanely into my hobby of making movies, I know.) Drag a block here, add a texture here, plop in some trees here, and you get something that the human mind can recognize as a place. Although my lack of skill (click the picture included with this post for proof) leaves it less than what could be mixed up with our reality, it is still conceivable as a location. Just like dreams are unreal, so are created realities of the mind. The line between fiction and nonfiction is in the strength of the narrative.

winter already

2009-10-29T19:32:00.005+09:00

Winter comes this way again, but first a quick visit with Autumn, then repeat the cycle, repeat the blog updates; barely there, I so thought I would blog more this year. Somehow the repetition of work is pulling my creativity down.

I kind of have the urge to travel, but not sure how or when. I like to see things, feed my brain with new ideas and places. Need new light patterns for the retinas.

In my Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese) class at work I learned a new word a few weeks ago. It was "xiong mao" (xiong is pronounced like SHE-OH-NG if you don't know) which literally means "bear cat"... Are you asking what the heck a bear-cat might be? Well, it's the Chinese word for panda! Kangaroo is "bag mouse" and dolphin is "sea pig". Dang, animal words are cool in Chinese. (For the over achievers in the house, those words word be "daishu" and "haitun" respectively.) In fact, a lot of learning Chinese is fun. I never have enough time to take lessons though. Only one lesson this month. Oh well, it's just a hobby.

I finally fixed my camera, well kind of fixed it. So I have been taking billions more photos, along with some technically difficult panoramas (quite hard when I didn't have a working display) and even a nasty spider (partially pictured above) which all can be seen from the link, a total of 44 new pictures of now.

edumacation

2009-10-11T09:35:00.002+09:00

Sometimes I wish I was in the Lesson Planning Division. I got a fax regarding a new style lesson with "instructions" in broken English and written unrealistically, to paraphrase: "Junior English Aptitude Test are for improving the English kinder/junior/senior students. Show the mixed level class four cards. Instruct them that you will say a four short conversations. Ask the students to mark (a number in the empty boxes) in their test book the sentences that is best matching one of the cards, but not all. For example, 'Tom, what is that?' 'It's an apple mom.' Grade all tests before student go home." arrrg. There are so many things wrong with that teaching plan, I don't know where to start. Just let me be a good teacher don't give me unrealistic expectations. For example, IF the kids can understand those complicated instructions they will find the English in the 'conversation' way too easy. (Not to mention, what kind of mom doesn't know what an apple is?!) Frustrated. Sorry for the rant. You may now continue what you were doing.

new shopping

2009-09-22T00:05:00.002+09:00

So the above picture is a somewhat drunk me wearing a brand new shirt. I was out drinking tequila shots with an old coworker I hadn't see in years and years. And when I got back to my house, wow! A delivery from Canada! A few weeks ago I ordered some shirts from an "on demand" t-shirt printing place. I'm thinking now that this is the future for creative types of people, like me. I don't ever really feel like going into a store and buying "designer" tshirts, but when I have the option to design my own and then wear my own unique designs, the idea appeals to me. (If you are wondering this design says "wo haipa" in Mandarin Chinese and "oh! hyper!" in small English letters under it, some sort of Multilingual pun, if you will [although haipa doesn't of course mean "hyper"! It means "scared" which adds a layer to the silliness I suppose].) In any case, I think we found my preferred way of shopping now. Nice!

placebo stress

2009-08-11T03:34:00.004+09:00

Stress can really keep people awake, and it's been doing that to me again recently. My mind just buzzing around, clicking on this and that and not sleeping. I got some Chinese Herbal medicine that has helped me sleep quite well. I am curious how much of it's relaxation effect is placebo, and how much is the actual herbs. And I am also wondering what's the difference between the two effects? If it works, it works. I think its time to have some and fade off into sleep. There is an interesting synergy between humans and what they input into their bodies. Daily drops of caffeine, or nicotine for some, and countless whatever else falling together to form the definition of a particular human.

** I guess I should also point out the 52 new pictures in my album to browse. **

beautiful ballet

2009-07-19T23:55:00.004+09:00

One of my friends invited me to come to her ballet performance in Northern Japan, and I ended up having a special day off work so I decided to go check it out. I am very naive regarding the classic arts, both western and asian so I was looking forward to educating myself a bit. The exhibition hall was a bit out in the countryside faraway from Tokyo. So I took a bullet train as far North as it would take me, and then hopped on a local train. From the station to the culture center, I walked about 10 minutes in a soft, warm, summer rain. The countryside was fresh, the mood vibrant.
The performance itself was fascinating. I kept in mind that this was an old art, that first came to prominence in a more conservative era. With that said, the dresses of the female dancers were clearly designed to be titillating, the moves provocative. And even the male dancers simply wore a tight leotard on bottom (so tight that it etched the butt cheeks) and a clearly stuffed cod-piece. Not all the dancers were professional, some were a bit young and wobbly. But when a group of ballet dancers got into a synchronized movement there was something highly mesmerizing about it. Almost as if a group of flowers , lacking words, had animated themselves on stage and began to try to communicate with symbolic movements. Hands arched, bodies twisted, all conveying some sort of narrative that went beyond words. It was truly art, movement for no logical reason; half way between a vigorously abstract dream and the dawn of functional reality. My friend was amazingly talented too. Dancing as if she was putting no effort into it, each move perfectly executed like a robotic feather. It was amazing.

odd people

2009-07-18T10:11:00.001+09:00

Our world is filled with odd people of all sorts. Here are some people I think are odd.

I live on the Yamanote train line. I see people rush to get on the train, running full force. And if they miss the train a dark cloud crosses their faces, as if they failed at life. Come on people, the trains on the Yamanote line come litterally every three minutes! Missing a train is no big deal.

Sometimes people get mad at me for things I have no possible way to change. I was drinking with a Japanese friend and she started to get upset because I was genetically American. Genetics are something that are fixed in stone. Get angry about it all you want, but its not gonna change.

Often when I'm in a public restroom stall people come up and knock on the door to 'check' if I'm inside. How could the stall be closed and locked if I wasnt inside? Don't get it, but I guess maybe they are saying hurry up. But I still think its odd.

switched on

2009-07-10T03:13:00.005+09:00

I've mentioned in to my friends, and in a few other places online, but it's bubbled to the top here too--- my broken camera is inspiring! Because the display is broken, I treat it something like a cheap holga film camera. I just point and shoot a few random shots each day. I usually end up with random blurry crud, but sometimes I get shots that are more exciting in their random framing. I also get more excitement from it than a normal digital camera. I have to wait until I get home and put the SD card in the SD card reader, excited to see what I ended up with. Because of this I have 73 new photos on my photo album site. And it's only going to grow, I've been inspired by most of what I see around me. Almost as if I am surrounded by a whimsical sober melancholy.

classic dilemma

2009-06-29T22:49:00.000+09:00

I am signing another contract with my company this week, and they
asked me if I wanted to work a massively intensive schedule for more
money or a laid-back schedule for predictably less money. It's the
classic "more money, less free time" versus "more free time, less
money" dilemma distilled into a real life choice. I told my boss I
would think about it and tell him this week. I think that I knew that
in my heart which one I would go with. I really genuinely love
teaching, it's part of my identity. Although, with that said, I also
like time to be creative. Making short movies, writing poems or
stories, and just generally expressing myself are something I value a
lot too. So I am going to accept the less money but more free time
option. I have told myself for at least three years now that I would
finish a few books (yes, I am secretly working on a few books even
now) and somehow film a few film ideas I have. So maybe 2009-2010 will
be my true year of creation, even though I think that quite often. So
look forward to all sorts of odd creativity from me if my schedule
opens up slightly.

swine flu & fear

2009-05-21T22:12:00.002+09:00

So if you haven't heard, people are a bit worried about what has been named "Swine Flu". A media frenzy about this little infection problem has swept Japan, and the news keeps a constant update on total number of reported cases. In Tokyo, word is going around that protective surgical masks are sold out everywhere. People are starting to panic, and today the Japanese staff at my company got a fax from up-top that they should wear those protective masks (this is actually a common Japanese personal practice when one has a flu, in order to not share it with others or during the flu season to avoid getting it). I felt sympathy for the staff and let them talk me into wearing a mask too. The other teachers weren't so happy about the request to don masks though. Claiming it stupid, and unfounded. (To be fair, more people have so far died TODAY in traffic accidents in Tokyo than have died because of swine flu since the beginning of the whole outbreak in Japan.) The teachers reacted strongly against having to wear a mask, and the staff on their end refused to take theirs off for long periods of time. (Taking them off to answer the phone or eat lunch.) It was too hard to teach lessons with a mask on though, so eventually after a few lessons I fell to the peer pressure of my fellow teachers and took off the mask. Somehow I felt this stand-off between the Japanese staff and the foreign workers was some kind of window into a deeper culture difference that I can't quite put my finger on at the moment.

journey to america (part cuatro)

2009-05-15T02:03:00.003+09:00

{{... final post}}

I flew into an oddly treeless Reno on a sunny day. My friend Yuka picked me up and we went to a huge American style all-you-can-eat buffey. After that, we went and tried a little gambling with her roommates. Inside I still feel like a little kid, so I didnt sit down at any of the poker tables, but Yuka's roommate taught me how to use a video slot machine and I played around on it a little. I'm not that into gambling though so after that we went back to Yuka's home in the suburbs. They had such a large American style house that there was even a spare room for me. Cookie-cutter suburb, but big and spacious.

The next day, Yuka had to teach (her job!) so I watched her teach at her college. She was teaching a "Japanese Culture" class, full of energy and mental bubbles. The students seemed to get a big kick out of it, and I kind of felt like a student again because I had mingled with the students in the back of the class. After her classes were finished at about 3:00 we headed out to a huge lake near her place, lake Tahoe. By the time we got there it was cold and rainy. We just mostly sat in her car, with rain smearing the windowshield, talked about time flying, and other random topics until the day began to fade.

In what seemed like a blink of an eye, it was the next day and I was heading off back to Seattle to take my plane back to Japan. I met a college friend Seth for dinner (but oddly two other mutual college friends didnt want to meet) and then kind of anti-climatically checked myself into a too-expensive hotel next to the airport so I could wake up early for my return flight. And then after a long push through the air the next day, I was home in Japan again.

It almost doesnt seem real already. Just a blur of memories. I uploaded about 48 pictures of mostly scenery I saw in America. If you want people pictures, you'll have to explore the network of connections I have to the web. They're somewhere, but not here. Here I just wanted to share a few mental impressions.

journey to america (part tres)

2009-05-05T01:08:00.007+09:00

The endless parade of people I hadn't seen in years continued. This time meeting all my brothers and sisters who I hadn't seen in so long. My older sister was taking care of three kids and one on the way. A vibrant family of little boys with mohawks. They were so full of energy and vitality, I imagined my sister being exhausted every day. The next day, my mother drove me from my sister's house to my small countryside hometown. I felt like Marty McFly, stepping out of a time machine. In the 7 year gap since I had last been in my hometown they had transformed the corn fields near my house into a small uniform suburb community of factory-made houses. And there were a few street lights now! It felt a little weird and invasive somehow.

Me and my younger brother Tim (who I had missed a lot) walked around our small neighborhood. Up to a tiny creek where we used to go as kids, past the creek that no longer had cows around it, and to an old cemetery that was now pressed against a brand new middle school. Unlike most of the dying small towns across middle America, my hometown seems to be going through a bit of a growth spurt. My brother has a theory about everything, and I listened to him wax on about the growth of trees, movement of gravestones, and the possibility of an impenetrable ionosphere. The sunlight began to fade from the sky, leaking out of the corners of the horizon with a golden glint. It was time to head on back to my mum's home.

My mum is a colorful person with a creative streak. She works hard too but took some time off to spend time with me. We went up to a lake near my house, and discussed life. Time goes by too quickly when you think back, but at the time it seemed to be going just fine. Green trees with moss hanging off them, the glossy surface of the lake reflecting the sky hung above it, and my mum talking about life.

My brother Ben had broke his leg the day after dropping me off at my sister's house, so I didn't get to spend too much time with him. Me and my mum stopped by his place and watched American TV with him as he told us about the metal pin they had to put in his leg. I marveled at modern medicine that allows someone to walk again after they have completely snapped off their legs.

I did get to spend a little time with my younger sister Chrissa though. She is a fully grown woman now, and seemed like a kid last time I saw her. She helps to fix broken rivers and help reestablish ecosystems. Yup, she's a full blown hippie and it's awesome. It was interesting to think she was about the same age I was when I first began to live in Japan full-time.

I also spent some time in my college town with my dad and his new family. His new wife and him recently gave birth to a new kid and interestingly enough they use baby sign language with him. In college I wrote a paper arguing for it's use in augmenting early communication with a baby because children can learn to sign before they can learn to speak. I had never seen it in real life, and it was fun to watch the baby see a rabbit and poke out his fingers in a V sign or want milk and squeeze his hands into a fist up and down. While in my college town I made time to quickly meet an old teacher (for less than 15 minutes) and stop by Brendon and Maralise's house. They had squeezed out two kids since I had last seen them, but they still lived in the same place I have always known. They told me about dreams of living in other countries, and we passed around a few thoughts before I ran off towards my next direction.

After the parade of Washington family and friends, I took an Amtrak train down to Oregon. On the train, a man dressed in all black sat down next to me. He had all black clothes, a black cellphone, a black bag and even a black iPod. He turned on his iPod and blared death metal into his ears. I thought he was fitting his stereotype until he opened his black notebook and revealed a Bambi quote. Yup, Bambi. You don't stereotypically think that Death Metal heads will be into Disney movies. He must have been an amateur author of sorts, because on the other pages there were short stories. Bored on a long train ridding past endless patches of green trees, I kept glancing at his stories. Phrases lingered in my mind, "God became the devil's gumball machine" or "An idiot's guide to shoplifting" and also something like "I remember Ms. Green's first grade class, I moved and moved and moved and learned to move."

In Oregon, I met my friend Steph at the train station. I first met her around my freshman year in college, and hadn't seen her in a million years. We went for lunch and cocktails. The cocktails were thick and not so fruity. We drove back to her suburban apartment and I took a quick shower to wash off the grime of constant travel. We went back out to dinner at a hip Portland club. In the morning, Steph was very hung over (and I wasn't, too much drinking in Japan I guess) but she still drove me downtown to meet a my Japanese friend Tomoko.

It was a brilliantly sunny day, the clouds fluffy and the air fresh. I had yet another hamburger as my friend ate french toast, talking about my reverse culture shock and her experiences in America. The contrast was interesting, both of us finding a lot in common regarding the odd parts of American culture. Such as how Americans dont always shut the bathroom door when they are finished, as a signal that the bathroom is ready to be used. (In Japan some families use bathroom slippers outside the door as this signal.) After that, we were walking around an outside Saturday market when suddenly in a matter of minutes the clouds darkened and it began to utterly down pour. If you are thinking it was raining cats and dogs, you are mistaken, it must have been raining cows and horses. It was thick gobs of rapid-fire rain mixed in with hail that literally soaked me to the bone in less than 30 seconds. We dashed under an overpass, as the rain thundered down. My friend had to get back to move her stuff and had no choice but to depart into a mist of thinning rain. In less than 10 minutes, the clouds faded back to blue and the rain stopped. The sunshine came out again, and glistened off the newly wet roads.

A few hours later I met Cody and Michelle. I first met Cody when I was taking script writing in college. He physically reminds me a bit of Mister Clean, the advertising genie. Meeting him reminded me of visiting them with Kayo a million years ago. At the time they lived a bit in the countryside down south in Japan. That summer trip to the Osaka area was a near perfect memory, and it was like a pleasant wind running through my mind. This time Cody and Michelle were great hosts again, taking me to a nice old-style pub and making me breakfast in the morning. After that, I got on a massively delayed flight heading towards Nevada.

{{To be continued...}}

journey to america (part dos)

2009-04-30T07:18:00.004+09:00

A flurry of faces and palces. Wanting to cling to moments with friends and family that I haven't seen for years and years.

In Seattle I first met up with my frail grandmother and her boyfriend. They got lost, and wandered around the airport until they found me a few hours later. We walked out to their car, and we made our way to a Denny's American Style Restraunt. While I munched on my country fried steak with gravy and hash browns, my grandmother's boyfriend Bob told me about his bad knee and all the medicine he has been taking for it. Doctors, medicine, drugs, medicare, problems, never listen to me, my bad knee, doctors.

After that, my friend Tanya and her new husband Matt picked me up and we went out to eat Mexican food. American-sized food, stuffed to the gills. Tanya and Matt recently moved back from Japan to America, in to the rhythm of life, starting to live a new way again. Moments spun around as we got a few beers and I got asked for ID I didn't have. Tips, bars, English conversation failing me.

Before I knew it, Cory passed the baton with Tanya and I was riding in his sportsy car towards his house to crash that night. I hadn't seen him in such a long time, and it was fun to slip back into that conversational tempo we used to have when we were both exchange students in Korea. Life continues.

The next day, Cory passed the baton quickly Yvonne. I met her at a supermarket, and we ate vegan sandwhiches and salmon soup. Yvonne's new boyfriend turned out to be someone I knew in college, and that kept the conversation afloat. After a quick conversation with her, she tossed me in the direction of my good friend Christina and Alisa. We walked around downtown a bit, eyeballed a youth hostel, got me a cheap $16 prepaid cellphone, and went out to eat at a fancy restraunt with german beer. They wanted ID again, time to dig through my bag to find my ID. The conversation and moments mangled together a bit like multiflavored icecream on a summer day. In moments I was off checking into a youth hostel and heading towards to sleep.

The next day I met my cool friend Nicky. When I left America he had just got married, and now he had two talkative young kids who couldn't stop showing me their cool toys. I helped him plan for a Movie he was trying to make for a festival. The actors came, the cameras rolled, the people did their magic things. Once again a blur of moments heading towards the next moment. With a couple of beeps my brother Ben was outside in his car, giving me a ride towards my small rustic childhood home.

{{To be continued...}}

journey to america (part uno)

2009-04-24T14:59:00.003+09:00

I wake up early, sleepy. Nerves kept me awake the night before. I check my bags once more, pull them up around my shoulders and head to the airport.

At the "self check in" counter an agent tries to do it for me. I point out the "self" in "self check in" but he insists. I get a bit annoyed and explain I can do it. He literally puts his hands on me to push me away, I slap off his hands and he finally relents. I forget about it as I go through the gates and board the plane. I'm sitting on the plane as other passengers board, we're going to take off soon. A big shouldered security man comes up to the man sitting next to me and asks him if he is me. I offer that I'm me. And he asks me to come with him to the back of the plane and he begins to launch into a conversation about "physical assault" and what not and at first I have no idea what he is talking about. Then I remember the check-in agent. The security man is in a huff, clearly wanting to cause a scene. So I try to flip it around. I tell him I wasn't angry about the check-in man touching my arm, even though it wasn't appropriate. I say that although airline employees shouldn't be touching their customers, I wasn't upset about it and he shouldn't get the guy in trouble. Caught by surprise he says something about how he thinks I misunderstand the situation. I mention that we are all adults and should act that way. He lets me go after a bit of more defused steam. Not kicked off the plane, I gratefully return to my seat.

After a cry-baby flight I touch down to a rain-drenched Seattle. I ask the immigration officer if I should check resident since I am a US Citizen or check visitor since I am only coming to visit friends and family and will return to Japan after that. He eyeballs me. "That depends on how long you been away and if you plan on ever living here again--- how long you been away?" I tell him six years and he asks me to repeat. He seems amazed, which puzzles me. You'd think a border guard would deal with such travelers often. He then asks me if I ever want to live in the United States again. I'm not sure he wants to hear me say no so I tell him that I'm young and haven't decided anything yet. He watches me silently for what seems like a long time, then he says "Welcome back to America." and stamps my passport.

But I'm not in yet. They tell me at bag check that they have to search my bag in the back room. A big portly man with a short slender assistant are standing next to various X-ray machines. The big man asks, "Is this your bag, sir?" I nod, and begin to open the bag for him. He enters 'panic mode' and his left hand hovers above what I guess was a teaser, his right hand popping out like a stop sign. "Step back, sir." He belts out, adding "I'm a trained professional." They tare into my bags, my items going every which way. They finally procure a small cube of packaged soup I bought at the travel department of a shop in Japan. "This has beef in it, sir. Trying to bring in beef can result in a $300 fine." I explain my honest mistake and he lets me go. I pack up all my stuff, and step into America again.

{{To be continued...}}

circadian rhythms

2009-04-11T10:12:00.001+09:00

My days blend into patterns, sounds, repeated moments. If I'm home, its 5 o'clock when the neighborhood cult begins banging their drums, and about 6 when they finish. It was 8 o'clock when through my thin walls I could hear my nextーdoor neighbor starting a bath, recently her hours at work must have changed her two year habbit though. The porno shop stairs also moved out last week, so the shutters closing at 2 in the morning can no longer be my get to bed notice.

My morning meal tends to be a pattern too. Fruit juice and a tuna flavored seaweedーrice triangle. Not that I prefer tuna, the pattern just makes selection simple.

I tend to think the same thoughts even, repeat, repeat, rephrase, repeat. Not that I'm saying thats a bad thing or a good thing. It's just human existance.

drunk conversation

2009-04-04T02:51:00.003+09:00

I'm drunk. My head is dizzy, another 7 minutes until my last train comes. I decide to sit down on the train platform. The train platform man comes up to me:
Train Platform Man: "Mr. Passenger, please stand up."
Me: "This is the yellow safety line, this is me [behind it] so I'm OK."
TPM: "Stand now, it's dangerous."
Me: "I'm drunk, so standing is more dahhhngeruus"
TPM: "If the train driver sees you, he will be perplexed by your sitting down. Stand up now!"
Me: "You are standing in fuh-ront of the yehhhlow line-e so youre more dangerous"
TPM: "Mr. Passanger, stand up now or I will move you by force."
Me: "Whathehec..."
Train Platform Man pushes me full force against the pillar in the station, I feel my drunk back slap against the hard surface.
Me: "Youre soh frhickin annoying..." But by now the train is coming, TPM keeps his needle hands on me until the train comes to a stop and then he abruptly leaves. I stumble on to the train. Moral of the story? Swaying around near the platform gap seems to be OK but don't sit down to attain stability or TPM will come get you.

digital memories

2009-03-25T12:35:00.004+09:00

So if you havent heard, I'm gonna ride a bottle across a huge sea of clouds and end up in my country of origin for about a week before i end up back in that bottle heading back here. That inhuman voyage will be my first in over 6 years, so I am a bit excited to see that land of memories.

I want to digitally store my memories so I got a cheap 12 megapixel camera. Its amazing how fast these little boxes improve. Yesterday, I decided to take a walk in m neighborhood to try it out. I ended up walking deep into the heart of my city's old downtown. It was a sunny but not hot day. I bought a pack of freshly roasted (and heavily salted) potato wedges for a buck. I munched on them while getting lost in the small streets in my neighborhood. I realized it had been years since I roamed my neighborhood, I need to do that more often. I captured 20 images of my urban hike, a kind of quick splash in a sudden torrent. (On a quick computer geek note, click the images to go to the next one.) A moment in spring.

silent art

2009-02-18T03:36:00.002+09:00

I am sitting here as my computer slowly chugs away at rendering something I am making for an online art project. It has been doing it all day, and it has just recently finished less than a second of screen video. It says I have another 55 hours of rendering time to finish the 5 second clip. This makes me think about art and why people make it. I know that this is only one of the many shots I will have to render for my project, which will maybe make the whole thing which will be less than 5 minutes on screen take up most likely weeks and weeks of rendering. And then... maybe 50 people will watch it in the history of the Internet. So I am wondering about the concept of "art" for the sake of art. That has always been my guiding principle. I wonder if its some "lofty" way to excuse obscurity, or is it really the way I approach my life. Well, enough random blabbering.

flickers of a flashback

2009-01-22T00:24:00.002+09:00

So I woke up today with a haze of the past clinging to the threads of my mind, so to speak. I dont think I ever blogged much about it because it used to be a rather dull lifeless story for me. But time adds animation and depth and with that begins my flashback. For reasons to be dealt with in another memory, I began college when I was 16. With the help of the government I was paying my own way and so in order to conserve money I started out at the community college near a large university. For a couple of quarters I commuted from my parents house in the countryside (roads with no painted lines) to the big college town (painted lines with traffic lights). After a few quarters of that endless loop, I decided to move into the Big City. I found out that at the time the University had a deal with the community college which let "out of towners" (mostly international students) live in their senior apartment-dorms. This brings us to the main point of the flash back, my first room mates. I knocked on the door, holding a small bag of things. A flamboyant man named Manny flung open the door and burst out with a torrent of words, "oh! you must be the new roommate! oh! are you The International guy? oh wow like, welcome to america! oh do you speak English? well, any case come on in, welcome to the castle!" Or something of the sort. I dont remember his major and I dont even really remember having much of a conversation with him. Mostly a torrent of bubbly one way words, I think he felt so old to me at the time even though he was younger than I am now. The other roommate felt even older. His name was Eric, he was a quiet math major. He affiliated himself on the opposite side of Manny's rainbow. Even so, they would sing mundane songs to eachother as if they were locked in some kind of everyday musical. "Giive meee thee remote con-troool!" "Wouldja miiind, wouldja miiind, bringin' me-a fork?" What I remember most about Eric though was on my first day watching TV in the living room. Suddenly he looked over and said, "You look pretty young, man. How old are you??" I mumbled something, turned a bit red. He laughed, swore, drank some more beer and asked me again. I mumbled again and got up and went to my room. He followed me and said, "Come on man, how old are you??" and with nowhere to go I crawled under the desk in my room. He was laughing and swearing, his beer still in his hand. "What are you 12 or something?" I gave in, "16" He kept laughing on his way back to the living room. I heard him tell the TV "Daamn, they let anybody into college these days."

another year

2009-01-14T00:43:00.005+09:00

So 2009 is here. Just another year until 10 years into this new millennium. Just numbers I suppose, but numbers add up and begin to weigh down on you if you think about it long enough. For new years, me and my cool friend Kayo got in a train and tried to go as far as we could possible go in one day. We used this special train ticket that Japan Rail gives that makes such endeavors economically possible. We got a little past Shizouka, to a small town called Toyohashi. Spur of the moment travel is fun, I gotta do that more often.

A few days after that my New Zealand friend came to visit. She's in Japan for a few weeks, staying at different friends houses and what not. She came by my place for a few days. It was my New Years holidays (sort of) and so I had some time to take her around and show her all the tourist spots. I wonder sometimes what pulls people to go to certain spots, isn't every place just another place? A cascade of light on our retina can be oh so thrilling I suppose.

I haven't updated pictures in awhile. Maybe mostly because my digital camera is crap. Well, it takes awesome video but weak pictures. I need a better digital eyeball to chronicle my fade into the abyss. Hmmm. If only money grew on trees, or camera companies gave out free cameras. Or I could plug y'all into my visual cortex. I'll work on that.

So yeah, there are 18 new photos up on my photo album, if you wish to have a photo snack. And even a video of a bashful Mt. Fuji hiding among clouds. Enjoy!

Oh. And you know? How about some random corporate love? Years and years ago I bought a cheap Cantonese learning CD from a company called EuroTalk. It's basically just a CD of colors and numbers, but its great fun. A few hours ago, I tried to put it in my new mac and the mac spat out a "classic applications" not supported error. I e-mailed EuroTalk and in less than 30 minutes (no joke!) they said they were sending me a free replacement CD with current application design. I guess I shouldn't fall in love with this company before I actually see the CD, but it seems at this moment to be some of the best customer service I have ever dealt with. Gold stars for everyone.

language interference

2008-12-05T02:57:00.007+09:00

As I mentioned a few blogs back, I have been trying to learn Mandarin Chinese at work, just for fun. I haven't made much progress, and doubt I ever really will in the short term. It's more a way to keep my brain active and adaptive. I also find it fascinating to watch my mind tackle another language from near the start of the whole process. I find all sorts of other previous languages interfering and even in some cases helping out. It's a bit of a patch-work quilt at times, a word here and a random guess there. A few weeks ago English popped up and interfered in a major way. But I wasn't aware of this until a few minutes ago, and when I found that out I decided to write a little blog here expressing my stupidity. The teacher was about 30, friendly, a vibrant woman. She was asking me questions, but I was slow, still waking up mentally. "Something something something family?" she says in Chinese seeming to slam at me a mile a minute. I dig in my mind for a memorized Mandarin phrase and throw it back at her in a ear-crunching English-Accent, "Sorry what was that?" She smiles, writes down the phrase with Chinese characters. This helps a bit. Just a bit. I make the mental connection as she says it again, "Who is in your family?" I think too long, and try to flip to a page in my notebook that covers the knowledge gap. Drats. Nothing. What do I know? I start out slow, "Mother..." she smiles and says OK so I continue, "...father..." she encourages me enough that older sister pops into my head at that moment (not at this one) and I enthusiastically shout out "...older sister..." and then I falter... younger brother, younger brother, younger brother, dang it. It's not coming to me. Suddenly like a warrior on a brilliant horse the word brother marches into my brain. But wait, I tell myself, I need younger brother--- not just brother. I improvise. I literally belt out what I think is, "Little brother." (I actually pulled the correct word from my mind but over compensated by adding little to it, and even after reviewing my notes it didn't seem like such a big deal, but...) The teachers eyes get big, and she starts laughing hard. I think I realize that she must imagine my brother being 4 inches tall and running around like a garden gnome so I decide to make it better. With my fingers I try to save my improvised Chinese, I show her the size of my 4 inch brother garden gnome and say, "Not this." This doesn't work. She busts out in more fits of giggles. I knew she was a bubbly sort of teacher but this was unexpected. I try to move it forward with my improvise explanation and say, "I have TWO little brothers." She is snorting a bit through her nose now and she says, "No no no no, not LITTLE brother. Younger brother, younger brother, younger brother." Hmm. I don't get it, but move on to trying to discuss my younger sister. I got it today. I was clicking around on a language learning site, and naturally my eyes fell onto the slang section. I clicked it open and immediately my eyes fell onto my constructed word. If you say little younger brother instead of younger brother it literally means wee wee. dick. cock. that guy. Uh huh. I even went so far as to say I had two.

onwards!

2008-11-30T20:04:00.006+09:00

Moving towards yet another year, almost a decade into this new millennium already? Wow.

I must say I was saddened by the news that US shoppers stampeded through a shop so wildly that they led to the death of a worker, because they stepped all over him. Bloody capitalism. It's times like this that I wonder about the system.

I feel like receding into my memories. This time lets follow me back to the start of 2006, when I was living in Hong Kong.

I am sitting on my tile floor, looking at the steep hill outside my window. I hear cars and people beyond. I am sipping on some vitasoy lemon tea (my favorite). I woke up sometime ago, but not sure when. If I have no work my days tend to blend into awake and not awake times. I go out of my room. Past the old security guard who is listening to old Japanese pop music on the radio. The security door snaps shut behind me. A wave of pleasant city business hits me. The mixed spice of Hong Kong city life wafts into my nose. I walk down towards the station, walking past the giant frogs in the market waiting to be served as dinner. Maybe I'll get a cheap Hong Kong movie on VCD and watch it, in the last month I have watched over 50 or so. I change my mind. I step into the 7/11 convenience store. I find my favorite melty cheese tuna sandwich, and some more vitasoy lemon tea. Luckily here in Hong Kong the microwaves are self service so there is little conversation with the clerks besides the one way announcement of price. (Unlike in Japan where foreigners must know how to request or answer a question about the heating of purchased items.) But today has been slow, and the clerk throws a wrench in to the turbine and asks me a perky question in Cantonese. I look at her. From her smile, and tone I gather it's simply a conversational question. I scan backwards mentally and grasp the only word I can get with my broken Cantonese. I nod. She said something something something good? And so I reply with a half smile, "Good." She doesn't seem upset or confused by this answer so I turn around and microwave my stuff before heading off up a slanted sidewalk leading to a park and a swing set. The weather is great, wind blowing in my hair, and it's perfect for a small ride on some swings while eating a kickass sandwhich--- and drinking vitasoy lemon tea of course.

the future

2008-11-05T22:44:00.004+09:00

As many of you might have noticed, I try to avoid political, too personal, and things about work on my blog. But just like last time when work bubbled into the core of what it meant to be me, I will post some thoughts. I am really really happy for America today. While in American college I had endless debates with classmates about what was wrong with American politics. I argued quite simply that politicians are supposed to represent America, but how can it be equal representation when most all politicians are rich old white men? Being a good politician of course transcends personal race and what not, but the fact of the matter is 99% of all presidents were protestant, and until now 100% affiliated themselves as Caucasian-Americans. Diversity, in all things, is strength. I see Obama as the example of a true American, his diverse family background and his strong political savvy make him a near perfect president for a twenty first century America. And on a final more controversial note, McCain and others claimed that Obama was out to "spread the wealth around" which was twisting one sentence Obama said in order to try to spread fear. But I never understood why that was a smear? What's wrong with spreading the wealth around a little bit? If the rich had a little less and the poor had a little more, wouldn't that make a better America and a better world? In any case, I look forward to seeing how this presidential term unfolds.

stolen words

2008-10-02T23:55:00.005+09:00

The other day, I met an Australian friend of mine for some beers with him and his girlfriend. We were talking about this, that, and everything when suddenly he got quite livid about the fact that Japanese people don't borrow the English word for platypus. I pointed out that elephant and rhinoceros are among many other Japanese animal words that have endemic names. I thought he was getting up in arms about how a lot of other words are borrowed phonetically (computer becomes "konpyuta" and smile becomes "sumairu" and so and so forth) but he clarified that he was more annoyed that the word wasn't borrowed as it exists in English because there was no way for a platypus to be local in Japan. That they were local to Australia, and that it made no sense to have a "native" Japanese word. I argued that in Japanese it must just be a translation of the Latin (which I was wrong, apparently platypus means "flat footed" in Latin, I need to brush up on my Latin. Literally it means something akin to "duck's bill" in Japanese which I guess is actually a translation of the nickname "duckbill platypus") but none the less I don't think I really got how frustrated this made him feel. Flashfoward to the next day, focus on my Chinese class. (Yes, I'm taking Mandarin at work. Employee discount, and it's fun!) The teacher shows me a picture of a lady standing in front of the statue of liberty. He asks me (in Chinese of course) "Where is she from?" and I smile, knowing I can ring this one, and answer "She is from America." The teacher (a temperamental old bald man) nods, I've quieted his tamper for the time being. I have answered this question, and he wont get mad at me yet. (He tends to get upset when I answer incorrectly, something that puzzles me as a student. I'm learning, take it easy on me!) He asks, "Where is she from in America?" and I smile, confidence leaking into my grin. "New York." I say in what I assume is a Chinese accent for the place, I get close enough to receive another nod. (Something like "niu yue".) Then he throws me a curve ball, he asks me "Where is she from in New York?" I panic. Whaaaat. I try to throw on a direction word I am learning, "North New York?" He glares, not the faintest hint of a nod. I smile. Still no nod. That doesn't work. I try a Chinese pronunciation for "Queens". It doesn't work. But he decides to cut me some slack, he says, "Queens? ahhh, huang hou qu?" (Keep in mind, qu should be read CHU here.) And I have the "wow, that's what my Ozzy friend ment!" moment. I got it. It felt so weird to have a name that wasn't phonetically borrowed when talking about a borough of New York. Shouldn't it just be a borrowed word? How can there be an endemic word for Queens? It's maybe a translation, instead of a stolen phonetic copy like I was expecting. Thoughts shot through my head. If I didn't misunderstand, that meant something beautiful. There are a million sounds to describe anything. What we tag to things are only the sounds we have been assigned to associate with those things through our connection with our own language frames. There is an infinite way to perceive things. Cool!

cheese

2008-09-21T00:54:00.002+09:00

i'm sitting in my ibaraki room, thats decorated like a glorified hotel. which is what it is, i guess. outside i can hear the chirp of crickets and the distant drone of a car at the edge of my ability to hear it. it's quite different than the constant roar of cars flowing past my tokyo house. recently i found out that my boss wants me back in tokyo. it will be great to finally come back to tokyo, enjoy life and sleep on my own futon again. but after being out here for awhile, i feel a little blue about leaving. life is full of cycles, the ending of this extended moment leads to the next. tomorrow is my last day in ibaraki. i ate cheese tonight, hoping that'd give me weird dreams that will inspire me tomorrow.

photos at midnight

2008-09-10T02:42:00.008+09:00

So not really much to say besides announce about twenty-six new photos of my summer vacations. I didn't have a lot of money to go faraway this summer, but I did manage to make it up to Sendai and down to Wakayama. For those of you who might be less entertained by static images, the high-energy videos of my Wakayama and Sendai forays are alive, and kicking. Maybe a trip report someday, but with this he sleeps.

brave new world

2008-08-14T23:01:00.003+09:00

OK. I am sitting here totally in awe and a little scared of google. I never thought it was a big deal before. But it feels different when it hits so close to home. For awhile they have had a "street view" option in their software that lets you get panoramic photo-realistic views of American streets. Some people were saying it was creepy, and I thought they were over reacting. And I still do. But. Yeah. But. I just found out google launched this function in Japan. And that I can sit here on my computer and get a 360 panoramic view of my neighborhood with photo realism. Heck, I even recognize some of my neighbors walking around near my house and... and I can even see the Ethiopian flag hanging in my own fricking window. (Why do I have that flag? Long story for a different day.) In any case, it's a bit weird. But from a more positive side of things, I started thinking how this has the potential to pull us all together as humans. If you can roll on down the streets in any country of the world, the "mystery" of our differences will began to evaporate and maybe we'll begin to see eachother as just people no matter where we live. It's pretty amazing actually, in a way that I think I'm not able to express in words at the moment.

glimpse

2008-08-02T01:06:00.003+09:00

I always think I have seen most of Japanese culture and then I always get a glimpse from another point of view. Tonight I met my cute friend (lets call her Ms.I) and she was with another friend who was the stereotype of cute (hanging cleavage, long legs, all that, lets call her Ms.H) I went to a kind of stylish bar with the two of them in Imotesando. The conversation (in Japanese of course) was rapid and right down my alley, fun, bubbly conversation. We decided to have a "bar hopping" night, but by the time we left the first stylish bar the cash in my wallet was almost burned up. So I told them to go to the next bar (they pointed it out) and I would run to the ATM and be back in no time. When I got back, Ms. H was in the restroom and my friend Ms.I was talking with two old (late 60s) businessmen. They see me and one of them says, "Whos this fine young man?" and my friend says, "Yeah, he is a fine young man, he's a friend from college." and I am puzzled so I say "Do you guys know each other?" And the vocal old man laughs with a little bit of rust in his voice and says, "well, we are becoming to know each other right now." Ms. H comes back and after a brief exchange about how hot her legs are, the two old men leave. I am thinking 'dang! what creepy old men!' when Ms. I my friend says "yeah, I met some old guys like that last year, and just because we let them talk to us girls they bought all our drinks, it was so cool." Ms.H laughs and turns to me and advises me, "Be sure to turn into an old guy like that, ok?" The conversation twirls in the warm summer evening and the memory of those two old men begins to fade. But suddenly the vocal old man is back, this time with two young college boys. The old man says, "I know this nice wine bar near here, do you guys wanna go?" and I somehow expect them to react with shock, but instead they are smiling and laughing and agreeing whole-heartily. We move over to the wine bar, where he buys us a lot of wine. The conversation hovers on me for awhile, in an odd way, trying to figure out how much I could communicate I guess. The college boy next to me asks me if we have olives in america too, and I almost thought he was joking until I saw his ernest face. The old man says to me, "You speak this language quite well, so I suppose you know the word pervert?" Ms. H laughs and says "Already with that?" But I ignore the fact that he must be talking about himself and just say frankly, "There are a lot of perverts in Japan, so I am sure I know that word!" but he doesn't seem to be offended, he just laughs. "I am a pervert." he proclaims loudly and the girls smile and laugh. The conversation twirls into the evening air, my friend and her friend talking about how they have always wanted to eat dinner up in a skyscraper but couldnt afford it and other such hints. He pulls out his name card and recommends Ms.I and MS.H email him, with which they say they will for sure. Suddenly we all become aware of final train times, and it's a flurry of feet as we run towards the station. I run towards my train platform, opposite my friend's platform, shout a goodnight as I hop into my train and I am whisked away into another evening leading to the next day.

bad poetic lines

2008-07-25T22:42:00.001+09:00

a dark broken sidewalk leading to my countryside bed. humid night hung low, whispers of a midnight wind. a clear ding of a small tin bell, i step aside, and a bike with a silent rider glides past in the darkness, the single dim headlight glowing like a firefly

wondering

2008-06-20T13:51:00.003+09:00

walking to the station to ride one stop to work. the walk from the new place I'm staying at (yeah, my boss moved me again) to the station is about 50 minutes. that gives me plenty of time to think so i am walking and typing something on my cellphone.

i am thinking about...

if a friend comes over to our house we let him or her use our spoon or chopsticks but of course never our toothbrush. why? they both go in our mouth, after all. i asked some high level students, and one student had the very clever answer that we wash our spoons and chopsticks with soap but we dont do that with our toothbrushes. very good point. but then i started to wonder, why dont we wash our tooth brushes with soap? dont we want clean tooth brushes? culture is fascinating.

also wondering why i just bought an energy drink when i'm not sleepy. well, that answer is easy. the cycle of caffeine addiction has begun just like last time i lived in japan. its hard to pass on something that brightens up your day. supplements replacing the natural. hmm...

two houses

2008-05-24T00:51:00.001+09:00

Welcome to my second appartment. Like I've said before, i dont like to talk about work unless it bubbles over into my real life... and this case, works kind of effecting my life again. I got transfered to a different district of Japan. It's too far and I didnt want to move out here so my boss is providing (in otherwords, I dont pay) a place in the same area as work. After work I'll sleep there, my days off: back to Tokyo. Its kinda like a hotel. It already has a fridge, bed, sofa, and stuff. Its total countryside so its a lot bigger than my tokyo place. Regretfully its about 30 minutes walk from the station. That sucks. But fun to officially live in two places.

moments

2008-05-23T03:47:00.004+09:00

Just a quick post to say nothing more than I finally got around to uploading about 61 new pictures to my photo album (in the album, click "next" on the upper right to see more). For Some reason the photo album service mixed up the chronological order they were in... but thats kind of like my memories of these events (stretches over the last few months) all kind of jumbled... so enjoy as it is, wander through some of my memories. (and of course I never stop updating my cellphone album, thats why I have unlimited bandwidth on my phone. So that I can update it a million times a day. Dont forget to check that out if you like pictures since I get about 1 hit per picture, not sure why I bother to update it, mostly for my memories I suppose. Was this another ad for it or what?!)

rain & music

2008-05-20T11:36:00.001+09:00

Standing here outside listening to an old Japanese punk band on my mp3 player as it drizzles.
"I wanna be as beautiful as a rat,
you cant understand the beautey in a photo"
I guess something is lost in my translation to English.
Next song starts,
"I wanna sing the never ending song for this F'd up world."
Love this song. That one kinda works in translation too. Its still raining and I'm still standing here waiting for my late friend. A life continues, one moment after the last, a cascade of seconds.

Earthquakes

2008-05-08T01:59:00.005+09:00

I dont like earthquakes. Its not that I hate them, its just the uncertainty of whether or not the floor will give way or the ceiling will cave in that bugs me. We just had a fairly large one and then a few minutes after that a huge one. At first the official world record keeping website listed it as a 7.1 but they have now officially downgraded it to a 6.8. None the less it was a shaky one. My bookcase was wobbling like it was drunk, my TV threatening to dive down into the pool of my undulating floor. I remember thinking "wow, if a earthquake totally smashes my new iMac, that would be really ironic since I just got it" Yeah, I know, a rather odd materialistic thought.

In other news, my friend (on the left in the above picture) Suah came to visit me here with her cheerful friend Soyoung. It was really fun to show some Korean friends around Tokyo again. I didn't really clean up my house enough to have two female guests though, it was a bit too cluttered, so they forced me to clean up more. I plan to upload some pictures of their trip and many other things soon. For now those who want media should continue to feed off my live cellphone junk.

And a final word about how to listen to me talk for literal hours about random stuff. Me and my friend Nicky have recently started up an audio blog, although it might become a video blog in the future. It's basically a variety show. We have a topic each weak, and we review media and talk tech, but basically just letting you listen in on a conversation between two old friends. If you are interested, check us out at Pizza Bento!

applereligon

2008-04-23T13:05:00.001+09:00

You can never recapture a moment but you can create other similar moments. Or thats what I'm hoping. I have been wanting to get back into making movies since, well, since the day I stopped. I used equipment in college to make some independent filmy things, and I found it fit me perfectly. I must be visual because it litterally feels good making a script or concept and seeing that become something. In anycase, we used Apple Macs at school and in my attempt to recapture that which is not recapturable, I splurged on a nice iMac from America. It should be here in about a week (as a side note: the apple store in Japan, Ginza, was really not helpful. I wouldnt recommend going in to talk face to face with those silly weirdos.) What I find funny is how culty the Apple brand is. Those of my friends with macs are "welcoming" me as if I was born again or as if I found the path to nirvana. Most of my friends with out macs are shocked at my purchase as if I had commited some deep sin against
society. Its really quite silly. A computer is simply a tool to express our hearts. But I guess humans too often get their identities mixed up with their tools.

money

2008-04-16T13:31:00.002+09:00

I dont like to feel like a capitalist pig, so I try not to want money too much. When the company I was working for went under last winter I lost over 3 months of pay. I tried not to worry about it too much, even when I was down to about one rice triangle a day. It's not like that anymore. I'm back to eating four times a day. And yesterday I was stressing a bit about expensive bills, when suddenly I noticed that the Japanese government had given me 80% of my lost wages. Its as if I was forced to save money. I plan to get back into making movies again, as a hobby of sorts so I guess its good timing.

Winter is starting to melt away. I wonder how fast we'll jump into summer this year? At work, I got transfered to a branch in the state of Ibaraki, not even in Tokyo state. One way, its over an hour from my house plus waiting time between trains. That aint cool. Want to transfer back to Tokyo but I guess that aint gonna happen anytime soon.

six am rain

2008-04-08T05:50:00.002+09:00

So many of my blogs I am sitting here infront of a computer at a ghastly hour at night/in the early morning. And thats where I find myself again. Unable to sleep yet again, I'm sitting here trying to wind down into dream-land. I had a great day. Started the day off with getting a cool postcard from my American friend Candace, then I recorded video for a video blog project I'm trying to put together with another American friend, Nicky. (More details on that soon!) Then I was in happy Wikipedia edit mode for a few hours, had okonomiyaki (Japanese egg pizza is the common explanation for that food) with super cool Japanese buddy Kayo, and although I was too sleepy to be a good conversationalist, it was fun. She is becoming a teacher, so she is looking so professional these days. After that I came home and was going to surf youtube (I have a very geeky life, OK!?) for a bit, but I ended up chatting on the computer with a few American friends I hadn't chatted with on the computer for years and years. Life is good, I guess. The sky is bright outside now and the rain is still pelting the windows. My head is spinning, I'm too tired. It's time to really fade away for tonight.

late night rumbles

2008-04-02T03:33:00.003+09:00

So it is about 3:30 in the morning and they are still doing violent loud construction on the road outside. Seems to have settled down in the last few minutes, at least for now. Hope I can get some sleep, but before that I thought I would put a few thoughts up.

Over here in Asia (at least, maybe the same in other parts of the world) it's really common to walk into a video store and see "sequels" to movies that haven't come out yet, or "versions" of movies that don't have any of the same actors. They look like American movies, but they aren't quite right. I have always wondered about them, but never sat down and watched any. Well, until yesterday when I saw "War of the Worlds 2"... yeah. The first one was an odd Tom Cruise movie that tried too hard to be what it was, for a budget of over 130 million dollars. yeah 130. But "War of the worlds 2" is actually a sequel to a different low budget movie, with a similar title. And they are classic B movie crapola. Mockbusters are what they seem to be called. Designed to lure audiences into renting or buying them when the big name blockbuster isnt currently available. But I couldn't help myself, I enjoyed it. Now I guess it's good to remind anyone reading this that I am a big fan of B movies. That maybe influenced me. But the never ending cliches, the special effects that would have looked bad on a late 1990s TV show, the acting that was for the most part stage-actor sounding, the alien spaceship sets that looked like painted sheets; it all added together to make a fun movie. They are almost a satire of the idea of movies, or atleast the idea of Hollywood movies. It was painful at times, but painful in the way eating cheap candy is. You like the sugarhigh, but you know you are mainly eating artificial flavoring. I would be proud if I could have a movie production studio that could make half of what these guys are doing. Of course, I would make weird artsy strange movies though, that wouldn't rake in the money like their mockbusters are doing. These movies are mainly made by the production company The Asylum, if you are interested.

I also watched the original Logan's Run tonight. That is a good chunk of scifi movie, although I found it quite ironic that the special effects in this movie (which I guess was a fairly big budget at the time) were quite cheesy. The long-distance shots were clearly a plastic display model, and the outfits of the people were clearly 70s sexy sci-fi movie clothes, instead of any logical social construction. And the plot holes, the massive plot holes, rained down on this movie like a storm. (How 1000s of people who have never seen an animal and believe they aren't eating flash suddenly be expected to become violent omnivores? and is there anything to eat since the oldman said the fish died? well, the old man did have a lot of cats. and there are green bushes, I guess they could eat the cats or the plants, but how will they know which plants can be eaten or how to cook a cat? Why didnt the runners just try to brake the walls of the dome if they knew they were escaping? And did I really just see someone in the crowd give the spock sign for the camera? OK. If you havent seen the movie this rant just made no sense.) Don't get me wrong though, it's for sure a classic movie. I think I'm also pointing out a movie doesnt have to have 130 million dollars of modern special effects to be watchable.

In a technical note, I have found some more posts from years ago. I have filled them into this diary, so those who like to backsurf into the past can now read some of what I was thinking (in Korea) in 2005. If I ever find the other missing posts (or if you have any saved?!) I'll be sure to add them in there. The diary only goes back so far, my old online diary from 2002-2003 has over a 100 posts so importing that into here would be a lot of work... something for a different day.

Well, the construction has fallen quiet. Creepy quiet. I guess that means its time for dreams.

mp3 player

2008-03-29T10:21:00.001+09:00

here i am today listening to my mp3 player on my way to work, country joe and the fish is playing, it's interesting how reality is filtered by music. i originally got this cheap player to work on my crappy cantonese (audio lessons) but the lessons only took 500MB of the 2Gigs. with the extra space I put on music, which distracts me from actually studying. oops. but its like living in a soundtrack, i am one of those odd people who sometimes mouths the words along with the song. and i even move along with a really good groove. yeah, i know. that's really sad, huh? haaaha!

flickers of a flashback

2008-03-22T10:10:00.003+09:00

i am sitting on my floor in my tiny appartment in america on bill mcdonald parkway. i dont know yet, but living on the floor of this tiny appartment will be good practice for living in tokyo. it's rainy, and i'm writing a poem about my endless days in this town. an eternity that all too soon came to an end. i pause and look up at my window and feel the sound of the fresh rain. i remember thinking i loved the smell of newly fallen rain.

audioblog 01

2008-03-18T19:10:00.002+09:00

I'm not sure why, but I couldn't get my first audioblog to embed in this post. (Yeah, I am creepily inspired by Diego to audioblog. Yeah, so I'm a copycat. Sue me! haa!)

I talk about rain and play some clips from music I've been running into these days. If you can play OGG files play this, otherwise most people should go here to stream it (in slightly less quality) from the internet. Cheers

trash man

2008-03-13T18:11:00.001+09:00

It's been a series of unfortunate events. Four weeks ago I didn't have too much trash so I was lazy and thought "I'll take both weeks out next week" but the following week my boss changed my schedule so my day off was on trash day. I ended up being out around town and didnt take my trash out. And the same problem next week. Thats too much garbage so I decided to stay home and watch movies on the fourth week of no garbage out. And just my luck! They were doing construction on my road so no one put out garbage that week. It's been over a month. I have a nasty pile of garbage bags I wanna throw out! This is sad. It's kinda something ya shouldn't tell people, huh? oops!

asimulation?

2008-03-09T01:54:00.001+09:00

Tonight I'm thinking about cultural asimlation. I have always wanted shop people to stop giving so many bags when I go shopping, its such a waste so I usually make noise when staff try to put my 3 things in 8 bags. But tonight when the quiet old man at the 24 hour discount mart carefully placed and wrapped my cheap things in too many bags, I couldnt bring my self to complain. I wondered, on the walk home, if thats somehow what cultural asimulation feels like... I think I'm still going to refuse a bag for a candybar though, no matter what!

mcdonalds conversations

2008-02-25T23:07:00.004+09:00

Sitting at McDonalds waiting to meet someone. On my left and right two young professionals are talking on their cell phones.

The man on the left, jeans and a stylish jacket.
"Dadadadon dada"
pause
"No at the end put another da."
pause
"Left right left right, like rhythm"
pause
"Yeah, next dandandan. No like the last one. Yeah."

I guess he was dictating music over the phone. The man on the right, expensive pin striped gray suit. Briefcase up on the counter where we are all sitting, phone charger plugged into a provided socket, wallet open revealing his company ID which boasts that his company is a "green printer" company.
He makes a lot of quick calls, in bursts.
First,
"hello? yes, we should check that Club Invaders is available. OK? Right. Have a good one."
Second,
No greeting at all simply "Find out? Ok. I'll check if we can do that."
Third,
Seems to be talking to an answering machine. "This is Omura. I know I've called a lot this month." His confidence seems to waiver, he takes a breath. "I was just wondering if you could call me back? Thanks, have a good night."
He fades in to silence for about 20 minutes fiddeling with a few forms on the counter. And then begins his fourth phone call,
"Sorry. Hello, sorry about calling this late at night. Sorry. Yeah. It's about this witness testimony...Yeah, I don't understand what I put on page 2, line 3, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand, yeah, yeah. I understand. That's ok right? Not in such a hurry. A fax would be OK? Well, for now I'll just write it. OK, if I dont understand again I'll call back. Right. Thanks. Goodnight."

Fifth,
"Hello,"
he laughs,
"Basterd. So what should we do? OK. Next time. See ya."
What was that second guy's conversations all about? A drop in the ocean of daily external noise. Take a moment to listen as it fades past.

anti-anime & time travel

2008-02-23T01:21:00.003+09:00

I have recently noticed that I am quite "anti-anime" in my thinking. I intentionally avoid watching Japanese cartoons, and when someone I really respect talked about watching some I started to think about why. I remembered my scary room mates in college that would non-stop watch anime all day, every day. When they went to class they would leave the TV on playing anime and if I changed channels or anything they would get mad, because they wanted to hear and see it the minute they walked in the door. I kid you not. But added to that, when ever my Japanese friends came over they would ignore them. You would think you would want to talk to people who come from the land that produced your desires, but I guess they were too busy watching anime. Too busy infact to even clean their dishes. Now I'm a dirty person, but when you share a kitchen with people I expect a little bit of cleanliness. No luck there. They would leave ALL their dishes in the sink, every last one. At first I would wash their dishes for them, but I finally had enough and said (while they were watching anime) "I'm not going to wash anymore of your dishes!" and one of the two really responded, verbatim, "It's OK, we'll just buy new plates next time we go shopping." Gong! What the heck. A final oddness was they would often watch really creepy almost porn-ish anime. And I'm liberally minded. But public cartoon porn is just weird. So basically these guys gave me psychological damage apparently, because I have always kind of avoided Japanese cartoons after that. Well, after being inspired by the blog post previously mentioned, I decided to check out something. A few days ago I had stumbled (literally) across a review of a Japanese anime movie titled (in English) "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and so I gave it a try. My first non-forced not super mainstream Japanese cartoon (i.e. not Akira, Princess Mononoke, etc) It was cool! It was childish (no more than an american G rating I'm sure) I guess, and few plot holes bugged me. But I saw an old school Indian Jones movie after that, and even that had some big plot holes, so I started thinking that movies can be kind of like watching a dream, they don't always make total sense when you scrutinize them, but we can have a lot of fun if we just let go and just enjoy it. The movie itself is based on a time travel story (no surprise, read the title!) but it is more than that, it explores relationships and life, like most good Japanese movies.
And continuing on that time-travel theme (must admit I have an interest in those kind of movies I guess) I saw an awesome independent film. If you like to think when you watch movies, please watch "Primer" And this film gives such inspiration to independent film makers everywhere, it was made for about US$7000 and its awesome. Makes you think, it looks cool, a bit of a geeky flavor, and had a nice complex but satisfying plot. Coolness. Big thumbs up on this one, if you can find it.

sleepy eyes

2008-02-20T00:24:00.006+09:00

Here I am thinking about silly things again. I really want to get back into making things, kind of like being the student, not the teacher, I guess. I want to create, to make, to experiment again. Creation is one of those things that some people desire and some people could care less about. I'm one of those "gotta make stuff!!" kind of people. So because of that, I'm thinking about buying a camera that is the new high quality ones, its cheap, its small, and maybe I can make some stuff with it. A movie? Who knows. This is like a rant, but with no energy, and directed to myself. Anyone else have that "must create" fire inside?

Speaking of which, I just realized I didn't blog about my digital camera passing away. And although I have some more archived and not uploaded yet, until I get a new camera there wont be too many more photos to share. Although there are quite a few up that I havent publicly mentioned before, and since I always seem to blabber on about new pictures... check out some new ones, if you haven't already.

Just click on the thumbnail above to jump on over and take a look.

turn the page

2008-02-16T17:50:00.003+09:00

Lets try to recapture the whispy fog that was my experience of last night...

I boil water. Pour some into a small cup of instant curry udon noodles. I pour the rest into my yutanpo (plastic hot water bottle to warm up my bed) I convince my self to cut short my Wikipedia editing spree. I gulp down the hot noodles, puffs of my breath visible in the cold room. Turn out the lights and curl my knees against the yutanpo. It feels like I'm in a bathtub. The heat is soothing, I'm alive. But I can't sleep. Its 3, but I cant sleep. I got work tomorrow. I want to sleep. Eventually sleep pulls me down to a room with crickets and celery...

The picture is the view out of the window at work today. Nice blue sky.

odd english

2008-02-15T17:34:00.002+09:00

I have been really busy doing nothing, and I almost never update this blog. So this is an update from my cellphone in an attempt to start updating more often.
Since I am at work (having lunch) I'm thinking about the English language. It's such a strange language. "Take off" means to remove something like clothes but "take on" means to challenge something, NOT put some clothes on like you'd logically think. "Put on" is the choice of words used for wearing clothes, but oddly "put off" means to do something later, and so we have to use "take off" as that asymetrical pair in this case. And continuing along this chain of reasoning, shouldn't "stressed out" mean a reduction in stress... I mean, the stress is going out right? Why does it mean an increase in stress? Shouldn't that be "stressed in" or something? And don't even get me started on "catch up" to some one. How am I supposed to logically deduce that means to match speeds with you? Or on the other end of the spectrum, how about created words that are too simple? "Fireplace" used to annoy me that way, the place where you have fire. Genius, pure genius. Or how about the area in Canada n
amed "Newfoundland" ...oh! Don't tell me, was that land that was recently discovered? You don't say! Language is one of those things that if you start thinking about it long enough, nothing make sense and it all seems quite odd.

And in an unrelate random final note... did you know elephants have a 22 month pregnancy period and that the typical birth can last about 11 hours! Freaky cool.

things i bet you didnt know

2008-01-16T01:06:00.000+09:00

1. If you see an ethnic Korean online chat or BBS and you see people add three Ks next to their message, they arent an evil member of a white supremest klan, they are instead phonetically representing in English the way Koreans write snickering in their language on the internet. Really.

2. It's cold right now. I sleep with a big red plastic hot bottle (or rather bottle I put hot water in to) that Japanese people call "yutanpo" it helps me sleep, but if I roll over and it touches my belly, it makes me too hot and makes me have weird bloody dreams. Odd, I know. So I have to wrap it in a blanket layer so I don't overheat.

3. I would love to live in this Stanford torus style space colony station.
Yeah I know its super geeky or whatever. But living on the inside of a donut shaped world that is slowly spinning in space, with a glittery space backdrop, soft light filtered through solar mirrors and lush artificial landscaping, with the horizon stretching up and away from you on both sides. Nice, beyond words!

4. I haven't written a poem in awhile, I really need to get more creative.

5. I want to know what happened to 15 year old Gertrude Seifert and her 17 year old loverman. Who're they you may ask? Here they are:

Still confused? Well, recently I have been a bit addicted to "deep diving" on the internet again. Even thinking about starting up a blog about it. Recently on some of my expeditions I've been digging up massively ancient newspapers, this one is "The San Francisco Call" from April 1, 1910 (page 3, to be precise) ...Still confused a bit about who they are? Let's read the original text:


LOVER   IGNORANT
OF   HER   DEPARTURE
Maid   Who   Eloped   With   Boy
Will   Be   Taken   Abroad   for
Indefinite   Stay
SAN   DIEGO.   March   31
Gertrude   Seifert, whose   sensational   elopement   with Thomas   Foreman,   aged   17   years,   Tuesday   startled   San   Diego,   was   removed from   the   custody   of   the   jail   matron   at 2   o'clock   this morning   by   her   father and  mother,   placed   on   the   Owl   train without   being   given   a   chance   to   communicate   with   boy   lover   and   today is   speeding   eastward   to   New   York-city and   Germany   for   an   indefinite   stay. Thomas   Foreman,   kept   in   ignorance by   the   jail   matron,   at   noon   today had   not learned   of   the   move. During   their   elopement   young   Foreman   held   a   pursuing   posse   at   bay   with his   rifle.   They   were   captured   only   after   an  exciting   chase   through   the   brush. The   lad   did   not   surrender   until   he was   covered   by   the   guns   of   the   deputy   sheriffs,   and   then  only   to   protect the   girl.   -   -   -  The   elder   Seifert promised   to   let them marry   after   his   daughter   had spent   18   months   abroad,   but   this   may have   been   only   a   subterfuge.

forward forward

2007-12-13T16:41:00.000+09:00

So things seem to be moving forward in the work department. Positive. It'll all be OK, I suppose. But thats boring. What else is new? Well, not much.

I did upload billions of pictures to my album site, check them out if you want. Tons of pictures of when Evan visited me, when my mum came for a visit, and all sorts of other stuff. I have even more to upload, but haven't got around to it yet. (On an unrelated technical note, I changed the current look of my blog. It doesn't work in IE, so I might change it again, but I currently use firefox so it doesn't bother me. End of unrelated technical note.)
It's been getting really cold here in Tokyo, but winter is cold in many parts of the world so I wont bother to say much about that. In fact, I'm really unsatisfied with this blog post. I almost pressed cancel, but whatever a diary is a diary. So here we go.

old numetal & walking around

2007-11-29T22:38:00.001+09:00

I wasn't really thinking I would be going to a Nu metal concert, but thats what I found myself doing last week. My friend Kayo had an extra ticket to a Linkin Park concert and I went along. I was most interested to see the opening band Dir En Grey (a Japanese odd rock act) but bad timing led to getting to the stadium right before Linkin Park was set to go on. It was a large full stadium of anticipating fans. We pushed forward towards the front and as the music washed out onto us the fans writhed and pulsed and smashed us like waves. It was a thick chaotic moshpit. The music was high tempo, and the bass resonated into the bones. It was a good musical escape.

My American friend Evan came to Tokyo (from the countryside of Japan) to visit me for a week before he heads home to America. We've been walking around and seeing many random things. (A video of this is online for you to check out.) Yesterday, Evan's friend invited us to a bar he works at. I refused because I don't have enough money right now, but his friend insisted saying he would pay for everything. I decided I should go along and hang out. His friend sat us in the VIP section and provided endless free drinks. The bar was what you would think of when you would think of a stereotypical Tokyo bar. Big orange chandeliers, a lit up floor and an occasional burlesque show (picture of that above). There was a mix of foreign and Japanese stylish people with artsy jobs and a slightly demure lighting. It was a fun night out about town.

Adventures in Joblessness

2007-11-05T02:31:00.000+09:00

I'm not sure if I made it clear before, but I can make it clear now. My company apparently just evaporated. I worked for two months, waiting for them to finally pay me, but instead they disappeared in a cloud of collapsed effort. 4000 teachers with out a job. I was talking to my landlady (I would like to invent a new word such as "landperson" if I could) about whether I would have enough money to pay rent next month (who is, by the way, a super super nice person) because being unemployed suddenly from a job that wasn't paying usually leads one into a situation where it is difficult to pay rent. She suggested I go with her on her trip to the government office. I know that my scrawny wrongcountry-frame wouldn't do me much good begging for government help, so I gladly took her up on her offer. So we head on over, and we go up to the third floor, and fill out the forms requesting unemployment money handouts. In all my adult life (which isn't that long I suppose) I haven't had to ask a government to help me because I didn't have a job, but I don't really see it as a bad thing and they seemed helpful enough. I filled out the forms, and they said they would process them and we would get details of the success or failure of the application later. There was a little more to be done, so they suggested I go down to the 2nd floor which was the job-listings database floor and look for a job. They told us they would be done tinkering with their tools in about an hour, which left plenty of time to go down and get on the job searching computers. We go down to the counter to get a card for me to use the computer.... and the man behind the counter nervously avoids me and says to my landlady (landperson) that they basically "can't help his kind" I look at him and ask, "Why not? I just want to look for a job." and I kid you not, he continues to avoid me and looks at her and says "Because they don't understand our language. Go to Shinjuku or something, they can help his kind." And I was kind of annoyed, to say the least. I was wanting to lay into him, but luckly my landperson is my civil. She points out that the 3rd floor told us to come down here. He says how odd that is, because they can't help me. That there must be a mistake. Instead of dealing with him anymore, we go back up to the 3rd floor (we had eaten lunch between going to the 2nd floor, so it was about time to go up there anyway) and get the final paperwork setup. My landperson with her cultivated words asks why they wouldn't let me use the computers down stairs. The lady and man behind the counter seem confused. I poke my cheeks and say maybe its a skin thing. They assure me it isn't that at all and send us down to the 3rd floor again. This time we skip the guy at the counter, and she sent me directly to the counseling counter while she went off to do her chores. At first it was a bit hard for the lady to understand my slightly coagulated accent, but she warmed up enough and I was given my card to search for jobs on the computer. Found three possible ideas and turned them over to another counselor. He looked like a mouse, almost literally, and he set about getting me the contact information for the jobs and giving a little advice. His Japanese reminded me of a mouse too, I'm not sure why he seemed so mousy to me. In between tasks he couldn't help but talk about this Australian he had met once and other random things that didn't really seem connected. He told me to come back next week because they would have new listings. I thanked him and left. None of the jobs wanted me.

late night drifting

2007-10-16T03:54:00.000+09:00

I'm laying here on my futon, propped up on one elbow, typing on my laptop's dirty keyboard. The up key stopped working, and that is annoying me. Wondering about work is keeping me awake. Payday came and went and no one at work has received pay yet. We are effectively working for free. Well, some of us are working for free. Many of my coworkers are just not coming to work, under the philosophy of no pay equals no work. Not sure why I keep going. I think we will get paid eventually I guess. And we have some cool students. The future is a bit murky, but it will begin to unroll when I wake up tomorrow. Time to try to sleep.

armageddon and my mama

2007-09-28T11:59:00.000+09:00

As I'm sure any reader has noticed, I don't usually talk about work on my blogs. Work is work, it isn't my blog and I think it's best to keep it that way. However, recently work has been boiling to the point where it might spill over into my personal life. My company is self-destructing. There is massive meltdown going on. The students are running away because of scandals, the government has shut down signing up new long term contracts, and many teachers are running away because it's all so demoralizing. The company is on the brink of a massive belly-flop if something good doesn't happen. It's got so bad I even have Japanese friends from out of town calling and telling me to find a new job. It's an awkward odd moment in my work life, not sure what's going to go down.
But in happy news my friend Christina D. came to visit last week, and from today my mama comes to visit me! I can't wait to show my mama around town. It will be fun to go to famous places, and look at beautiful things for awhile. And then maybe after that I can deal with the job melt down with a peaceful mind.

night of living silence

2007-08-30T02:31:00.000+09:00

It's 1:40 at night. I'm waiting for my clothes to dry at the coin laundry. I sit on the hard sidewalk, back pushed against a vacant building, reading a really good book about Australian place names. My shoes are off, my barefeet pushed against the asphalt. A thin misty rain starts, cutting through the still humid night. I ignore it and keep reading, part of me aware of the feeling against my skin and the occasional taxi drifting past in the darkness beyond my peripheral vision. It's moments like these that my mind kind of twirls, reflecting on a kind of 3D depth to my life's current state connected to what it is and what it will be. These deep thoughts distract me briefly from the book, and I see the mist has left a thin glistening sheen on the pages. I check my chipped orange cellphone, another 10 minutes. I keep reading.

time enough for time itself

2007-08-19T00:18:00.001+09:00

A few more moments that were unblogged about hanging out with my college friends Evan and later Priscilla.

Going to the post office on bikes in the rain with Evan, the rain getting harder, not cold in the summer heat, but drenching me like a shower. My glasses get misty, rain drenching my hair, running down my face, the rain gets thicker, introducing the typhoon that was on the way. Evan rides infront of me, calling out directions so that I wont get lost.

In a shopping center with Priscilla. She's buying some Hello Kitty stationary. We are standing behind a guy who buys over US$150 on small sparkly girly stickers, the store worker has to almost grunt when she puts the huge stack of sticker sheets in a big bag. I cant help but be impressed and wonder if he will use them on letters or what. How often does he spend such a chunk of money on such things?

Stuffing things in a laundry bag to go to the laundry with Priscilla. She rejects my red shirt, thinks the colors will bleed on to her whites. Walking to the coin laundry mat in the melting hot heat. Priscilla using her sun umbrella with one hand, clutching the big laundry bag with the other. On the way back we stop at a bento (lunchbox) store. I dont have a table, I never have, so we sit on my floor talking, eating Japanese food and drinking lemon tea.

I have many more memories, but I dont have the time for them now. For those interesred there are some pictures of these times and more. 25 new pictures to browse as of now, in any case.

hello kitty reloaded

2007-08-14T02:50:00.000+09:00

A friend from Hong Kong, Priscilla, came to visit for a week. It was good to see another hong kong friend (so far HK is winning in most visits! buy your tickets now and represent your country at the Neonvirus Hotel-House[stinky one room studio appartment]!) but I still havent uploaded pictures (for that matter, still missing most of the ones from my Yamaguchi trip too, I need to upload)...
Basically when I had free time off of work, me and Priscilla did a lotta shopping. She loves shopping, so it was kind of a shopping vacation for her. Oh. And Hello Kitty Land (Sanrio Puroland) was also on the agenda. Week of Stereotypical Girly Events. I had fun talking and being noisy, after all... we all know its fun to gossip and be silly. Photos up when I stop being lazy.

yamaguchi memories

2007-07-20T02:25:00.000+09:00

I had a few days off work so I thought I would take the bullet train down to the last prefecture on the main island of honshu. Yamaguchi. I woke up early, and made my reservations on a vending machine in Shinjuku station. I picked up a station lunchbox (ekiben) and hopped on the nozomi bullet train (shinkansen). It takes about 5 hours on the bullet train to get to Yamaguchi, and only about 2 hours on the airplane. But somehow I like the feeling of being a rocket cutting through the countryside of Japan, nothing beats it. The plush green fields, small hamlets clustered around the train tracks, and the tree clumped mountains. Increasing in frequencey near the bottom of honshu, it was most surprizing to count the endless amount of tunnels the train would speed through. It felt like a land-based submarine, sometimes coming up for less than a minute to offer a breathtaking view of a deep country valley or something before submerging in a long tunnel again.
Hanging otu with Evan in Yamaguchi was a lot of fun. He is a very open-minded friendly guy, so he had a lot of local friends to introdue me to. Including a couple running a sushi shop, a rich widow, and an elementry school teacher from America. My second day there we rode around on a bike tour of his countryside town, warm air floating past us with a taste of rain-coming in the fragrance. And when the rain came, I poured. The welcoming dance of a typhoon on it's way towards the coast. I had to run up to Tokyo, with the typhoon chasing me. Eventually it got lost in Nagoya, and I was back in Tokyo with fairly little rain left to be thrown at me by the smashed typhoon. (Photos uploaded soon maybe?)
And speaking of natural earth things, a quick word on the earthquake that rocked this area. I was teaching when suddenly the table began to shake. I looked around at the students, everyone paused. I remembered how the current left-to-right shakes are a good sign and the not-present up-and-down shakes are a bad thing. I said something about that, and then got back to teaching. Although the tremors shook down some houses in the prefecture next to Tokyo, over here in Tokyo area we all bairly noticed enough to change what we we were doing.

summer light falling

2007-07-02T00:15:00.000+09:00

I've been feeling like I should do something more creative than waking up and going to work and going home and repeating this cycle over and over. The creative urge. I just never seem to actually get my ideas out from inside my head and into the real world. I got to try more often.

These days, this blog always seems to be about pictures, so I might as well point out I have more than 13 new pictures and a few videos for viewing. That is all for now.

collection of moments

2007-06-16T03:12:00.000+09:00

I was walking to the 100yen shop at 2 in the morning (why is another story) and I walked past a group of construction workers huddled around a chalk sign posing after the completion of the installation of a drainage network. Is that something I missed when I was in the states? Is that something that isn't common here, I just happened to see it? Why are construction workers taking school-style group photos? The moment lingered in my mind.

Today I had to wake up really early to go to immigration in Shinagawa, but the weather was great. So on the way home I decided to make a video about the Yamanote loop line. Just the idea was fun for me to think up, I was going to translate all the station names into literal English. I got a tuna sandwich and chunky mango juice, and emptied out my 1 GIG digital camera memory card. I ended up giving up on the translate all the station names thing (all that text was too cluttered looking and a lot of work) but I still made the video. Making it was fun, and brought back memories of my total geeky moment of riding the Yamanote loop about 7 times last year. Its a big loop. Anyway, I cant vote for its coolness (7 minutes of a train, that might not be your thing?) but this (Live Video stream, it wont show Japanese right now, but the English text works) is the video I made, if you want to check it out.

here i am again

2007-06-09T13:14:00.000+09:00

So my friend is getting married, so I jumped over to Korea with very little planning and here I am. Sitting in Kim's Guest House in Hapjeong. Sunny day, echos of a street vendor in the distance. I love this place. Right now Sunny (not sure if she spells it this way or the korean way Soon hee or something, the owner) is checking in a customer who forgot to take his shoes off. Shes a friendly person who tries to help her customers. I highly recommend this place. It always feels like my memories mix and mingle when I stop by, maybe because the owners seem to remember me. And this time it was even stronger because someone from last time was here too. What a small world it is.

My friend Mr.Frog is getting married tonight. I shaved my cheeks, ironed my shirt, and bought a new Korean style Zipper Tie. I'm ready to go check out his wedding!

a day at sumo

2007-05-31T20:06:00.000+09:00

In my whole life, I had never gone to see a sumo match. Last week, I decided to change that.I talked Kayo into going with me, and we went fairly early in the morning and got there at about 11:00. Although this was many hours before the main matches would start, the cheap upper row tickets were already sold out. We got the next cheapest ones (about 3000YEN) and went inside. The minor wrestlers were already going through their rounds. Not that many people were watching, and it was fairly easy to get real close. It was fun to be so close to these semi-religious (shinto) pro wrestling power pushers. We decided to go try the sumo style soup, which can be had for 200 YEN next to the sumo rink. It was good, and filling. If you ate a big bowl of that everyday you would definitely beef up. We went out of the stadium (and got a hand stamp so they would let us back in) and walked around for an hour or so. When we got back, the action was starting to pick up. So we went to our seats way above the rink, and watched. I took a million photos and videos. There was something surreal about being in a rink that you have seen so many times on TV. Near the final matches we sneaked down and found a seat near the ring that wasn't taken and made bets between each other about who would win which match. We opened a few cans of sake and I began to yell support for some wrestlers, just like a lot of the other drunk salarymen around me. The final match was with the grand champion Morning Blue Dragon, and he regretfully lost. As could be expected, the crowd through their cushions into the air and towards the ring. I took a million photos, but somehow I misplaced my memory card (stupid!) so right now there are only a few online, plus a video which I will paste as a embedded player below.

revolutionary critical mass

2007-05-22T23:47:00.000+09:00

As I sit eating my microwavable cheese and ham and egg naan I can't help but think about the impending revolution that is reaching critical mass in Japan. Some Japan-watchers might think I'm talking about the coming militarization of Japan that the prime minister and his companions are pushing for at the moment. That is frankly a little scary, and it will ultimately lead to a change in the way Japan sees the world. But, no, I mean a far deeper change I can see all around me. Tokyo, and thus by some extension the rest of Japan, is on the cusp of becoming a truly international city. I can hear that in the myriad languages I can come across down town, I see it in the faces of the millions of foreign people streaming past me in the train stations with a look of wonderment on their faces, I can sense it in my kids classes that seem to be quite full of multiethnic children these days. In most countries in the world, seeing a huge mix of the world mingling on the streets, and children of different ethnic heritage in a classroom shouldn't be and isn't surprising. Japan has been stereotyped as a homogeneous society, but the foreign population is reaching critical mass. When you can see a white guy working at McDonalds in front of your house, you know its about to happen. A Japan that truly begins to become a new country with a new culture that will lead to a new way of seeing the world. Change is coming.

trip to immigration

2007-05-15T18:26:00.000+09:00

My friend in Korea is getting married but as a quasi-member of this society I currently reside in, I had to go to the immigration office today to get permission to travel. Although I find it kind of weird that I can't travel internationally unless I get permission, thats the way things roll, so thats what I went to go do. I woke up a little late, because I had a special day off and wouldnt be going to work today. The sky was getting darker, even though it was day, so I decided I should rush to the station before it began to rain. And thats when the sky decided to down pour. Litteral buckets of rain smashing down. Heres a direct link to a 7MB (I didnt have space on my card, so its lo-res) quicktime video of the rain turning some stairs into an urban waterfall. My socks, and pants were totally soaked. Well, I got on the train and head to the immigration office in Shinagawa... and since this wasnt my first time, I got the required "revenue stamp" at a convenience store before going up to the immigration office. For some reason, they wont take cash and require these special stamps but dont post any information about it. So a lot of people just wait forever and get upfront and are told they cant be helped with out the stamps, or that was my experience anyway my first time there. Today I heard some lady complaining on her phone in English about how she wasnt sure what to do but she was just waiting anyway. When she got off the phone, I asked her if she had revenue stamps, and explained what they were... and immediately like flys attracted to sugar water, I was swamped with several other inexperienced foreigners who wanted more details. I also noticed that English speaking foreigners are noisy. While I ended up waiting for about 2 and a half hours, I noticed that a baby crying in one corner and the white guy talking to his wife on the other side of the room had about the same level of vocal output. Who would have thunk it. So after the loooong wait, I go up to the counter and say almost nothing, hand over my passport and get the permit in literal seconds. You'd think it would be more efficient if it was built into my visa, instead of requiring me to wait for it. But oh well, thats bureaucracy. As I walked out of the office, the sun was beaming bright on the freshly bathed earth as if signally a movie-style change in moods.

i admit it

2007-05-11T23:03:00.000+09:00

OK. So I saw Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision today. And if you are a fan of high quality movies, dont even try to watch it. But if you are a fan of good quality bad movies, sloppy B movie freakzones, this one doesnt disappoint. On the honestly good side, not bad acting for this kind of "direct to dvd" kind of movie, and the martial arts weren't so bad... fun to see a few detailed kick 'em ups outside of the realm of kickass hong kong theater or (shudder) walker texas ranger (if you dont know what i reference here, you might want to count yourself lucky). The plot and the special effects on the other hand were amateurish but fun. The prerequisite "time travel" effects looked like someone painted on some colors with photoshop. Though when mentioning the time locations traveled to, one should point out that they were fairly good... on par with a fairly decent TV show. Too clean, and the signs in nazi germany looked like they were printed off with a printer, and the costumes were all too "rented" looking... Although the locals (temporals? haha) all spoke the correct language or accent of their time ("correct" is used loosely here, because the Japanese used was so mangled it was funny-cute), which I prefer. Speaking of time zones traveled to, they hit almost every stereotypical zone, nazi germany and wild west, etc although they forgot the 1950s, but I guess the trip to the 1980s, was equivalent just more hip for people who would feel nostalgia for the 80s not the 50s. And oh god, the plot was juicy! There were some major plot holes that really tear through the mind of a rational thinker, in a good way if you enjoy odd movies. To give you an idea about how minor this movie was, it didn't even have a Wikipedia page until I added one. Come on, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch had a major page on wikipedia (including a section detailing "Continuity issues" ... which is kind of scary actually, that someone(s) cares so much about the continuity issues in a kids cartoon.) Anyway, thats my movie review I guess!

jumbled mumble

2007-04-28T00:19:00.000+09:00

It seems more often than not, my posts these days are about new photos I've added to my album. I suppose thats the current mode my blog has taken on for the time being. My memories of the past few weeks seem a bit jumbled in my head, as if I shook up a box of confetti, emptied it out on a windy day, and grabbed a few strands as they twirled off. I have met a lot of people from many years ago who just happened to be in the area for one reason or the other. Memories make me who I am, I suppose. And still more people are moving, changing, going other places. I wonder what life will be like when too many memories build up under my finger nails, behind my ears and under my bed. Follow the link, if you want to see about 14 new pictures in my album.

life as it goes on

2007-04-07T03:02:00.000+09:00

Several people have left my company, and one of my work friends will leave soon too. Its got me thinking about these kind of cycles. Most of the people that disappear from my work will disappear from my life, as if they pass away. In life, we live in a certain moment and as we glide forward we bump into many souls, but most of the people we meet fade into the shadows of the rush forward. I guess I should be really thankful for the few friends and acquaintances that have managed to keep their light bright enough that I can continue to know where their soul goes, even after all these years. Most of the other people are just whispy memories, ghosts inside my shifting thoughts.

It had been awhile, so I uploaded something like 47 new pictures to my web album, so if you like to browse pictures be sure to check that out. Even a few new videos too. Life continues.

another night

2007-03-25T02:46:00.000+09:00

Maybe it's because I work until fairly late, or maybe it's because I am a "night person" but I usually find myself awake at odd hours of the night. Tonight, before going to sleep I thought I'd run to the local cheap shop to buy myself some shaving cream and toothpaste (ran out of both on the same day, go figure!) even though it was about 2:00 at night. I step out side, and I'm met by a pleasant wind tempting me to assume spring is on it's way again. It sure seems like winter has hidden in the curtains this time. The wind compliments the darkness, and the splattering of late night/early morning rain that comes as a combination meal. I have a surge of clarity, like when I'm writing and I suddenly know what the next character will say. My surroundings sharp, my mind clear. I floated along in my reality bubble, and walked past an old gentlemen bar. Small neon sign in front, fading door. A customer was singing badly to an old 70s tune, reaching the crescendo, the payoff, and he ended it with a half-hearted "yeea!" to congratulate himself, and a few hands could be heard clapping briefly. And I wondered about motivations, and I wondered why he was singing karaoke at 2 in the morning, why he was sining such an old song, to such a small audience. Did he have images of being a rockstar? Being famous? Being a good singer? Being loved? What motivated him? Why was he singing here, what drove him forward? And before more thoughts could bubble further, the bright blue and orange lights of the cheap 99yen shop disturbed my flow, I hesitated while I made some sort of mental bookmark so that I could write my thoughts down later, and then I stepped inside.

late night thoughts

2007-03-14T03:16:00.000+09:00

So its 3 in the morning and I should be sleeping. I was thinking about a few days ago when I thought spring was finally here. It was my half day, so I was walking home in the afternoon. The sun was golden, warm. And suddenly tiny sprinkles of rain speckled my skin, like tactile polkadots I could feel but not really pay attention to visually. And next the wind picked up and blew strong down through the corners of buildings and around the bend in the sidewalk, blowing hard against my face. I opened up my jacket, and held it out with my hands, as if I was wearing a kite. I learned into the sudden impressively strong wind, and honestly could feel the force of the wind supporting me.

But now its all cold and sour again. I guess spring isnt really here yet. My feet are cold, and my room is cold, and outside is an ice cube factory.

The other day I was talking to Kayo (who was walking around in Shibuya) on the phone, and then she suddenly goes "Ohmygod! its michael jackson, michael jackson just walked right past me!" and I knew he was in Japan, so I told her, get off the phone, follow him and take a picture with your phone. And she goes "But he might be upset if I take his picture." and I thought it was really funny and an interesting view of her way of thinking. The "rational" thought would say, he is a celebrity he should be used to people taking his picture, and beyond that even if he does get upset why would it have an impact on kayo's life? I laughed and said "yeah, if you do it, he might not be your friend anymore after that, maybe he wont call you to hang out anymore." By the time she realized she should try to get a picture, quite a few people had begun to recognize him, so he had already been whisked away and was gone. (For those wondering, Kayo says he was wearing some sort of "Indian [as in, person from India]" headgear wrapped around his head, and he was accompined by a Japanese woman who appeared to be a guide of somesort, and thats it. Checking out the streets of Japan!)

Trip to Oshima

2007-03-02T23:02:00.000+09:00

Oshima is an island (literally "big island") off the coast of Tokyo. Me and my good friend Kayo decided to take a brake from the grind of endless work, and hop over for a quick two day trip. It was a lot of fun, although not so much different than Tokyo. On the way there we took an airplane, and the view was amazing. Pulling up and away from Tokyo, Mount Fuji poked up over the horizon and slipped away as the ocean revealed the destination. Oshima is famous for a type of flower called Tsubaki (camellia in English?) and although the peak of the blooming season was over, there were still a lot of Tsubaki flowers everywhere. The air was a little cold, but not too bad. Oshima was extra interesting for me, because I'm a big Gojira (godzilla) fan. Gojira escaped from this island's mountain when it erupted, and thats just so cool. The first day, we went to a small sushi restraunt and I got some really fresh maguro tuna. Kayo's bowl was spicy and had a piece of a bandaid in it, so she had crap luck for lunch I guess. After that we took a bus to the other side of the island and walked to the ocean. It was peaceful, almost no one around. No sounds but the waves, a few birds, and Kayo singing karaoke to herself. Me and Kayo have known each other for a long time, so sometimes we would get a bit grumpy in the cold air, but I guess thats the nature of our communication sometimes. After watching the waves for awhile, we took the bus back to the area where we were staying. The sun was fading, but we decided to rent bikes and ride along the shore on a bike path. The sky was a dark blue with a ribbon of pinkish-orange, and we were shooting along in the crisp air. The road would snake through chunks of old lava and trees, or along a row of old restaurants being renovated, or along the mellow ocean. It was beautiful. The next day, we woke up really early and ate breakfast at the inn and then we took a bus to the base of the mountain. We walked/hiked up the dissolute mountain for a couple of hours. Endless fields of lava-rocks and lava-sand. Kind of impressive for its complete sterile vibe. I felt a bit like I was walking along mars after it had just been terraformed or something. Endless bleakness. It was really geographically interesting, but really hard work in ratio of the reward when we reached the summit, which was simply a semi-smoking hole. I can now say I've peaked down the hole of a volcano. Next we made our way to the port, and took a boat back to Tokyo. The boat was slower than the airplane, but it was fun in its own way too. I took 2GB of photos and videos, I think that shows how bad I needed a vacation.
Below is an embedded video clip collection of my trip:

two sides to one coin

2007-02-26T01:36:00.000+09:00

I was walking to the local 99YEN discount shop, and I walked past a bar I had seen when Tom came to visit me from Hong Kong. Its a chicken-on-a-stick (yakitori) bar, and sometime around 11 at night me and Tom had walked past it. We were hungry, and the Japanese sign out front read "open for business" so I slid open the door and started to step in (with Tom behind me, not yet through the door) and the owner looked over at me and said (in Japanese of course) "We're not open for biz-nuss, son" (I'm trying to capture in English the feeling of informal friendliness that could also be seen as rude depending on which way you want to read it.) Although that sounded oddly like something from a cowboy movie when the greenhorn walks through the doors, even more so because of the open sign, I decided I must have just caught the bar right as it was closing up. Which brings me to my 1:30 in the early morning walk past it a few minutes ago. It was still open, with customers inside. Heres where we get to the two sides on one coin idea. This situation could be understood as zenophobia or racism or a mix of the two. But it could also be understood in a million other ways too. Maybe the owner's friends came in from out of town. Maybe the customers were yakuza gangsters and the owner was afraid to push them out and close up. Maybe he has special super-late hours on Sunday nights. The list could go on forever. The same two sided coin situation can play in the opposite way. When I got to the 99 YEN shop, I was in a hurry so I just grab my super late dinner stuff and just as I'm thinking about walking to the counter, the register-guy runs over and brings me a basket for my stuff, I tell him I dont need one because I'm buying my stuff at that moment. He responds by bowing and using respect words in a hurried nervous manner that makes me feel important, like he needs to sell me my stuff as fast as he can so I can go home to my warm house. Of course, up pops the two-sided coin. Maybe he was thinking I was a drunk foreigner and when I communicated with him he realized I wasnt one of those two things. (I'm sure you can figure out which!) Or maybe he was feeling guilty for not liking me which translated into rushed service so he could get me out of his hair. Or maybe his rush was fear I would hurt him or speak to him in some freaky language, or both. Theres always more than one way to see the same thing, I suppose.

visits of souls i know

2007-02-21T01:43:00.000+09:00

Thats right. Friends from out of town! Thats always good news. My friend from Hong Kong, Tom, came to visit Japan for about a week. He stayed at my small place, and took the bullet train to Kyoto or Osaka almost every day. (He had a JR pass, so it wasnt so expensive.) It was fun to have someone in the neighborhood, I hadnt ever made that much time to check out local bars and restaurants so much. At the same time, two students who I had taught in Korea came to Japan with my previous boss. I hung out with them for a few days while my hong kong friend was in Kyoto. We went around Tokyo and did most of the tourist things I never do. It was fun to pretend like a Tokyo Tourist for a few days. And yeah, the end result is 34 new pictures that you should check out... just click next in the upper right corner to go through them all! (Well, they arent all about the things I mention above, kind of random actually, I have been lazy to upload recently.)

The Untold Story: part 1

2007-02-08T00:33:00.000+09:00

I have too much stress to sleep right now, and I really need to get to bed. In an attempt to relax the mind, I will tell the story of the first time I came to Japan about 7 years ago. (Time flies when you are living life strapped to a rocket.) Some of you might be familiar with this story, and some might not know much about it. And I honestly have to admit that a lot of it is lost in the haze of my incredibly selective memory. So some of this story will remain lost forever, either by personal choice, by bad memory or simply because I wish to build suspense for a further episode of my look up at the memories blowing away. (Warning this might be a little long.)

Somehow I ended up eating lunch with some international students at my small community college. The "how" of the situation is too much of a bother to explain at the moment. I remember the dull peptobismol-pink tables, the noisy people trying to be cool. It was usually the same table. I cant remember what class I was coming out of or going to. European Art History? Northwest American History? Seemed to have a lot of history classes for no reason that year. I had learned a few words in Japanese from my friends or students. I had been helping out in the tutorial center for about a year or so at that point. Well, I had been helping out with the benefit of $6.50 an hour that helped to put me through my early years in college. I was playing with the Japanese words I had learned and somehow it came to me. Why not go to Japan? The idea of a foreign country was more an abstract glow, I knew it wouldnt be like Canada or California, but I think I was niave enough to not even make a solid picture of it in my head. I dont think I even ran an internet search on it. I just thought, hey, I should go and check it out for the summer. Part of my reason probabbly had to do with the fact that because I wasn't going to go to school in summer, my dorm wouldn't let me live there. If I was "homeless" I thought I might as well enjoy a wild ride of it. I had been saving money for the last few years. I doodled out some ideas. Lets see, after buying a cheap airplane ticket, my budget would give me about 600yen (about US$6 at the time) a day for everything. Food, transportation, lodging, everything. Thats not bad. I showed my Japanese friends at lunch. I suppose saying they freaked out would be an understatement. They told me there was no way I could survive on such a small amount of money. That I couldnt even get a hotel for that cheap. I said that I was just expecting to sleep under bridges or in parks. I really said that, thinking back I either was incredibly stupid or just super happy-go-lucky or some odd mix of the two. Several of my Japanese friends spent the next few days trying to find me options, one of them found several people who wanted to let a "foreign person" stay at their house. Cultural exchange so to speak. So I was off. Not so fast young man! I found out my wisdom teeth needed to be taken out, they were impacted and it was dangerous to go anywhere with out doing anything about them. I got them ripped out and literally went to Japan the next day, with a pocket full of pain pills. My ride over was a haze. The only clear thing I remember through the daze of pills was looking down at my hand after eating some shrimp and seeing the perfect triangle of bumps that sometimes appears after eating shrimp. I must have some sort of odd allergy. I got to Japan, and the guy who I had been put in contact with to stay with first surprised me by meeting me at the airport. Tatsuya. Tall, thin, t-shirt and jeans. Glasses and a friendly but a slightly odd smile. As I got on the local train I realized that the air was thick, and it smelled different. The smell of air is something that always lets me know when I'm in a new country, every country seems to have a unique fragrence twirled into its translucent local atmosphere. I didn't know at the time that the airport was in the countryside, so the endless green streaming past the windows put me into a happy sleepy daze. A glimpse of the light that had begun to fade as we got closer to Tatsuya's and then I lost all my memories until I woke up later that night, a victim of jet lag, a smile on my face in the dark silence. A dog barked in the distance and I was in Japan!

bad jokes & warm rooms

2007-01-31T03:35:00.000+09:00

Lets listen in as I fail to make a funny joke. When I work at Matsudo, they have the school front desk on the 3rd floor, and the teaching rooms on the 5th. Yeah, a bit odd. So when the front desk Japanese staff want to talk to us, they have to call up stairs on an intercom phone. The phone rings, I answer.
"Hello, is Dansen there please?" says a staff member, asking for me.
"Oh sorry" I say "He isnt here. He died."
Silence. The staff member is shocked. Or maybe just a little confused.
I try to laugh, "haha... just joking. This is Dansen."
She says in chilly Japanese "You're pissing me off."
I need to work on my humor skills. I'm a total idiot huh. ha ha!

So I was woken up this morning by my landlord and the electric store handyman. I put on my pants, and let them in. When I came home, the air conditioner (and thus my heater) was working again! Oh joy! No more chilly nights, with a runny nose in the morning. Yay!

its cold in here

2007-01-22T22:56:00.000+09:00

The air conditioner (and thus the heater) seems to be broken, so I am sitting in a room the temperature of a cold fridge. The hum of the microwave. The smell of my frozen cheese and vegetable spring rolls sizzling in the microwave. The computer on one futon, me on another, wrapped in several layers of coats. My (intentionally, tastes better that way) cold fried chicken, and crispy fresh don tacos chips ready to be consumed. Its a night to remember. The microwave bell goes off, I get up to check on my springrolls. The bottoms are hot, the tops not perfect but I take them out of the microwave because I'm hungry. It's dinner time. I eat a few cheese sticks of goodness, complimented with divine chips, and then get up and boil some water. The boiling water will heat my room (a trick I learned from my mum) and hot water is also perfect for my red plastic yutanpo. This room is getting a little wet (from the steam) but its a little less chilly. Thats good, just like my cheese sticks.