politics of language

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.