Well, I'm about to sit down to open my presents from my mother, and I was struck by just how Anti-Christ(mas)y this day has been. Actually, that's a lie, it's been slamming me in the face at odd intervals all day long like poorly timed blows from some laboring Asian Paul Bunyan who keeps forgetting that he's supposed to be pretending to be Santa Claus. Give me presents, Saburo-san, not blows to the dome with your othersideoftheworldly hammer! Ok, that's all silly, but the words are flowing right now and I don't give a damn if they make sense. That whole Japanese Christmas as the Anti-Christ thing? Well, I was going to say that it's fully unrepresentative of how my day went, that I just liked the sound of the phrase, but now that I think about it...
Ok, let's get down to brass tacks before I get down to opening my stocking. Maybe today wasn't Anti-Christmas. It's not like I woke up, went over the the Satanmas tree (which is red and thorny and strung with laced together clumps of feces and dismembered puppy parts (nobody said worshiping the devil smelled nice), drew a few pentagrams, sang a few unholy dirges, and then spent the rest of the day lounging in the luxurious sins of roast fetus on the dinner table, naked goats in my bed, and fuck this is foul, I think those are ample luxurious sins to get my point across. No, it's not the fact that Christ wasn't a very big part of my day that made it weird. It's a very well documented fact, but, hey, Christ has been largely replaced by the Corporation in the American holiday, and X-mas is making a very good name for itself. Kick Christ out the door and replace his name with a screwy manifestation of the thing we strung him up on. Such is life.
But, no, it's not the secular nature of Japanese Christmas that threw me off. And that's because there wasn't even a secular nature to the damn thing. Christmas doesn't actually exist. Sure there are lights hanging from the eaves of the train station, and there's a big fucking electric tree in the plaza nearby, shedding softly incandescent holiday cheer on people commuting back and forth to work and school, but that shit aint Christmas. It's just window dressing, you know? It's kind of beautiful, in a way. It's Christmas as it could be in America once it's reached the terminus of the road of secularization and commodification it's currently traveling. Stripped of everything except the barest notion of lights, trees, and the obligation to buy your significant other or kid a present, Christmas here... well, what else can you expect, really? Of course families don't make a huge fuss about it, nobody gets work off for it, kids only get school off for it incidentally; it's just another in the host of countless things that has floated across the Pacific on the wind, an imprecise, barely recognizable shadow of it's American self once it reaches these Far Eastern shores. Japanese people take these indistinct shells of America and fill them with something that is distinctly their own, and that's one of the most fascinating things about this country. Just how good they are at bastardization. Or maybe I should say Japanification.
So yes, I went to work today. Sat around, did some studying, stared out the window and watched cars go by. I almost napped. It was nice. But was it Christmas? Nope. Christmas turned out to be just another thing that seems universal, but fails and dies once you cross the invisible cultural boundaries that keep it alive. Well, time to go open my stocking. Happy Christmas.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
A Word on Wordiness
Enjoy.
Actually I can't be content with just one. This section of the epic is the corniest and most forced one one there is (you will quickly notice the part where I most explicity and inexpertly wove in the theme of religion as senseless violence and fratricidal destruction), but, immediately following it is the one where Iesous goes into hell, and I'll be fucked if that one isn't hella awesome. So, perhaps the proper word on wordiness here is "gaman" which means, grin and bear. Suffer through. Stick it out. Nut up and be a man. All of the above apply to this book five (?).
(A brief refresher: Iesous recently talked to his mom who told him he was born for greatness, he nearly realized the true power hidden within him but then he left his village to sit in the woods for a while, and then Triton killed himself and his loyal sea nymph, Joanna. The scene opens upon Iesous in the woods, waiting for the apocalpyse of the Olympian Gods to fall on his head)
Time went by, and there was no retribution.
The little village in the trees held its lease longer
than any who lived there could have hoped, and
the storm they resigned themselves to bracing for
did not come. The woman in the house at the head
of the road had felt the great surge of energy that
was the release of Triton’s soul, and for some time
she feared the end was near. But as it became apparent
that the apocalypse was averted, again she hoped
that her boy would find his feet walk
them along his path into the sky.
What the woman didn’t feel, however, was
the assimilation of the energy bolts by the
amulet around the boy’s neck.
He was sitting alone, contemplating a means
of entering the netherworld of Hades’ Dominion,
when suddenly he was struck by what seemed
a giant wave quivering with electric
currents. An immense power rushed into
the amulet around his neck, and it overpowered
the symbols etched therein, glowing the deep
blue of the open sea.
Any lesser being would have died immediately,
as no normal mortal could successfully absorb
a god. The boy, however, was far from normal,
and what would have been a fatal seismic
oblivion to any other, he hardly noticed. So
deep was his concentration that he sensed
nothing spectacular until his gaze turned to
the pendant ‘round his neck and he saw it
burning blue. Seeing and feeling it around his
neck, he knew that Triton was dead. Nodding
to himself, he continued to puzzle out how he might
unbar the gates of Dis, and slay the keeper of the
dead.
So long he sat there seeking a means that
an observer might have thought him turned
to stone. Upon a rock he sat, elbow upon
knee and face upon fist like a piece of art. He
passed up plan after plan, each more impossible
than its parent, and still he had no idea how to
proceed. He was nigh upon ripping the earth in
two to create a clear path to the deeps when he
felt some persons approaching. Nimbly, he jumped
off the rock, and hid himself behind a nearby tree.
Proceeded by angry cries and cracklings
in the underbrush, two men burst into the clearing,
grappling and gouging and yelling incoherencies,
in between gasps for breath, harsh whisper
of a knife being drawn from a leather sheath, two
men entered the clearing, one advancing upon the
other with the offending knife upraised. The other
had a bright sword strapped to his thigh, yet it
remained secured within its scabbard. It was
clear that an argument lay between them,
and it came to the boy on their loud voices.
“ Would thee not see the light, however brightly I shine
it in thy eyes? Does not the glory reflected by the
tip of yon knife convince thee of thy folly?”
“ No blade could dissuade me. You are blinded
by the might of your gods, whereas I see
clearly through it. May they smite me where I
stand, I will not worship the despotism they represent.”
“ Still no, brother? Would thee not
change thy mind even knowing that thy
impiety will likely invite the wrath of god
upon our family? Would thee not change
for that?”
“What god worth praising slays believers
for the crimes of the wicked? Are
the bolts of Zeus so treacherous? So difficult
for him to aim? I should think not. He
cares not for those who love him, until
they disrespect him.”
“ I will stand for no more of this. Blasphemy
flows from thy mouth like poison, and
every word of it stings my soul. Draw
thy sword, and we shall see whose
position the gods favor.”
“ You would fight me, brother, for them?”
“ My god is my life.”
“ I will not draw. Strike me down if
you must, but I would not fight you no
matter how many hosts of heaven
stood at my back.”
“Then may thee meet thy scorned maker,
and suffer his most severe punishments for
all eternity. My lords’ wills be done.”
With this final utterance he drove the
wicked knife between his brother’s relenting
ribs, twisting it until it ruptured his stolid
heart. Before the black wind closed
his eyelids, the slain man said to his brother,
“ I hope only that your gods do not forsake
you like you have forsaken me. Eternity is a long
time to spend reliving a betrayal from one so dear.
Peace, my spirit quits it mortal casing, and I can fly,
at least for a little while.”
Just so, he died. His spirit fled the ()
hindrance of its flesh and hovered above
for a moment, bewildered at the separation.
The other man saw this not, nor the angry
rash spreading across his forehead like a brand,
and wiping his brother’s blood upon his coat
he walked away. The boy, young Iesous,
saw both though, snapping his fingers at the latter,
but in seeing the first realized his solution to
the puzzle of the hidden underworld.
Quickly forgetting its former limitations,
the tint flowed away from the scene
of it’s body’s end and flew out toward
the distant sea. Leaping up, the boy
pursued, his feet cutting the wind as he
outpaced it. The soul took, as his condition
made quite easy, the path of least resistance,
and the boy had to take the country in switchbacks
to follow. His feet nearly burning stripes in the
ground, he sprang over boulders and down
steep slopes in a furious effort to keep up
with the speedy shade. Closer and closer
the two came to a giant promontory over
a turbid sea, and still the boy followed,
fast as ever. Suddenly,
as it appeared the shade would plunge
headlong into the sea and down to some
watery end, it stopped and stood a modest
hole before the edge of the cliff. The boy
stopped to watch. After a moment, and with an
air of resignation, the shade entered the hole and
did not return.
It was clear to the boy that he had found the
entrance to Erebus, and so he made much
haste for the hole. Upon reaching it’s gaping
mouth he jumped in, landing on a stony floor.
There was no light in the cave, yet the boy
could make out a giant door of mysterious
metal, worked all in flames and bones.
At its center loomed a helmed god
on a sinister chariot, his hands reined to a trio
of dragons, their maws open in the act of a throaty
scream. In his other hand he claimed a sceptre
mounted with an obsidian skull. The gate to the ever-after,
firmly shut in the boy’s face.
A calm power rose again in the boy’s blood,
and for the first time since his father’s home,
he drew back a bit the shade over his spirit.
His eyes blazed like the apocalypse, and he
clenched two mighty fists. Like a savage
earthquake he struck the gates of hell, and
they crumpled before him as a child’s
castle will before the sea. They fell to the ground,
and the sound they made when they struck
was like a lone bell, dark and without an echo.
Once they had settled, he stepped over them, and
descended into the tangible darkness of Hades.
And scene.
Actually I can't be content with just one. This section of the epic is the corniest and most forced one one there is (you will quickly notice the part where I most explicity and inexpertly wove in the theme of religion as senseless violence and fratricidal destruction), but, immediately following it is the one where Iesous goes into hell, and I'll be fucked if that one isn't hella awesome. So, perhaps the proper word on wordiness here is "gaman" which means, grin and bear. Suffer through. Stick it out. Nut up and be a man. All of the above apply to this book five (?).
(A brief refresher: Iesous recently talked to his mom who told him he was born for greatness, he nearly realized the true power hidden within him but then he left his village to sit in the woods for a while, and then Triton killed himself and his loyal sea nymph, Joanna. The scene opens upon Iesous in the woods, waiting for the apocalpyse of the Olympian Gods to fall on his head)
Time went by, and there was no retribution.
The little village in the trees held its lease longer
than any who lived there could have hoped, and
the storm they resigned themselves to bracing for
did not come. The woman in the house at the head
of the road had felt the great surge of energy that
was the release of Triton’s soul, and for some time
she feared the end was near. But as it became apparent
that the apocalypse was averted, again she hoped
that her boy would find his feet walk
them along his path into the sky.
What the woman didn’t feel, however, was
the assimilation of the energy bolts by the
amulet around the boy’s neck.
He was sitting alone, contemplating a means
of entering the netherworld of Hades’ Dominion,
when suddenly he was struck by what seemed
a giant wave quivering with electric
currents. An immense power rushed into
the amulet around his neck, and it overpowered
the symbols etched therein, glowing the deep
blue of the open sea.
Any lesser being would have died immediately,
as no normal mortal could successfully absorb
a god. The boy, however, was far from normal,
and what would have been a fatal seismic
oblivion to any other, he hardly noticed. So
deep was his concentration that he sensed
nothing spectacular until his gaze turned to
the pendant ‘round his neck and he saw it
burning blue. Seeing and feeling it around his
neck, he knew that Triton was dead. Nodding
to himself, he continued to puzzle out how he might
unbar the gates of Dis, and slay the keeper of the
dead.
So long he sat there seeking a means that
an observer might have thought him turned
to stone. Upon a rock he sat, elbow upon
knee and face upon fist like a piece of art. He
passed up plan after plan, each more impossible
than its parent, and still he had no idea how to
proceed. He was nigh upon ripping the earth in
two to create a clear path to the deeps when he
felt some persons approaching. Nimbly, he jumped
off the rock, and hid himself behind a nearby tree.
Proceeded by angry cries and cracklings
in the underbrush, two men burst into the clearing,
grappling and gouging and yelling incoherencies,
in between gasps for breath, harsh whisper
of a knife being drawn from a leather sheath, two
men entered the clearing, one advancing upon the
other with the offending knife upraised. The other
had a bright sword strapped to his thigh, yet it
remained secured within its scabbard. It was
clear that an argument lay between them,
and it came to the boy on their loud voices.
“ Would thee not see the light, however brightly I shine
it in thy eyes? Does not the glory reflected by the
tip of yon knife convince thee of thy folly?”
“ No blade could dissuade me. You are blinded
by the might of your gods, whereas I see
clearly through it. May they smite me where I
stand, I will not worship the despotism they represent.”
“ Still no, brother? Would thee not
change thy mind even knowing that thy
impiety will likely invite the wrath of god
upon our family? Would thee not change
for that?”
“What god worth praising slays believers
for the crimes of the wicked? Are
the bolts of Zeus so treacherous? So difficult
for him to aim? I should think not. He
cares not for those who love him, until
they disrespect him.”
“ I will stand for no more of this. Blasphemy
flows from thy mouth like poison, and
every word of it stings my soul. Draw
thy sword, and we shall see whose
position the gods favor.”
“ You would fight me, brother, for them?”
“ My god is my life.”
“ I will not draw. Strike me down if
you must, but I would not fight you no
matter how many hosts of heaven
stood at my back.”
“Then may thee meet thy scorned maker,
and suffer his most severe punishments for
all eternity. My lords’ wills be done.”
With this final utterance he drove the
wicked knife between his brother’s relenting
ribs, twisting it until it ruptured his stolid
heart. Before the black wind closed
his eyelids, the slain man said to his brother,
“ I hope only that your gods do not forsake
you like you have forsaken me. Eternity is a long
time to spend reliving a betrayal from one so dear.
Peace, my spirit quits it mortal casing, and I can fly,
at least for a little while.”
Just so, he died. His spirit fled the ()
hindrance of its flesh and hovered above
for a moment, bewildered at the separation.
The other man saw this not, nor the angry
rash spreading across his forehead like a brand,
and wiping his brother’s blood upon his coat
he walked away. The boy, young Iesous,
saw both though, snapping his fingers at the latter,
but in seeing the first realized his solution to
the puzzle of the hidden underworld.
Quickly forgetting its former limitations,
the tint flowed away from the scene
of it’s body’s end and flew out toward
the distant sea. Leaping up, the boy
pursued, his feet cutting the wind as he
outpaced it. The soul took, as his condition
made quite easy, the path of least resistance,
and the boy had to take the country in switchbacks
to follow. His feet nearly burning stripes in the
ground, he sprang over boulders and down
steep slopes in a furious effort to keep up
with the speedy shade. Closer and closer
the two came to a giant promontory over
a turbid sea, and still the boy followed,
fast as ever. Suddenly,
as it appeared the shade would plunge
headlong into the sea and down to some
watery end, it stopped and stood a modest
hole before the edge of the cliff. The boy
stopped to watch. After a moment, and with an
air of resignation, the shade entered the hole and
did not return.
It was clear to the boy that he had found the
entrance to Erebus, and so he made much
haste for the hole. Upon reaching it’s gaping
mouth he jumped in, landing on a stony floor.
There was no light in the cave, yet the boy
could make out a giant door of mysterious
metal, worked all in flames and bones.
At its center loomed a helmed god
on a sinister chariot, his hands reined to a trio
of dragons, their maws open in the act of a throaty
scream. In his other hand he claimed a sceptre
mounted with an obsidian skull. The gate to the ever-after,
firmly shut in the boy’s face.
A calm power rose again in the boy’s blood,
and for the first time since his father’s home,
he drew back a bit the shade over his spirit.
His eyes blazed like the apocalypse, and he
clenched two mighty fists. Like a savage
earthquake he struck the gates of hell, and
they crumpled before him as a child’s
castle will before the sea. They fell to the ground,
and the sound they made when they struck
was like a lone bell, dark and without an echo.
Once they had settled, he stepped over them, and
descended into the tangible darkness of Hades.
And scene.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Just a little Something to Pass the Time
It's a sunday morning and I'm sitting here in my apartment waiting to chat with my parents (for the first time in over three months, actually), and I thought I'd splash some random words onto the internet until Six Thirty Pacific Standard Time rolls around and I link up with the motherandfathership, so let's see. Hard to say what exactly I want to say, considering the biggest thing on my horizon right now(pretty much the only thing on my horizon right now, actually) is a little under two months away and furthermore nothing relavant to just about anybody who might be reading this blog (wink), but there are actually two kinda neat things coming up this week that I can detail some. The first is something the kids are doing, and the second is something I hope I can make the kids do. On thursday they got this "Talent Show" type thing, but I'm not expecting a small little affair in the gym composed of groups of kids performing sloppy karaoke or imitating Kojima Yoshio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1utN8BWudf0&NR=1) (this guy is fucking weird as shit, but was a total phenomenon over here for a while, which makes sense). Nope, there will be nothing impromptu or shoddily performed about this particular talent show, considering that the kids have been practicing for it for since about May, at least twice a day during lunch and after school. Not to mention the time they spend during fifth and sixth period studying recordings of themselves practicing.
Let me back up a moment to see if I can't get this to make some more sense. On Thursday, my school will have it's Gakkogei happyokai, which roughly roughly roughly translates to Talent Show/ Chorale Contest, and as my translation makes clear it is split up into two sections. The first part I am a little unclear about, but think that it involves individual students or perhaps groups of students performing something, anything, they've prepared by themselves and proved to the powers that be to be of high enough caliber to show to all the collection of parents, administrators, and local daimyo who are going to be filling up the 1200 seat auditorium they will be performing at. I think during this segment of the performance we will get to see anything from sweet guitar solos, to a performance from a band or two maybe, probably some piano pieces, speaches in English (shudder), probably speaches in Japanese, and maybe a dance or two thrown in for effect. That will be fun, but it's all just stage dressing for the second part of the show, which is what everybody is looking forward to. In Japanese middle schools, the kids are all divided into classes called kumi, and instead of traveling around the school to rooms occupied by different teachers, the kids stay in the same room all day and the teachers come to them. For this contest, each kumi is given a song to perform, and they compete against the other kumi to do perform their song the best and win points for their color. Let me explain this, there are five colors in the school, not unlik the four houses in Harry Potter other than the fact that there are five of them and they just have colors instead of the names of the schools founders, and each color group is composed of a kumi from each grade. So for example the Aogumi (blue group) is made up of a kumi form the first, second, and third year students. At various events throughout the year, they compete against each other and the different grades can win points for their color kumi. There's a board in the front of the school displaying the points. So exactly like Harry Potter, basically.
Well, I think this contest is one of the bigger point getters for the whole year, so the kids are bustin their balls to be the best. I, however, have to go put a shirt on some I'm decent for my family, but, check this link out to hear one of the songs they sing. It's called, Adventure in the Carribean Sea of Dreams (basically), and it rules. I'll translate it later. These aren't my kids, by the way, there is just a very select number of songs Japanese kids sing at these contests. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mngzBdQeDEs
I'll finish this shit later.
Let me back up a moment to see if I can't get this to make some more sense. On Thursday, my school will have it's Gakkogei happyokai, which roughly roughly roughly translates to Talent Show/ Chorale Contest, and as my translation makes clear it is split up into two sections. The first part I am a little unclear about, but think that it involves individual students or perhaps groups of students performing something, anything, they've prepared by themselves and proved to the powers that be to be of high enough caliber to show to all the collection of parents, administrators, and local daimyo who are going to be filling up the 1200 seat auditorium they will be performing at. I think during this segment of the performance we will get to see anything from sweet guitar solos, to a performance from a band or two maybe, probably some piano pieces, speaches in English (shudder), probably speaches in Japanese, and maybe a dance or two thrown in for effect. That will be fun, but it's all just stage dressing for the second part of the show, which is what everybody is looking forward to. In Japanese middle schools, the kids are all divided into classes called kumi, and instead of traveling around the school to rooms occupied by different teachers, the kids stay in the same room all day and the teachers come to them. For this contest, each kumi is given a song to perform, and they compete against the other kumi to do perform their song the best and win points for their color. Let me explain this, there are five colors in the school, not unlik the four houses in Harry Potter other than the fact that there are five of them and they just have colors instead of the names of the schools founders, and each color group is composed of a kumi from each grade. So for example the Aogumi (blue group) is made up of a kumi form the first, second, and third year students. At various events throughout the year, they compete against each other and the different grades can win points for their color kumi. There's a board in the front of the school displaying the points. So exactly like Harry Potter, basically.
Well, I think this contest is one of the bigger point getters for the whole year, so the kids are bustin their balls to be the best. I, however, have to go put a shirt on some I'm decent for my family, but, check this link out to hear one of the songs they sing. It's called, Adventure in the Carribean Sea of Dreams (basically), and it rules. I'll translate it later. These aren't my kids, by the way, there is just a very select number of songs Japanese kids sing at these contests. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mngzBdQeDEs
I'll finish this shit later.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Jump into the Time Soup
Sometimes you go places and say to yourself, definitively, I'll never ever be here again. But sometimes you go back. What does that mean?
When I left Kansai Gaidai a couple years ago, it was lugging a pair of maroon suitcases into the Mid-December light, calling over my shoulder to a group of softly crying friends "This isn't the end. We'll see each other again, someday, so you don't even have to say goodbye." I hate saying goodbye. But even though I said I was sure we'd all meet again, was there a part of me pretty convinced that this sunrise was also the sun setting on Hirakata City, Japan? I'd be lying if I said there wasn't. I went home hoping I'd make it to Japan again one day, but I also went home pretty sure that even if I did, the Japan I'd make it to would be entirely different from the one I'd left.
Well, I made it back, and even though I staggered into the coutnry lugging behind me the same two suitcases I'd left it with, I guess I was bringing my baggage to a place that knew nothing about it. My bags were the same color of maroon they'd been sitting in the closet in my dorm room, most of the clothes inside of them were two years older but of the same stitch and thread they'd been sloppily spread out on the tatami of Sem II, but when I got it all out on the (wooden) floor of my new apartment, something just didn't look right. What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that even though I was mostly the same person I had been two years prior (and had all the matching stuff to prove it), Hamamatsu was not the Japan I had left, the Japan I had expected, and certainly not the Japan I had signed up for. Some times it didn't even feel like Japan at all. Finding out I was placed in Hamamatsu, the larger, optimistic part of me tried to say that it would be fun to see a new place in Japan, experience some new sights, sounds, tastes, what have you, but there was a darker part of me that knew Kansai for home and didn't care one bit to settle anywhere else, even if it was only for a short time.
I don't really care about Tokyo. I went to Akita, and it was nice, but not for me. Okinawa sounds pretty, but, meh. Hiroshima is cool. To visit. Yokohama's got a sweet Chinatown. I hear Hokkaido is famous for its summer wildflowers. Hm. Now that I think about it, I actually want to go to Hokkaido, and summer wildflowers sound heavenly, but fuck Hokkaido, and fuck summer wildflowers. As far as I'm concerned Japan is (one end to the other) about two hours on trains, and has only two cities (and their surrounding areas) that matter: Osaka and Kyoto. I've been fighting it, trying really hard to give Hamamatsu and Kanto a chance, but fuck 'em all, when you're from Kansai like I seem to have become nowhere else matters.
This is going to get out of hand if I keep going at this pace, so let me cease blasting 95% of the Japanese landmass and get down to business. I went to Osaka and Kyoto this weekend! It was great. It felt like Japan for the first time. I like soccer. I don't like natto. I am fine, thanks, how are you? Whoops, sorry, slipped back into my English teacher role, there, but for the moment we're discussing nothing that has to do with my life as an educator and everything to do with my life as a student of Japanese. I first came to Kyoto when I was 16, and, in the middle of a long day touring various Japanese cultural landmarks, we stopped in at a place called "Heian Jingu," a large shrine famour for it's largness, orangeness, oldness, and four lovely gardens you can walk through. One of those gardens has a large Koi pond in it, and running along the edge of the koi pond are a group of stepping stones you can use to cross like a bridge. Of course, to a still culturally nubile 16 year-old mind, these stones were perfect for pictures posed in the kung-fu and zen style. Somewhat amazingly, I found a couple of those pictures deep in the memory banks of my computer, so I'll dust 'em off and here they are:
Oh what the fuck? This isn't right? John English turned into a little Japanese girl? And what, I didn't have a beard... Or a pony-tail for that matter. What the hell. Oh, that's right, these photos were taken yesterday. Not 6 years ago. But other than that they are the exact same. It's unreal. I don't know exactly what it means that my life continues to meander through the same points on the map of a distant land, but maybe it's just that I like those places. After we took those pictures, I went and made myself a little medallion to replace the one I'd lost 5 years ago (thankfully the imprinting machine was there), and to bring the deja vu a couple years into the future, we walked around Sanjo, a pretty, but mostly exorbitantly overpriced shopping district that we came to from time to time two years ago. Time goes on in a straight line, but I'll be fucked if life doesn't go around in slowly expanding circles, each of us sucking new people into the vortexes that are our lives even as we are sucked in by others until the ripples all overlap and you can't tell which one is yours and which one your neighbors anymore, but it's all good because the point is that we can all be connected if we spend a little bit of time in the same pond. Though I could say a lot more about this, and will later, perhaps tomorrow, I think I'm going to end the transmission here. I really really can't wait to pull a few of my friends from back home into this crazy pit of light and sound and agelessness that has one index of my life for the past god knows how long. Throw 'em into the pond and watch the ripples spread.
When I left Kansai Gaidai a couple years ago, it was lugging a pair of maroon suitcases into the Mid-December light, calling over my shoulder to a group of softly crying friends "This isn't the end. We'll see each other again, someday, so you don't even have to say goodbye." I hate saying goodbye. But even though I said I was sure we'd all meet again, was there a part of me pretty convinced that this sunrise was also the sun setting on Hirakata City, Japan? I'd be lying if I said there wasn't. I went home hoping I'd make it to Japan again one day, but I also went home pretty sure that even if I did, the Japan I'd make it to would be entirely different from the one I'd left.
Well, I made it back, and even though I staggered into the coutnry lugging behind me the same two suitcases I'd left it with, I guess I was bringing my baggage to a place that knew nothing about it. My bags were the same color of maroon they'd been sitting in the closet in my dorm room, most of the clothes inside of them were two years older but of the same stitch and thread they'd been sloppily spread out on the tatami of Sem II, but when I got it all out on the (wooden) floor of my new apartment, something just didn't look right. What I'm trying to say, I suppose, is that even though I was mostly the same person I had been two years prior (and had all the matching stuff to prove it), Hamamatsu was not the Japan I had left, the Japan I had expected, and certainly not the Japan I had signed up for. Some times it didn't even feel like Japan at all. Finding out I was placed in Hamamatsu, the larger, optimistic part of me tried to say that it would be fun to see a new place in Japan, experience some new sights, sounds, tastes, what have you, but there was a darker part of me that knew Kansai for home and didn't care one bit to settle anywhere else, even if it was only for a short time.
I don't really care about Tokyo. I went to Akita, and it was nice, but not for me. Okinawa sounds pretty, but, meh. Hiroshima is cool. To visit. Yokohama's got a sweet Chinatown. I hear Hokkaido is famous for its summer wildflowers. Hm. Now that I think about it, I actually want to go to Hokkaido, and summer wildflowers sound heavenly, but fuck Hokkaido, and fuck summer wildflowers. As far as I'm concerned Japan is (one end to the other) about two hours on trains, and has only two cities (and their surrounding areas) that matter: Osaka and Kyoto. I've been fighting it, trying really hard to give Hamamatsu and Kanto a chance, but fuck 'em all, when you're from Kansai like I seem to have become nowhere else matters.
This is going to get out of hand if I keep going at this pace, so let me cease blasting 95% of the Japanese landmass and get down to business. I went to Osaka and Kyoto this weekend! It was great. It felt like Japan for the first time. I like soccer. I don't like natto. I am fine, thanks, how are you? Whoops, sorry, slipped back into my English teacher role, there, but for the moment we're discussing nothing that has to do with my life as an educator and everything to do with my life as a student of Japanese. I first came to Kyoto when I was 16, and, in the middle of a long day touring various Japanese cultural landmarks, we stopped in at a place called "Heian Jingu," a large shrine famour for it's largness, orangeness, oldness, and four lovely gardens you can walk through. One of those gardens has a large Koi pond in it, and running along the edge of the koi pond are a group of stepping stones you can use to cross like a bridge. Of course, to a still culturally nubile 16 year-old mind, these stones were perfect for pictures posed in the kung-fu and zen style. Somewhat amazingly, I found a couple of those pictures deep in the memory banks of my computer, so I'll dust 'em off and here they are:
Oh what the fuck? This isn't right? John English turned into a little Japanese girl? And what, I didn't have a beard... Or a pony-tail for that matter. What the hell. Oh, that's right, these photos were taken yesterday. Not 6 years ago. But other than that they are the exact same. It's unreal. I don't know exactly what it means that my life continues to meander through the same points on the map of a distant land, but maybe it's just that I like those places. After we took those pictures, I went and made myself a little medallion to replace the one I'd lost 5 years ago (thankfully the imprinting machine was there), and to bring the deja vu a couple years into the future, we walked around Sanjo, a pretty, but mostly exorbitantly overpriced shopping district that we came to from time to time two years ago. Time goes on in a straight line, but I'll be fucked if life doesn't go around in slowly expanding circles, each of us sucking new people into the vortexes that are our lives even as we are sucked in by others until the ripples all overlap and you can't tell which one is yours and which one your neighbors anymore, but it's all good because the point is that we can all be connected if we spend a little bit of time in the same pond. Though I could say a lot more about this, and will later, perhaps tomorrow, I think I'm going to end the transmission here. I really really can't wait to pull a few of my friends from back home into this crazy pit of light and sound and agelessness that has one index of my life for the past god knows how long. Throw 'em into the pond and watch the ripples spread.
Monday, October 27, 2008
In Anticipation of a Flash Mob
Nothing spectacular to report today, at least nothing spectacular that happened. I sat at my desk for about six hours, picked my nose, stared off into space, slept, picked my butt, slept while picking my butt, woke up to teach a class, then went back to sleep until it was time to go home (a disorienting day, but not surprisingly I feel pretty rested right about now), so outside of the number of stairs in my school (176), tiles in my classroom (12), or urinals in the third floor boys bathroom (4), i can't really say much about my day at school, except for that I now know that whistling in class is most definitely against the rules, even for teachers.
However, I can briefly say something about something cool that is going to happen sometime soon. Cryptic, yes, but it's kind of a secret. I hate secrets though. On Wednesday November 5th, from 5:37 PM until 5:42 PM at a McDonald's nowhere near you, myself and a few brave souls are going to participate in the greatest social experiment to take place in Japan since somebody showed them a white person. What sort of experiment, you say? Well it's largely to see if we can draw out the deeply seeded Japanese belief that foreigners aren't actually human beings but are instead some sort of animatronic nonlifeform with no feelings and no known ability to use chopsticks that might either explode into random violence or shut down entirely at any moment. Well, there's really no way to get them with the random violence thing without having to face some sort of jail time, so we're taking the other route. Have you ever heard of flash-mobbing? I hadn't, but I'm finding out everyday that being from suburban Washington makes you more of a country bumpkin than I had suspected so I wouldn't be surprised if you already knew all about this (except for those of you who also grew up in suburban Washington and then went to college in rural Washington). But, while it comes in many shapes and sizes, it ultimately boils down to a large group of people seemingly randomly engaging in a bizarre coordinated something in what would otherwise be an incredibly ordinary place and situation. A large group of people suddenly freezing in a crowded bus station and staying that way for five minutes before walking away like nothing happened; a mass of people pulling out pillows from shopping bags in the middle of a shopping center and having a huge pillow fight for a few seconds before calmly putting the pillows back in their bags and going back to their business; a huge group of people sprinting down the length of a train platform as if they're late and desperately need to catch one, but then stopping and breaking off into small independent groups to chat once they get to the platform and there's no train there. It's crucial that you catch as many innocent bystanders in the middle of the spectacle as possible, because part of the fun of a flash mob (I'm guessing) is messing with people and getting them to think there's something big going on that they're just not in on. Their everday reality, catching the train, buying christmas presents, eating in a restaurant, gets turned on its head for a moment, and something crazy happens that you would never ever expect to. If it works, if you've done it right, then people leave wherever they were thinking, "what the fuck just happened? Did that just happen?" Not just, "damn kids."
We're going to go with the easy one first, freeze-framing it for a pre-determined amount of time, and then coming back to life and moving on like it was no big deal. Just robots that ran out of juice for a minute, you know? And we're going with McDonald's not to make a political statement about how McDonald's isn't the sort of fuel you'd like to put in your body if you'd like to live a healthy life and not have full body breakdowns every now and again, but more because that's where all the kids hang out, and they might react the most strangely. At any given time you can find elaborately dressed girls standing in front of wall mirrors, doing their make-up or refashioning their hairdos or maybe even doing a little improptu plastic surgery. Boys hang out after school in their uniforms, looking tough in their mullets and mohawks and military themed duds as they sip on a blueberry oreo mcflurry (drink of the month and it's great). If well executed, it could be great. We'll see how it goes, and if we manage to get a video of it, well, you can see it in action. I'm hoping there's a computer hacker amongst us who can hack into the McDonald's security camera system and like divert the feed onto the internet or something, but I'm guessing that's impossible. This sort of thing looks better from all angles, though, you know?
However, I can briefly say something about something cool that is going to happen sometime soon. Cryptic, yes, but it's kind of a secret. I hate secrets though. On Wednesday November 5th, from 5:37 PM until 5:42 PM at a McDonald's nowhere near you, myself and a few brave souls are going to participate in the greatest social experiment to take place in Japan since somebody showed them a white person. What sort of experiment, you say? Well it's largely to see if we can draw out the deeply seeded Japanese belief that foreigners aren't actually human beings but are instead some sort of animatronic nonlifeform with no feelings and no known ability to use chopsticks that might either explode into random violence or shut down entirely at any moment. Well, there's really no way to get them with the random violence thing without having to face some sort of jail time, so we're taking the other route. Have you ever heard of flash-mobbing? I hadn't, but I'm finding out everyday that being from suburban Washington makes you more of a country bumpkin than I had suspected so I wouldn't be surprised if you already knew all about this (except for those of you who also grew up in suburban Washington and then went to college in rural Washington). But, while it comes in many shapes and sizes, it ultimately boils down to a large group of people seemingly randomly engaging in a bizarre coordinated something in what would otherwise be an incredibly ordinary place and situation. A large group of people suddenly freezing in a crowded bus station and staying that way for five minutes before walking away like nothing happened; a mass of people pulling out pillows from shopping bags in the middle of a shopping center and having a huge pillow fight for a few seconds before calmly putting the pillows back in their bags and going back to their business; a huge group of people sprinting down the length of a train platform as if they're late and desperately need to catch one, but then stopping and breaking off into small independent groups to chat once they get to the platform and there's no train there. It's crucial that you catch as many innocent bystanders in the middle of the spectacle as possible, because part of the fun of a flash mob (I'm guessing) is messing with people and getting them to think there's something big going on that they're just not in on. Their everday reality, catching the train, buying christmas presents, eating in a restaurant, gets turned on its head for a moment, and something crazy happens that you would never ever expect to. If it works, if you've done it right, then people leave wherever they were thinking, "what the fuck just happened? Did that just happen?" Not just, "damn kids."
We're going to go with the easy one first, freeze-framing it for a pre-determined amount of time, and then coming back to life and moving on like it was no big deal. Just robots that ran out of juice for a minute, you know? And we're going with McDonald's not to make a political statement about how McDonald's isn't the sort of fuel you'd like to put in your body if you'd like to live a healthy life and not have full body breakdowns every now and again, but more because that's where all the kids hang out, and they might react the most strangely. At any given time you can find elaborately dressed girls standing in front of wall mirrors, doing their make-up or refashioning their hairdos or maybe even doing a little improptu plastic surgery. Boys hang out after school in their uniforms, looking tough in their mullets and mohawks and military themed duds as they sip on a blueberry oreo mcflurry (drink of the month and it's great). If well executed, it could be great. We'll see how it goes, and if we manage to get a video of it, well, you can see it in action. I'm hoping there's a computer hacker amongst us who can hack into the McDonald's security camera system and like divert the feed onto the internet or something, but I'm guessing that's impossible. This sort of thing looks better from all angles, though, you know?
Monday, October 13, 2008
Beyond International Emo
Remeber how I said I was going to a festival last night and that I might have something to write about it later? Well, I've got loads.
I had never been to a festival before. Well, one, but it was just a few food stalls arranged around the "quad" (a rectangular patch of beaten up astroturf with a couple basketball hoops stationed around the perimeter) of the school I went to here a couple years ago, and the main attraction was watching their large cheerleading squad build a couple pyramids to the blare of vintage Brittney Spears coming from an equally vintage boom box. So it was lame, is what I'm saying. As such, I didn't have extraordinarily high hopes for this one.
Going into it I had little to no idea of what to expect. Other than a few whisperings I had overheard in the hallways about a "dangerous" festival coming up this weekend, I'd heard nothing at all. Why was it "dangerous?" What does that even mean? I've come to disregard most everything the Japanese call "dangerous," because 15 mile per hours winds and drinking too much apple juice fall under that category, so when they said the festival was "dangerous" I figured it could be, but only if if a swat team of angry Chinese assassins with Uzis happened to crash it. Even as we were driving there, I had no idea what was going to happen. I asked the Japanese lady driving what kind of festival it was, and she said it was some sort of harvest festival. Something people do all over Japan. Not necessarily the most explicit explanation ever (to be fair she did mention a couple other crucial things I would understand later but at the time didn't have the vocabulary to comprehend), but I did start to get a little nervous that the "danger" involved little slips of paper, a single black spot, and one unfortunate soul getting stoned to death by an angry mob of superstitious farmers.
Luckily my slip of paper was clean. My shoulder is a little sore this morning though.
JK I didn't kill anybody. But here is what happened:
After stopping off at my Japanese friend's house to pick up some happi coats for the occasion, we set off into the night, following the mass of humanity making it's way towards something I didn't really understand. We wound our way through the darkened streets for a while, gradually getting closer and closer to a fuzzy source of light and sound lurking in a grove of trees like a slowly awakening beast. Hypnotized by the interwoven call of flutes and horns, attracted like curious foreign moths to the foggy glimpses of silver and gold revealed in gaps between tree trunks and leaves, we eventually made it to the "fair grounds" I guess you could call them, and then everything made a little more sense to me. Yoshimi, my Japanese friend, had said someting about these things called "yatai" when she was explaining the festival to me, and that's a word I didn't know and one she said she couldn't really explain any better. Well, having seen them, neither can I, put luckily seeing, in this case, is understanding, so this is a "yatai"
Hmm I don't know if this is going to work... And I was going to rave about how amazingly liquid the world becomes when you can translate a little piece of it into pixels of color and light that sit on your cell phone until you email them to yourself and post them on the interent for anybody to see, but whoops, there goes that little ecstatic moment for technology. Fuck you technology for ruining yourself for me. (Unless it actually worked in which case I'm the uber idiot).
It worked (I'm revising and editing right now), but you can't see it very well, so here's another:
But, back to business. The first part of the festival was held on the grounds of a local shrine in what I suppose we could call a cul-de-sac of revelry. At the far end of the holy "U" shape stood the shrine building itself, sitting quietly in the darkness and leaving the spotlight to the real stars of the show, the yatai (which, for that purpose, were lit up with artfully placed halogen lamps and some sort of incadescent article placed inside of lamps attached to the sides of the thing (this festival must have been incredibly dangerous in the past because I imagine they must have put candles in those lanterns, and with the way they get tossed around in the process of pulling the yatai around town (something I will get into later) I bet back in the olden days there were yatai burning down left and right, filling the night with flames to go along with drunken dancing and chanting (which sounds really nice, actually)). Along the sides of the U, where the houses would usually be, were set up a shit load of little stalls selling everything from buttery baked potatoes to candy apples; there were chocolate bananas, yakisoba, takoyaki (fried octopus balls), okonomiyaki, dozens of other sorts of yaki I'd never heard of before, shaved ice, ice cream, probably even ice sculptures somewhere in there, basically any sort of festival food you could ever want, and it was all contained in the otherwordly golden haze that demarcates the realm of memory from the present moment, or just indicates spectacular mood lighting. I'm convinced at this point that Japanese people know how to manipulate light better than any other culture, they've got a really finely tuned photo-aesthetic eye, that's for sure.
It was in this ethereal landscape that the festival operated. For kids it must be the best shit ever. Speaking of kids, this festival was held pretty much right next door to my school, so I was basically every one of my students there, munching on some sort of yummy snack of another. Our encounters followed one of two patters every time: If I noticed them before they noticed me, I would stare at them until they did notice me, and then they would have a minor convulsion at the sight of me, look sheepish, say "hello chado" and then get out of there; if they saw me first, they would point at me, look really surprised, laugh, (this is all according to Yoshimi), poke me, say "hello chado" and get out of there. That was pretty funny to see them out of the classroom setting, I kinda liked that. But yeah, every neighborhood within the Hamamatsu area has a yatai, and the first part of the festival involves the yatai, ostensibly pulled by members of the town with ropes but actually powered by generators secreted within the shrines' ancient bellies, doing a processional from their berths near their stationary superior and out into the streets. I watched this for a while, looking at my kids, rocking out to the tunes of the flutes and the trumpets played by the lucky elementary students that got to ride inside the holy things and the parents that followed nervously behind, and it was good. But then, I found myself being led out of the magical cul-de-sac and into the decidedly prosaic night, and I was a little disappointed, because I thought it was over.
Not so, however. Not even by half. For the next part of the festival, everybody splits off and follows their particular yatai on a merry jaunt around the kinjo (neighborhood) chasing after it like pilgrims following an ark (sorry for mixing up my ideography, I don't can't help but bring everything back westward) past shops and houses empty because their owners are all out enjoying the evening. Along the way, the yatai stop from time to time and people hand out free beer and free food that the revelers then consume while they rest and prepare to revel some more. In between bouts of consumption, while the shrine is still stopped and waiting, somebody pulls out a bullhorn and starts yelling "O ISSHO" which apparently is the signal to dance around like a maniac for thirty seconds. It's like a dance party in the TKE house, except less grindy and dingy and more mosh-pitty. Everybody participates too, young and or old. Fathers dance around with toddlers on their shoulders and beers in their hands, grandmas get in there and raise their hands with the 20 year old dudes and chicks, and everybody is really just getting down. And then it stops, suddenly and without warning. But about ten seconds later it starts all over again. And then it stops. But then it starts again. Then it stops. Then it starts. Then it stops. Then is starts. Then it stops. Then you're pretty sure it's done but it starts and stops at least three more times before the shrine gets moving again. It's a workout, that's for sure.
We ended up following the yatai around for maybe two hours, "dancing," eating, drinking, dancing, and generally just thanking kami-sama for another good harvest. It was great. At one point I got sucked in by these drunk, entirely unintelligible old men who tried to tell me a story about how much they hated Ichiro because he's not good at baseball just fast (not true but whatever) but at the time I was pretty freaked out by them and so didn't understand what they were trying to say until like an hour later. At another point, in the mosh-pit, I found myself getting backed down Andy Huntington style by this random drunkass Japanese dude who spoke a lot of English. That was awkward, so I just turned around and we bumped butts until the crowd cleared and I could get out of there. It wasn't me, because after I escaped he found another victim. When the full moon comes out some people just get crazy I guess. Whoo, well, that's about all I got there, and boy was that ever an epic. Speaking of, the next installment coming soon. Thanks for coming.
I had never been to a festival before. Well, one, but it was just a few food stalls arranged around the "quad" (a rectangular patch of beaten up astroturf with a couple basketball hoops stationed around the perimeter) of the school I went to here a couple years ago, and the main attraction was watching their large cheerleading squad build a couple pyramids to the blare of vintage Brittney Spears coming from an equally vintage boom box. So it was lame, is what I'm saying. As such, I didn't have extraordinarily high hopes for this one.
Going into it I had little to no idea of what to expect. Other than a few whisperings I had overheard in the hallways about a "dangerous" festival coming up this weekend, I'd heard nothing at all. Why was it "dangerous?" What does that even mean? I've come to disregard most everything the Japanese call "dangerous," because 15 mile per hours winds and drinking too much apple juice fall under that category, so when they said the festival was "dangerous" I figured it could be, but only if if a swat team of angry Chinese assassins with Uzis happened to crash it. Even as we were driving there, I had no idea what was going to happen. I asked the Japanese lady driving what kind of festival it was, and she said it was some sort of harvest festival. Something people do all over Japan. Not necessarily the most explicit explanation ever (to be fair she did mention a couple other crucial things I would understand later but at the time didn't have the vocabulary to comprehend), but I did start to get a little nervous that the "danger" involved little slips of paper, a single black spot, and one unfortunate soul getting stoned to death by an angry mob of superstitious farmers.
Luckily my slip of paper was clean. My shoulder is a little sore this morning though.
JK I didn't kill anybody. But here is what happened:
After stopping off at my Japanese friend's house to pick up some happi coats for the occasion, we set off into the night, following the mass of humanity making it's way towards something I didn't really understand. We wound our way through the darkened streets for a while, gradually getting closer and closer to a fuzzy source of light and sound lurking in a grove of trees like a slowly awakening beast. Hypnotized by the interwoven call of flutes and horns, attracted like curious foreign moths to the foggy glimpses of silver and gold revealed in gaps between tree trunks and leaves, we eventually made it to the "fair grounds" I guess you could call them, and then everything made a little more sense to me. Yoshimi, my Japanese friend, had said someting about these things called "yatai" when she was explaining the festival to me, and that's a word I didn't know and one she said she couldn't really explain any better. Well, having seen them, neither can I, put luckily seeing, in this case, is understanding, so this is a "yatai"
Hmm I don't know if this is going to work... And I was going to rave about how amazingly liquid the world becomes when you can translate a little piece of it into pixels of color and light that sit on your cell phone until you email them to yourself and post them on the interent for anybody to see, but whoops, there goes that little ecstatic moment for technology. Fuck you technology for ruining yourself for me. (Unless it actually worked in which case I'm the uber idiot).
It worked (I'm revising and editing right now), but you can't see it very well, so here's another:
But, back to business. The first part of the festival was held on the grounds of a local shrine in what I suppose we could call a cul-de-sac of revelry. At the far end of the holy "U" shape stood the shrine building itself, sitting quietly in the darkness and leaving the spotlight to the real stars of the show, the yatai (which, for that purpose, were lit up with artfully placed halogen lamps and some sort of incadescent article placed inside of lamps attached to the sides of the thing (this festival must have been incredibly dangerous in the past because I imagine they must have put candles in those lanterns, and with the way they get tossed around in the process of pulling the yatai around town (something I will get into later) I bet back in the olden days there were yatai burning down left and right, filling the night with flames to go along with drunken dancing and chanting (which sounds really nice, actually)). Along the sides of the U, where the houses would usually be, were set up a shit load of little stalls selling everything from buttery baked potatoes to candy apples; there were chocolate bananas, yakisoba, takoyaki (fried octopus balls), okonomiyaki, dozens of other sorts of yaki I'd never heard of before, shaved ice, ice cream, probably even ice sculptures somewhere in there, basically any sort of festival food you could ever want, and it was all contained in the otherwordly golden haze that demarcates the realm of memory from the present moment, or just indicates spectacular mood lighting. I'm convinced at this point that Japanese people know how to manipulate light better than any other culture, they've got a really finely tuned photo-aesthetic eye, that's for sure.
It was in this ethereal landscape that the festival operated. For kids it must be the best shit ever. Speaking of kids, this festival was held pretty much right next door to my school, so I was basically every one of my students there, munching on some sort of yummy snack of another. Our encounters followed one of two patters every time: If I noticed them before they noticed me, I would stare at them until they did notice me, and then they would have a minor convulsion at the sight of me, look sheepish, say "hello chado" and then get out of there; if they saw me first, they would point at me, look really surprised, laugh, (this is all according to Yoshimi), poke me, say "hello chado" and get out of there. That was pretty funny to see them out of the classroom setting, I kinda liked that. But yeah, every neighborhood within the Hamamatsu area has a yatai, and the first part of the festival involves the yatai, ostensibly pulled by members of the town with ropes but actually powered by generators secreted within the shrines' ancient bellies, doing a processional from their berths near their stationary superior and out into the streets. I watched this for a while, looking at my kids, rocking out to the tunes of the flutes and the trumpets played by the lucky elementary students that got to ride inside the holy things and the parents that followed nervously behind, and it was good. But then, I found myself being led out of the magical cul-de-sac and into the decidedly prosaic night, and I was a little disappointed, because I thought it was over.
Not so, however. Not even by half. For the next part of the festival, everybody splits off and follows their particular yatai on a merry jaunt around the kinjo (neighborhood) chasing after it like pilgrims following an ark (sorry for mixing up my ideography, I don't can't help but bring everything back westward) past shops and houses empty because their owners are all out enjoying the evening. Along the way, the yatai stop from time to time and people hand out free beer and free food that the revelers then consume while they rest and prepare to revel some more. In between bouts of consumption, while the shrine is still stopped and waiting, somebody pulls out a bullhorn and starts yelling "O ISSHO" which apparently is the signal to dance around like a maniac for thirty seconds. It's like a dance party in the TKE house, except less grindy and dingy and more mosh-pitty. Everybody participates too, young and or old. Fathers dance around with toddlers on their shoulders and beers in their hands, grandmas get in there and raise their hands with the 20 year old dudes and chicks, and everybody is really just getting down. And then it stops, suddenly and without warning. But about ten seconds later it starts all over again. And then it stops. But then it starts again. Then it stops. Then it starts. Then it stops. Then is starts. Then it stops. Then you're pretty sure it's done but it starts and stops at least three more times before the shrine gets moving again. It's a workout, that's for sure.
We ended up following the yatai around for maybe two hours, "dancing," eating, drinking, dancing, and generally just thanking kami-sama for another good harvest. It was great. At one point I got sucked in by these drunk, entirely unintelligible old men who tried to tell me a story about how much they hated Ichiro because he's not good at baseball just fast (not true but whatever) but at the time I was pretty freaked out by them and so didn't understand what they were trying to say until like an hour later. At another point, in the mosh-pit, I found myself getting backed down Andy Huntington style by this random drunkass Japanese dude who spoke a lot of English. That was awkward, so I just turned around and we bumped butts until the crowd cleared and I could get out of there. It wasn't me, because after I escaped he found another victim. When the full moon comes out some people just get crazy I guess. Whoo, well, that's about all I got there, and boy was that ever an epic. Speaking of, the next installment coming soon. Thanks for coming.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Something about an International Language
That's right, music. We're going to do another of these I post a video of myself doing something embarrasing with a guitar in my hands things. This is a little different from Garden State and T-Tones covers, however. Well, it's still most definitely a cover, but this time I'm not singing in English. This is a Japanese song that I think is pretty sweet. I'm trying to think of what I would compare this band to, and I guess I would say that while they have the sartorial style of Pearl Jam, they are more musically aligned with a band like Lifehouse or something like that. They're totally a product of the mid 90s, though, that's for sure. It's nice to know that we were all going through the mushroom cut, sloppy flannel-phase at the same time all over the world. It's a point of unity, you know? So here it is. I'll translate the lyrics below, though I can't be entirely sure of a couple parts...
The song is called "Sora mo Toberuhazu" which roughly translates to "I Feel like I Could Fly," and here's the best I can do on the English translation
While unable to make my little fever go down,
I feel afraid of God's shadow
The hidden knife eased my out of place self
with silly songs
As the color fades,
as it all starts to break apart,
I call out for a sparkling escape
I feel full of the miracle
that was meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
When the tears that soak my dreams
wash out to sea
I want you here smiling next to me
I'll tear up the transparent lies
I used as the aces up my sleeve
on the evening of the full moon
To the smell of hair
fluttering hollowly in space,
I wake up from a deep deep sleep
My heart is full
with the miracle that is meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
Even though this world glittering with trash
rejected us,
I still want you here smiling next to me
Oh yeah. That translation sucks a little bit I realize, but it's Ok. It's a trickier song that I thought. Ok, I'm off to a festival, maybe there'll be some more to come later.
The song is called "Sora mo Toberuhazu" which roughly translates to "I Feel like I Could Fly," and here's the best I can do on the English translation
While unable to make my little fever go down,
I feel afraid of God's shadow
The hidden knife eased my out of place self
with silly songs
As the color fades,
as it all starts to break apart,
I call out for a sparkling escape
I feel full of the miracle
that was meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
When the tears that soak my dreams
wash out to sea
I want you here smiling next to me
I'll tear up the transparent lies
I used as the aces up my sleeve
on the evening of the full moon
To the smell of hair
fluttering hollowly in space,
I wake up from a deep deep sleep
My heart is full
with the miracle that is meeting you
For sure, I ought to be able
to fly right now
Even though this world glittering with trash
rejected us,
I still want you here smiling next to me
Oh yeah. That translation sucks a little bit I realize, but it's Ok. It's a trickier song that I thought. Ok, I'm off to a festival, maybe there'll be some more to come later.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Coming out of a Dry Spell
My posts were really few and far between last month, but it's a new day and I guess I gotta get the update train a running again. This one's mostly for you Dana, though anyone else who has been foolish enough to attach this blog to their google reader (here's lookin at you Michael) can give 'er a look too.
Today's topic is the adult english conversation phenomenon. All over Japan you can find different establishments whose sole reason for existence is to cater to old people who want to come in and speak a little English with a foreigner. They come in all shapes in sizes. You've got your standard, somewhat formal English schools for adults, which seem to be fairly reputable and worthwhile for the people who come in to polish up their conversations abilities. You've also got your more informal "conversation groups," which equate to a few old people, one English speaker, one hour, and a lot of inane/unintelligible babbling. I've never done one of these before, but apparently the old people just like to tell people they've spoken English with a foreigner, while any fly on the wall at one of their meetings would have to disagree, and say they've spoken at a foreigner in Japanese about their cats or perhaps the local weather patterns. There are also these things called English Conversation Cafes that employ a resident foreigner or two to come in and chat with patrons. A lot like hostess bars, except for that the company you provide comes in exotic (culturally and linguistically, not sexually, though there probably are English Conversation Hostess Bars) flavors. Last time I was here I was propositioned by a man in a black van to work a couple hours a week at just such an English Conversation Cafe, and even though I am a little leery of the potential link between the mafia and english conversation in this country, I regret to this day passing that up that opportunity.
Which is probably why I was so ready to accept a similar invitation this time around. Granted, it came through more official channels(straight from the local Coordinator of International Relations), but I still felt like this was fate offering me a second chance. I said yes. To be fair, I don't have much else to do (the most entertainment I get on a standard weekday evening is watching strange people lift weights in skimpy clothing at the gym (there's one guy who I'm convinced is the gay ancestor of the Norse warrior Sigmund (look him up, then imagine him doing calf-raises in booty shorts), but nonetheless I was excited about this.
It's officially termed an "English Conversation Exchange," this thing I'm doing, and it certainly falls on the unofficial side of things. After I agreed to participate, Bonnie (the coordinator for international relations) gave these two men looking for a chat my information, and from there it was up to us to determine the where when and how of our exchanging. I wasn't sure exactly when to expect a call from these guys, but promptly a few days later I received a call from an unknown number that I was pretty sure was from my new Japanese friends. Well, actually I received about 4 calls within about a 20 minute period (I was working at the time and couldn't really answer my phone). I guess they were really excited to start the chatting. Well, later that day they called when I was actually able to talk (I believe I was sitting on my toilet at the time) and after a quick exchange of Japanese we made plans to meet the following week.
Well, the following week came up yesterday, and at a little before six I stepped out my apartment to go meet my new friends Gonda and Yoshida. Ten minutes later I found myself in a smoky little cafe, the three of us arrayed around a cozy corner table like participants in some strange Omiai without so much as a whiff of a bride. Plenty of cigarette smoke, and I guess we did discuss girls at some point, but, well now that I think about it I'm not exactly sure how it was like an Omiai (which is the first step in an arranged marriage where the dude comes to check out the chick and see if she's worthy of him) I just liked the idea of the metaphor, and it did seem a little homoerotic at first. Two older men take a young man out for coffee so that they can chat and get to know him a little better. Sounds like ancient Greece except for a little classier. Can you imagine Achilles taking Patroclus out for a cup of... what the fuck, did they drink anything except mead and wine those days? to discuss his hobbies and educational history? I can't either.
But back to the topic at hand. It was supposed to be "English" conversation exchange, but it Japanese was most certainly the main meal. I think there was about a 3 minute garnish of English thrown in there for coloring, but mostly it was Japanese all the way. Which is perfect, as far as I'm concerned. It was awesome. Sweet dudes, sweet practice, sweet everything. They asked me most of the awkward questions I had always been told I would be asked but never had been (which are more beautiful, American or Japanese girls (a stupid question for many reasons, one that I was able to manage with the eminently diplomatic response "well, there are pretty girls all over the world, but of course my girlfriend is the prettiest" (sappy blog shout-out to girlfriend count: 1)) how much money do you make? how much do you pay in rent (not that awkward I guess)? how many centimeter is your penis). Just kidding about that last one, but they did ask me (well after we had been through whether I was a butt or a breast man) if there were any hot teachers at my school, to which I replied, "go fuck yourself." Luckily they didn't catch that and the conversation proceeded without much of a hitch.
Whoo, yikes, I realize I'm trying to make up for a month hiatus with one massive post, but bear with me even though most of the good shit has already passed. But yeah, we really hit it off which was great. It's pretty impressive that you can have an hour and a half conversation with total strangers in a foreign language and it's not awkward or strange at all. All the credit to Japanese people on that account. I was trying to imagine my dad and his boss or somebody taking a 22 year-old Japanese guy out for coffe and conversation, and try as I might I just couldn't see it happening. I'm certainly not giving my dad enough credit here, for even though he probably couldn't hold up the Japanese end of the conversation as well as these guys held up the English end of ours, he's a great guy and could easily flow through such a conversation. But the fact is, we just don't do that kind of stuff in America, which is one of the really cool things about Japan. They're willing to take in random foreigners off the street and invite them to play volleyball with them on Wednesdays (I'm doing that with Gonda next week), which is crazy! I've also been invited out to drink sake with them and eat food at their respective homes, so shit I guess they liked me. Or maybe they just thought I smelled good.
Today's topic is the adult english conversation phenomenon. All over Japan you can find different establishments whose sole reason for existence is to cater to old people who want to come in and speak a little English with a foreigner. They come in all shapes in sizes. You've got your standard, somewhat formal English schools for adults, which seem to be fairly reputable and worthwhile for the people who come in to polish up their conversations abilities. You've also got your more informal "conversation groups," which equate to a few old people, one English speaker, one hour, and a lot of inane/unintelligible babbling. I've never done one of these before, but apparently the old people just like to tell people they've spoken English with a foreigner, while any fly on the wall at one of their meetings would have to disagree, and say they've spoken at a foreigner in Japanese about their cats or perhaps the local weather patterns. There are also these things called English Conversation Cafes that employ a resident foreigner or two to come in and chat with patrons. A lot like hostess bars, except for that the company you provide comes in exotic (culturally and linguistically, not sexually, though there probably are English Conversation Hostess Bars) flavors. Last time I was here I was propositioned by a man in a black van to work a couple hours a week at just such an English Conversation Cafe, and even though I am a little leery of the potential link between the mafia and english conversation in this country, I regret to this day passing that up that opportunity.
Which is probably why I was so ready to accept a similar invitation this time around. Granted, it came through more official channels(straight from the local Coordinator of International Relations), but I still felt like this was fate offering me a second chance. I said yes. To be fair, I don't have much else to do (the most entertainment I get on a standard weekday evening is watching strange people lift weights in skimpy clothing at the gym (there's one guy who I'm convinced is the gay ancestor of the Norse warrior Sigmund (look him up, then imagine him doing calf-raises in booty shorts), but nonetheless I was excited about this.
It's officially termed an "English Conversation Exchange," this thing I'm doing, and it certainly falls on the unofficial side of things. After I agreed to participate, Bonnie (the coordinator for international relations) gave these two men looking for a chat my information, and from there it was up to us to determine the where when and how of our exchanging. I wasn't sure exactly when to expect a call from these guys, but promptly a few days later I received a call from an unknown number that I was pretty sure was from my new Japanese friends. Well, actually I received about 4 calls within about a 20 minute period (I was working at the time and couldn't really answer my phone). I guess they were really excited to start the chatting. Well, later that day they called when I was actually able to talk (I believe I was sitting on my toilet at the time) and after a quick exchange of Japanese we made plans to meet the following week.
Well, the following week came up yesterday, and at a little before six I stepped out my apartment to go meet my new friends Gonda and Yoshida. Ten minutes later I found myself in a smoky little cafe, the three of us arrayed around a cozy corner table like participants in some strange Omiai without so much as a whiff of a bride. Plenty of cigarette smoke, and I guess we did discuss girls at some point, but, well now that I think about it I'm not exactly sure how it was like an Omiai (which is the first step in an arranged marriage where the dude comes to check out the chick and see if she's worthy of him) I just liked the idea of the metaphor, and it did seem a little homoerotic at first. Two older men take a young man out for coffee so that they can chat and get to know him a little better. Sounds like ancient Greece except for a little classier. Can you imagine Achilles taking Patroclus out for a cup of... what the fuck, did they drink anything except mead and wine those days? to discuss his hobbies and educational history? I can't either.
But back to the topic at hand. It was supposed to be "English" conversation exchange, but it Japanese was most certainly the main meal. I think there was about a 3 minute garnish of English thrown in there for coloring, but mostly it was Japanese all the way. Which is perfect, as far as I'm concerned. It was awesome. Sweet dudes, sweet practice, sweet everything. They asked me most of the awkward questions I had always been told I would be asked but never had been (which are more beautiful, American or Japanese girls (a stupid question for many reasons, one that I was able to manage with the eminently diplomatic response "well, there are pretty girls all over the world, but of course my girlfriend is the prettiest" (sappy blog shout-out to girlfriend count: 1)) how much money do you make? how much do you pay in rent (not that awkward I guess)? how many centimeter is your penis). Just kidding about that last one, but they did ask me (well after we had been through whether I was a butt or a breast man) if there were any hot teachers at my school, to which I replied, "go fuck yourself." Luckily they didn't catch that and the conversation proceeded without much of a hitch.
Whoo, yikes, I realize I'm trying to make up for a month hiatus with one massive post, but bear with me even though most of the good shit has already passed. But yeah, we really hit it off which was great. It's pretty impressive that you can have an hour and a half conversation with total strangers in a foreign language and it's not awkward or strange at all. All the credit to Japanese people on that account. I was trying to imagine my dad and his boss or somebody taking a 22 year-old Japanese guy out for coffe and conversation, and try as I might I just couldn't see it happening. I'm certainly not giving my dad enough credit here, for even though he probably couldn't hold up the Japanese end of the conversation as well as these guys held up the English end of ours, he's a great guy and could easily flow through such a conversation. But the fact is, we just don't do that kind of stuff in America, which is one of the really cool things about Japan. They're willing to take in random foreigners off the street and invite them to play volleyball with them on Wednesdays (I'm doing that with Gonda next week), which is crazy! I've also been invited out to drink sake with them and eat food at their respective homes, so shit I guess they liked me. Or maybe they just thought I smelled good.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Classroom Dynamics
I can't remember the last time I wrote something that actually dealt with the day to day realities of my life, and so I think it's about high time to get into the nitty-gritty. I'm a teacher now. Ha. Let's define "teacher" for a second here. Someone who is old. Check. Someone who knows things. Uh.. check I guess. Someone who stands in front of an assemblage of students on a daily basis. Sure, yeah, I'm still following you, check. Someone with the ability to convey something of worth to said students he or she stands in front of. Ah fuck, nope, I can't do that.
I "teach" four classes a week by myself, but I think on the kid's schedules instead of "Eikaiwa" (English Conversation) some cheeky little bastard at the Shokuinshitu (teacher's room) substituted recess. Or maybe nap-time? The kids certainly converse, but rarely in English, and rarely when I want them to. To be fair, this is due mostly to a combination of my poor abilities as a teacher and Japanese society's hesitance to prescribe Ritalin, but yikes I've had some worthless classes so far, that's for sure. The other day I was trying to teach them about Mt. Rushmore (my first mistake) and a host of other noteworthy American landmarks (including the Alamo, I was really trying to pick the most impossible shit I could, I guess. I don't write out what I'm going to say in class before I go, I just kinda wing it, and so imagine my surprise when I came to the Alamo. I have a difficult enough time trying to convey the names of fruits and vegetables, let alone facts about the Mexican-American war and the conception of rugged individualism as it relates to the old west. Fuck, I was like, "uhh, and then I went to the Alamo (the whole presentation was framed as a massive vacation i went on), which is... an old building? Ok moving on... Disney Land!"). That lesson went well, except for when I looked at my students. I try not to do that anymore. Just pretend they're not there and everything will be fine.
Some good things do come out of my lessons, however. During the first week I got a lot of attention from my female students. I remember back in middle school all the girls had huge crushes on Mr. Bruns, the social studies teacher, (two bits if you remember that dude), and boy was I jealous of him. He was like 26 (?) and all the hot chicks were totally into him, while here I was, appropriately aged (13), and floundering in a sea of never having talked to a girl ever. To be fair, part of me was OK with that, but another part of me wanted to kick Mr. Bruns in the nuts. Oh how times change, because now I have become Mr. Bruns. And you know what, it's not that tight. I feel for the poor guy. But I guess I feel more for myself, because when you get down to it I'm sure the girls who were into Mr. Bruns were a little less forward in their appreciation. I wonder if they ever walked up to him and said "you have beautiful eyes." Or, slightly more unlikely, hollered from the back of the class, "cute boy!" No, I'm quite sure that never happened to him. But it does happen to me, and I guess there's nothing to do about but luxuriously sweep my hair away from my eyes and act sheepish. There's no other appropriate response. There is one girl who asks me her name every time I see her, and after a fifteen second struggle with my recalcitrant memory and I finally find myself able to bring it up, she collapses into a paroxysm of delight that I can only respond to by turning my back and running away at full speed. I'm going to have to do something to let those poor 13 year old boys know that I'm not trying to steal their potential girlfriends. I think I'm going to stop showering and or shaving and or wiping my butt and see how long it takes for a) the infatuation to fade away or b) for me to get fired. Only time will really tell.
I "teach" four classes a week by myself, but I think on the kid's schedules instead of "Eikaiwa" (English Conversation) some cheeky little bastard at the Shokuinshitu (teacher's room) substituted recess. Or maybe nap-time? The kids certainly converse, but rarely in English, and rarely when I want them to. To be fair, this is due mostly to a combination of my poor abilities as a teacher and Japanese society's hesitance to prescribe Ritalin, but yikes I've had some worthless classes so far, that's for sure. The other day I was trying to teach them about Mt. Rushmore (my first mistake) and a host of other noteworthy American landmarks (including the Alamo, I was really trying to pick the most impossible shit I could, I guess. I don't write out what I'm going to say in class before I go, I just kinda wing it, and so imagine my surprise when I came to the Alamo. I have a difficult enough time trying to convey the names of fruits and vegetables, let alone facts about the Mexican-American war and the conception of rugged individualism as it relates to the old west. Fuck, I was like, "uhh, and then I went to the Alamo (the whole presentation was framed as a massive vacation i went on), which is... an old building? Ok moving on... Disney Land!"). That lesson went well, except for when I looked at my students. I try not to do that anymore. Just pretend they're not there and everything will be fine.
Some good things do come out of my lessons, however. During the first week I got a lot of attention from my female students. I remember back in middle school all the girls had huge crushes on Mr. Bruns, the social studies teacher, (two bits if you remember that dude), and boy was I jealous of him. He was like 26 (?) and all the hot chicks were totally into him, while here I was, appropriately aged (13), and floundering in a sea of never having talked to a girl ever. To be fair, part of me was OK with that, but another part of me wanted to kick Mr. Bruns in the nuts. Oh how times change, because now I have become Mr. Bruns. And you know what, it's not that tight. I feel for the poor guy. But I guess I feel more for myself, because when you get down to it I'm sure the girls who were into Mr. Bruns were a little less forward in their appreciation. I wonder if they ever walked up to him and said "you have beautiful eyes." Or, slightly more unlikely, hollered from the back of the class, "cute boy!" No, I'm quite sure that never happened to him. But it does happen to me, and I guess there's nothing to do about but luxuriously sweep my hair away from my eyes and act sheepish. There's no other appropriate response. There is one girl who asks me her name every time I see her, and after a fifteen second struggle with my recalcitrant memory and I finally find myself able to bring it up, she collapses into a paroxysm of delight that I can only respond to by turning my back and running away at full speed. I'm going to have to do something to let those poor 13 year old boys know that I'm not trying to steal their potential girlfriends. I think I'm going to stop showering and or shaving and or wiping my butt and see how long it takes for a) the infatuation to fade away or b) for me to get fired. Only time will really tell.
Friday, September 19, 2008
A Long Time Gone
It's been a while since I've posted anything, I realize, and while there are a couple things bouncing around in my head from the past few weeks, I just can't seem to get to get it up right now (gross) so for the time being, how about some more of the epic??? Sorry this part sucks too, I think the editorial comment at the end of the selection speaks for itself, but I swear it's the last lame one of the bunch. Then it gets rocking for real.
The truest thing about divinity is that it
cannot hardly separate itself from pride,
and for Triton it was no different. Though
his wound was already closing, he felt the
pain of it steadily growing. Like a lunatic
blood poison it traveled through his veins,
bypassing his vena cava and heading up, thirsting
not for his heart but his mind. Slowly upward
did it flow, and even as Joanna was heartened
by the apparent regeneration of his Divine health
his mind grew closer and closer to insanity.
And so they swam on, she unaware of her dire
peril, he unable to do anything about it.
Some time along, the poison now very near
to Triton’s brain, he stopped, seemingly needing
to catch his breath. The nymph, still unaware
of his degeneration, happily obliged and the
two of them sat on a rock. Triton looked
up into the sea and the sky above that, and
spoke to the naiad, lost somewhere deep
inside his slowly twisting mind. “Dost thou
see the stars far up? Dost thou see them?
Mine eyes can pierce those heights, and
to me they seem to waver. Fleeting and
inconstant, whose were they before
they gave themselves to the Olympians?
Zeus made them not, and neither did that
glorified smith, Hephaistos. They were there
flickering before Ancient Kronos and likely they
will long survive me and thou. Why do they
waver so? Do they mock me in my
frailty?”
“Lord, do not speak so, it makes no sense.
Thou art strong as thou hath ever been. The
stars do not waver, ‘tis merely the watery
filter through which thou see’ests them.”
“Nay, they waver, and they would
do so for me even were I to see them from
the solid earth. Has thou ever known a
god to die? I think it must be possible. Does
our power come from ourselves? Clearly not
entirely, for what power had Zeus before
he took it from Kronos?”
“ Enough to fight back the Titans. But wait,
why do you even ask? What a morbid subject
for one so mighty...”
“My might bled out of me when that boy
smote me with his weapon. So much
strength, and so inconspicuous! From
whence has he descended that he
should have grown so strong so soon, and
without anyone knowing?
Yet Zeus hadn’t lightning bolts before they
were gifted to him, and even Gaia
came out of Chaos. We are nothing in
ourselves.”
“But thou are so much to us! Didst thou
not feel the sea’s wound as it reflected
thine? If you died would the sea die
too?”
“My fair nymph, I may be the sea while I
yet live, but was there not a sea before
there was me? Were there no waters
before I was born to Lord them?
Nay! The ocean breathes not through
my lungs, rather I breath through the
ocean.”
“ All the same, what is a city without
a king, and how could we survive your
death. Our love for thee would dissolve
our bodies! (But how could thou die?
Thou are Triton, king of the sea...)
“ Am I so great as to deserve such devotion
from thee? What do I do, save take offense
and subsequently revenge for the actions
of mortals? Does the water love me for
my abuse of it? Does any mortal love me,
or do they merely show respect for fear
of me? Death would be a gift. Would thou
die with me?”
“ So thee is intent upon dying? It seems that
thy wound penetrates far beneath thy mendable
skin. Could no words persuade thee?”
“ My eyes are growing dark and I fear that
the shade is death.”
“ Then I would go with thee. Whatever you
say, I love thee, and a sea devoid of thy
presence would be for me too salty by
far. How could I discern the water
from my tears?”
“ All is well. On this trident let me
take what the Arbiter left behind. Hades,
thou shall not have my spirit, for it belongs
to the sea. Here, Joanna, let me soothe
thy pains with a gentle edge... The cut is
true... Now for me... It’s not as cold
as I had thought it would be.... With my
blood, I make peace. Now let it run forever
in the waters of my ocean... peace...”
And so, almost in sight of Poseidon’s great
palace, for it was beyond only the next rise,
Triton took his life along with that of his loyal
nymph and surrendered his immense soul back
to the sea. Before his eyes closed for the last
time, the haggard gleam therein went out, and
for a moment there were flowing lines of peace
graven upon each iris.
Seconds later his body and that of the nymph’s were
consumed in a startling blaze of ultramarine, and
a blinding light sped out of the ocean and up into
the air, racing for a little grove of trees nearby. The
moaning of the waters ceased, and where two godly
bodies had lain only a brief flash earlier, no trace remained.
(BLEAGHHH, SUCKS)
Friday, September 5, 2008
A Dip into my Brain
It's strange to stop and notice you're somewhere new, and then to look behind you and see how you've got there. Does the past stretch out behind us like a road, like a wide, straight path, clearly visible all the way back along gently inwardly sloping time-lines that create the impression of distance before they vanish into the dim West, the setting sun that sits static on the edge of our worlds and marks , somewhat paradoxically, where we started? Is it clean, manicured, littered here and there with signposts that we can see that we can read that tell us where we were and when we were there? Can they tell us what it was like to be where we were? Or, is the past the proverbial winding road, short-sighted, obscured by the bends we've just come around, the anticipation of those to come? Does it move up and down, into and out of valleys, onto promontories where everything is visible for years and years around, sometimes coming down and turning strange corners where all around there's nothing but cliffs, big old rock walls on all sides and just a little trickle of a path to crawl through in the dark. Is the past a road at all, is the impression of distance, of a discrete progression through space and time just a metaphor we make up to understand and order the massive glotted mess of memories that are our lives?
I guess it's all semantics because when you get down to the stones at your feet and the old dusty trails in your mind, where we are is where are, and where we were is where we were. It's fun to plot lines between then and now, now and again, however, because that's the only way we can see the extraordinary lines our lives make. What am I doing right now? Sitting on my balcony in Japan listening to Creed, firing neurons into cyberspace and trying to paint a picture of what my life has become, is becoming. What was I doing two years ago? Sitting in my room in Japan, probably listening to Creed, scribbling in a journal, trying to figure out how I was going to survive a semester in an unknown place. Well, I've got about three times as much time to while away this time, and a much wider portal to spit myself out of once it's all done. What was I doing last year? Mostly drinking hella beer, staying up late because, never sleep you silly bitch, playing Settlers three times a day, occassionally reading something, occassionally fretting about something. But with the briefest progression of three months, oh how things have changed. And in so many ways. I'm back in Middle School, wandering the halls of a place that most certainly is not Kellogg, dressed in a shirt and slacks, armed with posters, pictures, and a suddenly most spectacular ability to speak English, waking up at six-thirty and unable to stay awake past ten thirty most nights. Talk about a dramatic revision. But I guess that's what makes this life fun; it's potential for rapid, incandescent, fundamentally revisionist Change. Every morning I wake up and am amazed by how the jigsaw pieces that make up my life have been rearranged and put back together, how elements I expected and pieces I never could have imagined are combining to form an entirely new me that is only a few steps down the road from where I was, but feels, at times, like a man who's stepped into a parallel universe. Are there other worlds than these? Why worry about that, when Earth contains more than you could explore in a lifetime?
I guess it's all semantics because when you get down to the stones at your feet and the old dusty trails in your mind, where we are is where are, and where we were is where we were. It's fun to plot lines between then and now, now and again, however, because that's the only way we can see the extraordinary lines our lives make. What am I doing right now? Sitting on my balcony in Japan listening to Creed, firing neurons into cyberspace and trying to paint a picture of what my life has become, is becoming. What was I doing two years ago? Sitting in my room in Japan, probably listening to Creed, scribbling in a journal, trying to figure out how I was going to survive a semester in an unknown place. Well, I've got about three times as much time to while away this time, and a much wider portal to spit myself out of once it's all done. What was I doing last year? Mostly drinking hella beer, staying up late because, never sleep you silly bitch, playing Settlers three times a day, occassionally reading something, occassionally fretting about something. But with the briefest progression of three months, oh how things have changed. And in so many ways. I'm back in Middle School, wandering the halls of a place that most certainly is not Kellogg, dressed in a shirt and slacks, armed with posters, pictures, and a suddenly most spectacular ability to speak English, waking up at six-thirty and unable to stay awake past ten thirty most nights. Talk about a dramatic revision. But I guess that's what makes this life fun; it's potential for rapid, incandescent, fundamentally revisionist Change. Every morning I wake up and am amazed by how the jigsaw pieces that make up my life have been rearranged and put back together, how elements I expected and pieces I never could have imagined are combining to form an entirely new me that is only a few steps down the road from where I was, but feels, at times, like a man who's stepped into a parallel universe. Are there other worlds than these? Why worry about that, when Earth contains more than you could explore in a lifetime?
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Something to Wash away the Faith
I really can't leave that last post up standing alone any longer. Have you ever cried while watching a person make a speech? Have you ever cried while watching somebody make a fourty-five minute speech about governmental policy? Is you name Kramer Phillips? If not, kill yourself. Whoops, I guess I have. Then I wrote a really long, passionate post about it. What is the world coming to? Not sure, but I need a little irreverence to bring things back to normal.
Uh, let's see here, there's gotta be something.... ..... ..... fuck, come on, something.... I haven't felt this stretched for material since I stood up in front of a class and sang this song: "January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December." To the theme from Splash Mountain. See if you can do that, and then see how you feel about yourself afterwards. I at least got to do it in front of roomful of giddy seventh graders who clapped for me when it was done and were awed at my ability to say "February" without sounding like my mouth was full of marshmallows. It's not their fault, listening to people who don't speak Japanese trying to speak Japanese is similarly painful, and they don't often have the redeeming qualities of being 11 and adorable. It's like being in a classroom of little puppies. Or maybe kitties. You know the website kittenwar.com? Well, it used to be my favorite way to pass 10 seconds, but now it's my life. You do always get that one really ugly kitty every once in a while, which, well, yeah my life works like that too. You can't scorn the ugly child, however. You just have to smile the biggest at them.
Yep, I think that'll suffice.
Uh, let's see here, there's gotta be something.... ..... ..... fuck, come on, something.... I haven't felt this stretched for material since I stood up in front of a class and sang this song: "January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December." To the theme from Splash Mountain. See if you can do that, and then see how you feel about yourself afterwards. I at least got to do it in front of roomful of giddy seventh graders who clapped for me when it was done and were awed at my ability to say "February" without sounding like my mouth was full of marshmallows. It's not their fault, listening to people who don't speak Japanese trying to speak Japanese is similarly painful, and they don't often have the redeeming qualities of being 11 and adorable. It's like being in a classroom of little puppies. Or maybe kitties. You know the website kittenwar.com? Well, it used to be my favorite way to pass 10 seconds, but now it's my life. You do always get that one really ugly kitty every once in a while, which, well, yeah my life works like that too. You can't scorn the ugly child, however. You just have to smile the biggest at them.
Yep, I think that'll suffice.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
I Think I... Believe in Something?
Change. It's a word I've been hearing a lot of lately. At least when I listen to the things coming from the Barack Obama campaign. It sounds nice. Hey, yeah, change, Ok, I could go for some of that. George Bush is stupid! Whooo, I went to a liberal college and now believe firmly in blue things and things on the left. Yeah, poverty and big business sucks! And screw war. That's totally wack, dude. Ah what? Health Care? Sure, I'm 20 and covered by my parents, who gives a fuck, but yeah Change!
I admit I haven't been much of a politically minded person, well, ever. I didn't even vote in the 2004 election. I spouted the same old stuff I remember a lot of other people saying: the candidates are the same, my vote doesn't even matter anyway, who cares, what can the president really do, no matter who wins my life won't change much, blah blah, apathy is cool, blah blah. I didn't vote, and it turns out that, technically it didn't really matter after all. John Kerry won Washington, lost the election. Had I voted, nothing else would have changed. And it certainly wouldn't have Changed. Still, I've gotta think that my heart was in the wrong place. And yet, to continue qualifying myself here, I'm not too ashamed. I was 18, which is young, and having just recently come from a place where my biggest social concern was where in the South Lot I was going to park my car in the morning, all of a sudden affecting a massive political interest would have been just that; an affectation. I wasn't ready to vote because I didn't believe anything because I didn't really know anything. So I didn't vote.
However, you go to a school like Whitman and you can't help but suck up a lot of ideology. And that's good. That's what college is for. You're supposed to learn about the injustices in the world, about the way things should be in a perfect world, and about how far in actuality we are from such a perfect world. It's good to feel, to sense what's wrong out there in the great wide open and put on a drive to fix it. If you don't leave school with a little bit of a bloody heart then, well I won't say you're doing something wrong, but I will say that it's good to soak up some sense of social justice like a giddy human sponge and hold onto it like the sort of sparkling water you one day hope to see the world reflected in.
I wouldn't say I ever really became a massively politically minded sorta dude, but yeah, by the time I graduated I had a better sense of what's right and what's wrong in the world. What we're doing well and what we need to rearrange. Of course everybody thinks George Bush is a dummy (speaking here not for the whole country, just the vast majority of Whitman's admittedly small, admittedly liberal population), and so of course I'm going to vote democrat, because we need a Change, and Obama's gonna give it to us. However, as my first paragraph-paraphrase of my first take on the Obama campaign suggests, maybe my appreciation for the actual meaning behind that capitalized word wasn't really that great. Maybe I was more of a body surfer bowled over and helplessly swept away by the wave of Obama-mania surging through that little liberal community than, to persist in a tacky metaphor, someone who had ever stopped to think about what sort of kinetic energy that kind of a wave actually possessed. What it could actually do.
Now? I guess I'm not that much better than I was. I didn't even know Joe Biden was the democratic VP nominee until a week or so after it was announced. I'm in Japan, a little separated from the epicenter of US political activity, and I'll admit, that old political apathy was starting to seep out from deep within my bones again. Yeah, I'll register for an absentee ballot eventually. Whatever. But, today I watched the speech Obama gave at the DNC, and I had to reevaluate a lot of stuff. I always figured I'd vote for Obama, but unfortunately my sentiments listed heavily in the "just because" direction (dereliction). Well, he's a democrat. Doi. But I watched that speech today, and I now know I'm going to vote for Obama because look at what he could possibly do.
Look at where America is now. The rest of the world hates us, but much worse it's almost become expected that we hate ourselves. I'm speaking largely from a liberal viewpoint, but the past few decades, and particularly the past eight years, have introduced an infusion of national shame into our collective bloodstream, and we can't hold our heads up in public unless we do it with a sheepish look on our faces. Whoops, yeah, I'm American, yeah we suck, sorry. This is especially true for those of us in foreign countries, but I'll get to that. The National Anthem has picked up more than a minors and discordant resonances, and it gets harder to look at people waving the American flag without wanting to cringe, to look at it without feeling that the red parts are died in blood, the blue part mostly melancholy, and the stars either ironic or just more rows of soldiers waiting to fall into and get lost in the blood. I see that flag and the last thing I want to do is smile, the last thing I want to do is salute it. Because how can I, when America is rapidly becoming synonymous with a host of words far less savory than liberty and independence for all. Even "freedom" has been hijacked as a word we can believe in, has been slowly beaten and broken down, reprogrammed so that now it's just a shade of what it used to be, just a shade we hide behind when we go out into the world and do something for our own sake. The national lexicon is changing, has changed, and, though I hardly need to say it, America is far from the global angel it once was (a title which is itself intrinsically flawed, but gets to the point that people used to like us more than they do now). At this point, it feels like we've fallen out of the international sky and crashed straight into hell, only it's happened so slowly that only now are we noticing the horns poking out of our collective forehead.
That's where America is now. Living in a foreign country makes it worse. Sure, I'm in Japan, and if there is one country that would stand next to the US if it managed to shit toxic waste from the Florida coastline it's this one, but I spend a lot of time around people from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (our... allies?) and hating on America is something of a pastime around here. We played this silly game called Typhoon the other day, where you get points for various things and if you pick a particular card you can wipe out a certain team's points. We played it where different teams were countries. At one point the US had zero points, Canada had 1,500,000, the UK got the obliterator card, and I'll give you one guess whose points they whiped out. "Uh, we'll whipe out the US's points." "Don't you dare, we'll bomb your asses." "Sorry, we're taking your zero points anyway" "Oh it's on now. Japan was the last country to bomb us and you see where that got them" And so on. It was all banter, all done with irony in mind, but it proves the point anyway that the rest of the world bashes on America, and America has no choice but to bash on itself in the face of it.
But is that how America has to be? Do we have to be a country of fat, rich, trigger-happy assholes that nobody likes? Do we have to do all the shitty things to ourselves that we do? I think for the past few years I've resigned myself to the fact that America sucks, and all I can do about it is be aware of and apologetic for that fact. But. Can we actually change what we've become? Is that what this whole Change thing is really about? Taking America in our hands like potters clay and remaking it in the beautiful image of what it could be, of what we want it to be? It's hard to think of an America I can actually be proud to belong to, because for as long as I've had a consciousness of national identity we've been shitty. We've been a bully. We've been sloppy and sordid and untrustworthy and that was that, all there ever was, all there ever will be. But just maybe we have a chance to take on decades of dishonesty and slough them off like old skin, and maybe underneath there is still a place that sparkles. Maybe we can never get our wings back, but, well, then again maybe we can. When I think about it, aiming any lower than that is to underestimate the message of Change.
Hope some of that was readable.
I admit I haven't been much of a politically minded person, well, ever. I didn't even vote in the 2004 election. I spouted the same old stuff I remember a lot of other people saying: the candidates are the same, my vote doesn't even matter anyway, who cares, what can the president really do, no matter who wins my life won't change much, blah blah, apathy is cool, blah blah. I didn't vote, and it turns out that, technically it didn't really matter after all. John Kerry won Washington, lost the election. Had I voted, nothing else would have changed. And it certainly wouldn't have Changed. Still, I've gotta think that my heart was in the wrong place. And yet, to continue qualifying myself here, I'm not too ashamed. I was 18, which is young, and having just recently come from a place where my biggest social concern was where in the South Lot I was going to park my car in the morning, all of a sudden affecting a massive political interest would have been just that; an affectation. I wasn't ready to vote because I didn't believe anything because I didn't really know anything. So I didn't vote.
However, you go to a school like Whitman and you can't help but suck up a lot of ideology. And that's good. That's what college is for. You're supposed to learn about the injustices in the world, about the way things should be in a perfect world, and about how far in actuality we are from such a perfect world. It's good to feel, to sense what's wrong out there in the great wide open and put on a drive to fix it. If you don't leave school with a little bit of a bloody heart then, well I won't say you're doing something wrong, but I will say that it's good to soak up some sense of social justice like a giddy human sponge and hold onto it like the sort of sparkling water you one day hope to see the world reflected in.
I wouldn't say I ever really became a massively politically minded sorta dude, but yeah, by the time I graduated I had a better sense of what's right and what's wrong in the world. What we're doing well and what we need to rearrange. Of course everybody thinks George Bush is a dummy (speaking here not for the whole country, just the vast majority of Whitman's admittedly small, admittedly liberal population), and so of course I'm going to vote democrat, because we need a Change, and Obama's gonna give it to us. However, as my first paragraph-paraphrase of my first take on the Obama campaign suggests, maybe my appreciation for the actual meaning behind that capitalized word wasn't really that great. Maybe I was more of a body surfer bowled over and helplessly swept away by the wave of Obama-mania surging through that little liberal community than, to persist in a tacky metaphor, someone who had ever stopped to think about what sort of kinetic energy that kind of a wave actually possessed. What it could actually do.
Now? I guess I'm not that much better than I was. I didn't even know Joe Biden was the democratic VP nominee until a week or so after it was announced. I'm in Japan, a little separated from the epicenter of US political activity, and I'll admit, that old political apathy was starting to seep out from deep within my bones again. Yeah, I'll register for an absentee ballot eventually. Whatever. But, today I watched the speech Obama gave at the DNC, and I had to reevaluate a lot of stuff. I always figured I'd vote for Obama, but unfortunately my sentiments listed heavily in the "just because" direction (dereliction). Well, he's a democrat. Doi. But I watched that speech today, and I now know I'm going to vote for Obama because look at what he could possibly do.
Look at where America is now. The rest of the world hates us, but much worse it's almost become expected that we hate ourselves. I'm speaking largely from a liberal viewpoint, but the past few decades, and particularly the past eight years, have introduced an infusion of national shame into our collective bloodstream, and we can't hold our heads up in public unless we do it with a sheepish look on our faces. Whoops, yeah, I'm American, yeah we suck, sorry. This is especially true for those of us in foreign countries, but I'll get to that. The National Anthem has picked up more than a minors and discordant resonances, and it gets harder to look at people waving the American flag without wanting to cringe, to look at it without feeling that the red parts are died in blood, the blue part mostly melancholy, and the stars either ironic or just more rows of soldiers waiting to fall into and get lost in the blood. I see that flag and the last thing I want to do is smile, the last thing I want to do is salute it. Because how can I, when America is rapidly becoming synonymous with a host of words far less savory than liberty and independence for all. Even "freedom" has been hijacked as a word we can believe in, has been slowly beaten and broken down, reprogrammed so that now it's just a shade of what it used to be, just a shade we hide behind when we go out into the world and do something for our own sake. The national lexicon is changing, has changed, and, though I hardly need to say it, America is far from the global angel it once was (a title which is itself intrinsically flawed, but gets to the point that people used to like us more than they do now). At this point, it feels like we've fallen out of the international sky and crashed straight into hell, only it's happened so slowly that only now are we noticing the horns poking out of our collective forehead.
That's where America is now. Living in a foreign country makes it worse. Sure, I'm in Japan, and if there is one country that would stand next to the US if it managed to shit toxic waste from the Florida coastline it's this one, but I spend a lot of time around people from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (our... allies?) and hating on America is something of a pastime around here. We played this silly game called Typhoon the other day, where you get points for various things and if you pick a particular card you can wipe out a certain team's points. We played it where different teams were countries. At one point the US had zero points, Canada had 1,500,000, the UK got the obliterator card, and I'll give you one guess whose points they whiped out. "Uh, we'll whipe out the US's points." "Don't you dare, we'll bomb your asses." "Sorry, we're taking your zero points anyway" "Oh it's on now. Japan was the last country to bomb us and you see where that got them" And so on. It was all banter, all done with irony in mind, but it proves the point anyway that the rest of the world bashes on America, and America has no choice but to bash on itself in the face of it.
But is that how America has to be? Do we have to be a country of fat, rich, trigger-happy assholes that nobody likes? Do we have to do all the shitty things to ourselves that we do? I think for the past few years I've resigned myself to the fact that America sucks, and all I can do about it is be aware of and apologetic for that fact. But. Can we actually change what we've become? Is that what this whole Change thing is really about? Taking America in our hands like potters clay and remaking it in the beautiful image of what it could be, of what we want it to be? It's hard to think of an America I can actually be proud to belong to, because for as long as I've had a consciousness of national identity we've been shitty. We've been a bully. We've been sloppy and sordid and untrustworthy and that was that, all there ever was, all there ever will be. But just maybe we have a chance to take on decades of dishonesty and slough them off like old skin, and maybe underneath there is still a place that sparkles. Maybe we can never get our wings back, but, well, then again maybe we can. When I think about it, aiming any lower than that is to underestimate the message of Change.
Hope some of that was readable.
Friday, August 29, 2008
My First Day at Work
So you want to make a good impression on your first day of work, huh? I did. Wanted to, I mean. Sure I've been coming to this school for about two weeks, cheerfully popping in @ around 7:55 ( a full 15 minutes before work starts (which is expected)), sitting down at my desk for a couple hours and working diligently on, eh, well I guess I've been studying, but considering my title is "English teacher" I feel like Japanese student doesn't necessarily fit the job description. But with nothing else to occupy my time, that's what I've been up to since I've been here; lounging around an empty teachers' lounge, reading books, occasionally drinking the other teachers' things from the community fridge, and generally using up oxygen and freon (it's like 100 degrees in this city and the teacher's lounge has AC).
Yeah, I've been making a good impression. Every once in a while if somebody is here we'll exchange a word or two, they'll praise my Japanese, I'll smile demurely into the carpet and that'll pretty much be that. However, today was supposed to be the dawning of a new era, and I was supposed to be able to make my first impression for real.
Yep, today was the opening ceremony for a new term, a requisite part of the Japanese School year. You guys remember fighting back tears as Jean Carwile Mastellar showered us with some over-quoted Emily Dickinson some four odd years ago @ convocation? Yeah, well, here that happens three or four times every year. And it starts in middle school. But, hey, different country, different customs. And if it means I get to make a speech (which it did), then I'm all for it.
For such a momentous occasion I figured I had to put on my Sunday best, so I woke up early, brushed my teeth, pulled my Dad's old suit from the wardrobe, fastened my tie nice and tight, and stepped into the late August sunlight with the words of my upcoming speech fluttering meldiously against the walls of my skull like little puffs of silver wind through church bells. Hmm, I just realized I'm using a lot of Christian iconography here, which is totally inadvertant. But anyways.
However, true to form, this is where everything stopped going according to plan. Immediately upon stepping out of my apartment. And I had even eaten breakfast, too. The late August sun is pretty hot, it turns out, but being the mach man that I am I decided to ride my bike to work. Which was my biggest (and in fact my only) mistake. But it was enough. Have you ever tried biking twenty five minutes to work in a full suit in 95 + degree temperatures. Aesthetic perversions aside, it's a great way to turn yourself into a human stream of sweat. So here I am, lost (did I mention I didn't really know how to get there?), pitting out in ways even BK could never imagine, and starting to freak out. At this point, the fact that my blue suit was so dark it was sucking in matter and crushing it to nothingness within the cavernous maw of the sweat-stain opening up in my lower back was probably the least of my worries. I had to find where the shit I was. Ok, landmarks, that's what I need. Street signs, anything. I just gotta find that one, building, with the, kanji.... on it... o fuck i'm fucked.
My heart sinking to the squishy soles of my shoes, I took a left and started mentally preparing myself for the impeding loss of my pink (seppuku isn't quite an appropriate punishment for a first time offense), when, Holy Amida on a sunbeam I recognized something! Yes! A landmark! I knew where I was, and now I just had to concentrate on getting my butt to school as rapidly as possible.
I surged past the trundling groups of my soon-to-be-students like a speedboat past clutches of ducks, splashing them with twin streams of sweat that must have spread out behind me like a wake, and with about a minute to spare I made it to the teachers' lounge, my shirt transparent, my smile triumphant. Sure I had to introduce myself to all the teachers looking like I'd just gotten out of a swimming pool, and sure I gave my speech with my nipples clearly visible through my clinging white shirt, but, I rocked it all. And maybe now they will never forget Frisk-Sensei, the speedy, sweaty foreign wonder.
Yeah, I've been making a good impression. Every once in a while if somebody is here we'll exchange a word or two, they'll praise my Japanese, I'll smile demurely into the carpet and that'll pretty much be that. However, today was supposed to be the dawning of a new era, and I was supposed to be able to make my first impression for real.
Yep, today was the opening ceremony for a new term, a requisite part of the Japanese School year. You guys remember fighting back tears as Jean Carwile Mastellar showered us with some over-quoted Emily Dickinson some four odd years ago @ convocation? Yeah, well, here that happens three or four times every year. And it starts in middle school. But, hey, different country, different customs. And if it means I get to make a speech (which it did), then I'm all for it.
For such a momentous occasion I figured I had to put on my Sunday best, so I woke up early, brushed my teeth, pulled my Dad's old suit from the wardrobe, fastened my tie nice and tight, and stepped into the late August sunlight with the words of my upcoming speech fluttering meldiously against the walls of my skull like little puffs of silver wind through church bells. Hmm, I just realized I'm using a lot of Christian iconography here, which is totally inadvertant. But anyways.
However, true to form, this is where everything stopped going according to plan. Immediately upon stepping out of my apartment. And I had even eaten breakfast, too. The late August sun is pretty hot, it turns out, but being the mach man that I am I decided to ride my bike to work. Which was my biggest (and in fact my only) mistake. But it was enough. Have you ever tried biking twenty five minutes to work in a full suit in 95 + degree temperatures. Aesthetic perversions aside, it's a great way to turn yourself into a human stream of sweat. So here I am, lost (did I mention I didn't really know how to get there?), pitting out in ways even BK could never imagine, and starting to freak out. At this point, the fact that my blue suit was so dark it was sucking in matter and crushing it to nothingness within the cavernous maw of the sweat-stain opening up in my lower back was probably the least of my worries. I had to find where the shit I was. Ok, landmarks, that's what I need. Street signs, anything. I just gotta find that one, building, with the, kanji.... on it... o fuck i'm fucked.
My heart sinking to the squishy soles of my shoes, I took a left and started mentally preparing myself for the impeding loss of my pink (seppuku isn't quite an appropriate punishment for a first time offense), when, Holy Amida on a sunbeam I recognized something! Yes! A landmark! I knew where I was, and now I just had to concentrate on getting my butt to school as rapidly as possible.
I surged past the trundling groups of my soon-to-be-students like a speedboat past clutches of ducks, splashing them with twin streams of sweat that must have spread out behind me like a wake, and with about a minute to spare I made it to the teachers' lounge, my shirt transparent, my smile triumphant. Sure I had to introduce myself to all the teachers looking like I'd just gotten out of a swimming pool, and sure I gave my speech with my nipples clearly visible through my clinging white shirt, but, I rocked it all. And maybe now they will never forget Frisk-Sensei, the speedy, sweaty foreign wonder.
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