1 + White = 100

WorldCon 2007

2006-08-29T11:35:00.000+09:00

I originally planned on coming back to Canada in June. That may be delayed by a couple of months: it appears that WorldCon 2007, the world's biggest annual science fiction convention - is to take place in Yokohama (which is only like an hour from here.)

Japanese Name Translator

2006-08-29T03:13:00.000+09:00

I just found this through digg: Your Name In Japanese. Apparently 'Matthew' translates as either 'True Genius' or, if I'm so inclined, 'Demon Genius.'

ma	shu

True	Genius

ma	shu

Demon	Genius

And, yeah yeah, been a while since I updated. So sue me.

Coldplay

2006-07-23T00:09:00.000+09:00

So after getting my arse handed to me by a great bloody mountain, I went to see Coldplay with my girlfriend, at the Nippon Budokan. Now, I'm not really much of a Coldplay fan, and I was really horrendously exhausted from my attempt at Fuji, but even so, I enjoyed the show. It was what you'd expect from a modern rock concert, backed by lots of label money: lights, video effects, giant yellow balloons filled with gold glitter falling from the ceiling. The frontman, whose name I can't be bothered googling, struck me as being right on the edge of offensively arrogant, but the rest of the band rocked out pretty hard. It was a good show, and I'm glad I'm went.

But there's one thing I feel bears mentioning about concerts in this country: there's no floor admission. Everyone is given an assigned seat, and expected to damn well sit there for the duration. The Japanese are big on this (the faster trains, and almost every movie theater, all involve assigned seating.) For the most part this isn't a big deal, but at a concert!? Well okay, if you're going to a Beethoven symphony, but for rock? People are supposed to be standing, moving, dancing ... there's supposed to be a mosh pit packed up in front of the stage, with the lucky getting crowdsurfed and the unlucky getting trampled. The chaos is all part of the energy, part of the experience of going to a rock concert.

To be fair, pretty much everyone was standing, clapping in time with the music, singing along, but still ... it all seemed just a bit, I dunno, micromanaged. I love this country, but sometimes these people need to learn how to let go a little.

In Which Fuji Kicks My Ass

2006-07-21T22:28:00.000+09:00

Okay, so it's been a while since I've posted. Frankly my life's been a combination of lots of work/little of interest, so there hasn't been much time to blog nor much to blog about. Last weekend, however, was most certainly blog-worthy.

We (my friend V., my girlfriend S., and myself) had been planning to climb Fuji on the 18th for a while. The idea was to do a night climb, and be on the summit to great the Sun as it rose over the Pacific ocean and revealed the Japanese landscape in all it's glory. To this end, the day before S. and I went shopping (I got a backpack, gortex Nike hiking boots, and a rainjacket. I eschewed rainpants, a choice I would later heartily regret when my girlfriend, clad in a full body gortex rainsuit, escaped from the mountain merely damp.)

Now, late July is supposed to be prime Fuji-climbing season: not so hot as August, but still relatively sunny. Unfortunately, the rainy season is un-naturally long-lived this year - it's still going in full force - and by the time we arrived at the mountain (halfway up, at the 5th station) the wind was in full gale force and the rain was coming in horizontally. The fact that the bus we arrived in was utterly devoid of natives (except for my poor girlfriend, trapped with the crazy gaijin) should have warned us that today was not a good day for a hike.

We spent twenty minutes or so at the station, buying supplies (food, cold tea to supplement the red bulls I'd brought, souveneir walking sticks that have little Japanese flags on the them and on which you can get stamps burned as you reach each successive station), and generally getting ready. Then we set off.

We lasted about two hours, finally reaching the 7th station. The rain did not stop. The wind just got fiercer. None of us are in excellent shape, exactly, but neither are we cancer-ward patients or morbidly obese couch potatoes. Still, a mere two hours in these conditions had left us soaked (except for my girlfriend) and frozen, and by the time we reached an open hut at the 7th station we decided to nip in for a bite to eat and a warm fire. As often happens under such conditions, once there we elected to stay the night (you know how it goes: once one person says, screw it, go on without me, the rest of the group followed.) It didn't help our motivation that, the weather being what it was, even if we reached the summit we wouldn't see the sunrise.

After we'd been at the hut about thirty minutes or so a couple of Americans showed up. One of them was a Navy consultant, a giant beefy guy who looks to be in prime shape. The fact that they pussed out at exactly the same spot we did made me feel like a bit less of a pussy.

The climb down the next day was terrible. The wind had died down, but the rain was so heavy it was like we were swimming; by the time we reached the bottom, my pants had absorbed 20 pounds of water and my gortex hiking boots had become water-bags. It was the knowledge that Fuji had won, though, that really busted our morale; my friend V. was particularly pissy on the way down, as she's going back to Canada soon and this was her last chance to climb Fuji.

Not me, though. I'm going back in August, when the weather improves. Up yours, Fuji. You ain't playin' me like that. You're goin' DOWN.

Cool New Webtool

2006-06-21T02:22:00.000+09:00

I've been waiting for something like this for a while ... actually went looking for it a few months ago, when the need arose, but sadly (as all too often happens) what I wanted hadn't been invented yet, and I didn't need it badly enough to learn how to invent it myself.

Well, now that's all over! WetPaint has opened it's doors to the world. Making your own wiki is now as easy as making a blog (ie, as easy as writing an email.) I've already set one up: eikaiwa sensei, for all your curricular needs (if you're teaching English, that is.)

In Which I Brag

2006-06-09T15:38:00.000+09:00

So I've been studying Japanese at the sedate pace of a few hours a week (on average: I go through flurries, two+ hours a day for a couple of weeks, followed by weeks of not even glancing at the book) since last September, which I like to think isn't all that long. I think I'm officially starting to get somewhat decent at it, and here's my proof:

今、私の日本語をもっとじょうずです、と、本がいいじゃないので、クラスの前、レソンプランを書いたなければなりません。２千円をしごく小さいです。それから、３千円なったら、私は教えます。

And the translation:

Now, my Japanese is more skillful, and, the book is not good and so before class I have to write a lesson plan. 2000 yen is too small. Thus, if it becomes 3000 yen, I will teach.

Actually, that's a pretty rough translation (and after I sent the above, I discovered a spelling mistake ... and there's probably more. I'm not saying that my Japanese is perfect ... just better.) At any rate, as you can see, I successfully engaged in simple wage negotiations, in Japanese (weirdly, this is the first time I've ever negotiated for higher pay.)

At any rate, I received an email a few hours later, in which the company in question (that would be Hello Teacher) agreed to pay me 3000 yen an hour. I felt pretty good about myself after that.

Getting Screwed at the Immigration Office

2006-06-09T15:26:00.000+09:00

So, it's been almost a year in Japan (officially, one whole year tomorrow) and so a couple of weeks ago I trudged down to the immigration bureau (the small, less-well-known one in Tachikawa, much closer than the main center in Shinagawa) to get my landing permit extended by another year. Of course, me being me, I forgot a crucial piece of documentation at home: while I brought my passport, gaijin card, and tax forms, I left my contract back in my room. Luckily they were nice enough to do all the paperwork, and told me simply to come back in two weeks or so (once a postcard came in the mail), with the contract, and they'd finish the process.

The postcard came a few days ago, so I woke up early-ish today - it being my day off - trudged down there in the pouring rain, took a number, and waited for an hour. Finally it was my turn, and I went up, gave the clerk my postcard, and was told 'please give me your passport, your gaijin card, and 4000 yen.'

'4000 yen? For what?'

'The revenue stamp.'

'But I bought a revenue stamp the last time I came!'

So the clerk went, took out my file, and leafed through the various forms and documents therein. I could very clearly see a little square of abraded paper on the corner of the application, where the stamp had obviously been removed.

I pointed it out, but of course it counted for nothing. So, once again out into the rain, to track down an ATM and buy a revenue stamp.

The moral of this little story? Well, I take away two. First, obviously, always remember to bring all your documents ... especially when going to a government office in east nowhere, suburbia, where the nearest ATM is a fifteen minute hike away. And second - while I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for the missing revenue stamp - my inherent paranoia and prejudice against bureacrats leads me to suspect that the slime removed the first revenue stamp after I left, purely so I'd have to pay twice and, thus, increase their precious revenue (after all, what could possibly happen to them? If I start complaining, then 'sorry, I do not understand. My English is not so good.' Not that I don't do the same thing in reverse whenever convenient, but still.)

A Tale of Three Words (or, depending how you look at it, of One)

2006-06-04T17:01:00.000+09:00

Back when I was a teenager being forced to study French, it one day occured to me that maison was very similar to the English mansion, at least insofar as both words referring to a dwelling of some sort. The interesting thing, to me, was where they differed: maison refers to a simple house, whereas mansion refers to a big, fancy, luxurious house. This made an intuitive kind of sense, given that the French-speaking Normans conquered Britian in 1066, and for several hundred years after that the English aristocracy spoke French almost exclusively. Given that, it's not at all surprising that the word was adapted in English to mean 'big fancy luxurious house'.

When I came to Japan, one of the first things I learned was that modern Japanese contains a very large amount of 'katakana English' (katakana is the alphabet the Japanese use to write foreign words.) Only rarely does the meaning survive entirely intact, and manshon (マンション) is one of those. For some reason that I don't really understand yet, manshon refers to a large apartment. This can lead to occasionally amusing situations (Me: "Where do you live?" Student: "I living in manshon in Tachikawa." Me: "Wow! That's really cool! It must be very expensive for all that space!" Student (looking confused): "It is expensive, but it is very small." Of course that doesn't happen anymore, now that I know what manshon means.)

So here you have a word, which originated waaaay back with the Romans (the Latin mansio, according to my online dictionary); was elevated, on a rainy isle off the coast of Europe, to the status of 'rich man's house'; crossed two continents and found a third home in the difficult tongue of another archipelago, where it was used to refer to a kind of dwelling that didn't even exist when the word itself was first spoken.

Kinda cool, no?

The Dark Side of Japanese Trains

2006-05-30T11:57:00.000+09:00

Johan over at Lost in Japan writes to remind us that not all is sweetness and light on Tokyo trains:

The last two mornings have been like a visit to commuter hell. Actually, yesterday was not that bad, but today’s train ride was every bit as fun as being dragged by wild horses and chased by an angry Irish mob (no offence to any Irish people) at the same time. When I came down to the platform all I could see was an endless sea of people. It was almost impossible to even reach the platform, because the lines reached up the stairs from the ticket gates.

I've had to deal with that a time or two myself, actually. Luckily, it's not often, as the hours I work (3:30 to 9:30, most days) mean I board the train at low periods, but there have been the occasional times when I have to get somewhere early, or when I go drinking and have to catch the Last Train Home. Especially in the latter instance, the crowds trying to cram themelves into the train are something to see. Like a vastly powerful, but very well-mannered force of nature.

(last post on this topic for a while, promise!)

Trains, Public vs. Private

2006-05-30T11:30:00.000+09:00

The whole transit strike thing in T.O. gives me an excuse to mention something I've been observing for a while, namely, how much better the trains are here.

In Canada, almost every large train company - and every public transportation system - is a government monopoly. Inside city limits, the business plan (if you can call it that) is to charge a flat rate for a lift anywhere inside the city. This is a great deal for commuters, because it keeps their visible costs low, but it ends up screwing over everyone who doesn't live there because their taxes inevitably end up bailing out that public transportation. Not only can it not turn a profit, it can't even break even.

This was the model in Japan up until the early 90s. Most of the trains were run by JR (Japanese Railroads), which became famous here for inefficiency, laziness, high prices, etc. When the bubble burst, any patience people had for JR vanished, and the entire thing was privatized. JR itself still survives - under its old name, no less - but as a private entity. Although there are other train lines (in Tokyo, the Keio and Odakyu lines, whose names translate as 'King Capital' and, mysteriously, 'Little Rice Field Fast'), JR remains the biggest, most expensive to use, and least efficient. There isn't really competition, except in very specific circumstances, due to the inherent economics of railways. Railways really are a natural monopoly, in that if you want to get a train somewhere you generally only have one choice; but Japan's experience shows pretty clearly that it doesn't follow that it should, thus, be a 'public' entity. The easiest way to see that? The business plan.

In Japan, when you take a train anywhere, you pay by distance. This makes the visible costs higher, but it also means that no tax money is required to support their public transportation, which I imagine (though lack the data and training to prove) keeps total actual costs significantly lower. At the very least, it means some hapless fisherman in Hokkaido isn't subsidizing the lifestyle of a Tokyo salariman (or, for that matter, a filthy gaijin such as myself.)

Unions and Strikes

2006-05-30T10:58:00.000+09:00

So I hear those unfortunate chuckleheads in the Toronto Transit Commission's union have decided to go on strike, this bringing the city to a standstill (at least for those too poor for cars), all over something just as trivial as the strike perpetrated by the New York transit workers not too long ago. There are a lot of things I could say about this (the phrases 'selfish assholes', 'overpaid bureaucrats', 'cancer on society' and 'criminal' spring to mind) but they're sort've outside the scope of this blog.

It's interesting to compare unions here and there, though. Western unions tend to be for the working classes and occasionally the skilled trades; while there are plenty of professional associations catering to white color workers, they're certainly not unions. The common office worker is almost never unionized.

In Japan, on the other hand, professionals, such as engineers, generally are unionized but - at least according the Japanese union bosses I've talked to at school - the working class usually isn't. These Japanese 'unions' seem a lot like associations: while they might to collective salary negotiations, they don't, as a general rule, strike.

And that seems to be the major difference: the Japanese (unlike, ohhh, say, the French) don't throw a temper tantrum and refuse to work just because every aspect of their dental plan isn't entirely satisfactory. They understand the idea of consensus, of negotiation, of meeting the other party halfway and not expecting to get every little thing you want. This isn't just a union thing, it's a very deeply rooted cultural thing. And, to be honest, it can be a little infuriating at times ... but at least the trains are run well.

Golden Week Vacation Day 3: Osaka Castle

2006-05-15T11:56:00.000+09:00

Okay, so it took me long enough to get this up here .... I confess, I'm lazy. So sue me! (Actually I just discovered netvibes.com last Monday, which sort of sucked up a lot of time.)

Anyhow, there were a number of other things I did, but none of them really blogworthy, except for this: seeing Osaka castle.

Osaka castle was built between 1583 and 1598 by Hideyoshi Toyotomi, one of the three warlords responsible for uniting Japan (the others being Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu.) As you can see from the picture, it's much prettier to look at than most British castles, having quite a few decorative flourishes (British castles being generally entirely functional in appearance.) It's seen quite a bit of action over the centuries, including being the epicenter of one of Japan's largest internecine conflicts, the Siege of Osaka.

The most striking thing about the castle was how new-looking it all was. By this, I don't mean it had all been restored to a period-accurate appearance: I mean the entire castle had been comprehensively renovated. Carpeted floors. Fluorescent lights. Chickenwire around the upper walkway. There was even an elevator shaft (!!!) unceremoniously bolted to the outside of the building. Once you're inside, you might as well be in a museum almost anywhere else in the world; there's not a single visual clue that you're in one of Japan's oldest castles.

Golden Week Vacation Day 2: The Bloody Temple

2006-05-08T13:48:00.000+09:00

We woke up late, checking out at the last possible minute. The rabuho had one helluva comy bed. Breakfast was an onigiri (rice ball wrapped in seaweed) from a konbini (convenience store.)

Our first stop was the Bloody Temple (Hosen-in), one of Kyoto's lesser-known shrines. We paid for admission, which included a quick tour ... really much more useful for my girlfriend than for me, as the tour didn't come in English (I was the only gaijin there, after all, so I'm not complaining.) She tried to translate some of it, but I shushed her when it became obvious that she was missing out on a lot of it, and concentrated on looking around me. The temple included a dozen very old sliding-door paintings, including elephants, demons or guardians (I think), and some very fractal looking trees. I'd have pictures, but no one else was taking any so I assumed it probably wasn't allowed (the Japanese not being particularly shy about taking pictures anywhere it's not specifically prohibited.)

The temple gets its name from its famous Bloody Ceiling, reclaimed from the floor of a Tokugawa-era castle where several hundred Samurai, surrounded and about to be over-run, committed seppuku en masse. In English, this means they carved open their own viscera with their swords, disembowelling themselves and dying in possibly the most painful way possible. The floor soaked up so much blood that, to this day, the ceiling from which it was made has a very obvious reddish tint; body-prints, and even a hand-print, are quite apparent.

Being a Westerner, I was very curious as to why, exactly, the samurai committed seppuku. I'm sure they must have had a good reason - something to do with the shame of imminent defeat I imagine - but for the life of me I can't see why they'd do it before the battle. After all, if there's several hundred of you, and you're sitting in a castle, surely you're much more militarily valuable fighting to the last man (and thus taking a good number of the opposition with you, usually about a 3-to-1 ratio in a situation like that, where you're fighting from a defensible position.) So I'm sure I must be missing something here. Sadly I've been unable to find anything online to explain the story, so I'm left wondering ... if anyone reads this and has any idea, please, don't hesitate to let me know in the comments!

Golden Week Vacation Day 1: Shinkansen and Kyoto

2006-05-07T15:39:00.000+09:00

I woke up early-ish, say about 9:00, did my morning necessaries and chugged a Red Bull on the way to the station (I'm not used to waking up before 11:00, most days, so the strong stimulus of an energy drink was necessary.) At about 10:00 I met my girlfriend in Machida, then continued on to Shin-Yokohama where we caught the Shinkansen (or, as Westerners who haven't been to Japan call it, the Bullet Train.) We had about an hour to kill before our train left, most of which we spent getting lunch (bento boxes) and (trying to) take pictures of passing trains. God-damn but they're fast ... exactly how fast I found out when my girlfriend prodded me into asking a station-staff (in Japanese) how fast they went (something like, Shinkansen wo, dochira hayai desu ka?) Once he got over his initial shock at a foreigner asking him something in his own language, he replied that it went about 270 km/h.

Our seats were worlds away from the usual cattle-packing of JR trains; it was more like sitting on an airplane (as was only fitting, given the airplane-esque fare of 14,000 yen for a two-hour trip.) I spent the first part of the trip admiring the landscape as it zoomed by, at one point getting a decent view of Mount Fuji in the distance (though sadly, no good pictures.) After an hour or so, the morning Red Bull wearing off and the rolling green mountains flattening into industrial wasteland, the train's steady motion lulled me to sleep ... something that always seems to happen when I'm travelling.

When I woke up, about 1:00 or so, we were in Kyoto. Outside the station we met up with my girlfriend's sister; they immediately began conferring in Japanese - I caught maybe one word in ten - and then turned to me to ask if I was willing to walk to the first shrine, as there was a long line-up for the bus. Of course, I replied, walking was fine. Good excercise and all that, plus a good way to see the city, and I wanted to stretch my legs after two hours on a train.

Kyoto's a much smaller city than Tokyo, in terms of population, area, even building size (it turns out Kyoto has a law restricting the height of buildings to six or seven stories, in order to preserve it's old-time touristy appeal.) Traditionally, it's served a very different function in Japanese life from Tokyo: where Tokyo is the centre of political power, Kyoto is Japan's spiritural capital. It's a city of Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, museums and koi ponds; artists, craftsmen, priests and monks. The closest Western analogue I can think of is Rome, in that most of Kyoto's population seem to make their living off of tourists drawn to the city for religious reasons, and have had centuries to perfect the art of separating tourists from their money by offering them trinkets, food, lodgings, and tours, all only marginally affordable. If I had to pick four words to describe Kyoto, they would be quiet, beautiful, old, and expensive.

After walking for about an hour or so, my girlfriend was getting a bit of a blister so we made a pit-stop at a drug store for some gel bandaids. While I waited outside with her sister, I saw my first passing caravan of real honest-to-God Japanese rightwingers: three, maybe four vehicles, including one almighty big truck, all loaded down with stern-faced men wearing beige or black jumpsuits complete with Nazi-esque armbands, and a megaphone blaring out propaganda. Basically a bunch of chuckleheads who blame all of Japan's problems on foreigners and pine after the glorious days of the pre-War era dictatorship. I'm sure they intended to be very intimidating, but really I thought they were just kind of funny, sort of like, "Ah, ain't that cute! They hate me for the color of my skin!"

We reached our first temple (or shrine, not sure which to be honest) maybe half an hour later, just a small little place were we nipped in to get some takoyaki (octopus fried in some kind of batter, which you pick up, or really attempt to pick up, with a single tootpick. Difficult to eat but quite tasty.) My girlfriend's sister explained something about the temple's guardians that I immediately began to notice everywhere: the one on the right went "Aaaa!", while the one on the left went, "Unnnn!" That is to say, the lips of one were sculpted into something of a yell, while the lips of the other were made to look as though it was growling.

The next place we went to was really the day's chief attraction, a temple called Kiyomizu, or Spring Water. The temple features a tall tower on the outskirts, visible from quite a distance; in order to get close to it you have to go through what seems like a mile of souveneir shops, selling everything from expensive hand-crafted tea sets and imitation katanas, to cheap plastic 'good luck' cats and keychains (I almost purchased a door-hanging, but was yanked out by my companions who pointed out that the temple closed at 6:00, and it was already 4:30.)

In addition to the tower, the temple contains an ancient Noh theatre stage, one essentially built on the side of a cliff, supported by hundreds of pillars. It sags visibly, but I assume it's entirely safe. The whole complex overlooks Kyoto, giving a quite beautiful view of the city. There was also, as at all temples and shrines, a very beautiful garden to walk through, consisting of trees, ferns, rocks, streams and waterfalls, rather than flowers.

After all that walking about, we were quite tired, and in a mood for food. I was warned in advance that Kyoto food (being descended from the diet of monks - with all the weird dietary restrictions that commonly entails - and the cuisine of rich folk, who care more that their food is priced out of the reach of commoners than that it tastes good) is notable chiefly for being both nasty and expensive, but happily we found a place that was only the latter.

When we'd finished our long meal, my girlfriend and I bade her sister farewell, and found our way to a nearby love hotel, or rabuho, an entirely Japanese innovation whose hospitality is specifically targeted at amorous couples. We decided to go for the love hotel because, a) it was cheaper, b) you don't need a reservation (because they don't allow them) and, c) I'd never been to one before. I won't go into the details of all the various amenities on offer at such establishments; I'll only say that it was every bit as swank as a very decent western hotel, and if anyone imports that particular business model into the West they may well make a killing.

We Love Pinks

2006-05-07T15:34:00.000+09:00

Anyone who knows anything about the Church of the SubGenius ought to get a kick out of this:

Taken outside Hachioji Station, quite close to my house. A testament to my stunning powers of observation that I only noticed this recently after living here almost a year.

Golden Week

2006-05-07T14:20:00.000+09:00

So it's the last day of my Golden Week vacation (Golden Week is sort of like march break, a five-day long weekend that pretty much everyone in the country gets), and while I spent far too much of it watching all 34 episodes of Battlestar Galactica, I also took three days to visit the Kansai region, better known to the outside world as Kyoto and Osaka.

I've got a lot to post, so I'll break the trip up into 3 posts, one per day. I'll put some of the pics I took in the posts, but if you want to see the rest then please, take a look at 1+White=100's Flickr page (I just spent the past half hour or so organizing all those photos, which is why I say 'please look'. Hate to think all that effort had been wasted.)

Battlestar Galactica

2006-05-01T14:39:00.000+09:00

I think this might be the ultimate compliment to Battlestar Galactica (not the old one, of course, but the new version ... which I've been uncontrollably watching for the past week or so in lieu of getting any actual work done.) I showed it to my girlfriend Saturday night - starting with the miniseries - and although she admitted to only being able to catch about 30% of what they were saying (there's a lot of technical or military jargon) she still found the series every bit as addictive as I have.

And now, I'm going to go back and watch more.

Language and Personality

2006-04-14T22:27:00.000+09:00

It seems the language you speak has a direct effect on personality:

The personality of people who are bilingual changes depending on which language they use, lending credence to the Czech proverb “Learn a new language and get a new soul”.

And somehow this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I've already observed that my higher-level students tend to be more willing to speak out, disagree, and in general have opinions than those at a lower level (all of those are very Anglosphere traits, at least as compared to Japanese culture.) Also, last Wednesday I attended a long and boring area meeting of all the teachers, staff, and school directors at the various Kanto area ECC schools. Towards the end we were introduced to the non-English teachers: Japanese teachers who teach Chinese, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. Each of them gave a short speech (basically, Hi my name is _______ in their respective languages), but I amused myself beforehand by trying to guess what languages they spoke. Two of the ladies were very well dressed, attractive, and friendly looking: I pegged them as speaking one of the Romance languages, and I was right. Another was hefty, dowdy, and more than a little bitter: I guessed German, and was once again right.

Kind of makes me wonder what kind of neurological hacking I'm doing by teaching myself Japanese....

On Poetry

2006-04-14T19:23:00.000+09:00

Back when I was an arrogant, cocksure kid in high-school (as supposed to an arrogant, cocksure eikaiwa sensei) I remember mouthing off at one of the teachers in a Grade 11 English class. It wasn't that I didn't like the teacher, understand - he remains one of the few teachers that I ever actually respected - simply that I disagreed with what he was saying. The topic in question that day was poetry, and he was trying to start a discussion on what, exactly, poetry was. So I stuck up my hand and said, "Poetry is words in a pattern." Of course that wasn't the answer he was looking for, and he proceeded to take the class down a long, boring, and pointless discourse on the nature of poetry, including such flowery assertions as poetry being akin to hyacinths (bad pun intended) or some such damn fool thing.

Frankly, I stick by my description. Poetry is just words set down in a pattern. Modern 'poets' would disagree, of course, but then they mostly produce unreadable crap that no one outside of government-supported arts communities pays any attention to (personally, I blame T.S. Eliot, as it was him started the whole free verse thing ... though actually, if you read his stuff, there is a pattern, or rather several patterns: they just keep changing so fast you're barely aware of them. More recent generations seem to have ignored this, and simply decided to chuck 'pattern' altogether in favor of clumsy metaphors and political posturing, resulting in stuff that is more accurately called 'bad prose.') Anyhow, if you want modern poetry, you listen to hip-hop; regardless of what you think of the subject matter, it's hard to deny that the best of it is constructed as skillfully with regard to rhyme and meter as anything by, say, Byron or Tennyson.

What interests me, actually, is the way in which the particular kinds of patterns that are selected for poetry seem to be predetermined by the structure of the language in which it's composed. The main criteria is that, for a pattern to be impressive, it must be difficult.

European languages, for instance, almost universally favor verse that includes rhyme (or alliteration) as well as some sort of meter. This makes a lot of sense when you consider that all of those languages, Romance or Germanic, share two properties. First, they are sound-rich (ie make use of a large number of phonemes.) Second, they all include some degree of rhythym in their languages: spoken English, for instance, has a tendency to blur together words of little importance (a, the, kind of, to give a few examples), while it exaggerates words of larger importance (or, within a given multi-syllabic word, exaggerating one particular syllable.) The rhythm always follows a sort of 'DUM-dum-dum-DUM-dum-dum-dum-DUM-dum....' rhythm, which never repeats exactly, but also very rarely includes, say, three consective 'DUM's or five consecutive 'dum's.

Property 1 - sound-rich - means that it takes a certain amount of skill to find appropriate words with a similar sound at the end (ie, rhyme), whereas property 2 means that arranging the words in a predetermined rhythym is also quite difficult.

Now, compare to Japanese. First, Japanese is sound-poor: there are only about 50 sounds in the Japanese language, and consonants are almost never found separate from vowels. Thus rhyming in Japanese is ridiculously easy. Second, rhythym: Japanese doesn't have rhythym, but rather a machine-gun like 'dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum' with every syllable exactly the same length. Thus the very concept of arranging words into a rhythym is basically meaningless in Japanese. The result, of course, in haiku: only the number of syllables is of importance, with that number very very small (5-7-5), thus forcing the poet to load maximum meaning into each word.

Interesting, no? And the obvious reason why poetry - like comedy - is virtually impossible to translate between languages.

In Japan, Even the Bums Are Clean and Polite

2006-04-11T13:04:00.000+09:00

I don't pretend to be an expert on homeless people. I've never so much as really talked to them, not at home and certainly not here. Nevertheless, I've noticed certain differences between Canadian bums and the Japanese variety, differences which I think are indicative of the larger differences between Japanese society and, well, the rest of the world.

To start: create a mental image of a bum. If you're from the west, odds are you're now picturing some wild-haired, filthy, drugged out lunatic, harassing pedestrians for spare change with which to buy crack, heroin, liquor, or mouthwash. If you're from anywhere else, you can probably add 'starving wretch' to that image (you can't in the west: I lost track of the number of obese street people I saw in Toronto. Note to homeless people: I'm not overly generous to strangers on the best of days; your being well-fed is unlikely to sway me towards handing you my subway fare.)

Okay, now chuck that image out. In Japan, it's almost completely different. True, they're still alchoholic - I'm pretty sure that's a homelessness universal - but alchohol abuse is also rampant in the culture as a whole over here anyway so I'm not convinced it's a defining feature like it is in Canada. Everything else is different, though. For a start, they're generally clean: if you walk around Shinjuku station near the time of last train, you'll see neat rows of cardboard boxes - the homes of the homeless - and if you peer inside you'll see their possessions, all squared away in a fashion that would have impressed my boot camp instructors. The homeless themselves aren't particularly clean by the standards of Japan, but compared to Toronto bums they're paragons of personal hygiene.

Then there's the whole begging thing. Basically, here, they don't. I've never seen a homeless guy sit on a street corner with his hand out, waiting for spare change to fall into it and occasionally dishing out verbal abuse when it fails to fall fast enough. They know no-one would give it to them, and anyways, it would basically never occur to them to try. In the west, we have this idea that society exists to give us stuff for free; not so, here, where the direction of duty and responsibility is very much in the opposite direction. That has it's downsides, but one of the major upsides is, no panhandling. If homeless people in Japan want money, they have to do something useful to get it (one example: collecting discarded manga porn from trains, and selling it on street corners. Yes, you heard me right: there's a market here for used porn.) Otherwise, they survive through scavenging ... just like bums everywhere (and the fact that they do survive so well makes me wonder at exactly how badly the ones back home need that pocket change. Though I guess it's hard to find smack in a dumpster....) Sorry to go on like this, but this is one of the things I really like about this country: the ability to go to work without running a daily emotional blackmail gauntlet.

None of this is to say that there aren't occasional creepy moments. I particularly remember a couple of times in Yokohama station. I was coming to work one Sunday morning - this is maybe a couple of months ago - and saw a guy sitting on the stairs, head buried between his legs as though sleeping or crying; he had no shoes (it was winter, mind) and his feet were red, blistered, filthy, and cracked. One week later, and I saw the same guy, in exactly the same place, in exactly the same position, as though he hadn't moved at all. And I had to wonder: had he died, and no one bothered to check him out? Or maybe he was a ghost, haunting the station. It was like something from a horror movie.... Needless to say, I let him be.

Warning! This Post Contain Sexually Explicity Language

2006-03-20T01:15:00.000+09:00

There, that should get your attention (and, Hi Mom! Consider yourself warned.)

I've developed a new theory on why racism exists. It's rather simple, and I'm almost positive that it can be applied to almost any situation you care to name.

Here it is: (drum roll, please)

Racism is All About Sex

Specifically, it's about male sexual jealousy. Seriously. How many racist women do you know? Not many. Racist guys? Way more.

Enough with the empty theorising. On to the case studies:

Case Study 1:

Take North American racism. The biggest divide there is between white men and black men (notice I say 'men', not 'people': this is important.) Usually it's the white guys who hate the black guys ... when it's the other way around, it's usually because you're not likely to be too fond of someone who hates you. And why? Well, black men are widely reputed to have bigger, erm, organs than their caucasian counterparts. Whether this is true I don't know, but it's certainly the perception. So, white guys - all insecure about their endowments relative to black guys - find a bunch of reasons, mostly bullshit, about why black people are bad. But what it comes down to is that they're worried that their women will leave them, because 'once you go black, you never go back.'

Am I saying all white males are racist asshole? No. But the ones who are, are racist because they're insecure about their own sexual access to women.

Case Study 2:

Not that all situations are simply a case of penis envy. Take another example of racism in the world: the Muslim hatred of anyone who Isn't Them. Now, I'm not aware that there's any substantial difference between arabs, persians, etc and other ethnicities. But in this case, I don't think that's important. What I think matters is that, by and large, Muslims treat their women like dog-poo. Especially the Arabs (who, coincidentally, are also the most violently prejudiced.) Now, whatever culture you're raised in, you're unlikely to like this state of affairs if you're, y'know, female. Especially when you hop on the net and hear all these rumors about western women getting treated to romantic dinners, getting foot massages, being blessed with partners who actually think it's important to go to all the effort needed to give them multiple orgasms, etc and ad naseum. Hell, it's gotten to the point for a lot of these sorry cultures that the only way the men can keep their women from running away for someone, anyone, so long as it isn't them, is on threat of death.

So I would posit that Arab men feel just the teensiest bit envious of the way women everywhere seem to actually like Western guys, and as a consequence go around blowing stuff up if said stuff happens to belong to Western guys. Not that they'll ever admit that. Nope, jihad's all about destroying decadent evil Great Satan western culture ... hey wait, all that decadence seems to have a lot to do with the fact that WE'RE NOT SCARED OF SEX! My theory's testable prediction is thus that Arabs won't stop making jackasses of themselves on the great stage of History until they start treating their women like human beings.

Case Study 3

Let's bring this rant around to something I have a little personal experience of: namely, Japan. Now, anyone who tells you that Japan isn't a racist country has either never been here or is taking the piss. The Japanese people are openly, innocently, and uncomplicatingly prejudiced against anyone who isn't them. Political correctness has no toe-hold here, which is one of the things I love about this country.

Anyhow, I noticed people staring at me very soon after I got here. Most of the time, it's just curiosity, which is understandable. It's not like this island is crawling with non-Japanese, after all. But, sometimes, I get stared at with something more than just frank, 'wow, look at the gaijin!' Something more along the lines of, 'if I thought I could get away with it I would disembowel you.'

Such stares very rarely issue from women. In fact, they almost come from Oji-san (that's Japanese for 'old man'.) And at first I thought, hey, so what? A lot of these codgers spent their youth trying to kill people who looked like me. So a bit of residual hostility is only to be expected.

But I noticed something recently (which is what got me to thinking about the origins of racism in the first place.) Whenever I'm walking around with my girlfriend, the hostile stares - once again, mostly Oji-san, though I already knew he didn't like me, but also sometimes from younger guys - multiply about 10-fold. From which I drew the conclusion that, alone, I'm just a dirty foreigner, but as the uglier half of a couple, I'm a dirty foreigner who's taking a woman that rightfully belongs to some random Japanese guy and, what's worse, potentially polluting the gene pool.

Evidentally, then, there is - at least among a subset of the older, male Japanese population - a certain degree of anxiety and insecurity regarding us gaijin. Why, then? Well, two reasons spring to mind, and it's kind of a combination of 1 and 2. First, the standard Japanese is endowment is reputed be somewhat less than the Caucasian allotment (and trust me, I haven't been at pains to investigate, which is why I say 'reputed'.) And second, Japan remains more traditional in many ways than Western culture (okay, so everyone's more traditional than us, but still) and Japanese women supposedly don't get quite the same level of doting affection from their boyfriends and husbands that their Western counterparts are accustomed to.

Now, how much truth is there to this? To be honest, I can't say from direct experience, but I can infer at least one conclusion, based solely on the fact that the hostility emanates almost exclusively from Oji-san: which is to say, that the sexual and romantic practices of the current generation is far more similar to Western norms than is the case for the older generation; that younger Japanese women are more satisfied with their partners as a result; and that, consequently, younger Japanese men are not nearly as threatened by Westerners as older ones are.

The wider lesson in all this? Well, the theory I would essentially make is that, of the two subsets of racism (that due to penis envy, and that due to men treating women like dog-poo), it's the second that is far more serious. After all, while the first still applies in Japan, the second largely doesn't, and as a result racism - at least of the I-hate-you-because-you're-not-me variety - has largely disappeared.

V for Vendetta

2006-03-14T16:31:00.000+09:00

As the movie is coming out in Japan shortly, I decided to read the graphic novel. I just finished the first book. For those of you who don't follow comics, V for Vendetta is a graphic novel by Alan Moore, one of the greats of the field. The book involves a future (when it was written; now, a past) Britain in which a fascist government has taken over.

In the introduction, Moore makes it pretty clear that he considers Thatcher's tenure to be a protofascist regime.

Very early in the book, there's a panel showing a video camera mounted on a street-light, a sign under it saying 'For Your Protection'. The sinister implications are too obvious to go into, but one thing that struck me is that the modern Britain is, in fact, saturated with CCTV cameras, ostensibly erected to protect against crime ... and that those cameras were not put up by some evil bogeyman Conservative rightwing junta, but by New Labour.

Isn't it interesting that, throughout the 20th century, the Left has consistently used the slur of 'fascist' or 'nazi' against the Right, when in fact most of the century's worst crimes have been committed by ideologues from the Left. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and even Hitler (the leader, don't forget, of the National Socialist party.)

Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

Movies in Japan

2006-03-06T01:13:00.000+09:00

Went to the movies today, and saw Narnia. Nothing too special, really: a story I already knew from childhood, prettied up with nice special effects (hey Hollywood, would an original story kill you?) Anyhow, two things I'll say:

First, the beginning, by which I mean the ads. Yes, it's the same as back home: before you get to see the main feature, you have to sit through five minutes of 'be polite' animations, ten minutes of ads, another five minutes of movie trailers, and then a doleful message asking the audience to please, don't download movies (cuz, yah, that makes sense: implore the people who already paid not to steal. Yep, brilliant strategy. That and making 'em watch 20 minutes of ads - when, I repeat, they've paid for the tickets! - that's really gonna convince 'em not to rip you off. Chuckleheads.) What kills me, though, is that in Japan the seats are almost always reserved. This means that you can, if you buy a ticket early enough, still show up late and get a good seat. This immediately raises the - to me - obvious question of "Why not show up late and not watch the ads?" Apparently people don't think that way here.

And second, the end, by which I mean, the credits. And this was weird: everyone stayed in their seats. Well, almost everyone: me and a few others snuck out. But about 90% of the audience remained in their seats, watching the credits roll, showing no signs of leaving (contrast with a western audience, who upon the beginning of credits suffer a universal and instinctive urge to pile out of the dark box as soon as is compatible with basic dignity.) I asked why, and my girlfriend said, "They want to listen to the music." Strange, huh?

Update: My girlfriend says that Japanese people want to bask in the afterglow of the movie. Which makes a little more sense, I guess ... though it's still very strange to me.

More Than Meets the Eye

2006-03-04T22:00:00.000+09:00

Those crazy Japanese engineers. Not content to build cars and robot people, now they've built a toy robot car that turns into a toy robot humanoid. I know what I want for my birthday; it tickles my nostalgia bone like you wouldn't believe.

Sorry, I Just Have to Get This Off My Chest

2006-02-24T22:36:00.000+09:00

I'm looking at my calender, and I swear to you it says 2006. So, that would be the 21st century, right?

Right?

Then why are we still using cassette tapes for classes at ECC!?

Ah ... that felt better.

Municipal Governments: The Same In Any Language

2006-02-22T01:43:00.000+09:00

So a few weeks ago, the omnipresent municipal construction workers descend on the footbridge near my apartment to commence a new paint job. The paint started going up last week: an attractive shade of burgundy, quite fetching I thought, neither dull nor flashy. It brightened up the whole street.

Little did I know, that was just the base coat. The real paint went up today: a stunningly imaginative gun-metal grey. What is it about governments and boring?

And people wonder why I cheer on taggers.

建国記念の日

2006-02-20T14:54:00.000+09:00

So last Saturday - the 11th of February to be exact - was Japan's National Foundation Day. It's essentially analogous to Independance Day (for my American readers) or Dominion Day (officially, 'Canada Day', but god what a silly name ... I hear the same party that unilaterally ditched 'Dominion Day' back in the 70s now wants to replace Victoria Day with 'Heritage Day', 'cause, y'know, nothing says 'Heritage' like systematic erasure of same. Sorry, rant done.)

National Foundation Day (or kenkoku kinen no hi) originally commemorated the crowning of the (probably fictional) Emperor Jimmu as Japan's first Emperor, in 660 BC. The holiday dates to the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, during which period it was known as Kigensetsu (紀元節), or Empire Day. The holiday was abolished after WWII, and reinstated in 1966, shorn of Imperial baggage and repackaged in the warm fuzzies of contemporary politics (hmm ... seeing a parellel here between Japan and Canada, now that I think about it....)

Anyhow, one thing I noticed was that, if I hadn't known about the holiday in advance, well, I never would have noticed it. I saw no Japanese flags on display; no celebrants waxing enthusiastic over their country's birthday; in fact, no overt sign of celebration at all.

This is a stark contrast to what I'm used to. In North America, the first week of July cannot pass without fireworks, flag-waving, and drunken hordes with their respective country's flags painted on their faces or plastered on T-shirts descending on city centers. Where I'm from, your country's birthday is a Big Deal. Not so, here.

I can think of two reasons for this:

1. Lingering hangover from the malignant nationalism of the first half of the 20th century.
2. The Japanese people don't feel they need a flag and a nation-state to bind them as a people. You could rip out all the political wiring, replacing it with something better, worse, or simply different, and Japan would still be, well, Japan. So, no sense in getting all excited over a bit of 19th century propaganda.

What I usually here from outsiders is number 1; number 2 is something I've heard from students, so I tend to give it a bit more credence.

Stuff and Things

2006-02-19T22:50:00.000+09:00

Just got of the phone with my family, and they all pestered me about the blog, complaining that I hadn't updated since ２月６日. Who knew people kept track of these things? Anyhow, I wish I had some deeply interesting reason for the long silence, but, really, I'm just lazy.

So, as many of you know and no doubt privately lamented, Valentine's Day was last week. This is one of the holidays Japan has imported from the West (by which I mean, the U.S. ... the other being Christmas.) But (as with all imported holidays) they Japanese have made some improvements. Essentially, they've split it in two, into 'Valentine's Day', and 'White Day'. On Valentine's Day, the girl gives the guy a present, and on white day the guy repays, with interest. I say this is an improvement because it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of 'how much should I spend on a gift', for both parties.

Anyhow, I got a very nice bathrobe (the largest size available is a little on the small side, but still quite comfortable) which is nice, as I forgot my bathrobe at home. Now, after work, I can offend my room-mates with my slothful appearance! Ahhh, feels almost like I'm back in university....

The previous weekend, I went out to see a movie, Munich. It was my girlfriend's idea (I don't often see movies on my own); we were able to go largely because Saturday was a national holiday (on which more later.) I'll hold off on my usual strident politics, as I don't feel this blog, given it's focus, is the place for my opinions on the latest existential threat to the West, and say only that those who protested the movie, on either side of the culture war, doth protest too much. Spielberg did a good job of portraying the conflict, even if unwittingly.

After the movie, we went out for dinner. I had squid-ink risotto (ie, the sauce was made from squid ink.) It was ... interesting. Notice, I didn't say 'tasty'. Certainly not something I'd have again, but at least I can say I'm tried it.

Bored now. More later ;-)

What a Fine Day

2006-02-02T01:42:00.000+09:00

I woke up after four hours sleep (I blame you, Neal Stephenson!) The weather was terrible. It rained, heavily, until some point in the evening. And there was an earthquake (though I didn't feel it for some reason; however, it did cause a delay in the trains.)

But, thanks to the rain, two students cancelled today, which left me with about two and a half hours of sweet nothing right in the middle of the day as only one student was signed up for those two classes. I put the time to good use, reading a fascinating book, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, which consists of an investigation of the universal human phenomenon of religion from the viewpoint of cognitive science.

Since today is Wednesday, the earliest of my early shifts, I was finished at 4:00. It was then down to the Kichijoji Excelsior (Excelsior is Japan's answer to Starbucks), to get some writing done while I waited for my language exchange partner. This went as usual: an hour's conversation in English, followed by an hour's instruction in Japanese out of a textbook (it goes without saying that her English ability is far beyond my Japanese ability.)

There was even a nice surprise at the end: another woman in the coffee shop had overheard us, sussed out that I was maybe an English teacher, and approached me about assisting her with a press release and a presentation she had to give to a visiting corporate team from the States. She's with the marketing division of an IT company, I think. At any rate, I gave her my e-mail address and either she calls or she doesn't.

All in all, a pretty sweet day.

Cultural Polination

2006-01-27T22:39:00.000+09:00

So I'm watching a National Geographic documentary on the USS Reagan, and they show the crew blowing off some steam in the hangar: karaoke, sumo (with suits, of course), Judo practice ... and it strikes me, all of their passtimes are Japanese.

Kinda funny, when you think about it. The Americans conquer the Japanese, and a couple of generations later they've picked up a bunch of habits from them (especially in the military, that segment of American culture that's had the most prolonged contact.)

The Birdie....

2006-01-26T01:14:00.000+09:00

My room-mate tells me it's a hat.

I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrased that that never even occured to me.

Chipped Paint Can Give a Sign a Completely Different Meaning....

2006-01-23T12:58:00.000+09:00

"Ow!" said the little girl. "The birdie bit my arm!"

"Don't worry," said the nice transit worker, "We've caught the horrible winged rat. See, I'm holding it by the neck with this handy extensible claw, and we'll just hold it here until a train comes by.... Justice will be done, dear. Justice will be done."

First Snowfall

2006-01-22T19:49:00.000+09:00

Okay, okay ... long time since the last update. My excuse is that I was sick for a week, and really didn't feel like blogging (or doing much else for that matter.) One of my lymph nodes swelled up to golfball proportions.

Anyhow. Friday night my girlfriend came over. "It's snowing!" she said. To which I thought, uh huh, right, sure it is. I figured it was the Tokyo Snowfall I've already been exposed to (one snowflake per cubic meter, which melts within a foot of the asphalt.) The next day I looked outside, and, wow ... it was still snowing, and pretty heavily too. The air was filled with big, sticky, wet snowflakes, and the ground was comprehensively white and slushy.

I made an interesting discovery, too. Apparently, they bust out the umbrellas over here when it snows.

It snowed up until about 9 or 10 Saturday night. By Sunday evening, it had all melted....

Odds and Ends From the End of the Winter Vacation

2006-01-06T02:24:00.000+09:00

Just got back home from the first day of work after the vacation. Ah, so slow ... so very nice. I only had three students and a placement test ... three free periods, and a fourth that was basically free. What a wonderfully relaxing day at work (even if I did have to go all the way out to Omiya, which is over an hour from Hachioji.)

I spent the last day of the vacation with my girlfriend. She introduced me to a movie by Miyazaki (that would be the guy who did Spirited Away.) It was called Laputa, and is apparently about 20 years old. The story's pretty simple - two children, aided by a band of air-pirates, try to find a flying island - but it's very well done and the animation is simply excellent. Anime is so much better than Disney that it's a wonder the latter even bothers making movies any more.

She helped me with my Japanese a bit, too. It turns out that I memorized two completely useless kanji, the ones for the verbs iru ('to exist', animate) and aru (to exist, inanimate.) They're never used, apparently. And, she helped me translate my name into Japanese:

Now, my full name is Matthew (Hebrew for "Gift of God"), Eric (Old Norse, for "King") and Shultz (German for "Village Ruler".) So, the above translates as Kamiokumono Oumurashu. The first kanji is "God", the next two, "Gift", the fourth "King", the fifth "Ruler", and the sixth "Master."

I'll try not to let all this go to my head ;-)

Christmas in Tokyo

2006-01-02T18:21:00.000+09:00

Apologies to my (cough) many devoted readers, for the long interval between posts. I've been uncharacteristically busy these past few weeks. But now the Winter Vacation is upon me, with almost two weeks with no work, and I finally have some time to get back to posting. Incidentally, I've also updated my flickr page, so if you want to see some cool pics from Tokyo, check it out.

Anyhow, I've recently finished celebrating my first Tokyo Christmas, and it was, er, somewhat surreal. Fun, but occasionally odd. You can see a little bit of why if you check out the aforementioned flickr page. But, well, here's what I did for Christmas. First, I accompanied my girlfriend to Roppongi (the better part, where the art galleries are, not the infamous part where all the drug-dealers and hookers are) and had a look around an exhibiton of Vivienne Westwood's many interesting designs (including a sweatshirt repurposed as an evening gown.) Westwood, as you may know and I certainly didn't before Sunday, got her start in London's punk scene and from there moved on to the world of high fashion. After this, we adjourned to a cafe on the same floor of the building - namely, the 52nd - and watched the light come out over Tokyo. First time I've done so from such a height ... it's quite a sight.

After this, we met with some of her friends and went to the Millenario, an annual Christmas lights festival held in the Maranouchi district of Tokyo, normally not so crowded but for this event so packed with people that, for most of the time, we crept forward in a sort of Night-of-the-Living-Dead shuffle. The lights were, I thought, quite well done - my girlfriend disagreed, claiming that last year's had been more impressive - but they were of an odd design; said oddness later explained by the fact that this year's designer was a Muslim ... or maybe not ... I can't find any referrences to his being Islamic, though he is Italian, and I have a feeling that my notion of his being Islamic might have arisen due to language barrier issues. I'm leaving the issue open, but if it's true, well, I can only say this: only in Japan would people fail to see the humor in a Muslim designing Christmas lights.

So, after that, it was off to an Izakaya (which is sort of like a pub.) There, we ate a lot, and drank too much, as ones does at Izakayas (amongst the food we ate was raw chicken, which was new to me: I've had sushi and sashimi before, but raw chicken struck me as dangerous. Quite good, though, when suitably soaked in soy sauce and wasabe.) As always when out with Japanese people, it was an excellent chance to practice my Japanese ... by which I mean, my girlfriend (who speaks pretty good English) translated her friend's questions for me; I would then ask my girlfriend for a word or two, and then use it to compose my reply in broken Japanese.

So, that was my Tokyo Christmas ... about as different as one could possibly imagine from my accustomed ritual of gigantic meals and endless present-opening. But Christmas is different here: where in Western countries it's a family holiday, in Japan, it's basically a sort of Valentine's Day.

Oh, and the plastic Christmas tree that my room-mates found in our closet, some weeks ago? Still in the closet. You can walk in our house and never even know that 'tis the season....

Correction: Turns out the the designer was Italian, not Islamic ... but, the original designer was a Muslim. That was several months ago, though; the organizers must have changed their minds, or the original designer became unavailable.

New Years Day: Climbing Mount Takao

2006-01-02T15:11:00.000+09:00

Most New Years that I remember consisted of staying home and nursing a hangover. This one was different: not the hangover part, but the staying home. I actually left the house ... to go mountain climbing.

This is less arduous than it sounds: they had a chair-lift that took us most of the way up (incidentally, the chair-lift didn't have a guard-rail, unlike every other chairlift I've ever been on. This is not a country that feels the need to idiot-proof everything, in stark contrast to back home, where coffee comes served in cups that are careful to inform you, 'careful! hot!' But I digress.)

Now, before I go any further, I should mention that one of the many Japanese New Year's traditions is visiting a shrine (other traditions include: giving money to your children, nieces and nephews; and watching the first sunrise ... not everone does this last one, as it involves getting up Really Early and, well, there's that whole hangover thing....) Anyhow, my girlfriend and I decided to visit the shrine at Takaosan (ie, Mount Takao: in Japanese, the suffix 'san' is used both as a unisexual equivalent to Mr., and for the names of mountains.) It was closer than the Meiji shrine, after all, and - given it's presence halfway up a mountain - likely to be less crowded.

Once we got off the chairlift, we purchased a small pine box full of sake, to warm us for the climb (it was cold up there. I got to keep the box, too: makes for a pretty cool souveneir.) The path up was lined with a variety of interesting shrines, gravestones, and monuments, some of which are pictured here. There was a lot of other stuff, too, all very interesting and beautiful, but very little of which I was allowed to take pictures of (it's rude.) And for the rest, it rapidly got too dark to take any decent pics with my camphone (lacking, as it does, a flash.)

There were also some amazing, ancient, gnarled trees to be seen, which I was informed are called 'god-trees' (as they are, I suppose, inhabited by gods, or at least godlings.) Oh, and the view was, well, see for yourself:

The shrine itself was impressively large, consisting of several buildings in the traditional Shinto style: swooping tiled roofs, curling up at the edges, decorated with guardian spirits. On either side of the gate were several fountains, presided over by statues of gods, heroes, tengu, dragons, and other fantastical creatures. We paused there, dipped out some water with wicker baskets, and cleansed our hands (the water was ice cold, always fun when your hands are already frozen.)

Thus purified, we entered into another part of the temple, where we purchased bundles of incense, which we burned (getting them to light wasn't easy), stuck into a truly mountanous pile of ash, and and then wafted the smoke over our heads. The ritual is somewhat similar to blowing out the candles on a birthday cake: while the smoke drifts past you, you keep your wish for the next year at the front of your mind. The smoke catches your wish and relays it up to heaven.

After this, we prayed: we waited in line, made an offering, clapped our hands twice and bowed our heads. I felt a little silly doing this, because I couldn't help but think that all the Japanese people around us were thinking, "What's this silly gaijin doing?" A little like a muslim receiving communion, maybe ... except that the concept really doesn't quite map, as Christianity (and, for that matter, Islam) are post-ethnic religions, whereas Shinto is an organic outgrowth of two thousand years of Japanese culture. It's just not a relgion that makes converts, which is why it must have looked kind of weird to them to see a gaijin doing it.

After visiting the shrine, we climbed the rest of the way to the top (only another twenty minutes), passing two more shrines on the way. Both of which were noteworthy, the first for being surrounded by a small army of two-foot high guardian spirits, and the second for being decked out in gold, lions, and dragons.

Then there was the cable car. We nicknamed it 'Takao Disney', because it's at about a 45-60 degree slope, and we took the whole thing standing (or, occasionally, hanging, as the case may be.)

Stupid #$%&ing Banks....

2006-01-02T14:59:00.000+09:00

So I walk down to the bank today to pay my rent - yeah, yeah, technically a day late, but the 1st happened to be a Sunday this year - and, of course, the bank is closed. Until Wednesday.

Fair enough, I sez. Everyone needs a holiday.

So I go down to the 7-11, where there's a cash machine; can't pay rent there, sure, but I can make a withdrawal, and I'm running a little low on cash after the weekend. It is at this point that I discover that, apparently, in Japan the bank machines need a holiday too. Withdrawals will not be available until Wednesday morning. As I have approximately 1000 yen left in my wallet (and might be able to scrounge up another thousand or two out of my overfilling change jar) this means that the next two days will be somewhat more, er, low-key than the last two.

(It's times like this that I regret my gaijin habit of never having more than twenty thousand on my person at any given time. Here, people feel so safe that they regular walk around with fifty thousand on their persons ... whereas in Canada (and of course the U.S.) anyone who carried more than a hundred or two would be regarded as foolish and possibly insane.)

This isn't the first time this has happened, incidentally. On probably four or five occasions over the past six months, UFJ (that's the bank I'm with), and it's entire network, have shut down for the entire weekend. One time, this almost left me stranded in Yokohama: luckily, I had just enough money on me for train fare back home. This time, thankfully, I have plenty of food and don't have to go to work ... but still, spending the next two days of my vacation with next-to-no-money is gonna suck.

First Crazy Night of the Vacation

2005-12-29T17:16:00.000+09:00

Woo. What a night. Muscles hurt I didn't even know I had. So this is what I did last night:

My room-mate's friend has come over from the States for the winter vacation, and so we are, of course, obligated to entertain him. I met up with them, and my room-mates girlfriend, in Shinjuku around 4; we went straight to Shibuya, and attended the Hub's happy hour (the Hub is a sort of imitation English pub, with franchises all around Tokyo. It is THE gaijin hangout, because it's menu is in English as well as Japanese.)

After that we had dinner at The Lockup, one of the many theme restaurants in Tokyo. The Lockup is set up like a dungeon/prison: as you walk in (and down, and down), you pass an animatronic prisoner being given the electric chair, which reveals itself with strobe lights and sound effects just as you pass it. Inside, the waitress - in orange correctional institution coveralls - met us, and locked a handcuff to C., my room-mates friend, and led us to our room, complete with a barred metal door that slides shut with a satisfyingly final clang. We ordened a drink called a 'Denki (or Electric) Shock', which may well be one of the nastiest and most potent alcoholhic beverages this side of a Prairie Fire. Throughout the meal, the lights would periodically strobe, heavy metal music would crank up to full volume, and the staff would run around in Freddy Krueger masks, jumping into people's rooms and pawing them. Quite an interesting dining experience.... Sadly, I have no pix: it was too dark.

After that, off to play some pool and drink some more beer. 'Nuff said there.

And then, finally, the night's main attraction: Ageha (warning, Flash), where Ferry Corsten was headlining. I spent relatively little time dancing to Corsten, actually; I've got nothing against trance, but there was a drum n' bass room off to the side, and dnb will always be my first love when it comes to dance music. I basically spent the whole night in there - with breaks to go outside and get some air (the dnb room was small, poorly ventilated, and crowded: the body heat alone hit you like a wall when you walked in, and the body odor was like getting punched in the nose.) But the music was great: hard, violent, driving beats that kept you going even on the verge of collapse.

One unexpected thing that happened: meeting my old friend R. She's my friend J.'s girlfriend; the last I'd seen her, they were working through some problems caused by LDR issues (she's in Japan, and he's about as far from Japan as it's possible to be), but now she's quit her job and, in less than a month, going to live with him in the Bahamas! Some people have all the luck....

So, well, that was my night. Basically, drinking and dancing. And, boy, am I ever paying for it now....

Hachiko

2005-12-27T19:12:00.000+09:00

Hachiko is a statue at Shibuya station. It's been there since 1934, save for a brief period during WWII when it left Japan in the form of shell casings. It's probably one of the more popular meeting spots in Tokyo, partly because of it's location (namely, right outside one of Tokyo's busiest stations, in the middle of Tokyo's best-known recreational hangout), and partly because of it's distinctiveness (saying 'let's meet at Hachiko' nails things down quite a bit better than, say,'let's meet at McDonalds.')

Now why, you might be asking, would there be a statue in honor of some random Akita? Well, there's a story to it of course. Hachiko, in his younger days, belonged to a professor at the University of Tokyo. Every day, the dog would wait for it's master at the train station. Then, his master died. No one told the dog, however, and for the rest of his life he went back to the train station every day and waited for his master.

Kind of touching, when you think about it.

Fun With Kanji - England

2005-12-27T19:08:00.000+09:00

This Kanji currently has two meanings. One - the original meaning - is superb, or superior. The other, newer meaning, is England.

In the interests of humility, as someone with at least a little Albion in my veins, I feel it would be in extraordinarily bad taste to say anything else at this point.

Fun With Kanji - Rice Country

2005-12-27T19:02:00.000+09:00

Okay, this is just weird. The one on the right, on it's own, means 'Rice.' The one on the left means 'country'. But them together, and what do you have?

America.

WHY!?

Reasons Why My Job Rocks

2005-12-08T23:58:00.000+09:00

So my keitai rings at 11 a.m. - a good hour and a half before I have to call in for sub duty - and I immediately know that that doesn't bode well. A quick glance at the call log dashes my brief hopes: it was HQ. And when HQ calls early on a sub day, that's never a good sign.

I call back, and sure enough, I'm getting sent on a Journey today. Yokohama, a good hour on the train from Hachioji. Actually, this isn't as bad as it sounds; I go to Yokohama every Sunday as part of my regular schedule, and the Sunday shift starts early - have to be at work at 10:45, instead of the normal 3:35 - so I'm used to the commute. To make things even better, the only non-Free Time Lesson class I have is an IM Con (Intermediate Conversation), with which I'll cap things off. By better, here, I mean: no kids classes.

I start the day as I normally do, getting to the school a couple hours early and then finding a coffee shop and sitting down to practice my Japanese. Things take an immediate turn for the worse when I go up to clock in: S. is there.

Now, I've encountered S. twice before. I know very little about him, both of said encounters having been mercifully brief, and I have to state right up that he's never done anything against me (unless you count his ham-handed attempt to slime my friend R., a couple of months back, which I introduce as character evidence only.) Nevertheless, there is something about him - in the way he speaks, or the way he dresses (Donald Duck jacket and macthing tie), or just the annoying things he says - that makes my lizard brain want to grab control of my extremities so it can kick him in a place men shouldn't kick each other.

This is cause for comment only because the majority of the teachers at ECC are great people. The company seems to hire, not just on the basis of qualifications (ie, one official University diploma), but also on the basis of basic social skills; after all, teachers who annoy students aren't likely to be very good for business. Which makes me wonder how this creature made it past the hiring process.

Then there's the final class, the IM Con. I've been looking forward this all day: the topic for the day is clubbing, and that can't possibly be a dull subject, right?

Right?

Well, when you're class consists of 6 Japanese ladies in the upper-20's/lower-30's, who haven't been clubbing in a very long time if at all ... yeah, the topic went over real well. I figured this out pretty early on, so I fudged and basically just allowed them to talk about whatever they wanted (it is IM conversation, after all.) So they talked lots, but I'm not sure they actually learned anything.

So, that was my day at ECC. And if you're reading this, and thinking, "Wow, you barely worked and you're bitching!?", well, just keep this in mind: this is what a bad day at ECC is like. And there aren't too many of them.

Understand the title now?

Semi-Daily Haiku: Revelations 6:13

2005-12-08T23:54:00.000+09:00

the stars have fallen
fairydust apocalypse
the cities sparkle

Semi-Daily Haiku: Twofer

2005-12-07T22:01:00.000+09:00

File Under 'I Miss My iPod':

other side of earth,
and still I cannot escape
from christmas music

It's everywhere! Maybe it's less annoying if you can't understand the words....

Crossing at Hachiko Plaza

pedestrian tides
isolation, connection
pulsing of the hive

Semi-Daily Haiku: Shinjuku at Night

2005-12-07T00:54:00.000+09:00

neon fireflowers
stars blacked out, fair payment for
new constellations

Fun With Kanji

2005-12-04T23:29:00.000+09:00

This is how you write 'optimism' (rakuten) in Kanji:

The first means 'pleasure, comfort, relief' (it can also mean music, but that's for another pronunciation, gaku.) The second means 'heavens.'

So the Japanese word for 'optimism' literally translates as 'comfort of heaven'. And ain't that the truth....

Semi-Daily Haiku

2005-11-29T23:48:00.000+09:00

eye contact through glass
maybe a trick of the light
or maybe you smiled

Weird Japanese Historical Factoid

2005-11-29T23:40:00.000+09:00

I can't find any referrences for this (except for the historical fiction book, The 47 Ronin Story by John Allyn, that I read it in) but, if true, it's pretty crazy. Apparently Shogun Tsuyanoshi, distressed at the death of his heir and his lack of success at siring a new one, enacted the Life Preservation Laws in the hopes of bettering his karma or something. This law would thrill PETA: it outlawed (on pain of death, in some cases) the taking of any life, including that of an animals. Since all animals, even vermin, were included, this made agriculture somewhat problematic.

Like I said, though, the only source I can find for this is the above-mentioned book, so it might be an invention of the other.

Japanese Statistic of the Day

2005-11-29T23:22:00.000+09:00

Japan, at something around 20%, is the second-largest contributor to the UN (the first, of course, is the US, and why they bother keeping it going at all is beyond me.) And yet, they don't have a seat on the security council. Cuz, you know, they were really bad fifty years ago.

Damn You Apple! or, In Memorium

2005-11-29T14:10:00.000+09:00

After a year of faithful service, my trusty 3rd-gen clickwheel iPod has bitten the dust. Why? I don't know, though as the warantee expired a convenient (for Apple) one week ago, my paranoid side suspects that this was not an accident. This leaves me at something of a quandary: while I (desperately) want an MP3 player, I'm not sure what to buy ... I'm stuck between my newfound distrust of Apple (a $650 piece of hardware cacking out after a year is not exactly confidence-inspiring), and my long-lasting and potent contempt for Sony (they of the rootkit fame.) Or I could get the iPod fixed, but I see that costing upwards of $300.

Nevertheless, for the moment I am left with nothing to protect my ears from the clangor of the hated Outside World; after a year of being comfortably cocooned inside my own little personal soundtrack, this is a little like passing out drunk only to have your evil friends gleefully throw your comatose body into an ice-bath. I really have noticed an effect on my mood the last few days: I've had less energy, I've been more depressed and negative, and have seen my general enjoyment of life in general plummet to new lows.

I hate you, Apple.

'Tis the Season to Spend Too Much

2005-11-28T18:18:00.000+09:00

Finally! Christmas shopping is finished! And December's not even done yet (normally I don't even start until, oh, Christmas Eve or so.) Hopefully I don't have to sell my kidney on eBay to pay for the postage....

And, Mom, when you read this: yes, it was your gift that took the longest to find. I finished the rest of it a week ago. So, you better like your present!

Students Say the Dardest Things

2005-11-27T21:05:00.000+09:00

Me: Tomoko, are you doing anything special next year?
Tomoko: Yes, I'm going to keep studying English.
Me: Really? Why?
Tomoko: Because I want to speak English more better.

Priceless.

Semi-Daily Haiku

2005-11-26T01:23:00.000+09:00

he's pointing, staring,
(i think he says that i stink)
amazed by pit hair....

Today in my kid's class, one the boys was pointing and jabbering excitedly at me. At first, I thought maybe my deodorant had warn out ... a constant source of paranoia for me in the land that invented air freshener after first coming into contact with my countrymen. But, no, it turned out that he was just fascinated by the armpit hair he glimpsed underneath my short-sleeved shirt.

I'd forgotten: Asians don't have body hair.

Labour Day

2005-11-24T23:10:00.000+09:00

Want to know what I did for Labour Day? (The Japanese Labour Day, that is, which falls on the 23rd of November.) Too bad, I'm gonna tell you anyways: I went to the country's largest, and probably coolest, club - Ageha - to see Armin van Buren (okay, okay, so Womb might well be better.) And, man, was it ever good.

There were some initial hiccups, like waiting in the cold outside Shin-Kiba station for my room-mate to show up, and then having to change once we actually got to the club (I'd come straight from work. So had he, but he stopped to change on the way, which is why I waited so long ... bastard.) After that, though, wow. What a great night.

Met a lot of people, both gaijin and Japanese. Talked to a bunch of girls, mostly Japanese of course (briefly, a French girl who claimed to be a head-hunter. We're pretty sure she was a hostess, though.) And, of course, drank and danced (van Buren provided the expected solid, driving trance for which he is justly famous, while other rooms provided some funky, hard-edged garage or some more unclassifiable but still eminently danceable stuff.) The usual club stuff, in other words.

Some things of note:

First, the water bar. It's outside, and includes a pool - which would have been a lot nicer in the summer, I'm sure. I don't know if people are allowed to swim in it; given that it's late November, no one tried.

You can make out the sponsor of the event in the water. You basically would have to have been blind not to know that the Kool brand cigarettes were behind the festivities; the Kool logo - sometimes just the two interlocking O's - were everywhere. There were three people behind a table hawking the cigarettes, too (I actually got a free beer out of that, getting my room-mate to take me up on a bet that they smoked. Turned out one didn't, the other two did, which I thought was kind of funny. I mean, come on: who takes a job marketing cigarettes if they're not going to smoke them?) Then there were these guys, wandering around the party all wrapped in neon and bouncing around with springs on their feet and pogo sticks on their arms (I'm not making this up, I swear.) Sadly the pics are a little blurry ... besy I could do with a camphone (and actual cameras weren't allowed in, so it wouldn't have made a difference even if I had one.)

Sadly, I had to leave early: my room-mate Tom, who had already had a few girls dance away from him (he's not a loser or anything, just in this case unlucky) sent me a text saying, first, where are you, and second, i'm at the station see you later. So I called him up and found that he'd had a couple of Spanish gays come onto him, which was pretty much the last straw for him. It was a long way home (two hours from Shin-Kiba to Hachioji - Shin-Kiba's even more in the ass-end of Tokyo than Hachioji is) and I didn't fancy doing it alone, so I told him to hold up and I'd catch him there in a few minutes, especially as it was pretty close to the end and I didn't want to get caught in the crowd.Two hours later we got back to Hachioji (we had to wait on the platform for a train one stop from Hachioji ... why it didn't just go all the way, we don't know, but resented deeply whatever the reason); shovelled down some beef-and-rice and Yoshinoya, and crashed out until three in the p.m.

I Am the Living God of Korean Barbecue

2005-11-21T23:27:00.000+09:00

Squish

2005-11-21T22:14:00.000+09:00

Let's talk about the public transit system in this country. They're noteworthy for two things.

The first is that, unlike in most (all?) major North American cities, you pay by distance in this country. On the one hand, this makes it a little more complex to get into the system (you have to go to a ticket machine, like this one, and if you're not sure how much the fare will be you have to go to another machine to get your fare adjusted at the end), as well as making it way more expensive to travel. On the other hand, the train system here is actually able to support itself, unlike, say, the subways in Toronto or New York, which require massive annual subsidies from the government to meet their operating costs. The only people who pay for public (not really public, as it was all privatized after the bubble burst ten years ago) are the ones who use it; tax payers in, say, Hokkaido don't have to shell out so that a bunch of sararimen in Tokyo can get to work.

The other thing worth commenting on is that, sometimes, they get crowded. Now, before I go on, let me emphasize that they're not packed all the time; in fact, usually they're fine. It's only early in the morning (when everyone's going to work) and late at night (when everyone's coming back from the bars) that they get bad ... the latter case by far the worst, which probably goes to show you peoples' priorities in this country. This picture was taken when I caught the last train back last Friday night. It doesn't really do the situation justice: simply retrieving my camera phone required miraculous economy of movement; for the first three stops there was no need to hold onto anything, as the human pressure was enough to hold us up. I've literally never in my life experienced such a density of people ... it was awe-inspiring, to squeeze my way on, thinking 'wow, what a lot of people', and then have so many more pack in that I was pushed all the way to the other side.

So that's trains in Japan. At the very least, they squash your wallet, and sometimes they squash you as well.

(Semi-)Daily Haiku - Christmas Shopping

2005-11-21T22:05:00.000+09:00

earliest ever
never before december
six weeks in the mail!

(All Right, so Semi-) Daily Haiku

2005-11-19T02:05:00.000+09:00

Today's theme: paranoia

Welcome, we love you!
Exotic barbarian.
You can't leave too soon.

Daily Haiku

2005-11-16T11:48:00.000+09:00

Overcrowded train.
Ow! My foot has been stepped on!
I forgive: she's cute.

Can Anyone Guess What's Wrong With This Picture

2005-11-15T23:25:00.000+09:00

Pictured is the heating/air conditioning unit for my room (Japanese residences don't tend to have central heating, apparently.) Now, don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant air conditioning unit, probably saving me from brain damage by heat stroke during the Brutal Tokyo Winter, and, certainly, it's quite ingenious (and typically Japanese!) to combine two appliances in one.

However, as a heater, it leaves something to be desired. Look at it's position, up near the ceiling....

That's right. Heat rises.

And my toes are very, very cold.

Nippon no Piza

2005-11-15T23:00:00.000+09:00

(Language note: the title means 'Japanese pizza'.)

Last night was payday, and as we were hungry and had no food in the house but lots of money, my roomate and I decided to go out for some food. One of the items on the menu was pizza.

Now, I haven't had a lot of pizza in Japan. This is largely because, in contrast to the vast majority of delicious Japanese food, it often isn't very good. There are a number of reasons for this: the Japanese prefer their pizzas with extremely thin crusts, occasionally verging on tortilla-esque crispiness; also, one of the more popular toppings is corn.

Yes, that's right. Corn. On pizza.

The pizza above, however, was possibly one of the best pizzas I've ever tasted, possibly because I've never had a pizza like it before. The toppings were as follows:

-Teriyaki chicken
-seaweed
-green onions
-mayonaise

Sounds a little gross, maybe? (especially the mayonaise part?) Not so. That was one damn fine piza.

Yasukuni Jinjya, Part 2

2005-11-10T00:48:00.000+09:00

As promised, here's the second installment, in which I actually visit the shrine itself (and the musuem, though regrettably I was unable to take pictures - strictly prohibited, apparently.)

First, the Toori gate:
Yes, yes, I posted an image of this before, but this time you can see just how damn big it is. There are, I believe, three of these, two leading into the outer courtyard, and the third leading into the inner courtyard.

Just inside the third toori, there are two pillars, each with eight friezes around the base. Here are two of them:

Of course I took pictures of all sixteen, but I'm not going to put them all up ... that would just be overkill, and I'm not sure how many pics blogger will let me publish (the rest of them are up on my Flickr account.)

This caught my eye as soon as I entered. I'm not sure what it is, but it certainly is decorative.

The shrine itself was, to my admittedly untrained eyes, a fairly standard and unexceptional example of Shinto architecture. Which is, elegant buildings:Surrounded by trees and interspersed with the occasional rack of prayers:

To tell the truth, I didn't spend much time in the shrine itself ... I felt, somehow, as though I were intruding, an unwelcome stranger in a place I didn't belong (admittedly, this is a feeling that gaijin get a lot, it seems.) Seeing people cleansing their hands with holy water, clapping twice and bowing their heads to pray didn't make me feel any more at home; it was as though my very presence was an imposition. Not, mind you, that I was given any "Go away, dirty foreigner" looks, or anything at all like that ... I don't want to give the wrong impression here. It was just that, Yasukuni is a shrine dedicated to those who died for their country; two and a half million souls are entrusted to it. The Japanese come here to pap their respects to ancestors - or brothers, or lost uncles - who paid the ultimate price. So I tried to tread lightly, and spend no more time than absolutely necessary.

So, on to the musuem. In the courtyard were various statues, honoring everything from battleships to horses (apparently only one or two horses ever returned from Japan's various campaigns; cavalry veterans, grateful for their mounts service, paid to have the statue on the right put into place.)

Now, as I said at the top of the post, I was unable to get any pictures of the musuem ... or, really, I was just too cowardly to disobey the 'Photos Strictly Prohibited' sign, which is really too bad as there was some very cool stuff in there, like (what I assume is) a Zero, and even one of those human-guided torpedoes the Japanese Navy used during the really desperate closing days of WWII. And, of course, Samurai armor, swords, and all other things military from Japan's long, occasionally inglorious but never dull military past.The two photos you see here were, of course, taken by someone with more balls than I.

Now, I've been to a number of war musuems, both in my native Canada, and in Great Britain, and there were two things that really struck me about the one at Yasukuni. The first was the abruptness of change the museum shows; in British war musueums, you can see the long, slow, and painful evolution of military hardware, from armoured knights to musketeers to WWI riflemen to Spitfires. At Yasukuni, you see medieval equipment right up to a certain point (specifically, around July 8 1853, when Commodore Perry forcibly opened Japan to international trade.) Then, there is an abrupt transition to European-style military hardware, not just in the technology (primitive rifles, cannons, etc) being used, but even in the style of uniforms: ornate piping on the sleeves, regimental cap badges, round Civil War style hats, it's all there.

The second thing was the somewhat different interpretation of history offered by the museum. It's hardly even-handed; it glosses over the atrocities of the firsy half of the 20th century, such as the Rape of Nanking, the use of bubonic plague against the Chinese, and the brutalization of POWs and occupied territories. This is hardly surprising; the Japanese are famously reluctant to acknowledge the crimes of their grandparents' and great-grandparents' generations. However, the central way in which the account differs is not one of ommision, but one of perspective: the section on modern history (which is most of the museum) starts off with a map of the world, centered on Asia, showing the encroachment of the Western powers. Essentially, the museum takes the position that the Japanese were simply taking action to preserve themselves, and other Asian peoples, by forging a pan-Asian superstate that would have the resources, manpower, and military might to withstand the European onslaught.

It's tempting to dismiss such a view as a post-facto rationalization, an attempt to duck the guilt for their crimes. And that's probably partly the case; any accurate history of Japan in that period must, after all, take those crimes into account. Yet there is, I think, something to this. Try to imagine, after all, what the world must have looked like to the Japanese at the beginning of the 20th century: after centuries of intentional isolation, happily slaughtering one another in an endless series of vicious internecine wars, a fleet of strange-looking, ill-mannered gaijin come up to one of your ports and say "Trade with us, or we blow up your cities." So you trade with them, and suddenly become aware that, 1) their technology (the steam engine, firearms, printing presses, etc) has made them very, very strong and that 2) they have subjugated more or less the entire planet. Your culture immediately begins a series of protracted upheavels as it attempts to assimilate all the new technology gained through this trade; by the time you've finished, you take a look around and realize that you may well be the only non-Western country in the entire world to have gotten it's shit together. Still, you're much smaller and weaker than any of them are ... then, at the very beginning of the 20th century, you find yourself at war with one of those powers (namely, Russia.) It's comparitively short, but immensely costly in both lives and treasure: fighting it almost bankrupted the Japanese government, and 85,000 were wounded or killed. But, in the end, you win ... you (and, not trivially, the rest of the world) realize the Europeans can be beaten. You know another war with European powers would be a Bad Idea (hence, the Anglo-Japanese alliance) but at the same time, you can see that, with a little bit of expansion (just like the Europeans have been doing) you can get the resources necessary to avoid being smashed, and maybe even push them back a little.... and there's the rest of Asia, still reeling drunkenly from it's collision with European culture, poorly defended and ripe for the taking....

I'm not saying the war was right, of course. What I'm saying is, the Japanese didn't do anything the Europeans hadn't been doing, and did it for essentially the same reasons (principally, greed, with possibly a very small helping of their version of the White Man's Burden.) One can understand why they behaved as they did, and if they behaved like animals during WWII, well, that wasn't a war noted for easily troubled consciences, by any of the players. And, to be fair, the Japanese took their share of lumps. Their entire country was burnt to the ground in air raids, and to this day they remain the only people to have been nuked. Twice.

To close: one of the somewhat touching things I learned in the musuem was that, before they flew, the pilots of one of Japan's fighter wings vowed to meet in the second life by the second cherry tree from the left of the toori at Yasukuni. The survivors - there weren't many, of course - planted this tree when they returned.

(I think this is the right tree....)

Yasukuni Jinjya

2005-11-04T03:18:00.000+09:00

Today was a holiday in Japan (Culture Day, apparently, though I didn't know this until just now, when I checked it out on google.) So I decided to use the time to see something I've been meaning to check out for some time now: Yasukuni Jinjya, the Shrine of the Peace of the Nation. Things got off to a bit of a rocky start (my evil room-mate got twisted my rubber arm and got me to stay up all night playing Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur II, so I woke up a little late) and as a result, the shrine was of course closed by the time I found it ... assuming it was open at all today, Shinto shrines following schedules that are frankly opaque.

At any rate, I was still able to walk around for a bit and snap some pictures. To start things off, here's one of the Toori gates that marks the entrance to the shrine's grounds. These things are
massive, imposing concrete monsters; you've probably seen more traditional kinds before in pictures from Japan, usually painted red and decorated and such. It's really hard for this picture to do justice to what it feels like to walk through one of these.

Some background on Yasukuni may be in order. If you've heard of it at all, it's probably only in relation to Prime Minister Koizumi's annual visits to the shrine, which stirred controversy in Japan and quite a bit of acrimony in Korea and China (even leading up to anti-Japanese riots in some Chinese cities.) The reason for this is that, since 1978, fourteen Class A war criminals have been enshrined here, including the executed Tojo.

Before I came here, that was pretty much all I knew of Yasukuni, and I found myself wondering how a modern, liberal democracy like Japan could have a shrine to war criminals. It just didn't make sense.

The answer is quite simple: Yasukuni is not a shrine to war criminals, it is a shrine to every single soldier who has died serving Japan since the Meiji Restoration. 2,466,532 names are written in it's Book of Souls. When Koizumi visits the shrine, he's not honoring a handful of monsters; he's paying his respects to the two and a half million young men who gave their lives for their Emporer. Regardless of what one might think of Japan's motives for the carnage it inflicted throughout the first half of the 20th century (and there's a museum nearby, which I didn't get a chance to go to, that puts forth the view that those wars were motivated not by callous expansionism but by a desire to check the influence of European powers in Asia) it is very difficult to say with a straight face that the Prime Minister is out of line in visiting the shrine. There are many, in Japan and outside, who say the visits needlessly antagonize China ... but if the Chinese are so easily angered, then frankly they're looking for an excuse (which I think they are, though that's a subject for another post.)

Here's another picture I took, a little further in on the grounds. It's a statue of Omura Masajiro, the admiral who presided over the modernization of the Japanese military during the Meiji Restoration. I know this because of a bronze plaque at the base, helpfully translating what I assume is the writing you can just make out on the column.

Now that I know where the shrine is, I plan to go back there next week and check it out in more detail (including, hopefully the museum with it's, er, unique take on the history of Japanese militarism.) Check back on Tuseday or Wednesday for more....

Join Us

2005-10-26T00:17:00.000+09:00

If this doesn't creep you out a little bit, it may be too late for you.

As a poorly-thought-out name, JoinUs is right up there with Telus (for those unfamiliar with the latter, that's the name of a cell-phone company. In the age of roving wiretaps, someone thought it would be a good idea to call their company Telus. Tell us, tell us everything ... what disturbs me is that so few people seem to get the intrinsic irony of that name. But I digress.) JoinUs is a department store (as a note, Japan doesn't do malls; department stores fill that particular economic niche), one of several competing chains in this country ... though since they're probably owned by the same conglomerate, sort of like Canada's deer old Chapters/Indigo monopoly, they're probably 'competing' only in the loosest possible sense.

Which isn't why Joinus is kind of a creepy name. You'd really have to be here to understand, but I'll try to give you a sense of it.

Picture hordes of cookie-cutter young women, all immaculately made-up, all wearing similar over-priced fashions and clutching the exact same Louis Vuitton bags. A tide of salarimen in more-or-less identical dark suits, white shirts, and indifferent ties. All working their asses off, so that they can afford the ludicrously priced fashions offered by such fine establishments as Joinus.

Ludicrously priced, you say? But this is Japan. Tokyo no less. You should expect that. Everything's expensive in Japan, isn't it?

Well ... no. Most non-durable goods are about the same as in Canada; some (for instance, booze) is much cheaper, about half the price. As for durable goods, things like electronics are very similarly priced. Even land has been getting significantly cheaper since the bubble burst.

In fact, about the only things that seem a lot more expensive are luxury items (those Louis Vuitton handbags, again.) To give you an example, a friend of mine (another English teacher) used to work at the Coach store in Toronto. She went into one of the franchises in Tokyo, to compare, and found one purse that was exactly the same model, for about three or four times the price. Keep in mind that these things are made in Thailand or Indonesia or something, so they only have to travel a fraction of the distance to get to Tokyo that they have to travel to get to Toronto. Basically, demand for these items is so staggeringly high that the prices are pushed up into the stratosphere.

The baffling thing is that this has happened in the face of a decade-and-a-half of general economic crappiness. In most places, when money is tight, people cut back on luxury items and jack up the savings rate. Here, they spend everything they have on expensive clothes and accessories, and eat ramen noodles for the rest of the month. There's this overpowering desire they seem to feel to fit in with the crowd, to be just like everyone else; they follow trends so closely they're tailgating them, with the result that there's a constant pileup in the supply-demand equation.

Which is why the name 'JoinUs' struck me as so weirdly fitting. Come. Join us. Become one of us. Resistance is futile. You know you want it....

Modern Tokyo Architecture

2005-10-20T02:03:00.000+09:00

I've had a few (well, okay, one) request for shots of Japanese architecture. No doubt, when you think of Japanese buildings, you think of one of two things: elegant shinto shrines with sloping tiled roofs, surrounded by manicured gardens whose genius lies in encouraging their natural beauty rather than forcing the artificial kind ... or, if you're from my generation, neon.

These both exist. The former is hard to find, the latter more or less confined to the downtown core, places like Shinjuku and Shibuya.

Here's something a little more representative of the modern Japanese contractor's art:

It's a little archictural stillbirth I like to call The Ugliest Building in Japan. Or at least in Hachioji. I get to gaze upon it most every day, as I stand on the train platform while en route to work. Gaze upon it, and shudder. It is, I will admit, an extreme, but know this: the buildings in Japan (or at least those thrown up since the country was reduced to rubble in WWII) are very, very Ugly.

The Costume - I Admit Defeat

2005-10-20T01:35:00.000+09:00

So, I gave up. There might be a hardware store somewhere in this city ... but I can't find it. so instead, I'm going as an evil demonic skeleton monkey.

I did find, so far, the only Japanese store that actually had Hallowe'en costumes: it's selection was comparable to the smaller, crappier department stores ... only worse. They had one shelf - not even a whole aisle, but a shelf - of adult costumes. Which isn't surprising: Hallowe'en isn't, apparently, Big over here the way it increasingly is back home. I've had students make comments to the effect that, well of course, Japan isn't a Christian country so why would they have Christian holidays?

While I expected this, I am nonetheless somewhat saddened. Hallowe'en is, after all, my favorite holiday (okay, so technically it isn't a exactly holiday, but, really, it should be. Actually, the day after should be. To give us all a chance to recover.) I can deal with no Christmas, no New Years (yes, yes, they have New Years over here, but it's an intimate family affair. The city, apparently, shuts down.) But no proper Hallowe'en? Bah.

Of course, they do have their own bizarre festivals:

This was taken in Mejiro, during some kind of festival. Try to imagine about fifty percussionists going nuts on the drums, following along with a whole parade of these weird-looking glowing jellyfish lantern thingies that have essentially shut down an entire avenue (And, no, I have no idea what, if anything, the weird-looking glowing jellyfish lantern thingie is meant to represent. It may have some deep cultural significance; it may just look cool; I truly do not know.) This sort of thing happens in one neighborhood or another of Tokyo every few weeks, it seems: parades of odd-looking shrines or floats or whatever, traditional dancing, drumming, etc. It's always particular to the neighborhood/city, though, not a national thing ... I'm not even sure if Japan has (traditional, originally religion-based) national holidays like the West does.

Supposedly Kawasaki has an annual fertility festival involving floats shaped like, er, well, it's a family blog so I won't be any more explicit. But I will try and get pictures (assuming I haven't already lost it.)

Speaking of Kawasaki, it apparently boasts Japan's largest (only?) Hallowe'en get together of freaks and miscreants, a sort of massive spontaneous parade/street party featuring bizarre costumes and public inebriation. So all may not be lost after all. I will try and attend (and, of course, get pictures.)

Finding Stuff in Tokyo

2005-10-18T13:16:00.000+09:00

The weather's rotten right now, and has been for a few days. Frankly I've stopped being surprised - Tokyo weather comes in two main varieties, rotten and worse - but it has left me in a bit of a funk which is why I haven't bothered updating the page until now. Thankfully the rain should let up by Thursday, though I'm not holding my breath.

Right now I'm trying to put together my Hallowe'en costume, and the difficulties involved are actually somewhat illustrative of the general difficulties of life in this city. On Saturday, I decided that I'd try and make a Bender costume (that's a Futurama character, for those of you who don't watch enough cartoons.) The costume should be relatively easy to make: all I need is a bucket, some flexible ventilation duct, a few plastic or tupperware (or foam or whatever) bowls, and a sheet of flexible, hard plastic, kind of like a Krazy Karpet. And, of course, duct tape and silver paint.

In Toronto, I'd go down to the local hardware store and probably come out with everything I need. Don't know where the hardware store is? No problem! A brief interlude with google, and I'm set.

Here, that isn't possible. I'm sure Tokyo has what I'm looking for - it's the biggest, richest, most consumerist city on the globe - but finding what you're looking for can be all but impossible. First the language barrier: I'm not even sure what the Nihongo for 'hardware store' is, and if I saw one it would probably be marked with the kanji for hardware store, which I don't know. Then there's the street plan issue: unlike North American cities, which are laid out in a regular grid, Asian cities are basically an organic growth dating back to the first footpaths. No such thing as parallel streets here ... or for that matter street names ... OR even an intelligible numbering system (buildings are numbered in the order in which they were built, not the order in which they appear.)

None of this is insurmountable (though I might just give up and buy a pre-made costume at the Tokyu Hands department store.) But, it gives you an idea of what a gaijin has to go through whenever they try to find something in this city.

On the Way Home From Work....

2005-10-15T22:15:00.000+09:00

What indeed?

Title of the Blog

2005-10-14T01:31:00.000+09:00

Just occured to me that I should probably offer some explanation for the blogs bizarre name. Actually, it's an old Japanese riddle, most easily, er, illustrated pictorially:
+ =

First Post

2005-10-14T00:31:00.000+09:00

Well, I've been planning this blog for a while now; I've been in Nihon for just a little over four months, but it was only a couple of days ago that I got internet access at my apartment, so now the fun may begin.

First, perhaps, a little about myself. My name's Matt Shultz; I'm a 24 year old Canadian, over in Japan as an eikawa sensei (that's English school teacher for the vast majority of you who don't speak any Nihongo other than samurai and ninja. I'm not being condescending here: my Japanese is utter shite, which can get old real fast when you're trying to chat up a pretty girl at a club.) Anyhow, I graduated just under a year ago with a B.Sc. in physics from the University of Toronto, and after spending a number of months wasting time with crap temp jobs in Canada's biggest city, I said screw it and came here. Seemed like a better deal.

By and large, it is. I miss all of my friends and family back home, of course, but I've met (and keep on meeting) a lot of really cool people over here, both Japanese and gaijin. I put it down to a sort of self-selection filter effect: expatriates tend to be eccentric (otherwise they wouldn't be expatriates, right?), while Japanese people who want to meet and talk to gaijin are obviously going to deviate a little from the Japanese norm.

Anyhow, after being here for four months I've got material in my head for probably dozens or hundreds of posts. Very little or none of which will be posted: if I did, I'd be sitting here for weeks getting it all down, and not only do I have a job to worry about, I like to think I have something resembling a social life. So for now I'll just leave you with a picture I snapped with my keitai (cell phone):

This was taken outside Shinjuku Station (the largest and busiest train station in Tokyo.) The cute little shill is pointing towards one of the ginourmous shopping malls that sit on top of the train station. Other countries build statues to great statesman or heroic warriors. Here, they're for corporate mascots, anime characters, and Godzilla.