An Indiana Hoosier in the Land of the Rising Sun

from email

2010-12-06T22:55:00.001-05:00

testing 1,2,3

Testing

2010-12-06T22:46:00.001-05:00

Round 2

KL Int'l airport, 6:30am

2010-08-26T19:02:00.001-04:00

should've smuggled more booze into Malaysia. Only brought a decent bottle of port since the limit is 1L of anything. But customs didn't even pretend to check, they just sit at empty, roped-off check stations. I totally could've brought in 6 or 8 bottles. As it is, a lovely cabin attendant gave me flasks of cointreau, rum & cognac because we chatted during the flight. Oh, and she gave me a bottle of white wine after I told her I couldn't sleep during flights.

In other airport news, I can tolerate the French -- they're like Americans who can't speak English. But I can't abide by CDG airport security making me throw out an empty water bottle. That is only second to the lunacy of KL and Singapore, who do the security check at the gate, so you can't fill up your water bottle before boarding (and you can't put liquor in storage outside customs, hence my hesitancy to buy lots of wine only to have it confiscated at KL customs).

Ticker with live video feed of how much oil is going into the Gulf

2010-06-05T21:13:00.001-04:00

2010-03-21T09:58:00.002-04:00

eVolo, an architecture and design journal, had it's 2010 skyscraper competition recently. I'm rather disturbed by the winners, they created a prison in the sky (really, guys? Is this what we've come to?)

Besides that, we get some more interesting entries, such as a skyscraper that purifies polluted rivers, or underwater 'skyscrapers'.

I'd recommend Inhabit's other articles, they have more underwater buildings, among other interesting, fantastical designs.

New National Insurance rules

2010-03-05T22:00:00.002-05:00

A year ago, the Japanese government published revised rules for work visa renewal. The most prominent change was the requirement that people show proof of national insurance when they renew. The problem is, most foreigners aren't on national insurance. Despite there being a law requiring EVERYONE to enroll, most eikaiwa (English conversation schools) did not -- and still do not -- enroll their employees. Instead, they changed the work hours to 29.5 hrs/week (by changing what counted as 'work' and what counted as unpaid 'preparation time', like walking to the classroom) to skirt these laws. Now, despite the fact that the companies who brought people in neglected to inform them of their responsibilities, workers would be punished by having to enroll in national insurance AND pay back dues on all the time they were in Japan. So, for myself, I've been in Japan 6 years and could potentially owe more than $10,000 in back insurance payments that I will have to pay if I want to continue working, despite being covered under private insurance that I was told was sufficient (my first employer, NOVA, had me enrolled in their company plan, JMA. After I changed jobs to Interac, I was covered under Interglobal, where I remain to this day). Now, I wouldn't be opposed to enrolling in Japan's national plan. what I object to is being told that I must back pay thousands of dollars because I was misinformed.

Well, since my visa expires April 8th, and the new guidelines take effect April 1st, I've been paralyzed by the fear of having to enroll. Not to mention, little to nothing was said on this topic after the initial announcement. Now, it seems, proof of enrollment will not be grounds for visa denial. At least, that's what the Japan Times says. But then again, somebody in the immigration office has it out for me (I've had 2 consecutive 1 year visas, despite having had a 3 yr one before and everyone else getting 3 yrs), so I'm sure I'll be the one who gets denied and deported.

The Legality of ALTs

2010-03-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting read on the legality of ALTs in Japan being employed by dispatch companies. It seems most things about ALTs are illegal. We'll see if things change with the new insurance rules for visa renewal (NOTE: see my next post for more on that).

Hire Bernie Madoff

2009-10-31T21:23:00.002-04:00

After reading this interview, perhaps Madoff should be used like Frank Abagnale, Jr. and he can go to work for the SEC, since they evidently don't know what the hell they were doing. Remember, Madoff only got caught because his sons turned him in after he confessed to them.

Secondary lesson: don't teach your children to be honest if you're going to break the law.

The perfect egg

2009-10-15T06:03:00.003-04:00

Here's a great analysis on the perfect soft- and hard-boiled egg. I just tried it out and the egg was perfect. I've still got a small peeling problem, but that's not such a big deal. The article is also a great bit of food science writing.

Next, on to julienne-en-en-ing!

Good hair

2009-10-13T10:07:00.003-04:00

Speaking of which, this looks interesting in all sorts of ways:

Do black people really spend that much time in barbershops? I thought the whole "Barbershop" movie thing was a schtick for a movie, but perhaps not. Do all the other white people spend time socializing in barbershops and I just missed out on this?

I like the one by my house, it's very tradition 'old-man' style -- they'll cut your hair only with scissors if you ask, and you always get a hot towel and a straight razor shave on your sideburns and the nape of your neck. Japan still has good ones, and so did Spain. My last encounter in an American barbershop (circa 2005) didn't end well. SOMEbody told this guy his son was a liberal and I spent the entire haircut listening to a rant about hippies and how anyone opposing the Iraq war is a traitor to their country, all while he wielded pointy scissors about my vital arteries.

What's racist? Addendum

2009-10-13T09:11:00.002-04:00

Updating a bit on this post about racism in Japan, we have the following clip from a Saturday evening program in Australia, called "Hey Hey It's Saturday":

I think Americans will instantly notice what's wrong here. When I went to Australia last August, it was fun to watch the evening variety shows. TV there is more akin to Spanish or Japanese television than American TV, in that there are lots of shows with minor celebrities sitting on panels. There are quiz shows, talk shows, talking head shows where the celebrities comment on news or amateur videos. The above clip is one of those.

Australian TV is interesting to Americans because there is a lot more profanity used, as well as the culture there being not nearly as politically correct. While I enjoy it because sometimes people get riled up about the wrong things, this clip was way over my line, and it was interesting to see Harry Connick, Jr. as one of the judges give the group a '0' and the short discussion that followed. The Wikipedia discussion of the event is interesting in that the Michael Jackson character is played by a man named Anand Deva (not the whitest name in the world), and that 'Jackson Jive' group was ethnically mixed, and the whole group was made of doctors.

Some points to consider:

Australia didn't participate in the slave trade.
Blackface wasn't used to mock blacks, as well as appropriate their culture and undermine it.
Australia has a troubled history with regards to its Aboriginal peoples, who are kind of like American blacks and Native Americans rolled up into one unfortunate bundle.
'White Australia' wasn't even abandoned completely until the 1970s, allowing for more immigration from Asian countries.

The above clip also shows the 'Jackson Jive' performing on the same variety show 20 years ago, when it won the competition. It's worth keeping in mind the change from then to now. And lest we Americans decide to get on a high horse:

Which kinda leads us to this:

Gone biking

2009-10-10T18:58:00.003-04:00

I'm cycling to Hakone today with my friends Eric and Todd. We'll stay one night in a small inn on Lake Ashino and cycle back. Should be good exercise and good fun.

Until I get back, feel free to peruse the photos on the right there, I've posted some aftermath photos of the beach from the typhoon last week, as well as some pics from hiking around Fuji Five Lakes.

Or you can watch these:

'Liar!' vs. 'You lie!'

2009-09-15T08:08:00.004-04:00

Here's an interesting linguistic post on Rep. Joe Wilson's (R - Idiots) outburst during Obama's healthcare speech. Essentially, it boils down to Wilson's using the simple present, whereas most English speakers would use the present progressive. The blogger, Geoff Nunberg, posits that this is something Wilson probably said in his head over and over again. Not that he planned it, but his dislike of Obama being so strong, it just came out. I wonder if it isn't more of a Southern thing, like Wilson was trying to provoke Obama into a duel or something.

While we're going all linguistic on Teabaggers' asses, might as well analyze this one:

Notice the reference to Obama and then the honorific used for Bush. Evidently, this guy doesn't consider Obama to be a President of the USA. While it's common to refer to the President only by his last name, I think it's rather telling that he uses the title with one, but not the other. I can't recall ever seeing people refer to 'Bush' and then to 'President Clinton'.

(for more photos of the 9.12 march, check out Jeff Malet's photo gallery)

Talent vs. Deliberate Practice

2009-09-02T04:47:00.002-04:00

I just listened to a fascinating talk by Geoff Colvin at RSA. He's the author of Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. He discusses phenoms like Tiger Woods, Gary Kasparov and Mozart, and how they got to be who they are/were. There's evidently a lot of research on this, as well on what makes average people good at certain things. What Colvin puts it down to is "deliberate practice". But this isn't your normal practice.

Deliberate practice involves two aspects. First is the ability to force oneself to practice. Doing something you don't like is a bummer, doing something you like is fun. Being able to make yourself do something for hours on end, day in, day out, that's what makes Tiger Woods. As well, there has to be a goal to the practice. Colvin discusses the unpleasantness of failing at figure skating for this example. Messing up a jump in figure skating involve you landing on your tush on hard, cold ice. But great figure skaters practice the jumps they can't do. They keep hitting that ice until they get it down. Mediocre figure skaters are ones who only practice the jumps they can do. The lesson here is to aim just beyond your capabilities, at a place that's just outside your comfort zone, but not so far out that you get discouraged and give up hope.

While a lot of time is spent focusing on people at the top of their game, Colvin also talks about more mundane jobs. Like auditors. He discusses how, for most people, they eventually level off at some point, such that an auditor that has been doing the job for five years is about as good as an auditor that has been around for decades. They both have roughly the same ability to spot fraud in a company's books.

In addition, Colving discusses luck and time. One reason Tiger Woods is so great is that he's been doing his deliberate practice since he was 2. By the time he won his first Masters, he was 21. That meant he'd had 19 years of practice. Jack Nicklaus had about 13, and Arnold Palmer had 19 also, but they started golfing at 10 and 7, respectively, meaning they achieved things later in their lives. Tiger also had the luck to be born to his father, who was driven himself. Mozart's father was a noted composer and teacher, who had vowed to bring up his son to be a musician and composer.

A lot of this discussion was about business, but there are lots of possibilities when thinking about education, or when thinking about learning something yourself, and how to plan for success. Anyway, go have a listen and see what you think.

If nothing else, I'd recommend the RSA Events and Lectures to people interested in hearing new and different opinions.

On this day in history...

2009-09-01T07:29:00.002-04:00

On this day in 1923, a large earthquake struck O-shima, the large island just to the south of where I live. The timing of the quake, when cooking fires were going to prepare lunch, combined with winds from a nearby typhoon, caused nearly 100,000 deaths in the Kanto region. To put this in perspective, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake killed 3,000, and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed 'hundreds'. Nearly all of Yokohama burned to the ground, as did Tokyo. The devastation in Tokyo can be seen above. This is the area that my friends Aaron and Molly stayed when they came to Tokyo. The Great Buddha in Kamakura, which I take nearly all visitors to see moved forward two feet (it weighs in at 93-tons). Reading through the list of places devastated on wikipedia, I recognize all of them, and have visited most. It's truly a reminder of how brutal nature can be, and how a perfect storm of circumstances can bring disaster.

Even worse, in the aftermath rumors blamed foreigners, mostly Koreans, for looting and robbery. Vigilante mobs attacked and killed Koreans as well as setting up checkpoints. Anyone who sounded different was attacked. This included not only Koreans and other foreigners, but people from other parts of Japan with strong accents. Police and the army attempted to protect the Koreans, but some officials were complicit in handing over Koreans to the mob. A number of civilians were prosecuted, but sentences were light and the rest were pardoned as part of the marriage ceremony of Prince Hirohito. The authorities also took advantage of the confusion to arrest and kill dissidents, such as socialists and anarchists.

Incidentally, we're about due for another giant earthquake in this area, as well as a big eruption from Mt. Fuji one of these days. They did estimates of what would happen, namely that any ash fallout from an eruption of Mt. Fuji would halt all transportation between there and Tokyo. That's around 20 million people that will be unable to drive or use mass transit. I better start stockpiling canned peaches.

(The reason the deaths were so much higher in Japan than the other disasters is that most houses were made of wood and charcoal fires were used for cooking. This combination caused a firestorm. For some reason, the Japanese didn't learn not to build things out of wood, which meant that when Curtis LeMay was set loose on Japan, we ended up with this.)

What's racist?

2009-08-24T05:11:00.002-04:00

I was discussing the "Mr. James" ad campaign at McDonald's here in Japan with some friends (see here and here), along with whether or not it should be considered racist. I thought that yes, it was rather racist, while another American thought it was all in good fun and that I was being over-sensitive. A Japanese friend thought nothing of it, just that it was amusing.

I had a long screed written about this, but it's probably better to just get the backstory from the above two links. I wonder when is something considered racist/offensive? Does intent factor into it, or can there be unintentional offense? Not to mention the international aspect of this. If something is considered offensive in one country, does it carry over to another as well? Watch this:

It's pretty obvious who the monkey is supposed to be. But in Japan, there isn't the same derogatory association of monkeys with black people -- rather, foreigners in general are associated with apes, with pretty much the same connotations as in the USA. But, monkeys are also cute. And monkeys are also considered clever: a samurai watching a monkey bathe in a hot spring was the inspiration for onsen. So, is the Obama monkey video racist? I guess in one way yes, and in another way no. Another example of this would be the controversy over Little Black Sambo here in Japan. The drawings of an odd black boy with giant red lips and big eyes has definite historical racist connotations, but in Japan that sort of thing is just cute. Yet the book was pulled in Japan about 20 years ago because some people took offense at it.

I guess stereotypes, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But a little sensitivity from McDonald's Japan would be nice as well.

The perils of working in Japan

2009-04-19T09:47:00.002-04:00

I've had a pretty easy time of it here in Japan. It's not hard work, and I've had mostly positive experiences. A huge part of that is that I'm still single and thus avoid all the complications that go along with family life. Like, you know, the death of an unborn child. I don't know what I would have done in this situation, but I do know some of the people involved (not the main person, however), and I used to work for the company. I can't believe this would happen. Well, actually I can. This is how Nova was, and how many smaller companies act. Foreigners are a very vulnerable population, as we are at the mercy of our employers much of the time. Japan has very strict employment rules, so even a small slight can cause huge delays and potentially a non-renewal of your visa. I hope I never have to suffer what this guy has suffered through.

Go read.

L/km or, I'm not crazy after all!

2009-04-18T23:38:00.002-04:00

A while ago, I was having a friendly debate with someone who always has to be right. Being the same type of person, I wasn't giving up, either. We were talking somewhere about gas mileage in cars, and I mentioned my car in high school/college. It was an old BMW with a little computer thingy on the dash that would show different types of data like the temperature, time, average speed and gas consumption. Being American, I stuck a pencil in the little hole and changed the settings from metric to US standard, something I had to do every time the battery got disconnected (or ran out of power, something I often did by leaving the headlights on).

Gas consumption fascinated me, mostly because I always got lower than the rating, and also because the metric gas consumption was listed in liters per kilometer (or 100 km, I can't quite recall). Now, this guy, let's call him M, said that was a stupid thing and couldn't possibly be right. We appealed to his French co-worker who said they measure it in km/L. I was quickly voted down and that was that.

Today I came across this story about a typo on Fox News, and lo and behold, in comments some Australians remarked how mileage in their country is measured in L/100 km, and how it makes perfect sense if you want to figure out how much is needed to go a certain distance. I'd surmise this would be useful going to the Moon or across the Outback, but not so much in suburban America.

Sadly, I won't get to lord this over M. One night he drunkenly berated me for disliking the black vans that drive around waking me up in the morning, telling me I have no rights in this country. Not hanging out with him again.

Money in, money out

2009-04-16T20:20:00.003-04:00

I just got my hefty tax return from the government, which will allow me to pay off my shopping spree from being home. And on a whim I bought some tickets to Australia, so this summer I'll be going to visit Ana and Damien in Brisbane, with a stopover in Singapore to see a couple friends there.

So far, I'll leave Japan on July 24th, stay in singapore a couple days, then up to Kuala Lumpur, fly out on the 29th to Brisbane. I'll stay there until the 11th or 12th, then fly back to KL, stay there a day or so, over to Singapore and back to Japan on the 17th. I got the Japan-Singapore leg through ANA, and the KL-Brisbane flight is through budget carrier AirAsia. I've flown them several times before, but only on short hops around Malaysia and over to Borneo. The short trips are nice, but I wonder how they'll hold up on a 7 hr flight.

Of course, there's the small matter of getting from Singapore to KL. I'll have to look at another AirAsia hop, which would be short and moderately priced, or a $10 bus ride that isn't bad, but wastes about 9hrs all told. I also just realized that Singapore won't allow me to take alcohol through, so if my friends want anything, they're gonna have to find another supplier.

Things to do with your free time

2009-04-12T17:22:00.002-04:00

Make the largest LEGO ship ever. That's quite impressive. It's a 6.6m model of the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Yamato, the largest battleship ever built. The original fired her guns only a couple times in battle, then was sunk, killing nearly all of her 2,700 crew. It's got kind of a cult following in Japan, as some sort of symbol of big dreams that suddenly go ker-plooey.

Reason #6,835 I'm glad I don't live in the US Texas

2009-04-09T17:21:00.002-04:00

Some lawmaker in Texas thinks Asian names are too difficult and suggested they take new names to make it easier on the ignoramuses who think everyone in America is a white Christian. I especially loved this part:

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Yes, "your citizens", because people with slanty eyes can't possibly be Americans.

The first weekend home

2009-03-23T16:27:00.002-04:00

Mmm, I've had some good beer and food since I got back. I got to the house around 5ish, and headed with my folks to the Friendly Tavern in "downtown" Zionsville. I got a good prime rib with sauteed cabbage and some friend mushrooms. The cabbage wasn't so great, I was expecting saurkraut, but oh well. I also had a great Blue Moon wheat ale and a Sierra Nevada pale ale. The pale ale wasn't so great, it was a little too bitter for my taste. I had another bottle later that night when I met some high school friends and it was really different. Go figure.

Having home cooking was great, Mom's mexican soup was great, and last night Dad cooked up a turkey breast. I'm working my way through my list of must-eat foods. Tonight I'm going to have a Qdoba burrito with friends Sam and Jessi while we watch the Battlestar Galactica finale.

Speaking of which, I'm gonna be late if I don't go now. More on the weekend later.

Travel time sucks

2009-03-19T09:02:00.002-04:00

I'm packing things right now and wondering what exactly is wrong with me. I've hardly got anything in my suitcase. The largest thing is a giant backpack I'll presumably use as a second piece of luggage if I end up buying large amounts of clothing and booze to bring back.

I know I'm missing something, but what? Planning on buying new clothes in Indy, so I've hardly packed anything. I've got some old ratty things at home to tide me over.

Upholding the curtains

2009-03-17T09:59:00.003-04:00

I'm taking a break from one of my quizzes (hooray for untimed, open-book quizzes!) and browsing through the class forums. We've been discussing morphology, and how some words don't really relate to their meanings once you remove their affixes. One person brought up some words like 'downhearted'. Our text says there's no other relation to 'hearted' (even Firefox spellchecker agrees), but this student came up with 'kindhearted'. I was thinking about 'hearten', as in gaining courage or morale from something.

Another one was 'upholster'. The etymology is quite fun, according to Dictionary.com, it came from a 19th century Americanism 'upholsterer', the profession name. And that came from a 17th century term where a person was employed to install furnishings, or to literally 'up-hold' the curtains.

Transporting goods

2009-03-08T09:50:00.002-04:00

I made a list earlier of all the things I want to get for myself when I'm home:

couscous
lentils
creme eggs
reese's pb cups
shirts
shoes (oh, Born, how I love your shoes!)
jacket (actually, never got my secret santa present, which a little birdie informs me is of this ilk)
Settlers of Catan
SD flash card

The couscous and lentils are dependent on price. I'm pretty sure lentils are dirt cheap in the US. I might buy a bunch and ship them freight or something to save weight on the airline. Of course I'm going to add a few bottles of wine. Anything I'm missing?

Even better is the list of things people want me to bring back for them. We have Twix, Combos, Frito Lay guacamole dip, and several dozen cadbury eggs. I might just reserve one suitcase for those.

Coming home

2009-03-05T19:43:00.001-05:00

Well, I've been bad about blogging here. Too much with life and new classes and work.

But, the big news: I'm heading home from March 20th to April 5th. So anybody with free time that wants to hang out, let me know.

2009-02-16T07:16:00.001-05:00

I believe the phrase for this is f'ing HILARIOUS.

In other news, I am actually alive and around, just haven't really done much worth blogging about. Maybe later this week.

Talk about long shots

2009-01-28T09:17:00.002-05:00

I once met Italian girl I'd met in a random hostel in a tiny town outside Valencia, Spain in 2001. It was just after Las Fallas, a festival in Valencia where giant paper mache statues are created and burned on the final night. She and I and a selection of other Europeans and a couple Argetinians would stay up til the wee hours, drinking wine on the beach, chatting. I don't have any of the same emails as I did then, and we haven't spoken since emailing a couple times that year.

But tonight I got a Facebook request from her. How strange.

A Public Servant Announcement

2009-01-09T19:00:00.003-05:00

When I come home in March, you're going to have to get used to metric. Here's a handy guide:

Movie Backlog

2009-01-08T08:47:00.003-05:00

I'm watching SiCKO now. The crap people have to go through is appalling. I'm planning on going home for a visit in March, and this movie prompted me to look up my insurance plan. I found this little gem in the FAQ:

7. Will my cover be affected if I return to my home country?
No - provided it is within your chosen area of cover*.
* Except if you are a citizen of the USA, and are returning home. If this is the case, cover will be terminated when the time spent in your home country exceeds 180 days continuous stay in one plan year.

Ah, America.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T02:26:00.002-05:00

Went to my friend Kim's house party last night. I wound up catching a bit of a cold, so it's probably a good thing I caught the first train home and didn't join them in their quest to jump into the ocean at sunrise. Though, I'm told the sunrise was really nice, and Fuji looked awesome at 6:30am.

So Happy New Year, I'm off to attempt to scrounge up some food, hope something's still open.

Gone skiing

2008-12-27T10:31:00.002-05:00

Leaving tomorrow for a few days. I'm going to Nagano with some friends, where we'll do some skiing and soaking in onsen. It should be a good time. I went out and bought a new hat. It's a lot like the ones Ana and Damine had when they came earlier this month - earflaps to keep my extra-long lobes warm. Last year they almost froze off because my hat was too short. *Sigh* Japan.

Anyhoo, I'll be back on the 31st, when I'll then have to rush off to a house party down in Yokosuka, near the US naval base. My friend Kim is having a countdown party. Hope I can stay awake after 3 days of skiing.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T20:22:00.003-05:00

Santa brought me a hangover this year! It's like the adult version of coal.

On another note, today doesn't seem like Xmas. It's (relatively) warm and sunny out. Last year I was in Hokkaido where it was below freezing with snow and ice everywhere and my tongue stuck to the bus when I tried to lick it. Here? I just get my tongue dirty.

Going to a friend's house for a Christmas dinner. Should be rather nice.

Give money!

2008-12-22T22:13:00.002-05:00

I don't know if this is the best time, economically speaking, to do so, but the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the ubiquitous Wikipedia and many other similar wikis, has issued a call for donations. I often link there for explanations of various Japanese terms and cultural references, not to mention using it for everything from learning about movies and books to looking up historical events.

I've plunked down a bit for them, I hope you'll consider doing the same.

That's what I get for sending money home two weeks ago

2008-12-12T02:06:00.002-05:00

Back then, 96 yen to the dollar. When I got home from work today, 89.8.

Wow.

Mmm, breakfast

2008-11-29T20:58:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like Nacho Cheese Doritos and clementine oranges, washed down with milk tea for Sunday breakfast. What can I say, I'm outta food. More on the reasons why later.

A nice surprise

2008-11-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

I got two nice surprises last night, shirts from both my brother and my folks. I've had trouble getting shirts with sleeves long enough for me to wear, so it's good to get a fresh supply just as the weather has turned and short-sleeves aren't cutting it, even under a jacket.

Today I get to celebrate Thanksgiving, a few friends and I are headed up to Tokyo for a turkey lunch, then it's back to Hiratsuka in the evening for a potluck dinner party. I'm going to try and recreate my pumpkin soup recipe. The key is the blending.

What're you thankful for?

2008-11-27T10:28:00.000-05:00

I'm thankful for my life as it is. Out of all the possibilities, sure, there are a hundred scenarios in which I'd have a better job, stable family by now, or something like that. Of course, I could also have ended up dead in a ditch at 16 if that car had hit me a hundredth of a second earlier. So on the balance, I have a pretty good life.

I do wish that I had an animal, but with my forgetfulness, it'd be a pile of bones by the time I remembered to water it. This is why I don't have kids, and why my plants are perpetually brown.

I'm thankful for my friends in Japan, the US and around the world who hang out with me, put up with my crap, and let me sleep on their couch. I'm thankful for being able to enjoy my life to the fullest. That's what matters.

Alternative to a Detroit bailout

2008-11-26T08:35:00.000-05:00

This actually occurred to me one day, and then I pushed it aside as I was deciding whether to make pumpkin or potato soup. But it really is a theoretical possibility, as much as it may be a cartoon. Although, in my version, in exchange for a bailout, the Big 3 automakers were required to manufacture rails and train cars that the US government would then buy to construct a high-speed rail service in the Midwest. Considering the bailout is around $5 billion more/less (c'mon, what's a few billion when we're handing out trillions to the financial sector anyway?) than the high-speed service California's constructing. I, for one, will not move back to the US anywhere that doesn't have some form of decent public transit. Prompted by Keith Knight's cartoon

Children of Japan

2008-11-15T23:23:00.004-05:00

Speaking of WWII, this is an interesting video of Japanese life in pre-war Japan. It's interesting that even then the Japanese-as-photo-nuts stereotype is well-established. I also like how the narrator uses 'oftener'.

Dehumanizing the enemy

2008-11-15T21:59:00.002-05:00

I came across an interesting discussion online about video games, and particularly the portrayal of different races as the villians. The game referenced here is a(nother) WWII first-person shooter, that's set in the Pacific theater. A gaming journalist took offense at the opening scenes, bringing up memories of his family, specifically his (Japanese-American) grandmother who was interned in the camps in the western US. If you feel uncomfortable, that's fine, but he goes on to use the Nazis as an example of a group that he has had no problem gunning down in other WWII shooters.

The discussion at Ars has ranged pretty widely, and I think it's notable that it hasn't descended into typical Angry Internet Man territory. There are some very thoughtful comments on what the use is of dehumanizing the Nazis, and how some people conflate the Germans of today with the Nazis of the 30s and 40s. I would highly recommend it, and I'll restate my comment there that it's important not to call the Nazis monsters, because it removes their humanity from them, thus making it less likely that the rest of us will be on guard for that same potential to commit atrocious acts. The best way to honor the victims of concentration camps is to realize that all of us are capable, and to protect against becoming what we decry.

The most interesting comments were about Japan, and how they were so much worse than the Nazis, and thus are even more deserving of dehumanization. My father wrote me recently, asking about the Japanese Air Defence Force general who was forced to resign after writing that Japan was forced to bomb Pearl Harbor, and specifically my reaction to a blog post he read.

History is written by the winners, but that only works if you eradicate the opponent. Otherwise, what you get are different versions written for different audiences. I'm going to assume most of you know the schoolbook American version. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we fought back, it was very difficult, but we overcame the hardships and dropped atomic bombs because we had no other choice. This is not exactly how it went, and deserves some thought about revision. Why was Pearl Harbor bombed? Hint, it wasn't because we Americans were minding our own beeswax when the Japanese decided to conquer the US.

The Japanese schoolbook version is a bit different, and there's not actually one set version. There are some versions that are more true, but there are also a few revisionist versions that whitewash everything from the occupation of China to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the basic gist of what schoolchildren learn is basically that Japan started the war, people fought, then America dropped the bomb on poor, little Japan and now we should pity them and they have a cudgel to beat Americans with every August (which is reason #53 I leave during August, in between #52 80% humidity and #54 being bored out of my skull not doing anything for a month).

Neither the Japanese version nor the American schoolbook versions are entirely correct. Each one emphasizes what benefits the country's narrative (Americans fighting back after being unfairly attacked, Japan suffering the only atomic bombing in history) and minimizes embarrassments (American Marines boiling Japanese skulls for sending home as souvenirs, the firebombing of Tokyo, the Rape of Nanking, the death marches, "comfort women").

With my parents, I visited Yasukuni shrine, the one that gets Asians all upset when Japanese politicians visit because all war dead are enshrined there, including a number of class A war criminals. There's a history WWII there, told from the Japanese perspective. It's very illuminating, especially the parts about pre-Pearl Harbor events. Most Americans think Pearl Harbor just happened. There's no mention of the US oil embargo on Japan, nor how they were being strangled economically because of their involvement in China.

I'd really like to know more about Japanese sentiments, but it's very difficult to have this discussion with people. It's still an emotional topic.

Classic

2008-11-13T09:20:00.002-05:00

Indiana went for Obama we know, now check out the video at this link (I'm too lazy to embed it). It's worth it, though. It's got Luke Russert, son, I presume, of Tim, at IU discussing the election. Just wait for the verrrry end:

here

The new setup

2008-11-13T08:29:00.004-05:00

I've been saving my money up lately, since I got back from my summer vacation, and with my evening private lessons, I've been able to afford a new computer monitor. Well, that's what I call it. It's actually a hi-def Sharp AQUOS 37" TV. Does the job quite nicely as well. I'm still mucking about with the dual-monitor setup, and I've managed to get my shows, movies and games to play on the big monitor, while I can still use the smaller one for web browsing and chat programs, to see if they're worth pausing my movie for :P

Here's the pic of the new setup. What you can't see is the mound of crap I've shoveled out of the way to make this all nice and neat. Saturday and Sunday will be living room straightening day, though I've got a date Saturday in Kamakura (and I'll get your paper, Mom), which might preclude me from getting this stuff done. Ah well. Hopefully I'll have it ready in time for some Thanksgiving party action.

I'm still futzing about with stuff, so the arrangement will probably change due to space considerations. I'd also like to get a more sturdy rack for my CPU, barely visible behind the small monitor. They're some cheap-o 100 yen things I had lying around. Ye olde computer desk, inherited from my friend Nicole, will probably go to roommate Mike, who's about to start online classes. Which also means I'll have to get some headphones to play Fallout 3 in 1900x1080 resolution. Happy happy happy.

(And yes, that's a bottle of sake and a tupperware of Japanese pickles. The green bottle is water, and the rope....use your imagination)

Back from Gifu

2008-11-10T08:49:00.002-05:00

I had a three day weekend, so I took off to visit Ana and Damien in Gifu Prefecture, a ways off. We visited an old postal town on the Nakasendo (the inland route from Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto). The main street is very well preserved, and full of little shops and wonderful restaurants. I had some awesome soba noodles and the local specialty, gohan-mochi, which are rice balls grilled and dipped into sweet peanut sauce. Good, but a tad messy. It was chilly out, so after the warmth from the soba wore off, we stopped in and warmed up at a little hirori (I think), which is a square of hard-packed earth with an open fire in it, and usually an iron pot cooking something over the fire. Very traditional.

We bought some local beers, and Sunday we visited a tiny village nearby to visit a sake brewery owned by one of Ana's students. The owner was in and allowed us to sample his wares. We probably could've gotten a tour had he not been the only one minding the shop that day. I got a bottle of something for myself to take home. It'll be good.

I just got home, then immediately sped out again to do some food shopping. Now it's bedtime, I'm wiped out. I'm uploading photos as I write this, so I'll linkify things when they're done (or more probably tomorrow)

Proud to Be an American Again

2008-11-05T19:02:00.004-05:00

I've travelled a lot since 2000. I've been on 4 continents, the only white face in the room countless times. I've lived outside of the USA for longer than I've been in it. And to my discredit, I've often found myself wishing that I weren't an American citizen.

An old man on a train in Morocco asked me where I was from. I replied that I was from America. He said, "Ah, Bill Clinton," and started cackling. I was pretty embarrassed then. Little did I know...

In 2000 I watched the election from my boarding house in Madrid. I watched the Floridian fiasco play out to Spanish guffaws and ridicule. When Bush finally won, I wondered what was wrong. How did a nepotistic loser gain the highest office in the land?

I once got pinned into a crowd of pissed-off North Africans in 2000, demanding my nationality. I told them I was German and they left me alone.

I watched the Towers fall on a sunny, beautiful morning at Purdue University. People cried, constantly phoning, trying to reach family and friends. Some douchebags in my classes tried to convince the profs that we should have a day off from classes and get out early. One professor said we should just "continue on, because what the people who did this want more than anything was to disrupt our lives, and we can't let them."

I flew to Denver a month after, when the TSA changed the rules for baggage while I was gone, and I was stuck trying to repack everything at the check-in counter to match their specifications. The next three years were spent exactly as the professor said the terrorists wanted: in fear, confusion, orange alerts and duct tape. Shoes off at the airport, suspicion of everyone, some asshole driving a car into the mosque in Plainfield. My Indian girlfriend going to a supermarket in Carmel, IN and being treated like she was going to blow the place up. Racist fucks.

I don't even want to get into Iraq. Trillions of dollars squandered, thousands of dead Americans, multiples of that are now maimed or scarred, physically and/or mentally for life. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, with at least a million chased from their country by ethnic strife. All because Saddam was bad, he had WMD, was complicit in 9/11, we needed to free the Iraqis. Bullshit. As Friedman said, we wanted to flex our muscles and tell the A-rabs to Suck. On. This. Yes, that's turned out well.

I went to Japan, where it's still reasonably pleasant to be an American, unless you live near a military base, where 18-year olds drunk on hormones and booze brawl and make general nuisances of themselves. Don't get me started on the military. It's hard to thank someone for their service when they're busy puking on your shoes or starting a brawl or raping the occasional Japanese schoolgirl.

Bush: worst President in post-WWII America, probably since the Civil War. A drug addict, failed businessman, draft dodger (yes, poppy pulling strings so you don't have to fight is dodging) and 'Christian' who should by all rights have been living in a halfway house were his daddy not rich. I was raised by my family to make your way on your own merits. This sad excuse for a man hasn't ever done that.

Two more months, then our long, national nightmare will end. We've elected a charismatic man, someone who truly worked their way up from nothing. The poor guy's grandmother passed away mere days before the election, the last person to raise him that was alive.

I don't expect him to be perfect, contrary to what many say, I don't believe he's the be-all end-all of our hopes. Him getting elected was half the battle. Now making sure he carries through on his promises and trying to get him to relinquish the powers Bush has seized for the office is the other half. And we won't win all of them. But we'll do better under him than under anyone else.

The McCain campaign used dirty tricks, claiming he was a socialist, with one hand egging the racists on, while with the other hand pretending to distance themselves. McCain probably isn't that racist, and he attempted to tamp down some of the more extreme stuff. But he certainly took what he could, and didn't bother to do much about it. Maverick my ass. Anyone who still thinks he's an independent man is deluded. He's only for his own glorification.

But that's in the past. We've got a long way to go. Civil unions for gays have been banned in at least 3 states and gay adoptions banned in Arkansas. Energy policy needs tackling, we've wasted 8 years to take the lead internationally. We seriously need national healthcare. We're the only developed nation without some form of national healthcare. We need fix so many things that have been broken or left untended for so long. Worried about Obama raising taxes? Shoulda thought about that before you cheered on two wars replete with war profiteering and watched our economy tank. Conservatives always trumpet personal responsibility, but they never want to take responsibility for the fallout from their bad ideas. Suck it up, boys.

We're on our way to something better, I hope. Get on board folks. Whatever comes, it's going to be interesting. And I'm finally proud to be an American again.

Now THAT's my generation

2008-10-21T04:34:00.003-04:00

Anyone else think being called Generation Y sucks? I'm definitely not Gen X, and not young enough for Millenial, so I guess I'm stuck in this generation with a crap name. Fortunately, one guy has a great suggestion, Generation Trail.

The criteria I'd set would be born 76-86, like Yglesias says, plus played Oregon Trail in elementary school. In addition, I'd say we're unique in that we're the generation to go through school with computers being around the whole time, but no Internet. I never used the Internet until a senior in high school, when I'd use my dad's email to write friends who'd graduated and gone off to college.

Any others?

Time to send money home

2008-10-09T06:15:00.001-04:00

101 yen to the dollar. Wow!

UPDATE: 99.9 yen! Holy schmoly. C'mon payday!

Just a thought

2008-09-20T22:08:00.002-04:00

For $700 billion, how many kids could have health insurance?

Ben's here!

2008-09-20T21:55:00.002-04:00

My brother got here Friday night from Washington. He was only back in the States a week or so, having just got back from the sandy wastes of Iraq. He's still vacuuming sand out of his craw, but he's in good shape and a lot bigger than I remember (although I still win in height - yay!). Weirdly enough, we weight the same, which tells me that if I can somehow turn my beer gut to muscle, I'll have an advantage.

We hit up Bincho Ohgiya, my favorite yakitori restaurant the first night, then played darts at the sports pub near my house. Ben beat me at darts and then celebrated by breaking the tips off one of them. boo.

Yesterday we went to Kamakura and did the normal thing, visiting two of the major shrines and temples before jet lag set in. Ironically, he stayed awake the whole train ride back while I napped. In the evening we had a drinking session, complete with lots of sashimi and variuos fried stuff.

Today there's a Brazilian festival on in the park north of my place, so we're heading up there. It looks like rain again today (we had a typhoon brush us Friday night, then last night another rainstorm), so our plans for heading to Harajuku and checking out the crazy people is gonna have to wait til next week.

A slight detour, by Tarp Lazer Palin

2008-09-13T07:10:00.004-04:00

Well, there's a lot going on. I've been back from Singapore for a couple weeks, broken up with my girlfriend, had a birthday that turned out alright after threatening to be a complete bummer. I'm now on a 3 day weekend drifting, not knowing at all what to do.

So instead of dealing with our problems, let's aviod them for 15 minutes and play the Sara Palin Baby Name Generator. You can see my name above. My friend Ana has the best name, as she's now "Skunk Grunt Palin," a name that only slightly bests her maiden name of Ana Roof.

Movies

2008-08-10T03:59:00.002-04:00

Last night I watched Hancock. It was an alright movie, especially since I only paid about $3 to get in, and this is at one of the premier theaters in Kuala Lumpur, in the mall attached to the Petronas Towers. The downside? The censoring of certain words. Now I see why it was so cheap. They cut out the words, either leaving you to lip read Will Smith's expletives, or they just skip the movie ahead, cutting out the word/phrase. It's not a huge detriment, especially since Hancock didn't have that many cuts (that I know of), but it's enough to jar you out of the experience and deter you from watching other movies at that cheap a price. I suppose if I were going to watch a G-rated film, it would be alright. But I was planning on seeing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and they'd probably have to cut out half the movie. So there go my plans of escaping the midday heat with a movie.

That and the DVD player at the guesthouse is busted, so no watching their giant library of pirated dvds.

Spa fish

2008-08-09T01:26:00.002-04:00

Meandering around Chinatown the other day, I got hit up by the touts selling massages. I usually blow them off, but one had a fish spa on offer, and for super-cheap compared to what it was going for in Tokyo. So for around $12, I got to sit in lukewarm water up to my knees and have hundreds of little fish come up and feast on my dead skin. It was a weird sensation, the fish are basically rasping the outer layer of skin off you. There were a couple really big fish that you could tell when they tried to take a bite, but otherwise, it felt like millions of tiny sand grains being rubbed on you, but all at a different pressure. I'll post a photo as soon as I find a good shot I can take. Might go back for another one today, since I saw one on offer for even cheaper, though the presentation wasn't as nice - basically you hang your feet in a plexiglass tank in a storefront window with passersby gawking.

Singapore to Malaysia

2008-08-06T01:16:00.002-04:00

So now I'm Kuala Lumpur. I had a few good days in Singapore. I visited the zoo, a definite must-see that somehow I didn't on my trip last year. The enclosures aren't really cages, except for a few necessary ones like the butterfly enclosure or the close-up reptile enclosure (where, oddly, the only reptile I saw was an iguana - but there were tamarinds everywhere). most of the animals are separated by a large moat, except for one area with windows so you can get up-close and personal with the lions and tigers. The orangutans had two enclosures that they could travel between via ropes high up over the visitors' heads.

Besides that, I also went to the movies in order to catch The Dark Knight, which came out on the 2nd in Japan. It cost me only S$9.50, a far cry from the 1400yen I'd pay in Japan. I did a bit of shopping, especially books. I'm going through Stephen King's epic Dark Tower series. I managed to find the first two at the Border's in Singapore. I tore through the first one, and managed to finish the 2nd on my first night in KL. Fortunately, I found the rest of the series at a bookstore in the mall near my guesthouse. I picked up #3 and #4, will have to get the remainder before I move on. It's going to be heavy carrying all those around. Hmm.

I'd been staying at my college friend Borna's house. She and her family just moved into a really nice house out in the 'burbs in Singapore. It's a bit of a trek into the city, but I'm not complaining. Especially when a cursory look for hotels turned up quite a few going for S$200/night. Her family is fantastic, especially her mother who made sure I was well-fed every morning before I headed off to wherever. Her dad I didn't see as much, but on the first morning we chatted in the kitchen as he stuffed me full of watermelon. Her younger brother I only spoke with briefly, and her boyfriend was down with a throat infection, which curbed his natural chattiness. Hopefully, I'll get to see more of them when I pass through again on my way out.

So yesterday I got up early, and headed off for the border to Malaysia. I'd meant to get a really early start, but got caught up searching for a pair of shorts that had vanished into the black hole of family laundry management. They turned up eventually, a good thing when you only have three pairs, one of which is dirty and the other doesn't quite fit right. That pair's headed for the trash heap before I leave.

Anyways, got to the border ahead of the rush, definitely a good thing, since I don't have fond memories of my last trip through the overland border crossing. I made it to the Johor Bharu bus terminal in time to catch the 11am bus up to KL. Traffic wasn't too bad, so we got in just past 4pm, giving me ample time to plow through the 2nd Dark Tower book.

I wandered out, got a kebap for an afternoon snack, and plopped myself down in the guesthouse lobby to get an early night. Well, that's what was supposed to happen. I ended up chatting with some of the other guests, including one Malaysian girl from the northern part, who was apartment-hunting while she started a new job. She showed us around the local bar scene, which was very useful because I had no idea that there were some good expat bars down a tiny, dirty alley beside our guesthouse. I'd have probably gone my whole time here without finding them otherwise. So we hit a couple places, then I wanted to have something other than meat and beer in my stomach, so we stopped at an Indian place for ayam tanduri (tandoori chicken) and garlic naan.

Today's a bit of browsing Chinatown and searching for a lens cleaning kit, since I've got a small smudge on my filter I need to get off before it ruins my photos. Tonight? Maybe fish & chips at the pub 'round the corner and a chat with the owner, seemed like a nice guy last night.

My night in Changi

2008-08-01T13:22:00.003-04:00

I've arrived in Singapore, and am currently deciding how I'm going to spend the night, until my friend Borna comes to get me. There's a decent place to crash out right here, but I've just got off the plane - I haven't gone anywhere to get my luggage yet. I need to do that before I can sleep, but I'm worried about getting stuck somewhere between immigration and customs where there won't be anyplace to sit. How fun. And I've got 8 minutes left on the terminal here, so I thought I'd post something real quick.

The flight was good - the staff are friendly and helpful, although the 2nd and last beer they brought me was Budweiser. I was hoping for more Tiger. I did get to catch up on my summer movies, I watched "Kung Fu Panda" and "Iron Man," both movies that have been out a while, I believe, but haven't arrived in Japan yet. I also watched "Leatherheads," the George Clooney movie. That man loves the '20s. That's all for this update, it's 2:15am and I need to find a sofa to lie down on.

Sitting, waiting, wishing...

2008-08-01T01:51:00.002-04:00

I'm trapped in Narita airport now. My folks wanted to get here early for their 3:30pm flight, so we rolled in a bit ahead and they just went through security. I ran into my friend Todd, who's flying back to Philly today, and chatted, but he's just gone too. I'm stuck because Singapore Airlines won't open checkin until 3.30pm for my 7pm flight. So I'm in this place for at least 5 hours, with only a few periodic, frantic bursts of running about as I realize I've left something or other and get screwed.

I'll arrive in Singapore at 1.15am local time, well after the trains and buses shut, so I'll have the joy of sleeping on a couch somewhere inside the restricted zone and hope nobody ganks my camera. Gosh, ain't flying fun?

Stabbing rampage

2008-07-29T02:26:00.003-04:00

Last (Monday) night, my parents and I went out to dinner in Hiratsuka near the station. I took them to a ramen shop I really like. On the way, we saw a bunch of fire engines race up to the station, and there were a ton of police at the koban.

Turns out, there was a stabbing rampage here in Hiratsuka around that time. It's the latest in a series of stabbing episodes that kicked off after one guy ran over a bunch of people in the Akihabara electric district, then got out and started stabbing the people who'd gone to help the victims. Seven people died in that, but fortunately, none of the seven men stabbed in Hiratsuka were seriously wounded. That's some crazy stuff.

My folks are coming

2008-07-22T05:45:00.002-04:00

Well, that's the theory, anyway. They were supposed to land at 1:30 this afternoon and be here by now, but it turns out their flight was delayed, and they won't touch down until 8pm. This puts a serious damper on their first day here, as they won't even reach Hiratsuka until almost midnight.

At a loss for what to do with myself today (I cleaned the apartment somewhat yesterday, but that motivation has gone out of me today), I rode my bike around town. The downside was that I forgot that it was really hot and sunny, and how that would affect my poor bare arms and shoulders, which are currently bright red and not too happy.

The Corporation

2008-07-14T10:02:00.002-04:00

I finally got around to watching "The Corporation", a documentary recommended to me by a coworker a few years ago. I expected it to be a diatribe against corporations and capitalism, simply that it was evil and we should do away with it. What I found instead was a serious look at the history behind corporations, and the "legal person" theory (you have the 14th Amendment, granting rights to slaves, to thank for that - along with hordes of corporate lawyers).

One of the more interesting characters in the film was a man called Ray Anderson, founder of a carpet company. In the mid-90s, he had an epiphany, after customers started asking about his company's environmental considerations. For people who would take the corporatist position on this, his story is important to note, especially considering he's managed to balance profits with social responsibility. In my opinion, the ethical decline the world has suffered is not due to atheism and lack of religion, but a blind adherence to the almighty dollar. This should give those genuflecting businessmen something to chew on.

The main thrust of the film is that corporations have one inherent evil, a drive for profits that gives them an incentive to ignore long-term benefits in place of short-term profits. The idea isn't that capitalism is bad, but that the way it's currently done - in the case of a corporation responsible to no one - is.

It also gives a good reason to stay away from milk in America. Unless you like bacteria-filled pus, that is. Ick. Glad Japan has the sense to limit rBGH.

My new toy

2008-07-14T08:11:00.002-04:00

It can't do Aut-exposure bracketing for HDR, but it oughta take some pretty photos.

Josh and Jenn came to visit

2008-07-04T04:40:00.002-04:00

I've been remiss in my writing, so let me say that my friend Josh and his wife Jenn came to visit last week. It was good to see someone from home finally show up here, it'd been more than 18 months since my last visitor. My apartment is rather small and not well-suited to accommodate visitors, nor is my roommate terribly keen on having people crash on our couch for a week (he bitches a lot). So it was a great stroke of luck that my friend Eric from Michigan had to go to western Japan for some business during that time, and graciously opened his apartment to them.

Anyways, hopefully I'll get around to posting the pics, but this weekend's the Tanabata festival, so I won't be in the house much.

Happy birthday America

2008-07-04T04:36:00.002-04:00

232 years old today, and your age didn't start showing until about 7 years ago...

Summer plan decided

2008-06-24T10:09:00.002-04:00

Well, I was thinking I'd hang around Japan, but with friends visiting now, my folks coming next month, my brother coming in September, and my good friend Miwa just now getting back from Thailand, I'm feeling left out from all the travel goodness. So I've got a flight booked to Singapore on August 1st, the day my parents leave. What I didn't realize is that it's upwards of a couple hundred bucks for a hotel room, and I wouldn't be arriving til about 2am. Thankfully, my college pal Borna came to the rescue and secured a bed for me in her parents' guest room. Score!

I'm not gonna hang around Singapore for 3 weeks, though, since my objective is to spend less money than I would futzing about in Japanland. So I'm thinking of boating over to Indonesia (mind the pirates!) and resting on the beach. I'm thinking about the Riau islands, though this might change depending on what info I can get about it. My idea is to stop off at the Border's in Singapore, load up on books, find a small island with a dive shop and a beach chair, and park my butt there for a while.

That's the plan, though my manic side might take over and I'll turn up in India with a hangover, a sore bum and a missing kidney.

My letter to Senator Obama

2008-06-21T07:38:00.000-04:00

What the hell, Senator Obama? I'm extremely disappointed in your support for the so-called 'compromise' on the FISA bill in H.R. 6304. There are times for compromise, and then there are times to stand firm. I've spent so much time defending you to friends and family, telling them you're the right man for the job, that you're interested in getting our country back on track after 8 years of abuse. And many of them had come around. These were Republicans and Libertarians who were going to vote for a Democrat, something they'd villified for so long, because of your statements on reaffirming our civil liberties.

And then this happens. You've soured untold numbers of people by this craven folding to 'compromise.' This is not a compromise, it's giving criminals immunity from prosecution. I expected better from you. So much for Change we can believe in.

If you want my vote in November, you're going to have to work hard to earn it. Because you've just lost yourself a ton of credit.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Eades

A question

2008-06-16T03:37:00.002-04:00

Is it good or bad if my biggest concern is whether to wear track pants because they're cooler, or jeans because they'll prevent children from poking their fingers up my butt?

Maybe it's human sacrifice

2008-06-15T01:07:00.002-04:00

There's some weird chanting coming from the house right by my balcony. It started around noon, when a friend of mine was over picking something up. He asked me what it was, and we couldn't figure it out. Eventually, we stood on the balcony and could hear it coming from that house. It sounded like that part from Indiana Jones, right before they tore the guy's heart out of his chest. Hope that's not our neighbors.

Derren Brown, Messiah

2008-06-03T10:19:00.005-04:00

Dunno if any of you have ever seen this guy, but he's a really talented British magician, and in one show, he goes around the US trying to convince 5 influential members of various kooky communities (including an evangelican preacher) that he's a legitimate practitioner of whatever they're pushing. In it, he claims to be psychic, be able to convert people to Christianity with a single touch (this one got me the most), can read dreams with a magical crystal-powered box, was abducted by aliens and can read people's medical history, and talk to the dead.

Brown's an adept magician, he uses these skills to manipulate people and situations to maneuver them into believing him. The first segment, on remote viewing, provided the most "WTF!? how did he do that?" moment, but the Christianity conversion was the most interesting. I for one, find it pleasurable to have someone touch me, or be near me, but it's nothing religious, I just enjoy human contact. One of my most memorable moments was watching a friend of mine -- Christina, I think -- draw a picture in a cafe in Spain. It was just that feeling of closeness to someone else, nothing more.

He may be a skilled entertainer, but I doubt everything he did was merely psychology. Here's a good video of him reading someone's mind whilst ballroom dancing. Cold reading is a skill I'd love to have, though I don't know that I could only use it for good. Here's a criticism of Derren Brown as well, decrying his claims (on another show) that he didn't use magic. The Youtube video is eight parts, so just look for the next one in the related videos section.

Immigration rant

2008-06-02T23:39:00.000-04:00

My visa expired last April. Yes, nearly two months ago. But more than two weeks before, I’d gone to the immigration office in Yokohama to renew my visa. I took the same information that my co-worker, Tracey, took when she went to do hers, a tax receipt for the past year and proof of current employment.

So I get there early, because if you don’t, you’re waiting in line for hours (my roommate waited an hour and a half when he went in the afternoon), and take my number, then go fill out my application, making sure to request the 3-year visa. I’m number 18, twelve people behind who’s being served now. I get up there, hand over all my documents, and the lady asks me for information on my previous job. Previous job? That was more than a year ago. But she still wants the info, and asks for two specific things, proof of employment at the previous job, and info that I’d paid taxes. Why they didn’t ask Tracey, you got me. But anyway, I said ok, they gave me an envelope to put the stuff in, and I head off. I email my old company a few days later, and get all the stuff mailed off around the 1st of April.

And then I wait. Tracey gets her notice to pick up her visa around the time our visas expire (by an odd coincidence, we have almost exactly the same expiry date), but I don’t get anything. I wait more, and by the end of April I’m wondering if my roommate hadn’t thrown it out with the daily mound of junk mail. At the beginning of May, I call the info line and ask what’s up. They say it’s probably just been held up, April’s their busy month, and to just sit tight.

Fast forward to May 23rd or so. I’m tearing my hair out, paranoid that I’ll get pulled over by the cops on my bicycle and arrested for having an expired visa (we get a stamp in our passports that allows us to remain legal while the visa’s being processed, but our foreigner registration card shows the original date) by an overzealous cop who won’t care if I claim I’ve got a legit stamp at home. And they can keep you locked up for a few weeks without having to file charges. And I check the mail and I find that glorious little postcard telling me to pick up my visa before May 30th.

Fortunately, I’m off the Monday before then due to the sports day held over the weekend, so I can go in. I get up early, about the same time as usual since it’s a longer haul to Yokohama than to work, and set off. I’m still groggy and the morning caffeine hasn’t kicked in, so I miss the station I was supposed to get off at. I switch trains, go back one stop, get off, and promptly go out of the wrong exit. And there’s no way back to the correct exit through the station, gotta cross the river over the little bridge with the ramp in the middle for bikes. As I’m walking down the stairs on the far side, I somehow miss and step half on the step, half on the air above the ramp and do a superman down the stairs. The slope was shallow, so there was no tumbling, but I managed to sprain my right ankle, one that has been weak for a while. And it hurt. Bad. I’ve never sprained it this badly before. It hurts like hell, but the only thing going through my mind is, I don’t wanna get deported, gotta get to immigration now. So I limp the 15 minutes (20 with a bad leg), go into the convenience store to buy the stamps. It’s $40 for the visa renewal, plus another $60 for the multiple re-entry permit (if you leave without one, your visa is automatically cancelled and you can only re-enter on a 90-day tourist visa – goodbye job). I limp my way up to the 5th floor and get in line. This line typically goes faster than the initial application line, so even though I’m twelfth, I get up to the front pretty quickly. The kind lady takes my stuff, puts it in a folder and gives me a waiting number. About 20 people ahead of me, but that’s not so bad. I sit down and crack open my book, trying to ignore bawling kid next to me and the pain and swelling going on in my foot, and try to tough it out. Eventually, my number gets called and I limp up to the counter. The guy shows me my passport, checks ID, then shows me my visa stamp. “Here’s your one-year visa,” he says. Wait – what? One year? I ask him, and he says something to the effect of, “Yeah, that’s what you had last time.” I try to explain that I had a 3-year visa, why didn’t I get another one, and you can see the wall go up. Either he doesn’t understand or he understands and could care less about explaining to me. I wonder how many foreigners he gets trying to argue their visa status each day. My throbbing ankle makes me completely unable to deal with any conflict, the soullessness of the atmosphere has sucked any combativeness out of me. I limp out of there, my reward for $100, a sprained ankle, and train fare to Yokohama? A one-year visa that I’ll have to do all over again next year.

This is the kicker. A three-year visa? Forty bucks. A one-year visa? Forty bucks. That multiple re-entry stamp? Good for as long as your visa. So Tracey, who’s in the same position as me, gets a three-year visa with a smile from Immigration. I get grilled on past employment and a dinky one-year visa, despite having lived here for 4 years, 3 of those on one visa stamp. I suppose I would understand and accept it if there were rhyme or reason to it, but there’s not. It’s completely arbitrary. I checked the little box that asks if you want a 1-year or 3-year visa, so why didn’t I get it? I’m not the only one, either. This has happened so many times. People who arrive around the same time will go in together to renew their visa, and one will walk out with a three-year, one gets a one-year, but both apply for a 3-year, and have the exact same work conditions.

It sounds like whining, and it is, but part of it is the fact that I will have to go spend another $100, plus 2 days taking the train to Yokohama, possibly missing work, just to do this all over again. Theoretically, if I do this again next year, and they give me the same damn one-year visa, I’ll spend $300 whereas someone else who gets the lucky strike only shells out $100. Like I said, if there were a method to this madness, I could accept it, even if I didn’t like it. But there’s nothing. No explanations, nothing. This sucks. And my ankle hurts.

Here's a haiku for you

2008-05-16T21:51:00.001-04:00

Ode to the Tsurugaoka Hachiman gingko

I was there last month
all those squirrels are gone I
wonder where they went

The Monon Trail dilemma

2008-05-08T10:09:00.000-04:00

The Senator from Delaware made a speech recently on the need for more mass transit, especially in the face of rising gas prices.

From Planetizen, I found this IBJ article about planners in Indy looking to add streetcars as a form of mass transit to relieve congestion. This is something I think every city needs to look into. I know lots of people back home would always bring up population density and how no one would use it, etc. And to look at the comments at the IBJ article, the same short-sighted view is on display. One reader questions why his taxes should pay for a line that only goes to Irvington, overlooking the simple fact that we can't build a full network immediately. Start with Irvington, then slowly add and build up.

I went to public meetings about this while I was at Purdue, the city was discussing building a line from Union Station out to Noblesville in order to relieve some of the congestion on I-465. It would have been a great idea had it worked, but people were up in arms about everything. About how they'd be inconvenienced waiting at RR crossings for the trains to pass. One couple stood up and actually made the argument that they'd bought a home along the rail corridor the city wanted to use in hopes that it would turn into a Monan Trail and up their property value. They were aghast that people would want to use an existing rail corridor for - get this - a railroad!

And this brings us to the Monon Trail. In all, it seems to be a very noble idea - build a greenway that cyclists, skaters and pedestrians can use, that connects various neighborhoods and will bring people together. I admit making use of this trail, albeit only 3 or 4 times in the time it has existed. Frankly, I think it should go, and a light rail service be put in place. Wikipedia claims that it's successful for its promotion of healthful activities such as walking and biking, and that it promotes local businesses along the trail. I'd beg to differ.

The climate of Indianapolis is not the most favorable. It changes frequently, from bright and sunny to sudden downpours with strong winds, neither of which is conducive to cycling or walking. In addition, the weather from about October to April is chilly, if not dangerously cold, while the summer months often find people hiding indoors from the scorching heat, something that a walk on a sun-beaten asphalt path wouldn't help. In addition, the Trail passes through some unsavory neighborhoods as it moves towards downtown. While that may change, it means that at the moment many people, primarily women, are afraid to go anywhere on the trail south of Broad Ripple, especially alone (this is based on conversations with several friends and hasn't been scientifically studied. Who knows, maybe all my friends are wusses).

I believe a light rail service that ran the length of the Trail would be far more useful to the city and beneficial to its residents. The trail extends for quite a long distance and passes through several central commercial areas. The city should put stops in at, say, downtown, the Indiana Fairgrounds, Broad Ripple, Nora, 116th Street by carmel, probably another one farther north, as well as one or two more in between downtown and Broad Ripple, which would connect several popular destinations, primarily downtown and Broad Ripple year-round and the Fairgrounds during the summer with the exploding populations of Fishers and Carmel. Doing so would revitalize the perrenially empty Nora area, as well as bolster the already popular destinations downtown and in Broad Ripple. Something like this should be done in conjunction with another line headed NE out to Noblesville, as well as another stretching to Zionsville. These would cover the parts of Indianapolis that I have extensive knowledge of, connecting popular residential and commercial areas in a bid to reduce congestion and parking space, as well as provide a safe alternative to driving. Such a system would be a boon to the pubs and clubs downtown, in Broad Ripple and in Castleton and would hopefully reduce drunk driving.

While this would mean the loss of a somewhat popular (Indiana Greenways claims a study has shown "thousands of users" but neglects to tell us if that's per day, week, month, year, or ever, which wouldn't mean very popular, methinks) exercise trail, I think we as Hoosiers need to question why we need a greenway separated from cars - a greenway that I have always needed a car to travel to so that I can make use of it. The city itself should be a greenway, more friendly to bikers and pedestrians, and designed in a way that benefits those who make use of more healthy, less space/energy-consuming modes of transportation. If the trains were designed to allow stowage of bicycles, these could be taken to the destination points, taken out and ridden around. In addition, bus lines could run out from the station along major roads. From Broad Ripple, for example, a bus running eastward could run to Castleton and beyond, which a westward-bound bus could follow the canal (another popular bike path) all the way to Butler University, connecting residential areas along the way. Tram lines like the ones featured in the IBJ article could also be used, although they move slower and would not be very efficient on the Monon itself. As well, transfer stations around I-465 could allow a loop train to connect various spokes of the wheel if a train could be made to run in between the two major lanes of traffic.

A side benefit would allow for fewer parking spaces and for certain areas to utilize parking lots and turn them into open-air malls that are more pedestrian-friendly could hold more businesses. One other thing that should be done is to redo zoning in areas around the station to allow for taller buildings with commercial street-level properties. This would allow for essential stores to be placed closer to larger amounts of people. Taking over the various big-box stores, razing them and their parking lots and building an apartment complex maybe three stories high with streetside grocery stores would certainly be an improvement to the urban blight we have going on now. And if you believe a person wouldn't want to live in a condo around Nora within walking distance to a train line that runs to the commercial center downtown as well as the party district of Broad Ripple, I've got a nice portfolio of subprimes you might be interested in. I'll even throw in a bridge to sweeten the deal.

So yeah, this a wild, incoherent rant, but it's one that needs to be ranted. I've lived in several cities now, and I definitely know the benefits and drawbacks (I lived next to one of the most heavily-travelled train lines - the 4am freight train wasn't fun) of public transport. But the reality is, not everyone can own a car. This would help poorer people to travel to work affordably, and allow others who are better off to be more efficient in their time. What do you do during your 45-min commute? Drive and get stressed? I could sleep, read a book, check out the pretty girl across the aisle from me, etc. Of course, you occasionally get the old drunk with horrible breath leaning on you, but the good things more than make up for it.

Indiana Greenways says that from 10th street to 96th is roughly 16km (well, they say it's 10 miles, but I'm going metric here, get used to it). From Hiratsuka to Tokyo is 50-60km, or roughly an hour with several stops. 16km would probably get you from here to Ofuna, or 20 minutes with three stops in between. Would you like be able to go from Broad Ripple to downtown in 20 minutes, without having to drive. That means no $50 taxicab back from the bar, and a whole heap of other hidden costs taken out. If there was a monthly pass system, that would mean a free ride all the way, making it an absolute steal.

The ways are out there, they just need to be seized. On this note, I'm off to bed. Let me know what you think if you manage to read this far.

Hey, I'm in Wikipedia

2008-05-05T22:25:00.000-04:00

I don't have my own entry yet, but it's a start.

Back from camping, with a souvenir sunburn

2008-05-05T09:22:00.002-04:00

I just got back in this evening from Nikko. Going wasn't bad, despite the smattering of rain on the way. It took quite a while, about four hours by train to Nikko station and then another 45 min or so by bus to the campsite, with a pause between the two to load up on groceries. This was the first time to go camping without a car to get me where I needed to go. It's very difficult to do 'car camping' when you don't have a vehicle. Other people drove, so they brought a couple crates of beer, but the four of us who came together had to get all the food and haul it there.

The camp was beautiful. I went camping there two years ago and had a great time, and this year was with many of the same people, though I think we had fewer than the previous time. We set up camp, played a game of ultimate frisbee, and set up a great campfire where we cooked a good deal of food. Yesterday was spent hiking partway around the lake, to a nice little beach, where we rested and had lunch. A couple of guys went for a dip, but they didn't last long in the mountain lake. It's up around 1200m elevation, we could still see snow in crevices on the mountains. I dipped my feet in, but nothing else. Sayaka made friends with a 9-year old in our group and they made sand sculptures of boobs, which I'm sure greatly entertained the families who went trekking past us on the way out.

After the hike, we wandered up the highway to the onsen. This one was definitely natural -- it had that eggy smell, and the water was milky and had a nice later of sulfurous sediment encrusting the spout. It was also searingly hot. I could only sit down in it just above my belly because it drove my sunburn mad, so when I got out and stood in front of the mirror everything below that sharp line was a bright pink. But it was relaxing, and the stroll along the waterfall just outside the onsen was beautiful.

The second night wasn't anywhere near as cold as the first night. Sayaka spent that night wearing all the layers she had and still shivering and complaining about the cold. She got up 5 or 6 times for I don't know what, though once was to buy a hot tea from the vending machine at the camp office -- I know because I knocked it over in our tent when I woke up. We made sure to rent a heavy blanket from the camp office for the second night, but it was still chilly the second night, though not like the first.

Our ride home was a huge pain. One reason we left so early to go to Nikko was because of the horrendous traffic jam that hits that area during Golden Week. We were lucky enough not to have any traffic going, but heading back was a nightmare. The bus didn't come for us once, so we had to wait for the next one, which headed down the mountainside in a hair-raising series of hairpin turns and the occasional monkey crossing the street. It then proceeded to get stuck in a long, snaking traffic jam all the way to the station, during which time it started raining. We got to the station only to find out all the express trains had been sold out, so we had to take a local train. It wasn't so bad as we were lucky enough to get a seat, whereas some of our friends who were in a hurry to get home had crammed themselves into an earlier train with (very little) standing room only.

We were waiting for the bus from about 1:15pm, and I didn't roll in to Hiratsuka until about 7:45pm. That is a long trip. I'm exhausted and my insides are punishing me for the enormous quantity of alcohol consumed with an almost entirely carnivorous diet for three days. Oh, not to mention, I brought my camera, but forgot to put the memory card in, so all the photos I got were taken with Sayaka's camera and will be a little tardy in getting posted.

4-day weekend, woohoo!

2008-05-02T04:11:00.002-04:00

This week is Golden Week, and on my extra-long weekend, I'm headed off to Nikko for some camping. I went a couple years ago as well and had a good time. Sayaka and I went shopping and are now the proud owners of a tent and a soft-sided cooler.

We're not driving this year, there was a shortage of people with cars, so we have to take the train. Carrying all of our gear will be interesting. We're not travelling alone, we'll meet up with a few friends on the way, and things should be easier as we'll buy stuff at the supermarket near Nikko station, so carrying stuff shouldn't be too tough. But we're going during one of the busiest times of the year, and since everyone and their brother is going camping up there, my guess is that the market will be sold out. I'm hoping to be proved wrong. Otherwise, we'll be up a creek.

Tonight I have a welcome party for new teachers, and then I've gotta get up before 6am to get the train. Ick.

Caught up

2008-04-23T02:01:00.001-04:00

Now that I’m more or less caught up with spring break, I can focus on other things. This year isn’t too bad. I’ve got one of the teachers asking for me to see if there’s an aikido place around Hiratsuka where I could learn. Hopefully enrolling in a course where I’d have to go would make me more likely to go. Rather than dithering about going to the gym because it’s raining and I hate going out in the rain because I can’t ride my bike. I’ve also taken on a couple of things to do in the evening. It’s good money, but I sometimes wonder if I’m stretching myself too thin. Fortunately, they’re not too frequent, so they shouldn’t eat up too much of my free time.

Last weekend Sayaka and I went to Kamakura for the Kamakura Festival. I think the festival is supposed to commemorate one of the rulers from back when Kamakura was the capital of Japan, but the modern festival didn’t get started until the 50s or 60s, probably as a way of drawing tourists, particularly foreigners, down from Tokyo and up from Yokosuka (where the US Navy base is). It certainly worked – I haven’t seen that many foreigners since I met Aaron’s friends and went walking around Akihabara and Shibuya. If I start becoming surprised at seeing westerners, does that make me more Japanese? I hope not.

Anyways, the main reason I went to this festival was to see the yabusame. I’ve mentioned it before, it’s basically Japanese horseback archery. The horses come charging down a path and the archers shoot at targets that, realistically, aren’t that far away. I don’t think ancient Japanese warriors hung around waiting for the archers to get three meters away just so they could get plugged by an arrow. They probably had pikes and things longer than that, come to think about it. It seems to be more ceremonial than anything. The targets are all trussed up with flowers hanging off the sides. It also makes sense to have a closer target, considering the huge crowds of people, as well as the large proportion of foreigners and their propensity for ignoring Japanese rules and wandering about where they don’t belong, like behind the target range.

The horses were fun to watch, and the riders, one in particular, urged their horses on really fast as they flew down the course. We were next to the second target, so we had a good view of them drawing the bow, but we couldn’t see around the barrier to see if they actually hit the target. From what I gathered, only one person missed. It’s pretty impressive that they did so well, especially in comparison to how I’d fare (I can’t even ride a horse), although with targets that close…

Afterwards, we found a little sausage shop and got a couple sausages and a really good Kamakura beer.

The new school year

2008-04-23T01:33:00.001-04:00

We’re now into the second week of the school year. In previous years, at the other school system, I was moved around quite often, and had to visit four or five schools for a week or two at a time - and every six months, that set of schools changed. All this meant that I never really got to know the students very well, or see their progress in English, or just in general. In my second year there, I was moved back to one school that I’d taught at at the beginning of my first year. It was fun to see how the students had changed, and it was nice that some of them even remembered who I was.

At my current schools, I rotate between the same two elementary and two junior high schools. After teaching the sixth graders in elementary, who were acting like big shots over there, and seeing them as first-years in junior high, is rather humorous. They’re so meek and quiet now. It seems like the third-years have gotten bigger somehow, over the three-week spring vacation.

Adding to the mix, some teachers have changed schools. We have new teachers coming in to replace retiring ones, as well as some teachers who’ve reached their mandatory limit for teaching at one school (I think it’s nine years), and have been reassigned to the other school. So the vice principal at one junior high school became the principal at the other, both of the elementary principals moved, and nobody told me, so I nearly ran down one of the new principals, this tiny lady, who was making tea when I was trying to find some class materials. Just another day, I suppose.

Visit to Nagoya and Kani

2008-04-21T20:29:00.002-04:00

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, so some recaps. I went to visit Ana and Damien in their new home in Kani City, in Gifu Prefecture at the end of March. It was good to see old friends again, and especially interesting to see another part of Japan. I’d pretty much assumed all of Japan looked more or less like Hiratsuka, with everything centered around a train station, and getting less dense the farther away you got. Kani’s not like that. There are two train stations, right next to one another, but they’re not near the center of the city. Really, Kani doesn’t seem to have any really defined center. There’s an older section, with narrow roads and old wooden buildings that probably was Kani back in the day, but the busiest places seemed to be the shopping centers located far away from the historic area.

Getting around by car was a unique change of pace. I rode in a car there more than I have in the past year in Hiratsuka. Damien commented that one reason he wanted to come to Japan was to escape having to drive everywhere. Now he drives 5 days a week to his schools. We drove out to a mountain to do some hiking and happened across a large group of mostly older Japanese folks, all of them out to view these little purple flowers that covered only a small area of the northern side of the hill. It was really odd since we’d rather expected it to be quiet and empty, only to be directed by people directing traffic viewing for small, purple flowers.

As far as sightseeing goes, we went to Inuyama Castle, the first time Ana had been on a train since she’d come to Japan. Inuyama is one of four or so original castles. All of the others had been burned down or bombed in the war and are concrete reproductions. Outside, you can’t really tell, but inside the difference is striking. Odawara Castle, near where I live, is a reproduction, and the interior is nice and wide, easy to access, with nice views from the windows. Inuyama feels old. Upon entering, the first thing you have to do is climb up a set of narrow, incredibly steep stairs into a confining room with nothing in it except another set of the same stairs leading to the castle. I don’t know the real purpose, but I’d guess it would be difficult for heavy, armored attackers to enter and move up the stairs. But my understanding is that Japanese castles were mainly for shows of power and keeping treasure and arms, so I’m not really sure.

The grounds of Inuyama are pretty, the castle’s perched on a hill over a river, giving you a fantastic view of the surrounding area. A good military vantage point, I suppose. Walking back we saw what I think is probably the prettiest tree I’ve ever seen. It was a cherry tree in full bloom in the garden of a little temple. It’s called shidarezakura, a kind of weeping-willow cherry tree.

While that was a beautiful tree, Inuyama has nothing on the grounds of Nagoya Castle. One of the guys in an English group I go to occasionally got his sister-in-law to show us around Nagoya. She took us on a walking tour to the castle. After walking a bit from the bustling station area, we walked about a block off the main thoroughfare and found a bunch of Meiji-era buildings and little, worn shrines. This area was a shopkeepers district back in the day. Coming upon the castle, it looks like it’s just a nice, peaceful pedestrian park, but once you get in the gates, you see the castle set back, peeking out through myriad cherry trees. That had to be one of the largest groupings of cherry trees I’ve seen, right up there with the famous Ueno Park area of Tokyo. One of the curious features was the moat. There wasn’t any water, it had long been drained and was covered with grass. The weird part was the deer in it. There was no visible way out, nor any noticeable water source or food, besides the Japanese tourists for whom feeding wild animals ranks up there as a pastime with baseball and eating anything they can put in their mouths.

Most of the castle and its gate towers were reconstructions, the originals were destroyed by Allied bombs. They did a remarkable job on the reconstruction, and the interior of the castle, while not very authentic, made a better museum than Inuyama did.

After the castle we headed to another random open-air mall, but a beautiful one with a roof that was essentially a giant glass oval with a pool on top. We had a coffee underneath it, then took the elevator up and watched the sun set. It wasn’t very high, but afforded us a good view of downtown and the taller landmarks nearby. It seems every major Japanese city has a large, orange and white radio tower modeled after the Eiffel Tower. Tokyo’s is the most famous, but Sapporo has one, as does Nagoya, even Hiratsuka has a smaller, gray version perched on top of Shonandaira mountain, that bizarre lump that I have to ride around to get to my schools every day.

After my friend, Toshiko left, the three of us had some greasy izakaya food and lots of beer and sake, a must whenever you’re in the party district of a city.

Meguri Max!

2008-04-04T03:27:00.002-04:00

Well, I've got some things to write about my spring vacation, but I'm still recovering and exhausted, so I don't feel like writing much. Instead, I'll show you a bizarre Japanese game. Here's the game's own explanation:

I'm the Mekuri Master, the Skirt-Flip King. The name isn't their idea... It's mine. I'm a man who was born to lift skirts. You think any so-called "rules" are gonna stop me? When classes get out, I race through the corridors like a fearsome wind, flipping, flipping, flipping up girls' skirts and letting the whole world know that I am the Mekuri Master!

Basically, you're some pervert running through a school hall flipping girls skirts. It's harder than it sounds (oh, I kill me!). You can even select the type of panties the girls have. For those of you unwilling to play, here's a video for ya:

(from Rock, Paper, Scissors, video by GameTrailers)

Off to Gifu tomorrow

2008-03-26T04:52:00.002-04:00

That's the plan anyway. I've got my tickets, and a bunch of books I'm going to offload onto Ana and Damien. I've also got some other things, but since they read this blog, I'm not gonna say what they are. But it's gonna be fun!

Today was a lazy day. After going to bed way too late last night, I puttered around the house, walked to the place I'd left my bike last night (it decided to pour down suddenly), and went to the internet cafe to print some things off. The weather's warmed up recently, and the cherry blossoms picked today to come out, which is really lucky because usually one good rain ruins them all. Looks like I'll be doing my hanami thing in Gifu prefecture this year.

Spring vacation

2008-03-23T09:56:00.002-04:00

Friday was the last day of the school year, at least for me. In the town I work for, there is a special school for troubled kids. I'm not sure if it's because they have family problems, or behavioral problems of the kids themselves - probably a combination of the two - but the students live there. There aren't many, only about 15 or 20 students, and nearly as many teachers there. Tracey and I go only very occasionally, Friday was the 3rd time for us. The last two times we played soccer and visited the festival held on the school grounds, but this time we went to Enoshima Aquarium in Fujisawa city.

It's fairly small, but pretty good for one not in a huge city. A few weeks ago I went to Hakkejima Sea Paradise, and while Enoshima lacks a ginormous whale tank with beluga whales and roller coaster rides, they do well with what they've got. The construction is really impressive, there's a giant central tank full of schooling fish, stingrays and various other fishes. The entrance is on the 2nd floor and winds around the central tank, giving you small glimpses into it while showing various aquatic ecosystems around Japan, then finally opens up into a giant glass wall that shows the whole tank. It's pretty breathtaking for a town of 400k people.

So we went with the kids and got in free (teachers get free entrance, yay!), then ran all the way to the other side for the dolphin show. After that was a more leisurely walk back around the aquarium and then hanging out at the beach right next to the aquarium. That part was still rather cold and windy.

And that finished my last day of school, how tough. But it's not all fun and games yet. Tomorrow I've gotta go to the immigration office in Yokohama and suffer through the visa renewal process. After, I'll meet Sayaka for lunch and walk around Chinatown, though it's supposed to rain, which sucks.

Future plans are going to visit Ana and Damien on the 27th for the rest of March. I can't wait to see them again, it'll be so strange to hang out in Japan again. Crazy. Right after I get back, I'm going to meet a friend of my friend Aaron, Drew, and his wife who will be visiting Japan. I'm going to take them up to Tokyo and show them around Akihabara, maybe go to a maid cafe, and then have dinner and drinks somewhere. Probably Shibuya. But I'm gonna have to ask around where the good places are because my idea of exotic up there is going to this great English pub and having a bunch of specialty brews.

I'll have some days off at the start of April, school won't get going again until after the 7th, so I was thinking about doing a bike trip. I wanted to ride out to see Ana and Dam-o, but 300km is too far to ride in such a short time. Maybe I'll try to ride halfway, there's a famous castle about that distance. Three days oughta do it.

Time to move the money

2008-03-18T07:33:00.002-04:00

Looks like the dollar's down to 96 yen. About a year after I came here, it reached a high of around 122 yen/dollar. Amazing. Note to self: next time you go abroad, do it in the middle of the Republican's term, and send money home all the time they manage to tank the economy.

"I Am Legend" Alternate Ending

2008-03-07T06:21:00.002-05:00

I saw this movie a month or two ago. After the movie, my friends and I were discussing the ending and things we didn't like about it. I haven't read the book yet, I'm waiting on my roommate to relinquish the book so I can give it a go.

Evidently there's an alternate ending. It's not much better, it doesn't quite mesh with the book's theme, but it's better than the original. The link has some interesting theories on why this ending wasn't used, though I'm not sure I agree with them. Either way, the alternate comes out better.

(Tip: if you haven't seen the movie, go watch it first)

Speaking of seafood

2008-03-03T09:12:00.004-05:00

Monday's lunch was interesting. I wandered back to the teachers' room after 4th period to get a drink and wait for the kids to come get me for lunch. At the elementary schools, I eat lunch with one of the classes of the grade I teach that day, so they can pepper me with the same questions about how tall I am, if I'm married, or when my birthday is. So I walk into the room and some of the teachers are putting food onto trays for the teachers to eat in the staff room, and one of them is plucking these brown fried fillets and plopping them into a dish. I asked her what they were, and she replied, "kujira," or whale.

Yum.

Actually, when I tried it at lunch, it wasn't all that bad, although it was cold and the congealed grease made it not terribly appetizing. Most of the kids didn't even seem to be aware of what they were eating. The 12-year-old boy next to me said it was fish, and when I asked if it might not be whale he said, "tabun." Maybe. Then he shrugged and downed the rest of it. The taste wasn't that bad. I have to say it wasn't exactly appealing, but it wasn't any worse than cold KFC that had been left in the fridge. But I took a couple bites and pushed it off to one side to finish my mochi rice cakes.

This was my first experience with whale, although it can be found at several restaurants. One of my favorite yakitori shops offers whale bacon, something I've never gotten up the courage to eat.

Japan has a long history of whaling. It started out as a nutritional supplement for the Ainu (a different race of people that were pushed into the north of Hokkaido and were killed off or assimilated), kind of like the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, though without a religious tradition behind it. After WWII, when food - particularly protein - was extremely scarce, the US encouraged Japan to turn to whaling for its protein needs. After Japan's rapid growth, it didn't really need it, but the fleet was still sent out as the owners were/are politically connected and receive huge subsidies. Nowadays, most people don't eat it - those who do do it as a sort of nostalgia for their childhood when it was widely served in school lunches. All that excess whale that's caught is typically turned into pet food here, a very sad ending that could easily be replaced by soy products - lord knows they eat enough soy here.

Blue-eyed Boy

2008-02-26T08:16:00.002-05:00

This is pretty cool. Blue eyes are really new in our genetic history, just 6-10,000 years old. We can be traced back to a single genetic mutation that turned off the brown eyes that had heretofore been all humans had ever known. According to the article, all other eye colors, from brown to green, can be attributed to the amount of melanin in the iris, but only us lucky blue-eyes have an absolute lack of melanin there. I guess that's why albinos have blue eyes as well. Funny that one genetic switch was able to change our eyes but not our skin or hair levels.

(from Long Now)

Weekend ski trip

2008-02-23T20:14:00.002-05:00

I got back last night from an overnight ski trip. It's a pretty interesting way of doing things.

Sayaka and I caught the 10pm shinkansen from Tokyo north up towards Niigata to Echgo Yuzawa, a little resort town full of hot springs and ski slopes. We had to exit the train at Echigo Yuzawa and wait a bit for the shuttle bus to pick us up. They didn't list what time the train left that we were supposed to board, and the information guys told us that we had about 3 minutes to board a train going that direction, so we jumped aboard the wrong train, but at least going in the right direction.

The shuttle bus took us to the Gala resort spa. This is the cool part. The building where the spa is also has the ski rental shop, the gondola up to the ski slopes, and a shinkansen station for the trip back. Talk about all-inclusive. So we went to the onsen in the spa and slept in the relaxation room there. Typically, the room's are nicely-lit with tatami floors and soothing music. Everything that makes relaxing easier. But this one was hard carpeting and fluorescent lights, and I forgot my sleeping bag. It made for a rather hard night's sleep.

And from here on out, everything kinda went downhill. We woke up in the morning to an announcement that the gondola was closed due to high winds, but our lift pass would be tradeable at another resort. I had to rent my skis at the first place, though, and haul them onto the bus for 20 minutes to the other resort. That one wasn't so bad, but it was pretty crowded.

One cool thing was that at the very highest lift, there was a small restaurant serving Okinawan food, incongruously enough. But there was also a stand outside selling beer and cocktails, with several young people sitting around sipping away. Thirsty? Just grab a beer, chug it down, then head down that black diamond slope. No problem.

This probably explains the most annoying part of the day, every goddamn snowboarder's penchant for parking themselves in the middle of the slope, just sitting there, sometimes in twos and threes. It's not all that uncommon, actually.

If you go to the beach here in the summer, you'll see surfers bobbing up and down in large groups way out. Every now and then one of them will halfheartedly try to get a wave, but most of the time they're just out there bobbing. But they're surfers - that's their hobby. Evidently, those same bastards are snowboarders in the winter.

Our perfectly-laid plans of hitting the slopes early ruined, we didn't get out til about 10am, and we had to catch the 3pm shuttle back to the first place so I could return my skis without a penalty. We'd only been out til about noon, with the weather going from just above freezing with beautiful clear skies and awesome views, to threatening clouds on the horizon, to lots of snow coming down and visibility reduced to not very much. It was tough to tell where the edges of the slopes were, especially if there were no trees marking the places you obviously shouldn't be skiing on. But at least other skiers were visible and you could follow them down or at least dodge the idiots blocking half the slope. We decided to wait it out, in the restaurant at the top of the mountain, but after a couple hours the the wind was blowing harder, picking up the bits of ice on the ground and slamming them into your face. Not the best conditions. After a few times down where I nearly hit or got hit by several skiers, we decided to pack it in.

We actually snuck aboard an earlier shinkansen and headed back. The weather was so bad it delayed all the trains, so we ended up arriving back in Tokyo at the time out normal train would've made it back anyway. The train ride was alright, between sleeping and listening to all the TEDtalks I'd loaded onto my iPod.

February is sick month

2008-02-18T06:40:00.002-05:00

Just as well that I cut out the booze this month, I'm not on antibiotics. And not for that, thank you very much. February is about the time the Japanese cedars (I believe) release their pollen. It's similar to what happens in Indiana when the cottentails send out their little minions of annoyance: clogged/runny nose and itchy eyes. Yes, folks, allergy season in Japan is in February.

Despite taking meds, I get sick. I think it has to do with not having heating in my bedroom, besides a simple little 2-bar space heater that is costly to leave on all night, not to mention incredibly dangerous. I think the cold air combined with the allergies gives me a sinus infection. I was looking for my doctor's card today (I've sense gained a third one since the one I went to last year in Hiratsuka is closed Mondays) and they were all issued in February of each preceding year. Except the first year, because that year I decided to tough it out, which turned out to be an incredibly bad idea. How bad? Like shivering, delirious, crouched in a hot shower kind of bad. I decided to forgo that, cancelled my tutoring lessons for this evening ($70 gone) and shelled out $50 to see the doc.

I tried out a new place, one Tracey recommended, though it turned out to be a children's doctor (dunno why they treated Tracey). Those people recommended another one around the corner, with a kindly old doctor who spoke about two words of English and a nurse who showed pretty much everybody in the waiting room how I'd written my address in kanji.

So now I'm at home with a ton of kleenex and having drunk about a gallon of tea, and my damn heater won't turn on for some reason. Hopefully an early night and the antibiotics will get me set for tomorrow. Today's lessons with 6-year olds was hell.

On the wagon - kinda

2008-02-16T02:13:00.003-05:00

One of the running jokes among foreigners here is the amount of alcohol we consume. Access is incredibly easy - nearly every convenience store sells booze (though some don't - I've never understood why those two or three individual stores in particular don't, they aren't even the same chain), it's available at train stations for hardworking salarymen to pick one up on the long train ride home, vending machines all over the place. Also, there's not many activities here that require total sobriety to do (besides work, and even then not for some) because I know only two or three people who drive a car/motorbike, and even then that's just to work, afterwards they're out at the bars.

Working for the now-defunct NOVA, the school ran 7 days a week, so teachers' days off were staggered, so it was always someone's Friday, plus there was always a reason to have a party - someone had just arrived, someone was leaving, someone's birthday was coming up, or someone's roommate's co-worker was doing one of those three things and we tagged along.

When I moved to the junior high schools, I lost a lot of those contacts, for better and for worse, but one of the guys who'd changed jobs with me, my good friend Julian, was a big fan of casual drinking, so we'd finish work around 3:30 or 4 and head back to Hiratsuka, grab a couple of cans in the convinience store and hang out in the city park for an hour or so if the weather was nice. It was a good way to spend an afternoon, we did it quite often.

Well, as time goes by, it just becomes one of those things, part of the culture. It's not just foreigners, the Japanese are the same way, especially older working men. It can be a lot of fun, but after a while, you find yourself drinking 5 or 6 days out of the week. Not getting smashed, but a can or two to relax after work.

So I decided February would be my no alcohol month. I didn't plan it very well, as I had a friend leaving at the beginning of the month, and another good friend's birthday party tonight. So this month has become my "drink only three nights" month. Though I've come down with a bad case of allergies/sinus infection, so tonight will be mostly booze-free as well. I thought initially it might be why I wasn't sleeping very well at night and not feeling so good during the day. Well, that's been proved wrong as I've felt exactly the same, and even managed to get sick this week. So much for that idea.

Breaking news: January's cold

2008-01-21T19:29:00.000-05:00

Bet you didn't know that, huh?

Most of the year, being outside may not be the most pleasant thing in the world, but it's bearable. The heat won't kill you, and you won't be a popscicle in the winter. Well, during most of it. This week's turning out to be a pretty frigid one, especially in the morning. Not too cold, it doesn't get much below freezing around here, but since people here are outside a lot more than Indiana, you feel it. This morning was the first day of real ice on the ground, remnants of the freezing rain that hit late last night. The sun had managed to warm up the roads enough that where the cars drive was totally dry, but it was still a bit damp, though not frozen, on the sides where I ride. The big problem is riding around the north side of the mountain just west of my town, where the low sun's blocked for a large part of a winter's day. It's not hard to just ride straight and hope you don't slip and fall under a tire, the dangerous part is once you've got up the hill and are heading down the other side, because you run the risk of hitting a patch and either falling - with or without a car riding your tail - or not being able to turn and running off the road into something: an onion field or a concrete pole.

While it's a cold ride to and from the schools, it's nice to be able to jump in a hot shower and thaw out. That is, if your hot water works, which ours hasn't. The way I've been showering for the past month and change is to fill up the tub with the not-even-lukewarm water, turn on the bath heater, wait for it to get reasonably warm then use a small bucket to pour water over your head and do the bathing thing. Afterwards, you jump in the bath and get nice and sleepy-warm. That's the only nice part about it. Obviously, this isn't all that conducive to rapid showering, so if I'm running behind, there's little-to-no chance of getting out the door on time.

All that changed yesterday. My friend Miwa, who'd been helping me deal with the landlord (he still hasn't replaced the stove that the gas company said was dangerous to use last JUNE), has been too busy to really help out, so Sayaka rode to the rescue. I don't know what she said, but the real estate agent who's been the mediator (maybe because the landlord lives in Yokohama, but no one I know has had this many degrees of separation), and a bit of a dick, came by last week, mucked about with it, and said he thought something was broken, and called the gas company to have them come out to check the water heater. The guy came by yesterday and after 15 minutes replaced one little part, and we're back in business.

I don't know if I should be happy or really frustrated. Happy because it's fixed, or frustrated because the real estate guy dragged his feet every step of the way. I told him back in July about the gas stove and the hot water not working right. Because I was gone in August, he didn't make it out til September to check things, but I wasn't there, so my roommate, whose interest in things that don't directly affect him at that moment rates about 0, didn't really tell them anything. The guy says they'll get a new gas stove, and did nothing about the water. Well, come winter, hot water doesn't work, and they're "still waiting" for the new stove to come. Still waiting on the gas stove, too.

New Year, Same Old Thing

2008-01-14T05:41:00.000-05:00

I'm ready for a change. I don't know what it is, maybe something biological, but after doing the same-old same-old, I get all antsy in the pantsy and start yearning for something different. It's not that things are bad, just a sense of unease that I've been feeling as of late.

It's not that things aren't going well - I had a great winter holiday. Sayaka and I went skiing in Hokkaido for a few days, then spent the New Year first at the shrine by my house, then met friends and talked, drank, and danced. 2008 has started off really well for me: I got a solid score on my GREs, which is the first baby step towards grad school.

I'm back at work, though the first two weeks are short so I can sort of ease my way back into the mix.

I guess the biggest thing for me is trying for grad school. The hardest thing I think will be that the schools I'm looking at want you to have a paper published already. That's fine if you're a college student and can talk to your professor about doing something, but if you've already graduated, then it's a bit difficult to write a paper, especially the necessary access to other works and research so you can develop your hypothesis without trying to reinvent the wheel. Spending lots of time creating your own study and writing it, only to find out it's been done to death already, doesn't make it likely you'd get your paper published at all. Yay. I got a lot of work cut out for me.

Batmobile State University

2007-12-15T19:23:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, I'm looking at graduate schools to apply to, though it won't be until the fall of 2009. Right now, it's looking like U of Wisconsin or one of the UCs. My grandmother's worried about me going to California, what with everyone there being hippies, so I found an alternative. I'm looking at a BA of Transhumanist Philosophy with minors in Ninjutsu and Socks.

Visiting the family

2007-12-08T03:24:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday I headed to Yokohama to spend the day with Sayaka in her natural habitat - that of outer Yokohama. I got to see her house and meet her dog, an ancient little Pekingese named Dairi, or "Big Power." As a gift, I used a recipe sent to my by my aunt Kathy for buckeyes. Basically, I've discovered the recipe for reese's peanut butter cups, or an approximation anyway. It took rather longer than I'd hoped to make them, but I was able to make about 4 dozen sizable peanut butter balls and dip them in chocolate. They weren't salty, but I didn't have Chef's recipe on hand.

The Kosuges loved them, and as a thank you, her mom gave me the tupperware back with a couple apples, a pack of dried udon noodles and a package of dried squid. I think that one's for my folks. Sayaka's house is typically Japanese - more vertical than horizontal. It's footprint is probably the same as my apartment, or less, maybe 50 square meters, but it's three stories. And immaculately kept. Sayaka must think I live in a pigsty when she comes to my place.

Her sister and brother-in-law live about a block and a half away, so we wandered over there and partook in some Wii Sports. I got my butt kicked by her in-law, Toshi, at tennis, only to narrowly beat Sayaka at both tennis and bowling. I'll have to let her win next time, I guess.

In the evening, her folks took us all out for yakiniku, at a great restaurant. They're big fans of the raw beef liver. Me? Not so much.

J's Book Report: "First into Nagasaki"

2007-12-06T08:19:00.000-05:00

I just finished a really good book loaned to me by my roommate. It's called "First Into Nagasaki," by George Weller. Basically, it's a bunch of news reports written by Weller, who was, literally, the first free Westerner to enter Nagasaki after the 2nd atomic bomb was dropped. The thing about these reports is that they were never published - General MacArthur had them all censored before they left Japan. Weller's son discovered them, half molding, in a box of his father's documents a few years ago.

I was expecting more of a book documenting the effects of the bomb on the city and its inhabitants. What I ended up with were essentially news reports - short stories and essays about the bomb, as well as a ton of statements from surviving POWs - American, British and Australian. The most disturbing part was reading the accounts of the 'hell ships.' These were ships used by the Japanese to transport Allied POWs, often unmarked by Red Cross or any other signifier, so some of them were attacked by Allied aircraft and sunk. The account discusses the depravities undertaken by the POWs, who were stuffed into the holds in such numbers that many asphyxiated or went insane.

One of the more interesting accounts was by a group of American prisoners who were directly beneath the blast, yet managed to survive by hiding in a shallow trench when the plane flew overhead. You have to wonder what people would've said had they known that 'the Bomb' had been dropped on their own countrymen.

Another interesting idea that can be gleaned from the book is the capacity for barbarism in the human soul. A lot of the prisoners were quoted as saying the Americans should drop more bombs just to clean up these 'animals,' as the Japanese were called. A rather understandable sentiment from someone who survived the Bataan death march and 2 1/2 years as slave labor in a deathtrap coal mine. But what strikes me is seeing the Japanese of today, and thinking how unlike the people I've met the Japanese of sixty years ago seem. It just goes to show that you, I or any other person is capable of the things done by the Japanese during WWII. "There, but for the grace of God, go I," and all that. It's only the rule of law and the mores of our society that prevent this, somehting that should be kept in mind when people try to tell you, 'waterboarding isn't torture.' It sure as hell is. The American POWs underwent it, as did they stress positions and being placed in rooms with vast temperature swings. They also suffered a million other atrocities, depths we have yet to plumb - but if a stand isn't taken here, I don't think it will take long for Americans' sense of decency to break down.

The book does an amazing job of recounting the Japanese response, essentially unchanged from now - "Oh, pity us poor Japanese, upon who was visited this most horrific of atrocities for no reason, none at all. What, war? I didn't see any war around here, did you?" Anyways, that's about all I'm going to rant about it. It's well worth your while to read about the semi-forgotten (at least in the American mind) other half of WWII.

(edited for title)

I'm special

2007-11-17T19:21:00.000-05:00

Via Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic, the NYT has a report on the commonality of surnames in the US released by the Census Bureau. In addition to discussing the dramatic rise in Hispanic surnames from the 1990 census, they have a field you can use to look up your own surname. 'Eades' didn't make it into the top 5,000, but the alternate 'Eads' make 3682, up from 4803 in the 1990 census. 'Eades' turns out to be ranked #6,396 in between 'Shaner' and 'Ribeiro'.

The whole list can be found in an Excel document here (ZIP file). Incidentally, 'Featherson' is the
least common, coming in at #65,536. Sayaka's last name, 'Kosuge' (小菅), isn't even on there.

The return of Julian

2007-11-13T08:42:00.000-05:00

My good friend from Manchester, Julian, came back for a 2-week visit with his girlfriend, and he graced his humble old stomping ground Hiratsuka with a couple of passes through the drinking establishments with yours truly.

His first time out, last Thursday, ended in typical (read: bad) form for any night out drinking - three of us slumped in a karaoke booth wailing away at hair metal music until 2:30am, with a 6:30am alarm to get to work.

Friday saw me somewhat loopy and extremely exhausted doing quiz games with 15-year-olds, and getting to bed early so I could be in some semblance of shape for the big meet-up on Saturday night.

Saturday saw the whole gang getting back together, complete with all available SO's and heading out to the nearest cheap izakaya. After that, it was a run to ye olde bar Sad Cafe, a place where Ju left a large portion of each month's salary, and then back to the old, back-alley karaoke bar. This place is really dodgy, in the more-or-less red-light district and right next to a cheap, seedy-looking love hotel. Utandamura, baby! I managed to hold it together that night, Sayaka and I winding down around 3:30am while the karaoke raged on.

It was good to see Ju again, he's always the life of whatever party you invite him to. He might end up back here, but not teaching English. I think he does enjoy his current job as a tree surgeon (basically a sap who climbs 150ft into the air and lops of tree limbs while trying not to lose any of his own). He doesn't seem to be getting much intellectual stimulation, not surprising considering his co-workers being rural yokels whose idea of a holiday is driving to the next town over and drinking. I don't know what he's got planned, I doubt he knows either, but his lady will be headed back next year, which will be good for him.

Julian heads off Friday, so I doubt I'll get to see him before he goes. Such is life, I guess. He's always talking about a motorbike trip somewhere, I'll have to try to get to Europe one of these days to do it.

School lunch

2007-11-13T08:18:00.000-05:00

One of the things about teaching in elementary school is that you have to eat lunch with the kids. Usually it's not that bad - they ask questions if they're bold enough, and since you get the same questions over and over again, it's not bad Japanese practice (what? You thought they'd ask in English?). The food is average school food. Well, average for Japan. Quality is about what you'd find anywhere in the US, but the type of food you get is completely different. I'd thought the worst was the cold slab of squid covered in some tasteless 'sauce.' Then Monday happened.

I try to be adventurous, but some stuff you just can't choke down. And being from Indiana, I just have a revulsion for certain things. Like fish. Now, I love fish, but I prefer my fish cut up and easily eaten, without the difficult things like bones, tails, and heads. But Monday's lunch was whole fried fish, each about six inches long. And I mean whole - I don't think the thing was gutted, even. The idea of eating whatever said fish had lined up to be expelled while doing it's fishy business doesn't exactly appeal to me. And, because I'm a grown-up, the kids had decided I need extra nourishment and gave me two of the little buggers.

Fortunately, the lunch also included a hot dog bun-shaped roll, conveniently sliced down the center. The first-graders I was dining with tucked in, and after poking my fish for a bit, I stuffed one into the bread and bit down on the head. It'd been fried thoroughly so the bones weren't too bad, though the spinal column gave me some trouble. I chowed down, trying to avoid looking into the ever-shrinking cross section of the half-fish. I was starting to worry when I got to the entrails, and didn't look at all. Eventually I noticed a change in the flavor and glanced down. My stomach churned and I showed it to the little kid next to me, who'd been staring throughout the meal at my giant, freakishly blue eyes. "Oh, you're lucky, you got the pregnant one," he exclaimed (well, something to that effect, anyway).

And thus ended my appetite, looking at a fishbelly full of little white eggs. Yuck.

Nova's bankrupt

2007-10-26T11:54:00.000-04:00

Well, it was to be expected. Nova Corp's going to shut down for a month while they try to find a sponsor to get them out of hock. Unfortunately, that means that the teachers, like my roommate, won't get paid for the work they did in September, nor for the work they've done so far in October. Their pay was delayed from the 15th to last Thursday, but it still didn't come through.

To hear Mike tell it, it's been rampant lawlessness there. Teachers just decide they don't feel like being there and leave, many of them have taken emergency leave and said, "until I get paid, I'm not coming back."

It all started a while ago when Nova got busted for deceptive advertising and strong-arm sales tactics. That got them a 6-month moratorium on signing new students. Their business model was always based on expansion, and their corporate structure was always too top-heavy, which meant they couldn't consolidate their gains in the marketplace. In addition, as part of their court settlement, they had to increase hiring of new teachers. Unfortunately, by the time they got it ramped up, it was September and they were in severe financial trouble. So now they had all sorts of financial problems. Like I said earlier, some teachers had been evicted from their company-run apartments, the Japanese staff was last paid in August, and now they're going to shut down all schools for a month.

The really sad part is that if the teachers pulled together, went to work and did their best, the students would probably stay happy and resign with the company, giving them new revenue. The problem with this is that Nova has never given its employees any reason to feel any loyalty towards it. They were notoriously micro-managing, they'd take any opportunity to take advantage of the teachers and the people who got promoted were the ones who could either kiss ass or stab others in the back best. The ideal area manager would be one who could do both. This sort of corporate environment never made me feel any sort of loyalty to them whatsoever.

While maybe they could've pulled out of it reduced in size but intact, like the clusterf*ck in Iraq, you can't really expect the fools who got themselves in the current situation to extricate themselves with any semblance of competency.

So Nova lied to and coerced students, and exploited foreign teachers who have little to no idea of how to operate in this culture. I guess you reap what you sow.

One interesting side effect I've discussed with a few people is what will happen to the general job market for English teachers here. Right now, there are 5000 people suddenly dumped into a small job market sector looking for work. Many of the ones who don't have ties to Japan and live in Nova housing will probably wind up leaving. The motivated ones are the guys who've been here 10 or 15 years, have families and a mortgage to pay. Right now it's nigh impossible to find a job. But many people are betting that after a few months, when people who are trying to stay despite not having a home or much in the way of resources start giving up and heading home, the job market will swing to the other direction. One niche Nova served very well was as a gateway for foreigners to come to Japan. Many of them would do like me: work for your first year (if that) with Nova to finish your contract, then look for other employment. Many jobs here require you to currently live in the country and have a valid work visa. Without this gateway, if no other major company steps in, there could be a severe shortage of teachers. This might not be all that bad, because the recent glut has led to a general stagnation of wages, which really sucks for most of us.

Keep your eyes on this story, it's only going to get more interesting. There are some unconfirmed rumors I want to see about, then I'll write more.

Culture Festival

2007-10-26T11:29:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday was the Culture festival at the junior high schools. In addition, for one of the schools, this year is its 60th anniversary, so it was especially important. If I haven't mentioned it before, for the Japanese, junior high school has the same kind of emotional attachment that high school does for Americans - it's the end of your geographic-based schooling, where you've been with the same people for nine years. They even have reunions. My girlfriend went to her 15th this summer.

Culture day kicked off with a ceremony to commemorate the school. And as with any special occasion in Japan, there were speeches. Lots of speeches. Lots of very long speeches. Since I couldn't understand 80% of it anyway, I found myself dozing off. I started to feel bad, but then realized the gym teacher next to me was dozing as well, with a nice stream of saliva mucking up his shirt as well. So I went back to sleep. To make up for all the boringness, they'd hired a taiko group to come play. So I was jolted out of my nice dream by a shout and lots of banging on drums. The group was pretty awesome, really.

Afterwards, the booths and things opened up. The students had created a variety of activities and so on to entertain the family members and locals. A really cool one was called somen. I'd seen the ichinensei (first-years) building the setup earlier in the week, but didn't really understand what they were getting at. They'd taken lengths of thick bamboo and cut it in half lengthwise. These lengths were connected and made into a kind of ramp. A hose at the higher end spat out water and ran all the way down, winding up in a kiddie pool at the far end. People would buy tickets and sit alongside the ramp, with a pair of chopsticks and a bowl of tsuyu, a kind of weak soy sauce. The high end was obscured by a cloth, so you couldn't see the students behind there dropping noodles into the stream. They'd come down at a pretty good clip, and you had to be quick to stop the noodles and pick them up without letting too many continue down the chute. I was lucky, the two students next to me weren't very handy at snatching the somen, so I got a bit more than my fair share when half of a clump would slip out of their grasp. For 20 cents a go, you can't really argue with that.

Another group of ichinensei were running a small cafe, with a talent show scheduled. There was a demonstration of balloon animals, spinning pie tops on sticks, and my favorite, juggling. I'd brought my juggling balls along and jumped out to perform with the kids. Besides dropping the ball a couple times, it went pretty well, we got lots of applause.

The ninensei (second-years) had a haunted house going, which I was disappointed to have missed, and a reflexology room run by the tennis team (go figure). I got a nice little foot massage by a really embarrassed student. The poor lady next to me got one of the troublemakers, who decided to really dig his knuckles in. Everytime she'd gasp or yelp, he'd just glance at the diagram sheet and say something like, "That means you drink too much," or "That means you have to poo."

The sannensei (you probably know this one, by now) put on a couple plays and did some talent shows with dancing or drumming. You could tell which groups were the ones where the girls had chosen the music and the moves by the pained look on the boys' faces and their lackluster dance moves.

For some reason, the teachers at this school don't do much socializing, but fortunately, the teachers at the other junior high school invited me to their post-event drinking party, where it was fun to hang out with the old guys and drink beer.

The downside was that Sunday was my only day off that weekend, which I spent with Sayaka doing some shopping for a Halloween costume. More on that later.

Look, ma! I'm popular!

2007-10-17T09:14:00.000-04:00

Not much new to report here, just going through the same routine every day. Saturday was a rare weekend day Sayaka had off, so we bicycled to Enoshima island and took a walk around. It's getting cooler and windier, but still warm enough for a bike ride on the beach.

In other news, I've been writing for the website Futurismic since mid-September, and while it's been tough finding time to post something every day, I've more or less managed to do it. The reinvigorated blog there seems to have prompted PC Magazine to include us in their list of the top 100 blogs. We're right up there (in alphabetic order, of course) with Gizmodo and one of my favorites, Ars Technica. Color me happy.

Interesting Soviet trivia

2007-10-13T20:54:00.000-04:00

Did you know that the latrine in the Kremlin was kept secret because someone might find out and attack the Soviet leaders when they were 'vulnerable?'

(so says Nikita Kruschev's son Sergei in a radio interview with the BBC)

The bigger they are...

2007-10-07T21:00:00.000-04:00

The easiest way to get to Japan and find a job is to go through an eikaiwa, or English conversation school. When I came, Ana and I got hired on with Nova, the largest of the eikaiwa, with roughly half of the private English-teaching market under its control. And while the books they used were quite outdated, and their managerial practices were absolute crap, the books and lessons got better. But because I couldn't learn or use Japanese there, I decided to leave and work in public schools.

Well, today I got clued in to this article in The Sydney Morning Herald about Nova's impending collapse. I'd known about their problems for a while, my roommate Mike works at the Nova here in Hiratsuka, and they were worried about not getting paid last month. Turns out the head teachers had their pay delayed for about a week, and the Japanese staff still haven't been paid. Now everyone's concerned if they'll be paid for September's work next week. And then there are the stories about people being evicted from their company-owned apartments for failure to pay rent (failure on Nova's part, they still deduct the rent from employees' paychecks). One story goes that a few new teachers arrived, only to be told by Nova a week later they had to move. Then after getting to the new apartment, they were evicted and Nova gave them a sheet with realtor info and told them to do it themselves. If you've ever heard my complaints about getting an apartment, you know it ain't easy

The article mentions the Fujisawa school being closed for not paying rent. That school is the largest in our area and I still know many teachers working there and at other branches. If Fujisawa went down, the others aren't far behind. Mike's looking for a job, but with so many teachers doing the same, finding one isn't going to be easy.

(image from autodafe0728)

DisneySea trip

2007-10-04T22:32:00.001-04:00

Sayaka convinced me to go to Tokyo DisneySea last weekend, so we trekked out to Chiba (the prefecture on the other side of Tokyo from where I live) early Saturday morning. My idea of a weekend isn't necessarily getting up at 6am to get on a train for an hour and a half, especially when it's drizzling. See, the thing about Japan is that the people get so little time off that they'll be damned if a little rain or even a typhoon is going to stop them from going to Disneyland. Or DisneySea, as the case may be.

DisneySea is meant to be a little more adult than Disneyland. There aren't characters with big heads running about, and you can get booze there (although I found out they don't like you walking around the park with a bottle of beer - gotta keep it in the restaurant). The moment we got inside, Sayaka was running around to collect our FastPass tickets. You can go to a special ticket booth and get a ticket that lets you bypass much of the line for a ride, cutting down the waiting time from a couple hours to twenty minutes or so. Everyone gets this option, but once you get one ticket, you can't get another for 90 min or 2 hours, and you can't get one for the same ride until you use the one you currently have. The ticket you get has a time range on it, so you can't go right then. Talk about introducing an element of strategy to a theme park. Sayaka had her map out, figuring out how to maximize our time in the park, cutting down the time needed to get to each area. I think she missed her calling, although the makeup counter may require some organization, she should be doing consulting or something.

We managed to hit quite a few rides, the somewhat new Tower of Terror, a twisty roller coaster with a loop (and I didn't get any debilitating headaches - yay!), as well as a couple of funny cart rides, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and some Indiana Jones ride (or Indy-Jone-zu, as he's known here). In addition, we saw a couple music shows, which were surprisingly good. The first was a jungle-themed show called "Rhythm of the Jungle" or something like that, with people dressed as various animals dancing around on stage. It was really funny to see the few foreign dancers, as they really stood out. There were a couple guys onstage who were taller and more muscular than anyone else. Guess that's why they got the jungle voodoo doctor roles and not the flying water fairy part.

The one that impressed Sayaka and myself the most was called "Big Band Beats." It featured a 'big band' that was really just about 10 guys, but big enough, who played the swing music that was popular from the 20s to the 40s. There were quite a lot of foreigners in this one, and all of the talking as well as the music was done in English, which made me wonder what the Japanese thought of it. Sayaka didn't seem to care what they said, she just enjoyed the music. Unfortunately, the downside to this show was them having Disney characters come out and sing and dance, which really put a damper on things. Oh well.

A cool little aspect that I appreciated at the park was that most of the signs and billboards in the 'American Waterfront'-themed area were in English, and they were done with quite a bit of humor and wit. I also stuffed myself with food, the reuben sandwich I had was particularly good. It took a while to explain to Sayaka the difference between corned beef in the US and in Japan. The stuff in DisneySea was somewhere in between. It's nothing like what Mom makes.

So after our Saturday giving money to the Mouse, we went back to Tokyo and ended up staying in a love hotel in the Shibuya district. We'd had trouble getting a hotel in Tokyo - the one I wanted to go to that my friend Sam stayed at was booked for a weddding - and the closest one we could find was in Chiba city. So we paid the same price and stayed in a nice love hotel in downtown Tokyo. Sunday was rainy, which killed a lot of our interest in doing things, but we found a notice for an India-Japan friendship festival in Yoyogi park, so, rain or no, we headed out there for some Indian grub. And it was tasty. There were a bunch of booths set up, so I got some spices to make curry and pilafs, as well as a can of hemp beer I'm curious to try out. Strangely enough, there were some environmental booths set up. One was some type of composter that would take kitchen scraps and used bacteria to biodegrade them to basically nothing. I used some churning arms to aerate the soil and break up big pieces. They say it costs only about $2/month in electricity to run. Another small booth held a prototype for breaking down plastics into a type of kerosene for heaters and such (but not vehicles) at only a 20% cost. It's cool to see things like that around, but rather strange at an Indian festival.

After a long, exhausting weekend, I expected to go home and sleep, but Monday was Tracey's birthday, so I headed out for yakiniku with some people. So all this week I've been playing catch-up trying to get enough sleep not to fall over in class. Fortunately, I get today (Friday) off, although tomorrow is sports day at one of the elementary schools, so I'll be headed there to cheer the kids on. I heard them practicing a marching band routine, and those little kids can play rather well - for 10 year olds.

Friday Dinner Blogging

2007-09-21T20:15:00.001-04:00

Chicken cutlet on rice with a bowl of soba, beer & green tea in the background. Oishikatta!