The first weekend home

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Movie Backlog

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

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

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

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!

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

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

Wow.

Mmm, breakfast

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

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?

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

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

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

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.