Sunday

Charisma Man


If you have taught in Japan, or know someone who has, this collection of the comic strip Charisma Man is for you.

Saturday

To Mickey, with love...


There are moments when I look around at Japan and things Japanese and I recognize the sheer beauty of it all. Much of it has been shipped off and is now world-reknown-- Ikebana (art of flower arranging), Chado (tea ceremony), Washi (paper making), Origami (paper folding), Ukiyo-e (Edo period printmaking), Shoji (Japanese screens), Kimono (literally "wear thing") and other forms of the Japanese Wabi Sabi (the truth that comes from the observation of nature)--simple, elegant, neat; a sense of balance and harmony where less really is more.

There are also the lively arts that every culture now knows: Kabuki (literally "song-dance-art"), Taiko (Japanese drumming), Shamisen (literally "three taste and touch" strings) and Koto music. There are the the marital arts: Judo (literally the "soft way") Karate (literally "empty hand"), Kyudo (archery); and finally the art of courtly love and seduction, eloquently described in the world's first true novel, Genji Monogatari (the tale of Genji, written by Murasaki-shikibu, a woman), and made accessible to the elite by the ladies of Gion--the Geisha (literally "art person").

We have been delighted with this Japanese aesthetic since at least the mid-19th century, when the American Commodore Perry sailed his black ships to the shores of Uraga and forcefully opened up Japan to trade after a 300 year self-imposed isolation. We do know, however, that Portuguese and Dutch traders kept up their trading during this hiatus, but were limited to the small island called Deshima just off the coast from Nagasaki. In short, there was much to be learned by both sides.

The infatuation with things Japanese permeated Western consciousness in an assortment of fine art and designs made by Western artists in the late 19th century. It even had a name, Japonaiserie. The flurry of interest about this slumbering island nation, having been so rudely awakened from its hibernation and forced into world, is the start of its decline and loss of soul as I witness and write about it today.

Such a Pity.

It's hard to begin to express the sorrow I feel looking at all these wonderful, gorgeous, beautiful, precious gifts the Japanese have bestowed upon our consciousness, reduced to mere shadows--just the very soft flicker of the original fire left.

I took the afternoon yesterday to look around town on my bike. The Nagoya landscape has been described before and more eloquently by others, so I won't go into much of it here; however, it is clear to me, at least here in Nagoya, people have lost all sense of values about who they are and where they are going. As I cycled around Nagoya Castle, the original built in 1610 (destroyed by fire 1660, rebuilt, then destroyed by bombs in World War II, and rebuilt again in the 1950s) by the great Shogun himself Tokugawa Ieyasu who's lineage held sway over Japan for 265 years (1603-1868), I found myself in one of those precious moments !!Ping!! when you recognize you really are in Japan.

As I communed with the carp and ducks living in the moat surrounding the castle, and admired the latticed stonework patterns in the vast, high-walled gates, the intricate yet simple design of the castle structure as it sat resplendent on the highest point in town... I was forced to succumb to the here and now--sounds of highway traffic, screaming sirens, honking horns, and the ubiquitous squeaks, chirps, pongs, barks, whiffles, hacks, and high-pitched robotic voices of women through electronic loudspeakers telling me to look left, to look right, not to cross the street, to cross the street, be careful of cars, take my children by the hand, and the thousand and one other things I really don't need to reminded to do on a pleasant, sunny, solitary Saturday morning out for a carefree bike ride.

Those that live or lived in Japan know what I am talking about. You can't go anywhere without a loudspeaker telling you what to do. It's like the entire nation is potty-trained or beat into obedience with these constant messages yelling out at you--I wouldn't be surprised if there is a warning in the toilets telling you not only to flush afterwards, but to check to see that you wiped. But of course there are! They have paperless toilets (well, not so popular since the bubble burst ten years ago) where at a push of a button, a joystick-controlled nozzle streams warmish water at your privates with some voice saying what it's doing ("your buttcheese is being smeared off now") then a blast of hot air dries "it" off ("your butt is being dried now"). I mean, sheesh.

To add insult to this aural assault, now they have these mini video cameras that look like a wire and can be concealed almost anywhere, anytime. The fallout from this sort of thing has been a wave of pornographic movies and images available on the World Wide Web showing people sucking, peeing, pooing, and screwing... and whatever else they do in a public spaces. Personal space, in other words, is almost non-exsistent.

In my own wee room, for example, the quality of my life is made worse by the thunderous bass of the yahoo-down-the-hall's boom box, the guy beside me who watches TV constantly (all night long, don't you know) and the strange sounds emanating above me from the guy or gal who "paces" up and down (the room is about 10 feet square) and seems to roll ball bearings across the floor at the oddest times to inflict a form of torture.

Of course I forgot about the aural and visual horror of the construction of yet another faceless, ugly ferro-concrete piece of shit building being built kitty corner from me some yakuza/pachinko owner/government official's putting up on some money laundering scam. Here the work crew arrive dutifully and ready to go, all done Ultraman fashion and Jika-tabi footwear, promptly at 6:30 am--Sunday morning. The rest of the week they roll in around 10 am. *sigh*

Recall I once lamented how the thing about Japan is that it is ALMOST comfortable. Almost--but there is always a jab in your ribs to let you know that you can't be too comfortable. But enough about me. I want to address the rest of this about 1) the people here, and 2) the lowdown on the work front.

I remarked to a friend last week, and it was the first time I have ever said this, and it sort of was a shock to me as much as it was an epiphany, but this is what I said: "the Japanese are Ugly. U-G-L-Y."

Yes, succumbing to Yellow Fever (those guys that have lived here know this form of yellow fever, and it ain't from a mosquito) was a useful (and fun!) phase, but it has run its course and the prognosis is this: the ugliness has nothing to do with physical appearance (although Nagoya is not the home of the most attractive Japanese people-- something about the short, chubby and stubby legs, the pigeon-toed shuffle, too many teeth that shoot out at all angles when they smile, and a propensity for the people here to have roundish, chubby faces, and mouths and lips that are too big and pouty, but in a very unnattrative way--think of the Alfred Hitchcock, not Marlene Dietrich-- pout--and that is the Nagoya pout).

No, the ugliness comes from within. The ugliness is, in these parts, is that the people have no class. I don't mean to say I look down my nose at these folks because, after all, I am a negro-- it's more observational than a judgment.

Tokyo folks are sophisticated. I will give my Japanese sculptor friend full points for that observation. But Nagoya?

1
On my first day back to school, and the first thing this rather ugly Nagoya troll doll (remember those things?) of a boy comes up to me and describes, in some detail, that he has the shits, and the shit is sort of runny with blood in it. He then smiles and goes and sits down. He did not even bother to say "Hello, Happy New Year" or perhaps just "Hello"--he launched into this description.

Admittedly, it is well known that fecal references in greetings is common in most cultures of the world. We know for fact the French "Comment allez vous", which literally means "How are you going" is an everyday common greeting having its origins in speculating on one's bowel movements. You see, if one was ill with plague, the feces would be runny and off-color as well of a particular sweet and sour aroma (for which the French would describe the scent as a mal au coeur--sickness of the heart. How that figures in bowel movements is... well... they are French...).

The Germans have "Wie Gehts", and English speakers say "How's it goin", which etymologically is associated with bowel movement. So, it is not that my virgin ears were hurt by this boy's greeting, it's just that I was not at all ready to hear about this troll's shit in lieu of the usual greeting on the first day back from break. Well, no matter. He'll get his come-uppance... because I have to fail him.

Note I didn't say I want to fail him, or that he failed, or anything to suggest there is a causal relation between whatever he did in class and the grades he earned and all that. No. The dictate from above is that 30 percent of my class gets the chop, regardless of their performance in class, on tests, exams, or other forms of assessment. This has been the bugaboo that has haunted my consciousness ever since I signed up for this gig in the bottom-feeder, low life university between Kinki and the Kanto plain. But I'll pick up on this part later.

2
People honk, hack, hork, chortle, sniffle, wheeze, katchoo, suck their teeth, roll their eyes, tongues, mouths, and burp-- then breathe the morning's tobacco, fish and congealed oleo-ketased protein breath in your face, pick their bums/twats/dicks, pick their nose and/or scalp and/or zits, look at it, and if is too small wipe it on the seat, and if too big eat it-- in very tightly cramped public places, especially in rush hour, jam-packed commuter trains.

3
When walking, they zig-zag along the street like some Limey high on cheap sherry, except they are perfectly sober. Hmm... might have something to do with the pigeon-toedness that prevents them from being able to walk in a straight line. And as they walk, they swing their arms pell mell, so guys, watch your nads when that sassy foxette ahead of you decides to stop suddenly, not before laying on a solid low blow even Mike Tyson would be proud of.

Ok. I went into physical description when I really wanted to talk about what is ugly on the inside.

What is ugly is their vapidness. What once was the noble Zen No mind has lost all the significance and meaningfulness of its original intent, and now no mind really means "a mind filled with such garbage they don't know what to think about anything". Being bombarded from all sides (even at buttcrack level!) with nonsense, how can one expect these very real and noble humans to carry on in the sublime cultural heritage which is their birthright?

Well, the Japanese are not the only victims. They are but one race who have sucked up the the poison seeping out of that bastion of freedom America (believe it--or else!), which seems to see the world population as a homogeneous mass of Madison Avenue slogan believing, jelly-spined... consumers.

If you've got the "Holiday Gift Giving Season" (formerly called Christmas) Santa Claus ornaments, the Elvis bust, the black velvet pastel of a clown (crying), the wee statue of the cute little boy trying to take a crap on the toilet (from the Franklin Mint!) at Walmart's, then swing over and load up on bulk bags of sour cream 'n' onion Lay's at Cogeco, have a nosh at McDonald's/Carl Jr.s/Burger King/Pizza Hut/Mister Donut/KFC... swing buy the pharmacy to buy your Ibuprophen/Allatin/Valium/Visine/Viagra/Xanax and your carton of Marlboro lights before speeding off to that important "business meeting" at Starbuck's in your SUV-- the SUV being all decked out with a rack of high intensity Bosch magnesium spotlights mounted on the front (...and back!...just in case some asshole gets a little too close), the geo-satellite locating device for those dangerous off-road back country treks you'll never in a lifetime ever do...only to find your SUV's digital fuel gauge display is flashing red and beeping annoyingly to let you know you are running low on the high-octane, super duper premo, Iraqi-grade oil byproduct and need to retank the mother because it gets 6 miles highway/3 miles city per gallon at the nearest Exxon/Shell/Mobil gas station...and while you're there, you might as well pick up the windshield ice scraper and a few licorice ropes...what the hell, a few Snickers bars for the kids...pay the $80 in gas and chug your SUV along the well appointed boulevard past strip malls that the Flintstones predicted every city would look like in the future in a subliminal way (you know...if you watch the Flintstones, the artists got a bit lazy and just looped the sequence of Barney and Fred driving/running home in their car past the same shop/drug/barbershop...which, if you really look carefully, is what every city looks like these days...check it out) and onto your "business meeting", which, well, is not really a business meeting, but a secret lunch with the silicone-tittied and botoxed-faced thirty-something you met at the Louis Vuitton shop while you were there to pick up a little something for the missus (separated, but "trying to work things out"), after she just finished her aerobics class at Bally's, and you don't want to be late because she has to run off in half an hour to the Bikram yoga class, followed immediately after with her Tibetan meditation class, (where she and other bored ladies of the "empty-nest"/"he left me for a younger slut"/"I finally kicked him out, that slob!" syndrome listen to tapes of some fey Rinpoche). You meet her and her pungent Calvin Klein smelly hair tonic only to arrange yet another "meeting" sometime later at the franchised Wolfgang Puck eatery to munch squid-ink pizza and wash it down with a Zima or a Tecate...and then after you've made that date, you head back home, the four-story Victorian townhouse (a fixer-upper ...but with all the potential in the world), which is what you spend the rest of your earnings on based on the sagesse advice of your investment broker/banker/laywer/fiduciary/and golf pro. You greet the kids who are watching Pokemon on TV and playing Pokemon Playstation at the same time) and spend a little quality time (which is to take off the Rockport shoes and Ermenegildo Zegna suit and lie back like a sack of beans on the punched-leather couch and vege out...only to really pass out and the missus has already put the kids to bed (her eyes rolling scornfully and whispering "you selfish prick" under her breath...almost all the time...), and since things between you two aren't really working out (hence the "business meetings" with Ms. Silicone Botox) you take the Burberry blanket and matching pillow and head on up to the guestroom and crash out for the rest of your six hours of sleep before you wind it all up and do it all over again.

I could be talking about almost anywhere, couldn't I?

Well, this is Japan, and although there are all the trappings as I outlined above here, in the words of that cooking guru Everil, they take this label displaying inanity and "turn it up a notch"... they don't really understand what it is they are buying, or why they need it, but if it's expensive, it must be something to have...especially if it is foreign.

4
Richard Feynman, the nuclear physicist and wisecracking, no-nonsense wise guy, delivered a speech to the 1974 graduating class at Caltech entitled Cargo Cult Science, in which he denigrated the problem of unconsciousness and the lack of inquiry into how things really are:




In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head as headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

It would be difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. There is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples.




5
Apparently, in this day and age, most people, but especially the Japanese because they are at the leading edge of this problem--they really don't get it--they are not getting to the root by looking at the examples at all. They don't get the joke. They don't know they've sold out their birthright and replaced it with straw men, straw planes, straw bags (which cost a fortune!)...and they really do hope that these external signs are meaningful and important, simply because they've looked around and been told that they are.

It is not working because there is nothing on the inside to tell them why these external forms are of value. They have no grounding, no culture to deal with all these external things. They've traded their culture in for a culture whose heritage and development they cannot even fathom.

This is what I mean by vapid. It is not their fault, other than they have been led by whatever forces to slowly erode their own understanding of themselves to adopt--a Louis Vuitton bag and Burberry scarf-- as culturally important artifacts.

6
One of the most foreboding images of this trade-in was a photograph of Japan's Emperor Hirohito at Disneyland in Anaheim, California in the 60s. In this photograph, we see Walt Disney and the Emperor on some ride, and both are smiling, but there is something rather impish about the smile on the Emperor's face. He's grinning ear to ear, in full mirth.

Here he is, the descendant of God (GOD!), the man who was as cursed as Hitler during World War II by the allied forces, and the man who had to admit, as part of the unconditional surrender to MacArthur, that he was not really a God at all. What a turbulent reign indeed. And yet, here he was a happy as could be...and do you know why?

He was wearing a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.

That just about sums up the problems that are besetting the Japanese culture today. They've turned in their culture for a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.

Wednesday

Divorces Hit All-Time High in Japan


I don't usually take articles written by others and post them, lock, stock, and barrel.

But since I'm interested in things to do with Japan, I thought this was a useful post.

By GARY SCHAEFER, Associated Press Writer

TOKYO - Japan's divorce rate rose to a new record high last year, reflecting an increasing number of middle-aged and older couples who are parting ways.

The number of divorces rose for a 12th straight year in 2002, according to recently released government statistics that provided the latest confirmation that the stigma long associated with breaking up is fading in Japan.

According to the nation's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, a record 289,836 couples divorced last year, up 1.4 percent from the previous all-time high of 285,911 in 2001.

That amounted to 2.3 divorces for every 1,000 people in Japan, also a record and more than double the rate of 1.07 in 1975.

Behind the rise is an increasing number of couples who are parting ways after having been married for 20 years or more: They accounted for 15.7 percent of divorces in 2002, up from just 5.7 percent in 1975.

Divorce was long seen as a social taboo in harmony-conscious Japan. A popular term for a person who has been divorced once ? "batsu ichi" ? translates to "strike one."

But that shame is slowly becoming a thing of the past, a trend attributed to changing values, including a growing rejection by women of sacrifices they were once expected to make in Japan's male-dominated society.

"Women in this country used to feel like they should put up with anything for the sake of their marriages," Yoriko Madoka, a national lawmaker who runs a divorce hotline, said on Wednesday. "That kind of thinking has changed."

There were four divorces per 1,000 people in the United States in the 12 months ending in January 2003, according to a provisional report by the National Center for Health Statistics. The rates were 2.6 in the United Kingdom and 1.9 on average in the European Union for the year 2000, according to Britain's Office of National Statistics.

Sunday

Is Saying "I love You" in Japan a Problem?


More on "Love and Japan". This is a comment from a Gagaite with the mandatory Gaga sez that follows.

Useful? Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Gaga!

"...When I taught in Japan, I asked the students if they ever saw their parents kiss. They said no. I asked them if they ever heard their parents say "I love you". They said no. I felt sad for them."

The roles of marriage and men and women aside, don't different cultures express emotions in different ways? In many western cultures, we are low-context communicators, ie. ignorant of the subtlies in the environment - everything has to be verbalised or written in a contract for communication to take place. In Japan, a very low-context culture, people do not have to talk all the time to communicate. Do people in such cultures do not need to say "I love you" to say I love you?

If romance is defined in the West as kissing, and saying "I love you" then wouldn't any culture that does not exhibit these behaviours be deemed "unromantic"?

I am English, but have never heard my parents say they love each other or kiss. Should I feel sad? I do know that they have been very much in love for the last 40 years, expressing it in many different ways.

A

Gaga Sez:

Point taken about the expression of love in its many manifestations. The shades and tints of this feeling definitely range from a deep red (passion) to a light pink (amenity), so I guess I was speaking of a certain shade somewhere towards the deep red (passionate) end.

Certainly you don't have to be physical nor all that emotive to love someone. Agreed. For example, the term "loving kindness" (or in Pali/Thai metta) describes a state of loving everyone and everything in the best possible way: for no personal gain, that you simply wish them no harm and to be well. Metta has no boundaries or conditions--it extends to all beings, living, non-living (deceased), in all forms (plant, animal, human, ghost, hell realms, heaven realms). It extends not only to those you are fond of, but to those you are NOT fond of, or downright dislike... but in the same way the sun shines on all alike, we can extend loving kindness to all, our own personal opinions/feelings in tow. So it is quite possible to dislike a person deeply and still love them.

I suppose a little background to my "sad" feelings when the Japanese said they never saw their parents kiss or heard them say, "I love you" is in order.

It was prompted by watching an American TV show (Bill Cosby) that one of the teachers designed a course around (the course was called "American Culture"). I had to sub for a sick teacher in this course and what they did was watch episodes of Bill Cosby and then discuss what they saw, based on a few prompt questions.

One of the questions was, "Is your father like Bill Cosby", and I felt this to be rather shallow and downright insulting. The fact the TV show depicted Bill Cosby as a wonderful father who took great interest in his family, and was the fount of wise advice and great problem-solving was entirely a fictitious dramatic script, and I thought the kids had better be told this reality. After watching the show, the kids were all depressed because in Japan, as I found out over seven years living there, the relationships they have with their parents was very different...cold, in fact... compared to, say, a North American concept of family structure, prompted by this TV show.

I did not think it wise to rub salt into their depressed states and say all American families have great dads just like Bill Cosby, so I went on to say that it was only a TV show, the depiction was unreal, and that, in fact, Bill Cosby as a real father was a hard-ass with his real kids.

But for some reason, the Japanese students and people I encountered... over an extended period living there... were extremely gullible and would believe almost anything given to them. It might have something to do with their stratified social groupings borrowed from Confucianism, i.e., a deep respect for elders and teachers, and what the elders or teachers said was true ...but that is another whole story in itself, quite humorous at times! Hmm. Perhaps they didn't believe things told to them deep down inside, but in Japan people are willing to sacrifice their own personal beliefs for the summum bonum, to ensure a harmonious grace (and even that wears you down!). But I digress.

Occasionally, and you must have had to act in this manner too as a teacher, you end up in a situation where all these kids want to express themselves. So, you have to take off the teacher hat and put on the good listener hat and deal with the outpourings of hurt people. And they really poured it out that day. All sorts of stories of sorrowful family relationships.

So my emotion, as patronizing as it seems now, was one of sadness. I can't change the feeling that occurred then; however, I think now my feeling of sadness has matured to one of compassion, as there is so much dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, incompleteness, not just "so", sorrow, suffering, etc) in life as a fundamental condition of being born-- there's nothing one can do about it-- but rather, you can hold a feeling in your heart, come to know it, and understand it. There are very subtle colorings to any emotion, and used unskillfully, just adds to the problem. Used skillfully and the problem can be understood. But I digress.

To segue into the second part of my point, which is my observation on how the deep red (passion) is played out in Japan, that is, alcohol and sex and love hotels as a garish, paltry form of the expression of love, might be inaccurate too. It might not envelope the entire experience of everyone in Japan. But it does exist, not so well hidden either (just go up the hill at Shibuya and you'll see the love hotels in full swing). This is something uniquely Japanese--at least in how it is played out. Certainly other cultures have this low-ball sex feature, but the Japanese way is very unique. They can readily compartmentalise their experiences and feelings. One emotion doesn't seem to interact with another. This was something noticeable and a feature I think people who have lived in Japan would be able to recognize. This makes them appear cold, particularly to Western folk. This inscrutability, the difficulty in getting a read on what goes on in their minds, is well known, almost a stereotype, and is what I referred to as being strange. It is something commented about by all my friends living in Japan, even now. Reading Japanese literature and seeing other forms of their expression and art, it is something even they notice, and even regale in as being an expression of their uniqueness.

Never for a moment think a Japanese doesn't view himself as a special breed of human! It's been bred into them from birth that they are somehow different than all other humans on the planet.

But that's another can of worms....

Saturday

Fake tits and other contemporary concerns on a 42-year-old Japanese woman's mind.


Another insert from M, the 42 year old woman from Japan, who asks me inane questions.

Gaga follows suit.

Useful? Enjoy?


M:
I sometimes watch Beauty colloquium on TV 8 channel (Fuji TV) on Friday night. Maybe you remember this program.

Gaga:
I remember such a show on Sunday mornings (in Nagoya).

M:
Do you like someone get cosmetic surgery and become beautiful face and figure?

Gaga:
To look at someone from a distance and notice they have tried to improve their physical appearance is fine. It works very well for photography. But when you actually feel the results (such as breast enlargement) it doesn't feel right.

I knew a girl in the late 80s in Ottawa that had her breasts enlarged. She was a waitress at a disco I liked to visit. Her boobs looked fantastic! My girlfiend at the time was very nice and fun and asked the waitress if she could feel the fake breasts. The waitress said it was OK. So I too asked if I could feel them.

It was winter, and of course in Ottawa the winter is very cold. When I squeezed her breasts, they felt cold and lumpy...not very nice to feel at all!

Nowadays when I see the young women with big boobs I know they are fake, and I don't care. I think they have some personal problems trying to change the way they look, because even though it might look good, it certainly isn't very nice to feel or to look at up really close!

M:
All Japanese women who come in this TV program, are very negative, looks gloomy or sad face. They say their life with making tears, they are tragedy of their life and unhappy always.

Gaga:
Well, of course the women have to act this way--it is a TV show! There is no use hiring happy people for this show-- no one would watch it.


M:
Do you agree if your girlfriend say she want get cosmetic surgery and want become beautiful girl for you?

Gaga:
If there was something really distracting from a anyone's face, such as a big hairy mole that could be removed, and that would make the person happy because no one would stare at the mole instead of enjoying the person's face, that can be quite helpful for a person's confidence. I agree with this sort of surgery.

But to put in fake breasts, or get fat sucked out of the body is not very attractive. I feel sorry for such people. They have no self-confidence to start. What needs work is their attitude, not their body!

M:
Many men love beautiful girls and care about how her looks.

Gaga:
This is quite true. First impressions are very important. But I think if you get to know someone, you'll find other qualities become more important over time, like what sort of personality the person has: is she helpful, is she honest, is she cheerful, is she clean, can she do things well, does she talk too much... these factors are much more important than big tits and a nice ass.

After all, when the lights go out, and your in bed, who really cares what the person looks like? You tend to like the other senses more in this case, like touch, taste, and smell. If the woman is made up of fake parts, you can feel the difference.

What really counts if your looking for a sustained relationship is the next day pattern of behaviour: does she know how to clean up after herself, can she make a nice meal, does she apply herself to chores in a cheerful manner?

More and more women can't do the simple things that count for so much in a relationship...like be clean, and know how to cook good, healthy food and clean up with no complaining. Sure this sounds old-fashioned and chauvinist, but if you really want to hook a guy, learn the basics--learn how to take care of yourself and your man and your home. More and more I meet women who can't do anything at all! They spend all their time in some fantasy world, talking on the telephone, looking at pictures of J-Lo and fantasizing about a life with prince charming... wondering if the beige dress makes them look fat, or if they should buy the black pumps or the penny loafers, do their hair this way or that, get a boob job, suck out some fat, get a belly button piercing, a tatoo across the small of the back...sheesh. So many diversions from what counts really. What counts is mutual love and respect. It's a very subtle balancing act, but it starts when two people aren't competing all the time. This is what I notice more and more--men and women competing, instead of swallowing it a bit and trying to get along.

So, no matter how big the boobs or how garish the butt crack tattoo, if you can't make a good meal and clean up after, what posible use are you other than a cheap, ephemeral fuck doll?

M:
I am so sad...... Everybody get grow up and day by day get looks older.

Gaga:
I guess it's time you realize this truth. We all grow up and get old. This is the way it is. You might as well accept this fact and get on with living your life. Don't be afraid of life--live it!

If you want a relationship, go get one. It's not that hard. Try it and see. Who knows? It could be satisfying. But remember this: nothing is totally perfect in this life. If you want a relationship, it will end one way or another (he or you will die! This is a fact!). It will never be forever, nor perfect.

What you need to do is change your attitude. Don't be so afraid to get involved with a relationship...if that is what you want. Just don't be surprised when it isn't exactly what you think it should be.

M:
Especially recently Japanese men say "Old women is person who past expiration." It is terrible judgment. We are vegetables? What do you think about "past Expiration"?

Gaga:
It all depends on the attitude. I know women in their 50s who are sexy and have self-confidence that I think is attractive. Sure it has something to do with their looks--they take good care of themselves, exercise, eat right, are calm-- this is attractive about people. We like being around confident people--or at least people who have made peace with who they are. When we see such people, we feel good.

When I see young sexy gals, sure I think they are young and sexy--because they are trying to be that way! That's natural to try to show off your youth and beauty. As you get older, hopefully confidence builds and other qualities will emerge.

M:
How do you judge Japanese men?

Gaga:
I don't really care for them. I think Japanese women are fine, but most of the men I never really got to know.

There were a few cool young guys I knew--guys from the various universities I taught at in Japan. They were smart or clever or funny (or could play Grateful Dead music). But the salaryman in his bad suit who looked nervous and hurried all the time, with a cigarette in his mouth in restaurants, I didn't really get to know. I felt sorry for him actually. He might have been ok, but life in Japan is very hard. Men have to get a job in a good company and work their entire life to support their wife and family. When he comes home, his wife and kids don't really talk to him. They want his money, but don't really care about him.

When I taught in Japan, I asked the students if they ever saw their parents kiss. They said no. I asked them if they ever heard their parents say "I love you". They said no. I felt sad for them.

Japanese culture is fine, but when you compare some of the values with the west, like romantic relationships, Japan is not very romantic.

To compensate, cigarettes, alcohol, and sex are used instead of love. It's ok to smoke, get drunk, and take an OL to a love hotel in Japan. You can have wild sex for an hour, and then after you have to act like nothing happened. I found this strange. The relationships I had in Japan were very strange. You never really knew the person all that well.

I have western men friends who married Japanese women. It always starts off nice, but then there is a change. Once the children come, things start to separate. I know many men who have been sad by this. Some are divorced by their wives after they have kids. It's puzzling really.

Do you have any insights to share?

Thursday

Youth, beautiful youth...


This one is a dialog with a 42-year-old Tokyo woman I recently met online (in my research on the "Online Dating" piece I'm still working on!). Useful?

note: I fixed up a bit of the English...it was really bad before, now it's just ok...
~~~

M:
I am serious think about my future what I have to, want get. Recently I don't have self-confidence a lot when I failed in interview with Japanese. They say I have strong self-confidence, aggressive... I confuse Japanese.....what can I do for them? I have no work here in japan for a year. As you know in Japanese culture nobody is interested in old women working. Someone judge old women is kind of like expiration foods. It is terrible judgment. Unbelievable... So this is our culture, Japanese men don't respect old women. I am so sad and complex a lot but still I am here. I am thinking I have to move back Toronto soon. I believe Canadian respect old women. This is reason I love your country, I don't want life in Japan. M
~~

Gaga sez:

It's a hard life in many ways (hence the pali term dukkha, or "unsatisfactoriness"). Everything is aimed at young people in most societies, and especially the wealthy ones... the reason is simple...they are not experienced enough to understand most companies aim at them so that they buy things they don't need; kids and parents of kids spend their money on things that make them happy, and everyone and everything seems to be happy. Magazines, advertisements, TV, everything is aimed at the attraction of youth... until you get old and then you spend the rest of your life trying to be young again! Ha.

It's a silly denial of what truly happens. We all get old, get sick, and eventually die. There is no hiding from this reality. We blind ourselves and pretend the only thing important is youth. We live entirely in a sort of denial. Gizzillions of dollars are spent trying to avoid the inevitable...

We change too often in life in so many ways it's just not a good practice to worry about it. I used to worry a lot, but there is no point in worrying. Just breathe. This is reality. The breath is life, everything else is a game of some sort (as Colin Powell pointed out the other day). It's nice to see this wisdom clearly--when I was younger, I couldn't.

So enjoy your life. Who cares what others do or what they think...or even what ideas you think! What matters is not to get too confused by the swirling pressures around us.

This is the most important lesson I am learning. Breathe... feel it, experience all the sensitivity of this body and mind, but always remember: it is dukkha, it is impermanent, and there is no self in any of it.

Monday

Semantic error of measurement


Things are hectic as I still don't have a place to live, but besides the loathing facet of dealing with cramped quarters, long commutes, a propensity for the Japanese to be overly proprietous and superficial, recalcitrant about communicating, well, what more can I say?

I had a nice chat with M again. He seems to be doing wonderful things at the university as you intimated. Before he arrived, there were no speaking classes at all; now he has coordinated such a program. He's also figured out the most ethically clean way to fail 25% of the students--he pools all the test results for each of the oral classes, and sets the cut point appropriately. Very good of him--the down side is there are teachers who rebel because the course is teacher proof--he designs all the forms of assessment, and well, you now how teachers are about such control taken from them.

The rumour about the place still is that EVERY teacher must fail 25% of their class, regardless of true performance. So you may have a class of excellent students and still a quarter of them must fail. Just shows ignorance about matters of assessment and testing really. To wit, there is not one testing book in the school library, nor are there any in the downtown book shops that have a foreign language books (although there are plenty of TOEIC guides and coursebooks). Sheesh. At least M has identified the correct approach to setting a cut point, and I hope to work more closely with him on it--(yes, the phi(lambda) and SEM stuff here too!).

I talked with the university president's right hand man-mainly because he wanted to size me up, and he wanted my impression of TOEIC and all that. Well, being the honest person I try to be, I said it all depends on what they wanted the TOEIC to tell them--that is, test purpose should be borne in mind when choosing any sort of assessment instrument. I also cited the official TOIEC report from ETS that states that the majority of TOEIC test-takers are Japanese (over 70%), that they are also the lowest on average for that test, which means to say they are the 'worst' performers of English, and I queried why that might be the case. My bad. But I couldn't resist the challenge.

Generally speaking, most of the folks here are here for the money and not much else in terms of scholarship or research. It's an old boys club as you well now, and if you can swallow that fact, and abandon all the time and energy one spent on doing post-graduate studies, scholarly research and the like, get the full frontal lobotomy (or fall prey to sex and booze) one could stay here forever. Some do. One guy in his 60's, a Ph.D no less, sings country western songs in each of his MBA classes, guitar and all. It doesn't help that he's a disciple of Rush Limbagh either. The even higher-ups are incorrigible old, disgusting alcoholics and womanizers. Sheesh.

The others? Well, playboys and misfits of all shapes and sizes. There are a few earnest good people, but very few. If the intrigue of political jockeying in the corrupt university system, playing the game cleverly and buttering up those in power is one's cup of tea, then this is the perfect place to be.

As for me, well, I daydream about clean mountain water, fresh air and sunshine, coconut water and mangoes, and semantic measurement of error.

May all our deviations be standard.

Kyoto People


If you feel I've been a bit harsh about my exploits here in Japan, perhaps the letter below will suggest it's not just me.

This letter was written by my friend from Kamakura, who is currently doing a masters in fine art in Kyoto.

Anyway, her last name dates back to the Kamakura period of Japan's history (1192-1333 A.D.). This might be odd to point that out, but for the vast majority of Japanese, last names were only reserved for royalty up until 1867. After 1867 (the Meiji Restoration) and the westernization of Japan, all the people started to take on last names.

Names in Japan are very similar to North American Indians...you know... Billy Two Rivers, Sitting Bull, Screaming Eagle...references to nature on all that (Natsuko--summer child, Yoshiko--good child..etc).

Anyway, here then is a voice of a dissenting Japanese about Kyoto...






Can I complain about Kyoto people?

They are weird. They love to be given, and hate to give, even share. I'm getting go know how they are. For example whenever we have a party at my room, they eat all things in my refrigerator. They don't bring anything to my room. First time was ok, but now I had parties several times, most of the time we have a party at my room, because my room is big and comfortable. I'm happy that they are enjoying but now, But as they don't give me any happiness, I feel something is wrong.

Not only party, they don't like to give information. They love to keep special information just for himself. I've never seen those lots of stingy people at the same place. This place reminds me of London.

And the most thing that I hate is they feel inferior to Tokyo. I came here because I'm interested in the culture of Kyoto, but Kyoto people have inferior feeling to Tokyo, so they don't want to give any information to us.

In the beginning of my staying Kyoto I've never thought that Kyoto is inferior to Tokyo. But these days I've begun to feel like this: Kyoto people like traditional things, and hate new things.

Anyway this is the reason why I often go back to Tokyo. I finished up one project. I'm going to speak out about this on Thursday. I love to talk what I think, so it's not a big deal.

I'm relaxing but my university friends love to study. I think they don't know how to enjoy life. And I think they don't know what is stimulus.

My days are so peaceful, this is good. But I often think about people and stimulus these days.

Have a good day.

Stinky Pants


For all the fuss made about how well groomed the Japanese are, there seems to be a trend these days of people walking around like real cretinous stinkees.

I notice this on the train in the morning. I made comments a while back about how the smell of moth balls and bad breath assaults your nose in the "crowdy" train in the morning. But recently it's more than those usual scents of which you catch a whiff. Bad hair, and I'm not really talking about the way it looks, is another recent stinky smell-- large glops of dandruff floating around the car like snowflakes to boot. There are those folks too who splash on, to excess, the pheromone-enhanced body cover-up smell, and the latest trendy thing is the unhygienic reek of high school girls nether parts.

What?!

Well, read this then
Mainichi Daily News




Reek rises as gals stick with stinky panties.

Dyed hair, make-up, body piercing, 40 percent with sexual experience, 30,000 of them having abortions every year. Unthinkable among teen-age girls a few years back, it's the norm in Japan now, according to Asahi Shimbun(7/6). And if the once unthinkable is now common practice, it should be no surprise that we're witnessing what had previously been unimaginable -- girls nowadays refuse to change their panties.

"My undies? It's a pain changing them sometimes. You know, like after you've stayed at a friend's place, you don't change 'em much," 16-year-old Yumi says. "But ... I do make sure I use a protective sheet for secretions so my panties don't get dirty."

Kyoko, a 17-year-old Tokyo teen, tells a similar story. "It costs a lot to buy underwear if you're away from home for two or three days, right? That's why I always used the protective sheets," Kyoko says. "But I've stopped using them now. I used to leak a real lot of fluids. My panties would get all crunchy and the hairs would stick to them. It really hurt when I changed my undies."

Physicians are astounded by the girls' attitudes.

"These girls have got an alarming knowledge of sex techniques, but most of them have no idea about illness or hygiene," says Tsuneo Akaeda, a gynecologist. "Some girls think it's fine not to change their underwear for a few days as long as they replace the protective sheets for secretions."

Akaeda tells Shukan Asahi that a random test he conducted last year found that 82 percent of 125 girls in their late teens or women in their early 20s have had some form of venereal disease. He adds that random tests on teen-age girls this year have come up with even more alarming results.

"Just changing the protective sheets and not their panties can lead to a build-up of smells and conceal the degree [to which a sexually transmitted disease (STD)] has progressed. Sometimes, this makes it too late to treat the STDs," Akaeda says.

Shinya Iwamuro, a doctor from Kanagawa Prefecture specializing in public health, agrees there're problems with young women's awareness. "Most of them think that if they come down with an STD it'll be easily treated," he says. "But they've got no idea of the difference between germs and bacteria, or what's clean or dirty."

It seems the problem lies largely at the feet of the protective sheets women can insert in their panties to absorb nether-region secretions. But the sheet-makers are shocked to hear that many young girls are using their products as an alternative to changing their panties, Shukan Asahi notes.

"Many women feel uncomfortable with the fact that secretions can dirty their underwear. Protective sheets were developed in 1988 so that even if secretions did appear, women could feel clean in their delicate zones without having to change their underwear," says a spokesman for Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals Co., Japan's largest manufacturer of the sheets.

Kobayashi has found that 36 percent of all Japanese women use the sheets, with the core market made up by 20- and 30-somethings. Those in their teens account for 39 percent of all sales. "With the declining birthrate, sales of all women's sanitary products are down, except protective sheet sales, which are booming," the spokesman says.

Shukan Asahi finds that some girls feel that using the sheets as an alternative to underwear helps their sex life. "If secretions dirty my panties, it's really embarrassing when I have sex," says a 17-year-old girl. "But all I need to do is take the sheets out just before I do it, and my panties stay clean."

Perhaps cartoonist Mimei Sakamoto speaks for many when he utters his disgust at the idea of girls leaving their knickers on for days. "They're not changing their undies?" Sakamoto scoffs in disbelief. "Letting their panties smell so bad that anyone who gets a whiff becomes sick shows a complete disregard for others."

Thursday

Bigmouth Strikes Again


"I feel great." --"Pistol Pete" Maravich, 40, basketball legend, shortly before dying of a massive heart attack after a 3-on-3 pickup game.

Well, notwithstanding the fate of Pete, I do feel great.

Now I don't have to teach, and besides some inane meetings that will divide up the long break between now and April, I basically get paid to go and hang out in Thailand and Australia for February and March.

I leave Feb. 8 for Thailand again. I hope to scope out some job in Chiang Mai at the uni there. At the "holiday gift giving season" (formerly Christmas) I talked with a former colleague in Bangkok and she said she'd put the good word in for me there. It's an excellent university and an excellent location. Keep your fingers crossed.

I come back for re-exams Feb 27 and head off to Bali (one day), then fly to Brisbane and onto Byron Bay for a surfing safari with a bud from school. I've never surfed, so if that's boring, I'll check out Ayers Rock or something. I have to come back for graduation Mar 28, but on the way back get a few days in Bali at a 5 star hotel (a perk from this inane "Bush/Blair vs. the world of Terrorism" is that all these beautiful spots on earth have no tourists any more, which makes it great for travelling!). After that, I will decide whether to begin a new semester at this crazy uni or just pack it in before becoming complicit in the crime they call education in higher learning in Japan.

In all fairness to my dear friends and colleagues who do have OK jobs in higher education in Japan, the place I work is not indicative of all universities in Japan. It's pretty much a bottom feeder, money making racket, and I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few years they close it down and open it up as either an old folks home or perhaps a country club. In 2005, the world's fair will be held about a half mile from this university (The Aichi 2005 World's Fair), so it might segue nicely into a facility for that shtick.

In the meantime, well, lucky for me my real estate agent left me her TV which has a VCR built into it, and so I've been catching up on rental movies. Titles of note so far are "Being John Malkovitch", "Mighty Aphrodite", and some classics I somehow never seen yet, like "On the Waterfront" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".

As things are unfolding now in these various hate campaigns in the world at large, it's nice to keep things very small and focused.

To that end, I urge you all to pray, think, meditate, chant, or whatever you do to commune with the great unknown, that you will have the wisdom and decency not to get too swept away in all this inanity and share the love that you have in you with all these poor saps that seem to have lost it.

Goin' My Way?


In the March 3, 2003 edition of Forbes, they went on a rant about the suffering Japanese tourism industry. Ha! I didn't even think such a thing existed.

But lo, sure enough the current prime minister, Juichiro Koizumi, has got a PLAN. By the year 2010, he hopes to double the number of tourists dollars that visit the island ...from $3 billion to $6 billion.

Sounds like a lot, but if you weigh this figure of foreign visitors forking out their hard-earned cash on their holidays to other nations, Japan is below Croatia as a tourist draw.

Granted, Japan beats out the tourist revenue to New Zealand ($2 billion), and Finland ($1 billion), but even my own dear frozen country Canada ranks in the top ten in tourism ($11 billion...the US is number one with $72 billion...but Americans also travelled the most and spent $43 billion abroad).

So what is wrong with visiting the second largest economy in the world...err...the land of the rising sun?

Lots.

According to Pleasant Holidays, a U.S. firm founded in 1959 that is devoted to Asian travel, a 7-day package trip to Japan will cost $1,250; a similar package to China costs $850.

My own fact finding mission proved that even international hotels and toursit relations are staffed with people with little or no competence with the world's most widely used language...English, making it impossible to communicate. Add to that the humiliation, for many Westerners who are forced to sleep on lumpy futons on grass-mat floors, awakened at 7 am in the morning to run down to eat a kipper, a raw egg on white, bland rice, and you can see it's not everyone's idea of a Holiday Inn experience.

Lack of hotel luxury aside, once you get to the island, it's astronomically expensive to travel within the country. Even the locals don't travel much given the expense. To wit, the Shinkansen (Bullet train) from Tokyo to Nagoya costs $100 one way, not including snacks or other details. A similar distance, say between Toronto and Ottawa, costs $45 US.

Besides, what is the value of traveling to an island nation? If you land in Asia, a better place to be is Bangkok, Singapore, or even Hong Kong, for the proximity to other Asian nations. When going to Japan, it is about that one contry and that's it.

Part of the problem with tourism in Japan stems from how Japan is marketed. One is reminded constantly of Geisha, Cherry Blossoms, and Samurai Warriors. Occasionally we get news stories on how awful the economy is faring, and we see glimpses on TV about the grey, dirty heavy-industry sites and faceless salarymen in overcrowded trains--or a twentysmething woman dresse up like a Kewpie Doll in a ridiculously shrill high pitched voice "manning" an elevator.

What we don't know is what is on the minds of the Jpaanese. We don't see "la vie quotidien", the up to the minute things a Tokyoite or a Kyotan get up to. Why not?

In their push to Westernize, they forgot one inportant thing--to tell us about themselves. Now they really are a faceless mass--not only because of the lack of information they provied about themselves, but even the type of information they pass off to one another.

In short, it's a hard place to travel to because even the locals have trouble in telling you anything about themselves because, in reality, they really don't know.

For my money, anywhere but Japan is the place to travel to.

Another Rap



...on the flight to Kathmandu from Bangkok, there was this older kinda wigged out Japanese guy beside me. He had an Abe Lincoln kind of beard, you know, no moustache, and it was wispy and white. He had on safari gear, as most guys of his generation from Japan wear traveling, you know, a photographers vest with a gizzillion pockets, khaki pants with a gizzillion pockets, a khaki trout-fishing hat, cameras and all that. As it were I got the window seat looking in the right direction to see the Himalayas as we flew in.

So, the Japanese guy kept on leaning over, breathing that ketased fish and barf smell on me the whole trip, and every once in a while would exclaim, "Look, za Himalaya are so beutiful."

This was when we were flying over Burma and the Andaman sea. I pointed out to him and said, "Look, that's ocean."

About 10 minutes later, the sky was sort of hazy, low clouds off in the distance, and he exclaimed, "Look, zere is za Mount-o Everest-o."

I looked out, thinking perhaps he might be onto something, but when I looked out, all I saw was flat desert, and a river snaking along the ground, no sense of elevation at all. I thought perhaps it might be where the clouds were, but try as I might, I got no sense of mountains in the distance.

"Sooo beutiful..." he was cooing, sucking his teeth too.

Realizing the guy was doing what the Japanese do best--fantasize about nothing--I let him coo away in his idiotic delusion. Then further ahead I noticed some snow-peaked caps, and the unmistakable black triangular pyramid with white snow blowing off one side which IS Mount Everest. He couldn't see it at the time.

Finally, I couldn't resist and said, "Pal, I don't know what you have been drooling over for the past half hour, but you've been looking at nothing. THAT is mount Everest."

Needless to say after losing face to this insubordinate Gaijin, he was overcome with fuck-upness and finally shut up.

Chalk one up for the good guys!

I say spank them


Hey, I would really like to launch into how pathetic teaching English in Japan is, but that's a one-note theme and it must be getting tiresome for you.

Ok, ok, here's the most recent crap about school:

The Dean, this older, seedy Scotsman, has decided to put his foot down about the TOEIC test. The TOEIC test is a measure of your communicative ability in international settings. Sounds good huh? But no, in Japan it is used for accreditation, and so people study the test like it is going to help them become really good at communication. Not so.

Like everything else the Japanese do, they adhere to the form of things, but not much on the substance (arguments can be made here about the notion of "what is substance exactly", but for now I think I'll leave this to your common sense).

Anyway, the dean gets up in front of us and says we have to do a better job at getting he TOEIC scores higher. He then hands around a sheet of paper with the current TOEIC test results. They are all way low for the most part, and then singles a few that got like 5 out of a possible 990.

Wow.

Well, it turns out the kids are forced to take this test as a requirement 4 times a year, paying $100 extra for each time they take it. There is no way taking the test that many times a year is necessary, nor are the scores going to improve all that much after like 30 hours of instruction (especially when the instruction is to go over the test items and then spoon-feed answers to the kids-- they can't memorize all the items, and they really have no background knowledge to really know any of the scenarios in which the language feature is presented, amongst other reasons why they can never get the language (one being they don't really care about it).

But the clincher is that the dean, in a stern face and in all seriousness said we must wake the students up when they fall asleep during the exam. That would be one 'drastic' measure to improve scores. The other was to scold them and threaten them if they don't do well, 'something' bad might happen to them.

At this point in this staff meeting, the first one I've attended, I just couldn't believe my ears. The bile started to rise in my gut, that sinking feeling overcame me, and I thought to myself "Why am I here?"

Later on, the vice-dean pulled me aside and said, "the Dean doesn't like you to make any more noise about the TOEIC test. It is very dangerous for you."

To which I said, "Dangerous? Look, there is nothing dangerous going on here. What can you or he possibly do to me? The only two options you have are 1) fire me or 2) kill me. I am not afraid of either of those options. But if you expect me to sit around and listen to this crap and pretend this is a serious matter, you're wrong. What is serious is the total whitewash you've given education at the university level. If these were your kids, would you put them through this crap?"

Admittedly, like most private universities, there is steep competition for the best students. Naturally, any student would go to the university that can guarantee a rosie future. Since our university is below average, it's very hard to recruit the good students, so you end up with the real lousy ones, and hence the lack of interest or ability in English.

But I mean, if you have to wake them up during an exam, I mean, what are they there for in the first place?

I say spank them. I think my young sex fiend friend would be happy to do that ;-)

Speak Ill-glish


The best experience I've had teaching ESL was in Montreal when I did my teacher training in in 1989. I had French Canadian kids with northern Africans and Latinos. We renacted a court trial, I assigned each student a role, gave them a description of their duties, provided a glossary of terms and concepts, laid out the protocol of how a trial worked, and they just took over and did it.

The second best experience was in North Carolina. A great mix of students that kept me on my toes all the time with such insightful discussion.

The third was in Bangkok teaching e-commerce to a group of MBA students. They were really fun, all well heeled and placed in the upper echelons of Thai society, but only because they were excellet minds and deserved it.

The worst teaching experience I had was an arbeit teaching in a chemical factory in Matsuda. They wanted a lesson to start at 6 pm, and in a half hour they all were asleep.

My first round in Nagoya was the 2nd worst experience, and this one is just a notch above that one.

Last night I taught this very high tech online course, but the addage 'you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear' rings true for most teaching in the God-forsaken land. I really do mean God-forsaken. They are a blank spiritually.

I used to think Zen was an amazingly interesting religion...the no mind was such a thrillng two words to say. No...mind. What could that mean exactly?

With all the catholic upbringing I had (God bless my mother who did a wonderful job in instilling a sense of mystery and wonder to life through her faith and conviction to give us a religious sensibility) I had a belief there was more to matter than meets the eye. I mean, there is a spirit somewhere, a non-tangible. There is, I feel it.

But if you believe in Zen, there is nothing.

It takes quite a bit to approach this. It takes a lot of abandoning a lot of what you think to really get this. This is a life long endeavour, one only the hardy actually pursue (but we all get it...at the last breath we will know what nothing will be...).

But these Japanese people are truly empty. I feel sad for them.


I will go on about what I have seen. It's all being stored and organized. It disgusts me to uncontrollable, horrible, laughter.

Educational Value?


Education is touted as being a very important facet of socialization--taxes are used for education and so we do pay the premium for it; and we hear day to day how important school is and how we must maintain standards of excellence and develop leadership. On the other hand, we are a bit scornful of inividuals who truly learn and think about situations, or who may not be all that practical, and even praise those with little education who are over-night sensations because they succeed economically by their God-given talents. Nothing wrong with having talent--it just is that it is a rare commodity and one that for 98% of the population that is truly lacking.

But then when the virtues of diligence, effort, study and hard work are usurped by those that 'beat' the system--those that scorn it from all walks of life, it must give our young people a very disorienting view of what values are important. Then, on top of al that, we cheat the earnestness of these innocent minds by making tests that are incredibly unfair, that bias in favour of some but not for others, and we maintainan elitist system--a guild as it were--where membership is closely guarded and concealed from true view. If you are in, well, you can reap all the rewards and power your membership afords. If you are out, well, get down on your knees and start scrubbing.

Yes, life is not fair; I happen to have each foot in each of these camps, and then I come here where the rules are non-negotiable, totally corupt, unfair, and I would even say inhumane and cruel.

I wish I could ask the university president what he would think should his own children have to go through the system he endorses? Of course his children are exempt (if he has any--not sure). He has all the power and resources to ensure his kids will get the finest, whether they earn it or not. Ironically, they will go to American universities, where equality and opportunity are indeed open for all. Ha.

Anyway, this experience is not for naught. It is useful for fodder to write about.The story to be told.

Your faithful story-teller

Waiting for the Godot-damned lights!



My brain is little soft and tender, sort of like the skin of a snake when it shirks off its outer skin every once and a while to grow. Only 4 days on Ko Phang Nan and I'm feeling pretty good about things. When the biggest thing you have to do is wake up, eat, and admire the sun and the water, life gets pretty simple indeed.

I went snorkeling around that little island on the north side, and it was by far the better experience than previous journeys. It helped that it was a calm, hot and sunny day and the water was clear, clear, clear. It also helped that I rented a pair of flippers that actually fit my feet. The coral seems to have multiplied, all colors, but the most predominant being a deep burgundy and moss green, and bright little fishies darting in and out in their megalopolis. Wonderful.

The only down side has to be that crappy trance, Eurobeat and techno music that provides extra decibels of thumping bass at bungalows that Lonely Planet cowboys need for hyper-stimulation--like, it's just not good enough to listen to the waves crashing and the sounds of the jungle. But hey, who am I to judge?

Anyway, it's nice to be back in Bangkok in the Nanatai Mansion, right here beside the luxurious space and quiet of the Tobacco monopoly.

Well, the other realm, that of Japan,looms ahead,and what can we expect?

I'll let you be the judge of that...read what my scultpor friend finds so enchanting about it:
I'm really enjoying living in Tokyo. I love city. This season TOKYO is so decollated with illumination. For example, there is a illuminated street in front of Tokyo station. I visited there with my friend. The illuminated street with many illuminated arches runs about 400M long It usually takes only 5 minutes from Tokyo station to the point that there's a illuminated entrance. But I lined for "1 hour and 40 minutes" to arrived at the gate! But I impressed so much. 15 minutes walk under the illuminated arches and chatting with best friend for 1 and 40 minutes with very slowly walk to reach gate was so fun. "Waiting" is Tokyo's culture, isn't it?

Gaga editorial: yeah, Samuel Beckett wrote a play all about waiting. Alas, he had know idea the Japanese would willfully create spaces to wait around for.

Friday

Chaipatsu- Every Picture Tells a Story



On this tour of duty, a lot of guys and gals have dyed their hair to various shades of brown--the gamut from ginger to auburn. So the old exercise wherein the students describe their appearance has taken on a bit of a twist from the usual "brack hair, brack eyes" routine.

Mind you, I don't need to do that sort of description crap anymore...hey..I teach at a university! We talk about fiscal policies and negotiation techniques... which means Hiroyuki is passed out in the back, Megumi studies her split ends, Yoko admires her keitai cell phone, and the rest just await your dear teacher to dance around like some sort of wind-up toy.

They just fired some hapless older gent from Georgia for no apparent reason. I only talked to him once, and that was about the only other time he was in Japan--he shipped through Okinawa en route to Da Nang to fight the Vietnamese in that war.

The Russia under Stalin motto seems to be ringing true. I am sure if he could, the president would actually behead his victims, or feed them to the lions for sport. What is most vexing is what informs his educational policy? From colleagues who have been here for a long time (8 years), they tell me he doesn't actually read anything, he acts on compulsion based on some sort of information that comes from God knows where, and none of it is pedagogically of any soundness.

Part of the blame might be the sycophantic core of pedants who form his counsel. Hmm. I am reminded of the Roman senate in the age of Caligula or Nero... as wonderfully portrayed by Charles Laughton or Peter Ustinov in Spartacus or maybe even Stewart Grainger in Salome... you know... the "yes" men who just save their own asses at the expense of others.

The poor hapless dean, who is recently flaking away (literally...flakes of scalp and skin falling onto his navy blue blazer in largish chunks, and his face red and scabby) is just one step ahead of having his own head chopped off.

As for me? Well, my well appointed office (MAC G4, 26" monitor, mahogany paneling, a conference room with a large mahogany table and four chairs, my desk in an "L" shape with one of those executive, punched-leather chairs you recall from the Rock Hudson/Tony Randall movies showing the high life of Manhattan's Madison Avenue advertising execs...you know...martinis at five, a nosh at Delmonico's, a little side table later on at the Village Vanguard to see the last set of Earl "Fatha" Hines' two-handed melodies, then after hours at Jilly's joshing around with Frank and Dean, and of course in the wee small hours of the morning bedding some Ziegfeld girl or a Doris Day bumpkin...) is away from everyone else, way up the hill in the graduate faculty office building.

Ahh...the luxury of being an associate professor! Sort of reeks of the British officer's club, without the pomp and circumstance.

So far I've made enough noise to keep people at bay. They did grant me my request for an all-expenses paid trip to the JALT national conference, and permission (permission!) to leave the country for holidays in Thailand for Christmas. So far, so good.

Acrimony will set in should I be granted rights (rights!) to carry out some research, which is to see is if teaching to the TOEIC English proficiency test actually increases TOEIC scores. I'll wager it doesn't, but let's play the cards and see how they fall. That is the state of the union. Stalin has shaken it up a bit, but the waves have yet to make an impact on your true Gaga.

Monday

"You fail... so love me, OK?"



In this one, I'd like to just list some of the inanities about this
higher education institute which pays me a salary to do as
they say.

~1~
Although not really written down anywhere, the policy of the school
is that 30% of the students in your classroom must fail outright.

It does not matter at all about their performance in class--that it
might be possible for you to have a class of exceptionally bright
students. The policy is that you submit your grades to the
administration, and if there aren't enough failing grades to meet the
quota, they send it back to you and tell you to change the grades until
there are enough failures.

Why? Perhaps it's an economic measure. If the students fail, they must pay some
extra money to write a make-up exam. If they fail that, then they can
pay some more money and take a remedial exam. If they fail that, well,
they pay more money and have to do the class all over again.

This seems extremely unfair, and no doubt to you it is. But this is
Japan, after all. It is not uncommon for this irrational decision
making to be acceptable practice. The most important feature being
taught here, as it is in other sectors of life in Japan, is that you
are never really above the system, and if you think you are, you are
going to be slapped down.

Take the driver's license exam. No one, and I mean no one, passes the
exam the first time around. First of all, you have to pay a fortune to
some driving school to take lessons. The driving school then arranges
your test, and then you take the test, only to fail, even if you do
everything right. Everyone knows this. So, it is not really uncommon
for people to accept their failures the first time around. It is just a
little disingenuous to those of us who really have no reason to fail
someone if they do well. But, if you want to keep making this salary,
then you gotta do it.

~2~
The school administers a teacher evaluation which all your students
in each class must complete. In this evaluation, they ask questions
like, "was the textbook any good?", "would you recommend this course to
others?", "did the teacher use all the bells and whistles (OHP, video,
tapes, computers) available?" Hmm. It seems unreasonable to me that I
will be accountable about the choice of textbook and nature of the
course, given that I had no say in this decision, nor did I put a gun
to the students' heads and say they HAD to take this course in the
first place. Further, if I decline to use all the bells and whistles in
the class, why would that be a good or bad thing? For example, if I
teach reading skills, it is clear to me that a couple of good books
might be in order, that I might not need to use a video or audiotape to
teach reading skills. So I question the rationale for being judged
about my use of equipment which is not necessary.

Additionally, but more grave in its importance to my future, is that
the president of the university takes this survey very seriously. That
is, judgments made based on the opinions of students about your
teaching count a great deal here. It means the difference between
getting a raise, or worse, maintaining your current level of income,
and at the worst, getting the sack. It seems rather flimsy that I might
be docked 10% of my pay if the students "feel" the course they signed
up for didn't suit their fancy, or that they didn't fancy me. The
reverse cannot be made known however; that is, I have no recourse to
say that the students are a lazy bunch of deadbeats, with poor study
abilities, little intellectual curiosity, and are basicaly wasting
their and my time for even showing up.

But here's the clincher: let's say the students generally do think the
better of you--that they "like" you (which is worded on the
questionnaire as "is the teacher passionate about teaching", and "did
you communicate with the teacher?"). What happens if they generally
like all the teachers?

Let's say, for example, Tom, Dick, and Harry are teachers and the
students give them all high ratings. The ratings are numerical (5- high
rating, to a 1-low rating) and so can be tallied and a number total is
derived. Tom gets a 96 out of a possible 100; Dick gets a 95, and Harry
a 94. Pretty good--all the students think quite highly of Tom, Dick,
and Harry, giving them a rating in the 90s out a possible 100. In
anyone's eyes, this would be a good thing.

But, alas, what the school does is rank the order of the teachers: Tom
is number 1, Dick number 2, and Harry is number 3. Since Harry is
number 3, or last, he will get 10% of his salary cut.

This is the inanity we have to deal with.

~3~
How this affects teaching is that you must really please the
students in some way: coddle them, cajole them nicely, and heaven
forbid you ever should make them do something where your own ratings
would be in jeopardy.

To this end, the vice-dean, a Ph.D mind you, has taken the tact to
entertain his class by bringing a guitar to every class regardless of
the subject, and singing country and western tunes. He teaches such
classes as Computer Technology, Readings in Language Learning, Seminar
on Business and Foreign Policy; however, in each of these subjects, he
pulls out the 6 string and sings Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and maybe a
bluesy thing by Elvis Presley (note: it helps in some obtuse way that
he is a direct descendant of that Irish gadfly and writer Lafcadio
Hearn--a beloved honorary Japanese citizen who wrote Japanese fables
and taught at Waseda University at the turn of the century).

This is how he guarantees his position as a "great" teacher that all
the kids adore.

Actually, I took over from a few of his classes, and the first thing
the students said to me was, "we hate country music." I took that as a
hint the vice-dean's ploy to win the hearts of his students with song
no longer worked, and so I was left with the arduous task of actually
having to open the textbook and teach them something--entertaining. I
would say teach them something of value, but that can't be true. There
is not a snowball's chance in hell the students in my "Readings in
Language Learning" class could care less about the topic, because when
I asked them why they took the course they said, "it fit my schedule".

Proof positive that they couldn't care less was that half of them were
sound asleep by the end of the hour and a half I had with them each
week. Now, you may be shocked by this admission. Don't be. It is not
uncommon for these hard studying miracles of modern Japanese education
to sleep in class, out of class, on the job, on the train, just about
anywhere. In fact, when asked what sort of hobby students engage in,
there are always a handful who list "sleeping" as a hobby. Yeah, I
know...in our part of the world, sleeping is not really a hobby. I
suppose I could scold them for engaging in their hobby while they were
supposed to be learning in my class, but I'm up against it: I wouldn't
want my students not to "like" me because it could jeopardize my big,
big salary.

~4~
In summary, you have to be liked by your students because they
determine your value as a teacher. On the other hand, you have to fail
30% of them. This is a precarious balancing act to perform. How do you
be nice, yet be a bastard and fail them for no reason at all at the
same time?

This I am trying to figure out.

Welcome to higher education in Japan.

Thursday

Hell in a Bucket


What I haven't realized until just now was that I have lots of money suddenly again. The danger of course with lots of money is that you get silly spending it. One must be always vigilant about such things...it doesn't take long to getting used to money and the things it affords, and then soon you're in above your head buying all the gizmos you think you need just to exist.

Given that whatever percentage of the world populace doesn't even have running water to poo in, let alone drink, it makes one think twice about how to spend money. Alas, I still buy useless stuff with it--bags of chips, beer, crap like that. Besides my rent (60,000 Yen = $493 US), transportation on public vehicles is my next biggest expense (they give me 30,000 a month, but it really costs me 34,000 a month to go to and from work).
Next would be food and house stuff. And then the telephone (about 4,000 a month). I am not going to invest any money in other stuff but the basics for my place. In a very short time, I should have several thousands of dollars to do something "useful" with.

At a very young age I sort of thought about what was the point of scrimping and saving for old age when you could be enjoying life now. I think my thoughts of enjoying youth as it was was the influence of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Siddartha. Then a real life experience solidified it when I worked as a Japanese gardener one summer--the crew went to do some Japanese garden at this huge, brand-new mansion in north Toronto. The house was gigantic. Inside was this nice older lady and her husband. They were so happy to see us. The lady would bring out lemonade and would talk to us all day. She had a family and they had all grown up and moved away. The house they bought was her and her husband's dream from when they first got married--I guess everyone then dreamt of a dream home to raise the kids in. They finally got the dream home, but really had no one to enjoy it with. No kids, just old neighbors living beside them. It seemed to me they were bored to tears living there.

I got this flash of insight then that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to waste your life saving and hoping for something, because eventually it may come, but it might not actually be what you want at that time. It's all a matter of timing.

The insanity of working here is sort of interesting to watch. It's doing nothing for my health, however. It's getting too cold to go ride my bike (which is what I loved doing in Stittsville through the farm fields and forests) so I guess I need to find some way to keep exercising. In terms of the job...well, there might be three students out of the lot I teach that are interesting. All have been abroad, all have a purpose for why they are studying, and all are the head of their various clubs--you know how Japan works--this club thing is more important than anything else. Being the social big wig is more important than what grade you get. Hmm. Something in that rings true,
doesn't it?

The shitty thing here is the same thing that was shitty about my previous Japan experience--the student polls. Students fill in a survey of your teaching, and it counts a great deal--promotions are based on it, as well as salary cuts and the possibility of getting fired (a guy was just fired in mid-semester here because the students
didn't "like" him).

All these teachers are all freaked out, ensuring they score high on the polls by not giving any homework, keeping everything in the comfort zone for the students, which amounts to a class similar to Romper Room--those that wanna play can play, and those that need a little nappie can sleep if they want. As long as the kids are smiling is all that counts.

Meanwhile the dean, poor devil--flaking away with psoriasis-- has put all his credibility on TOEIC test score improvement. There is just no way any pressure he puts on teachers or students to improve the TOEIC scores will work. Ha!

He keeps on telling the staff to buck up and get the scores higher. Me? Well, I'll do whatever it takes not to teach TOEIC (I am not just some anti-establishment yahoo here--I did a lot of work with language testing--recall--and it just doesn't make sense to run programs to teach to this test).

What amazes me is that Ph.D's in Japan (and elsewhere?) get the juicy jobs, and it doesn't really matter if they know how to teach or even have to come from an applied linguistic background. It's just the title that impresses hiring practice (well, the same holds true for politics...how can a cowboy be prez of the USA? How can a kid from Shawinagan run Canada?)

More vexing are the British cronies that keep on pushing for the TOEIC. What's with the Brits? I guess it keeps their white, hairy, ugly asses above contempt by pointing at test results and diverting attention away from their own lack of skill.

I think it's reached critical mass here. If scores don't improve come this December's forced round of TOEIC testing (the last round was Oct. 23--what possible increase can be expected?)

Who knows? What then will follow? There are a lot of people that eye a job where you make 18 million yen a year ($160,000 US). But always the wrong ones. These are the guys that like politics and bullshit. Most dedicated teachers steer clear from these positions because they'd rather teach than put up with the crap. So you end up with constipated ladies or poo-eyed slovenly drunken Brits in these positions.

Me?

God, I may be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I'm enjoying the ride.

Another couple of paychecks and I'm outta here.

Friday

The Apartment Hunt



I've been driven around to find an apartment suitable to live in by an agency the school arranged. This is a nice service indeed, and I appreciate the effort. I have several conflicting ideas about trying to find a place, notably the idea of signing onto a one or two year lease when I might not last 6 months.

Those who live or lived in Japan know a more vexing problem: the cost to get a place. The agency will charge a fee equivalent to whatever one month's rent costs. On top of that, the landlord will ask for up to three months in advance as a deposit, from which you might get back two-thirds; they claim it costs them money to clean the apartment after you leave, so they use some of the deposit money to do so. But there is still more: on top of the three month deposit, they often ask for 'key' money, which is a remnant of a pre World War Two custom to give your landowner a gift of money in return for allowing you to live in their place. Hmm. Seems to me they should give the tenant a little gift, considering it is the tenant that is paying down the landlord's mortgage. But hey, who am I to say?

So that's a bit of my housing dilemma, whether to pay down up to six months in advance when I might not even be here in six months. The other dilemma is what size of an apartment, and where?

I've been driven around the posh neighborhoods (Hoshigaoka or 'Star City') as they think since I'm some big shot associate professor I need a fancy place to live. Hardly. Recall I've spent time in a monastery, and at one time I stayed in a cave in Thailand... albeit only a few days because when it rained, I got washed out. Nonetheless, this training showed me you don't really need too much to live on. Anyway, the posh neighborhoods have the same rooms as anywhere else, only that there are noisy cars going by the wide boulevards and airplanes fly over every half an hour. Please tell me what's so posh about that?

I went to the countryside, nice and green and all. The thing is that it is mostly married couples with small children out there. It is the suburbs like anyplace in Canada or the United States. The places I checked out were nice, but I was told the idea of a single gaijin (foreigner, for those who don't parlay Nihongo) in an enclave of young married Japanese would be so odd it would make everyone...nervous.

But there is something even more disturbing about living in the Japanese style that is indicative of the national character... everything has all the trim, the fixings, the possibility for all the appliances and conveniences of modern high tech living...except that there is something not quite right...sort of an annoying aspect I liken to having a small stone in your shoe, or a bit of grit in your eye. It's not all that painful, but it's there, and when you think about it, it really annoys you.

Take for example some of the swank places I looked at. One place was very nice. A six unit low rise apartment built last year, situated on a mound overlooking a ravine, across that some rice fields and a small copse of trees. I thought 'great...a place with a view'...but not so my friends.

It was on the first floor, and the front part faced the small street with a clear glass window. Walking in (take off your shoes!) and looking around, it was spacious enough, a lovely 2 DK (D = dining room K = kitchen) — one room a hardwood floor, the other a tatami (traditional straw mat) room. Going to the rear I wanted to see the beautiful view of the ravine, but lo, the back window was frosted! What's this? The room with the view of the ravine, with not a house or structure obstructing, was covered with translucent white stippled glass. What's the logic in that? The room facing the street and the neighbors was clear glass, so I would need to put up curtains should I entertain the thought of prancing around nude on those sultry summer days (which I am apt to do--ask anyone). The vista was whited out and made my heart sink in my chest an inch or two. This then, is the stone in your shoe in Japan.

Other little stones: the kitchen area was butted right up against the ingressing door, which means as you cook up the yaki soba on the gas element, the doorknob would catch you in the small of your back like a karate chop. If you shut the door, there would be no air flow, and things would get hot, etc., etc.

Other things... windows that won't open, fancy-schmancy filigree, trim, transoms, baseboards, even mica walls!, that serve no purpose and are gaudy, tacky, and will just be places where spiders and dani (annoying microscopic sized mites, fleas, and things that bite in the night) collect. Also location. Places overlooking wide roads where traffic passes all day, and at night the bosozoku (Japanese outlaw biker gangs) drive by in their choppers (if you can call a Suzuki bike that sounds like a sewing machine a chopper) revving up their engines, driving slowly, and putting the fear of God into the gentry who patiently lie fully awake in bed while they pass by, which can take up to a half an hour. Add to that the police who follow behind them with their sirens going and a megaphone voice politely telling the gang to stop, which they never do. This will go on at least one night a week, every week of the year.

And so, this is Japan. One of the only places on God's green earth where having a stone in your shoe is a virtue for the entire time you have to live.

There is more of this type of thing to come.

Saturday

Sunday, November 03, 2002



The Squire of Gothos



"Eighty per cent of life is just showing up."
--Woody Allen

Never is this maxim more true than in Japan. While the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and the early 90s saw the Japanese spending more time at work than, say, the Americans, it did not necessarily mean they actually did anything while on the job.


Oh sure, there is a very strong work ethic in Japan. I am not discrediting that people generally feel they accomplish something in the workplace; but in Japan, the built-in redundancy ensures no one individual actually does anything of any consequence. Think of a large, monolithic public service operation in your neighborhood... and this is by and large Japan in almost every sector in society.


Now add to that the decline in the actual production of goods and the decreased work hours, and you have Japan today, faltering economically.


But what am I really trying to say here? I am no economic analyst, so let's just cut to the chase.


In Japan, people just show up. That's good enough. It doesn't matter what you do, just be present, and when the boss is around, just make sure he sees you.


Take my university gig. It doesn't really matter that the students are to learn anything, rather they just have to be there. There is no real incentive for them to learn. Just show up. If you teach something, great, if you don't, it doesn't really matter. The whole exercise is just going through the motions. Just show up and go through it.


There is nothing that revealing or profound at all, other than to earmark this for further development in another installment.


Another bit of interest: this Japanese fascination with things foreign takes on ridiculous shapes. I might have already gone on at length before about British Hills, a project the playboy president and my former employer at Kanda Gaigo Gakuin built. Here on a mountaintop, the president envisaged a British-type community, where students could learn the finer things of British life without the fear of actually having to travel to Britain. It was an hugely expensive enterprise; the oak alone he bought up from England cost one million dollars per structure, with a total of 13 Tudor-style houses constructed between 1992 and 1994.


Oak is a beautiful wood, as you know, but in order for it to enter Japan it was soaked in creosote to kill any insect pests and thereby ruining it's beautiful tone, texture, and aroma. Talk about a waste--he would have done better to use the white pine the Japanese build everything with because there is not one bit of that oak exposed for view.

I won't go into too many of the the inane details of what they learn up there at British Hills, but here's a few for the taste of it:

They hired a real "Jeeves" type butler and there he is, stuck, out of place, way up in the countryside of Japan, where the people would prefer their yaki imo (baked sweet potatoes) and rice curry (a disgustingly sweet tasting hodge podge of brownish looking goop laced with MSG, poured over bland tasting Japanese short-grain sticky rice) than British food. Admittedly, I am no fan of British food like most folks, and so the choice is a no-brainer for the hapless Japanese students, who are forced to make an annual trek up to British Hills to eat this crap. While there, they learn how to use an assortment of knives and forks, as if this sort of pedigree training will mean anything to them in their future. The Japanese are quite content on slurping down hot soba noodles or shoveling in that bland rice with two pointy sticks rather than any other utensil. Such a waste of time, money and energy.

In my new work situation, the president is yet another one of these playboy presidents (he has a helicopter to move him around) who sees himself as a genius/visionary. He fancies himself an architect and entertained his whim by designing a very non-functional main school building, which is a long narrow corridor which is filled with--his office space. What it effectively does is make it impossible to go from one side of the campus to the other, so one must make an elaborate detour around this horrible eyesore to get to anywhere.

In the faculty dining chambers there is a stone ski chalet style fireplace that has never once been lit. So much of Japan is facade. The architecture is sort of like something you may have seen in a book: is it Colmar? Bruxelles? Milano? Delft? Paris? Bayreuth? Hard to tell, but definitely European, but then again of a Europe long gone.

I liken the whole atmosphere like a Star Trek episode called the Squire of Gothos.

In it, a precocious teenager, Squire Trelane, is given a planet by his parents, and one day he looks out into the cosmos with his telescope and notices light emanating from our fair earth; however, the light took hundreds of light years to reach his eyes, and so he is of the impression earth must be like 17th century Europe. He proceeds to build a replica of what he sees and then harkens the Star Trek crew down to his planet for amusement.

When Kirk and the rest of his crew land, they notice something not quite right. Everything looks real, that is, the surface textures and details look authentic--the burled wood, the fire in the fireplace, the mirror, the clock...but upon closer inspection of the fire place, Dr. McCoy exclaims, "Jim...this fire has no heat!"

What Trelane had done was copy every visual detail perfectly, but what he had no access to was the real, tangible, living objects-- and so had no idea of their function or purpose.


This then is my impression of Japan--a bad copy of a Star Trek episode.




Saturday, November 02, 2002




Japan Bashing?




Time was in the early 90s the term 'Japan Bashing' came into the popular vernacular to describe the jealously other countries felt about Japan's overheated economy, and the term was coined to capture the scorn the western powers (i.e., the USA) thought about Japan. You see, the Japanese got off easy due to privileged trade agreements and tariff arrangements until the US realized Japan was the hottest economy in the world, and that when it came to doing business with the Japanese, the Japanese always seemed to come out the better.


All those books about the wonder of Japanese management, 'kirestu' systems of corporate families, the inscrutability of the Japanese mind, and the Japanese persistent desire to know everything about the world but unwillingness to let the world know about it got the ball rolling for this Japan bashing tirade. By 1990 the bubble popped, but it took another five years for the balloon to finally deflate noticeably.


I recall the moment the party finally was over. It was 1995 when the US car makers insisted it was unfair for the average Joe American to drive his Honda Civic or Toyoto product while Hiroshi Japanese didn't drive a GMC Jimmy or Ford product through the impossibly narrow streets of Chiyoda ward in Tokyo. I mean, the cars couldn't even fit the roads (not to mention the steering wheel was on the wrong side for Japanese driving standards) but what they hey! They just weren't buying Detroit steel products, and that was unfair, so they had to be ...screwed somehow.


Of course the faltering Japanese economic problem extended farther back than my reading about it in the Daily Yomiuri that day in 1995. It was in the air as far back as 1983, when I first got wind of it while I worked for a retired Todai (Tokyo University--the best university in Japan) professor in his tofu shop in Paris-- those who know me know that I made tofu the old fashioned way from 1983-85 for Sakaguchi-san. If you ate tofu in Paris and environs back then, well, it came from your Gaga's hands. But that's another whole story to tell.


Sakaguchi-san left Tokyo with his wad of cash and retired to make tofu for Paris. He recruited a handful of extremely interesting Japanese folks, and besides my encounter with Nora Nishikawa-- a Canadian-born Japanese girl in my second grade class, these Japanese folks in Paris were the first contact I had with real Japanese people.


They were pretty special. First, they could only speak French. I was utterly shocked to learn they actually had to learn six years of English, because none of them could speak English, but they all spoke French in that muffled-mouth manner most Japanese people speak every other language but their own. I was fond of all of them for their kindness to accept me as their tofu man. It was a hard job and it was the reason Sakaguchi came to Paris. He let me, some Canadian loafer, be the man for the best-paying job in his shop. But I digress.


My Parisian-Japanese friends all were skilled in economics, but left Japan knowing the economy would eventually unravel. Here were accountants, stock brokers, and highly talented commercial artists and retailers cutting vegetables, making hiziki salad and tarte aux pommes and scrubbing dishes for a living. They were different from all other Japanese people I have ever met--they were truly...happy...with not a single desire to go back to their former lives on the hamster wheel.


They all knew the Japanese economy was overheated and would explode, so they got out well before it happened and had interesting lives--one learned violin cello, the other was a painter and married a sculptor, and the others were powerful healers and...cooks! Sakaguchi-san had the power of healing with his hands (popular today as Reiki)--I saw him do some weird things with it, like knock people over without touching them. But that too is another whole story.


Back to 1995. The Japanese, for the first time since the Meiji restoration (if not their entire history), had the hottest economy in the world, and were using their leverage to buy up land, art, buildings, mountains, businesses, parks... you name it... in every part of the world, at well over the market value. Add to that the heinous construction industry's control over the government and all those make work projects to fill their coffers, it didn't take long before this 'kid in the candy store' had used up all its money and was now buying on credit. Gluttony reigned supreme.


I am no expert on economics and so don't look for me for all the juice on this. A good book to check out is Alex Kerr's (2001) Dogs and Demons.


So, what's my point?


Somewhere along the way, the Japanese lost their...soul. Or, perhaps that is incorrect. She lost her direction. Generations of post world war two political leaders have steered the course of the land to its own cultural, economic, and social woes it now must live with. So, while the Japanese heart still beats, it does so without a head. It is following along a course set in stone too long ago and it can't seem to get out of the rut.


So many examples to tell you of this. Everything from 'key money--a sort of extortion for renting a place to live that dates from feudal times to bowing while on a telephone. The whole Confucian social order that is mixed with Shinto animism and this persistent misreading of Buddhist 'suffering'.


She better put the brakes on, get her head out of the sand (or some other dark, moist body orifice) and figure out what to do.


It will do no good to wait until this ruling generation withers and dies away.


Is it Japan bashing?


No, it's a firm but gentle nudge to say, 'Grow up'.


Sheesh.




Friday, November 01, 2002




He doesn't even get a chance to shoot, how can he score?...




Some random mumblings that are back logged in a little brown book I carry around to take notes in.

They aren't profound, but they are observations.

Well, I am Gaga...what do you expect?


TV
*Beer ads with the sound of some guy swallowing amplified as he swigs down a glass of beer. Yeuch.

*Bob Sap, a humongous black man, beat the shit out of some other hapless black man in a fist fight broadcast live from Tokyo Dome.

*Endless shows (and shameless product showcase) of people traveling around Japan eating food at little hole-in-the-wall places. They interview the owner, some shriveled up old guy who says he's been making this food now for like 30 years--and it looks terrible and probably is bland and tasteless. Notable unusual American jazz music softly playing in the background.


School Girls
They all look so slutty, and the recent trend is to put on far too much eye make-up and sit in a circle on the floor of the subway car with their legs spread real wide. Naturally they wear impossibly short uniform skirts.

The salarymen (Japanese English for a white-collar company employee) in the train don't quite know what to make of it--on the one hand, these are their daughters, and on the other hand, these are sexual creatures that an entire part of the porn industry plays up...so the poor salaryman doesn't know whether to scold the girls for their loose looking behavior, or indulge himself in some sort of lust. He is caught, in yet another way, in a perpetual state of hyper stimulation, not really aware of the energies that are pulling him apart. The girls? Well, they are in for a life of being second class citizens, and this might be their shining moment to indulge their power, ever so briefly. And to add more to the hyper stimulation without the money shot: they have special 'women only' subway cars for the early morning rush hour, so that these salarymen cannot even cop a feel, grope, goose, or grind these little women anymore. Ha!


Speaking of the men, boy, I am SO HAPPY I have a plane ticket out of this country. I wouldn't trade places with the richest of them. No way. For the most part, these are working stiffs on a tight leash (in Japan, they give their salaries to the missus who runs all the household accounting...she doles out a weekly allowance to her pet man/slave, just enough for his soba noodles for lunch and drinking money after work so he can make those important social ties that are ever so important to go up the food chain in Japan). Once he's on the hamster wheel, there is no getting off...the missus and the kids treat him like dirt, she doesn't give up the pickle anymore, and so he's forced to taking out his libido in smokey bars with trampy women dressed like teenagers and speak in impossibly high, squeaky voices, who pour him overpriced scotch in thimble-sized glasses, as the tramp (trying to be one of those school gals!) coos sweet nothings at him, such as "oh, you must be so tired", "you work so hard", "you need to relax", "you are so strong".


Strong. Hmm. Durable perhaps. But maybe she is referring to his breath, which IS rather strong. In the subway car in the morning, you are greeted with some habitual aromas-- moth ball smelling clothes, lychee nut chewing gum, and recently some powdery sweet smelling cologne splashed liberally over a few ladies or gents who somehow think such an odor might be attractive...but the one 'strong', unmistakeable smell I am referring to is the reek of ketosis--the smell of the body chewing away on its own protein, which produces a sickly sweet, death-like smell as it gushes forth from the mouth.


Everyone in Japan has it, but notably the salaryman after a night of hard drinking which settles on a few small fish and rice in his gut. The next morning the gastric juices just gnaw away at whatever protein it can free up, and hence that smell. No small wonder stomach problems account for most of the death by disease in Japan.


Did I already mention the bad suits and the bad hair weaves, and that stoic, samurai 'don't mess with me' stone-faced grimace?


The stoney faces are slowly losing out to some cash strapped fidgety, desperate guy that mutters endlessly to himself, as if going through figures on the accounting ledger in his head. Again, that plane ticket, and the fact I am not from here, truly is a miracle for which I thank the powers that be.


And one final note--the best beer in the land, Yebisu, which is brewed on the north island of Hokkaido and boasts containing the finest all malt, hops, and water in the land, tastes no better than Labatt's 50...which, if you are Canadian, you know only your Uncle Mike, the alcoholic, used to drink after a hard day in the boiler room while watching the Leafs playing the Rangers on a 13 inch black and white TV in the basement apartment.


And there is more to be told....