2014 In Review

2014 In Review

January

I have a long-held belief that whatever it is one is doing at the stroke of midnight at the commencement of the New Year is a sort of metaphor for how one will spend the rest of the year.  Not being able to afford to hold or attend any parties, I spent the evening of December 31^st, 2013 playing Minecraft, drinking cheap bourbon, and listening to blues music.  Now, these are my default states of being at any rate, so it is not surprising that I’ve spent most of the year drinking Jim Beam, hitting the Xbox, and listening to a lot of Freddie King.  But I have also spent most of the year broke, so I guess that’s the takeaway.

I spent the rest of January struggling with Chinese classes, taking notes about the History of World War II, and being patronized rigid by a law professor who quite obviously hated having to teach an Intro class.

February

The second month in Seattle is always interesting.  We have a sort of fake spring in the second or third week of the month, during which the weather approaches niceness and the temperature gets up around sixty.  This lasts just long enough for suckers who have moved there from out of state to make outdoor plans for the following weekend, just in time for the weather to return to its state of godawful misery and damp grey coldness.  This year was no different, although the Seahawks were in the Super Bowl. 

“I’ll be able to watch, no problem,” I told my roommate.  “I never work Sundays.”

Of course, when I went in to check my hours for the week, I was on the schedule, along with everyone else, and a snippy memo from Corporate to the effect that everyone will be working on Superbowl Sunday. 

It was therefore an amazing coincidence that the front suspension went out on my car, and I caught triple pneumonia, and my grandmother passed away (a tragedy, to be sure, but the fact that it had happened some thirty years previously ameliorated the pain somewhat), and I had three different papers that were all due, and oh the hell with it, I’ve been waiting forty years for this, I quit.

The game is now a matter of public record and I still watch the highlight reel on YouTube when I need cheering up.  My roommate and I have been Seahawks fans since we were kids, so we were sort of expecting the typical Seattle choke, but apparently Russell Wilson didn’t get the memo on that one.  Good thing, too.

March

I spent a lot of time in March going to school, studying things at school, bringing things home from school, and trying to find money for school.  I had already been accepted to university in Tokyo, but one of the conditions of the visa is that each student must prove access to something like thirty thousand dollars, including financial aid.  With scholarships and everything, I was still about five thousand dollars short.  Plus, I still had to eat and so forth. Fortunately, I was working at the school, so I had a little money coming in that way.

April

In April I had Winter Quarter Finals, and got A’s in everything.  I also had some sort of birthday, which I celebrated by going out with some friends to, I think, every bar in the International District, ending with my buddy Joel and I eating in some Chinese restaurant at about 4 AM.  So, not too different from any other birthday.

May

I forget.  There were lots of classes.  I was still taking Chinese, and Linguistics, and Astronomy.  I probably had some coffee.  There might be photos; I don’t recall.  I was still sending out scholarship applications, not having realized yet that those are pretty much a dead end. I worked at school, was President of Phi Theta Kappa and the Go Club, and was Vice President of something called the Japanese Chit-Chat Club.  I gave a couple of motivational speeches that were very well received, and I won a couple of awards at school, some of which even had a little monetary love attached.  I was too busy to be stressed out, yet I still managed to find the time.

June

I made the financial deadline for my visa in the absolute nick of time and started the application process, and had a couple of lovely meals.  Oh, and I also graduated with honors from Highline College.  I walked down the aisle loaded down with swag; it was pretty cool.  Afterwards, Joel and I went out for a drink or two, then hung out at my place the following night and drank and ate a bunch, then took the train into town the next day and spent the whole day drinking and eating with our Chinese instructor and other friends.  If this was the party for my two-year degree, I can only imagine what the four-year will be like, and my MA might just do me in.

July

I was going to drive my ancient Volvo the fourteen-hundred-mile round trip to Twin Falls, Idaho, to visit my parents, but it was just too knackered to make the trip.  A friend offered to lend me a spare car, but then had to lend it to a co-worker; in exchange, she bought me a plane ticket to Boise, and I used the money I had budgeted for fuel to rent a car and drive to my brother’s house.  I spent most of the week helping my parents move into their new, smaller apartment, and about half of that time I spent trying to get my father, in his eighties and undergoing chemo, to sit down and stop trying to help.

“Dad, just tell me where you want this,” I would say, holding a box.

“I can show you,” he would reply, getting up out of the chair.

“No, just show me,” I said, “and if you get up again I’m going to tape you to that chair.”

Between that and explaining to my mother that World War II is long over, so she doesn’t need to save three-square-inch strips of used aluminum foil, it took a few days to move them.  It was very nice to see my brother’s garden in full bloom, however; I’ve never been there any time other than Christmas.

August

I spent August getting ready for school.  I sold a lot of stuff, cleaned up the house and boxed up my things as best as I could, bought the supplies I thought I’d need (namely a four-pack of Old Spice deodorant and loads of the Italian shaving cream I like), and visited the last few restaurants on my list.

The last week of August, I packed up my stuff and flew to Tokyo, having only a minor issue with the airline over whether or not I could carry my guitar on the plane.  My position, backed up by Federal law and FAA regulations, was that I could; Singapore Airlines took the opposite position.  It took some careful negotiation, but I finally let them put my Gretsch CVT in the hold of the giant Airbus A380. 

The flight to Tokyo, when flying economy class from LAX, takes approximately three hundred hours, but I eventually arrived.  I wrestled two suitcases, a guitar, and a laptop case containing a MacBook Air and two iPads through the Tokyo summer night (average overnight low temperature: four hundred and fifty degrees, with two hundred percent humidity) into a hotel in Ueno.  I checked into the hotel, and, utterly exhausted, walked across the street to a Lawson’s for a can of Yebisu and to McDonald’s for a cheeseburger.

The next day, I made my way across Tokyo and into Hiyoshi in Yokohama, where our dorms were located.  I got moved into a room not much bigger than the sleeper cab in my old International.  It was tiny, and next to the train station so very noisy, but it had free broadband internet and an air conditioner, which I turned on and did not turn back off until nearly Halloween.

September

Classes started in September.  I took Japanese, International Relations, Politics of Identity, and something called Superpower America.  I started looking for work, and didn’t find any.

October

Classes continued, I kept looking for work, kept not finding any, and my savings ran out.  Things, not to put too fine a point on it, were not good.  I kept busy, though, walking a lot and looking everywhere for some work.  Mostly, I just worked on classes.

November

My friend Ryan and I were referred to a nice apartment in Kawasaki and threw money at the landlord until he let us move in.  We got bicycles and I started working a little bit at the university; enough to keep me from starving.  I also had a lot of help from a lot of friends, way too many to name here.  I wrote a lot of karma checks in November, and I’ll have to pay them forward and back.

December

Got all As, including from the instructor that I was told didn’t give As.  Got signed up with two teaching agencies, and they started sending some teaching work my way.  Not all of it worked out, but some of it has, and I’m pretty confident that after the first of the year people will start.  Right now I’m looking at two lessons starting in January; that plus my financial aid money (considerably more this semester, as my matriculation fee and housing aren’t being taken out) should keep me alive; as I get more lessons, I’ll be able to slowly dial it in so that I’m not working too much but still getting paid a decent wage.

So, here we are.  I’m sitting in my living room, watching Young Frankenstein on the TV and typing this.  I’m slowly getting back into the habit of writing, which is an important habit to have in university.  And grad school, as well; starting to look into those.  I’m in debt, only have some change on me, and a couple of my credit cards are a little late, but everything is going to be okay.  Sometimes I lose perspective, but everything will be okay.

Thanks.

Precious Little Darlings

            When I was a kid, one of the things I really hated was people who started their stories with, “When I was a kid…”

            My parents were prime examples of this sort of person.  Both of them had grown up in rural Southern Indiana during the Great Depression; both of them had been from poor families to begin with, that only got poorer after the loss of a parent.  My mother was shuffled around from relative to relative and treated as a live-in servant, my father lived in a two-room shack in the country with no heat, indoor plumbing, or floor.  Trying to convince these people in 1978 that my life was over because they wouldn’t buy me a pair of Brittania jeans was an uphill battle, to say the least.

            But it didn't do me any harm to do without things from time to time, and it taught me how to fend for myself.  For example, I went and got a job flipping burgers in my senior year of high school so that I could buy clothes for school.  On one Saturday, I got a check with some overtime on it: one hundred and twelve dollars.  Flush with this newfound largesse, I drove up to SeaTac Mall to do some shopping.

            When I came home a few hours later, my dad was sitting in his chair by the window, reading.

            “How’d it go?” he asked.

            “Fine,” I mumbled.

            “You get everything you wanted?  Did you get that black leather jacket you were after?”

            “No.”

            “How about those designer jeans?  How much were they?”

            “Sixty bucks.”

            “Wow.  Did you get them?”

            “No.  Went to mumble mumble instead.”

            “Didn’t quite catch that.  Where did you go?”

            “I said, I went to Discount Jeans Warehouse.”

            I felt that the smug grin I got in response was really beneath him.

            The expectations of Japanese children seem to need a similar adjustment these days, at least in the opinions of some studies.  Are Japanese children really as spoiled as they seem?  A casual stroll through Kawasaki Station would seem to prove this.  Children screaming, crying, pitching epic fits in the middle of the station, laying flat on the floor and hollering because Mom won’t stop at McDonald’s – it seems like one can see evidence everywhere.

            Any expatriate can share half a dozen anecdotes about spoiled Japanese children: the adult researcher who still lives with his parents, who still cook his meals and do his laundry; the high-level education professional who wakes up at 4:30 every morning to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner ahead of time for her teenage son; and the moms who travel for hours up to Tokyo every weekend to clean their sons’ dorm rooms.

            None of these things would be, by and large, acceptable in American culture.  A grown man who still lives with his parents is slightly creepy and a case study in arrested development.  A career mom in the States would encourage her children to take on as many household chores as possible to help with the workload.  And any American college student who had his mom come up every weekend to do his housework would be a relentlessly-teased American college student.

            So why should this be the case?  Surely any society that spoiled its children to such an extent would run into serious trouble after one or two generations; after all, once Grandma has died and taken the Secrets of Laundry with her, who will wash the clothes?  If something happens and Mom can’t cook dinner any more, how long can we eat 7-Eleven oden before our digestive systems seize up?  (Hint: not long.  Not very long at all.)

            The key to understanding this question might be in a Japanese concept called amae.  According to Japanese academic and psychoanalyst Takeo Doi, in his work The Anatomy of Dependence, amae is defined in English as “indulgent dependency.”  This can be expressed as a mother-child bond, in which the mother experiences fulfillment by, in effect, keeping her child in a childlike state for as long as possible.  This would seem to make a certain amount of sense: some moms only feel a sense of self-worth when they are being a mother.  Spoiling a child and indulging their helplessness would ensure that Mom has a job for a long, long time.  In this light, amae starts to gain traction as a concept.

            Another possible answer might lie in the Japanese education system.  In the book Japanese Sense of Self, Joseph Tobin writes that “the Japanese school system is viewed by most Westerners (and not a few Japanese) as a Godzilla-like monster with (the Ministry of Education) for a brain and preschools for a mouth,” chewing up little kids with individual, vibrant personalities and turning them into automata who are totally dedicated to the group dynamic above all else.  “The nail that sticks up is pounded down,” as the old saying goes, and it is therefore not surprising that, after a long day of being pounded down, these little nails might find their way home to the indulgent care of Mother.  (It also might explain why the sarariman, after a long day of being pounded down in the office, enjoys his return home to a hot bath and warm meal.)

            A third factor might be the infantilization in Japanese culture.  This is a nation that worships kawaii, a word so pervasive that it has cross-pollinated to Western culture as well, although, as with most Japanese words that make the leap to American society, such as otaku, without all of the implications intact. Rima Muryantina, in an essay posted to academia.edu, quotes a couple of ancient Japanese proverbs, “Katawa no ko hodo kawaii (‘A deformed child is the dearer to his parents’) or Kawaii ko ni wa tabi saseyo (‘Send the beloved children on a journey’).”  These proverbs do not reference the modern concept of “cute” inherent to kawaii at all; rather, they call upon an older and more untranslatable concept assigned to the term: feelings of compassion and dependency within the family unit. 

            It is quite possible for words to be passed down from generation to generation with some or all of their original meanings intact.  The English “awful,” for example, quite literally means “full of awe,” and has over the years changed in meaning from a generally positive term to a negative one.  Likewise, the word “terrific” has done a similar volte-face, transforming from its original meaning, “inspiring terror,” to its modern positive usage.

            It is therefore not a grand leap in logic to consider that the word kawaii, practically built in to daily use among some Japanese (especially those young women between the ages of 10 and 50), might still retain some vestiges of the original, some elements of semantic programming that connect the concepts of “cuteness” and “helpless dependency,” and so from there to the “indulgent dependency” of amae.  It is in human nature to forgive and indulge adorable things.  As the couplet by American humorist P.J. O’Rourke goes, “It’s always tempting to impute/Unlikely virtues to the cute.”  Cuteness is a survival mechanism, it generates sympathy in humans and compels us not to leave our children in trees or to abandon them on the toy floor at Yodobashi Camera, no matter how much they scream and cry for the Doraemon playset.  The line between caring for the cute and indulging their every whim is a vague one, however, and can easily cross over into outright spoiling, especially when grandparents get involved.

            It’s also important not to ignore the cultural aspect of this issue.  Not to put too fine (or blindingly obvious) a point on it, but Japanese culture is not Western culture.  Specifically, it’s not American culture, with its emphasis on independence.  Tobin notes the prevalence of ethnocentrism in American cultural studies of Japanese life, the overpowering need for American exceptionalism in all things driving our need to assign binary values to another culture based solely on our own. 

This is a very easy mistake to make, especially in a place like Japan, where it sometimes appears as though whole sections of American culture and belief have been wholeheartedly adopted.  Just because the people here wear Nike shoes and eat at McDonald’s and shop at Costco does not mean that they are Americans, with American values.  Americans tend to place a high value on independence, with children leaving to make their own way in the world as early as possible and moving out of the house to assert control over their own lives.  We venerate the cowboy, the fighter pilot, the renegade: lone wolves who follow their own path and find success on their own.  Individual success holds greater merit in the American national eye than does team effort.

So are Japanese kids more spoiled than their American counterparts?  I would have to say it’s a case of apples and oranges.  The roles and expectations of children within the family unit differs considerably between America and Japan.  In America, a child in his teen years is expected to begin learning the skills that will allow him to function independently of his parents.  These skills can include driving, basic homemaking functions, and the first steps toward financial independence; Japanese teens, by contrast, concentrate on their studies to the exclusion of little else, in order to pass the stringent university entrance exams.

            Ultimately, it’s the prioritizations that create the cognitive dissonance in the culture.  Japanese people look at American kids as being blithely disinterested in their schoolwork or family, not understanding the need to prepare children for an independent life.  They might not also realize that American colleges are relatively easy to get into, but rather difficult to excel in, in contrast to Japanese schools, which have notoriously stringent admissions standards but are fairly lax in terms of required schoolwork.

            Americans, in turn, might not understand the strict entrance requirements for a Japanese university, nor the subtle class structure that rules their hierarchy. A degree from a top-tier college, such as Tokyo or Kyoto University, can mean an addition of  several thousand dollars a year in starting salary, not to mention access to certain high-level jobs in government or with top corporations.  It’s therefore understandable that high school students are encouraged to concentrate solely on their studies, to the exclusion of household chores and a social life.

            ‘Twas ever thus: the problem with teenagers is, ad oculos, that they are teenagers.  Having experienced them in several cultures, their main issue is that they are trying to find their way in a world in which all the rules are subject to change without notice.  It is the last period of growth in a human’s life in which everything is changing: attitudes; physicality; sexuality; relationships; everything.

            The best that we can do is offer our support, understanding, and perspective.

            Still no excuse for that kid screaming in Yodobashi Camera, though.

Bibliography

Doi, Takeo, M.D. The Anatomy of Dependence. Kodansha USA, 2014.

Muryantina, Rima. "Academia.edu." Why Is It Important to be Cute? Depicting The Notion of Kawaii Via Natural Semantic Metalanguage. www.academia.edu (accessed December 16, 2014).

Smith, Herman and Nomi, Takako. "Is Amae the Key to Understanding Japanese Culture?" Electronic Journal of Sociology (ICAAP), 2000.

Tobin, Joseph. "Japanese Preschools and the Pedagogy of Selfhood." In Japanese Sense of Self, edited by Nancy R. Rosenberger. Cambridge University Press.

           

HegeMom

Recently, I wrote a paper about the Falklands War for one of my Poli Sci classes.  Now, I'm not going to recap the war here.  You either remember it or you don't, and if you don't, go and look it up or buy a book or something.

In doing the research for the paper, I came across an excellent analysis of the war, written by then-Second Lieutenant Jason McClure for a military research journal, Strategic Insights.  Not only was this a pretty spot-on analysis of the war and the motivational factors behind it, but it McClure also made a great point regarding the expectations that nations have entering into a war, and why they are different for smaller countries (say, Argentina) than for a hegemonic state (albeit a reduced one) such as Great Britain.

To paraphrase McClure, it's easily possible for a lesser country to take on a greater one, lose the entire war, and still get what they want.  In fact, both sides get what they want.  The lesser state gets some minor concessions and some attention and a net change, hopefully a gain, in its status quo.  The more powerful country gets a return to the status quo.

In writing the paper, I came up with a really good way of illustrating this concept, but it's a bit too whimsical and glib for use in an academic work.  But I have to get it out of my system, so academia's loss is your gain.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This has never happened at a holiday dinner at which I have been present. My personal memory of holiday dinners has been nothing but joyful and happy, with delicious food and nice, warm memories.  I do, in fact, have a Mom, but not like the one portrayed here, and I have no such thing as an Uncle Randy.  All of my uncles were WWII veterans.  Clear?  Then let's begin.

Thanksgiving dinner is a rich and old tradition in the family, going back decades.  All the family members and invited guests converge on Mom's house for a day of delicious food, happy chat, pumpkin pie, football on TV, kids running around, and so forth.  Mom owns the big house, so that's where everyone meets.  Mom also sets the menu, prepares the food, tells everyone when it's dinner time, establishes the schedule, and sorts, wraps, and distributes the plentiful leftovers.  She sets the table as well, with diplomatic skill, so that Uncle Henry won't be so close to the liquor cabinet and Aunt Grace, who is devoutly religious, won't sit next to Aunt Sarah's daughter, who is going through this thing with Goth music and the pale skin and black hair and makeup.  Honestly, she looks like a ghost.  Such a pretty girl, too.

So, Mom is the hegemon here.  She holds all the power and distributes all the resources.  She pulls the strings, and with the help of her enforcer, Dad, makes the whole meal run like clockwork.  Dad is the military arm.  He just does what he's told, trusting in Mom to bring and keep peace to the house.

The guests arrive in cars and minivans, couples, small families, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Some of these people genuinely love Mom and think she's great for putting on this whole shindig. Some of them, to be honest, think Mom is a little bossy and overbearing, but come anyway out of varying senses of loyalty: Mom watched my kids when I was in the hospital.  Mom helped me through my divorce.  Mom lent me some money when I needed it. Some of these people are just here because they have no place else to go and don't want to sit at home.  Some of them just can't be bothered to cook for themselves.  A few of these people absolutely hate Mom and everything she stands for, but a free meal and some leftovers to take home is worth a few hours of being patronized.

And then there's Uncle Randy, who arrives in a taxi (such extravagance!), having flown in this morning from his loft apartment in the big city.

Mom doesn't talk about Uncle Randy much, but you know most of the story from family gossip. Mom and Randy were very close as children, inseparable, even.  They were the closest of pals, and stayed in contact as they grew up and went to college.

But over the years, they have drifted apart, due to some differences in personal philosophy and lifestyle.  Mom doesn't like Randy living in the city, which is so far away and full of crime and, you know, minorities (not that Mom isn't a firm believer in equality), and it's so expensive.

Randy, for his part, loves Mom, but he thinks she's had everything her own way for too long.  Mom always thinks she's right, and she's never interested in trying anything new. She's made a comfortable life for herself in the suburbs, and she wants to keep it that way.

The meal goes off without a hitch.  The turkey is perfect, the stuffing moist and delicious, the mashed potatoes plentiful, the gravy rich and savory, the relish tray and crudites divine.  The youngsters at the kids' table are boisterous but not to the point of requiring much discipline, unless one gets too noisy. In that case, a stern look from Mom to Dad makes Dad get up and walk over to the kids' table to get them to settle down.  (That Dad gets to refill his glass of Bushmills from the sideboard every time he takes the trip is an extra benefit.)

Now, it's time for the toast.  Usually, of course, Mom picks the person to give the toast, someone she can count on to be brief, tasteful, and, naturally, effusive in their praise for Mom.  This usually means the Rev. Parker, whose parish has been the recipient of much largesse from Mom and Dad.

But before the vicar can stand, Randy does, glass in hand.

"I'd like to make an announcement," he says, and proceeds to tell everyone that he has quit his job at the bank, and taken a job working in an art gallery, and is gay, and is going to be gone this Christmas because he will be in Majorca with his soon-to-be-spouse, Eric.

Naturally, Mom is appalled.  She's upset that Randy has done all this without talking to her.  She's upset that the family might think less of her for Randy's mild outburst. (They really don't care, to be honest; Randy's big reveal wasn't that surprising to anyone who'd talked to him for five minutes, and really, it's the 21st century.  Who cares?)

Mom fires the first shot: "I would never live like that.  All that promiscuity and craven behavior."

Randy drops the bomb: "Yeah, right, sis.  Remember, I knew you in college."

Things get worse after that.  Dad is now asleep on the couch with the Seahawks-Niners game on and has to be roused to escort Randy from the house.  Mom has a breakdown and retires upstairs, weeping.  The various relatives help themselves to whatever leftovers they can grab (Uncle Henry stretching the definition of "leftovers" to include "half-gallon Costco bottle of Tanqueray gin from the garage.")

The kids go outside and play.

The next year, Randy is not present at the dinner.  Everything is mostly as it was before, barring a few cracks in Mom's facade.  She gives the excuse that Randy "and his 'friend'" can't make it to dinner this year because of his work.  The dinner proceeds as always; the Reverend gives the toast, Dad falls asleep on the couch and misses Richard Sherman intercepting a Colin Kaepernick pass and running it back for a touchdown.

Who won?

Everybody.

Mom gets what she wanted.  Everything is back to the status quo, with one minor modification, and next year, people won't even notice that change.

The guests are happy as long as there's free food and maybe some leftovers.

Dad is happy because he doesn't have to work today and everybody seems content.

Randy is happy because he has elevated his position.  He is no longer defined solely in terms of his relationship within the Mom hegemony.  He has a great story to tell at parties, is no longer responsible to Mom, and has the freedom to do what he wants.

The parallels to the Falklands War are clear.  The UK got to return everything to the status quo as quickly as possible (and, quietly, resume agricultural trade with Argentina shortly thereafter.) Argentina got to change its position on the world stage and get some notice, although it did signal the end of their right-wing military junta, so even that worked out well.

It's an interesting metaphor, and one that can be extended a bit,

Useful Information

So, spent today hauling a futon, a suitcase full of clothes, and some other stuff over to the new apartment in Kawasaki.  My roommate and I met the landlord out in front of the place and he showed us around, including all the brand-new appliances, the video security system, the new combination microwave/convection oven, and everything else.  Then, he took us out for some really nice ramen while we waited for the Tokyo Gas guy to show up.  (He spoke English.)

After we got all hooked up, we caught a cab over to Costco, which is only four kilometers away, and stocked up on housewares.  We came back and I did some quick shopping around the neighborhood, which included grabbing a bottle of Jim Beam from the My Basket supermarket for 1080 yen, which, at today's exchange rate, is about $9.30 a fifth, which is about a third of what it costs at the Safeway in Federal Way.

Then I ordered some pizza from Dominos online and we put the stuff away and I've had a few beers and now here is the secret to finding a decent apartment in Tokyo.

First, forget about finding a decent apartment in Tokyo.  Unless you're willing to pay north of $1500 a month for a studio, that is.  Tokyo real estate is about like Manhattan; it's there, there's plenty of it, but you're gonna pay through the nose.  The good news here is that you can do like everyone else with an ounce of sense does and find a reasonably-priced place just out of town somewhere.  Kawasaki, where I live, is really nice and cheap; so is Yokohama, and both are under 45 minutes to Tokyo by train.  (It takes me about 30 minutes on the train, with about a 12-minute walk at either end.)  Don't like long train commutes?  Enh.  That's what cellphone games are for.

Second, for the love of Pete, don't go to an agency, especially one that pops up on Google.  These guys find lots of apartments, but half of them won't rent to foreigners (keep an eye peeled for a vicious rant from me on this topic at some point), and they all charge first month's rent plus another month's rent as a deposit PLUS another month's rent as "key money," which is basically just some money that you sort of give to the building owner, God knows why, PLUS maintenance fees PLUS building insurance.

PLUS you have to have a "Guarantor," who is basically someone who agrees to pay your rent if you can't.  Zillion dollars in the bank and excellent credit, but no guarantor? Then your best bet is probably to go screw yourself.  Now, if you're Japanese, then this is perfectly okay, as your parents or your employer will sign on as your guarantor.  My parents have outstanding credit, but are in their 80s and live in Idaho, plus no Japanese company will act as a guarantor for a foreigner here on a student visa.  So it's institutionalized racism, essentially.

So, here's what you do.  You find yourself a company THAT OWN AND MANAGE THEIR OWN BUILDINGS.  This is what we did.  Well, okay, I didn't personally find them; a fellow student who lives in my new building posted about an available apartment on Facebook and I jumped on it.  The deposit was less than the first months' rent, there was no key money, and, in exchange for no guarantor, we just pay an extra 3000 a month.  It's a pretty new building, all clean, with great management.  There's a park next door and a 7-Eleven a few blocks away.

Now I'm going to walk over to that 7-Eleven and buy some tea and a bottle of water and then come back here, drink another can of Yebisu, and watch Avengers for the rest of the evening, in my new, clean, quiet apartment.

Hmm

I've been helping out at the Minato Citizens' University, a joint function of Minato City in Tokyo and Temple University, Japan Campus.  One of the benefits of working at this thing is getting to attend the lectures and taking part in discussions with the lecturers afterward.  These people are all faculty at my school, and most of them work in one or the other of my major fields, so the lectures have been mostly fascinating and occasionally frustrating, as the speakers don't always touch on points that I would like to see addressed.

Then it occurred to me: oh, hey, I'm studying this stuff.  I could probably go ahead and touch on those points.  I'm not going to tonight, because it's 1 AM and I have to go and sign a lease on my new apartment tomorrow, but this is a great place to explore some of the meatier aspects of Japanese geopolitics.

(The sound of chairs scraping on the floor as people silently edge towards the exit.)

That's okay, I think it's interesting, and, what's more, I think I can make it interesting.

Here's the deal.  If Japan goes the way it has been for the past twenty years or so, within the next one hundred years its population will dip below the viability level and it will cease to exist.  There's a lot of denial about that, and a lot of discussion, and I legitimately think I have something to add to that discussion.  Which is sort of one of the reasons why I'm in college.

Other interesting topics I intend to cover are the insular nature of Japanese culture, the institutionalized racism, the aforementioned spectacular denial, gender issues, the aging population, infrastructure in a nation where cronyism is rampant, xenophobia, the attempt to run a cultural trade surplus, and oh so much more.  Like, you know, China.  Lots of China.

(CUT TO: one empty desk chair, spinning slowly.  A door closes in the distance.)

Best part: I'm not kidding.  I'm going to have to write about all this stuff for school anyway; might as well get it up here and hopefully get some love from this direction.

I'm also going to complain a lot about how Japanese people cram right up against the outside door of the train so as to grab a seat right away, but when the door actually opens, they rush inside and then stop right inside the car, so that nobody behind them can get a seat..  I've started just running right over these people.

So, yeah, this.  Enjoy.

Sunday Evening

Just sitting around, reviewing notes for my Politics of Identity exam tomorrow and listening to some Soma FM.

Yesterday I was hired by a company as a teacher, but it's not the sort of job that you show up and get a salary.  This company finds students who want to learn English in and around whatever areas you specify.  My university is pretty centrally located in Tokyo, so I have lots of options there, plus my new apartment is in Kawasaki, so, yeah.  Once the company hooks you up with a student, you meet them at a cafe and do a trial lesson; if they like that, then you get started on weekly lessons.  Each private lesson pays ¥3000; group lessons can pay as high as ¥5000. So I would really only need about ten or so of these a week to get by.

Oh, yeah, right: new apartment. A friend from Highline and I got a place in Kawasaki, but a kind of quiet, out-of-the-way place.  Two bedrooms, although you have to walk through one to get to the other. The building owner is sorting that out by bringing in some shelving units to act as a wall/hallway, and also as shelving.  It also has all the appliances, which is really convenient. Most Japanese apartments don't include refrigerators and washing machines and so forth.  We even get a few sticks of furniture.  Moving in the next couple of weeks or so.

I also walked by a bar last night that clearly had some live blues going, so I walked up to the little place on the third floor and hung around there quite a while.  Made some new friends and I'll be playing at their next blues jam, which is December 27th.  I'm looking forward to that.  I haven't had a chance to perform in quite a while.

Think I'll go downstairs and have a nice soak in the sento before going to bed.  That is the one thing I'll miss about living here: a bathroom that somebody else has to clean.

Minor Adjustments

Long day but a good one.  Got up at 7 AM, went downstairs and had a shower and shave, made it to school in time to kill the kanji test and finish some review for Politics of Identity.  Then, across town to Hongo Sanchome for a pre-screen interview for a job which, if I get it, would be pretty damn awesome.  I impressed the heck out of the person doing the prescreen and so she is writing me a letter of introduction and recommendation for the job.

After that, I realized I was only a block or two away from the main entrance to Tokyo University, famous from about a thousand anime and manga.  I walked over there and took some photos, then caught a train back to Azabujuban near my university.  I walked around for a bit and found a sort of Taco Del Mar-type burrito place.  It was... okay.  Not delicious until I drenched it in Tabasco Chipotle sauce, and expensive as heck, but the guacamole and chips were pretty good.  Next time I'll just have that and something smaller.

Walked over to Mita Hall and got there about an hour before we had to set up for the lecture.  Fortunately, I know a hidden little lounge area that is very quiet, and I was able to take a short nap before I heard the other folks arrive.  Made sure we were well-prepared and set up for the lecture, which is more than the actual lecturer did.

Came home and found a big box from Seattle, with some jackets (including my Russian flight jacket that Katyann Wilson loves), some shirts, some more t-shirts, two quart bottles of Huy Fong Sriracha and another of Tapatio, and a big bottle of Tabasco.

Tomorrow is another job interview, this time for some part-time teaching work, and tomorrow night I just might go out and have a beer.

Things are slowly improving.

A Short Tale Regarding The Need For Discretion

I used to drive a flatbed semi across the US and Canada.  It was fun for a while, then it was less fun, then it stopped being any sort of fun at all.  Then I quit.

For a time, I was driving on what they call the regional fleet, and spent a fair bit of time rolling with another driver on that same fleet.  He was some sort of cool cowboy type, but young, and with an element of skaterboi to him.  He was a driver trainer, so he always had a trainee on board, which was useful, because the trainee would help him secure his load or roll up his tarps, and then would come over and help me with my load and tarps.

Anyway, this guy would always regale us with stories of horrible injuries he had suffered in one way or another: automobile crash; motorcycle accident (I think he actually raced them at one point); falling off a cliff; diving into a creek that was only eighteen inches deep; what have you.  He had pins in his bones holding them together and could turn one of his fingers around on the bone and pull his nose away from his face.  These are the things that constitute hours of entertainment when you are waiting for a load of scrap metal from a recycling yard in Calgary.

One day he was telling me a story about how he sliced himself open somehow while loading his rig, a huge gash down the side of his ribs.  It was a suitably grisly tale and I won't relate all of it here.

"So, how did you get to the hospital?" I asked.

"Man, I didn't go to no hospital," he sneered. "Squirted some Super Glue on it and wrapped an Ace bandage around my ribs.  Got a wild scar out of it."

That was when it hit me: Hey, I thought to myself, this guy is kind of an idiot.

It wasn't too long before he fell off the side of a trailer and went on light duty for several months.  I never really dealt with him much after that.

It's not really a cautionary tale, as such; just a reminder that sometimes, someone will be talking, and that voice in the back of your head will finally get your full attention, and you'll realize that spending time with this person could very well lessen your sanity, or your life span, or both.

It's kind of important, when that happens, to flee.