Debt free, and Yakushima

As of this afternoon, I am officially both dirt poor, and debt free. It feels...about the same. Maybe it hasn't really hit me yet? More likely the fact that I managed to keep pretty well on top of it prevented me from ever having that drowning feeling which a lot of people have described. The relief is real, just relatively speaking my "relief, from what?" question amounts to a lesser evil.

I think we all have different tolerances for the amount of debt we're comfortable carrying. Mine turns out to be alarmingly low. I have real trouble rationalizing spending any kind of money I don't actually have, and even though the school loans were inevitable, my first impulse once I started rakin' in the teacher yen was to throw everything that was not directly preventing me from starving to death towards no longer having that hanging over my head.

But now I do find myself in an interesting position. No wife, no kids, no great material desires, no real obligations of any kind what so ever. I could get fired tomorrow and be totally fine, as long as I could scrape together enough to not starve, a minimum threshold I tend stay above fairly easily. The board just opened up significantly.

I am free to try some really, truly, wacky and experimental ways of going about living. I guess I always have been, but suddenly it seems a lot more obvious.

So later tonight I'm hopping on an 11 hour ferry ride up to the mainland, finding another ferry down to Yakushima, island of giant-cedar trees, monkeys and deer, and spending a week with no reservations, and no particular plans. It's an exercise in unstructured living, something I have always dreamed of, but tend to get mild panic-tremors when actually faced with a large number of unknowns. Time to go get comfortable being uncomfortable.

I'll be taking photos and maybe even some video the whole way along, but am going internet and media free for the duration. I'm bringing a total of 8 kilos of gear. 1 of those is my pack, 1 is my camera, and 1 is my raincoat. Yakushima is wet. I'm also going in my Fivefingers, which may turn out to be a horrible, horrible mistake when it comes time to scramble up some steep trails, but you know what? I'm tired of trying to plan for every contingency. I'm just going to go explore, and let the adventures, good, bad, weird and unbelievable, happen.

See you in a week and a half. I'll hug a giant-cedar for you.

Call me crazy...

It would almost be a confession, if I were ashamed of it. Let's pretend it is, for the sake of drama and tension. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a shaaaaameful confession, which I am only now able to bring myself to admit publicly. The only sport which has ever managed to hold my attention is sumo. There, I said it!

I love sumo, and I don't care who knows! I know the names of rikishi! (Sumo wrestler in Japanese, for the uninitiated) I can tell you the requirements for a promotion to ozeki! (The 2nd highest rank, below yokozuna) I can list the most common kimarite, and can tell you why one 5 second bout was way, way more impressive than another 5 second bout because that mother lover just used mitokorozeme, a technique which has only been seen once in the modern era of sumo! I find the salt throwing, and the staring contests a riveting display of martial prowess!!!

Sumo is a sport which most Americans seem to meet with two primary reactions:

a)It's boring. They posture, squat around, throw salt, and look at each other for 5 minutes, then fight for 5 seconds, and call it a day. What nonsense is this? Where are the flying clotheslines? Where are the cages, the bloody noses, the dick punches!? How could you possibly get excited about that?

b)It's profoundly ironic. Sumo is a sport in which being extremely fat is an asset, nay, a necessity. This is in a country where people are generally rail thin, and the dieting and weight-loss industry is large enough to form its own country, albeit a very neurotic, skittish one.

They are not entirely invalid criticisms. I myself often do something else while watching sumo to combat the extremely long down time between bouts, read a book for example. Or write this blog post. A lot of sumo wrestlers are pretty damn out of shape. Not all of them mind you. There's a fine line between "fat, muscular" and "fat...faaaaaat" and if you look at the ten or so guys camped out in the sanyaku (top 4 ranks) this becomes painfully obvious.

I used to marvel at exactly how the hell anyone could get so worked up over a sport, any sport. I have seen grown men weep, openly, to the point of buckling knees, when their team has lost at a crucial moment in the season. Not to rag on "the ex", but she like all Buffalo residents is a fanatical Sabres fan, and I recall one particularly crushing defeat which kept them from the playoffs where she was heartbroken, and existentially void for about a week. Being a good boyfriend, I was concerned enough to be in another state at the time.

For the record my love of sumo does not extend to this pinnacle, not yet at least. There are fighters I like, and watching the yokozuna Asashoryu retire as the result of a scandal (in which he punched a non-rikishi in the face while out drinking) about a month ago was mildly heartbreaking, but in more of a "Gee, that really sucks...OK, what's for lunch!" as opposed to "I just...I just can't see the point in living anymore..." way.

So why do I like it so much? For all of its reputation as a terribly boring sport, the number of individual inspiring moments is inexplicably high.

This tournament just finished its 9th day, of 15. Baruto, the absolute giant of a rikishi from Estonia who is currently ranked just below ozeki at sekiwake, just won his 9th straight victory this tournament, making him undefeated going into the 10th day. Hakuho, now the solitary yokozuna after Asashoryu's retirement also sits at 9-0. Baruto is currently up for ozeki review, and the prevailing thought is if he can get more than 10 wins, he's got it in the bag. But he's fighting like crazy, and there is a possibility, albeit slim, that he is in contention to actually win this tournament. The tension is amazing every single time he steps into the ring. Baruto is a very popular fighter because inside the ring he fights honorably, and outside of the ring he is always smiling, an all around nice guy to have representing the sport. Not to mention he's huuuuuge, and blond-ish. Plus I personally love him because lately he gets interviewed after fights a lot, and he has just the most adorable "Oh no, Japanese happening, go brain go! No...Noooooooooo" panic moment every single time he is spoken to. It leads to some pretty fantastic mumbling, and the occasional brilliant one liner "Baruto! Now that you are up to 9 wins is the pressure more, or less?" "Well...pressure is pressure." Classic.

This basic scenario, or something similar to it, happens in every single tournament. Last tournament it was Baruto stopping yokozuna Hakuho's 30 consecutive win streak. At the tournament I saw in Tokyo, not only did a European (Kotooshu, ozeki) win the tournament, but there was some amazing bad blood between the two yokozuna after Asashoryu gave Hakuho an extra shove into the ground after the fight was over, and the two nearly got into a brawl in the ring (which is considered sacred. Really, really sacred. So sacred women aren't allowed to step foot in it. Yes, its also sexism, but that's another post.)

I have yet to see a properly boring tournament on the macro-level. It's also usually pretty tense on the micro-level too, when it comes to fighters struggling to make their 8 wins. A fighter who wins more than he loses in a tournament either holds his rank or moves up. A fighter who fails and loses more than he wins is demoted. There is no other way to change rank within the sport. Everything is based on one's performance in the ring. And maybe one's ability at fixing matches, but that too is another post.

A kind of post

Took the day off today because of some epic food poisoning last night, which really put a damper on any attempt to move until about 9 am. Probably as a result of said food poisoning, I am currently suffering some absolutely god-awful heartburn or something which is making sleep frustratingly impossible. Tomorrow is the middle school graduation so skipping work again is pretty much out of the question. If this doesn't clear up soon though I'm defaulting to the "something has gone seriously awry" plan.

At any rate, if I'm going to be up anyway, I figured I might as well write something.

Still trying to find a new way of dealing with this blog. The periodic "journal" version just isn't doing it for me. Getting close though, I think. But don't believe it until you see it.

So, what's the 5 second version of my life these days?

I've started a barefoot running and high-tension strength training regimen which has been going very well, up until this recent bout of creeping death. Both are worth writing about in their own right, and in a very short period of time there have already been fairly notable results.

Once the weather picks up a little bit more I'm hoping to start swimming on a daily basis. I'm not a bad swimmer, it's just always one of those things I wished I were better at.

It'll be spring break very soon. Planning a trip to Yakushima, and also maybe going to Miyazaki to see some traditional Japanese archery. I'm quite excited about both of them. Particularly looking forward to doing some hiking in my barefoot running shoes, a contradiction of terms to be sure but really the only way I can think to describe them. Imagine gloves with a hard sole, for your feet. They seem incredibly, incredibly gimmicky. Until you try them.

After spring break I'm looking to be in the water pretty much every weekend diving.

The guard is changing all over the island, as is the Japanese custom of rotating out jobs around the prefecture every 3 years or so. My boss, one of the English teachers, and a surprising number of the elementary teachers are leaving this year, which means when I come back from spring break there will be a lot of new teachers running around. Should be interesting.

Ok, ate some plain rice and it seems to have calmed things down a bit. I'm going to try and get something vaguely resembling sleep before the sun rises. Real posts to come soon. Better posts.

The Not-so-art of Bowing

My mom sent me a link to this article about the way the Toyota corporation, in particular the president Toyoda-san, has been criticized for his failure to show proper contrition over his company's failure, in particular with respect to the apology bow he made. It also talks a lot about bowing in general, and it is actually a very well written article with some interesting information, which I feel is framed in a kind of unfortunate, destructive way. She asked me what I thought of it, and my e-mail response kind of turned into an article, which I figured some of you might be interested in. You should go read the article at any rate, but if you're in a hurry the gist of it is "Toyoda-san has been accused of offering a short, insincere bow for a fairly serious f-up, and the company has suffered for his failed bow."

Sigh. I mean, there are certainly parts of it which I agree with, but as I said I think the way the article as a whole is framed is kind of problematic. The truth is bowing, almost all of it, is pretty involuntary. You don't really sit around going "Oh gosh, I really should hit about 80 degrees on this one", you just bow to a level and duration, and in a style, appropriate to the situation.

For big, awkward foreigners this seems like it would (and does) take a fair amount of thinking, which is coincidentally why big, awkward foreigners are not expected to bow appropriately. But for Japanese people, they've witnessed these complex hierarchical interactions like...a hundred billion times by the time they are an adult. That number is probably not an exaggeration. You bow like, every 30 seconds. It means "hello", "let's begin", "thank you", "I'm sorry" or sometimes it's just an acknowledgment that the other person exists. We do the same thing in America, nodding at someone on the street if you make eye-contact.

The problem is that when you read articles like this, you get the idea that Toyoda-san f-ed up his bow. Like, he was thinking too hard and screwed up the gesture. That seems to be what the article is focusing on, but this just isn't what happened. Toyoda-san misread the severity of the situation, and his bow reflected this misread. It wasn't "his bow wasn't deep enough" it was "His apology wasn't deep enough. His mortification wasn't deep enough. His shame for his company wasn't deep enough." The bow merely reflected this.

So what the article does is it portrays the situation from a big, awkward foreigner's viewpoint, and ultimately ends up doing the whole "Ohh, Japan is so exotic and foreign. Look at the elaborate social custom of bowing, you sure couldn't understand that could you?" shtick which is ultimately harmful to the general cause of mutual understanding. Think of some of the JETs over here who haven't been studying the country for years now. They feel awkward as hell just about every day because they're not used to bowing, I sure did at first, and when they read something like this and it just reinforces their belief that they can never learn how to bow properly because it's just too complicated. Trust me, you could, if you spent 20 years growing up in Japan.

Anyone could.

Shit, I understand bowing for the most part and I've been here a combined year at this point. I even know how to bow sarcastically. It's not that hard, and you can always always get away with the gaijin "basically a head-nod" bow. Eventually you will start to get instincts for "oooh, I f-ed that up, they're all way lower than I am", and your bows start to instinctively reflect the social situation, along with your way of speaking, and your way of moving. We do the last 2 in America, we just don't realize it because it's not as much of an overt part of our culture. You don't talk to your boss the same way you talk to your kids. You also don't bow to your boss the same way you bow to your kids. Eventually, you'll learn. And chances are you are significantly smarter than the average gradeschooler, which means that you'll be able to learn it faster.

Nothing in the world is so complicated that you cannot learn it with enough time and exposure. The danger, perhaps the only danger, is in convincing yourself that you cannot.

Chindogu

珍度具 (Chindogu) is a Japanese word defining an invention which on the surface appears to solve a problem or serve a useful function, but in fact creates additional problems or would be incredibly embarrassing or cumbersome to actually use. All sorts of fantastically weird inventions have been produced, from slippers for your cat so that it can help with the housework, to an all day tissue dispenser which essentially amounts to a roll of toilet paper attached to your head. One of the chindogu I seriously considered putting together while living in Tokyo was a plunger that attaches to your head, which you can then attach to a train window, to prevent you from slumping into any number of the hilarious yet oh so embarrassing positions in which Tokyo train-goers are often found. Here's a website I found with some examples. Read the linked to articles about the feud between a random Chinese Jessica Alba lookalike and Jessica Alba at your own peril.


At any rate, I was lead to believe that chindogu is somewhat of an enthusiasts hobby here in Japan. People do it basically for the thrill of making something completely, to use their lingo "unuseless". or at least this is what I was lead to believe until about 10 minutes ago. I'm watching Japanese infomercials, or rather something like "the top 30 most seemingly useful but actually totally chindogu kitchen appliances". From the combination shabu-shabu, yakiniku plate, to the home yogurt maker, to the "mysterious plate" which allows you to fry things in the microwave, these are some of the most chindogu things I have ever seen, presented in such a questionably serious fashion. They even have the little Japanese "tarento" in the corner gasping and wowing along, although to give them credit half the time the look in their eyes is certainly one of "If I hold the laughter in for another second I may die." Oh man, it just ended and now they're talking about it all. First comment: "well, the names of the products were really good."

There is pretty much nothing good on Japanese TV, ever. It's like an elaborate satire, a meta-satire even because eventually you have to start reminding yourself just how ridiculous it is to be watching a team of questionably famous people answer questions while running back and forth between a toy train track where a train with a needle on the front threatens to pop a balloon unless you lift the balloon out of the way every 15 seconds or so when it makes a lap. It gets normal.

But for all its inherent fluffiness, it is absolutely fascinating, and man does it ever make for some amazing background noise. I could half-watch Japanese tv forever. Maybe that's what it's designed for. Having on while you do other things. I think that actually explains a lot about the way Japanese tv tends to operate. Very small, independent chunks. A lot of back and forth banter between an ever revolving cast of tarento, just long enough that you come to know them, and be familiar with them, but don't have time to get bored of them.

Either way, as soon as the weather warms up and it stops raining (as it has every day for about 2 weeks now) I am mowing a 6x3 patch of my lawn, laying down a towel, and reading in the sun. I got through about 200 pages today, granted of manga but still a pretty substantial amount of words. I'm getting faster, and having to skip less. I'd almost call myself literate at this point...almost. As long as I don't have to read aloud I'm pretty much golden. I'm very excited to see where I am at the end of my 2 years here.

It's not you, it's me

Posts have been infrequent lately, and I just want you all to know that it's not permanent. I have stumbled upon great truths to happiness and success, and am going through a long process of meditating on, and integrating them into the way I run my life. It feels fantastic, but some things are getting turned down low while my focus is elsewhere. There will still be posts, but until I can sit down and rework the way I treat this blog to make it less of a chore and obligation more or something I actually want to do, I just don't feel right throwing stuff up just to fulfill my Operational Blog Quota, or whatever you want to call it.

Kikai has just entered into what the locals call "the dead of winter" and I call "the first day of spring". Funny, that. It's over 20 C, and we got a rare break in the weather because whoever is doing the forecasting scribbled a whole line of angry storm clouds all over my week, and today was sunny and pleasant. Island - 1, Science - 0. Take that weather prediction!

I took the opportunity to ride around on my increasingly broken bike, and take some photos.








There, those are some of the things I'm seeing. Sunset over the harbor, the island Sakura (Japanese cherry trees) are just about in full bloom, and for it being the "dead of winter" there is alarming amount of fruit, and greenery.

I'm going to go be alarmingly productive now. If any of you have any specific questions or concerns about my charming little patch of island real-estate feel free to leave a comment with some questions, or send me an e-mail. I think you all know the address. It might strike a chord and inspire an actual post, or I might just write you back.

これからだよ

On the virtues of Japanese television

I believe that the world at large is beginning, in our modern age of youtube, to get some idea of exactly how surreal Japanese television is on any given day. The popularity of shows like Ninja Warrior and the whole human-tetris phenomenon speak to some level of the warped world of Japanese pop entertainment appealing to the world at large.

When I first got here, I neither understood, nor enjoyed Japanese television on any level. It was frustrating, impossible to keep up with even with the subtitles, and for some reason they kept putting these little picture in pictures of Japanese celebrities who seemed to do nothing except gasp and laugh at the show, which they were not actually participating in.

Lately, as part of Project Literacy, I have actually been watching a fair amount of tv. I didn't even touch the thing for the first 4-5 months here, but now that I can't go to the beach every day I'm spending more time in my house, and can't always muster the wherewithal to focus on reading something. At these times, tv provides useful background noise, especially when I'm doing something in English and music would be too distracting. It was profoundly useful as something that was interesting, but entirely ignorable.

At least until today. So I'm watching a show which I actually struggle to describe in English. Japan really likes "The top X" type shows, varying from "Top x weirdest animals!" "Top 3 most popular meals at every train station along a route!". Today's top x, is "Top 30 instant noodle meals".



It is literally two guys, getting served bowl after bowl of instant ramen, eating it, and talking about how awesome it is in a fashion which is so Japanese it makes my teeth hurt.

But for me, this particular moment in Japanese televised oddity, will always hold a special place. So I'm sitting here, trying to study my kanji while the dudes on screen slurp down bowl after bowl of ramen, and I'm getting all frustrated because for some reason I just cannot focus on the kanji! Damn dudes and their ramen just keep on distracting me! It's not even that interesting! Most of the noodles probably taste exactly the same!

And that's when it hit me. I'm being distracted by Japanese, and not in like a "screaming children way". Even when I'm not focusing on it, trying to understand it, my brain is deriving substantial meaning from it. My brain is starting to understand Japanese passively.

This. Is. Crazy.

My god if manzai starts being funny I am going to shit a brick...