a history of me

There's been quite a bit of stormy weather lately, complete with heavy rains and fantastic bolts of lightning. We also had a tiny earthquake yesterday morning, a standard feature of Japanese life I'm starting to get used to. I've experienced at least three or four in the past year, though none of them lasted more than a moment nor did they knock over even the flimsiest of my possessions. Here's hoping I never have to learn the difference between these trivial tremors and the real deal. Mako knows; she was there.

Today I've got a couple things I want to say about the Internet, and I'm not just going to complain either. There have been a few things lately that I've come to really enjoy about the Internet, things which aren't even that new but I only recently figured out how to use them.

As an American living in Japan the Internet has been, without hyperbole, a life saver. I don't mean that my life would be over if I did not have access to the Internet, because I don't mean that "life." I'm talking about the much more general "life" that the Japanese love to bandy about on awkwardly-worded signs (i.e. "We support your socks life"). I'm talking about my piece of mind, my day-to-day activities, the general sense of who I am and what I enjoy. I suspect the Japanese word for it is seikatsu (生活, a clearly distinct word from the concept of "life" that is the opposite of "death") which they use in all sorts of compounds to describe one's life concerning marriage, home, socks, whatever. I suppose I should test that sometime by talking about my "socks life" with my co-workers and see if they nod knowingly or make a funny face.

I use the Internet a lot in my life, in part because there's simply so much on there that interests me. Aside from the obvious communication uses, I read the news to try and stay informed, I follow the Yankees as best I can, I peruse reviews of major media releases so I some sense of what's out there to read, watch, play, etc. etc. etc. Honestly, just keeping up with those few things alone would take a significant chunk of my day, and the fact is that's only the tip of the online-content iceberg I seek.

As recently as May of this year, the only way I knew how to deal with all this was to plod through my bookmarks one by one and glance at each site to see what was new or interesting. Often I'd load a page and discover there was nothing new. Other times I'd spot something I thought was new but turned out to be something I had already read. It took forever and I always stopped having wondered which site or sites I had forgotten to visit.

My discovery of Syndication changed all that. I had seen mysterious logos and acronyms (RSS? XML?) on blogs for years but I had never figured out what it had to do with anything. I guess I wrote it off as a programming tool or encoding method; some kind of background element that had no relevance to me, the reader. It was a chance encounter with a cheap-looking video that showed me how wrong I was.



I can't explain it nearly as well as the video does, but the concept is straightforward. Rather than blindly and routinely visiting site after site to see what's new, you can "subscribe" to your favorite sites and the latest updates are collected for you. It's one-stop-shopping via a concise list instead of driving to mall and sticking your head in every shop window. In my case, I use Google Reader rather than software on my PC because being on the Web allows me to log in from any computer and check my updates - even at work, where some of the sites I like to read are blocked because they are not "education related."

Predictably, as the time I spent visiting all these sites decreased, I found myself wanting to read more online so I sought out more and more sites to read. So maybe I end up spending a similar amount of time reading shit on the Internet after all, but at least this way I don't have the feeling where I'm mindlessly wandering about, looking for what's new. I know what's new, and I can choose to read it or not. It's that proactive sensation that makes all the difference.

Beyond the black and white of reading things on the Internet, I am a late arrival in the world of podcasts. The fact that I never owned an iPod until last summer was surely a factor; while I used iTunes for months and months before that, I always saw the "Podcasts" option on the list and I never understood what that meant. Even if I had investigated, I don't think it would have appealed to me much. When I'm sitting at my computer, I'm doing something. It's one thing to listen to music in the background while you surf the Web or edit photographs, but it's quite another to actively listen to people talking.

So since I have an iPod and a decent daily commute, I began to look into podcasts as a alternative to just putting my music collection on "shuffle" each time I got on the train. It wasn't long before I found a number of shows that got me hooked on the concept. These are topical broadcasts that I can subscribe to, download for free, and then listen to at my leisure. It feels like I'm back in high school, actually, listening to Howard Stern on a walkman again. Indeed, most of the shows I download are pretty funny, so I am giggling to myself now just as I did then. And the good ones give you a "radio show" feel rather than a cacaphonic roundtable discussion. Podcasting is a learned skill, like broadcasting, and there's a surprising number of shows out there where there are long, awkward silences or people talking over one another and it's simply intolerable.

I know there are people making video podcasts as well, but these don't appeal to me nearly as much. The iPod has a very small screen and I simply can't get past that. Furthermore, you can't watch a video while you're walking around, whereas audio is good anytime. Unless it's a video clip or TV show that I know so well that the images are secondary, I'm not interested in putting up with those restrictions. I can't sit there and squint for my entertainment. I'd much rather watch videos, any videos, at home.

Yet as I find the Internet's appeal increasing in some areas, I've noticed an unpleasant trend that I'm quickly getting sick of. There's this misguided notion that every site, no matter what its purpose, must include a robust, customizable profile or homepage for each and every user. I'm not talking about mandatory registration to access a website, a bad habit that seems to be declining (and with Bug Me Not out there, it doesn't matter anyway). I'm talking about the elaborate shoehorning of "social networking" into websites where I really don't want to network with anybody.

Let me first say that I understand the convenience of registering a nickname as a Web 2.0 participant. As I mentioned, I read a lot of blogs and a good portion of their appeal is the ability to give feedback and discuss each post in the comments section. I also visit a couple message boards which are, of course, entirely built on the contributions of the respondents. In the case of the former, having a static identity is positive for communication and any move to de-anonymize Web comments is a good thing. In the case of the latter, a login name is a logical requirement for posting information on the boards.

Where I start to get sick and tired of everything is the insistence on field after field of input. What are my interests, what books am I reading, who are my heroes? It's bad enough I've gone through all this on MySpace and Facebook (which both came years after I did all that on Friendster), why the hell do I need this just to leave some comments on a blog? Do I need a "friends list" on every site I visit? I just want to secure a minimal sense of identity, I don't want to re-think of a list of movies to recommend.

There's nothing sinister at work here, it's all "follow the leader" bullshit. Everyone sees the success of the major social networking websites, so they figure they need to copy that model onto their site. They can't bear the thought of someone using a social networking site for social networking, and visiting a blog just to read and occasionally comment. No, no, everyone's got to be able to do everything and anything they want on our site. It's like when you listen to "wacky morning zoo" radio show and they keep taking breaks to report the traffic and weather. Nobody cares about that shit because there are a half-dozen stations that report those conditions every three minutes. If I want to check on my morning commute, I'll pick one of those stations and then move on. If I tune to a comedy show, I want to hear your phony phone calls and zany contests. I don't care if the FDR is backed up all the way to the Harlem River Drive.

This is all on my mind as of late because I'm working really hard behind the scenes to improve the look and functionality of feitclub.com, so I've been cataloging all of the sites where I've got this digital representation of myself. I was surprised at how long that list was, and I'm probably forgetting a couple. But don't worry, once everything's working you'll really be impressed by the improvements around here! You'll be able to register your nicknames, tell me your favorite songs, pick out a wardrobe for your virtual ninja avatars...

つづく... (Click here to read more)

In case you're wondering, the answer is No, my new-found mobile phone blogging (a.k.a. "moblogging"*) powers will not mean an end to the Twitter updates. Twitter is fun and random, and it serves as an alternate route of exposure for me and my writing. Moblogging is similarly off-the-cuff, plus I can (and most likely will) include a photo for your amusement, but it is bound to this site and this site alone. So unless one method starts to include proprietary fees, I'm going to use both at my leisure. Please enjoy them, and keep that feedback coming.

Imagine you're at a party. You're new in town and you're not friends with the host or anything, but you scored an invite through legitimate means, you brought the requisite bottle of wine or six-pack of good beer, and you're dancing to the music, sampling the hors d'oeuvres and enjoying yourself despite the scarcity of personal connections to the other partygoers. In short, you're just there to have fun and get to know your new neighbors/co-workers/whatever. Everyone is very friendly and eager to meet you and introduce themselves.

Now try to imagine that the behavior of the other partygoers towards you shows a distinct and disturbing pattern. While you dance, people keep asking you how you came to know this music and whether or not this song is popular in your hometown. People always want to know if you are able to eat the food - that is, if you physically possess the necessary skills to consume and successfully ingest it - and they appear genuinely surprised when you tell them you like it and you've eaten it many times before. And in every conversation you have, people want to know when you plan on leaving the party and going back to where you came from.

Here's the really bad news: every week, all of the guests will do this at every party you attend.

This imaginary party is my less-than-imaginative metaphor for life in Japan. I left out the language issues, which are plentiful, to focus more squarely on the primary difficulty of living in Japan when you are not Japanese. Mainly: you are not Japanese. Japanese people are really stuck on that concept, so when they mentally assess you the first litmus test they apply is to ask themselves "Is this person Japanese?" The second test is probably "Is this person a man or a woman?" but the first question has such massive impact on their attitude and behavior towards you that it even overshadows their infamously rigid views on gender.

This issue is not a new one and I'm sure many, many other people have written entire books about it before. Hell, I'm sure my own past writings on this very site have touched upon this false choice and its equally absurd implications. But after I went out with some co-workers this past weekend I was forced to re-face a few of these tired assumptions that Japanese people make. The questions they ask are relatively benign at this point, because I've heard almost all of them before. What kills me is the fact that I've heard them before from these same people and I know this won't be the last time they ask me either.

For example, our evening began at a Japanese-style restaurant. We have had several get-togethers like this in the past year and our venue of choice is nearly always a Japanese restaurant. Yet when the sashimi arrived this Friday, sure enough, one teacher asked me if I was able to eat raw fish. My answer was a quick "Of course" and I tried to point out how we had eaten raw food as a group many times before in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, she would realize that her question was a stupid one. But between my stumbling over a few key words and the general noise in the room, I don't think she got that point.

It's not like I haven't tried this tactic before when dealing with these bizarre preconceptions. One of the stranger ideas Japanese people have about foreigners is that we do not know how to use chopsticks, so when eating in this country I often receive glowing praise from the natives concerning my ability to properly pick up and eat my lunch. When one teacher decided to congratulate me on eating with chopsticks (again, this is after months of living in Japan), I pointed out that all of the children eating their lunch were using chopsticks, and they were only eight years old. Therefore, since I am much older and have been eating Japanese food since before they were born, there's nothing unusual about my basic grasp of the technique. She looked at me, clearly having understood my words, but showed no hint of understanding my message.

Before anyone says it, I know that no one is intentionally trying to ostracize or insult me. Honestly, the first time someone was impressed by my handling of chopsticks, I felt great because I had deliberately practiced in preparation for my (then) first visit to Japan in 2001 as a tourist. At this point, compliments regarding chopstick use or similarly elementary customs come off as a little condescending. This is magnified by the recidivism from people who should, by now, accept the fact that I live and work in the same country that they do. My in-laws have grasped this, so why can't my co-workers?

America has an abundance of assimilation, immigration and tolerance issues that should not be ignored or downplayed, and I don't want to suggest that people who come to the States don't have to deal with stereotypes and ignorance. However, at the very least, there comes a point where they can expect to integrate themselves into a group or circle of friends who don't insist on treating them like a tourist or a newcomer. Judging by the habits of those around me and the well-documented experiences of other foreigners in Japan, I don't know if I'm ever going to earn that kind of acceptance here. But if it merely manifests itself through repeated banal compliments, then I guess things could be a lot worse.

*Yes, this is the actual term for this method of communication.

つづく... (Click here to read more)

Someone thought this would help keep the gym cool during our Greenpeace/arts-&-crafts/recycling festival this afternoon.

つづく... (Click here to read more)

if this works, it means I can blog & upload photos directly from my fabulous Japanese mobile phone. Shudder before me!

つづく... (Click here to read more)

Ten, that's right, TEN feitclub points to anyone who already knows what I'm going to talk about based on the post title.

I had another memorable insect encounter yesterday. Walking the halls of an empty school, desperately trying to convince myself I wasn't bored, my eyes were drawn to a monster of a dragonfly sitting on the inside of a windowpane. It was at least as big as the intruder we expelled from another school last week (I mentioned it on Twitter - you do read those notes, right?), which is to say that the body was much longer than any human finger could be and the wings looked to be even longer still. If something like this landed on your face, some part of it would certainly cover your eyes, nose and mouth. If that doesn't clue you in to the horrible feeling I had looking at it, I'm not sure what else I can say.

(Quick aside: I know this is all a little ridiculous since a dragonfly is totally harmless. It cannot bite, scratch, pinch, sting, poke, harm, wound, poison, or slime me in any way. But bugs give me the creeps, plain and simple)

I returned to the office and casually mentioned the large insect in the hall. I don't know why I brought it up. I guess I got the impression that most of the people sitting around were bored in their own way and this was an easy bit of "news" to put out there. I didn't even need to form my statement in a complete sentence - just saying "large," "dragonfly," and "hallway" in any order would communicate the sentiment sufficiently. I did my best to construct a coherent sentence anyway because I certainly need all the practice I can get. A teacher was quick to inform me that rather than "large dragonfly" (dekai tonbo), such a creature was known as oniyanma in Japanese. It took me a couple tries to repeat that word to her satisfaction, but I'd like to think that I'll remember that word from now on. Especially after what happened next.

Having reported my findings, I went back to the desk where I sit (semantic note: I can't call it "my desk" because I don't have my own desk, I just sit in an assigned seat at each school) and sorted my papers or otherwise attempted to appear busy. I didn't think twice that the teacher I had been speaking to suddenly went out into the hall. She probably needed to look busy too. I wasn't even looking at her when she came back into the room and flatly stated "Oniyanma" again. I turned to face her in order to find out what element of our insect-identifying conversation wasn't over. My eyes met hers but then I noticed that she was holding the horrible thing in her outstretched hand, its wings clasped between her fingers, its body eerily still but indubitably alive.

My reaction was swift and decisive. I jerked my entire body away from her in shock, withdrawing all my extremities into my personal space, closing my mouth tightly lest a sound escape my lips that might prompt her to release her grip, while opening my eyes wide to communicate how utterly terrified I was by her captive. My saucer-like gaze fixed on the prisoner, frantically checking and re-checking to confirm that the insect was unable to approach me, my anxiety unfettered by the reality of this already-harmless life form now rendered helpless and put on display. It took me some time before I could say anything, and I don't think I managed much beyond the obvious "I'm surprised!" (bikkuri shita!) which my face and posture had already clearly established.

I don't recall her saying anything else, I just know that she took it away, left the room, and headed outside to set the dragonfly free. I was forced to wonder what her goals had been in bringing it into the office to show it to me in the first place. She could have simply grabbed it and taken it from the hallway straight outside. Did she think I wanted to know more about it? Did my difficulty in saying oniyanma give her concern that she had somehow failed to explain what it was? Did she catch on that I really was bored and she figured this was an easy way to liven things up? Whatever her motivations, I think the safest course of action is to think twice before pointing out any unpleasant-looking insects to my Japanese co-workers.

Once the presence of the dragonfly was behind us, we did continue to discuss it for a little while longer, specifically the nature of its peculiar name, oniyanma. Using a dictionary she pointed out the first kanji character of its name was the same oni (鬼) as the Japanese word for "spirit" or "demon." She also suggested something along the lines (my comprehension was really being tested here) that the name was tied to "an older brother being scared," oniisan being "older brother" and iya (嫌) being a word with numerous negative connotations. Whether she was giving me a true history of the word or simply offering a kind of mnemonic device to remember it by, clearly this insect's name was forged in a kiln of fear and loathing.

Hearing her explain the background of the name oniyanma reminded me of a nearly-forgotten quiz show segment that had, months earlier, mentioned this insect by name. A quick Internet check confirmed that an alternate way of writing oniyanma was 馬大頭, using the characters for "horse," "big," and "head." While not as scary as invoking a "demon," I'd say those three characters definitely imply that some author or wordsmith years ago felt the oniyanma resembled "a horse's large head" (please note that this is an unsourced, totally amateur assumption on my part and it is intended for entertainment purposes only).

I wish I could say my encounter with the oniyanma led to a new-found interest in dragonflies, a re-examination of my own fears, or even a better understanding of the Japanese cultural fascination with insects, but there's no magical segue coming at the end of all this. I don't like bugs because they creep me out. That's a difficult position to maintain in this country but I can no more choose to love insects than I could choose to love men. I'm straight, and bugs are gross - those are equally immutable facts about me. And by the way, Mako doesn't like bugs either, so those two facts work out well for her too.

つづく... (Click here to read more)

I've returned from Tottori with my face and neck bright red from all the sun. It seems that despite the cloudy skies and the refreshing breeze blowing in from the Sea of Japan, the sun was just as hot and strong as ever. The view from atop those dunes was worth the scalding.

[long post warning!]

We only stayed one night in Tottori but Mako made sure that we spent that night at a hot springs resort. Whenever we take a domestic vacation, Mako tries to book us at one of these places. They tend to have very similar features: the room is Japanese-style with tatami mats and very little furniture, we dress up in comfortable, old-fashioned Japanese clothes while inside the hotel, we eat an elaborate, multi-course Japanese meal (often served in our room), and there are a number of indoor and outdoor bathing options.

Allow me to run through my thoughts on these standard offerings: as much as I prefer sleeping in a proper bed, I got used to lying on a tatami-mat floor during my nine month stay at Kansai Gaidai, so I have no real issue with the occasional night on my back. Sitting on the floor is quite a different matter though. No matter how many cushions or legless "chairs" are available, there is no comfortable way for me to spend time on the floor. One of my feet always falls asleep, followed by a leg and eventually my waist and balls go numb as well. If you've never experienced pins-and-needles in your genitals, take my word for it...you don't want to.

Dining on the floor is even more awkward because it forces my body to assume a posture that will allow for eating and drinking and then hold that position for the length of the meal. Since I cannot sit seiza and tuck my legs under my ass like every Japanese person can, this means I must try to slide my legs under the table and do my best not to move them at all, else I knee the table from underneath and knock over everyone's drinks. If the table is too low and I can't fit my legs underneath, I have to try and cross my legs and then lean forward so that my torso is reasonably close to the food. Our hotel this weekend solved both of these problems by putting a few normal chairs in our room and serving us our meals in a private room that featured a space beneath the table, allowing me to sit comfortably (and normally) while I ate.

The outfits we get to wear around the hotel are always nice and every time I put one on I seriously consider investing in my own personal set to wear around the apartment. The one drawback is the one-size-fits-all slippers that come with the deal. Japanese hotels, schools, nursing homes and similar institutions all rely on these uniform "guest slippers" to keep things tidy. The styles and colors vary from place to place, but there's always a single size for all visitors. This is, in a word, unjust. If humans could seriously all fit into a single dimension of footwear, shopping for shoes would be as simple as dining at McDonald's. I know that I'm slightly larger than the average Japanese person, but when it comes to shoes we're talking about a difference of just one or two centimeters. Yet the public slippers I encounter are more than just tiny, they're not even close to fitting me correctly. My heel hangs over the back by a wide margin and my toes actually hurt if I try to cram them all in the front. Put simply, I refuse to believe these slippers comfortably accommodate even those men's feet which are significantly smaller than mine (Japanese women, of course, have microscopically-small feet that could fit into an envelope). Rather than one-size-fits-all, it's one-size-fits-women-and-small-children.

Traditional Japanese dining is an elaborate affair that few people outside Japan can really understand. I know Japanese food is growing in popularity around the world, but that growth is typically limited to certain subsets of Japanese food. Sushi, ramen, yakitori - I love all these foods but enjoying them is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a "proper" Japanese dinner. Put simply, no Japanese restaurant would offer a traditional Japanese meal abroad because then they would have to try and explain what everything on the table is. I used to try and ask about all the little dishes I was presented with at various Japanese meals, but I learned to stop asking after each answer only led to more questions. In that sense, eating a Japanese meal is a lot like having a Japanese conversation (at least for me). Rather than picking apart and investigating everything I don't understand, I just smile and nod, enjoying as much as I can.

Dining at these hotels is a long process. The table is wide and packed with little colorful dishes. Having no idea what to eat first vs second, I always just follow Mako's lead and pick up whatever she picks up. Sashimi and cold dishes usually come first, while rice and soup usually come later. There's usually some kind of a bowl or pot that has to be heated where we cook or boil our own individual pieces of fish or beef. Personally, I'd much rather the chef did that for us, because he or she knows a hell of a lot more about cooking than I do. That, and I find the giant steaming bowl of whatever to be a real nuisance in navigating the table of other small dishes. Let's not forget that I'm wearing a kind of robe at the table with a big, loose sleeve which I have to take great care to avoid dipping in any plate of food before me. In the end, I enjoy much of the meal and there's plenty of it, but I always look back and think how much happier I would have been with a single, delicious entree instead of the Voltron-style combination of a multitude of micro-servings.

Now let's talk about the hot springs themselves, which is the main draw to these hotels in the first place and the real reason I started writing today. Mako absolutely loves taking a bath in super hot water, and by extension, every single Japanese person on Earth also loves taking a bath in super hot water. That would sound overly stereotypical except simple logic tells me it's true, because otherwise there wouldn't be a dozen hotels and public baths built on the site of every single natural hot spring in Japan. Television, for what it's worth, also reinforces this theory because if there's anything shown on Japanese TV more than close-ups of food, it's people sitting in baths at a hot springs resort. Not to mention the frequent excursions made by fictional characters in movies and even in cartoons. So, either the Japanese resort industry is so rich that it has lobbied every form of national, popular media to reinforce the "hot springs bath" image as a desirable luxury, or Japanese people really do love taking a bath in super hot water. Occam's razor says I am not a racist.

What's my point? My point is I don't really see the attraction of the hot springs. I often find the hotel to be nice and much of the scenery to be lovely, but I fail to understand the notion that the springs themselves are worth the trip, and this notion is clearly a very popular one in Japan. I have nothing against a hot bath in winter to combat the frostiness of an uninsulated Japanese home and many of my fond memories of ski trips past revolve around the après-ski hot tubbing experience. But the idea of sitting in geologically-hot water for fun, especially in summer time, seems completely bizarre to me.

So why do I keep agreeing to these skin-reddening retreats? Like I said, Mako absolutely loves it. When we go to one of these places, she'll spend half the night exploring every single available environment, inside as well as outdoors, that the hotel offers. And while we always seek out a private bathing option so that the two of us can relax (sort of) in the intense heat, most of her exploits are her own as the vast majority of these baths are gender-separated. Which means the entertainment of soaking in these baths exceeds her interest in spending time with me.

Maybe I'm heading in the wrong direction here. I'm sure for Japanese couples there is nothing more normal than a trip to a resort where two people who love each other spend their evening in separate chambers, naked and sweating. Likewise, a group of friends who go out drinking and partying on Friday night are quite likely to end up visiting a public bath and capping off their evening with steamy, nude conversation. To be frank, the nudity issues at work here are something else entirely which I started writing about but then put it aside for another day. I guess I just don't understand what's so fun about sitting in a tub while the woman I love is sitting in another tub someplace else. Even when we manage to get a tub together, it doesn't seem to make the trip worthwhile. I love to travel for a great many reasons, but an opportunity to take a bath together isn't one of them. We've got a tub in our apartment and trust me, neither of us use it during the summer months. It's too hot for that...unless we're on vacation?

However, there's another possible explanation for all this. Looking at the entire package, going to a hot springs resort is a kind of vacation from modern life. It's a trip where the destination is nostalgic - an idealized vision of Japan's past which no one can truly experience these days, if they ever did before. Think about it: dressing up in traditional clothes that few people still wear, eating impractically-large and elaborate meals which no one could realistically eat at home, sitting around naked in a natural, outdoors setting, far away from the dense urban sprawl where most Japanese people live...aside from the tatami room, nearly everything at these resorts is an escape. And did I mention the tiny, old-fashioned televisions? Widescreen, high-resolution televisions are quickly becoming the norm in Japan, and modern hotels are working to make sure their in-room entertainment keeps pace. Yet hot springs resorts, in my experience, have very small televisions sitting in the corner of the room, almost like an afterthought - a concession to number one medium in the modern world.

So maybe - just maybe - a Japanese person goes to a hot springs resort for the same reason an American goes camping. It's a way to "get away from it all" which just happens to include literally stripping away everything and sitting naked in a pool of super hot water. What significance the bathing has in all this, I can't be certain. Honestly, I'm making up most of this as I go. All I can say definitively is that I can do without the hot water bit. And as my friends well know, I'm no fan of camping in the States either. But I'm a grown-up and a gentlemen, and I'm not going to prevent Mako from indulging in a little fantasy every now and then. Besides, who am I to turn down mutual nudity?

つづく... (Click here to read more)

Awesome moment of the day: a little girl with multiple handicaps came to school this morning looking rather down. The vice-principal greeted her and she barely acknowledged him. I walked up and said "Good morning" and she suddenly started beaming and looked up at me from her wheelchair with a huge grin. She may not have the faculties to learn much English in class, but it's obvious that I have had a significant impact on her life.

Hang on, did I just say a little girl came to school this morning during summer vacation? The short answer is yes, students still come to school over vacation. There are no classes, of course, but lots of children meet up in the playground, amuse themselves in the gym, or spend an hour or so in the pool. Every Japanese public school has a pool, apparently, which makes me crazy jealous. My elementary had a pool, in theory, but it was very small, fairly dirty, and it was never open anyway. If I had free access to a pool this nice every summer when I was a kid, I might actually know how to swim today.

It must also be said that in Japan, elementary schools are purposely integrated into the community to ensure that no one is more a few kilometers away because there are no school buses. All of these children walk to and from school every day, including the first graders. I grew up in a small town with about 7000 people, and we had only one elementary school. This town is a little bigger (closer to 10,000 people) and a little more spread out, but they have six elementary schools. If we applied Japanese thinking to my hometown, I'm sure we would have had at least two more elementary schools and I wouldn't have thought twice about hanging out there in my free time.

Here's where things really start to surprise me. Beyond the local elementary school, most neighborhoods have a jidōkan (児童館, "children's hall") which serves as an even localler (new word!) place for the kids to gather. I actually teach an after-school English class periodically at one of these buildings. They are quite small (at least around these parts) and run by the board of education. The one I visit has a tiny playground, a computer lab (no Internet access), a miniature kitchen and loads of books, arts & crafts projects, and other miscellaneous crap that some child twenty years ago simply forgot to take home. Kids come to these halls after school, on weekends and even over summer vacation.

What purpose do these jidōkan serve? Why don't these kids just go home? I haven't figured that out yet. When I first heard about them, I assumed they were created to solve the problem of latch-key kids who would otherwise be home alone because Mom and Dad both have jobs, but that doesn't make sense in a place like this. First off, these buildings are obviously older than the two-income household. Furthermore, this is a rural community where most people are farmers or work similarly-local neighborhood jobs. I doubt any of these kids come home to an empty house in the afternoon.

I suspect this is all tied into the importance of groups in Japanese society. As I said, all these kids walk to and from school. If they're from the same neighborhood, that means they probably walk together everyday. That means that beyond the usual sibling or grade-level pairings, these children have their own han (班, "block" I suppose). They presumably all meet in the morning around the same time before going to school. Once they arrive, they split up according to their grade and classroom. When they are dismissed (and this I've actually seen) they assemble in the schoolyard not by grade, but by han. Then they all walk home together, except when they want hang out or study together, in which case they go to their jidōkan.

Again, I can't help but apply these ideas to my own childhood and wonder how things would have been different. I did know a couple kids in my neighborhood, yes, but most of our interaction was limited to bus-stop conversations. We would hang out sometimes after school, but the older we got the less we would see of each other (despite living within shouting distance of one another). Nearly everyone whom I think of as a "friend" today I met for the first time at school, and most of them lived in a totally different part of town than I did. The school bus or a ride from Mom was the only way we got to see each other. Had there been a Truesdale han or Benedict jidōkan, I would have spent most of my time with those local kids, probably right up though high school. Considering how much my relationship with my friends has shaped my life, I can't begin to imagine how different a person I would be today if all that happened. I sure as hell wouldn't be in Japan right now!

Is one way "better" than another? Using the Japanese way, I probably would have had a lot more friends, or at least more daily activity with kids from my neighborhood. I also would have spent more time with my sister, and perhaps we would have found a way to spend less time fighting with each other thanks to all that extra interaction. On the other hand, the American way meant I was able to seek out other children who I had certain commonalities with. When I look at my friends now, we are very different people, but we all share a core of certain interests, ideals and values. That's what brought us together in the first place. By replacing that with mere coincidence (i.e. you kids live near each other, so you will spend all your time together), I can't believe I'd have the same kind of long-lasting friendships I do now.

I know I'm oversimplifying here, but living in Japan and working with children all the time has, understandably, given me a lot of time to wonder about raising my own (potential, as yet non-existent) children. But since my childhood is the only real "map" I've got to child-rearing, and since my childhood is so radically different from that of Japanese children, I'm constantly comparing and contrasting the two schools of thought in my head.

つづく... (Click here to read more)

I know I already tweeted this, but I just finished Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death today after nearly three days of reading. It's a pretty short book, and I thought I'd blow through it inside of an afternoon. Yet the book was so deep in content I kept stopping to think about what he was trying to say and how it applied to my own personal habits.

Oh wait, I should probably explain what the hell a "tweet" is. Let me digress for a moment.

With no classes or real responsibilities of any kind at work these days, I have but two choices to reasonably pass the time while I sit around the office all day: I can read, or I can write. The former is more appealing because it excites me and lets me think about new ideas, whether I read fiction or non-fiction. The latter is much harder work for me, but ultimately it is more constructive and I feel better having done it. And like reading, what kind of writing I manage is immaterial, because the mere act of writing is very important to me. That belief was a major motivator for me to start writing this blog in the first place, and my total lack of commitment to that ideal (and this blog) in recent times is one of my biggest regrets. Sure, I've been busy graduating from college, finding a job, moving to a foreign country and getting married, but all of that activity should have been fuel to write even more about my life. The past eighteen months should have inspired hundreds of (blog-)pages of material. Instead, I wrote less during this time than I did during the nine months I was an exchange student. Much, much less.

While I cannot undo the laziness that derailed my blog (no matter how many times I press ctrl-Z) I can take the necessary steps to get back on track, and that means writing. Writing, writing, writing. Pictures are nice, videos are fun, but the more I write the better my writing will become. Am I writing merely for writing's sake? Not exactly. My current job, the one that allows me to live in Japan and enjoy myself, has a finite length. At some point in the next few years, I must look for a new job. This is not like those days back in the postal service when I kept telling myself I "needed" a better job. That was a want, not a need. The postal service was all too happy to leech away my life indefinitely. Here in Japan, when my JET-tenure ends, I will have to decide what kind of job I want to have. It has become apparent to me that if I seriously want to find a job that doesn't require "teaching" English to uninterested Japanese schoolchildren, which I strongly suspect will be the case, then I will need to find a job that requires me to write. A lot. Let's face it: I'm not much of a laborer and my mythical entry into show business is incredibly unlikely to materialize. My best non-teaching prospect in Japan is translation, which means I will have to be a good writer.

In a kind of chicken-and-the-egg situation, I've also begun to look critically at the design of feitclub.com in an attempt to make it look, you know, halfway decent. This whole thing started with a pre-designed Blogger template that I used and then modified many times over to suit my needs. At this point, the site is a mess of mixed colors, out-of-date links, and general sloppiness. So while I take more of my time to write and improve the content of the site, I'm going to do my best to improve the look and functionality of the site as well. While I can't do too much of that at work (as all computers in the school district block blogger.com and anything else resembling a blog) I should have enough time to myself this summer to make major headway on both fronts.

One small step towards all this has been my foray into Twitter. Put simply, Twitter is a "micro-blogging" tool where each post is short and sweet. Most of my messages (a.k.a. "tweets") will be less than 120 characters, typically submitted via my mobile phone. That may sound like a waste of time, but I've quickly learned that typing little messages about my day is fun to do. Hopefully, it will prove to be fun to read. At this time, the latest posts from Twitter are wedged in the sidebar. In the future, I hope to find a way to integrate them with the rest of my updates, providing a comprehensive look at the non-stop excitement I am experiencing everyday.

Wait...wasn't my last post all about a fucking wasp?

つづく... (Click here to read more)

Today I learned to appreciate the fact that I spend most of my morning commutes bored, because an exciting commute is nothing but trouble.

This morning I witnessed a surprising display of teamwork and cooperation on my way to work. I was sitting on the bus, listening to a podcast and waiting to depart when I noticed a large, nasty-looking wasp on a man's shoulder. Immediately, I tensed up and made sure to keep my eyes on the pinky-sized terror, for if I could not see where it was I feared it would approach me and possibly land on my shoulder. The man soon noticed he was not alone in his seat and quickly brushed the creature away. From that point on, the wasp took to the air and got everyone's attention as it buzzed loudly and bumped along the surface of the closed windows in an attempt to get away. Unfortunately, it couldn't figure out to fly out the open bus door and it continued to fly back and forth, from window to window, forcing all the passengers to take cover when the wandering menace flew too close to their heads.

However, one courageous passenger took it upon herself to fight back. She had a makeshift weapon of sorts in a plastic fan and she used it to swat at the wasp whenever it approached her or another person. Despite several direct hits, each producing a loud SNAP as she struck the beast, her plastic fan simply didn't have enough mass to impact the wasp in any meaningful way. One salaryman on board had a newspaper he was reading, but the fact that he wanted to read the articles no doubt prevented him from embracing the paper's inherent bug-smashing powers, lest the front page be covered in wasp giblets.

At that point an amazing plan came into fruition. The lady with the fan had driven the wasp to the window where it was making a lot of angry noises. She smacked it with the fan and pinned it to the glass, then gestured to the salaryman with the newspaper to assist her. Wedged under the plastic, the wasp was no longer a threat to soil his paper with its innards. Seeing his opening, he walked over and delivered two solid strikes with the rolled up paper, silencing the insect that had panicked everyone on the bus. The woman holding the fan looked to another woman, one whom I don't think she even knew, and gestured again. This woman immediately responded by bringing over a pack of tissues, which the fan lady used to remove the splattered wasp from the window, as well as her fan. After a quick round of "thank you" and "sorry about that," everyone was back in their seat as if nothing had happened.

What do I make of this tale? On the one hand, we had a small insect fly inside a bus and frighten the comparatively giant-sized humans into a murderous act, one which required two of them to take out something a single bug. On the other hand, we have an impressive display of coordinated action, nearly all of it directed non-verbally, which quickly dealt with a situation that was making everybody on the bus uncomfortable.

Would this have unfolded the same way had it been in the United States? I suspect someone would have killed the wasp eventually, but there would have been a lot more shouting and it's unlikely anyone would have had a plastic fan, a newspaper or a packet of tissues handy. I can tell you that my response to the threat was to rush to my feet and look scared.

Sorry about that, America. I made all 300 million of us look like cowards.

つづく... (Click here to read more)