Osakatomebaby

Thanks to Melbotis for this. It's worth reposting so it can become part of the ever-changing lexicon of the brothers Manning.

BABIES! GRRRRRRRRRRR.

Yes, it's my birthday, thank you thank you. I'm officially halfway to 56 and a third of the way to being able to do math.

I coulda been a contender.

Weird things have been afoot. Universal shifts. Either that or Belgian beer. Probably the latter.

But the truth is, the ironies decided to whack me a good one. Between Sunday night and Wednesday evening I slept <8 hours. That means I was up for...math...about 80 hours.

Why? I got obsessive. I built another website I'll link here when it's more polished...especially considering my state when I wrote it. And yes, unlike this one I hand-coded the whole darn thing. It's so much easier. Why do I use these silly templates? I do learn from them but hand-coding is easier. Albeit I have no idea what I'm doing half the time. But it's like learning Japanese. Better to start with grammar and forms than just memorizing phrases and trying to adjust them.

That, I had a big meeting, learned a lot at work. Lost all hope and got reinspired about 10 times in the last two days. And was asked to define the meaning of life by a friend I thought had written me off.

Personal garbagio, work insanity, obsession, isolation and connections all weaving in and out too fast to keep up. Not in my best mind.

That having been said, I had a great evening out just now with two students. Too much fun. Good guys. Funny.

But I have to clean up my apartment so a bunch of drunken teachers can crash here tomorrow and eat girlscout cookies and milk till the first train comes.

And then I have to get my life in order. Japanese. Defining the meaning of life more practically. Finishing the website so I can stop fussing. So I'm making a concerted effort to do that stuff for a few days. Posting may be intermittent for a week and then I'll be back to proper blogging.

So in the last three days I've:

• Boasted about living simply and minimizing my posessions


• Complained about the Yen getting weaker


• Preached about getting enough sleep

So what did I do? Naturally I stayed up for no reason all night working on a website (not this one). Then today I went and having put my deposit on a trip to India which turned out to be less than I anticipated, I blew my extra money (as if it really were extra) on a printer/scanner/copier and a cheap pair of speakers.

In my defense I must say I have been needing the PSC and I bought last year's model on sale. I didn't _need_ the speakers, but I've been using my tv shoved under the desk as a speaker and it's mono.

That's right, I've been listening to the white album and I don't know what all in mono for the last seven months. C'mon that's an achievement. Now it's in stereo I feel like I've had my hearing restored. It's a miracle...stereo! So shame on me but I'm too tired to care because I knew if I got a nap I was really done for. But now...I...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Oh sure, as soon as I decide to send some money home the dollar gets stronger. Grimace grimace grimace.

There always seem to be earthquakes in the morning. I mean, I know there's no relationship...unless there's some tidal effect for magma I don't know about. More likely it's because that's when I'm still enough (in full contact with the ground) to notice.

This morning there was a little one...have you ever had a lucid dream? There are two kinds of lucid dreams (in my vast experience). The first is the kind where you are aware that you are dreaming, but you have no control over external events. Kind of like living an enlightened life...which makes me think of all kinds of other questions but will save you from them.

The other kind is where you have control over external events. If at any time you realize you are dreaming, the best way to determine what type of lucid dream you're having is to think to yourself, "well then, if this is a dream and I have control, I must be holding a cabbage (or tomato or eggplant or whatever)." Then look at your right hand. If you're holding a cabbage you're good. Otherwise you're just along for the ride, but it doesn't matter because lucid dreams aren't scary. Lucid dreams happen when you feel in control of your life anyway.

So you have the cabbage. Cabbages are good because they're easy. And even if you have one it doesn't mean it will be easy to control circumstances. But if you can't produce the cabbage it's going to be hard to do bigger stuff.

The other thing about the cabbage is that, you know, it's a cabbage. Of all the things you could want, why would you want a cabbage? I guess because it's not something that you want or care about, and probably doesn't have a lot of emotional associations.

This is important because once you start bringing emotional issues in your dream will go all haywire. Not that bad things will happen for the most part (well, not that they absolutely won't), but that once you flip that switch by say, wishing for your ex-girlfriend to be there holding your hand instead you'll start to lose control, because you're brain is smarter than you and it knows your ex-girlfriend. You can call her up, but I'm here to tell you, if she didn't do your bidding before, she's not going to now. She's defined, she's got her parameters, and the more you try to fix things the more your lucid control is just going to slip slip slip away-ay-ay.

Besides that you'll start wanting things that you wouldn't normally want. Actually that will probably happen anyway. I don't think I ever consciously wanted Madonna to teach me how to play the harp or to sing Christmas carols with penguins around a burning tumbleweed or to learn to manage a controlled fall down the side of a mountain while levitating 5 feet over the surface. If I did, I don't recall. Regardless you'll wake up wondering where this stuff is coming from...and you know, you don't want to know. All the more reason not to call on that ex-girlfriend.

The trick to lucid dreaming is...

Nah, I can't tell you.

Okay fine, the trick is simple. Live an easy life. It wouldn't hurt to be a little bored either. Get enough sleep. That means 5 to 7 hour-and-a-half cycles. You sleep in cycles of about an hour and a half. It's not exact obviously, but more or less. Trust me. (So by the way if you want to wake up more easily, try to time your sleep to this--the alarm clock is more bearable if it doesn't come right in the middle of a cycle). It also helps to believe in the power of suggestion, aka hypnotism.

So if you believe what I just told you about the hour-and-a-half cycles just because I said it, that's cool. If you got all cynical and started thinking, what the hey do you know, that's cool too. But, if you thought, well, that's rather dubious information you're putting out there and you aren't particularly an expert nor have you cited a whit of scientific research, but it sounds good...okay I'll give it a try, then I think you have a better chance. If you don't think you can be hypnotized you can't, right? You have to be willing.

(Why am I suddenly having a flashback to being hypnotized to believe I'm a chicken. That wasn't me right? It was a movie...with Woody Allen? Was it a dream? Aw heck).

So another thing about hypnotism is that you can do it to yourself. Like you can say, I'm going to keep a glass of water by the bed, and if I don't wake up at 6:00 I'm going to throw the water on myself. Or to be less literal you could say if I don't wake up at 6:00 the bed will catch fire. You'll be more likely to get up as long as you maintain the belief.

Admit it, you wake up a minute before the alarm because you hate it so much that you just can't stand to hear it. But you don't turn it off because it's your responsibility to obey the alarm you set. But! Once it goes off, it's not you you're disobeying, it's the damned noisy thing disturbing your sleep and why did I set it so early anyway because I can get ready in half an hour even though I was late last week because I set the alarm way way early and that was dumb and...snoozzzzzzzzze.

Okay, so I'm not always in control. That's why getting enough sleep is important because if you do it means you've got stuff under control and your priorities in order and as a bonus, you'll get lucid dreams which rock. Seriously, cabbage may not be that exciting, but instant out-of-nowhere-just-because-I-thought-of-it-cabbage is pretty satisfying.

The other trick is to try and remember your dreams. Well, you'll probably be too busy in a lucid dream to remember anything after the cabbage. But whether it's lucid or not, there is a trick to remembering your dreams (hypnotize hypnotize). As far as I can tell, if you wake yourself up slightly about an hour before you're supposed to wake up, you'll be more likely to remember.

So if, say you want to do this subtly and you wake up late enough you could leave the shades open or something and tell yourself you'll wake up a little at sun-up. Or just set an alarm and plan to turn it off.

Earthquakes? That started this? There was a tiny one this morning. If you can sense a 1 than I guess this was that...if not then 2. You get the idea. So I'm on the inch-and-a-half thick futon on a wood floor and I'm half awake. I'm not dreaming, but there's still this wish, it's like a dream. The first wish was that it be an earthquake. It was. The next was as it started to subside that it be a prelude to a bigger one. It was. That's where lucid dreaming and those unknown wishes and the control factor get all mixed up. I wanted a bigger earthquake. I wanted panic and terror. What does that mean first thing in the morning? Am I naturally morose? Do I have some destructive instinct? Maybe I need to get more sleep. And how can I control this Lucid waking state? Waking life?

I apologize for the animation, but I GOT THE BOX which I was waiting for. This is that very box. And I don't know how to make it stop spinning. C'est le sense de la vie.

So What was in the box?

• Books: Bradbury, most of the stuff written by TAL contributors, and, oh yeah, the Vintage Murakami I cared about a month ago.


• CDs: Leonard Cohen/Songs of Love and Hate, Lou Reed/Berlin


• PANTS!


• Presents! Books from Mum and Dum I can use in my classes

And this:



A star named for me. Awwwwwwwwwwww. However, to be really cool I think the star needs to change it's name to a symbol that looks like a greek letter and it can be pronounced like my name but with an Ancient Greek lilt. I'll be contacting Alfredo to see exactly what that lilt might sound like.

I wonder how many International Star Registries there are out there in the universe (or even just the galaxy) doling out names for my star. I suppose it's big enough to handle lots of names. Heck, the sun has about a million different names on this planet alone. Has it got more names out there? Almost certainly.

Still, I think it is about the coolest present I ever received. I just hope other critters out there in the universe can pronounce it.

On that note, I hope there are no Vogons out there writing poetry about it...more likely the only life forms in the vicinity are a bunch of unfortunate mattresses...or are they futons? Either way, that's where I'm heading now.

This is a good way to start the day.

I came across this when I did I GIS for "Crazy Train -Ozzy" (don't ask). The Internet works in mysterious ways. Click and read it too unless you're related to me...because...no one related to me likes kayaking.



BTW the following is true:

Class
4-Technical
5+-Consequences
6-Intimidation

The title of this article caught my eye. Interesting but quite difficult to interpret. For one thing, I've always been fairly oblivious to "gender differences" myself. For another, I have a hard time seeing my own culture in the kind of definitive terms that come so naturally when dealing with an "other".

I guess I'm mostly reacting to the comment that,

Cultures emphasizing manliness and femininity are in the West. Those kinds of ideas are traditionally weak in Japan.

I wonder if this is really true or if this is looking at it from a Western chivalrous perspective. In terms of gender roles and expectations, Japan is certainly more strict insofar as business is till male-dominated and images of feminine domesticity abound as an ideal. No, nobody's going to hold the door for you here on account of you being a female, but they're going to look at you askance if you use "male" language.

There might be at least two other things going on here. One is that the large-scale women's liberation movement in the Western world brought some of these issues to light in a way that hasn't happened in Japan. The higher attitude of role importance could be interpreted as generational backlash or simply an idealization of a concept that doesn't entirely exist in reality.

This can't be quite right, because certainly Americans do still act on these ideas, but is it just made more conscious by the politics of the last 40 years?

The other thing is that from what I can tell, many of the questions were based on affirming or denying traditional gender role assumptions (defined in large part by the Western idea of chivalry). But I wonder about what other questions were asked. For example, how should childcare be divided among the sexes?

Sidenote: I wonder why the translator twice used awkward expressions/vocabulary rather than the word "masculine"? I don't know the Japanese question, but "Do you think men should act in a manful manner?" is just wacky.

So I wasn't expecting to, but I had sent this restaurant review (including directions) to a friend this morning before heading out, and lo and behold, where did we end up tonight? Seriously fabulous beer, which, I can say without cultural reservation, there is a dearth of around here.

Loreley is exactly what it ought to be, which is to say, I had a smashing time and I wouldn't change a thing. It's a tiny place and it filled up fast. Fortunately we had already snagged our table in the corner.

My my my. The beer was a treat. We tried a pilsner and two different heffeweissens (Maisel's and another which doesn't seem to be on the otherwise fabulous site).

Dinner wasn't like the stuff at the chain German restaurants which usually includes marguerita pizza and very Japanese salads. We had pretzels (okay, kitschy but they were good), a fabulous salad of pickled herring with dill (there was a lot more before I took the picture but we ate so fast I forgot to get a good one), fried potatoes with eggs and pickles and an abundance of sausages.

Then we started to get jealous of all the folks sampling liquers and decided to join the fray. Not knowing we were ordering gin (because we didn't ask), we...did. So that was a bit of surprise. I'm not a gin drinker, much less straight*, but I sipped it for a little while and actually enjoyed it. Halfway through we switched. I had started with one of the flavored brandies--it's the last on the list.

I know, I'm a heck of a lot of help, but all in all I think that means I had a good time. Anyway, the owner and waitress were fabulous. She was very knowledgeable which is probably precisely why I don't remember the details. And the owner was too fabulous and generous. Perhaps they were all high on the great review, but whatever it was, it was worth it. They certainly looked like the pictures on the website.

I've been following Spaulding Gray's disappearance and suspected suicide over a month ago and I found this article in The Scotsman rather interesting because unlike the more sensational reports, it's more of a reflection on the man himself and the process by which he transformed his life experiences into performances. The journalist recalls his meeting with Gray 11 years ago and his feelings of catching him somewhere between actual experience and a final polished performance...of being someone he was perhaps testing material on, or less cynically, a participant in a conversation through which Gray was trying to process his experience.

"The important thing is not what you dreamt, he told me, but what you remembered that you dreamt and the way that you interpreted it."

He talks about his interpretations as well--about feeling sadistic. And he talks of internal conflicts--doubting the veracity of his own feelings precisely because he is interpreting them, not only for an audience but for himself. It's not conclusive, but that's probably why I appreciated it.

Feelings are a bit like sub-nuclear particles. You can't examine them without changing them or their course, and you're left to wonder if the resulting descriptions really bear any relationship to the thing itself.

Still, Gray's incredible monologues would suggest that this is worth doing. They're good because he captures the jarring unreality of life and our limited resources to respond. It's difficult enough to interpret experience, much less express it in a compelling way. Gray is extraordinarily talented. Yet it seems to me this extroverted technique of understanding life via art, monologue, memoir or blog is worth doing. Unfortunately it isn't always enough.

Don't worry, I'm not going to go off the deep end in the blog. I just hope Gray is just out there somewhere...being sadistic.

I'd source it if I remebered where I saved it from.

This is the most random reference to teaching English in Japan I have ever seen.

Everyone's favorite politician, Shigefumi Matsuzawa, Governor of Kanagawa (left), was on hand last month for the opening of a new subway line which happens to stop in Chinatown, Yokohama. Kind of an urban revitalization project for areas built out during the bubble economy that never had a chance to bloom. Guess that means it's not "revitalization", but you get the idea.

Matsuzawa made headlines last year during a campaign tour with the quote:

Foreigners are all sneaky thieves. As Tokyo Gov. (Shintaro) Ishihara has cracked down on them, they have flowed into Kanagawa Prefecture.

Kanagawa is home to Yokohama which is traditionally a port city with a major foreign community (well, legitimately foreign about 4-5 generations ago) as exemplified by Chinatown. Now take into account the fact that a major chunk of the foreigners he's largely referring to are Chinese.

According to the Japan Times:

[He] qualified his assertion Sunday that "all" foreigners are "sneaky thieves," stating instead that only "some" are.

And Americans get upset when Hillary makes a Gandhi joke.

But then, quotes usually get the biggest (desired or no) effect from the fact that they are information used out of context. Not that he should ever have said this but it would help to know why.

From an article (with an admittedly cynical stance) in Aussie newspaper, "The Age":

The...Governor was reflecting a widely held view - being aired in this election - that foreigners are to blame for Japan's crime wave.

...The issue has been fuelled by the National Police Agency and figures it released in August, which showed the record crime rate. The agency blamed foreigners for the deterioration in public safety.

The report showed a jump in crime committed by foreigners last year - 34,746 cases, representing a rise of about 25 per cent. But a closer examination revealed that once immigration offences were taken out, foreigners were responsible for only 4 per cent of crimes committed.

I don't know. I think he looks a little nervous.

Here's the english translation of Murakami's second book. Haven't had time to read the whole thing, and having read a lot of other Murakami, I'm a little confused because it contains characters or names that are in the other books. More to come when I have a chance to finish. It's short, but rather difficult to read because it's on screen not in a paperback I could curl up with on a freezing day like today. Brrrrrrrrrrrrr. I think the Iceman cameth.

The Japan Times reports on a Kobe doctor who performed a restricted genetic diagnosis on in vitro fertilized ova for the purpose of sex selection--which I take it means letting the women decide whether to implant based on the results.

The procedure is apparently legal in the States, but not sure of further details. That is a little scary. The diagnosis is primarily intended to prevent incurable genetic disorders. I can definitely see the slippery slope effect here, particularly with the case in point, but it would seem logical that if the ova isn't implanted it shouldn't be required to do so. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding the procedure somehow.

Cerebral palsy activists in Japan oppose preimplantation diagnosis, the counterargument being that later diagnosis would likely lead to abortion anyway.

But actually, I just posted this because the picture is wierd. One wonders what the photographer and editor were thinking.

Having babies is getting too complicated anyway. I gotta get fixed. Why not make a donation to the "No puppies for Molly" fund?

Remeber all that profound naval gazining I just did? Well, it's another day.

Found the business card from that taxi Friday. I thought I had lost it.

Catherine is 14 years old. Her birthday is September 12, Virgo. Her hobbies are drawing pictures and reading mystery stories. She wants to become a history teacher.

More power to ya Catherine! You crazy Virgo kid. But are your sure you're 14? You don't look a day over 10.

Create an excel spreadsheet with the kanji you're studying, a system to randomize it, and a way to quiz yourself.

Here's an article I've turned up recently in my attempt to address the question of violence in Japan. This woman is located in a suburb just next to my own.

According to the article, as many as 27% of Japanese wives have been abused by their husbands. I don't really know if CSM's stats are reliable or not, but that number seems quite mind-boggling. The fact that, as late as 1996, there were no more than 30 private shelters for victims of domestic abuse in the entire country does start to make the figure more believable. It's just so hush hush.

Warning: the following post contains extensive navel-gazing

I'm going to attempt to write this again. It rather reminds me of the time my freshman year in college I wrote the longest report I'd ever written (11 pages was long at that time) and then saved a blank document over it because I was inept with computers at the time.

Nevertheless...

I've noticed recently, that although I haven't broken the letter of the law in terms of my pledge not to make cultural comparisons, I have certainly broken the spirit of it. Partially because it's easy. I mean, just throwing a picture like this up on the site says a lot even if I don't make a lot of generalizations about what it means. And talking about the words "gaijin" and "gaikokujin". I have to pull myself out of that rat hole.

Having said that, I did a little reflecting on how I'm looking at my life here, and I had a rather enlightening experience.

Thinking back on my first stay in Japan, I'm a little disappointed. I made some big mistakes. I didn't learn enough Japanese and I relied on my English-speaking Japanese friends to interpret a lot for me. One of these was a recent returnee from London who was himself rather mixed-up. He was reading a lot of books on "Japanese-ness" at the time, attempting to get over his reverse culture shock. And he made a lot of proclamations that I took at face value. Japanese do this this way and that that way and so on and so forth.

Learning about a culture through the "rules" is like learning a language through translation exercises. Sure you can learn it, but you can't use it. You're inflexible. And those sorts of proclamations are always very ostracizing which is what leads to the famous jaded foreigner who doesn't bother to learn the language and believes "I'll never be accepted". When I came back from Japan I was very rigid, not only about Japan, but in everything.

Fast-forward to 2003. I returned to Japan because I wanted to give myself another chance to rise above that. To make amends. I've studied Japanese rigorously and I've lived a lot more quietly. I'm older anyway, so I can do that (when I'm not missing the last train that is). And I've tried to avoid painting things with too broad a brush. Even if I can speak Japanese perfectly, I would still be at risk of making generalizations. Sure they serve a purpose, but in my current position, they're more a threat than a tool.

Even with the best judgment, there are dangers. Everyone develops habits, especially when your constantly in problem-solving mode. What am I going to say to accomplish this task? How should I act in this situation? Living abroad brings these things to a conscious level more often, but often once you find a solution that works, you hard-wire it, even though it may not be the best one. This is precisely how people get rigid.

Probably the most famously important survival skill in Japan is indirectness and deference. Maintaining harmony or "wa" or what-have-you. So I've gotten really good at being very milquetoast. Not that I can't express myself, but that I wouldn't do it at the expense of that harmony. Here's how most of my conversations go.

Other: "What do you think about A?"

Me: "Hmmmm....yes. Well, (obvious comment about A)."

Other: "Mmmmmmm, (general agreement)."

Me: "What do you think about A?"

Other: "(Hint)"

Me: "Right. I think so too. So maybe B?"

At this point if B was what the other person was thinking we'll go into a lot of vigorous agreement and perhaps, eventually come out with C which was the obvious implication of B. If B was totally off the mark insert a long "Hmmmmmm" then loop back to line 2 and try again.

That's the pattern I've got ingrained. It's worked up until now because usually when someone asks your opinion, they really just want to make sure you agree with them. This is true in American culture too.

The inherent problem with this is that it assumes that the first person has an opinion and is looking for confirmation. If, on the other hand, they're honestly asking your opinion and you don't realize this you'll keep looking for that confirmation stage and never get it. So you'll loop back over and over, trying new tactics to gain that much needed approval.

It makes a more sinister assumption too, that your opinion isn't interesting or valued. That's where you start to slide down the slippery slope. If no one is ever really asking for my opinion, is it because I'm at the bottom of the totem pole at my company? Is there someone up there pulling the strings? Are Japanese subject to the same disinterest? Is it related to my being a foreigner?

Of course, if all this is happening on a conscious level it's bad enough because you're blatantly segregating yourself and assuming it's a cultural obstacle. I have to say, I am glad I don't do this on a conscious level these days. If I did start to, I think I would hear the words "Japanese" and "foreigner" in my head and alarms would start to sound.

So I don't do it consciously, but those patterns, those habits, still carve unconscious pathways to the same assumptions. And when someone legitimately asks your opinion and you go into the loop, things go haywire.

Anyway, it did on Friday. My head teacher asked me a question, my opinion about homework for certain classes. I tried everything, every possible suggestion and combination of suggestions I could, waiting for that recognition. But nothing worked. Worse, I was obviously throwing everything under the sun at her. Now it sounds like I was bullshitting, but in a wierd way, I wasn't. I was just confused. I thought, she has an idea which is probably a good solution, but I just haven't hit it yet. So, try again.

I finally ran out of ideas and she could tell I was crumbling. One of my old bosses in the States told me I can be a bit of a bulldozer, but I'm certainly not here. Chalk it up to paranoia or whatever (but as a great man once said, "Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you.").

I suppose I was saved by the bell because she had to go teach and I went to scribble out my frustration--the first time I've really felt it since coming back.

When her class finished we talked again. She apologized to the moon for frustrating me (I could write another tome about apologies but I know I still haven't got a proper grasp of them). I think in class she was thinking about how to tell me not to try so damned hard. Of course she did it by saying she really respected my opinion and she just wanted to know what I thought. She coated it in lots of kindness, but the subtext, or what I realized out of it, was that I had been really unfair. I had pigeon-holed her. I assumed she had some hidden agenda, and wanted nothing more than my acquiescence. I hadn't considered that she was treating me as an equal.

It was a tough blow. I've tried so hard. But as another great, well, fictional character, said, "Do or do not, there is no try." I think more than that initial guilt, which I can't do anything about anyway, I feel like she did me a huge favor. There are whole underground channels of assumption running through me, and I have to root them out.

Besides that, my head teacher wants to know what I think. I just hope I didn't blow it completely.

I have no idea what happened but the blog this window has just deleted everything I was writing, twice. I don't know if I can write it again after what just happened. I was well into a rather long post on something I considered somewhat important. Twice. RRRRRRRR. I know, I know, "user error". What a waste of time.

I'm going out for a sammich.

Never, never, miss the last train. Osaka is a big place and you'll have to take a cab like this Kanky one that got me home Friday for a mere 7000円. And yes, I find this picture (which I snagged from their feedback form) disturbing.

Confessions of a Grade School Role Model made me laugh, blogging on setsubun at the elementary school where she teaches. She also takes some lovely photos. Coincidentally, it appears she is from Austin, TX. One of my two hometowns (the other being Tulsa). Her first name is Karla with a K...no comment on that, just had to note it.

After that last post, I'm starting to think that that radio show I listened to is right after all. They claimed the current "adolescence" extends into the mid-thirties. I guess this post would validate that since I'll be turning 28 this month. But what's a birthday anyway? A lap around the sun? Tribute to the calendar-makers? Periodicity? I've always been rather apathetic to my own birthday.

Nevertheless, here's the obligatory wish list, although it's really just a holding pen for my shopping impulses. I get more pleasure from choosing stuff than actually getting it. Okay, I posted the link because someone may insist, but I would prefer not to receive presents unless it is stuff you don't mind me leaving behind or giving away. I'm really really anti-object (an object objector?), although I do like books, but I also give those away. Also there is nothing I need, except perhaps the segway.

Better yet if you have money to burn, you could send it to any of the following deserving folks:



Frankly, I'd be thrilled just to get one, real, live, hand-written letter.

Update Having just re-read this post, I realize it sounds a bit odd saying I am going to "leave stuff behind" and "give it away" then posting a link to the DBSA. Just for the sake of clarity, I am not bipolar, but I'm the friend of a bipolar person. The fact that I'm reading Tolstoy's Confession doesn't bolster my argument any, but when I say I'll leave stuff behind, I mean when I go to India or move in Japan or something.

Things like this make me wonder about the wisdom of studying Japanese. Not that I want to be in Forbes.

Uchinaga, selected by Forbes Magazine in 2002 as one of the World's 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, said it is helpful that she spends 40 percent to 60 percent of every week communicating in English.

'In English, there are fewer differences between the way women and men talk.' The differences that do exist, Uchinaga can ignore by pleading ignorance as a foreigner.

In Japanese, a woman who criticizes a subordinate using the same words as a man ends up sounding extremely harsh. This could hurt the subordinate's performance as well as the woman's reputation as a manager, she noted.

'There is no way I could have gotten to where I am today at a Japanese company,' remarked the sole female board member at IBM Japan, a wholly owned unit of the U.S. computer company.

I have infinite conjectures about how I would do working in corporate Japan. Then I think of dusty gulf coast beaches and bookstores, and I know that it will never happen. Or I read something like this or this (thanks to Jim) and I remember my original plan.

My favorite quote from a movie (The Muppet Movie):

Gonzo: I'm going to Bombay, India, to become a movie star!
Fozzie: You don't go to Bombay to become a movie star. You go where we're going: Hollywood.
Gonzo: Sure, if you want to do it the easy way.

Well, that movie was made before Bollywood had a name in the States, and that's kind of how I feel about India. Four years ago I was on my way there to try and get into tech. Of course, India was already a major center for tech businesses, still, there weren't a lot of people heading that way.

Instead I came back to the States. Why is a story I'll tell you someday when you're old enough. I got some good experience there. I wouldn't trade that experience, but my heart isn't in it the way it is when I'm out here in the Wide World, so when the time came, I came back to Japan.

The question is, what will I do next? Every now and then it rears up on me.

At least one part I can answer, I will go to India. For vacation at least this spring.

As for the long-term. It would seem there is more opportunity in India, and less of a language problem as far as work is concerned. But I love Japan too, and I love learning the language. Surely in this world, there is a way for me to work in Japan and India. The next step is to find out how I can do a job that contributes to the world at the same time I'm fulfilling these insane demands.

(Larger version)
No, it's not urban fishing. This is an old photo I've been meaning to share with the world, of a friend of mine attempting to win the Darwin awards. He dropped his football in the Potomac. Why was he carrying a football to the Jefferson memorial? I forget. But I do remember that they insisted on stealing my purse-strap to attach to this trash can in a *futile* attempt to fish the thing out.

I admit I overreacted. There, see I can do that. I just had this image of his hand slipping and him plunging into the cold river in those heavy clothes. As you'll note there's a slick stone wall and nowhere to climb out. It took much cajoling to get me to turn over the purse-strap.

Now this intrepid MacGyver tells me he is joining the Navy. I fear for our country.

I don't believe I've very used the word "nice" so often in succession. My vocabulary has obviously succumbed.

Had a big big take home test in 日本語 this weekend--that's Japanese for you landlubbers. Studying is soooo good. It's been several years since I've studied anything in any kind of structured format. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, but I need those tests and deadlines or I just get lazy...soooo lazy and soooo surly.

But it helps that my school (EII) is such a good match for me. The classes are quite small--one to four students for my regular class. The teachers are good. Very reasonable, and if I ever have a problem they're extremely responsive, really bending over backward for me.

Most of the time I come out of class feeling like I learned something. Sometimes my ego gets a little crunched, as has to happen when it's such a small class--you can't rock out every time and you're the center of attention a lot, so now and then when I haven't had enough time to prepare I crash and burn.

Plus I'm used to being good at academics, but languages have always been my weakness. I tried to learn German, but when I went to Germany children, *children* laughed in my face. And I gave up.

I had to take Sanskrit I twice because the prof told me, "we don't teach to the lowest common denominator". Actually at the time I thought that was pretty funny. UT even created a summer class for me (and some grad students that wanted in), because all I needed to graduate was 6 more hours of language. Yes, that's right, I'm the only person in the history of UT to *almost* not graduate because I lacked 6 hours of Sanskrit.

But the point is, I'm not good at languages. Sanskrit hardly counts for that since it's not spoken, but I did get a pitiful C in French I. And I'm a wuss when it comes to knowledge. I cower in the face of legitimate skill.

So, there's a new girl in class. She's studied in college and had a much better grasp of the language than me. More vocab, grammar, more fluent. Fortunately, she's also a total spaz and quite funny so it makes it good. If she were all stuffy and narcissistic like me I don't know. But she's a dork and I quite like her--crazy pigtails and too many bobby pins. Very Bjork, and she looks about 16 even though she's 23. I saw her on the street riding her bike in this weird get-up, very club kid but, no, Scandinavian too--colors and knits. My first thought: "I hope she's going to the school".

The real reason we hit it off is that when we talk, even if we're walking out of class or there're no Japanese around, we talk in Japanese. She's balls-to-the-wall gonna learn Japanese and my self-conscious self appreciates that. So we speak Japanese. We can both be creative dorks this way. It's much more interesting.

Like today, we have the best teacher on Monday, we had a lesson on how to refer to different races politely. This in itself is quite interesting in English. All the more so when you can see how the language plays into the "stereotypes". Well, she and I went off a bit.

For me every class is a bit like "The Miracle Worker". The teachers write words and patterns in my brain again and again, and at some point the light bulb goes on and I usually understand a lot more than just the language at hand, but how people's thoughts are structured by that language. I suppose I could over-politicize it if I thought that were unique to Japanese or I thought too literally. Even taking it with a grain of salt, there's something there.

If you've lived in Japan, bear with me or skip this bit because I'm going to go off on one of the most common red flags, apologies in advance -- Gaijin verses Gaikokujin. Gaijin is about the most political word you can use with a foreigner here (I'm just thinking of 1st generation, I can't even get into the problems for 2nd and 3rd and...).

Most dictionaries tell you they mean the same thing, "foreigner". And if you ask most English-speakers in Japan, they'll tell you that the latter is more correct and the former a bit rude, or anyway, not as polite. You'll also hear and read a lot of people using it like some sort of badge of pride, that they're in the know, blah blah blah. RATHOLE.

Everybody Felix!

Where was I? So bearing in mind the fact that literal translations of kanji are also ratholes...

Technically the difference between the two words is the kanji for "koku" or country. Gaijin literally, is closer to "outsider" and Gaikokujin closer to "foreigner" (outside-country-person). Now if you think Japan is racist and exclusionary, I'm not arguing that point, but you would say that being an "outsider" sounds a lot more closed-minded than "person from another country".

Or you could construe either one, in the Southern vernacular, as: "You're not from around here, are ya boy?"

Given that, what are the alternatives in our own language? Well, for one thing we use people's country name more. But sometimes, we do that wrong. There are a lot of Guatemalans, Columbians, Venezuelans, etc. who get referred to at "Mexicans". Or if we do use the proper term for "Hispanics", we're still probably wondering if we're supposed to be saying something else like "Latino" or "Latina". My favorite was my friend's old boss, who said something about needing to get more "Tejano" customers.

From what I've read in the last few years the majority has shifted and African-American is officially the preferred term to "Black" (the latter of which is totally unacceptable in Australia). Caucasians are pretty safely "white guys" and "white girls", but that has it's own prejudices as well.

So what are the polite distinctions in Japanese? Well, crudely put, white, black and yellow. Kanji-by-kanji (not accurate, but still) "white-color-person-race", etc. Between that and Gaikokujin, if I must be described, I'd prefer Gaikokujin.

So she and I went off a little bit, trying to figure out what people were called. We didn't come up with a proper translation of Hispanic for one, or Aborigine although we did come up with the word for "tribal people". Our teacher was very patient and helpful, even though we were diverting from the lesson plan quite a bit (we had a big test this weekend anyway and there weren't any other students).

It was fun trying to explain that "Hispanic" isn't just Spanish people who moved to South America. And it was rather shocking to learn that someone of mixed Japanese descent is referred to as "half". We were way out of our depth, trying to turn a low-level language class into an advanced discussion class, but if we only do it every now and then and our teacher doesn't object, it can be quite interesting.

I'm not even in the web marketing business anymore, but I found this search engine relationship chart quite cool. Wish I had made it.

Not that I've spent any time on this blog.

I'm an idea person, how many times do I have to tell you. I don't actually *do* this stuff. (Tell that to the next graphic designer or Web developer you meet just for fun).

Oh right, I teach English. I'm not even as cool as a Web monkey anymore.

One of the better-known Japan blogs. (Yes yes I'll add it to my pitiful page shortly). Nils posted a very nice annotated picture of one of my favorite parts os Kyoto. He's changing his template so it's a little clugy at the moment, but just scroll down. Nice pictures on the homepage too. Nice to see somebody who's been here for 10 years is still enthused about the surroundings. Nice way to live.

The AP reports that an uptight dad with a radio show has successfully lobbied to have this t-shirt line removed from Macy's racks because they promote "violence against boys". What a dope.

Do Nothing Here has a link for "Things to do". Giggle giggle. Catchy though. I'd rather do nothing on a crummy galveston beach on an overcast day.

I know, I'm a lot of fun. I keep telling you.

Waiting for a call back.

I'm not proud.