My fingers come to a rest on the keyboard.
Is this really writing? I can’t help but wonder.
So calculated, each sentence is.
Back space. Correct. Rewrite. Save. Tappity-tap.
Back space. Correct. Rewrite. Save. Tappity-tap.
Spontaneity has been lost, the flow of words dammed up. Tappity-tap. Back space. Correct. Rewrite.
How long did it take me to write a grammatically correct, yet insipid and meaningless sentence?
Fucking computer!
Several years ago, a friend of mine expressed his admiration of the Japanese language: “They even have a word for a woman who looks beautiful from behind, but when she turns around is actually ugly.”
The word he was referring to was mikaeri-bijin (見返り美人). The phrase originally comes from the ukiyoe woodblock print “Beauty Looking Back” by Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-1694). If I am not mistaken, the phrase didn’t originally contain the connotation of being disappointed once able to look squarely at a woman as it does now.
Even after studying Japanese for over two decades, I continue to be fascinated by the language. Just this morning, when I was looking up “fall from grace”, I came upon a kanji I had never seen before: 寵 (chō).
“Fall from grace” in Japanese, by the way, is kami no onchō-o ushinau (神の恩寵を失う). Bet you won’t be using that phrase anytime soon.
The on (恩) in onchō (恩寵) is a fairly common kanji meaning “obligation, indebtedness, a debt of gratitude”. An “ungrateful” person is someone who literally “doesn’t know the debt of gratitude”: on-o shirazu (恩を知らず).
Chō (寵), on the other hand, doesn’t quite translate neatly into English. It can mean “being particularly loved or doted upon”, “blessed or favored” and so on.
Words containing (寵), include:
寵愛 (chōai), the favor of (a king)
寵姫 (chōki), the most loved woman of the monarch
This is a word I use daily, as is the next one.
寵妾 (chōshō), the favorite concubine.
寵児 (chōji), a darling or star (of the media or literary world)
Ah to be a bundan no chōji (分団の寵児)!
寵臣 (chōshin), the favorite vassal or retainer of the lord
The funny thing about my friend, his initial interest in the Japanese language never developed beyond a handful of expressions, which begs the question: why is it that so many otherwise intelligent and thoughtful Westerners who have lived years, if not decades, in Japan still suck at the language?
Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove.
“Gas or electric?” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter.
This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.
Pat has her own business, a good one that’s allowing her to retire at fifty-five. She owns three houses, and two cars, but, even without the stuff, she seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success.
I asked which two burners she had cut off, and she said that the first to go had been family. After that, she switched off her health. “How about you?”
I thought for a moment, and said that I’d cut off my friends. “It’s nothing to be proud of, but after meeting Hugh I quit making an effort.”
“And what else?” she asked.
“Health, I guess.”
Hugh’s answer was work.
“And?”
“Just work,” he said.
From "Laugh, Kookaburra" by David Sedaris, printed in The New Yorker
I normally don’t read Sedaris for mind-bending existential content, but his short story “Laugh, Kookaburra” had me thinking about life and the choices I have made over the years, the “burners” I have turned off or down to low.
Shortly before I remarried, my fiancée would take me over to her parents’ home in the suburbs on Sundays and lock me up in their washitsu—a sparse Japanese-style room with tatami mats—forcing me to write for five or six hours straight. I had a good idea for a book that just needed to be written down, but I was having a devil of a time making any progress on it.
Being locked up in that room for hours on end was torture at first. Whenever I would try to venture out of the room, my girlfriend, who kept guard over me in an adjacent room, would turn me around, shove me back in and say, “Two more hours!”
“Two more? Can’t I have a drink of something or a smoke?”
“No!”
So back in I would go, and kneel down on the tatami only to stare for minutes on end at the empty white page on my MacBook, the cursor flash-flash-flashing as if to taunt me: “You got nothing. And you used to think you had what it took to be a writer! Hah! You got nothing!"
But it worked. After a few weeks, I started to get into the groove and before I knew it I was writing almost every day, usually in the morning, but sometimes at night until I had finished Rokuban. And when I had finished Rokuban, I then went on to do a major overhaul of A Woman’s Nails and managed to get through it without it being too painful. Then, I went on to the next work, and the next, and the next.
Where just completing a novel had once seemed like an insurmountable task, now I was faced with a new challenge: how to sell the novels I was now finishing.
The improved productivity came partially from turning down one of those four burners: friends. I seldom go out for drinks or dinner anymore. If I do, it’s usually by myself. I used to hate being alone, but nowadays it doesn’t bother me in the least. Sometimes I prefer it as I can get stuff done while I’m eating—reading, catching up on the news, and so on.
Being in Japan allowed me to turn the “Family Burner” down to low for about a decade and a half, but then I got married and had kids and now that burner is on full-blast, stealing gas from the other burners.
I was showing a young woman my collection of handmade German Christmas ornaments the other day.
“And these two,” I said, pointing (mit großem Stolz, I might add) to a large Nußknacker (nutcracker) and Räuchermann (incense smoker), “I got when I was an exchange student in Germany about twenty, no, thirty years ago.”
“Oh . . . So they’re vintage, then!” she said.
It was then that I took the nutcracker and bludgeoned the cheeky kid to death.
A Mexican friend, inspired by my photos of Japanese men sleeping on trains, sent me this photo of the Sistema de Transporte Colectivo. A few things struck me when I looked at it for the first time.
For one there are no men. The hombres, I was told, are corralled in other cars. Like Japan, the trains in Guadalajara have cars for women only. Three of them, in fact. Not sure if this is to prevent perverts from copping a feel like in Japan or perhaps for religious reasons.
The second thing I noticed is how clean the train was. No garbage on the floor like in China. No graffiti as is all too common in the U.S.
As for the third thing, take a look at the walls and ceiling of the train. Notice anything? Or rather, do you notice anything missing? Those of you who have ridden Japanese trains will probably be impressed that there isn't a single advertisement inside the train. In Japan, hardly any space is left untouched by an advertisement of some sort. You're attacked by it at every turn. If the train companies could find a way of putting adverts on the passengers themselves, I'm sure they would go and do it.
An elderly woman is placed on a stretcher at the close of the Battle of Okinawa 73 years ago.
On her hand you can see a type of tattooing, called hajichi or haduchi (針突、ハジチ or ハジキ or ハドゥチ). The women of Amami also tattooed their hands. “Island women decorated their hands with elaborate tattoos, whose quality was considered a marker of social status. Women tattooed their right hands between and thirteen, when they came of age, and tattooed their left hands when they married. On the Okinawan mainland, it was done at twelve or thirteen. The first tattoo marked chastity. Without a decorated right hand, a woman was unfit for marriage. A tattoo on the left hand, by contrast, represented a woman’s obedience to her husband.”†
The hands were tattooed little by little over a period of time, until they numbered 23 in total, an auspicious number.
Amami Hajichi hand tattooing
Ainu (アイヌ) women (below) tattooed not only their hands, but also their lips once married. Not sure what it was called in their language.
Ainu Tattooing was banned in October of 1871, but had little influence over the Ainu who believed they would gain the wrath of God and not be able to get married if they were not tattooed. In 1876, the restriction was lifted in the name of religious freedom. Similarly, in 1889, hajichi were banned in Okinawa, which had become a prefecture of the Japanese Empire ten years earlier in 1879.
Like the women of they Ryūkyū archipelago, Ainu women also tattooed their hands:
Face tattooing was common among aboriginal tribes on the island of Fermosa (modern-day Taiwan), suggesting that the Ainu, Amami, Ryūkyū people, etc. had Polynesian roots.
†Ravina, Mark. The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004, p.82.
About this time every year, I have the same conversation with my students: “There’ll be a national holiday next week,” I begin. “Can any of you tell me the name of that holiday?”
Silence.
“C’mon, think. This Friday — and no peeking at Wikipedia!”
One of the student calls out: “Culture Day!”
“No. Culture Day, or Bunka no Hi, was three weeks ago on Nov. 3,” I remind them. “Thursday, Nov. 23. What’s the holiday? Anyone? Anyone?” I feel like the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
“Oh! I know!”
“Ayano, yes, what was it?”
“Kinrō Kansha no Hi.”
“That’s right! Now what is Labor Thanksgiving Day? Anyone?”
One student suggests that it is a day we give thanks to our parents for working hard.
“Well, maybe, but there’s more to it than that. Are any of you doing anything special for Labor Thanksgiving Day?”
Crickets.
I go around the room, asking students what their plans are. Some will work at their part-time jobs, others will probably loaf about at home. A few may go shopping.
“If you’re not going to do anything special, why have a national holiday?” I ask. “Whenever a national holiday holiday rolls around, I always try at least to wear my ‘Rising Sun’ skivvies.”
When half of them laughs, the other half that has been dozing comes to life. Now that I’ve got their attention I ask why some of their holidays, such as the autumnal equinox, Shūbun no Hi, fell on a Saturday last year? “Why not move the day to a Monday like so many other holidays? Why is the date for Shūbun no Hi and other holidays like Kinrō Kansha no Hi fixed?”
They don’t know.
Shūbun no Hi, I explain, is actually one of two Kœreisai and Labor Thanksgiving Day is in reality a harvest festival called Niiname-sai, a Shintō rite performed by the Emperor.
“Have any of you heard of either Kōreisai or Niiname-sai?”
Of course, none have.
“Are you guys really Japanese?” I ask with feigned disbelief, eliciting embarrassed laughter from the students.
I then ask them how many national holidays Japan has.
“Eleven!”
“Nope.”
“Twenty!”
“I wish!”
“Eight!”
“Sorry.”
“Sixteen!”
“That’s right. There are 16 national holidays. And next year there will be nineteen. Many more than most countries have.”
With their help, I write the names of the holidays on the board with the corresponding dates. Once I have them all down, I tell them to pay attention to the 10 holidays that have fixed dates: National Foundation Day (Feb. 11), Showa Day (Apr. 29), Culture Day (Nov. 3) and so on. “Now, what do these days have in common?”
More silence.
“Anyone? Anyone?”
No one even volunteers a guess. They really have no idea what I’m getting at. None.
“All of the holidays with fixed dates are related to the emperor,” I explain. “Ten of your 16 national holidays are related to the emperor.”
You’d think they would know this already, but for the vast majority of them it is a revelation.
New Year’s Day (Jan. 1) was, until 1947, a national holiday on which the imperial worship ceremony called Shihōhai (四方拝) was held.
Foundation Day (Feb. 11) was known as Kigensetsu (紀元節), or Empire Day, until 1947, a holiday commemorating the day on which, legend has it, Emperor Jimmu acceded the throne in 660 BCE.
Vernal Equinox (Mar. 20 or 21), an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shunki Koreisai (春季皇霊祭).
Showa Day, the birthday of Hirohito who has been referred to by his posthumous name Emperor Showa (昭和天皇, Shōwa Tennō) since his death in 1989.
Greenery Day (May 4). This is the former name for Hirohito’s posthumous birthday. In 2007, Greenery Day was moved to May 4 and April 29 was renamed Showa Day. From 1985 to 2006, May 4 was a generic “national day of rest,” one more day expanding Golden Week.
Autumnal Equinox (Sep. 23 or 22). Like the spring equinox, this was an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shuki Kōreisai (秋季皇霊祭).
Culture Day (Nov.3). While this day commemorates the 1946 announcement of the new Constitution, it is actually Emperor Meiji’s birthday. The timing of that announcement was probably not a coincidence. Kenpō Kinenbi, or Constitution Memorial Day, takes place on May 3 and celebrates the promulgation of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.
Labor Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23), again, is the imperial harvest festival called niiname sai (新嘗祭). Niiname-sai (新嘗祭, also pronounced Jinjōsai — lit. Celebration of First Taste) is a Shinto harvest festival that takes place at the Imperial Palace and shrines throughout the country on the 23rd and 24th of November.
According to the Encyclopedia of Shinto, “The Emperor arranges an offering of sake, rice porridge, and steamed rice (made from the newly harvested rice) served in special vessels crafted from woven beech leaves (kashiwa) and presented to the kami (gods) on a special reed mat (kegomo). Following this evening meal (yumike), the Emperor purifies himself in seclusion (kessai) for the night and, after changing robes (koromogae), prepares the morning offering of food for the kami.”
The rite is called Daijōsai (大嘗祭) when the emperor performs it for the first time after ascending the throne.
The present Emperor’s Birthday is Dec. 23, or Tennō Tanjōbi. With the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the enthronement of his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, next spring, I suspect that Dec. 23 will be renamed Heisei no Hi once Feb. 23 becomes the new Tennō Tanjōbi, bringing the number of national holidays to 17, and those related to the Emperor to 11. (Actually, there will be even more holidays due to the ceremonies related to the abdication and enthronement.)
As for the 10th, Marine Day (the third Monday of July), this holiday used to be held on July 20 and commemorated Emperor Meiji’s return to Yokohama at the end of a trip around the Tōhoku region of Japan aboard the sailing ship, Meiji Maru. (Incidentally, the restored ship is on display at the Etchujima Campus of the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.)
“Why do you know this?” a student asks me.
“Why don’t you?” I shoot back.
“We’re not interested… ”
“This has nothing to do with being interested or not. I’m not all that interested in Japanese holidays myself, but I am curious.”
“Curious?”
“Yes, curious! You have a national holiday called Marine Day. Didn’t that ever make you wonder why there wasn’t a Mountain Day, too? Well, I guess there is now, so go figure. Or, doesn’t it strike you as odd that you have all these national holidays on which you don’t do anything in particular? Again, why have a national holiday? Case in point, the equinoxes: why are they national holidays, but Obon (Japanese festival of the dead) is not? Obon is a much more important holiday for ordinary Japanese people, but it’s not a holiday . . .”
Curiosity. Inquisitiveness. A healthy dose of skepticism. These are things that are sorely lacking among Japanese students today.
Established in 1948, Labor Thanksgiving Day is a day on which, we are told, Japanese “celebrate production and give thanks to their fellow citizens”. In reality, they do little more than blow both the day and their hard-earned money mesmerized by pachinko machines.
One of my favorite places in Hakata is Shōfuku-ji, Japan’s oldest Zen Buddhism temple. Every autumn I try to make it over there to take photos of the maple leaves. Today, though, I was surprised to discover that the temple has been over run with very people-friendly cats. (They understand Hakata-ben, too.)
博多にある正福寺は猫だらけですばい。日本の一番古い禅寺はいつのまにか「猫寺」になったと？ 「猫ちゃん」
「にゃん？」
「何ばしょーと？」
「坐禅たい」
The Kyūshū Basho, Sumō’s sixth and final tournament of the year, was held last month in Fukuoka.
Although I rarely watch Sum ō today, there was a time when I was very much into the sport. Until around the late nineties, I followed the sport closely, almost never missing an episode of “ŌzumōDigest”, a program which aired each night during the fifteen days of the tournaments and recapped the day’s highlights. Quite a few dates were cut short, I recall, so that I could hurry home and catch the results of the day’s bouts.
I must admit, though, that sumō is a pretty boring, especially if you have to watch an entire day of salt-throwing and menacing poses. But back in the nineties, the rivalry between the crown princes of sumō--the Hanada brothers, Takanohana and Wakanohana--and three upstarts from Hawaiians--Konishiki, Akebono, and Musashimaru--made the sport more dramatic than it ever has been. Since the retirement of those wrestlers the popularity of sumō has been pushed out of the TV ring, in a sense: “Ōzumō Digest” stopped being broadcast in 2003.
Anyways, one of the things that I have always wondered about sumō was the prizes given to the winning rikishi (wrestler) on the final day of the tournament.
In addition to a nice stack of cash (no cheques in this country) and a huge trophy, the winner is often given a number of “supplementary prizes” from a variety of sponsors. Most of these prizes come in the form of a “year’s supply of this” or a “year’s supply of that”. For example, a year’s supply of rice, beer, saké, toiletpaper--yes, toiletpaper--miso paste, gasoline, and so on.
According to the Japan Sumō Association (日本相撲協会), the amounts offered are defined by the sponsor. Ōzeki, maker of the poor-man’s saké, One Cup Ōzeki, provides the winning wrestler with 360x 180ml bottles of their fine saké.
As for rice, Zennō (全国農民組合, National Union of Farmers) gives the winner thirty tawara (俵) of rice, where one tawara is equivalent to about 60kg of rice. The average Japanese, since you’re itching to know, consumes about 70kg of rice. It takes about 78kg of unpolished, brown rice (玄米, genmai) to produce 70kg of polished white rice, or the stuff you usually find in your rice bowl. A 10 “are” (1000m2) rice field, incidentally, produces about 500kg of genmai. To produce enough rice for the average Japanese consumer, you’d need to have a rice field that was 150m2 (or 45 tsubo), about half the size of a tennis court. (For more on this go here.) The winning sumō champ, of course, is not expected to eat all 1,800kg of rice; he shares it with his "stablemates".
Miyazaki prefecture has also been known to award the champion rikishi with a year’s supply of beef. In actuality, this is amounts to one head of cattle (just the head, my rancher uncle often jokes) as well as a ton (1000kg) of veggies.
Itadaki—burp—masu!
Every year as Christmas approaches, I show my freshman classes "A Charlie Brown Christmas". I suspect that without exaggerating I have seen the special over a hundred times. In spite of that, the TV special hasn't gotten old for me yet. (Probably because of the music.)
In recent years, I have started paying less attention to the story and more to details, such as the quality of the animation (e.g. how backgrounds are recycled, the way movement, like walking and running, is conveyed). Considering that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was produced in 1965--it's older than me!--when animation was hand drawn, it's not surprising that by today's high standards, it can have a somewhat amateur and hurried feel.
Anyways, this morning when I was watching it for the nth time, I got to wondering about the value of 5¢ in 1965 and learned, thanks to Dave Manuel's Inflation Calculator, that a nickel then is worth about $0.38 today. Much less than I expected.
In case you were wondering what you could buy for one dollar in the 1960s, go here.
Gallon of milk: 95 cents
One regular size bottle of Heinz ketchup: 22 cents
One dozen eggs: 53 cents
One-ounce Hershey bar: 5 cents (Although the price remained the same, the size of the bar shrunk to 7/8 ounce in 1966 and 3/4 oz in 1968.)
Pillsbury cake mix: 25 cents
Pound of pork chops: $1.03
Pound of sirloin steak: 85 cents
Six-pack of Pepsi: 59 cents
Package of ten Gillette razor blades: 99 cents
Can of shaving cream: 59 cents
Tube of toothpaste: 55 cents
Can of hair spray: 47 cents
Revlon lipstick: $1.25
Revlon nail enamel: 75 cents for crème and 90 cents for frosted
Generic cold relief capsules: 60 cents for two packages of 12
Cough drops: 23 cents for three packages
Cough syrup: 59 cents for a bottle
Contact decongestant tablets: 77 cents for a package of ten
My wife visited our son's elementary school today to attend a lecture about kyūshoku, or school lunch. The presentation ended up being more interesting than she had expected.
In Fukuoka City, there are 144 elementary schools (grades 1-6) with a total of 80,077 students. The schools are divided into five blocks to prevent shortages in ingredients as almost all of them are sourced locally from within the prefecture.
To my surprise, each school has its own kitchen and a staff of up to 8, including licensed nutritionists. (I had been under the impression that a central kitchen was being used.) Vegetables are hand washed and hand cut. Although most dishes are made from scratch, some of the items, such as today's paozi(steamed dumplings), are prepared in advance by third party producers.
The lunches, as I have noted before, include many international dishes as a way of introducing kids to other cultures ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and World Swimming Championship that are going to be held in Fukuoka.
Today's lunch included a Chinese style stir-fry, paozi dumplings, bread with locally grown fig jam, and milk.
Each meal costs on average ¥243 ($2.23) and contains about 530 calories. Meals for junior high kids contain 640 calories; those for high schoolers, 740.
And, no, the food is not gluten-free and may contain lethal quantities of peanuts.
Thai-style Gapao Rice and Japanese-style White Stew
Pork and Beans, Raisin Bread, and Cabbage/Kelp Stir Fry
Fish flavored with Sesame, Miso Soup, and Rice
Looking at photos of Kyoto from a visit I made in 2012 and I can't believe how empty the streets are. Three years later the "Bakugai Tourists" from China would descend upon this and other sleepy towns in Japan, hold a steel wash tub over their heads and start banging away.
There has been much handwringing of late with regard to the childhood poverty rate in Japan. This is something I would like to address in future posts, but for now I want to share a graph I found which shows childhood poverty rates by prefecture.
Overall, Japan has a childhood poverty rate of 13.8%, considerably less than America's rate of 21%. But looking at individual prefectures, we find that the poverty rate of Okinawa, the nation's worst, is 37.5%. Ōsaka has the second highest childhood poverty rate at over 20%. Kagoshima is third and my prefecture of Fukuoka is fourth with just under 20%, meaning one in five kids is living in poverty. Sobering statistics, to say the least.
For some albeit dated perspective, here is how Japan compares to other countries in the OECD. On average, 13.4% of children in OECD countries live in “relative income poverty”, which is defined “as the percentage of children (0-17 year-olds) with an equivalised household disposable income (i.e. an income after taxes and transfers adjusted for household size) below the poverty threshold. The poverty threshold is set here at 50% of the median disposable income in each country.”
One of my favorite areas of Tōkyō is Marunouchi, the commercial district located between Tōkyō Station and the Imperial Palace. I love the architecture, both old and new, the wide, uncluttered tree-lined streets, the proximity to the Imperial Palace, and, well, I could go on and on.
The land where Marunouchi stands today was originally an inlet of Edo (Tōkyō) Bay. It was reclaimed in the late 1600s and during the Edo Period (1603-1868) feudal lords close to the Tokugawa Shogunate, known as fudai daimyō, maintained homes in the area. Following the Meiji Restoration, the land was used as a barracks and parade ground for the Imperial Army. And around 1890, the land was bought by the Mitsubishi company which began to develop it as a center for business. Mitsubishi still owns much of that prime real estate today.
The first "Mitsubishi Ichi-gō Kan" (Building No.1) was completed in 1894 (Meiji 27). It was followed by the construction of a large number of similar brick buildings, and by the early 1900s the area was nicknamed Icchō Rondon (一丁 ロンドン One-Mile London) because of its resemblance to the British capital.
Tōkyō Station, designed by Kingo Tatsuno, was completed in 1914.
As is sadly all too common in Japan, very little of Icchō Rondon remains today. Except for Kingo Tatsuno's Tōkyō Station, and the Ministry of Justice building near Hibiya Park, I don't think any buildings from the era have survived. If you ask your Japanese friends why, they'll probably shrug. Push them a little and they might venture a guess that the area had been destroyed in the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923.
There is some truth in that. The massive quake, which killed an estimated 140,000 people in the fires alone, destroyed much of the city, including parts of Marunouchi.
Damage to the Marunouchi Building. The original building was completed in 1923. Today's building was completed in 2002.
Metropolitan Police Department burning at Marunouchi. Going, going, . . .
The earthquake, however, explains only part of the story: many of Marunouchi's brick and stone buildings, though damaged, continued to be used long after the Great Kantō earthquake.
The aerial bombings of Tōkyō during the Pacific War also took their toll. B-29 raids from the Marianas began on 17 November 1944 and continued right up until the day Japan capitulated on 15 August 1945. The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9–10 March 1945 is estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history, wiping out more than 50% of the city.
For more on the war and the bombing of Japan, watch the documentary "Victory in the Pacific by WGBH's American Experience.
I have no idea when these photos were taken. Many of the modern-looking buildings were built in the 30s. The Dai-ichi Seimeikan which housed the GHQ of the occupational forces was built in 1938. The Tōkyō Chūō Post Office (the white building just left of Tōkyō Station) was built in 1933. The outer portion of the post office remains today and was incorporated into the design of the new Kitte Building that was finished in 2012.
This photo was probably taken in the sixties, judging by the extent of development. It amazes me that the Japanese will build something, tear it down, build something else, tear that down, then build yet another building. There doesn't seem to be a sense of permanence in the designs, something that is not new to Japan. The Dai-ichi Seimeikan replaced a beautiful brick building. (You can see it in the second photo from the top. It is the building on the left side of the street with the street car in front of it.) The exhibit at Seimeikan says that it was a bold move by the architects to do away with the original building. Bold? I'd say it was egotistical and rash. They took a a real gem of a building and replaced it with something you see in pretty much any city today. But, hey, that’s progress!
Marunouchi today
Mitsubishi's Ichigōkan today. Completed in 2009, it is an exact replica of the original Ichigōkan which had stood on that corner from 1894 until 1968. Wouldn't it have been better, and certainly cheaper, to just keep the original Ichigōkan? Apparently there was a movement to try to protect the building, but they failed to keep it from being torn down. Sigh.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel, Tōkyō suffered a similar fate. Although it managed to come through both the Great Kantō earthquake and World War II unscathed, it was no match for the wrecking ball. Fortunately, the central lobby and reflecting pool were disassembled and rebuilt at The Museum Meiji Mura in Nagoya.
The Origin of Dukkha is that craving for and clinging to what is pleasurable and aversion to what is not pleasurable result in becoming, rebirth, dissatisfaction, and redeath.
In other words: Drop the goddamn selfie stick, monks! Ye oughta be ashamed of yourselves.
Donald Richie in one of his collections of essays wrote about how the "narrowness" of the Japanese home forced people to seek places to relax elsewhere--a favorite snack or kissaten (coffee shop). These, he wrote, were extensions of their home.
I'm sure I have misparaphrased that, but I couldn't help thinking about what the Japanologist had written while I was wandering the streets of Hong Kong. Streets were like dry riverbeds between deep ravines, the walls of which were formed by impossibly tall, impossibly slim apartment buildings.
Google "small Hong Kong apartment" and you'll find photos of insane living conditions; apartments no bigger a four-mat room in a Japanese home.
Decades ago, a girlfriend of mine went to Hong Kong to help her friend with her flower buisness. "They slept on the kitchen floor!" she told me when she returned. I couldn't quite picture people living in conditions so cramped, but now that I've been to the city, I can.
Richie wrote of the uncomfortably cramped living conditions of modern Japanese, but in reality it isn't all that bad. My 90-square-meter, 4LD here in Fukuoka would probably house three to four middle class families in Hong Kong. Perhaps more.
Another thing, you can see further than fifty meters here in Fukuoka. Visitors to Japan from HK must feel liberated being able to just breathe the air while they're here.
Two decades ago the Kurosaki's shopping arcade was hopping with shoppers. Today, it is virtually bedridden . . . with pneumonia and bedsores.
Over a quarter of a million people live in Kitakyushu's Yahata Nishi Ward, and yet the heart of that ward feels like a cold wet stone.
The culprit? An AEON shopping mall located one station over. I was hearted to hear that local governments have finally wised up to how destructive those malls can be to local economies, often wiping out generations of businesses in one fell swoop.
“Go to the doctor’s,” she says.
“I’d rather just stay in bed and sleep.”
“No, you have to go,” she insists. “Besides, it’s much cheaper to see the doctor than buy over-the-counter drugs.”
“Okay, okay.” She has a point. So I crawl out of the futon, shower, then stagger in muted delirium to my doctor’s clinic.
Because it’s a Saturday, the clinic is somewhat busier than usual. Several men are having their physicals. Two women in the waiting room look as sick as I feel. After about fifteen minutes, I’m summoned to the doctor’s room. When I tell her what my symptoms are—achy body, high fever, headache, fatigue—she recommends the old tickle the brain with a twig up nostril. What can I do but submit? But then the test turns out negative meaning I was tortured for the nurse’s kicks alone. Another chat with my doctor; we decide which meds I want; and then I return to the waiting room until the receptionist can ring me up. (This being Japan, of course, it comes to only $15.)
Checking my watch, I see I haven’t got enough time to pick up the meds from the pharmacy downstairs before work starts, so I head home instead.
Once home I ask my wife if she can pick up the meds for me.
“Sure.”
“Fantastic. I appreciate it.”
An hour later, I ask if she got the meds.
“I can’t go out with my face looking like this.”
Ugh.
Another 90 minutes later, I ask again if she picked up my medicine.
“Not yet.”
Four hours later, my wife returns.
“Got the meds,” I asked.
“No. All the pharmacies were closed.”
Argh! Why the hell did you insist upon my going to the doctor’s then?!?!
So, another night of mediocre, lightweight drugstore pills for me. Maybe some negi (green onions) will do the trick?
Does anyone use these contraptions anymore?
I was invited by a friend to give a lecture. It went sumfin like this:
I've been asked to speak about the "Joy of Writing" but, to be honest, it ain't fun. It's work. It can be satisfying at times, but for the most part it's not. It’s a hassle for most people, especially students of English.
So, instead of that, I'm going to teach you How to Write. Or at least I'm going to try.
There's a saying in English: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Sadly, it's often the truth. There are professors of English who couldn't string a proper sentence together in English if their lives depended on it. There are teachers of business who have never even tried to start a business. (If they could, they probably wouldn't be teaching, would they?)
Most of your “process writing” teachers will show you how to put a paragraph together. They'll make you draw these silly diagrams like Amway marketing schemes. I don't know who taught them to teach like that. Well, you can forget about all that.
First off, on the piece of paper you've been given I want you to write about something we all have: family. Tell me about your family.
(I give them a few minutes to write and then tell them to stop writing.)
How many of you began with the sentence "My family is . . ."?
(Out of the twenty or so girls in the class 16 of them raise their hand. The remaining four or five, have written a variation of "There are . . . people in my family.")
I understand why you do this. It's the first thing that pops in your head. You're thinking "Watashi-no kazoku-wa . . ."
Well, stop that. It's boring. Nobody wants to read what you've just written.
So, Rule One: Don't just give facts or makes lists. Be creative. Be different!
Rule Two: Tell me a story and through that story, include the information you want to convey.
For example, I just wrote this before coming here:
(Reading.)
"One day when I came home from kindergarten, there was a newborn baby in my mother’s arms.
“'Say hello to your new sister,'" my mother said.
I was only five at the time and wouldn't know where babies came from for at least another ten years. By coincidence, our new living room furniture arrived from Ethan Allen on the same day as my mother’s return from the hospital. She was sitting on the new sofa holding the baby. I looked at the baby. I looked at the furniture--the sofa, the recliner, the ottomans, the coffee tables, the side tables, the . . . For all I knew, my eighth sister had come with the furniture."
Now, that's not the best writing in the world, but, one, it begins a story that you (hopefully) want to hear more of, and, two, it includes information: I have eight sisters, the eighth sister is five years younger than me, and so on. (For the record, I have nine sisters, and three brothers.)
Now start writing again.
(Ten minutes later, I tell them to stop writing. On the white board, I have written 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person; past, present, and future tenses.)
How many of you wrote in the 1st person, present tense?
(Most of them.)
How many of you wrote in the 1st person, past tense?
(The rest.)
Just because you are writing about yourself, doesn't mean you have to write in the first person.
Rule Three: Break the rules.
Rule Four: Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Read what you have written, find the mistakes, correct them, change the sentences, make them better, make them funnier or more interesting. Even famous writers such as Murakami Haruki spend more time rewriting their novels than they do writing them. You should, too.
(I give them a few minutes to read what they have written to their partner.)
One last point I'd like to make is that if you really want to write well, you'll have to do it a lot. And I mean A LOT. Practice really does make perfect. It's the same with sports, or a musical instrument. No one sits down at the piano for the first time and plays Chopin.
Also, read A LOT. Learn from the masters.
I’m out of time. Gotta run! Thanks!
This is Iturup (also known as Etorofu-tō (択捉島) in Japanese). I used to joke to my Japanese friends, “Why do you want these islands back so badly? Do you want to live there? No? So, what’s the big deal?”
“The natural resources,” they say.
Out of curiosity, I googled Iturup and found these absolutely stunning.
Now imagine if this and other disputed islands in the Kuril chain had remained in Japanese control after WWII. The beach today would surely be covered with tetrapod blocks, the white cliffs enveloped with concrete.
