The Epicanthic Fold

TROY

2006-07-03T10:00:00.000+09:00

Akiko Shimizu

1) Title of the movie: TROY
2) Genres: History
3) Plot summary: 紀元前1250年、青銅時代の終わりごろの話。パリの後に２つの新たな国が争い始めた。トロイの皇子は、スパルタの皇女・ヘレンに、彼女の夫・メネラウスと別れるように、そして一緒にトロイへ帰ろうと説得。メネラウスは、後から自分の妻がトロイの者に攫われたことに気づき、兄弟のアガメムノンに、妻を連れ戻すように頼んだ。アガメムノンは、これは権力を示す絶好の機会だと思った。そして彼は、１０００隻の船と５万人のギリシャ人を引き連れ、トロイへと向かう。アキレスの助けを得て、ギリシャ軍はトロイ軍に負けることはなかった。しかし彼らの目の前には、トロイの皇子・ヘクトールが待ち構えていた・・・。
この映画は彼らの戦いを描いたものであり、この神話はホメロスの｢イーリアス｣によるものである。
4) User rating:１０（Excellent!!）
5) Director: Wolfgang Petersen
6) Has he directed any other movies that you know? What are they?: Poseidon/The Perfect storm
7) Who wrote the screenplay?: David Benioff
8) Has he written the screenplays for any other movies that you know? What are they?: Stay/25th Hour
9) Who composed the soundtrack?: James Horner
10) Has he composed the soundtracks for any other movies that you know? What are they?: The New World/The Legend of Zorro
11) Who is the first actor listed under “cast”?: Brad pitt
12) What are 3 recent movies that this actor has appeared in?: Babel/Mr.&Mrs.Smith/Ocean’s Twelve
13) Has this movie received any big awards? What is the name of one award and the year it was awarded.: YEAR:2005 ASCAP Award
14) Choose one interesting item from “trivia” or “goofs” and write it below.: アキレスを演じたブラッド･ピットは、映画撮影中に悲惨な目にあった･･･左足のアキレス腱を切ってしまったのだ!!
15) 最後に・・・Write why you would recommend this movie to others: I recommend this movie because it tells us how wonderful a bond of friendship and affection. Moreover, Brad Pitt’s performance is so fascinating !! Actually, I haven’t liked him until I watched this movie. You must find how good his performance. YOU SHOULD WATCH IT !!!!! :D

宮崎の仕事

2005-11-06T11:31:00.000+09:00

ハローワークの検索結果です。全てが英語を使う仕事です。：

詳細１　（宮崎市）
詳細２　（宮崎市）
詳細３　（宮崎市）
詳細４　（小林市）
詳細５　（宮崎市）
詳細６　（宮崎市）
詳細７　（宮崎市）
詳細８　（児湯郡高鍋町）
詳細９　（宮崎市）
詳細１０　（都城市）

ヨン様韓国語講座

2005-03-05T14:38:00.000+09:00

This had me in stitches. There were a lot more, if only I'd written them down!

日：「違う！男の人はこっちでしょ！」
韓：「そっち女性用」

日：「あの黄色いシミは寝小便です」
韓：「小便のシミだ」

日：「この自転車ぼくには小さすぎます」
韓：「チャリちっちぇーよ！」

日：「この人は女の人の格好をするのが好きなんです」　
韓：「女装趣味だ」

日：「あの人の足、何か臭う」　
韓：「アンヨくせーよ」

「生ハム煮たらハム煮だ」もあるね。

Clouds of Doom

2005-01-30T16:19:00.000+09:00

The pollen... It is coming... It's all I can think about these days. It's all Japan can think about, too. Every time I turn on the TV, I see clips of sinister looking cedar forests shedding massive clouds of pollen, like locusts setting out to lay waste to Japan's nasal passages. It's a horrible sight. They say that the pollen count this spring is going to be up to thirty times higher than last year. I can't even imagine. There's hardly any pollen at all in the air now, and my nose is already completely blocked up.

From what I can gather, two major factors are contributing to this year's allergen hell: last year's unusually long growing season, and the fact that most of Japan's cedar trees planted after WWII are reaching maturity now.

At least I am not alone. "Allergic rhinitis is the most prevalent chronic disease in the United States, affecting approximately 35 million people, or nearly one- fifth of the American population."

Also, "Ragweed is the most important cause of allergic rhinitis in the US, affecting about 75% of allergy sufferers. One plant can release one million pollen grains a day. Ragweed is everywhere in the US, although it is less prevalent along the West Coast, southern Florida, northern Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii. The effects of ragweed in the northern states are first felt in middle to late August and last until the first frost. Ragweed allergies tend to be most severe before midday."

And, "The American Academy of Allergy says that some of the best places to escape ragweed are: the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, San Diego, Hawaii, the mountainous areas of Idaho, upper Maine, the Great Smoky Mountain area, the Virgin Islands and the northern edge of North Dakota."

I also learned that people born in autumn tend to be the most severely affected by seasonal allergies. Babies that are exposed to large amounts of pollen within the first six months of their life are more apt to develop an immunity.

I've incorporated into my diet large amounts of garlic, calcium, onions, yogurt and Taiwanese tocho (凍頂茶） oolong tea. It hasn't helped. Andrew Weil suggests taking quercetin, a plant pigment that acts as an antihistamine and anitioxidant. It can be found in foods such as apples, onions, raspberries, black and green tea, red wine, red grapes, citrus fruit, cherries, broccoli, and leafy greens. Might as well give it a go.

I'm even seriously considering buying an air cleaner for $200.

Anubis Spire

2005-01-28T23:24:00.000+09:00

I've recently stumbled across an odd progressive rock band called Anubis Spire. A bunch of downloadable tracks here. Apparently, they've even performed on Conan O'Brian.

Seasonal pollen in Japan

2005-01-19T20:44:00.000+09:00

Alder, cedar and cypress are the top three on the chart, and I suspect that it's the cedar pollen that's been wreaking havoc on my nose. I haven't heard much about alder pollen. The second from the bottom is ragweed.

Sugi, or Japanese cedar, can be found almost everywhere in Japan. The only place I can escape to is Okinawa.

Some info about pollen allergies here (in Japanese).

And finally...

Kato Rosa is such a babe. It just occurred to me that if I were to marry someone who is half Japanese, our children would be half Japanese. It doesn't seem to make sense for some reason, but if you mix fruit punch with fruit punch, you end up with fruit punch, don't you?

Three years bad luck

2005-01-16T13:58:00.000+09:00

According to a method of fortune telling called rokuseisenjyutsu, I'm going to have a three-year period of bad luck starting this year. And I thought things were supposed to get better from now on. Here's my luck from 2000 to 2007 (sorry, it's all in Japanese).

I don't buy into this shit anyway, but...

六星占術（ろくせいせんじゅつ）
I am a 金星人（－）

2000 ＜達成＞ (Miyazaki / Ebino)
文字どおり、自分の望みが叶い、目的が達成されるという強運気です。＜立花＞で果たさなかったことは、この時期に完成させるといいのです。運気は最高潮に達しているので、愛情運、家庭運ともに充実しています。経済的にも好調で、収穫するほどの実りといった感じではないものの、何をやっても楽しい時期です。

2001 ＜乱気＞ (Ebino / Spain)
「中殺界」です。＜健弱＞で肉体的な「運気のウミ」を出したのに対し、こんどは５年間たまった精神的な「運気のウミ」を出す時期です。働きずくめできた人は、ここでひと休みしましょう。新たな事をはじめようとしても空回りするだけなので、現状維持を心がけてください。もちろん結婚はいけません。身内に不幸が起きやすいとというように、精神的なダメージを受けることの多い時期です。

2002 ＜再会＞ (Spain / Korea / Oita)
結婚、就職、転職、開業、引越しなど、すべてにおいて、新しい事を仕掛けるチャンスが再度到来しました。愛情面でもやり直すよい時期です。人との出会いに幸運のカギがあります。また、前年に起きたトラブルも、この時期に働きかければ、以前よりよい状態に改善できます。

2003 ＜財成＞ (Oita / Beppu)
収穫の時期です。とくに財運は強く、やることすべてがお金になり、何をしても成功に結びつきます。１２年に一度だけ訪れる蓄財の年なので、大いに稼ぎまくってください。ただ、大切な人との別れが生じる可能性があります。財を得たら、何か人のため、世のためになることに使うことで愛情運が上昇します。

2004 ＜安定＞ (Beppu / Korea)
すべての成果をを勝ち取り、人生の果実を味わう時期です。ここでは、新たに事を起こそうなどと考えず、優雅に充実した生活をおくるように心がけましょう。がむしゃらに押しまくることはやめて、これまでの８年間の人生を静かに振り返り、次にくる「人生の冬」に備えることです。

2005＜陰影＞ (Fukuoka)
冬の到来、「大殺界」です。運気がただひたすら降下します。周囲に対するものの見方が歪み、それが原因で判断をあやまったり、大きな錯覚におちいったりしがちです。あなたのまわりでも、あなたを不安におとしいれるような心配事が相次いだり、判断に苦しむような得体の知れない出来事が起こるのも特徴です。

2006 ＜停止＞ (?)
「大殺界」のど真ん中、まさに八方ふさがりといった言葉がビッタリの状態です。だれもあなたのいうことに耳を傾けてくれません。だからといって、自分一人で行動すると大きなミスを犯し、周囲に大きなダメージを与えたり、他人の信用を損ねたりします。ただおとなしく耐える時期です。

2007 ＜減退＞ (?)
「大殺界」のラストです。多少運気が上昇に向かっていきますから、なんとなく気分は明るくなります。しかし、油断は禁物です。自分が信頼していた人に裏切られたり、身内や愛している人が突然亡くなったりと、取り返しのつかないことが起こりやすい時期です。そして、とかく悪い運気が自分の内側へ内側へと向かってくるので、心の病気におかされやすいのもこの時期です。金銭的には、身につけたものをゼロにしてください。ここで金銭を惜しんでいると、運気はさらにマイナスになり、翌年訪れる＜種子＞の運気まで損なう恐れがあります。

Your weather is probably way nicer

2004-12-29T11:56:00.000+09:00

Average Monthly Temperatures of a Few Cities (°C)

Average Monthly Precipitation of a Few Cities (mm)

That's Jecheon, S. Korea, where I am now; Oita, Japan, where I lived for two years; Miyazaki, Japan, where I lived for three years; Granada, Spain, my home for half a year; Herndon, Virginia, my "hometown" in the States; Salem, Oregon, stomping grounds of my relatives; and Honolulu, Hawaii, where I'd like to live, but probably never will.

What prompted me to make these? (Aside from having only one class to teach today?) I think it's the fact that my face feels like it's freezing off every time I step outside. I haven't experienced such a cold winter since I left Virginia in 1998. It turns out I didn't really miss the cold one bit.

Of all these places, I think the Oregonians have it the best. They enjoy both mild summers and winters, and despite getting a bad rap for their rainy weather, Oregon is practically a desert compared to East Asia. Oregon receives a scant 993mm (39in) of rain a year. Compare with Miyazaki, oft touted as the sunniest place in Japan next to Okinawa, which gets inundated with 2522mm (99in) of wet stuff yearly. Pfft...Oregonians. You think you know rain? Gimmie a break!

It is cold in Korea, but at least they know how to deal with it properly with heated floors and well sealed buildings, unlike the Japanese, who still build houses out of rice paper and twigs.

Nasal membrane reaction to cold air

2004-12-23T10:36:00.000+09:00

I finally know why my nose gets stuffy when it's cold out!

"When a person breathes cold air, the tissues lining the nose swell as the capillaries dilate, bringing warm blood to heat the cool air. Swollen capillaries in the nose are the cause of nasal congestion (nasal congestion is backed-up blood, not increased mucus). In addition to the congestion, the mucus in the nose, as we've said, increases and becomes thicker. This happens more in some people than in others. Thus cold air, by itself, can produce both nasal congestion and stuffiness. These can be treated with decongestants and/or antihistamines."

Interestingly, the symptoms temporarily subside while I am engaged in aerobic exercise, perhaps because adrenaline acts as an antihistamine. I've also read that nasal tissues are almost identical to penile erectile tissues, so I guess you could say that my nose is just really really excited all the time.

There's even a condition called "honeymoon nose," which is a sympathetic reaction of the nasal turbinates during a period of prolonged sexual stimulation. In other words, a stuffy nose is a sexy nose.

In my case, however, there's no doubt that the symptoms are brought on by nothing more than the cold air.

Fukuoka Googlized

2004-12-22T11:01:00.000+09:00

I typed "Fukuoka" into Googlism, and here's what I got (the ones that make sense, anyway):

Fukuoka is...

...a well known and important city in japan and in asia
...a modern vibrant city
...a compact city with a good subway system
...one of the few large cities in japan that can actually be described as "laid back"
...enjoyable
...also the japanese city closest to asia
...the largest city on the southern japanese island of kyushu with a population of over 1.3 million
...the energetic city as the center of economy
...punching way above its weight
...one of the areas where many universities are located
...a relatively modern city of approximately 1.3 million
...closer to china and korea than to some of the eastern japanese cities
...host to a national sumo tournament once a year and is host to the champion daiei hawks baseball team
...cold in winter but it rarely snows so warms jumpers and a jacket to keep out the cold wind will be fine
...the largest city and the cultural center of Kyushu
...the closest major city in japan to asia and this proximity gives easy access to the major cities of the asia
...growing rapidly
...an ancient city with a long histoly of opening towards the western sea
...also the birthplace of karashi mentaiko
...the leading area in western japan
...the largest city in kyushu with a total area of 336 sq. km and a population of 1.3 million
...the fourth largest commercial city in japan
...a thriving metropolis
...blessed with mountains
...een stad met twee miljoen inwoners gelegen aan een baai in het noordwesten
...the economic powerhouse of southern japan
...generally mild
...truly a city with a rich history of tradition and a friendly open spirit of progress
...a sprawling city
...japan's gateway to continental asia
...closer to korea than to tokyo
...a big city compared to the capital of laos
...a waterfront city located at hakata bay
...just the right size
...the largest city on the island of kyushu and the eighth largest of japan
...surpassed only by tokyo and osaka in terms of its high concentration of international economic exchange organizations such as diplomatic missions
...the economic and industrial center of kyushu
...famous for delicious foods such as fresh fish and hakata ramen noodle
...the major entry point for kyushu and the westernmost part of honshu
...located on the northern coast of kyushu and is thriving as a hub of culture
...also the seat of five universities
...a city that fosters talent
...a busy international terminal linking directly to many asian cities and indirectly to europe and north america

Compare with "Beppu" Googlized:

Beppu is...

...to go to hell
...located in part of south west island named kyushu
...visited by many foreigners
...located on the east coast of kyushu island
...located between sea and mountain
...the famous city for its unique and various hot springs
...the leading hot spring resort of japan
...a city of perhaps 100,000
...an unusual and extraordinary place
...one of the largest hot springs resorts in japan
...a seaport on the southern main island of kyushu
...an impressive sight to behold
...on the island of kyuushu
...one of japan's most famous hot spring resorts
...situated about 1000km southwest from tokyo
...located in oita prefecture
...always mentioned as a region famous for hot springs in japan
...the place for healing mind and body and it is the reception room of asia
...situated in the middle of oita prefecture
...far more geared up for tourism than the prefecture's capital
...a major center of bamboo basketry production in japan
...the leading hot spring resort of japan with as many as 104 public baths
...a city committed to international exchange
...inviting because it exists as a place of immersion and dissolution
...famous throughout japan for its hot springs
...the spa town with the largest amount of spring water in japan
...beppu is the number one hot spring city in japan because of the high volume of water output and because of the variety of hot spring there
...a coastal city on the southern island of kyushu with a population of some 135,000
...the third stop from oita by local train
...a highly volcanic area
...also known for its bamboo products
...a city with a lot of hot springs and geysers
...perhaps japan's most famous hot springs resort
...a monkey park
...indeed an unusual and extraordinary place in kyuushuu
...one of the most exciting hot spa resorts in japan
...a town built on 3800 hot springs and includes the famous boiling hells
...a good hotspring resort in oita
...a health resort city famous for natural hot baths
...not only known as a honeymoon location
...more attractive than tokyo
...a very famous spa resort towns in kyushu island
...a famous city in kyushu
...located on the northeast coast of kyushu
...well geared up to entertaining its constant stream of hot spring visitors
...one of the most popular hot spring resorts in japan
...kleiner dan sasebo
...bigger than you'd think
...known as the city of hot spring

So let's see... a thriving and modern, yet laid back city that is Kyushu's gateway to Asia, or a city with lots of hot water, bamboo baskets and monkeys. I think the choice is clear.

Then again, Beppu fares far better than poor Jecheon, which produces no results at all when Googlized.

APU = hell?

2004-12-20T16:26:00.000+09:00

This is quite funny. Someone thinks the university at which I used to work, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, is HELL ON EARTH! He writes of incompetence, bad attitude, lies... How dare he say all these horrible things about... waaaait a second, these are all completely valid points! How dare he expose the truth about APU!

At least the school's new bilingual website is awesome. From looking at it, you'd never guess the place to be such a sinful den of corruption and evil. I'm sure APU's really not that bad. It has a gym.

I just got a free calendar that says "Keep Korea Green" on the cover. Strangely, it does not have a single photo of Korea in it. What it does contain is beautiful nature scenes from Canada, America, Europe, Australia and Japan. Draw your own conclusions. (Sorry. I am not feeling terribly pro-Korea right now.)

Bamboo homes/biodiesel

2004-12-18T11:09:00.000+09:00

Bamboo Technologies is a company based on Maui that sells prefabricated homes made of Vietnamese bamboo. Very cool designs. The bamboo they use is a thick-walled variety called "timber bamboo," used for telephone poles in SE Asia, that has only a very small hole running through the center. They say it's stronger than wood, can be sustainably harvested in just seven years (it can grow 4 feet a day!) and yields 2o times more building material per acre than hardwood trees. They also say that it takes about an acre of trees to build a typical American home, but not much more than the area of the home itself to grow enough bamboo!

The Thai Hale and Pavilion hale designs are my favorite. I love their huge wrap-around porches. (Interior pics here. Awesome loft!)

Each house is first assembled in Vietnam, then disassembled and shipped in crates to the building site. And since it's all prefab, it can be assembled in just three days with nuts and bolts! (videos here) The total cost, including labor, electrical and plumbing, is $75,000-$113,000 for the Thai design above. I think these houses are best suited for a tropical climate, though; the walls look rather thin.

Speaking of Maui, I once interpreted for a guy named Robert King at an APU orientation session for parents. He handed me his business card: Pacific Biodiesel--Maui, Hawaii. Cool. Didn't think much of it until I poked around online and discovered that this guy is involved in some really amazing stuff! His company makes clean-burning alternative fuel for cars. Very innovative. Very cool.

"The firm, still the only producer of the product in Hawai'i, gets used vegetable oil from restaurants and fast-food operations. It is filtered and chemically treated to remove glycerin and then can go right in to diesel engines, either pure, or mixed with regular fuel."

Read this article about it. Here is the Pacific Biodiesel website.

The guy was so mild-mannered and kind, I would have never guessed that he's the head honcho of such an important company.

The more things change...

2004-12-17T20:04:00.000+09:00

...the more they stay the same. Check these out.

I pulled these off of Sensory Overload, a rather inspired SF Bay area blog. Man, you go to the good blogs, follow their links to other good blogs, and pretty soon you're sucked into a never-ending blog vortex of liberal-minded people with, I guess, a lot of time on their hands. Are they professional bloggers? Lots of good stuff out there. (This blog isn't even in the same league.)

Okay, just one more. Check out this map of the 2004 election results. Pretty amazing, huh? (And what's with that band of Democratic voters that cuts straight across Alabama???)

It's all doubleplusungood

2004-12-17T13:57:00.000+09:00

I've just finished my classes for the day and am doing what any normal English teacher does to relax on a Friday afternoon: reading quotes from George Orwell's 1984. It's been a long time since I read the book, and I'm shocked at how many of the quotes evoke the policies of the Bush administration.

"We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. (Abstinence education.) There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. (The Bush cabinet overhaul, filling positions with the faithful.) There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. (Big Dubya.) There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. (Mission Accomplished! We're turnin' the corner, heh heh.) There will be no art, no literature, no science." (Inhibiting stem-cell research, blocking foreign students from obtaining visas to study at American universities.)

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork." (The Patriot Act.)

Lots more here.

A kid was wearing the funniest coat in class today. On the arm was a picture of a maple leaf, together with the slogan, " Fuckin' Freezing." On the back was a big trout, around which was written, in huge letters, "I'd Rather Eat Meat." Maybe it's a Canadian thing.

And what's with those heathens to the north, anyway? (Check out this guy's other columns too. He's very entertaining. The Christian Resource Network says that he's "[A] misguided, lost and carnal individual... filled with vexation and ignorance of God [who will] gladly cheer the anti-Christ." You can't beat that.)

Lost in overreaction

2004-12-16T11:47:00.000+09:00

Clickem to embiggenem

Korean title: "Can love, too, be translated?"

While recently sifting through long forgotten Web detritus for info on Sophia Coppola's beautifully bittersweet film "Lost in Translation," I was surprised to find that upon its release some groups vehemently decried its characterization of Japanese people. The Lost in Racism campaign, by a group which seeks to promote a "fair and balanced portrayal of Asian Americans in the entertainment industry," harshly criticized the movie and scared off lots of potential Academy kudos. I didn't realize there was so much controversy surrounding the flick. Now I understand why it took so friggin long to be screened in Japan, and only by small arthouse theaters at that.

Weird. I lived there five years and thought it was spot on. Oh my god, maybe I'm oblivious of my own racist tendencies!

Here are some negative review excerpts from the website:

"[The] humor is too often based in stereotypical perceptions of Asians (they're short, they're laughably polite, they eat weird food)." - Ken Fox, TV Guide

"[After] it's abundantly clear the movie's going nowhere slowly, [the protagonists] encounter Charlie Brown, or "Chalrie Blown" (the director's friend, Fumihiro Hayashi), who's so thinly developed that he makes Bob and Charlotte look like classic Dickensian creations by comparison." - Gregory Weinkauf, Dallas Observer

"Lost in Translation is being promoted as a romantic comedy, but there is only one type of humour in the film that I could see: anti-Japanese racism, which is its very spine." - Kiku Day, The Guardian

"Lost in Translation expresses a distasteful racism through romantic comedy. It says, as racists often do, that foreigners, in this case Japanese, are inherently comic and stupid. Of all the Japanese in the film, not one comes across as much better than a cretin." - Robert Fulford, The National Post

"The film relies on stale stereotypes of the Japanese for laughs: They're short! They're wacky! They can't pronounce their r's! ... The film is replete with racial gags that draw from the same old Hollywood stereotypes" - Melissa Bagtan, Asian American Movement Ezine

"The Japanese are presented not as people, but as clowns ... the hilarity is rooted entirely in the "otherness" of the Japanese people. We laugh at them, not with them." - E. Koohan Paik, Color Lines Race Wire

Pu-leez. I didn't even begin to see the movie in this way. After all, the protagonists are very much the Murray and Johanssen characters; everyone else is peripheral. No, none of its Japanese characters are well developed. Yes, it's peppered with ethnic stereotypes shamelessly employed for comedic effect. But these things didn't bother me one bit, as I think they wouldn't bother anyone who has lived in Japan, because I know how honest they are. The Japanese are shorter than Americans. Showers are set at hobbit-height. Japanese people do bow excessively, and yes, they really can't pronounce their r's. (Call me insensitive, call me lacist, but I still find it leally hilalious.)

And Matthew's Best Hit TV? It's a real show, and Matthew Minami really is that insane.

I think it's rather difficult for most Westerners to understand how homogenous Japan truly is. One can make sweeping generalizations about the nation and be correct much of the time simply because the Japanese, unlike Americans, share so many physical and cultural characteristics. There was nothing in the movie, except for maybe the call girl scene ("Lip my stocking!"), that exaggerated elements of life in Japan--though I've never hired a prostitute so I can't say for sure.

I also think people saw the movie and thought, "The Japanese can't possibly be that quirky! The country can't possibly be that strange!" But, from a Western standpoint, they really are, and it really is.

And why not poke fun at such things? It was gentle ribbing at best. It wasn't as if the movie made fun of terminal illness.

I agree that it'd be nice to see a movie that presents a balanced portrayal of East and West, but first, you need a director with one foot firmly planted on each side of the cultural fence, and second, they have to be willing to take a big risk. The subtleties of a culture are easily "lost in translation" from the script to the screen. At any rate, it'd be a difficult sell. Who wants to see reality at the cinema? I thought "The Last Samurai" made a pretty good stab at a balanced portrayal of cultures (albeit during the Meiji Era), but it's still a far cry from what could be.

Most films are rooted in a single culture and a single language. Bridging cultures in a meaningful way is not an easy thing to do, especially for a film that requires broad appeal to make a profit. Not impossible, just difficult--and this wasn't the objective of Lost in Translation anyway. I mean, look, I couldn't even understand half of Trainspotting, and that was entirely in English!!! How do you expect Joe Blow to understand a realistic film that is both multiethnic and multilingual?

I think the films and performances "approved" by the Asian Media Watchdog tend to either focus on Asian American cultures (e.g. Harold and Kumar)--which is far easier than portraying cultures on both sides of the Pacific--or are so minor that no one's ever heard of them.

The Japanese government, at least, is cashing in on the film. The Japan National Tourist Organization is offering guided Lost in Translation tours.

My visit to the bank

2004-12-15T22:55:00.000+09:00

Just came back from the bank. I had to create a new pin number because I'd forgotten my original one. Here is an actual exchange between myself and the teller. This was all in Korean, mind you.

Ms. Kim: Do you have a passport?
Me: Yes. Well, no, heh heh. She left me.
Ms. Kim: Huh? Passport!
Me: Past tense.
Ms. Kim: #&$+=*!&)@??
Me: Telephone number?
Ms. Kim: . . . . . .
Me: Oh, I understand. It's at home.

Yes, my Korean is coming along nicely. The manager, who goes to my gym, gave me a bottle of Fibre-Mini (embarrassment can sometimes look like constipation) and a gift set of very nice Nonghyup Bank camping cups and hip pack. Later, a cute bank teller who spoke some English asked me if I was married. Man, I should have visited the bank more often! I think I'll have to forget my pin number at least two more times before I leave.

Good morning, Mr. Kim!

2004-12-15T21:49:00.000+09:00

Just another humdrum workday at the Korean National Assembly.

Funky Dutch boys

2004-12-15T19:53:00.000+09:00

Check this out (Rori): Retro 8-bit electronica by YMCK. They compose their tunes on a Famicom (Nintendo). Reminds me of a street musician Rori told me about who plays music on a Game Boy. I guess YMCK is a step up from that, but just barely.

Also, check out this Dutch "electronica" group called C-Mon & Kypski. They're kind of electronica stuff + live instrumental stuff + turntable and DJ sampling stuff, and dey is whack, yo! Click "Listen!" in the lower right of their website to listen to their tunes. Tracks like "Dazed and Confused" and "The Evil Needle" are kind of Indian sounding, but others are reggae, soul, African, funk or something else way out there. These guys are all over the show, and they're great! They're like a bunch of schizophrenic high schoolers with an ear for composition and an appreciation of all kinds of music. Not only that, they can play real instruments and rip it up on the turntables.

Here's what a reviewer had to say:

To describe C-mon & Kypski's music is as hard as playing soccer with a banana. People might find it even harder to describe what they do when they play their studio-recorded music live. They compose and produce in their home studio (El Crib), like any other producer does, we all know that method by now. But that is just one method of how C-mon & Kypski create their songs.

The other is this: C-mon & Kypski can also compose AND produce a song from 'scratch', on stage, in realtime. This includes live sampling, looping, the effects, the filters....and of course monstrous scratching action by six times national turntable champion Kypski. Starting with absolutely nothing, ending with freaked out, booming, skratchadelic funk d...etc

I'm usually not a big fan of electronic music because it's just so repetitive, uncompositional, and just plain uncreative, like some schmo sat down in front of a keyboard and played some chords over the same preprogrammed beat for five minutes straight. But these guys are awesome. I'm listening to "Ode to Rhodes" now. Wow, really nice.

The only other electronica album I really love is "Orchid" by Ishq, which is more ambient and serious, not funky and playful like C-Mon & Kypski.

Make sure to check out the "cloctaves" turntable vids on the site. What a virtuoso. This guy really knows what he's doing. So awesome.

From the site:

A 'Clocktave' is a note scale to scratch with, with a range of 2 to 4 octaves. The notes of the octaves are divided between exactly ONE rotation of a record so when you look at the record as if it were a clock, the root note of the scale will always appear at, let's say 12 o' clock, depending on where you have your orientation sticker or marker. As a result, all notes within one of the 3 octaves of the scale are to be found within one rotation, and when you get the hang of it, you know exactly what notes to play (scratch) because of the 'root-note orientation point' and you'll learn different note combo's (melodies). Great for organ solo's, piano solos, basslines, or just simple hooks.

Clocktaves are great for giving a true melodic approach to your scratching. It is like playing keys on your turntable. It is, also, a totally different way of thinking. And this is why some people might find them hard to use. Actually, if you succesfully want to use a clocktave in a band, or with other dj's, you'll have to start to think melodically and rhythmically at the same time. Whereas with most scratching, you just think rhythmically, with some pitch involved, but without the pitch being actual notes.

'But', you'd say, 'I could scratch an organ solo or a flute melody, those are notes!' Right you are, but the melody will mostly derive from the sample (the organ or flute player) itself, it wasn't you who created that whole melody yourself, from scratch, was it? This is where the 'different thinking' part comes in. Instead of a 'melodic scratchsample' , you now have just a 'note-scale', a range of tones waiting for you to make a melody out of it. All of a sudden you'll have to know what notes of that scale fit or don't fit in the key the music you scratch to is being played in. All of a sudden were from reverse engineering, back to forward engineering.

Got it?

Hard choice

2004-12-14T21:45:00.000+09:00

I've decided to move on and give my heart to someone new. I can't just mope around feeling sorry for myself. I have to live my life to the fullest, revel in my youth before it is cruelly snatched away from me by father time. So my first choice for a new girlfriend--and some naysayers insist I'm setting my sights a little too high--is Korean actress Han Ga In. Yeah, she's got a boyfriend, but that's not going to stop me. (Her bodyguards might...)

Then there's also CNN tech correspondent Kristie Lu Stout. Mmmmm, I just love it when she speculates about the future of China's electronics industry. Rumor has it that she's engaged to be married, but that's not going to stop me either. I won't accept anything but the best! I'll just have to wait and see which one lives up to my expectations. I won't lie to you. It's going to be a difficult choice.

Well, Fukuoka me!

2004-12-13T13:31:00.000+09:00

Fukuoka, here I come! I'm feeling pretty excited about this move. There's a fairly good chance I'll get the job, but if my past luck is any indication, I'll be kidnapped by North Korean spies next week and work as Kim Jong Il's private English tutor for the rest of my life--which might not be so bad if I get access to his Pleasure Squad.

I've wanted to live in Fukuoka for years, and now here's my chance. It's the best city in Japan. Asia Week magazine agrees with me. Here's a 1997 article about the city.

The houses seen in the foreground are on reclaimed land in the super-posh Momochi district. I'm sure they're really expensive. That round thing on the left is the Fukuoka Dome baseball stadium.

Some neat old photos of Fukuoka here and here.

The kids are not alright

2004-12-12T17:41:00.000+09:00

According to a recent UNICEF report, "More than a billion children--over half the children in the world--suffer extreme deprivation because of war, HIV/AIDS or poverty..."

"...nearly half the estimated 3.6 million people killed in wars since 1990 were children..."

"There is rarely a justification for war that mitigates the suffering and loss of war..." (Carol Bellamy--Executive Director, UNICEF)

One in six (90m) children are severely hungry.
One in seven (270m) have no healthcare at all.
One in five have no access to safe water.
One in three have no toilet at home.
More than 29,000 children die every day of preventable causes.

Sorry to keep harping on this kind of stuff. It's just sometimes difficult to believe that the world is so crap. Here I am, sipping calcium fortified orange juice in a room with a heated floor, watching the Tokyo Jazz Festival on cable TV. (TOTO is on stage now. Japan: where aging rockers go to die.) For lunch, I stuffed my face with bibimbap and kimchi. I've got it good.

Speaking of children, I've been volunteering at the Jecheon Children's Home for the past several weeks. The orphanage, which currently houses about 90 children, is run by an American woman named Jane White. She came to Jecheon in 1962, opened the orphanage the year after and has been here ever since. A disproportionately large number of orphans used to turn up in Jecheon because the city was once a major rail center, which made it easy for parents to get off one train, drop off their unwanted child at the station, and make their escape on another.

Ms. White has never been married, but told me that she has raised over 1000 children. All her children have "Baek" as their last name, which is Korean for "white." (You can't just choose any old last name. It has to be properly registered.) Imagine if I were the director. All the kids would be named "So" (cow), or maybe "Mokdong" (牧童/cowboy).

There are eight middle school kids living at the orphanage--four girls and four boys. They are all in the 1st grade, and I was surprised to find that they all attend one of my schools! They were pretty darn surprised to see me, too. Now, when I go to that school, it's like we share a little secret.

Last Friday, Ms. White was distributing their monthly allowance of 5000 won. That's about $5.

It's sad that I'll only be here for three more weeks. I wish, for so many reasons, that things hadn't turned out this way with Yoonsung.

Don't worry, be happy now

2004-12-10T23:07:00.000+09:00

Man, it just don't make no sense. The Puerto Ricans are the happiest people in the world? Are its 13% unemployed happy, too? Singapore was the only Asian country to make the top 25, but come on--we all know that place is hardly a real country. Not much more than a parched little rock with shiny buildings and gum-free sidewalks.

I guess it's true: money really can't buy happiness.

Here is the World Values Survey website. I checked it out, but it doesn't really seem to give much info about their survey methods. Their sample size is over a thousand, but what did they do? Walk up to people on the street and ask them how happy they are? For what it's worth, here's the entire list, ranked from happiest to saddest.

Green indicates high income countries.
Red indicates Latin American countries.
Boldface indicates ex-communist countries.

Subjective Well-Being Rankings of 82 Societies
High
Puerto Rico, Mexico, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Switzerland, N. Ireland, Colombia, Netherlands, Canada, Austria, El Salvador, Venezuela, Luxembourg, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Nigeria, Norway, Belgium, Finland

Medium High
Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Britain, West Germany, France, Argentina, Vietnam, Chile, Philippines, Taiwan, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Spain, Israel, Italy, East Germany, Slovenia, Uruguay, Portugal, Japan, Czech Republic

Medium Low
South Africa, Croatia, Greece, Peru, China, South Korea, Iran, Poland, Turkey, Bosnia, Morocco, Uganda, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Hungary, Slovakia, Jordan

Low
Estonia, Serbia, Tanzania, Azerbaijan, Montenegro, India, Lithuania, Macedonia, Pakistan, Latvia, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Georgia, Romania, Moldova, Russia, Armenia, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, Indonesia

Man, what in the world is wrong with Japan? The second strongest economy in the world, and it gets beaten by the former East Germany? People in Israel, living in constant fear of suicide bombers, are happier than the Japanese? For crying out loud, the Nigerians are way happier than the Japanese!

From the Nigeria Lonely Planet guide:
"From religious tensions in the north with the spread of Sharia law, to border conflict in the southeast with Cameroon as well as violent crime throughout the south, travellers need to be aware of what is going on around them at all times. Lagos and the Niger River delta in the south are particularly unstable, with carjackings, kidnapping, piracy, riots and ethnic clashes prevalent; the northern city of Kano is also dodgy. Travelling from the airport to Lagos can be an unpleasant initiation. Visitors to Lagos should arrange to be met on arrival. Street crime, robberies and muggings occur throughout the country, often in broad daylight."

And yet, the country ranks #20 to Japan's #42 and Korea's #49.

Here's my theory about the Latin American countries: they're lying. Come on, everyone knows that lying is a virtue in Latin American cultures! In contrast, Asians rarely admit to being happy, even if they are. This is, after all, a subjective well-being ranking. It's a bunch of quasi-scientific BS, man; I don't buy it for a second. There are a lot of cultural factors that aren't being taken into account.

But wait...I'm not happy, and I'm in a "medium low" country. Hmm, it all makes sense now. Bueno, no me voy a Japon, y empiezo a buscar for jobs in Puerto Rico.

Here's the bottom line: "Research around the world shows that married people or [cohabitating] people are much happier. Yet there's hardly any relationship between income and happiness," Veenhoven said. "So, rather than worry so much about your work, worry more about your wife."

But, but, but, Dr. Veenhoven, I tried that already, and it didn't work!

East Asian half-breed nomad boy

2004-12-09T17:07:00.000+09:00

I handed in my resignation on Monday. My last day on the job is December 31. I'm back at my dank and dusty base school again today, two days after I notified them of my resignation, and my "contact teacher" hasn't spoken a word to me. Granted, she never does, but I'm starting to wonder if she forgot to send my resignation to my supervisor at the Board of Education. Or maybe she just doesn't care. I'll just kind of silently disappear from my desk and see if anyone notices.

I've applied for a teaching position at Brighten College in Fukuoka, Japan (yes, I thought it was a misspelling too). It's located in downtown Tenjin, the central district of the city. With only 200 students, it's by no means a big school, but I think that's a good thing; it'll have a more friendly atmosphere and I'll have more diverse duties to perform. In addition to twelve class hours a week, I'd have a variety of other jobs that deal with curriculum planning and recruitment.

So, just four months after I arrived in the Land of the Morning Calm, I'm packing up my home in the Land of Glorious Natural Vistas (Jecheon), loading up the horses and heading back to the Land of the Rising Sun. I sometimes feel like a nomad.

Speaking of nomads... People of China, hide your daughters! It's Hurd!

The gravy life

2004-12-08T08:39:00.000+09:00

The International Labour Organization recently reported that half of the global work force, some 1.4 billion people, live in grinding poverty, subsisting on less than two bucks a day. Some 550 million, almost 40% of these impoverished people, earn less than $1 a day. 200 million have no job at all.

You'd think that with the world in such a miserable state, people like me would be grateful to have any job that allows them to pay for decent food and shelter.

Considered from this perspective, it seems ridiculous that I should get so upset over something so trivial as losing my fiancee. Oh, woe is me, I can't sleep well, food doesn't taste good, I'm so so sad! Poor Nick!

Well, waaaa. At least I have food to eat. I have the ability to earn money, I am healthy, I am a card-carrying member of the upper crust. I have more money saved up than most people in the world will see in their entire lifetime. And I'm sexy. What the hell am I worried about? Job satisfaction? Give me a fucking break. I wear clean underwear, take hot showers at night and eat three decent meals a day. I even get two whole days of the week, and six hours every evening, during which I don't have to work! What more could I ask for.

I'm reminded of a line from Platoon that goes, "We don't add up to dry shit. Whoever said we did man? All you got to do is make it out of here. It's all gravy. Every day, the rest of your life--gravy."

I am living the gravy life. We all are. Anyone who is reading this on a computer with an Internet connection is probably living a life smothered in the richest, lumpiest gravy imaginable. Do you think the concept of romantic love means anything to these 1.4 billion destitute people? Offer a starving man a bowl of maggot infested rice or a beautiful woman and he'll choose the rice. While guys like me are having dreams about sexy chicks, these people are dreaming about eating chicken.

With gravy.

The 3 stages of a relationship

2004-11-22T22:34:00.001+09:00

In order to analyze what exactly went wrong between me and my fiancee, I've reenacted the different stages of our four and a half year relationship with the help of my good friend, Mr. Nagatomo.

Stage 1: Falling in love

Stage 2: Bliss

Stage 3: The breakup

Conan '08

2004-11-22T19:58:00.000+09:00

Anything that does not kill me makes me stronger.
-Conan the Republican

The emotional cycle

2004-11-22T10:47:00.000+09:00

From surprise to disbelief to denial to sadness to anger to acceptance to, finally, a new kind of love. And I emerge from the other end of the tunnel a wiser, stronger and more compassionate human being.

The end

2004-11-22T09:08:00.000+09:00

It's all over. She loves someone else. She doesn't love me. And my life, my future, everything I've been living for, fades like a sweet dream.

I never thought it would end on a subway platform in Seoul. I never thought it would end, period.

Around town

2004-11-20T13:26:00.000+09:00

Some pics from around Jecheon. (Also taken by Jen the Newfie.)

Using only the freshest, free-range polar chickens.

A sign from a bar. At least they're honest.

Yes, the Koreans are very honest about, even proud of, their alcohol addiction.

We are safe and warm

2004-11-19T11:37:00.000+09:00

I was just looking at a New York Times slide show of desperate Fallujans, hemmed in by razor wire, lining up at a food distribution camp after being displaced from their homes. At the bottom of the screen flashed an animated banner ad for Hollywood movies. What a sick juxtaposition.

Caption: "...major concerns are whether refugees have adequate supplies of food, clean water, medicine and warm shelter."

Banner ad: "Let's Talk About Sex--KINSEY: In select theaters November 12!"

Buddhist schools

2004-11-18T22:24:00.000+09:00

Have you heard of the Hongwanji Mission School? It's the only Buddhist K-8 school in America. They've recently opened a high school called the Pacific Buddhist Academy.

The curriculum of the schools is built on "peace studies," whatever that is. Sounds kind of like the UN University for Peace in Costa Rica.

What kind of hippie schools are these? What can you do with a university degree in "Gender and Peace Building?" (Answer: join EPIK.) It sounds too much like a magnet for misguided idealism, but I suppose you could say the same for a lot of schools that peddle dreams to idealistic youth. (Take APU for example.)

I actually do like the idea of a Buddhist school, if for no other reason than to offset the high number of Christian schools in the US. I also like that you don't have to be a Buddhist to attend the schools. But I can't help but be skeptical of peace studies. It sounds nice and warm and fuzzy, but what is it? Nothing I've read so far has clarified it for me. I guess it's the direct opposite of what you learn at a military academy.

Self-Immolation 101?

I get the impression that one of the main goals of the schools is to educate kids of Japanese descent in the Japanese language and to familiarize them with Japanese culture. A noble cause. As far as I can tell, there are hardly any such schools in the US that are geared toward Korean Americans. Why? After all, Japanese language immersion programs are a dime a dozen. Are Koreans more eager to become integrated into white America? Or perhaps Koreans tend to live in areas with such a high Korean population that special schools aren't necessary to preserve their culture? (Just take a walk to Koreatown.) Or, since many Koreans tend to be Christian, perhaps the bonds formed through the church are enough to maintain a strong sense of community.

I think the last one is probably right. While Koreans have both their "Koreanness" and their religion to provide a bond after they leave their homeland, most Japanese have little more than their "Japaneseness" to hold them together. (Uh, so what Shinto god do you worship?)

Anyway, I'm intrigued. I think America needs more Buddhist schools--one in Salt Lake City, one in every Bible Belt State and one next to George Bush's church.

Jen the Newfie told me that every time she teaches at one of her rural schools, she has a post-lunch meditation session at a teacher's house. Ohmmmm.

The Governator

2004-11-17T18:54:00.000+09:00

I'm watching an interview with Governor Schwarzenegger on Larry King. How is it that a weightlifter from Austria can be a more articulate speaker than a homegrown politician from Texas? I'm impressed. Shuwa-chan (that's what the Japanese affectionately call him) is charming, eloquent and very gubernatorial-looking.

Before

After

Dubya got back

2004-11-17T15:26:00.000+09:00

Bush's hump. Why the heck didn't the Kerry camp make this an issue? They totally should have. It's certainly no worse than all the nasty speculations and accusations slung by the Bushies regarding Kerry's wartime conduct.

These photo analyses were done by a senior research scientist for NASA, an international authority on image analysis--not some bestubbled Photoshop cowboy with too much free time on his hands. He put his reputation on the line. Why wasn't this news?

"Everyone wants to think my colleague and I are just a bunch of dope-crazed ravaged Democrats who are looking to insult the president at the last minute," he says. "And that's not what this is about. This is scientific analysis. If the bulge were on Bill Clinton's back and he was lying about it, I'd have to say the same thing."

"Look," he says, "I'm putting myself at risk for exposing this. But this is too important. It's not about my reputation. If they force me into an early retirement, it'll be worth it if the public knows about this. It's outrageous statements that I read that the president is wearing nothing under there. There's clearly something there."

Oh well. It's too late now.

Why Canada rulz

2004-11-16T16:10:00.000+09:00

Reasons to move to Canada, as cited by www.canadianalternative.com:
1. Canada has universal public health care.
2. Canada has no troops in Iraq.
3. Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol environmental treaty.
4. More than half of Canada's provinces allow same-sex marriage.
5. The Canadian Senate recommends legalizing marijuana.
6. Canada has no law restricting abortion.
7. Canada has strict gun laws and relatively little violence.
8. The United Nations has ranked Canada the best country to live in for eight consecutive years.
9. Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976.
10. Canada has not run a federal deficit since 1996-97.

Unfortunately, there's one terrible thing about Canada that simply overrides all of these positives: it's cold up there! I'd rather live in hot and humid Haiti than suffer through those cold winters with six hours of daylight.

Question to Aussies: which of the 10 reasons above would also hold true for Australia?

CHEERS

2004-11-15T23:31:00.000+09:00

Oh...my...God. The EPA is recruiting babies to be scientific guinea pigs. American babies. And people are worried about Revlon and Gillette testing their products on rabbits?

But oh, the perks:

What will my family receive for its participation in the study?

You will receive both monetary and non-monetary compensation
A Study t-shirt
An official, framed Certificate of Appreciation
A Study bib for your baby
A calendar
A Study Newsletter
A video camcorder, if you complete all of the study activities over the two-year study period

This is totally for real. Here's the EPA's CHEERS Project website.

I wonder what the camcorder is like? Might be worth it if it's digital. Though, I'd rather get it at the beginning of the study so that I could document my child's deteriorating health.

Postcard

2004-11-15T22:44:00.000+09:00

I just got this postcard in the mail from a friend who's taking a vacation in Iraq. I like the palm trees.

Shroomy US map / Bring on the draft

2004-11-14T13:25:00.000+09:00

Great swaths of red got you down? It's not what it seems. Check out this kickass site, which has election result maps with the state sizes rescaled to reflect their populations and shades of color added to depict the degree of support for the candidates. The Rocky Mountain states look like they're getting sucked into a black hole. My god, where's Montana?

This is the real America. Whoa, dude.

I think that America really is God's country, man, cuz I looked at this picture for like 15 minutes straight and I think I almost saw God. The walls in my room started breathing too, man.

Anyway, it seems we're not as geographically polarized as people might think.

We're essentially pretty liberal folk, and in a few years from now, when the Iraq death toll is astronomical and gruesome photos of dead babies start to show up on the mainstream media, there will be a massive liberal backlash in the US.

Or so I used to believe, but now, I don't think this is how it'll happen. It's not the number of dead soldiers or photos of mutilated bodies that will push Americans to the breaking point. As long as we have our Chevy Suburbans, La-Z-Boy recliners and microwave popcorn, we really don't care. So what if some stranger half way around the world gets his brains splattered? Man, most of us have coworkers we'd like to kill!

That's why we need the military draft, and sooner rather than later. Americans will remember Vietnam as soon as the draft kicks in. The effect of the war on our lives will suddenly become very real, and people won't stand for it, cuz as soon as it's our own asses on the line, we'll start caring a whole lot more about the rest of the world. That's how people are. We're selfish bastards.

Of course we won't say that we're opposed to the war because we're afraid to die, but that's really what it comes down to. Like the Vietnam era protesters, we'll spout ideology to bolster our cause, and even think we believe it. But like the red-drenched election map, the real picture will differ from what everyone sees.

Super smart bald guy Ken Wilber talks a lot about human consciousness and its stages of development. The major stages are typically referred to as preconventional to conventional to postconventional, which can also be thought of as egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric. Your average college educated guy--much less the Budwiser guzzling factory worker--is not going to be the most enlightened dude around. Wilber cites a study that was conducted on Berkeley protests in the sixties that found most of the students, despite their claims that they were fighting for universal moral principles, were actually acting from egocentric drives.

...no matter how high-minded, idealistic, or altruistic a cause might appear--from ecology to cultural diversity to world peace--the simple mouthing of intense support for that cause is not enough to determine why, in fact, that cause is being embraced. Too many social commentators have simply assumed, for example that if the boomers were calling for "harmony, love, mutual respect, and multiculturalism," the boomers were themselves moving in that idealistic, nonegocentric direction. However, as we will see, in many cases not only were the boomers not moving in that direction in terms of their own growth, they were loudly embracing a nonegocentric perspective largely to conceal their own egocentric stance.

But you know what? The motives don't matter. It's this seemingly liberal backlash, which really just conceals our selfish desire to save our own hineys, that will ultimately bring an end to the war. So reinstitute the draft, I say! I'll be out there protesting alongside all the other neo-hippies, man.

And, more importantly, I'm already old enough to avoid the draft. (See? Selfish bastard.)

Masters of War

2004-11-13T20:15:00.000+09:00

Speaking of great war-inspired songs, look at what Bob Dylan's Vietnam era protest song "Masters of War" has sparked at a Colorado high school.

Sheesh. Paaaaaranoooooid.

lyrics here

Noam Chomsky's argument that Iraq is not another Vietnam is interesting, and probably true. Here we are pushing for democracy in a potentially powerful country where 90% of the people hate our guts. Even if Iraq does achieve true democracy--which is doubtful anyway--they most certainly won't be on our team.

Dumbness good for health, Bush bad

2004-11-13T19:18:00.000+09:00

Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont and Hawaii are the healthiest states in America. Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana are the sickest.

The report by the United Health Foundation also says:

The Aloha State is No. 1 for a low prevalence of obesity at 16.4 percent of the population. It also has a low rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer, and a low total mortality rate, the study said.

Other strengths include a low prevalence of smoking, a low violent-crime rate, a low rate of uninsured population, strong support for public health and a low premature-death rate.

However, Hawaii has a relatively low high school graduation rate. You think maybe there's a connection? Yes, education is bad for you! Books cause cancer! So now we know how Dubya maintains his health.

Additionally, all four of these healthy states, and in fact 8 of the top 10 healthiest states, voted for Kerry, while the 10 sickest states all voted for Bush. Coincidence? I think not! This is conclusive evidence that Republicans are bad for your health!

Especially for the health, uh, lives, of Iraqis.

Click here for the complete list.

Bush's books destroyed

2004-11-13T18:54:00.000+09:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A tragic fire on Sunday night destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. Both of his books have been lost. A presidential spokesman said that the president was devastated, as he had not finished coloring the second one.

This is from the Daily Show, I think. Sorry, but it really cracked me up.

This letter to Dr. Laura is also very funny. The more recent version circulating on the Internet has been changed to "Dear President Bush."

Eminem's Mosh

2004-11-13T01:39:00.000+09:00

I never thought I'd say this, but I have a newfound respect for Eminem. His "Mosh" video, which attacks Bush and encourages people to vote, is pretty darn amazing. Strange that I didn't see it until now. Check it out. With his black hood on, don't you think Eminem looks like the Emperor from The Empire Strikes Back?

Sing along with the lyrics here.

I think we'll see more and more songs of protest crop up over the next four years. War is an ideal catalyst for great art.

Photos of Jecheon

2004-11-12T23:53:00.000+09:00

(Click 'em to embiggen.)

Thank God I live in this quiet, little, piss-ant, redneck, po-dunk, Asian-trash, kick ass mountain town!

My street. That's my pad on the far left.

Where I used to go jogging before icy Siberian winds engulfed the peninsula.

Fields of gold. All these photos were taken by Jen the Newfie and her brand new digital camera.

Psychos in the Senate

2004-11-12T22:43:00.000+09:00

Ashcroft resigns and says, "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." Uhh, whawazat? Okay, then! You heard the man! Mission accomplished, let's bring our boys back home and focus our attention on more pressing issues, like:

Rampant lesbianism in our schools!

Gasp, in good ol' Oklahoma of all places. Newly elected Senate psychopath Tom Coburn said that lesbianism is “so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”

Oh, but it gets worse in the Sooner State.

(From the Boston Phoenix, Nov. 12)

Tom Coburn: Keeping us safe from condoms and the ‘gay agenda’
Fresh from helping to save Oklahoma from the scourge of teenage lesbianism, Tom Coburn arrives in Washington with perhaps the most bizarre set of right-wing credentials of anyone in the Republican Class of 2004. A former three-term congressman who was swept into office 10 years ago on the coattails of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Coburn — who succeeds retiring Republican senator Don Nickles — is an obstetrician possessed of an obsessive fascination with other people’s sexuality.

In 2003, George W. Bush named Coburn to co-chair the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Coburn’s very first act was to speak out against the one preventative behavior (other than abstinence) that actually works. "I will challenge the national focus on condom use to prevent the spread of HIV," he said upon his appointment. Earlier, as a congressman, he had sought to force condom manufacturers to label their products as "ineffective" in slowing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

But that doesn’t begin to plumb the depths of Coburn’s so-called thinking. In his successful Senate campaign against Democratic congressman Brad Carson, Coburn called for the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. That certainly gives new meaning to the term "pro-life." As a physician, Coburn himself performed abortions, although he says it was always to save the life of the woman. Tell it to the judge, Doc. Nor is that the only dissonant note from his career in medicine: Coburn was once accused of having sterilized a young woman without her permission. He says she had asked him to perform the surgery, though he conceded that he had lacked the written authorization that the law required.

In the 1990s Coburn criticized NBC for broadcasting Schindler’s List, the Oscar-winning film about the Holocaust, charging that it would encourage "irresponsible sexual behavior." That particular outburst was so odd that even one of his ostensible allies, self-appointed morals czar Bill Bennett, felt compelled to label Coburn’s remarks as "unfortunate and foolish." Coburn is also an outspoken opponent of the "gay agenda" in general and same-sex marriage in particular; as a member of Congress, he refused to allow the city of Washington to fund its program for domestic-partnership benefits.

Earlier this year, Coburn said that lesbianism is "so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl [at a time] go to the bathroom." Coburn’s source: a campaign worker. He later said his remarks had been taken "out of context," whatever that was supposed to mean. His spokesman gamely insisted that Coburn was worried that "our kids are getting mixed messages about sexuality." Mixed-up, rather, if they’ve been listening to Coburn.

Sources: Salon, September 13, 2004; AlterNet, March 28 and October 13, 2004; the Associated Press, October 12, 2004.

How could the noble and kindhearted Okies, the people of my long-lost spiritual home, vote for this wacko? They're not the only ones. Several other psychos have been voted into the Senate, and just in time to help choose the new Supreme Court justices. Yipee!

Don't you love how politicians can simply say that their comments were "taken out of context" and all is forgiven? I wish you could do that in real life. Maybe when Dubya is old, he'll write in his memoirs that the war was simply taken out of context, and everyone will forgive him for murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

We killed 600 insurgents! Hurray!

2004-11-12T17:25:00.000+09:00

"If anybody thinks that Fallujah is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention and even never our hope," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday.

What is our hope?

Wanna see a mandate?

2004-11-10T23:29:00.000+09:00

Here's a mandate for ya! Yeehaw!

What I don't get is, how can Dubya manage to snag a man-date and still be against gay marriage? (Get it? Huh huh. Huh, huh huh. Huh.) (Surely I'm not the first to crack this lame joke.)

Onward, Christian Soldiers!

2004-11-10T11:27:00.000+09:00

Don't you just hate wussies that whine about war all the time? C'mon, a little war never killed anyone! Get some of that hot lead in ya!

A quarter of the Iraqi troops have defected, Falluja is in flames, the interim government is falling apart, Prime Minister Allawi's relatives have been kidnapped and insurgents are on a killing spree in cities all over Iraq. All in all, I think the Falluja assault is going pretty well! Break out the wine and cheese!

Can't wait to see Rummy explain to Allawi that the kidnapping was an "isolated incident."

Why isn't the media making a big deal out of the 100,000 Iraqi civilians that have been killed as a result of the war? This utter disrespect for human life angers me more than anything else. Imagine if France invaded the US to oust Dubya and bring freedom to America (hmm...), killing 100,000 American civilians in the process. I think we'd be a little bit pissed off at France, don't you? After all, just look at how angry we were when 3000 Americans--a mere fraction of the casualties in Iraq--were killed on 9/11.

Ohhhhh, right, I forgot. Those were Iraqi women and children who died, people whose lives aren't worth as much as ours. One American is the equivalent of, say, 10 Iraqis? So really, we've killed only 10,000 people! No wait, that's still a lot... I guess when you reeeeealy think about it, one freedom lovin' American is worth about 100 Iraqis, so, all in all, we've killed only about 1000 civilians so far. What's all the fuss! That's way fewer than we lost on 9/11!

Ahem. But what is 100,000 anyway? Just another big number. To me, anything over 25 is a "big number," one which gives me a nasty migraine when I try to visualize it. How many friends do I have here in Jecheon? Five? How many middle school students do I see over two weeks? 900? So that means we've killed a hundred times more people than the number of students I teach. That would be equivalent to the number of students at over 300 middle schools... Aaaaagh! Big number! Migraine!!!

Let's look at that big number as a graph, shall we?

Ah, that's much easier to understand. I'm sorry, what was this war all about?

Just the other day I was asking Jennifer, the English teacher from Newfoundland who lives down the hallway, only half jokingly, what the requirements are for obtaining Canadian citizenship. Now that I think about it though, that would be tantamount to giving up! I'd be no better than Eddie Vedder (who also threatened to defect), and everyone knows that grunge has been totally uncool for the past decade. Just think of what America would become if all the sane people left.

Unless we did this:

The most uncool thing of all though, is that we had the Vietnam war just a few decades ago. You'd like to think we learned something from all that. I mean, who hasn't seen Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now?

I guess that's the one positive thing about wars: great cinema follows in their wake. Too bad only the living can enjoy them.

Let the Apocalypse begin in earnest!

2004-11-04T01:32:00.000+09:00

Well, that's it. It's all over. Bush takes Ohio, and I'm signing up for Korean citizenship.

A 136,000 vote lead is substantial. Heck, it's almost the same as the number of Iraqi civilians that have died as a result of the war, and that's a lot.

On the bright side, we can look forward to four more years of hilarious commentary by Jon Stewart. And, of course, Dubyaspeak!

Here's a "controversial" article that was sent to me by a former coworker at APU. Give it a read.

The hour of reckoning is upon us!

2004-11-03T22:39:00.000+09:00

I can't believe it. Rock the Vote Day is finally here. I'm voting for the guy that Bruce Springsteen likes because Britney Spears likes the other guy and she's like, dumb? And the hobag dumped Justin Timberlake? Pu-leez. Then again, Bruce Willis likes the other guy, and he was pretty good in Die Hard. Um, there's like way too many things to think about?

And like, war and killing sucks and all, but the guns and jets and tanks are like, pretty awesome, so I'm not sure about the whole war in Iran against Ben Laddin. At least we got his evil sidekick Saddam!

My uncle Cleetus says that "we need a cowboy for president, not a fag-lovin' French-speakin' windsurfer," whateva that means. He also said that the other guy killed people in Vietnam, but I'm cool with that cuz I know exactly what he went through. I've been playing a video game that's the same thing. (Kumawar rulz!)

Oh forget it, I'm not voting. I don't wanna stand in line anyway.

Red Sox rule!

You make kimchi or die!

2004-11-02T21:28:00.000+09:00

Just as the Japanese love to watch foreigners make mochi, the Koreans love to watch us make kimchi. That's me with Jennifer, the other EPIK teacher in Jecheon, being guided in an ancient Confucian pre-pickling ritual known as parul son uro teolda (파를 손으로 털다).

These pictures are from the Jecheon Uibyeongje Civilian Army Cultural Festival.

We were actually at gunpoint in this photo.

Kimchi: it's what's for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch.

Vote/amnesia/gingko/Davin

2004-11-01T20:43:00.000+09:00

Everyone suddenly burst into applause today when, during my advanced eighth grade class, I said, "I voted for Kerry," to try and get the kids to understand the word "vote" (they were voting for the best alien drawing).

One girl gave me the thumbs up and exclaimed, "I agree!" I was really surprised that eighth graders would have any opinion at all about American politics. I seriously doubt that their Japanese counterparts would have an opinion either way.

I think I'm starting to forget some Japanese. Last weekend, I couldn't remember the words for "gingko tree" and "mole" (the animal). The words you use the least are the first to go, eh?

I've discovered another Korean name that sounds all right in English: Davin (다빈). It'd actually Romanize to "Dabin," which is a French last name, I think, but Davin looks way cooler. Unfortunately, it's a Scandinavian name that means "bright Finn," which wouldn't really make sense for my child.

My shoebox room

2004-10-30T22:50:00.000+09:00

That's my fridge next to the TV.

Jennifer is using my computer.

Who's the evildoer again?

2004-10-30T16:39:00.000+09:00

According to a new study, some 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the American invasion. That's 33 times the number of Americans killed on 9/11. That's 41 times the number of Americans killed at Pearl Harbor. That's 20,000 more than the number of Japanese killed outright by the A-bomb in Hiroshima, and 26,100 more than Nagasaki. That's 41,774 more than the number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam.

That's 2/3 the population of Jecheon.

Over half of those killed were women and children.

Not including the number of soldiers lost in battle, an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Iraqis were murdered by the Hussein regime during his 23-year reign.

The US has managed to do a third of this in just a year and a half. A few more years and we'll top Saddam's record--all in the name of spreading freedom.

Rummy says, "Freedom is messy." Well, messy freedom don't mean too damn much to a dead guy.

Said the BBC, "Before the war, Iraq was a society with order but no freedom. Now it has freedom, but no order." As a teacher of semi-feral children at the ghetto-punk Dong Middle School, I can assure you that if you must choose between one or the other, order always takes priority.

Unless you like anarchy.

Curious George

2004-10-29T17:21:00.000+09:00

I always suspected... (click the pic)

There was a good discussion on Larry King Live the other day about the separation of church and state. The guests included several reverends, Catholic priests and evangelical ministers. One guy said something along the lines of, "I believe that we must separate religion from politics, but I also believe that we cannot separate God from politics," to which Larry said, "But then why do you think our Founding Fathers explicitly left the word 'God' out of the Constitution?" The response was something like, "I'm not concerned with what the Founding Fathers intended, but I am concerned with what God intends."

Religious dogma is truly frightening. If political leaders start invoking the name of God to circumvent or alter the very foundation of the American government, we're in big trouble.

There were some other interesting things said. For example, did you know that when Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency, he specifically urged religious leaders not to endorse a candidate? Sometimes I feel like America's going backwards. Pretty soon, we'll be burning witches at the stake again.

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." Dubya, 11/19/02

Hold on, isn't this what dictators believe? Oh wait, Dubya's different. He's got God on his side.

(Click the crucifix)

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." Dubya, 7/9/04
"God loves you, and I love you. And you can count on both of us as a powerful message that people who wonder about their future can hear." Dubya, 3/3/04

An interview with God.

Screw him!

2004-10-28T17:10:00.000+09:00

"Mr. President, how do you respond to Senator Kerry's recent accusations regarding the missing munitions in Iraq?"

Field trip and vog

2004-10-28T13:01:00.000+09:00

Yesterday, I had a field trip with the kids of Naeto Middle School to Mungyeongsaejae. Several kids were eager to speak with me during our hike. Our exchanges went something like this:

Kid: Hi Nick teacher.
Me: Hello!
Kid: Do you like Japan?
Me: Uh, sure.
Kid: I hate Japan.
Me: Oh. Okay. Why?
Kid: I like kimchi.

The museum there had a rather graphic diorama that depicted farmers defending themselves against Japanese invaders during the Imjinwaeran War, a seven-year war between the Choson Dynasty and the Toyotomi Hideyoshi Shogunate in the 1590s.

Amusing: "Beppu" is a Korean abbreviation of "best friend" (bestuh purenduh).

Funny: A kid was trying to say, "A man is fishing" during class, but since the "f" becomes "p" and "sh" becomes "s" in Korean, he said, "A man is pissing." I could hardly contain myself.

Funnier: These phonetic shifts are funny in Japanese too. A Korean guy was once trying to say 時間はまだ大丈夫ですか？(Do you still have time?), but with "j" becoming "ch", what came out was 痴漢はまだ大丈夫ですか？(Is molestation still okay?)

Another time, thanks to the same "j" to "ch" shift (and lack of extended vowels), the same guy asked me 宮崎のチンコはどれくらいですか？(What's the approximate length of penises in Miyazaki?) when he meant to say 宮崎の人口はどれくらいですか？(What's the approximate population of Miyazaki?)

Funniest: There is a traditional Korean song with a chorus that repeats, "Onara, onara, onara," which sounds like, "Fart, fart, fart," in Japanese.

Awesome: Korea's highest bungee jump is near Jecheon!

"Cheongpung Land has Koreas highest bungee jump board at 62 meters. Since it is jumping from a high board facing Cheongpung Lake, the thrill is unspeakable. With an additional safety belt attached there need to be no worries about any type of danger."

That sounds like fun! But then it goes on to say, "In case of accidents, an artificial pool is set up at the falling point of the lake." Not very reassuring.

Totally unrelated: Living in Hawaii doesn't always mean fresh, hibiscus-tinged ocean breezes, especially on the Big Island. Mt. Kilauea spews over 1000 tons of sulfur dioxide daily, equivalent to 3,650 power plants. This produces "vog," or volcanic fog, that hangs over the Kona coast. That sounds worse than Kagoshima, where the residents can't hang their clothes out to dry because of the volcanic ash from the Sakurajima volcano.

Korean condos

2004-10-27T01:28:00.000+09:00

Here is a great photo of Korean condos that I found on another South Korea blog. I told you they're ugly! But they're economical, comfortable and convenient! And, you're never jealous of your neighbors for having a better flat! (Get it? Cuz they're all the same.)

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

2004-10-26T20:06:00.000+09:00

Sixty-two percent of Republicans believe that Saddam had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed in June believed that Saddam personally masterminded the attacks.

There is only one logical explanation for this: Americans are being exposed to mind control waves that are being broadcast through their television sets. I refuse to believe that my fellow Americans can be so ignorant. I am, thankfully, safe from the waves here in Korea, but I have to watch my exposure to CNN, my only English channel. I think the most harmful subliminals are sent out every half hour when James Earl Jones says, "This is CNN". You have to listen real closely, but it's there:

THIS We're turnin' the corner. Freedom's on the march. IS Spreadin' liberty. Everything is just fine. Juuuust fine. CNN Flip-flop!

Here is an awesome article entitled "Without a Doubt," which examines how Bush can simultaneously be so sure of himself and so wrong. In uncertain times, people tend to favor a strong leader who is wrong than a weak one who is right. Remember, Hitler was elected, too.

Yes, yes, comparing Bush to Hitler, how unoriginal. But when you're living abroad, shielded from the Compassionate Conservative Mind Control Waves, the comparison doesn't seem all that absurd. In fact, after six years abroad, what seems more absurd than anything is the whole us-them mindset that drives international relations. Even the concept of patriotism seems pretty ridiculous to me now, especially with all the flag worshipping I see everywhere in Korea (the school festival at Dong Middle School concluded with a group dance by students wearing Korean flags fashioned into aprons).

Are the cultural and ideological differences that divide us really that significant? I don't think so. Or do I feel this way simply because the foreign countries I've lived in--Japan, Spain and Korea--have societies (very secular societies I might add, even Spain) that are fundamentally similar to my own? Maybe I'd feel less affinity with my fellow man if I'd lived in an ultra-Muslim Middle East nation, in an ultra-fundamentalist Christian Bible-Belt state or with the Ik tribe of Uganda, but deep down, I can't help but feel that folks is folks. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, at this very moment, people like you and me, who are going shopping, watching TV, having sex and squeezing out turds (not necessarily in that order).

Look, 48 Iraqi soldiers were executed by the "insurgents" (Rebels? La Résistance Nationale?) just a few days ago. Don't hear too much about them anymore, do you? That's because it's "them" who died, not "us". 13,900 civilians have been killed in Iraq so far. No big deal, it's just "them". Then a handful of guys get their melons hacked off and everyone makes a big fuss, all because they were "us," folks who eat Corn Flakes for breakfast and wipe their asses with Cottenelle (which, by the way, is not quite as soft as Quilted Northern).

Okay, 深呼吸...1, 2, 3. Blogging is so therapeutic. Didn't young people make a big fuss about this kind of thing not too long ago about another unjust war in Vietnam?

The October issue of The Sun magazine contained an excerpt from the book "At Hell's Gate," by Claude Anshin Thomas, a Vietnam veteran turned Zen monk. Nonviolence is at the core of Buddhism, but, like most Americans, I used to think that war is sometimes justified; that's why people can say that certain wars are "unjust." But one passage from this article, written by a man who has killed many, many people, gave me pause:

At speaking and teaching engagements, when I make the pronouncement that violence is never a solution, I am often asked what I refer to as the "Hitler questions." These include: If by killing one person you could save one hundred lives, wouldn't you kill that one person? If someone broke into your home and was intent on killing everyone in your family, wouldn't you use force to stop him? If we hadn't taken aggressive action against Hitler, what would have been the consequences?

These questions are legitimate. And they are also inherently rhetorical. I don't know what I would do if I were confronted with the sort of situations that they pose. The Second World War appears to have been successful, but is the world a safer place for it? Have those who aspire to gain power through the use of violence and aggression been deterred? Without a doubt, the answer is no. While it is true that Germany's defeat stopped the Holocaust, for me there still exists the nagging question: Did this bring an end to genocide?

Many people believe that, in certain circumstances, we should kill to prevent further killing. My hope is to help people discover what a terribly dangerous argument this is. This argument has been used to justify preemptive strikes, to maintain a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the planet a hundred times over, and to uphold the death penalty. It is being used as a rationale for the current occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan--and it was used by the Fascists and the Nazis to justify their agenda in Europe. As we can clearly see, this argument can be used to justify almost anything.

One million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide. Two million killed in the Sudan. Combined, that's half the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. And that's just in the past twenty years.

Is all this fighting making the world a better place? The Americas were formed by Eurpeans killing the native peoples. In Gangs of New York, Scorsese makes the point that the New York City of today arose out of brutal gang wars. Does everything have to be passed through a funnel of violence before achieving stability?

Then again, America might not be stable for too much longer. Maybe the post-election lawsuits will throw the American political system into chaos, regions of the nation will secede, and the US will be fractured into William Gibsonesque corporate states. Cool! Cyberpunk!

There is a big, dilapidated, windowless building in Jecheon that is similar to how I imagine Gibson's Bay Bridge cyberpunk shanty town. It houses lots of individually owned shops, with hundreds of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling on wires, like fluorescent cilia.

By the way, do you know one reason why this war has cost the US, from the beginning, so much more money than the Gulf War? In the Pappa Bush war, Kuwait picked up the gas tab. Not so for the current war. I paid $40 just to send a box from Japan to Korea. It costs a lot more to ship a 70-ton Abrams tank across the ocean and drive it around the desert.

Even if you agree with the basic tenets of the Bush theocracy, here's one good reason why you should vote his ass out of office.

Where's everyone going?

2004-10-22T10:42:00.000+09:00

Jecheon East Middle School held its school festival yesterday. It was nice, for a change, to see the kids dressed in regular clothes and having a good time. I was a little bit disappointed that no one bothered to invite me to watch the performances, but I would expect nothing less from this ice castle of a school. The teachers filtered out to watch the students sing and dance, and before I knew it, I found myself all alone in the teacher's room. Hell, North Korea could invade tomorrow and I'd be left sitting alone at my desk as the tanks rolled in.

The school actually had an "invasion drill" the other day to rehearse what they would have to do if the North invaded. Not surprisingly, I wasn't invited to attend. I'll have to fend for myself with my exacto-knife and ruler.

I was also surprised to discover that about forty students, who are training to become professional soccer players, live at the school in what appears to be a tiny concrete bunker. These "sports students" are common throughout Korea, I hear. They attend class only in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon, which alone is weird, but here's the real shocker: they are not required to take any tests. None! I used to think such specialized training programs existed only in places like Cuba, China and Axis of Evil nations. But apparently, this is how most professional athletes in Korea start out. The ones that don't make it become gym teachers.

The PE teacher Naeto Middle School was actually a weightlifting medalist at the Asian Games several years ago. I armwrestled him and nearly had my arm torn from my shoulder.

Whanky!

2004-10-20T11:12:00.000+09:00

Strange English for a grey Wednesday

An official looking sticker on the doors of my school: Don't waste wastes

Name of a bar in Jecheon: F.A.G.

Name of a clothing store in Fukuoka: Labia

Name of a jewelry shop in Singapore: House of Hung Jewelers

Written on the spine of a teacher's binder in bold letters: WHANKY

Search for Shangri-La

2004-10-19T16:53:00.000+09:00

Every year, as the weather turns cold and the nostrils start to mucify, I find myself feeling nostalgic for other places I've lived. It's Japan I miss more than anywhere else, and it's not the hot springs of Beppu, not the smoke stacks of Oita, but Miyazaki that occupies that special place in my heart. I think it was a powerful experience for me, those two years in the Zak. Never before had I lived in a foreign country, and never before had I had the opportunity to spend so much time with my grandparents. It was like coming out of the closet after an entire childhood deprived of contact with Japanese people. I wanted to run across Aoshima beach, naked, screaming, "Yes! I'm Japanese, and proud of it!"

A few years later, that sentiment was amended to, "Yes, I'm Japanese! Well, okay, not really, but I kind of am, sort of. My pronunciation is pretty good...what's that kanji again?"

Now and then, I wonder if it would be better to live in Japan instead of the States. A Japanese speaking foreigner, I'm a lot more marketable in Japan than in the US, which means that I'd probably make more money in Japan. It's proximity to Korea is convenient for Yoonsung, and moreover, Yoonsung already speaks decent Japanese. I find myself pouring over websites of companies like Maruhon, wondering what it would be like to work the rest of my life in a Japanese company.

But then I snap out of it. My god, if I have kids, they would never be Japanese citizens! Then there's the prejudice Yoonsung, and my child, are likely to encounter if we live in a large city. I read things like:

"Japanese children who are not born in Japan, or whose parents are not 100% Japanese, may experience racism from a very young age and can even be subject to beatings by their peers and adults, but mostly they are merely ignored. One recent example is of a 9 year old boy of 1/4 American heritage whose teacher aggressively pulled his nose while yelling 'Pinocchio, Pinocchio' until his nose bled. Initially the school refused to confront the issue until the boy's parents became incessantly vocal. The confused child was quoted as asking his parents if he was 'dirty' because he was 1/4 American. The teacher, a member of the Japan Teachers Union, was forced to resign."

Yes, like the US with Abu Ghraib, I'm sure Japan's Ministry of Education would claim this was an isolated incident, but shit like this is enough to convince me that Japan may not be the ideal place to raise my future 1/4 American children.

Here is a good research paper (pdf) about the state of Koreans in Japan.

By the way, Maruhon seems like a great company, but I'm not sure I'd want to live in Hamamatsu. It's an industrial city, home to Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki. After Oita, I've had quite enough of smoggy skies. The section "Preparing for the Tokai Earthquake" on the city's website also reminded me of the impending mega-disaster. I suppose living in the shadow of Mt. Fuji is the last thing you'd want to be doing when the big one hits.

Once, on the streets of Tokyo, a crazy woman grabbed my by the shoulders, looked me in the eye and said, "I can't wait until the big one hits and wipes all this scum off the earth."

It's no wonder the Japanese can be so fatalistic.

So where's the best place to go? There are plenty of places in the US with large, multiethnic populations, but they are also expensive. According to this fascinating report on the self-sufficiency standard in Hawaii (pdf), a family of three (2 adults, 1 infant) living in urban Honolulu (makai) has to earn $34,678 yearly just to make ends meet. That means living in a small apartment, no cable TV, no Play Station, no trips to McDonald's, no car, no movies. The situation is no better in other diverse US cities like San Francisco or New York. So I guess I'd better have a good job.

Then I look at home prices in Andong and think, "Dag! I could buy a brand new 890 square foot condo for $100,000!" Then I look at my employment options there and think, "Dag! I'll be 55 years old and screaming 'This is an apple!' to little kids!"

Then I take a deep breath and realize that no place is perfect, and that wherever I choose to settle down, I'll probably be pretty happy so long as there's no war or famine. As The George says, "She'll be alright."

Zoomquilt

2004-10-18T22:11:00.000+09:00

This is the trippiest site ever. Just put your face really close to the screen and hold down the arrow key.

As you can see, I'm using my time constructively.

I'm the center of the world

2004-10-18T09:27:00.000+09:00

It's weird how little things in my life fall into patterns. Is it coincidence or a grand alignment of the universe? For example: Right after I became obsessed with Hawaii, I discovered that Hollywood is going to make a movie about King Kamehameha starring The Rock. I bought a couple books by Thich Nhat Hanh, then immediately came across an article in The Sun magazine written buy a Vietnam vet who studied with him. After I get sidetracked while making a Scrabble game for my English class and read all about the cutthroat world of tournament play, I found that a documentary called Word Wars was an entry at the 2004 Sundance Festival.

These coincidences arise, of course, simply because I became aware of the existence of these things. It's like when you learn a new word. Before you learn the word, you never hear it being used; but as soon as you learn it, you hear it all the time. People don't start using that word more often because you learned it. I suppose it's human nature to think that you're the center of the world. Or it could be that I'm subconsciously picking up on current trends and vibes, and I'm nothing more than driftwood being tossed about on the waves of the media. Dag, man, that's some freaky stuff.

At least I'm not watching FOX. Ok, that's a lie. There are some shows on cable that are probably from FOX, and I'll admit, they are morbidly fascinating. Shows like "The Bachelor," "The Swan" and "America's Sexiest People" (or something like that) ("I'll give you a 8.4 on the face, but your thighs are a bit meaty, so 7.4 on the body.") I feel like taking a long, hot shower after watching shows like this. What happened to wholesome family entertainment like "American Gladiators?"

Right. I feel physically ill when I come to Jecheon East Middle School. Even as I write this, the bile is rising in my throat. It's totally psychosomatic, I know. The students are little punks, like peachy-skinned uniformed versions of Samuel L. Jackson's students in 187, a movie all fed up teachers should see. I'm lucky if the English teachers here speak ten words to me a day. Even nature is against me: when I opened up a classroom window last week, three huge mutant wasps flew into the room and started divebombing me. "Out, foreign devil!" I could hear them buzzing.

There is a 34 year-old 3rd grader at this school. He wears a school uniform and attends class with the rest of the 17 year-olds. I think the story is that he's a former gangster who's trying to set his life staight. I guess they don't have equivalency tests in Korea.

Clazziquai

2004-10-16T18:05:00.000+09:00

I've recently discovered a pretty cool Korean group called Clazziquai. Sound like a shameless ripoff of Jamiroquai? It is. Here's a little review I ran across. It says that the music can't be classified, which is the hallmark of a cruddy review, but it's the only one in English that I could find. How about we call all groups that draw upon various musical styles "Postmodern Pop?"

Clazziquai brings unique spice to K-pop

Listening to Clazziquai's first studio album, "Instant Pig," is like having a dish full of neat and colorful sushi rolls in front of you. The name of the group connotes its unique brand of fusion. Classic, jazz and groove (quai) are well blended in its melting pot. The band's members say they were inspired by legendary acid jazz group Jamiroquai. After tasting the eclectic mix, some say it sounds like fusion house with acid jazz and others say chill-out-lounge, but it is a meaningless effort to try to classify Clazziquai. The Clazziquai adventure started when Kim placed some of his music samples on his Web site (www.clazziquai.co.kr) back in 1999. Those caught the ears of Web surfers who soon got hooked on the exotic sounds and melodies. Kim's music became known through word of mouth and was soon played as background music in trendy bars and in the Soho of Cheongdam-dong and Apgujeong-dong, Seoul's trendiest shopping districts. Eventually, Kim signed a record deal for "Instant Pig." Three vocalists joined in Clazziquai's first project, each boasting a unique voice. Alex takes care of the male vocals while Horan and Christina lend a female touch to every track. From the first track, "You Never Know," which features samba rhythms to the last one, "Cat Bossa" that has a spice of bossa nova, the band shows a diverse yet intense musical spectrum. Some of their songs have already captured audiences outside of Korea. "Playgirl" is playing in the background in a Hong Kong television commercial.

The English lyrics are silly, as they always are in Asian music, but the music itself is a departure from the pop mold and uses something other than the mindnumbingly predictable 1-4-5 chord progressions and frenetic techno beats that characterize most K-pop (and J-pop and pop music anywhere). Then again, it's a bit depressing that pop music with something as simple as jazz chord progressions and bossa nova beats should sound so fresh and innovative.

The album, Instant Pig, has a some bossa, a samba and some R&B-ish beats, all with a dash of disco background strings and electronica blips. It also has the male and female vocals singing in octaves a la Sade, which gives it a just-quit-raining-sun-coming-out quality that I really love.

Here's what a Japanese guy had to say about the group.

Not all the songs on the albums are great. "Playgirl" in particular is downright annoying, which is probably why it's being used for a Hong Kong TV commercial. It's strongest and most popular tune is "Sweety," which can be downloaded here. Check it out.

The BMDS

2004-10-12T22:33:00.000+09:00

One more from Beppu. That tall thing is part of the Beppu Missile Defense System, which shoots down incoming missles from rival city Oita.

Beppu Bay

2004-10-12T22:32:00.001+09:00

Pic from Beppu

APU (The Ivory Prison)

2004-10-12T22:32:00.000+09:00

Another pic from Beppu

2004-10-12T22:27:00.000+09:00

A pic from last winter in Beppu.

The shy Japanese / mystery bulge

2004-10-12T21:50:00.000+09:00

If you've lived in Japan, you might have noticed how some people occupying toilet stalls flush as soon as you walk into the bathroom. Not because they're finished, but because they don't want you to hear their poopin' sounds. Well, the clever Japanese have invented a device to simulate the flushing sound precisely to serve this purpose. What will they think of next.

And, like the Singaporeans, young Japanese are starting to turn away from relationships and sex--not necessarily because they are shy, but because relationships can be more trouble than they're worth. I had a Japanese otaku friend who once told me he couldn't wait for Sony to invent a full body pleasure suit so that he could have virtual sex with his Play Station.

And, our debate-shy Commander-in-Chief might have been wired during the first debate! Not high-on-caffeine wired like he was during the second debate, but being fed lines through a mic strapped to his back. Man, I love this kind of stuff.

Deterioration, gravity, violence, sin

2004-10-08T20:43:00.000+09:00

I woke up yesterday morning to find a small chip in my front tooth. I discovered that if I moved my jaw in a certain way the tip of a lower tooth fit exactly into the chipped area, which means I'm probably grinding my teeth in my sleep. Stress? Too much kimchi? Maybe my going to the gym will remedy the problem.

I went to the Dr. Ha Dental Clinic after work and had the offending tooth shaved down a hair to prevent further cracking. The visit cost me about $3.

Dr. Ha is just about the best name for a dentist I can think of.

About the gym, EuroSpa. People tell me that it has the best baths and saunas in Jecheon, which is a good thing because people also tell me that Jecheon winters are bitterly cold, even colder than Seoul's. It seems the EuroSpa gym guy adheres to an outdated North Korean training method. He told me to work the same muscles (curls, shoulder press, bench press) for four days in a row. Now, I'm no expert on weight training, but I thought you're supposed to alternate muscle groups. He also came to me when I was doing half-crunches and said, "No no no! Head down, up, down, up!" I wish he'd leave me alone.

On a positive note, the aerobics instructor wears booty shorts that reveal the lower third of her gravity-defying buttocks. It's mesmerizing.

God, this is starting to sound like the typical boring blogs out there. If you're not going to blog about anything mildly interesting, why blog at all? Well, here's something interesting. A fistfight broke out between two boys today, in the teacher's room of all places. This was the real deal. These adorable little boys were punching each other, full force, in the face. A teacher broke up the brawl, then proceeded to punch the students himself! He then violently yanked back the head of one student by his hair and yelled in his face. One kid got a bloody nose.

Strangely, the teachers seemed less upset by this than they are by less serious infractions, such as improper attire. "Boys will be boys" seemed to be their attitude. It's a far cry from kids packing a 9 to school like they did at my school in the good ol' US of A, but still, damn, I could hear flesh smacking flesh from halfway across the room.

Magic Game Land has moved into the first floor of my building. It's a slot machine parlor. Their mascot is Winnie the Pooh. When I open my door, I am greeted by Carl Saganesque planetarium music, which always makes me feel like I'm setting off on some great journey when I go to work. Unfortunately for Jennifer, the music can be heard through her floor all night long.

One more year 'till alzheimers and cataracts

2004-10-06T21:36:00.000+09:00

"Prease to bro fire out, sonsengnim! Make happy wish!"

I've turned 29.

I had a very odd dream the other night in which I was watching a John Kerry campaign ad on the telly. There was that soothing, yet oddly compelling campaign ad voice saying something like, "John Kerry likes trees. He cares about the environment." Then I see a smiling Kerry, sporting a full beard, standing amid giant redwoods, wearing a plaid lumberjack shirt and cradling a baby.

That's it.

I sent in my absentee ballot today. I took my dream to be a sign and voted for the bewhiskered lumberjack. Not that it will matter, being from the staunchly Republican state of Virginia. Our great Commonwealth hasn't gone Democratic in over 40 years.

I also joined the Euro Spa health club today. It costs 60,000 won a month (about $60), but it's money well spent. The club lends you a clean pair of shorts and a shirt every time you go, so you don't have any sweaty clothes to take home with you except for your socks and underwear. Isn't that a brilliant idea?

Enlightened towns

2004-10-05T20:06:00.000+09:00

Have you checked out Sperling's Best Places? It's a pretty cool site that lets you compare most US cities in terms of living costs, crime, climate, etc. Really neat, but it feels kind of like the US News & World Report university rankings; it ranks cities according to criteria that make good sense on their own, but in the end, all these quantifiable factors don't seem to add up to what the city really is. The parts don't equal the whole.

Then I ran across this enlightened towns ranking by UTNE magazine. I think it has the right idea. It says:

It seems to us that a good place to live ought to offer more than just high salaries and a low crime rate. That's why we set out to find towns that are making a special effort to foster connectedness and contentment among all the people who live in them.

I like the sound of that. A lot of people would probably dismiss such places as being pinko hippie vegetarian retreats, but I'd rather live with a bunch of socially conscious pinko hippie vegetarians than people who, well, aren't. And anyway, Portland, Oregon made the list, and that place is da bomb. Check out the site. It even has a list of what they consider to be the most enlightened town in every state. Believe it or not, Norman, Oklahoma and Arlington, Virginia made the cut, and they certainly aren't commie-vege-hippie-fag retreats. (So maybe the ranking is wrong...)

So just going back to what I said in an earlier post, integrated cities that lack sprawling suburbs seem to get the high livability ratings. The human animal was not meant to sit in cars all day! We are social beasts (Starbucks, community performances, civic involvement), we are bipedal (sidewalks, compact city center, public transportation) and we like to go when nature calls (plenty of public toilets).

If I could have it my way, cities would be designed so that its residents could flow through the city, parkour style.

Anyway, it seems to me that we have a psychological craving for a town center, an area where we can congregate and feel connected with our fellow townsmen. That's why in suburbia carland, developers are building shopping centers that are designed to look like miniature towns. Take my hometown in Virginia for example. One of the most popular shopping centers is called, appropriately, Reston Town Center. It's a fake, pedestrian friendly "town" that's really just a shopping center. A more inspired example that takes advantage of existing architecture is Charlottesville, Virginia's Downtown Mall. It's an open-air mall formed from the buildings of the original downtown area, which gives it more of an urban renewal feel than that of a planned shopping area.

Even Japan is getting in on the act. Oita has its Park Place. Fukuoka has its Canal City (complete with a man made canal flowing through the mall).

Problem is, with the exception of Canal City, which was built to be a "city within a city", you still have to get in your car and drive to these places for the pleasure of taking a "downtown" stroll.

Not sure how Jecheon would fare in an enlightened town ranking, but Yoonsung thinks it is a little bit better maintained than Andong. Her guess is that Andong spends a good portion of its tax revenue on Hahoe Folk Village, the city's big tourist attraction. Jecheon doesn't have any tourist attractions to maintain, so more money goes to the city itself. Good theory.

I'm thinking about going to the Andong Maskdance Festival this weekend.

Oh, and Brad Embree, the sound guy for the infamous never-to-be-completed movie When Love Walks In (check out the video clip for a good laugh), has co-authored a book called Going Corporate. He's attending law school in New Orleans.

Le Parkour

2004-10-04T20:20:00.000+09:00

I've been checking out sites on parkour, an "extreme sport" originating in France in which the athletes (traceurs) run across, jump around and perform Spidermanesque acrobatics off of urban architecture. It looks, like, totally rad, dude. It's like skateboarding without the board.

Check out the gnarly vids on this dope website to see what it looks like. (Great French rap soundtracks too!)

I wonder if this has gotten any press coverage in the States? I certainly hadn't heard about it until a few months ago. The parkour community looks to be quite widespread, especially across Europe. I've found a couple websites devoted to the sport: Urban Freeflow and the UK Parkour Association.

Here is a good news article about parkour.

There is even a 2001 flick written by Luc Besson called "Yamakasi - Les samourai des temps modernes" that features Traceurs. I saw it in the video store in Japan with the tag line ７人の超人が飛ぶ！ but never got around to renting it.

Parkour takes the stuff you used to do on the playground as a kid--or running from the cops--and elevates it to an artform. All good fun, but falling off a roof must hurt a bit more than falling off a jungle gym.

Korean vs. Japanese teachers

2004-10-03T19:42:00.000+09:00

I suspect that Japanese school teachers lead more stressful lives than their Korean counterparts. Here's why:
1. Teachers in Japan must pay a visit to the homes of each and every student in their homeroom class. This practice was stopped in Korea a couple decades ago.
2. All school employees in Korea go home between 4:30 and 5:00, whereas in Japan, teachers normally stay long after the official quitting time. (I got kicked out of the building last week by the building manager at 5:10.) Many of these teachers must stay late because...
3. Japanese schools have after-school club activities that are headed by teachers. Korean schools have virtually no extracurricular activities. Many students go to hagwons, or private academies, after school to study specific subjects.
3a. Club activities may start before vacation periods end, thus cutting short the vacations of many teachers.
4. Teachers in Korea don't have to oversee lunchtime operations since everyone eats in the school cafeteria. (In Japan, 3 or 4 students in each class are given the responsibility of bringing the food to the classroom, serving the students and cleaning up.)
5. In Japan, public school teachers are frequently transferred to other schools in the prefecture. Likewise, Korean teachers must cope with life-disrupting transfers. But unlike in Japan, where one may have to move to a school clear across the prefecture, teachers here in Korea can be relatively sure that a transfer will place them a commutable distance from their current location.

Teachers in Korea, however, do still have to teach on Saturdays. And from looking through the English textbooks, it seems that teachers here have to cover a lot more material in a year.

All this is based on nothing more than what I've seen as an outsider looking in, so I'm sure there must be many other ways in which teachers in Korea find work to be stressful. I don't know yet if they have parents day here.

I did hear that the home visits were discontinued because they were too much of a hassle for the parents, not the teachers. For a similar reason--to reduce the burden shouldered by the guests--Korean wedding ceremonies have been vastly simplified from the traditional format. In Japan, each guest has to shell out $200-$300 at the door, resulting in the coining of the word 寿貧乏 (kotobuki binbo), which means to spend all your money to attend a large number of weddings in a short period of time.

Beppu pic 2

2004-10-01T23:57:00.000+09:00

One more pic I found waiting to be posted. Here is a picture of Beppu City, taken from above the Kannawa hot spring district. You can see some hot spring steam curling up from the chimneys. The mountain in the distance, slightly left of center, is Takasaki-yama, Japan's most famous monkey mountain. Check out how crowded Beppu is in spite of its small population (126,854 people). The city occupies a rather small area, a gentle, roughly triangular slope sharply bounded by mountains. Over the years, its hot springs have attracted a lot of tourist development, as well as people who sought the luxury of a home with hot spring water on tap. The city doesn't have very much agricultural land, another unusual characteristic for rural Japan.

Urban areas in Japan and Korea remind me of that game where you have to arrange your plastic buildings so that they fit perfectly on the board; a 3-D jigsaw puzzle with perfectly interlocking pieces and no room for grass or trees except in the properly assigned spaces.

When I went back to the States this past summer, I was immediately struck by how much green there was--not just in parks, but in urban areas. Jecheon in particular seems to suffer from a lack of green. Sure, there are plenty of mountains and rural areas surrounding the city, but within the city itself, there is not a single sizable park. Part of the problem is that Jecheon lacks a large river. Many Asian cities turn riverbanks into parkland, probably because these areas cannot be exploited in any other meaningful way. Andong, for example, has a river. It threfore has several big parks.

I found out today that a high school teacher in my English teacher's class is the wife of Jecheon's mayor. Before I knew this, I'd mentioned my thoughts to her about Jecheon's need for more parks. She promply conveyed my thoughts to her husband. Yes! A direct pipeline to the mayor! If I just casually mention, every week, one idea for improving Jecheon, who knows what kind of influence I could have on the city's future?

Beppu pic 1

2004-10-01T01:03:00.000+09:00

Found a couple old Beppu pics I forgot to post. The grassy mountain in the distance is Ogiyama. It's not the tallest mountan around, but it's my favorite. It's lack of trees gives you a great panoramic view, both from the summit and during the climb.

Here are some pictures of the Ogiyama fire festival.

Post Chuseok death at Dongjung

2004-09-30T22:10:00.000+09:00

The teacher who sat at the desk in front of me at Jecheon Dong Jung (East Middle School) passed away yesterday. He had been struggling with a serious disease for some time. The entire school assembled on the athletic field as the hearse-bus did a lap of the grounds. Everyone hung their heads for a single solemn minute. His wife wailed with grief.

Then the bus left and suddenly everything returned to normal. The kids were smiling and joking. Class was rowdy as usual.

I didn't really know the man--we'd only spoken once or twice--but his death served to remind me just how little contact I have had with death so far. Only a handful of people I know have died.

Today was also my 29th birthday. This combined with the death seemed to hammer home the message that I, too, will someday get old and die. In fact, the dirty little secret is that aging, not AIDS or cancer or Republicans, is the single biggest cause of death on the planet. Why didn't anyone tell me? But people have been dying for millennia! Why is it that humans suddenly find themselves old and unprepared for death? It's like an anxiety dream in which you've forgotten to study for the biggest exam of the year. Geez, most people in developed countries have at least 50 years or so to mentally and spirituallly prepare themselves, and everyone knows that cramming for a test doesn't work.

The Japanese word もらい泣き (morai naki) means to cry out of sympathy for someone, usually for someone else who is shedding tears of grief. To me, it looked like the teachers who were dabbing their eyes on the grounds were crying because the dead teacher's wife was crying, and not because they felt any real grief for his passing. And I found that to be the saddest thing of all. People spend much of their lives at work, but many maintain very superficial relationships with their coworkers. It's not natural.

Just like driving a car to the grocery store is unnatural.

What am I saying. Too much soju and karaoke. Good night.

Down with suburbia!

2004-09-28T22:59:00.000+09:00

New research suggests that suburbia is bad for your health.

See? Like I've been saying, living in a city is good.

As it says in the Salt Lake Tribune: "...living in a more sprawling urban area, such as Atlanta, has the health effect of making your body four years older than it really is, at least compared to those who live in more integrated cities, such as Seattle."

The article concludes by saying, "The desire for further multitudes of single-family homes on suburban cul-de-sacs, and our allergy to anything with the term 'high-density' attached, is going to have to be reconsidered. Our very health depends on it."

I'm telling you, the Koreans have the right idea. Build massive, affordable apartment blocks surrounded by parks, shops and restaurants. It sounds like a bad idea at first, and it looks damn ugly to single-family-home-loving Americans, but it makes more sense. High population density can be a good thing if it's planned well. Bring on the density!

Chuseok

2004-09-28T21:01:00.000+09:00

Dear Reader! I am officially back On The Grid! After a three month hiatus, The Fold is back, with the same old look and the same stream of consciousness style you have grown to accept. Thanks for reading, Rori. If it weren't for you...well, I'd probably keep posting anyway.

So, it's the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month again, and everyone knows what that means! The Wiccan Sabbat of Mabon! Or, as it's otherwise known in Korea, Chuseok (秋夕). It's a time when everyone piles into their Hyundai minivans and enjoys hours of quality time with family while stuck on gridlocked highways. Thankfully, I managed to make my way to my adopted ancestral home of Andong without a hitch.

Much like Japan's Obon, Chuseok is a time when Koreans pay respect to their ancestors and elders. Yoonsung spent all of yesterday preparing the traditional offering to the dead, an elaborate greasy pile of meat, fish and vegetables. This morning, a quick twenty minute drive brought us to a small group of houses surrounded by rice fields, where everyone shared Yoonsung's last name. Ji-ville.

Unlike the Japanese, most rural Koreans bury their dead in the mountains (i.e. they don't cremate). The first grave we visited was that of Yoonsung's great-great grandfather. Like most of the graves, it was nothing more than a grassy mound, about chest high, projecting out from a slope. Nothing indicated what lay underneath; no headstone, no sign, no graveyard. The offering was placed in front of the grave, makkoli rice wine was sprinkled on the grass and everyone kowtowed about ten times.

The second grave we visited was that of Yoonsung's father. It looked identical to the first. We kowtowed again. And again. And again. I have no idea what would happen to all these graves if people stopped tending to them. Just think, the mountains must be covered with centuries-old abandoned graves.

The Koreans are really into kowtowing, and not just to the dead. It was a bit of a kowtow fiesta at our next destination, Yoonsung's great-grandfather's youngest brother's wife's house. A lot of people came down from Seoul to kowtow to granny, a wizened brown peanut of a woman with a broad smile and sparkling eyes. Im Chansang, the director of a film called "The President's Barber", was one of the visitors. Seems he and Yoonsung share a great-grandfather. I asked him if he needed any foreign actors for his next project and he laughed--probably more at me than with me.

More than anything else, Chuseok convinced me that the Confucian ethic is alive and well in Korea.

I had, however, heard about various traditional games that people play during the holiday, and was a bit disappointed that the only game I got to play was Uno.

From the Korea Herald:
"A feeling of carefree abandon and joy like what you once experienced in your younger days can only be relived through the traditional games that are played during Chuseok. In the game of "somuginori," two people dress up as a bull and go door to door asking for food."

Actually, it sounds like a childhood memory that I would not want to relive.

Andong no sonata

2004-06-24T00:15:00.000+09:00

This is me and Yoonsung in what was supposed to be a romantic picture. It was taken on a newly constructed pedestrian bridge in Andong that goes out to a gazebo in the middle of a small lake. People actually drive out here on cool summer nights to take a stroll to the gazebo...and back...and to the gazebo again. Shows you what a happening place Andong is. "Hey, let's drive out to the bridge and walk to the gazebo!" I think it was even made by the city with taxpayers' money. They sure seemed to be getting their money's worth: back and forth, back and forth...

I hope I don't sound too cynical. I'm quite the gazebo aficionado, actually.

The other popular hangout is Andong dam. Attractions include bad food, a vaguely socialist-looking statue of happy workers, and the dam itself. Actually, I can't remember the statue. It might have been a giant hammer or sickle or something. Looked like it was lifted straight from the streets of Pyongyang.

I hope I don't sound too cynical. I love dams.

Kamegawa view

2004-06-15T08:04:00.000+09:00

This is how I want to remember Kamegawa, the area I live in now. Never again will my morning commute be this pretty.

For the love of Podunk and grit

2004-06-14T08:29:00.000+09:00

I saw two films in the past couple years that really moved me (that's how insecure guys say "made me cry like a baby"). They are:

1. Boys Don't Cry
True story of a girl who was raped and murdered because she tried to live her life as a guy. Ebert calls it a "'Romeo and Juliet' set in a Nebraska trailer park." I think the reason I liked has something to do with my fascination with Podunk, low-income, trailer trash culture. I feel a weird affinity for Po White Trash, perhaps because I spent my very early youth in Oklahoma hanging out with PWTs. (Or maybe I was one.) Once a PWT, always a PWT?

I'm not a big fan of tragedies that try too hard to make you cry, either by excessively focusing on the tragic fate of the protaganist or by leading you by the hand with a tear-jerker violin soundtrack. A good example of the former is Dancer in the Dark. Great songs by Bjork, great acting - by Bjork - and great Dogma film sensibilities. I really love all that stuff, and I really liked the flick, and I really like Bjork, but what's up with the last scene? It's like the director is saying to the audience, "Cry NOW! CRY, DAMMIT, CRY! You're not leaving this theater until you cry!"

*Btw, check out Gling Glo, which has Bjork on vocals before she was a superstar. Viking jazz! "Since it's release in 1990, Gling-Gló has attracted many dedicated fans world-wide. This despite the fact that almost all of its songs were recorded in Icelandic, an undeniably beautiful but largely unknown language. These Icelandic renditions of jazz classics combined Björk's unique vocals with the cool elegance of the Gudmundur Ingólfsson Trio (Gudmundur Ingólfsson on piano, Gudmundur Steingrímsson on drums, and Thórdur Högnason on bass)."

2. Promises
Good luck getting your hands on this one. Presently, it's only being sold to educational institutions. I was lucky enough to see it at the university where I work. Here is a short blurb about this painful but wonderful documentary.

And speaking of PWTs, one of the strangest movies I saw was Gummo, directed by the guy who caused such a stir by writing the screenplay for Kids. You can't get much more PWT than this movie. Most critics panned it. I liked it and am dying to see Julien Donkey-Boy.

Another one in the same gritty vein is What About Me, a no-budget black-and-white cult film about a woman who becomes homeless in New York. Good luck finding this one. I have no idea what it was doing on the shelves of Buster Video in Ebino, Japan. (Ebino is about as Podunk as it gets in Japan.) Surprisingly, the DVD is available on Amazon.

Gmail = Big Brother?

2004-06-11T09:02:00.000+09:00

The other day, I got an invitation from my father to sign up for Gmail. I made my account, and it looks awesome. The 1-gig storage and nested conversations are totally wicked, the ads are small and unobtrusive.

The privacy issues don't bother me one bit, but I can see how some people might be freaked out. Read this for example.

"After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record. This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed to force Google to produce a copy. Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries. Google's relationships with government officials in all of the dozens of countries where they operate are a mystery, because Google never makes any statements about this."

Hmmmm. Sounds like trouble waiting to happen. What is this "Google's databases are distributed all over the world" business? Something isn't right here. Does this mean, for example, that the Burmese government can force "Google Myanmar" to produce the email correspondence of a suspected seditionist and imprison or execute him based on the found evidence? I got the impression that all the emails are stored in a central Gmail headquarters, deep beneath the Nevada desert and protected by kung-fu guards.

Tasmanian wombat boy

2004-06-10T21:38:00.000+09:00

Here's me and "Death Racer" Andrew (right) after running the grueling 16.5km 大入島 (Onyujima) marathon. Click here for a view of the entire island.

Don't let Andrew's appearance deceive you. He's an adrenalin-addicted Tasmanian wombat-boy who thinks nothing of cycling 150km in one day - without any water; who will sprint 12km up a mountain, stoically ignoring the complete loss of feeling in his limbs; and who will run a 50km marathon - his first marathon ever - while enduring the pain of a stress fracture in his foot. And before long, he will be a Canadian Death Racer. Yes, he is truly a god among wombats. Either that or he's completely out of his friggin mind.

Easy skankin' in Beppu

2004-06-10T09:52:00.000+09:00

Big up mon! I did some interpreting for APU's sole Jamaican student today. Afterward, he told me a little bit about how Jamaicans view American universities. He obviously takes some pride in the Jamaican heducation system. He said that although the Jamaican system is marked by a British stuffiness and rigidity, it tends to produce students who are better heducated than Americans. In fact, he pointed out that Jamaican students who go the US for uni often wind up at the top of their class because the curriculum is so easy.

I wonder if it's true, or if he just has a very high opinion of himself? At any rate, it certainly is different from how Japanese and Koreans - and probably most of the world - view higher education in the US.

Would you believe there's an Oita-Jamaica Association? I imagine it's nothing more than a bunch of old farts sitting in a kominkan drinking shochu and listening to Bob Marley on a tinny boombox.

But me nuh kya about any of dat! Jesum Piece, me radda hear im speak in Patois! Unfortunately, there are only a handful of Jamaicans in Oita, so I'll probably never get the chance.

Check it bredda, unnu can henter dis ah sey one website fe read about Jamaican English grammar.

Jah guide.

Appeal Time

2004-06-09T10:11:00.000+09:00

My job requires that I translate poorly written or really stupid Japanese into English. Naturally, really stupid Japanese translates into really stupid English--unless you pour in a bit of your own special sauce, that is. I can't go overboard, of course, but I sometimes wonder if anyone would even notice if I did. Which brings me to....

English translations I was this close to doing. (Vol. 1)

豪華な景品が当たる抽選会や参加者のアピールタイムなどで会は盛り上がりました。

The event then reached a fever pitch, as a drawing for breathtaking prizes and a highly suggestive "Appeal-Time" whipped the participants into a bacchanalian frenzy.

This makes the Alumni Association's welcome reception sound much more exciting than it really was, don't you think?

Honolulu vs. LA, San Fran, Sacramento...and Herndon

2004-06-08T10:13:00.000+09:00

Here are some interesting statistics taken from City-data.com.

Races in Honolulu:
Japanese (23.3%)
White Non-Hispanic (18.7%)
Two or more races (14.9%)
Filipino (11.6%)
Chinese (10.7%)
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (6.8%)
Hispanic (4.4%)
Other Asian (4.3%)
Korean (4.2%)
Black (1.6%)
Vietnamese (1.6%)
American Indian (1.4%)
Other race (0.9%)
(Total can be greater than 100% because Hispanics could be counted in other races)
Ancestries: German (4.6%), English (3.8%), Irish (3.4%), Portuguese (2.2%), Italian (1.5%), French (1.3%).

Compare with Los Angeles:
Hispanic (46.5%)
White Non-Hispanic (29.7%)
Other race (25.7%)
Black (11.2%)
Two or more races (5.2%)
Filipino (2.7%)
Korean (2.5%)
Chinese (1.7%)
American Indian (1.4%)
Japanese (1.0%)
Other Asian (0.9%)
Asian Indian (0.7%)
Vietnamese (0.5%)
Ancestries: German (4.5%), Irish (3.8%), English (3.5%), Italian (2.6%), United States (2.6%), Russian (2.4%).

San Francisco:
White Non-Hispanic (43.6%)
Chinese (19.6%)
Hispanic (14.1%)
Black (7.8%)
Other race (6.5%)
Filipino (5.2%)
Two or more races (4.3%)
Other Asian (1.5%)
Japanese (1.5%)
Vietnamese (1.4%)
American Indian (1.2%)
Korean (1.0%)
Asian Indian (0.7%)
Ancestries: Irish (8.9%), German (7.7%), English (6.1%), Italian (5.0%), Russian (2.8%), French (2.3%).

And Sacramento, which, according to this article in TIME magazine, is "America's most diverse city":
White Non-Hispanic (40.5%)
Hispanic (21.6%)
Black (15.5%)
Other race (11.0%)
Two or more races (6.4%)
Other Asian (5.2%)
Chinese (4.8%)
American Indian (2.8%)
Filipino (2.1%)
Japanese (1.6%)
Vietnamese (1.5%)
Asian Indian (1.2%)
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (0.9%)
Ancestries: German (8.4%), Irish (6.8%), English (6.3%), Italian (3.8%), United States (3.1%), French (2.1%).

Look closely at the percentages for Asians. The differences are striking.

And just in case you're interested, here are the statistics for my "hometown" of Herndon, VA:
White Non-Hispanic (47.0%)
Hispanic (26.0%)
Other race (13.0%)
Black (9.5%)
Two or more races (5.3%)
Asian Indian (5.2%)
Other Asian (3.5%)
Vietnamese (1.8%)
Chinese (1.3%)
Filipino (1.2%)
American Indian (1.0%)
Korean (0.7%)

Surprisingly multi-ethnic, I thought, for a town of 21,000.

When considering these statistics, however, one should keep in mind the total population of these cities. What I mean is, a 4.2% Korean population in Honolulu, a city of 371,657 people, comes to 15,609 people. A 2.5% Korean population in Los Angeles, a city of 3,694,820, comes to 92,370 people. That's a lot more Koreans.

Percentages alone can be deceiving. For example, the city I live in now, Beppu, Japan, has a population of just 126,854 people. Yet, thanks to its high number of foreign university students, it boasts the second highest percentage of foreigners in Japan. (First place goes to Tokyo, of course.)

But then there's also the city's land area to consider: 85.7 sq. km. for Honolulu vs. 469 sq. km. for LA. And perhaps more importantly, population density: 1,674.4/km² (Honolulu) vs. 3,041/km² (LA).

Compare with Hong Kong, which has a population density of 6,700/km². Okay, okay, now I'm obsessed with population density.

From Wikipedia: "Despite the population density, Hong Kong was reported to be one of the greenest cities in Asia. The majority of people live in flats in high-rise buildings. The rest of the open spaces are often covered with parks, woods and shrubs. The vertical placement of the population explains why densely populated, green city is not an oxymoronic phrase."

I think this is how people should live. Screw big houses with big yards to mow. Wanna play frisbee? Go to the nice park down the street that's maintained by your tax money. Wanna take a trip? Take advantage of the efficient and affordable public transportation system that exists thanks to the high population density.

But with all those high buildings around, I wonder if you'd be playing frisbee in the shade?

Why doesn't Honolulu have a rail system? Because the population is not high enough or dense enough to support one. A light rail system running from Ewa to Downtown has been on the drawing board for years, but no matter how they juggle the numbers, the fact is that it would be a monumental financial disaster. Even the oft-showcased BART system in San Francisco has apparently done little to reduce traffic congestion in the city.

In contrast to the crowded streets of even the most rural areas of Japan, the traffic in Singapore was always moving at a good clip. It could have just been the time of day, but I got the distinct impression that the road system there was very well planned out.

Creoles and glass eyes

2004-06-07T09:23:00.000+09:00

Creole languages are not as exotic as you might think. Look at how foreigners speak to each other here in Japan. Even after just a few months, people start giddily peppering their conversations with Japanese words. I’m not exactly sure why this happens. For example, almost every single foreigner I have met in Japan refers to their cellular phone as a keitai. Why? Don't cell phones exist back home? My foreign coworkers call staff meetings kaigi. Why? Are meetings a uniquely Japanese phenomenon? Just this morning, a foreign coworker said to me, "It's just so mendokusai." Why didn't he say, "It's just a pain in the ass"?

I'll admit that I do it too, although I'm making a conscious effort to stop. It's obvious that being immersed in a foreign language makes your native tongue vulnerable to degradation, but why the selective lexical perforation? Why call a convenience store a conbini?

I think there are a few reasons why this happens. Some things are simply much more pervasive in Japan; conbini and jihanki (vending machines) are found on practically every street corner. Hell, there’s even a vending machine on top of Mt. Fuji!

Another reason might be that the object being spoken about is in fact uniquely Japanese with no English equivalent. Saying "uniquely Japanese" makes me cringe, but wouldn't you agree that it's nicer to say onigiri than "seaweed wrapped rice balls"?

And finally, there's the Cool Gaijin Factor. People use the Japanese word just to show how immersed they are in Japanese culture. Some people take this way too far:

"TSUKARETA! Today's kaigi was like, totally nagasugiru. Kacho told me to tsuyaku this one part and I was like, yo, wakaranai, okay? So are we goin' to an izakaya tonight? I'm ready for some yakiniku, dude. Remind me to swing by a conbini to pay my seikyushos before we go. I'll pick you up at, say, rokuji-han? I'll be driving an orange kei, you can't miss it."

But really, as weird as this may look, it's not a creole, or even a pidgin, since both parties are usually native English speakers. However, there are instances when two non-native speakers of Japanese are having a conversation in a weird hybrid language (me and my fiancée, for example). Exchange by two foreigners overheard on a train:

Gaijin A: 「ああ、それは目が落ちますよね。」
Gaijin B: 「ええ、そうですよね。」

I thought these guys were serious students of Japanese and that me ga ochiru (an eye falls) was an obscure Japanese idiom that I had never heard before. I looked it up in dictionaries and found nothing. I asked Japanese people. Nothing.

It's not an idiom. It doesn't mean anything, aside from the literal meaning of "an eyeball drops out of your eye socket", but to these two people, it obviously meant something. Perhaps it's an idiom that just happened to exist in the native tongues of both. I felt as if I'd witnessed the birth of a new creole.

Or maybe he really had a glass eye that kept popping out of his head.

Rap Reiplinger, Jake Shimabukuro and cigar box guitars

2004-06-04T05:10:00.000+09:00

Just some things to fuel my obsession with Hawaii:

Rap Reiplinger is an influential Hawaiian comedian.

From the Rap DVD description:
"Ask every comedian in Hawai'i today to name the one person who inspired them, and Rap Reiplinger's name will come up time and time again! Rap was quite simply the most successful comedy genius ever from Hawai'i. His unique character-driven style of humor reminds us of our childhood and the local ways in which we grew up. His "bits" appeal to everyone, and there is not a person today that doesn't incorporate his phrases into their everyday conversation."

へぇぇぇぇぇぇ

Jake Shimabukuro is a ukulele musician. Heard of him before? Until I heard Jake, I never knew that such a tiny, four-stringed instrument could be so versatile. Kind of like how I felt about the bass guitar after discovering Jaco Pastorius.

Jake is touring with banjo god Bela Fleck, which is pretty impressive. Maybe not if you've never heard of Bela Fleck. There are a lot more people who know about Fleck now thanks to the success of the Cohen Brother's film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, which helped revive interest in bluegrass music.

Here's an article about Bela Fleck's 2002 performance in Hawaii.

There's something intrinsically beautiful about music produced by "primitive" instruments, I think. Something about making music with an instrument that has severe limitations, whether it be in terms of pitch accuracy, octave range, volume, or chordal capability.

One of the most expressive instruments in the world is the Chinese erhu, and that only has two strings!

Even cigar box guitars, despite their simplicity, can produce music with real, gut-wrenching soul. A buch of free MP3s of Shane Speal's cigar box guitar music can be found here.

Hey, it was good enough for Hendrix, right?

"'Eight year old James Marshall Hendrix wanted so much to play the guitar to set his poems to music that he used a broom to strum out the rhythms in his head until he crafted a cigar box into his own guitar.' (from Pittsburgh Post Gazette) Jimi's cigar box guitar had rubber bands wrapped around the box, serving as strings."

And guess what Hendrix's second guitar was? A ukulele! No joke!

That is all.

Glocal Engrish

2004-06-03T13:45:00.000+09:00

Have you heard the word "glocal"? No, it wasn't coined by Dubya. Although it doesn't show up on any of the One Look dictionaries, it is, apparently, a real word.

People thought I had mistyped "global" when they saw the word pop up in a translation I did the other day. The word is a bit suss, I agree. It's a combination of the words "global" and "local", and often seems to be accompanied by the phrase "think globally, act locally". (Or was it the other way around?)

There's even an international glocal forum. After living in Japan for five years, one immediately assumes that any funny sounding English word is just some more Japanglish that one gets accustomed to seeing here. Better be careful. Absurd sounding words might actually be English legit.

Surprisingly, the word does show up on ALC, The Greatest Colloquial English-Japanese Dictionary Ever Made.

glocal
【発音】glo'ukl
【形】地域性も考慮してグローバルな視野に立った◆【語源】global + local

A coworker coined the word "grappy", a combination of "great" and "happy" (not "great" and "crappy").

Go here if you want to see a large collection of authentic Japanese Engrish. This stuff used to really crack me up, but nowadays, I almost see it as poetry. Check out this Japanglish poem (nearly a haiku!) that is printed on the windows of the university gym:

When the strong wind
Close and lock the window
To prevent from falling

Wow, that is like, totally deep, dude!

Have a grappy day.

Super Size Me

2004-06-02T12:41:00.000+09:00

Is this guy Michael Moore's alter ego?

Read also what Ebert had to say about Super Size Me.

Hayasaki Osamu

2004-06-02T09:05:00.000+09:00

On Monday, I got to talking with a photographer who had come up to take photos for the next issue of the university magazine. Said he was born in 1947, which would make him...57 or so. He owns his own studio in Oita now, but he told me he'd like to quit the commercial stuff in a few years so that he could concentrate on artistic photography.

He told me a story about what inspired him to take up photography. When he was in high school, he had an opportunity to meet Hayasaki Osamu, a young photographer who was at the time winning plaudits from around the world for his photograph of sprinter Bob Hayes in the Tokyo Olympics. (I think that must be Hayes on the famous poster.) His eyes really lit up when he started talking about Hayasaki's work. I think it was a defining moment in his life.

The site I linked to says of Hayasaki:
"Untimely death due to a fall during a photo shoot on a lighthouse in Niigata Pref. His camera was pointed toward the Sea of Japan, probably for ocean sunset shots." What a classy way for a photographer to go. If only we could all go out doing what we love. I guess I'd like to go out blogging. Just kidding. You hope.

Funny though, the photographer I spoke with said that Hayasaki fell of a cliff while taking photos of birds. Close enough, I guess. For people like this, maybe the myth is more important than the reality. Maybe I'm just saying that because I recently saw Big Fish.

Tora! Tora! Tora!

2004-06-02T00:11:00.000+09:00

Warning: only for those truly obsessed with Hawaii. Click here for an awesome Landsat 7 satellite photo + topographic map composite image of Oahu. (From the National Air and Space Museum's website.) That's Pearl Harbor you see there. See the little mouth of the harbor? Bridging it would be really helpful for commuters but the Navy won't allow it. Okinawa has a similar situation, where the military won't allow tunnels to be built underneath their sprawling bases (for good reason). To get from one side to the other, you have to drive all the way around. Really screws up traffic.

I really have a thing for aerial photos and maps. Could be a god fetish.

Blogging: worse than heroin

2004-06-01T16:03:00.001+09:00

I think I should quit this blogging thing before it gets out of hand. Read this article from the NY Times. My god, it's destroying lives! The fact that I'm posting this very message on my blog is making me feel depraved.

Like I said before about my Hawaii obsession, I have this sinking feeling that I'm doing nothing more than following the popular trends of the day. This NY Times article was published on May 27. That's just six days ago, man! Geez, why don't I just go out and buy the latest Britney Spears album while I'm at it.

I'll probably turn on the TV tomorrow and hear: "20-somethings interest in S. Korea at an all time high! More Americans are marrying Koreans then ever before! Recent study shows that 68% of half-Japanese males are obsessed with Hawaii and flamenco!"

Laconic like the Spartans

2004-06-01T15:24:00.000+09:00

Laconic:
"The study of the classics allows one to understand the history of the term laconic, which comes to us via Latin from Greek Laknikos. The English word is first recorded in 1583 with the sense "of or relating to Laconia or its inhabitants." Laknikos is derived from Lakn, "a Laconian, a person from Lacedaemon," the name for the region of Greece of which Sparta was the capital. The Spartans, noted for being warlike and disciplined, were also known for the brevity of their speech, and it is this quality that English writers still denote by the use of the adjective laconic, which is first found in this sense in 1589."

City of love and lava

2004-06-01T09:55:00.000+09:00

Saw a show the other night about the soaring crime rate in Japan. The show started off talking about security cameras installed on the streets of the UK. Those bloody Brits have been installing cameras like mad for the past decade or so in a full-on effort to discourage street crimes. There are now some 4,000,000 security cameras installed in public areas across the UK, and in a typical day, a Londoner can expect to be photographed around 300 times by just walking around outside. (Kinda like in Minority Report, huh?) The cameras have proven reasonably successful as a deterrent, with some areas experiencing a 14% decline in crime over the past six years. However, the show pointed out that a certain London district lacking such cameras - which is incidentally right next to an area that experienced a 14% decline - saw a 7% rise in crime. The bad guys just moved down a couple streets, and the ones who didn't want to go through the trouble just put on face-concealing hoods and went back to work.

They also talked about some other stuff, like the work of the LAPD, but the main focus of the show was crime in Japan. As you may know, Japan's crime rate has soared over the past decade. In fact, since 1985, crime has risen in every single prefecture and city district - except for one: Kagoshima. Check this out, dude: over the past 20 years, the crime rate has dropped an astounding 18% in Kagoshima City. The show went on to say that this decline can be attributed to the introduction of a citizen police force - guys that walk around the streets at night to keep kids in line - and the establishment of community centers (kominkan) near each public school.

Anyway, I guess the point of the program was that crime issues won't be solved by cops and cameras; you need to have community involvement to address problems at their source.

When the World Cup came to Oita in 2002, the local government was so paranoid about hooliganism that they called in cops from all over the prefecture, and maybe even from Miyazaki, to patrol the streets. With the high concentration of cops in Oita City, I imagine it would have been an opportune time to steal a new plasma-screen TV set from anywhere else in the prefecture. (I really want one of those.) When the games actually happened, however, the streets were pretty much deserted. I remember driving through Oita and seeing both sides of the street lined with cops, kind of like that scene in Matrix 3 with all the Agent Smiths lining the street during the big showdown. The cops peered into my windows to make sure I wasn't a hooligan, and then went back to picking the lint off their uniforms. My quatra-lingual friend John was working the emergency hotline for foreigners throughout the event. I don't think he received more than five calls, and none of those were true emergencies. He said that one guy rang to ask how to make a long distance call to Mexico. Another was a case of dangerous loitering by scary foreigners with facial hair. They cops asked them to move along. They did.

So crime isn't that bad in Japan. Not yet. Anyway, most of the crimes committed here are like breaking and entering, bag snatching, car theft and that kind of thing. You can call me crazy if you want, but I'd much rather get my wallet stolen than get shot by an assault rifle. (That's American crime for ya. Yeeehaw!!) But maybe that's just me.

But then again, Kagoshima has that smoldering volcano, Sakurajima... (Which friggin erupted when I was riding my bicycle across it, by the way.) Maybe the fear of the volcano god keeps the youth in line. Heck, maybe that's what keeps the entire nation in line! With so many earthquakes and volcanoes that could demolish a city in seconds, the Japanese don't need crime to spice up their lives. They're too busy praying to the gods, or repairing the damage caused by the gods. Look at the Kobe earthquake of 1995. It killed 5,500 in one fell swoop. Who needs violent crime when you've got nature to contend with.

Incompetent ninjas

2004-05-31T21:47:00.000+09:00

A video of a couple of incompetent ninjas. Made me laugh. A little. Not sure how long this link will work...

City state in the sun

2004-05-31T10:06:00.000+09:00

Sorry to keep rambling on about Hawaii. Like I said, I'm obsessed.

From an essay about Honolulu entitled "Paradox in the Sun" by travel writer Jan Morris:

"It is as though a Lisbon were to exist on the Cape Verde Islands, or a Bombay in the Maldives. Honolulu is 2,400 miles from the nearest continental shore, and, except for a few neighboring Islands, nothing but open sea lies between O'ahu and California, Japan, Alaska, or South America. History could not have chosen a more improbable spot for the creation of a metropolis."

I really like how that sounds. She goes on to say:

"Honolulu already sees its destiny as a prime point of contact for all the countries of the Pacific Rim - the Geneva, as one visionary lately put it, of the Pacific. It is almost happening already. This hardly feels like an American city nowadays, even of the most exotic kind. It is multinational to a degree unknown even in the most teeming immigrant cities of Mainland USA, and it looks to its Pacific neighbors, Japan, California, Australia, British Columbia, far more naturally than it looks to the distant authority of Washington D.C."

Just look at how the University of Hawaii makes special provisions for students from the Pacific islands, much in the same way that some Mainland universities may give assistance to black or Hispanic students. And look at the composition of American students enrolled at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan (where I work). Not that there are very many American students to begin with - fewer then 20, I think - but most of them hail from Hawaii.

Morris also describes Honolulu and Oahu as being like a city-state. I like that too. It conjures up images of ziggurats and adds to the city's mythical image. Are there any other cities in the world that are considered city-states? Singapore is one. I never realized how small Singapore was until I went there and found that one can drive cross the entire island in an about an hour! I see a disproportionately large number of Singaporeans here simply because they can afford to travel. The nation's wealth makes it seem larger than it really is in the collective consciousness of the world (or maybe it's just me).

I wonder if Sealand could be classified as a city-state?

Chinese propaganda art

2004-05-30T22:54:00.000+09:00

Here's a great site dedicated to Chinese propaganda posters. Check it out.

Korean names and kumamoto

2004-05-30T09:31:00.000+09:00

I've been thinking about baby names. Not that my fiancée and I are planning on having kids any time soon, but when we do, I'd like to give my child(ren) names that sound okay in both Korean and English. This is more difficult than you may think. Just take a look at how many Korean names sound or look ridiculous in English: Chin, Du, Gook, Ho, Doh, Suk, Bong, Hee, Goo, U, Dong, So, Shin, Woong... There seem to be precious few names that sound good in English. I suppose this holds true for many non-Western names. I'll even admit that my own first name, Hiroyuki, sounds pretty silly in English. (It sounds okay in Japanese though. Trust me.) There are a few Japanese names, like Ken and Naomi, that sound good in English. So far, I've found only one name that sounds okay in English, Japanese and Korean: Hana. Here's another nice name that exists in both Korean and English: Lia.

If I have a boy I guess I'll just have to call him Bong. Have some good name suggestions? Please drop me a line.

Here's an interesting site that allows you to search baby names by country/ethnicity of origin.

I heard from Jeff, a Kenyan guy here in Oita, that "kumamoto" means "a loose woman" in Swahili. It's also a city in western Kyushu, Japan. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to Kumamoto University, huh? Even stranger: in the language spoken in Jeff's village, the word oshiri means butt, which is exactly what oshiri (お尻）means in Japanese! This is it! Definitive proof for the Out of Africa theory for the Japanese language!

Here's something else that I found interesting: There's a Korean word 힘들다(himdulda) that means "exhausted". Now, check this out. In the Japanese dialect spoken in Miyazaki, a city in southeastern Kyushu, Japan, hindareta means the same thing! I think this is pure coincidence though, since the "da" at the end of the Korean word is simply the infinitive ending for verbs that corresponds to "ru" in Japanese. So actually, we should be comparing himdulda and hindareru. I guess they're not so similar after all. I was all excited when I first heard it though.

As I write this, I'm listening to an interview with the director of The Day After Tomorrow on NPR. He sounds like a complete woong if you ask me.

It's amazing how nasal American English sounds to me now. I never noticed that before.

Japanese TV rulz!

2004-05-29T14:47:00.000+09:00

Ask any gaijin what they like the most about Japan and they will usually say stuff like: the people, culture, food, temples, hot spring baths...that kind of thing. I like all that stuff too - except for the hot spring baths, which I quit going to a couple months ago - but what I love the most is the glowing box in the corner of my little tatami room.

I really like Japanese TV. No, I don't think you understand. I REALLY REALLY like Japanese TV. In fact, as pathetic as it may sound, I will miss the TV programs here more than anything else when I leave this country.

For example, there's the trivia show that features useless but fascinating facts. Did you know that the little projections on the upper half of temple bells are called 乳(chi chi)? That means "breast" or "nipple". Did you know that the pictures of Natsume Soseki on the 1,000 yen note and Inazo Nitobe on the 5,000 yen note were taken at a wedding? On today's show, they investigated a question that has surely been on everyone's minds for years: The word "stupid" is written 馬鹿 in Japanese, where the first character means "horse" and the second "deer". (There must be an interesting etymological story behind that.) So which animal is actually the dumber of the two? The horse or the deer? After a series of sketchy IQ tests, it was determined that the horse is the dumber animal.

After each bit, the panel members hit a button in front of them a number of times relative to how interesting they found the trivia. Each hit counts as one へぇ (he), which might be translated as "Hmmm" in English. Then at the end of the show, they tabulate the total number of he's for each piece of trivia to determine the winner. The person who submitted the winning trivia receives a golden brain trophy which opens up to hold a loaf of "melon bread".

Do American TV programs have such tongue-in-cheek humor? Not as much, I think. In fact, Japanese humor sometimes reminds me of British humor: good natured, sometimes deadpan, lots of slapstick, and always self depreciating. I love it.

There are so many interesting programs like this on TV. My all time favorite, however, is 世界うるるん滞在記 (Sekai Ururun Taizaiki), a show that sends one celebrity or TV personality (usually an actor or musician) to live in a foreign country for one week. Sometimes they are sent to developed countries, and other times they are sent to live with forest-dwelling tribes that walk around naked and wipe their asses with leaves. The program does a great job of showing that all the peoples of the world are fundamentally the same; we all value family, children, friends; we all enjoy eating; and we must all cope with sickness and death. And we all wipe our asses in one way or another.

I always wondered why the US doesn't have a similar show. Could it be because many - or most - countries of the world would not be so welcoming of an American guest? Japan has done a pretty good job of spreading good will around the world after WWII. I suppose if you are an island nation with few natural resources surrounded by countries that are still deeply upset about their wartime abuses, you'd better spread good will like there's no tomorrow. Are there any Western countries that feel animosity toward Japan? None that I can think of, especially after Japan's bubble burst. I guess that's why they are much more free to roam around the globe without fear of encountering enmity. I mean, imagine a show where an American goes to live with a French family for a week. When you think about it though, it's less that the French would be unwelcoming and more that Americans simply wouldn't give a damn about someone learning how to make croissants in Paris.

Have you noticed how many of the Japan Self Defense Force boys in Iraq have mustaches? Apart from construction foremen, I rarely see mustached men in Japan. It seems to me that the troops are doing their best to respect the local culture. It may sound inconsequential, but these little gestures can make a huge impression on people's minds.

I envision that in the near future, we will be able to watch any TV station in the world for a reasonable fee. Some things are available on-line, and a few stations, like NHK, broadcast via satellite TV services, but there's still a ways to go before we get Meta Cable. Thousands of stations at your fingertips! That's gonna be awesome.