SEND MY ROOTS RAIN.

JET for Sale

2006-08-26T17:27:00.000+09:00

Here I am at 1:30 in the morning on a Friday night with nothing to do but blog away until I get sleepy. So far, my return to the United States has been uneventful. I saw a homeless man try to shoplift some cold medicine in the local supermarket. The poor guy was not that incognito about his plan. He merely walked into the store with a plastic bag, grabbed a handful of packages of medicine (whilst knocking down various other brands) and then strutted towards the door in an extremely conspicuous manner. The store manager saw this all and apprehended him. It was a scene that I had never experienced, nor can imagine experiencing, in Wakayama. What else is happening? My stomach is having trouble adjusting to the rich American diet. I find myself being unintentionally wasetful here, given that the portions of food here are, on average, triple that of Japan. I ordered a turkey sandwich and salad today only to receive a behemoth of a sandwich and a pile of greens that looked like someone had opened up a lawn mower's refuse bag on my plate. Two open faced halves of focaccia with turkey, bell peppers, onions and goat cheese with a mountain of vegetables spilling out over the plate. Later this afternoon I made my first trip to downtown San Francisco for an interview with an English school called Aspect. They are located in the heart of downtown, right at the foot of Chinatown. I stepped out of Montgomery Station, took the San Francisco wind and hills in full stride, but was stopped in my tracks by my archenemy--diarrhea. Naturally there was a Starbucks close at hand whereat I relieved myself of the aformentioned sandwich. Then I went in for the interview. The school itself seems really nice, with many students from all over the world, though mostly of East Asian (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and Western Continental European (French, German, Italian) descent. I felt that I struggled to sound as professional as my interviewer would have liked, but she was all smiles throughout the process. That doesn't mean anything, yes, but I am slowly weening myself from my persistently pessimistic ways. After we were done, I made an awkward exit and hopped on Bart again for the 30 minute ride to Berkeley. A whole day spent for one job interview--probably more than I can say for some of my days on JET.

All in all, I have felt myself worried and lonely, as well as excited and hopeful. That of course is a contradiction (I think), but it is nonetheless true (I know I am defying the scholastic's definition of truth, but what the hell...). Some things are verifiably true: I must move out, soon. I cannot survive living at home for very long. However, I need money. Rent and all that other stuff. So I must find a job, even if I am an underqualified and picky dilettante whose intellectual and creative resources have been left to dry for some years (so it feels). Native English is slowly coming back to me. By this I mean the English native to the Bay Area. It has been a hard first few days trying to get my words out without long pauses and moments of deep concentration on a particular verb that I forgot. This is all coming from a future grammar teacher. From now on, this blog might be utilized as a practice pad for my English prose. Sorry to you readers out there who may be wondering why I suddenly sound like a garrulously phatic chatterbox.

I think I will call it a night soon, having gotten nowhere with this entry. I got an invitation to some punk show, from what I gather, at a club called "Kimo's" in SF. I wonder if the club owners know that the Japanese call a certain part of a cow's intenstine kimo. I, for one, found that not so delectable treat to be extremely kimoi...Still working on getting Japanese to work on my home's computer. My laptop is being reclaimed next week. Thinking about buying a new Mac, but also must consider moving out and all the other things money can buy. Donations are being accepted year round, folks.

Oyasumi everyone.

Reading the Map

2006-08-14T14:55:00.000+09:00

Dear Reader,

However inappropriate this entry may seem, I beseech you to read on a little bit more and consider in a manner unique to your way of seeing things some aspects of the present age that have currently been on my mind throughout this particularly uneventful afternoon.

This morning the sunlight's soundless warmth brought me out of the shoaled regions of a dreamless sleep, my thoughts never venturing far beyond the shores of consciousness. Thus I started today with a less than adequate amount of sleep. I rode through traffic from a suburb of Osaka to Wakayama, a journey that normally takes half an hour. Today it took ninety minutes, all while toughing out the sweltering summer heat in a groggy, slightly nauseated condition. Upon getting home, I took a cold shower and turned on the air conditioner. I reclined on the lonely couch, whose days are numbered now, and read the Master Word Lists's "a" section in the GRE test book, a book that I have neglected in the past three years. Three years, yes. Wow. I still can't tell you with aplomb what aberrant truths of existence I have garnered by default in my abortive labors to prepare for a test that I should have taken long ago. In any case, even though I don't feel that I have gained anything, what I have lost may be important. That which I have lost has a singular name in this endless list of persons, places, and things: time.

In fact, it took me over an hour to start writing this blog. Where did that time go? Mostly to the unreal task of looking for a job online, an undertaking that deadens even the most active and fruitful mind. I got as far as sending a few emails, and as I got up to refill my drink here at the internet cafe, I realized that the back of my shirt was stuck to my back with a brackish lagoon of sweat indicating my toil was certainly real, if only for a moment. After I returned from the drink station, I sat myself down, resolved to make a statement on how much time gets wasted here at the internet cafe, all while there are people writing songs, writing books, living their lives creatively, exploring themselves.

It seems that I have yet to conquer the neuroses of the times, the constant reversion to diversions that end in a nauseatingly rootless "anomie" (one which is the solipsists's revered euphemism, and which merely masks a sterility that, oddly enough, abounds these days). In Sawako Ariyoshi's "The River Ki", the protagonist Hana silently and imperceptibly resists her daughter's rejection of traditional Japanese customs and gender roles. Hana has Fumio study koto, traditional Japanese harp, despite the latter's dislike of such antiquated and impratical pursuits expected of women. In one of their lessons, Hana observes her daughter's struggle to come to terms with tradition and understands that however much Fumio champions the cause of "progress" or "change," she is still left in a lonely and vulnerable position without understanding of what she is changing.

I realize that this example may not be immediate to everyone, seeing as it comes from a novel few people will care to read. Yet in talking about these "neuroses," these ways in which we "kill time," to use a very ambiguous cliche, I cannot help but to turn to literature for guidance. After all, what else could I be remembering from four years in college if not what T.S. Eliot calls the "present moment of the past," being aware "not of what is dead, but of what is already living"? As the hours pass by, I find that the internet has the uncanny power of blinding this awareness, giving one instead what is "already dead." My thoughts may be like ghosts to you, things which you can imagine but neverthless do not believe. Even so, I often think back to the difference between what people say about a world without truth, as if just saying so magically invokes the presence of something we should all realize, something which is, oh no...true. I might as well have spoken up when there was time, but now what looked like a shortcut has only gotten us back to the same fork in the road--the same point which, for some reason, we can't find on the map. And what a strange, wonderful, and endless map it is. Something that you sure as hell can't google in your free time...

Thank You, Jinanbou!! ありがとうじなん坊！

2006-08-11T13:56:00.000+09:00

My days are winding down here, with little over a week left. My apartment is still cluttered with all sorts of domestic detritus that I have never used, never even dusted, in the time I have spent here. Instead of attending to the more practical matters of life, I find myself caught in reflection for a couple of hours, staring at the hills of Kishigawa and trying to imagine myself not as hot as I actually am. When I come out of this redolent stupor, more often than not I find myself engaged in reunions of all kinds--visiting the people who I have become close to here, who have helped me on the way, even if it just to "chew grass on the wayside"--dear friends who have insisted with all sincerity that I come back to Japan again as soon as possible.

Yesterday I visited Jinanbou san. Mr. Ohara (aka Jinanbou) runs a yaki tori restaurant by the name of Jinanbou (meaning "second eldest son"--which he is) just down the street from where I lived in Kibi Town. During my first year in Japan, I went to his eatery about two to three times a week for cheap, delicious yaki tori and free Japanese conversation practice. It was rough at first, and I still have times when I draw a complete blank in the course of conversations in the local dialect (Arida ben), but this experience and acquaintance motivated me to push through the initial difficulty and frustration of trying to speak a new language as natively as possible. Ohara san and his wife Mutsuko are the parents of four charming, bright and lively girls, ranging from ages five to twelve. Yesterday we spent the afternoon playing video games (the Taiko game almost everyone is familiar with, as well as a more educational English trivia game for Nintendo DS), eating snacks, and just being innocent and rowdy like little kids are supposed to be in their indellible honesty. Afterwards, Ohara took me for a ride on his Harley along the coast of the Kii Peninsula. We stopped at a famous park called "Shirasaki" or "White Cliff Coast." The rocks there are a shade of grayish white that reflects the sunset beautifully. I will miss Japan, in particular friends like Jinanbou san and his family, who made my time here something special, who welcomed me in as a member of their family. ありがとうさん！

*Photos*
1)My apartment building from the train. I lived in the second room from the right, if that interests anyone besides me...
2) Me on the Harley that I rode (on back of course)
3-4) Shirasaki Coast
5)Ohara Musume
6)Mr. Ohara, sporting the towel wrap, the musisians in Kibi I used to play with, and me having a bit to eat and drink at Jinanbou...

Jeff's Connection

2006-08-07T13:54:00.000+09:00

Last night, all three of the bands I have performed with over the past three years held a farewell concert at Wakayama City's famous live venue, Old Time. It was a fun and emotional evening, full of familiar faces, good music, and a few tears at the end. When I first moved to Wakayama City, I had a chance to see Mr. Kawabata (we call him Aniki), sing and play guitar with One (pronounced OH-NE) at Take Five, the jazz club across the street from my apartment. At that show, Mr. Kawabata sang a rendition of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," a performance which moved me to tears. It had been a long time since I shed tears of joy like that. I think the last time was when I saw Brian Blade's Fellowship in San Francisco with my brother John and close friend Nick Thom. The evening started off with The Redemptions, Wakayama's premier roots reggae band, led by Norihiro Kakiuchi, an original guitarist/vocalist, a funny and great man. Also on the lineup was Hot Sauce, a soul/funk/R&B cover band formed by Yoji Takada, also a wonderful man who is passionate about New Orleans music and culture. The last band, Shigeru One's Wave, is the first band with whom I used to sit in back when I lived in Kibi. Mr. Kawabata ended the night with another moving peformance of the aforementioned track. I think it was the first time I cried while playing drums. I didn't know I would or could do that. Thank you, Mr. Kawabata. You are a truly gifted and special man. I am grateful to have met you and played music with you. Thank you everyone for taking me in and giving me the chance to play music, the chance to learn from you all in my time here.

Some pictures of the event, taken by a former student of mine at Koyo, Yuji Murakami (and also a very adept heavy metal/hard core drummer). In descending order: The Redemptions, Sweaty Jeff, Hot Sauce, One san and Wave, Mr. Kawabata, and Jeff's Connection.

Thank you One san, Takada san, Nori san, Shimamoto san, Kawaguchi san, Shoko san, Kayo san, Naomi san, Chabo san, Yoga san, Yuusaku san, You Key Man, Shima san, Uemae san, Kawabata san, and all the friends who came out to listen last night. I will never forget you...ありがとうね！

I downloaded a video of Kawabata's performance from last night onto MySpace, so you can have a listen/look at my page (just click on "Videos"): www.myspace.com/iwaketosleep

Goodbye Koyo さようなら向陽！

2006-08-05T13:21:00.000+09:00

With only two weeks left in Japan, I know that I should be doing something more than blogging at the internet cafe across the street. Yet the heat and my memories have drawn me out of myself in order to look at my time here in Japan, what it means and doesn't mean.

What it means...

That I have learnt a new language, other than the one I was born into, and thus caught a glimpse at the mysterious fact that each person speaks (so to speak) with a different tongue. We humans, as individuals united by a singular nature, bear a personal rhythm, a cadence unique to our place in time and space. Despite the fact that we all are saying different things, with a different existential geology in mind for the words we use, there is a truth that says we can understand each other, that communion is possible and necessary.

What it doesn't mean...

That I have learned what Japan is. That I have learned who "Japanese people" are or how "Japanese culture" works. That I have acquired some esoteric knowledge into the cultural life of Japan. I have been here for three years, done and seen a lot, met lots of people, regretted many acts and words that I inflicted upon people and experienced by our willful tendency to see the world as an extension of one's ego. Thus, I do not have a remedy for something missing in American life, do not have the secret of Japan wrapped up in a handerchief to carry around like a talisman of worldly experience. I haven't taught that much English either, from what I gather, even if I have been an example, albeit in an impossible role, of a foreign "teacher" in a Japanese school. Then again this is the "not" section, and I feel as though I am not a teacher.

Without further ado, I will share some more pictures of me and my students. If you want to hear any of their stories, please ask. There are many to tell...Goodbye Koyo,

Jeff Sensei

Baseball tournament (I was interviewed on TV for this game, sweaty t-shirt and all, and became somewhat famous in the process)

Shiho (left) plays baritone sax, Nanami (right) is a rock and roller...both freshmen...

Ayaka (left) and Yurie (right)...looking cute as I interrupt their assiduous band practice for a photo opportunity...

Mari and Nana, second year students. They look happy, but there were many tears shed when we lost the second round game in extra innings and pouring rain...THE DRAMA!!!

Tomoki making chopsticks from scratch on the junior high school excursion...

Yoshie serving up some handmade curry udon...MMM...??

My buddy Taisuke didn't work so hard at cooking the udon, but definitely worked up an appetite wrestling with me. This is one of our friendlier moments.

The finished product...

I sported a Thundercats hairstyle for the last leg of the trip. We went swimming in the Kishi River. Here are my friends, Shiho, Satoko, and Akane, after we finished cooling off in the river...

English Club--The Last Supper

2006-07-13T19:48:00.000+09:00

Here is a scene from the party that the English Club held in honor of my leaving Japan. I had to hold back some tears, as it is starting to kick in--me missing Japan and realizing how much I love the people I've met along the way...You can see the healthy afternoon snack we indulged in on this hot, muggy day.

Countdown

2006-07-13T15:11:00.000+09:00

It's just hit me that I have exactly five classes left: four tomorrow and one next Wednesday. That's all, folks. Perhaps it could even be my last classroom experience for some time. Who knows? I am going to miss the students here at Koyo. Their charm, their willingness to listen, to try to speak English, and (most importantly) to grow is remarkable. Perhaps some of the suits higher up the ladder of social life could learn a thing or two from my kids about availability, in the sense of active reception. To make oneself open to others and make others to themselves.

The cicadas are back for a few months now, droning away like an endless troupe of samba drummers. In this case, each drummer is playing a different kind of drum. The combined effect of which is a "sheet of sound," composed of reverberations that stick together in the thick July air, an undifferentiated rhythm, an invisible wave that is soporific in its inimitable monotony. My clothes turn heavy and damp with sweat from the short walk between the air conditioned staff room to the air conditioned classroom.

I now revisit today from a long way ahead, look upon it with rapture and contentment, and never forget that it is now.

Farewell Tokyo

2006-07-03T20:55:00.000+09:00

On the weekend I found myself again in the mysteriously and endlessly urbanized sublime of Tokyo. One may gather from my diction of absolutes that I am merely reiterating a static perception of a static world. That is possible to say, but there is another way of looking at my experiences in Japan's capital that one must always consider anew with the turn of each page. This image is, as Wallace Stevens taught us with his "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", simultaneously an ending and a possibility: "the edge / Of one of many circles." Where I stop is where I keep on going. As Wittgenstein says, "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen" — whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

In this silence, the ineffable expresses itself. What I speak of is not an expression that we are used to, being accustomed to the book of human language. Rather, what is brought into being by itself, rather than words, which are an 'elegy to what they signify,' cannot be approached, wrapped up, and synthesized. However much we seek for, thrive on, and perish for the sake of a synthetic unity, a self made whole, it is only by sacrifice, by dying a symbolic death, that true communion happens.

What am I talking about? Whom may it concern?

One way of looking at Tokyo...

Larger Than Life

2006-06-28T09:06:00.000+09:00

Staying up late last night to watch the Brazil vs. Ghana soccer match was not that productive. Seeing as I had a conventionally unconventional day--floating my thoughts away on the waters of cyberspace for most of the morning/afternoon--I decided to counter such abstract thinking and doing by stopping in at the local "soccer cafe" here in my corner of Wakayama City late on Monday night to watch Ronaldinho and company take the wind out of Ghana's sails with expedient grace. As I watched the first half, I recalled a book that I read last year, my copy of which I sent to a friend in San Diego (who may now be poring over its pages at the Albatross Pub in Berkeley). The volume I speak of is a mock self-help book entitled "Lost in the Cosmos," written by Walker Percy. I'll spare you the long biographical account of his life, which you can find out for yourself if I have piqued your interest. Now, to dig into the experience I had, however vestigial, of transcendental exigence:

Percy elucidates the human need for transcendence, an experience of going beyond oneself within the limitations of one's mortal existence. This "going beyond" does not necessarily amount to something good, and can/does often lead us back to the exact same fork in the road one arrives at at when it was time to make the choice to leave oneself behind. Some people pursue science, scientism, scientific humanism, or whatever permutation of objective, classified, and specialized systems of human knowledge you want to put a label on, cork, and place on the shelf for posterity. Others seek religion, seek God, or seek some infinitely mysterious but equally real presence at the ground of being. R.H. Blyth found this illuminated sense in what a Chinese master called “無生念,” which translates literally as "non-life-desire" but is a perpetual evocation of hope in something that is neither life nor death, but livable in this existence. It is the closest thing to a creed, a principle or what not, that you find in haiku. The "something there" which is nothing, unable to be reified and yet infinitely and beautifully present. Some of us prefer much more concrete, accessible means to the pressing need of "going beyond" ourselves--living the 'good life' of fine dining, art, writing, music, travel, sex, violence, drink, drugs, and of course, sports. The most salient example of the latter being the "beautiful game," I thought to myself late last night (granted these thoughts were influenced by the humidity, my lack of sleep, and the excessive amount of suds imbibed in the last three hours) about how so much of this world is now experiencing transcendence, however momentarily and (dare you scoff) in such a trivial way as a game of soccer. More than that, I thought of the modern cliches about this game, the modern mythos of Brazil's legacy as the veritable heart of the soccer world. Why is it that we are sometimes able to discover the profound accord of human fellowship and freedom in a mere game like this? As I watched the Brazilian players race blithely around the field, making every pass look like a scene wrought on a stone engraving, or a watercolor painting depicting what Kundera coined "the unbearable lightness of being" (maybe the Brazilian players would replace "being" with a less abstract verb, "passing"), I wondered why is it that this game alone is unique around the world as the game which almost every nation knows and loves. Is there something in it, its likeness to so many other modes of transcendence--being "all of the above," an athletic, aesthetic, and intelletual engagement of one's being--that makes soccer one of the few things which our modern minds can still reflect on and enjoy in earnestness? Of course there are countless other factors thrown in which deter from this lofty vision of a sport that involves, among other things, flailing elbows, fliaing knees, and flailing egos; harsh rivalries, drunken revelry and its loyal retinue, mob violence (see other forms of transcendence); scandalous deals, coporate corruption, lives lived for and lost for the sake of a mere game. It starts to sound like life itself.

Maybe I have overestimated this game, which a lot of us still probably don't care about in the least. Despite the fact that my valuation of this game may seem to be a bit overwrought, stilted in its philosophical tones of grandeur, what I see when I watch the game is the same thing we forget so many times of the day, whenever it is I think to myself, "I need to get away." Granted this is not your R&R that is advertised in brochures offering a splendid five day holiday somewhere on the shores of a Cancun resot. No, what we often feel is the need to get away, not in spatial terms, but on an existential, a spiritual level. One really means, "I need to get away from myself." Why is it that people, who know so much about the world outside, still know so little about the world within? Perhaps these means of transcendence are something worth pondering, even if one finds oneself back at square one? They offer the key to somehing that may or may not be openable, but which is the only thing worth trying, the only choice worth choosing when feels the urge to "get away."

RAIN

2006-06-26T09:29:00.000+09:00

This morning the rain suddenly started falling, a deep, intense rain, deep and intense like Janis Joplin's voice. In Japanese they say
ZAAAAAAAAAAA ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps after three years I now realize how much rain my roots have been sent..,

Small Things

2006-06-22T10:09:00.000+09:00

As the advent of the second test term dawns upon Koyo High School and Junior School, I find myself once again running short of classes, and thus running to the Family Mart for mid-morning treats. Today a cool, drizzly rain has started to fall on Wakayama, and while I passed Nichizengu, the local shinto shrine in the Ota/Akizuki neighborhood, I found myself recollecting last year's tsuyu. An image surfaced, of waiting in line to receive Noh tickets with a special someone, the warm rain collecting in small droplets on the pine needles. Revisiting this scene today, I have the sensation of having passed a whole year within the span of one breath. A year, what a short period of time. It is usually our standard meausuring stick for human life--five years, ten years, fifty years, a lifetime. All that has happened in the past year does not come to mind right now, but I do have a sense of something immeasurably small containing the immeasurable.

The rainfall does not only recall but also presages another small event--the firefly season, which is most likely briefer and even less spectacular than the cherry blossom season. During my first year, I went to see the fireflies, or hotaru, with a friend of mine from Wakayama City. Out on the Kishi River, we wandered through groves of willows and various shrubs to a rivulet where the frieflies floated around beaming their soft light. It is a strange, wonderful memory, its greatness lying in the fact that it was nothing that special. A hot, sticky night out on a river with bugs that glow.

This weekend looks to be the best weekend for firefly viewing, now that the rain has come. I heard that fireflies are believed to be the souls of the dead. That means that they are like the experience of poetry--something insignificantly beautiful, hinting to us with a wink from the other shore of some sublime mystery. Call it the "trivial sublime," or whatever you will, but the small, greenish yellow flickering of the frieflies can easily demonstrate how something inexpressible can be contained in the brief span of an hour, a week, a year, a life.

All of this may bore you, the repetition of ideas that are romantically, if not tragically, attached to a past long gone, to nature as an indicator of our emotional and spiritual life; to a feeling of life being full of, as E.E. Cummings put it "intense fragility." More than what I am going to do, what I should do, or what I am doing, I find myself always hovering around the banks of this pool of fragility like a firefly around an evening pond. Keats called it the "vale of soul making," and Robert Duncan called it a "place of first permission." We can call it the imagination, the locus of abstract and emotional thought within the human brain, but whatever name you give to it--poetic or scientific--it is something small, intense, and very, very, fragile. It is that brilliant idea on the tip of the tongue, whose utterance is perpetually postponed. It is the next note after the song fades out, the soil with which our roots mingle and take life in. I am babbling on about this mysterious thing, the imagination, the soul, our being, but not to babble would mean capitulation to a notion of things set in an unchangeable scientific order. That order, of course, we all know, is slightly beyond imagining.

Hoping I will see the fireflies this year...

If I could...

2006-06-14T12:44:00.000+09:00

do anything right now, I would strip off all of my clothes and plunge into a bathtub of ice cold water. Today the temperature is 30 degrees Celsius. My clothes have become a part of me, like butter melting into toast. It is particularly unbearable on my back and buttocks. Sitting in a chair the whole morning through this weather doesn't help. They will be turning on the air conditioners tomorrow, so I only have to stick this out for one more afternoon. My brain has also turned to mush in this heat. Really, there is not even the faint possibility of thinking in this weather, in this unbearably sticky and uncomfortable humidity. Someone please help. Get the ice and bathtub ready.

Sounds

2006-06-12T15:15:00.000+09:00

From a distance unknown, the sounds things make:

Interpenetrating each other, always
emerging from that ocean of sound these shell-like ears cast,
the stock of images proceeds to pile high
until the shelves cannot bear their load,
it is now time to make new room in the old space.
One repeats that chance is change,
the receipt for an eternal purchase.

The windchimes hanging
on the fourth floor veranda
mumble ceaselessly in the calm wind.
I drowse off to the sound of children in the park
who observe no time limit for their game of dodgeball:
It goes on forever.

When I wake, it is almost dusk.
The streetlights have been turned on, but the kids have gone.
I look straight up at the ceiling.
A pale, stained section of the synthetic wood catches my eye,
I am lost, it seems, at a time in which everyone is finding stuff out.

There are movements starting, hands shaking, names signed;
people are missing loved ones, without having ever known who they are.
Who are they? This question, drifts to you like an answer:
the kids in the park, the people that you miss, the first image of many,
buried deep at the bottom of the pile.

Calm Before the Storm

2006-06-07T09:46:00.000+09:00

June 7, 2006. A bright and warm Wednesday morning sun gleams over Koyo's school buildings and gardens. Outside the staffroom, under the shady canopy of zelkova trees, a single hydrangea bush in full bloom glows with a hue too vivid for reality. It is a painter's compound: of baby blues, sky blues, tinges of rapturous turquoise and empyrean pearl. My thoughts rest in this sight for a second, then begin to grow restive aagain, like someone obsessively counting the change in their pockets. A Murakami protagonist indeed. Lately I have felt myself and my life to be resting upon a crux, a strangely wonderful and unnerving point of displacement. With only a little less than three months to go in my stay here, I feel far too many mixed emotions to get a clear picture of what I have decided to do in my life. There is a voice in me that urges me to start something permanent, but there is also a voice that beckons me to roam more. "Roam" comes from, as far as Dictionary.com tells me, the Middle English word "romen," which probably bears the same or a similar meaning as the present form. Thinking about this word in connection with my life, and the fact that I have grown fond of things like books, travelling, and improvisational music, I recalled that the word for "novel" (the literary entity) in German is "Roman." Unfortunately the connection between the German "Roman" and the Middle English "romen" is tenuous at best. I am sure that any serious etymological investigation would uncover different sets of roots for each word, but if we dig deep enough, we find an existential geology of sorts, a common soil in which both words, all words, are grounded. Thus, in a characteristically illogical and cryptic fashion, I have begun to realize how a journey, or in this case true "wandering" (i.e. a journey without a forestated purpose), is much like a novel. They are both forms of pilgrimage, in which the journey itself creates prupose. The how.. So I take back what I said about that forestated purpose. There is a purpose, but it is not seperable from the acts and days of life itself. While reading parts of a very intelligent book of literary criticism that examined how a walk is a type of poem (or vice versa), I have started to consider how a long period of wandering is the novel itself. It is a section of life. If it were in fact possible, the novel is life itself speaking in its own voice. How abstract I have become! since first sitting down to reflect on the flowers in the garden, the peaceful June sun, the clarity of thought early in the morning (with aide of freshly brewed coffee), and yet this digression seems to me a natural part of my mind's progress. Like Emily Dickinson said, "My business is Circumference." One starts at a point, i.e. conception (whether existentially--i.e. being conceived in the womb, or mentally--i.e. the birth of a "concept"), and then moves in concentric circles outward. Like tree rings. Shuntaro Tanikawa, one of the most successful and lucid modern poets of Japan, says that humans also have tree rings, however ambiguous they may seem, and that the poet's job is to go back to different rings, inhabit both their growth and stagnancy. Maybe it is just another from of 'emotion recollected in tranquility' (I forget the actual wording of that Romantic's dictum), but I know too viscerally the ache of things repeated, both joys and sufferings, how pain hurts less and joy begins to dull with time--for a time, at least. Even though one could play language games endlessly, and say that none of us really have a center, that it is all just relative to my position as a subjective reader of my life; we could give in to the temptation to consider life itself of no real importance and that if we have fun, that will be enough; but just this point of view too floats off with the pollen in the spring wind. But when everything is swept away, what is left? You are. However wonderful or terrifying that is, is up to you, is up to how.

How To Disappear Completely

2006-06-01T09:47:00.000+09:00

This morning the title of Radiohead's wistfully melancholic track floated to mind, a mind seemingly without a body or a name. What do I mean? Perhaps I can postpone the initial shock of the factual evidence by merely suggesting a means by which the said existential displacement, which Thom Yorke & co. set out for us some years ago, can be brought about. The answer to "How to disappear completely" may be this: become an ALT for multiple years in a high school in semi-rural Japan, then watch yourself vanish into thin air.

Why do I say this?

No it is not the fact that I have had no classes for the first three days of the week, nor the fact that I have had only four classes at the high school in the past two months; it is neither the fact that I sit in the staff room waiting for a sign of work, which never comes, nor am I expected to do anything (they even consider it an undue burden to my mental faculties to operate the new coffee maker); nor is it the fact that our school's principal asked me yesterday morning, "So Jeff, aren't you leaving this month?"; no, it is not the fact that the head of my school does not even know, nor can guess somewhat accurately, the general area, give or take a few weeks, of when my contract ends; it could not be the fact that despite sitting here writing this list, no one has approached me to ask what am I doing--for to them I have probably become part of the background (when they tour visitors of the school, some teachers might be heard saying, "Here is the staffroom: the computers here, the Japanese and English department desks, the copy machine, coffee machine, oh, and our ALT."); no it is none of these disheartening elements of my daily routine. For today, on the 1st of June in the year 2006, after almost three years on the JET program, I went to put my hanko (seal) on another day of not really being here, and as I did this, I realized that the office had forgotten to put my name on the staff list. There was no line for "Jefurii Niiruson" to verify that he was here, or more accurately, that he stamped and then performed his magical disappearing act. I thought that maybe this meant I could just go home, but then I figured that my logic was unsound. However, maybe the staff is on to something. Maybe my hanko means nothing. Maybe they have come to their senses and realized that all this stuff about "keeping face," or maintaining the social harmony, about putting your seal on every day, even if you don't come to school, is neither effective nor significant in the case of missing ALTs. Whatever the case is or isn't, I was granted to write my name on the list, after which I put my seal on another day of not being here.

For those of you who have read this, please don't mistake my flippant reflections as a sign of cynicism. If you were in my shoes, I am sure the need to laugh about it all would be one of your first gut reactions. That is, if there were voice to laugh with. Certainly my sarcasm has gone too far. Today I have an unthinkable three classes, which I am heading off to now to regain my name and body. It will be a welcome homecoming, to be here again. Oh, Jeff! How I miss your monosyllabic ring, your tenderly mellifluous double f, even if your students butcher it into two syllables! Je-fuu, Ja-fuu, Jo-fuu, Jo-se-fuu(??) O hands! O voice! How long has it been since you and I last met, when cognition and action convened and that sweet something of Doing transpired? Even something as deep as me, a singularly confused and underused mind, cannot recall such a distant age. O sweet reunion! O glorious apparition of my being, back from days and months out on the sea of Murakami novels, copies of the International Herald Tribune, and endless cups of bitter coffee!

Until we meet again, keep it real everyone...

Three Years on a Rock

2006-05-29T09:07:00.000+09:00

There is a proverb in Japanese that reads "石の上には三年" (ishi no ue ni wa sannen). The appropriate English equivalent would read something like "patience wins the day," but if one were to translate the epigram literally, it would read something like "there are three years on a rock." Today my first contact with a teacher at school brought a vision of the end: my plane ticket out of Japan. Looking at the calendar for days that would fit my busy schedule of moving things out, squaring away my future life, etc., I realized not only how long three years is, but how short it can become. I think it is Samuel in Steinbeck's East of Eden who observes this, 'Lord! How quickly the day passes when we don't look at it, and how slowly it moves when we do.' And so I think to myself: How closely have I looked at these three years? That might be the most important question to ask right now, the only one worth asking. Lately I have come across questions of all sorts, from very practical ones that all adults face every day, "what do I need to get done today, this week, this month, etc?", to moral ones "is it right for me to...and why or why not?", to metaphysical ones, "what is...?" These queries are all great practice for our critical thinking skills, as certainly everyone in this age of commodious thinking and imagining machines doesn't work the brain out in such necessary ways nearly enough. Despite the need for critical, creative thought, there is still an ultimately urgent need for patience, for humility, for us to recognize that however so dearly we cling to the delusions of the ego, of being one's own creator (thus relegating all others to mirrors in which one sees oneself in omnipotent, albeit illusory, splendor), one's life only becomes full, only becomes real among others: yes, we must also come to terms with the ugency of something which no longer makes sense in the present age of questioning it all not for the sake of illumination, but for the sake of rearranging the shadows within the cave. Thus the questions of deconstruction, of severing our ties from the world as it is, only serve to give us a break from our real task. It takes time for the mouse to chew away the ropes that bind our arms and legs, but someday we may be free.

I ask myself often, "What next?" It is understood by most people close to me that I am worried about my life--my future, to be exact. No. This question needs not be made in distress. I often fail in my delivery, thus sounding a little exasperated by the thought of change, of return. But my question is certainly one of hope, a hope that is furnished by enduring patience, a willingness to listen to the call from across the void. It is something within me and outside of me, calling me to live my life to its end. I too often catch myself chasing my tail, or stopping too long on the road to remember in which direction I was facing. But remember, the road of life is always how. Often we think that there is a single destination we are called to reach when one talks of vocation, of a calling. No, it is mere how, the degree to which we live and look at the day--the fact that we are moving and not standing still. It is something to keep in mind throughout all our days on this big rock, something for which we remain in patience, in hope: making ourselves available every day for that which fulfills one's life.

A Reminder

2006-05-18T11:52:00.000+09:00

With absolutely nothing to do today, I decided to write a poem. It has been a considerably long time. I noticed something today about most of, if not all, my poems. These poems that I pen or type are always of a critical and vatic nature, somehow predicting, indicting some element, some image of the real world (in abstract, uncouth language nonetheless). I seem incapable of writing a poem that can pass as a celebratory encomium of the world's present state, of things "as they are played on the blue guitar." More on all this later, or never...

A Reminder

Only my life could look at me this way,
like an impatient lover whose eyes open mid-kiss.
The fact of being connected, of having a breakable body,
sings above and beyond the din of this blind moment.

At first I couldn’t recognize anything here.
The birds had implausible plumage,
the sun seethed downward toward another life,
dipping darkly into these hills while emerging in a different sky.

Plato says that it is the sun that illuminates our soul,
but I find it hard to befriend the sun.
It is superior, and thus abstract; its unearthly face
shows in all faces, all times, and remains serenely unknown.

The moon, on the other hand, appears every night.
In the empty orchards of this mysterious town,
its silent face looks with patience at the world. With its companion,
the wind--my conciliator--I remain here for the time being.

Nobody is missing in this scene,
all have entered into the stream without looking back.
The dark fish, like words with no meaning,
swim upstream into the mouth of the source.

The sun and moon always remain,
we run into them everywhere, like a memory cherished forever,
they are still real because they don't live
untouched in a lightless closet as silent as dust.

Corinna's Going A Maying

2006-05-17T12:49:00.000+09:00

I remember reading this poem during the spring semester of my freshman year at Berkeley. If anyone's interested, the author is Robert Herrick (1591-1674), a master English lyric poet.

CORINNA'S GOING A MAYING

Get up, get up for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air:
Get up, sweet-slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree.
Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east,
Above an hour since; yet you not drest,
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have matins said,
And sung their thankful hymns: 'tis sin,
Nay, profanation, to keep in,--
When as a thousand virgins on this day,
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.

Rise; and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the Spring-time, fresh and green,
And sweet as Flora. Take no care
For jewels for your gown, or hair:
Fear not; the leaves will strew
Gems in abundance upon you:
Besides, the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept:
Come, and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night:
And Titan on the eastern hill
Retires himself, or else stands still
Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying:
Few beads are best, when once we go a Maying.

Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark
How each field turns a street; each street a park
Made green, and trimm'd with trees: see how
Devotion gives each house a bough
Or branch: each porch, each door, ere this,
An ark, a tabernacle is
Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove;
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street,
And open fields, and we not see't?
Come, we'll abroad: and let's obey
The proclamation made for May:
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying.

There's not a budding boy, or girl, this day,
But is got up, and gone to bring in May.
A deal of youth, ere this, is come
Back, and with white-thorn laden home.
Some have dispatch'd their cakes and cream,
Before that we have left to dream:
And some have wept, and woo'd, and plighted troth,
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth:
Many a green-gown has been given;
Many a kiss, both odd and even:
Many a glance, too, has been sent
From out the eye, love's firmament:
Many a jest told of the keys betraying
This night, and locks pick'd:--yet we're not a Maying.

--Come, let us go, while we are in our prime;
And take the harmless folly of the time!
We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short; and our days run
As fast away as does the sun:--
And as a vapour, or a drop of rain
Once lost, can ne'er be found again:
So when or you or I are made
A fable, song, or fleeting shade;
All love, all liking, all delight
Lies drown'd with us in endless night.
--Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna! come, let's go a Maying.

To Decide

2006-05-14T21:22:00.000+09:00

Sometimes when there is not a single flavor that appeals to one's tastebuds, one has to sit on the counter and ruminate at length about the unending decisions looming over the future....

Chiiori

2006-05-07T20:04:00.000+09:00

Golden Week this year was particularly "golden," or at least it was sunny, warm, and full of memorable experiences. Well, now that it is over and the first humid, rainy day of May has hit Wakayama, I have time to reflect on the experiences of the past few days. On Wednesday, I rode a ferry across the ocean from Wakayama (Honshu) to Tokushima (Shikoku-smallest of the four main islands of Japan tucked in at the southwestern corner of Honshu). I spent three days at Chiiori, a restored thatched roof house dating back to the Edo period (roughly 300 or so years old). Alex Kerr, author of Lost Japan and Dogs and Demons, bought this house many years ago and furnished it with various anitques, wood, and cultural artifacts of a Japan that is slowly fading away. It sits atop a quiet hillside in Iya Valley, a rural farming area specializing in buckwheat soba noodles, a locally made tofu that is quite firm, and old vine bridges that also date back many hundreds of years. While the area of course bears the mark of urban development (the most stark of these being the enormous raised parking lot built at the bottom of the valley, which looks like it is made of Constructs {does anyone remember this toy?} that the government had spare money and time to assemble), it is still one of the most beautiful and natural places I have been to in my travels through Japan. I spent most of the week viewing the hills, reading Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask" and Joseph Cambell's "The Power of Myth," cooking with the folks who run Chiiori, playing with the dog, Jackie Chan, and hiking along the river there. Overall it was a salubrious sanctuary that brought me much needed peace of mind. Now I am back in Wakayama. Lots of classes tomorrow, so I have no more things to say. Here's a few photos of my trip...

Dawn

Daytime

Dusk

Memories of Hanami

2006-04-30T21:29:00.000+09:00

It is now almost May--two and a half hours to be precise. I had an amazing weekend at Nick's wedding in Nachi Katsuura. It was a joy to be down there and share in his and Kyoko's big day. The train ride up left me ruminating on my life--where I have been and where I am going.

Well, not too much to report tonight. I have my first regular classes this week, after a stretch of inactivity at the workplace. Also, this photo surfaced from some weeks ago, but I vow that it is a staged scene with an empty bottle. The California wine my brother brought with him was good, but I am not that bad...

我只足知

2006-04-25T12:09:00.000+09:00

"I know only what is enough." This is a phrase I came across in Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons, a phrase which signifies what Kerr calls the "pure poverty" of Japanese traditions (which are disappearing or already have). So now Japan has a more profane indigence, one of pachinko and not tea ceremony, a sheer lack of common sense instead of the self-less action and intuitive revelations of Zen koans. There is a Zen saying that I read somewhere that reads, " Better to see the face than to hear the name." In modern Japan, certainly the name, the ideal, the thing as it is represented, remade, or just re-named (and what Kerr tragically asserts has relinquished all grasp and importance of the thing itself) takes precedence over something authentic, genuine, a thing, act, or quality which is valuable in itself and not just functional for a technique. I have harped on this theme far too many times in my earlier blogs, but there is always a need for repetition. One clause of Kenneth Burke's definition of man is that he is "estranged from his environment by instruments of his own making." Another is that he is "goaded on by a sense of hierarchy." As I finish this book, finish my term up in Japan, I see where, when, with whom, why, how, and to what degree I have been goaded and estranged; I see that what Kerr talks about in his book as the "demons" of modern Japanese society can easily be transposed onto other nations. He talks about how the Japanese education system, in asserting the solidarity of "us" versus the remaining "them," the hermetically sealed vacuum of uchi(inside) that elicits xenophobia and bullying of every kind, also stifles an "awareness of the brotherhood of mankind." Since we are on this topic, I could relate it to some part of society anywhere I go. In a book about the fundamental and far reaching differences between Native American tribes' world views and that of the various colonial powers who entered America, the author (whose name I forgot, the books is called "The Way of the Human Being") phrased it as an "ontology of fear." We (who am I talking about now?) identify ourselves by what we are afraid of, who or what is above and below us, and what was once originally a plan to keep us safe, bring us happiness and longevity, comes back to unravel our minds and lives in a strange sense of order beyond our disorderly sense of order.

Well, this entry has certainly unravelled. Perhaps, in the midst of an intense intellectual drought and emotional aporia I have come to the realization that I, like most of us these days, don't know enough. Either that, or I am just too late in realizing I have gone too far.

The Past Three Weeks in Images

2006-04-16T17:05:00.000+09:00

Here is a recap of what I have done and whom I have been with at the beginning of spring. (In descending order): *Anpanman at Miyawaki Bookstore *My friends Yuka, Ryuichi, and some children at their surrogate hanami party (rained out) *Nick, Kyoko, Mayumi and Emi looking cute *Saki and Kaoru, friends from Wakayama, at yozakura viewing *You guys want some salami sandwhiches...? *Sean, dreaming of dark beer, tests out Rashomon, Wakayama's finest sake...*This poor fellow had to be carted off *View of Wakayama Castle moat *Asakusa (Tokyo)
*Sadachiyo, the best place to stay in the world *Zabba Zabba TONKYATSU!

When People Reject You

2006-04-04T14:46:00.000+09:00

Thus my afternoon started, being kicked out of the meeting solely because my presence was a nuissance--an invisible and inaudible wraith of presence like something stuck in your teeth, an itch at the back of the brain, a tiny splinter in your conscience. While I am paid for these hours of studying and writing, for my otiose performance of this daily tragical farce, I see that perhaps if I were to act more vigorously at the spur of conscience, by reason's whip's sharp sting, I would pull myself up by my own bootstraps and redesign the curriculum for our school's Oral Communication class. However, I don't see how teachers who fail to communicate among themselves can teach communication to others. It is a dangerous business, the language business, for it has the potential to lead kids down the path of having everything put into a controlled system, English in little vaccum-sealed packets that they can open at any time and savor as much as they like. Lighten up, Jeff, right? Don't worry if you are doing nothing now and getting paid for it, you are learning something, even if it is the retrograde lessons of anomie which give you less job skills or tangible assets to parade around for job hunters of every degree. Now I have only one more thing to say, which is that every time I sit down at this computer, I realize how much I need something else to do besides sit, read, and write. They are all good skills, things which we need but which cannot sustain us in our days. There is something else we need. Out there, it is life. Isn't it a bit paradoxical to be kicked out of a "meeting"? Of course they did it so politely and with utmost respect to form, as if I was having a tooth pulled out, or was bullied at school and deserved tender, loving care.

Apriru Fooru

2006-04-03T08:27:00.000+09:00

That's me folks, a fool. A blazing bright mass of foolishness, like a comet burning itself out in the distances of the night sky. Countless people have reproved me for my lack of self-confidence, my abundance of unquestioned quilt and hypersensitivity, my analytical way of mentally taking apart things which should stay put together, and of course they are right. That is never the question. What is the question?

Well, to divulge such a riddle to you, to myself, would be like strumming the harp whose key is that of life. The Stevie Wonder reference aside, there is such a harmony in everyone's life, but it is often inaudible, the sound of a droplet hitting the bottom of an endless well.

Well, well, well. Today's long overdue entry has swayed from the original course of reporting the facts of the weekend:

Friday: First Hanami party (Flower viewing party) of the season. It was a night party and very cold. I decided to compare Budweisser with Asahi and Kirin, and to my expectation, found that Budweisser is certainly not the King of Beers. After that it was on to Japanese grain alcohol, sleepiness, and the malaise that I've gotten used to on weekends that start out so hazily.

Saturday: Woke up and read for a few hours. Another visit to Wakayama Castle, lunch, wasting time, went to bed at nine o'clock. Meant to write some friends letters/emails/telepathic modes of correspondence, but was too tired to lift my thoughts out of the abyssmal quagmire of sleep and peace.

Sunday: Early rise again. Reading Alex Kerr's "Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan," which is a disparraging account of modern Japan's corruption, sterility, and the anomalies which infects every form of bureacracy in Japan. At noon I headed to Burakuri cho, a district in Wakayama with an old shopping arcade, a McDonald's, a demolished movie theater, and nothing else. Played a double gig with my blues band and reggae band. Lot's of friends showed up, including a special "someone." After the show it was the same dilly dallying with my time, an onsen at night on Wakayama's manmade island, Marina City, and then sweet, sweet rest.

Now its time to get going. Monday morning. Time to read, work, study, and clean my apartment. Lots to do. I'm off....
WHOOSH!

The Disappearance of a Registry

2006-03-20T08:47:00.000+09:00

What a strange weekend indeed. Friday night involved the typical Wakayaman fare: finish work, go to the gym, shower and shave, food at an izakaya, a few drinks with some friends, sleep. After that, everything that I undertook was distinctly outside of the routine. I got up at 6:00am on Saturday morning, rode the train to Namba Station while listening to Daniel Lanois on my discman and groggily reading Murakami's novel A Wild Sheep Chase. It is an amusing and often poignant off beat detective story, but still it is not nearly as strong in a narrative sense or in a philosophical sense as Hard Boiled Wonderland or Norwegian Wood. Upon arriving at Namba, I met up with Kris and Martyn, good friends that I made on my trip to Vietnam. We spent the day together at Universal Studios Japan, waiting in long lines, goofing off (their laughter is contagious and irresistably salubrious), and roaming through replicated American cities while the rainfall gradually dampened my clothes. Throughout the day I noticed luminous fragments of my childhood appearing to me for a second only to drift off somewhere out to sea. Those halcyon years of Fred Flintstone's "Yabba dabba doo!", cheeseburgers on Saturday afternoons, friends I would hang out with all day long, smells of the streets of Berkeley, near campus, Shattuck Ave., North Berkeley, etc. Although I was very tired, I was awake to something, perhaps that something is both within me and beyond the present day.

Upon my return, I made some friends at Wakayama Station. Makiko, Nanayo, and Ayano gave me a ride home because I had no umbrella and was barely able to keep my eyes open or stand up straight. This constellation shines on me through rainy evenings and I wander my way to something good. I made three friends, and went to bed tired, grateful, at around midnight.

On Sunday I headed up to Osaka again for round two with my friends. As I was waiting outside Namba Station, I felt the bittersweet pang of solitude--of being alone in an enormous crowd. The rush of young people--on dates, in groups, waiting for someone, going home from work, etc. gives one the feeling of being in a dream. Everytime I stand outside Namba Station by myself, I feel this deep, immeasurable duration of the world--changing at every moment, each moment interpenetrating the other and yet wholly different. Everybody is on their way--all at the same time, all falling forward into the next moment, extending with every step what is past. At night, I dreamt a very strange dream which has been in my thoughts this morning:

I was somewhere in Japan, and had a date with a very close girlfriend. Her name started with an "M." I was looking through my mobile phone to find her name, but a message had come up on my phone. I read the text message, but it turned out to be a virus that deleted my entire directory of phone numbers and mail addresses. Not only did this crush me because I needed to get into contact with "M" (as each second went by in the dream, I could imagine her forgetting me), but I also knew in some way that this loss really entailed losing my entire stay in Japan. Three unforgettable years of my life vanishing with an errant press of a button. When my body rose this morning, I felt the heft of this dream, of my recent thoughts about my last few months of this stay. After my shower, I sat on my balcony, where I routinely sit a few minutes every morning, and saw a perfectly clear blue sky--it looked bigger than I had ever seen it in Japan. The sky itself seemed like my life--in the rough, uninspiring days, it seems to contract, get smaller, more sordid and meaningless, then one morning you wake up and see how vast and endless it really is.

Today I am the only one in the teacher's room. It is a lonely sound--these computers and the kersone heater running as well as the arrhythmic click and ping of my typing cutting through the noxious drone of machines.

外国人が相撲を体験

2006-03-15T13:19:00.000+09:00

In today's News Wakayama (p.3), there appears an article with the heading, "Foreigners Try Sumo." At the top left of the article, which recounts the events of Wakayama International Exchange Association's Sumo Workshop for Foreigners, there is an action shot of yours truly, on my way to being ignominously smothered and quashed by a large man over 150kg and whose legs are three times the diameter as mine. My claim to fame has taken quite a disparaging route of humiliation. Oh well, the nabe was tasty.

Yearbooks and a Diaper

2006-03-12T13:01:00.000+09:00

Last night I had a chance to see an amazing band play in Wakayama. The Aramaki Band is a quartet based in Tokyo consisting of Shigeo Aramaki (bass), Nao Takeuchi (tenor sax), Keiichi Yoshida (piano), and Tamaya Honda (drums). If the reader can find these names and procure a recording of their work, there is no doubt that he or she will be moved.

Other things I have done so far in March: bid farewell to the third-year students at my high school's graduation ceremony, sumo wrestling, and fought a bad case of chronic diarrhea (photos witheld). All sumo wrestlers have a wrestler's name, one which represents them in some way, usually with kanji (Chinese characters). Mine was 割箸, "disposable chopsticks," given both for my physical attributes and for my disposability in the ring.

Still, no picture

2006-03-02T10:12:00.000+09:00

of what I am going to be doing in the future. Bergson elucidates the centrality of intuition over intellect in consciousness, and right now I am running low on intellect. Perhaps all humans resemble the hybrid cars that recently hit the market. We run on intellect/reason for as far as we can until our limit is reached and then switch over to intuition. If I could understand him a little more, I would be more confident in saying that Bergson was one of those people who, like well-intentioned energy researchers everywhere, are looking for ways to get us around without destructing, or deconstructing, our environment.

I remembered what and why I wanted to talk about today. Reading the newspaper this morning, another "off-day" at school (we have hit the doldrums of the Japanese school year, between graduation (yesterday) and the beginning of classes (mid April)), I came across an article about physchotherapy and its commercialization. Apparently the field of psychotherapy is undergoing an identity crisis itself, says the author. I thought of academics too in the same light, and really all of my options lead to the same destination. I am not in any way alluding to some metaphysical truth, no, just a state of things in the present world. There seems to be no place in the world, no position one can hold, that is free from this invisible, pervasive, and unnameable presence. I can' put my finger on it, but everytime I think about how to make money, how to merely "survive"; everytime I read a scientific explanation of the world, extracting the wonder and joy from being alive and putting it in one of the lab's many beakers that stand lifelessly on the shelves; or (re)read the newspaper every day with a sense of deja vu, that there seemed to have been a car bombing in Iraq yesterday (and there was), skimming a very graphic report of the killing of school children in rural Japan, reports on global warming, McDonalds making profits on their new Ebi Filet-O burger, email scandals in the top-level of Japan's government, bird flu arriving in France, Bush's surprise visit to Afghanistan, etc.--in all of these observations, these apparitions, it feels as if this "thing" has just passed by me, like a ghost, and I can only intuit for a second what was there. A vestige remains somewhere in my memory of this unnameable, absent figure.

Then there is the positive things happening in life--also happening now in concurrence with the aforementioned personal, global, and universal woes. I read C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" the other day, and I am looking forward to seeing the movie on Saturday. Even though the Disney version will surely be less fulfilling than the book, will shine a little too brightly and lack the depth of Lewis's original (which is a masterpiece), I still believe the experience to be promising. I've also been reading the work of Haruki Murakami, Henri Bergson, and (off and on) O. Henry. Lots of Hs, I know. So, while March rolls along with promises of spring slowly unfurling in the first few plum blossoms, I have a lot and not much on my mind. Reading books, enjoying life, and all the time carrying around that companion with which I must learn to live with, smile at, and forebear in everything I do.

The Sublime

2006-02-27T15:36:00.000+09:00

Wondering how I will ever meet the elusive part-time music teacher at my school. She shows up surrepitiously some time on Friday mornings, when I am in class, and every once in a while I pass her by chance in the hallway as she is leaving. We've only excahnged "Konnichiwa"s and "Ohayo"s but it all seems too much to describe, and yet as beautiful as words can be. Sat through the whole day with no classes, no work, no nothing. I tried studying Japanese, pass. I tried reading a short story, pass. I tried forging through a volume called "Introducing Postmodernism," but that turned out to go in and out of my head. I read some reviews and autobiographical information on the web about Haruki Murakami, my new favorite author. I drank coffee, went for a walk, and found various ways to let the time pass away. I tried to not look at the teachers' photos too much out of fear of doting too long on Ms. Sakai's picture. I failed even that simple measure of self-restraint and self-respect. There has to be something for me to do today. There has to be.

An Exclamatory Awareness of Being

2006-02-20T14:42:00.001+09:00

It is such a strangely satisfying sense of the world that one feels upon witnessing the resurfacing of a vivid image from one's life, one that was once pulled down deep into the undertow of the past. This afternoon, while reading through the beginning chapters of Murakami's Norwegian Wood (if one is reading this blog regularly, it is unavoidable to notice that I am going through a twentieth-century Japanese novel phase), I found myself writing to a friend, in the process of which unearthing a few charms of the past. It was too much to bear--the long mornings spent in college by myself, drinking coffee and reading Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, the sunlight on a Wednesday morning, waiting for the bus with my walkman on, reading Paradise Lost at an A's vs. Giants game because there was nothing happening and it was still spring training.

In the past year or more, most of my thoughts have been directed to the act of memory and the thing itself. There is "to remember" and "memory." Bergson once talked about "pure memory" as opposed to that of our practical working mind, the one that remembers to pick up some milk and toilet paper on the way home. What is pure memory? I am not sure if I remember the definition, if there ever was one, but let's make up a new one just for the sake of re-creation. Pure memory reminds me of the sensation that Gabirel Marcel called "an exclamatory awareness of being." Pure memory is connected to that moment when you are awakened by a strange dream or a stange sound and hear your voice utter out a cry even before you have time to think. It is an unmediated connection between you and the world you are in. In Bergson's words, memory is the locus at which mind and matter are joined. That locus, where the acts in the world and the acts in your mind are conjoined, is what constitutes being a person and not just a record of things done. Actually, over "mind" I would prefer the Japanese word 心　more for its suppler ambiguity. It is more representative of life in its endless ways.

So now that I have been on earth for a fair amount of time, have memories rich with colors both dark and light, things start coming back to me, like the fact that I am out of toilet paper, but pure memory is qualitatively different from the latter. It is not only a thought I have about the world, but it is a thought which is me. These memories are my experiences, places I've been, things I've observed, people met and lost, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, visions of every sort under the sun or moon. It is strange to think back on who one was a few years ago. A particular day or habit comes back--like waiting for the bus in the morning light, all alone on an empty street and feeling doubt as to whether time is real or not--and it is as real as the present. I mentioned the "phantom mirror" that Mishima had depicted in the end of his tetralogy. But unlike Mishima's main character Honda, who at the end of the book remembers and regards nothing except the present moment (i.e. reaches enlightenment) in the temple garden at noon, the sun glaring in a sharp, transcendent whiteness on the garden's green, I have lived more richly in a life of confluence, of simultaneity, polyrhythmic and harmonic. A life of complex chords and symbols that sometimes don't reach me until well after the fact.

ALTs all have figured out ways to idle their time at work. As I sit here, trying to figure out my future and also trying to forget it, in order to not waste my life worrying; trying to balance the deep, life-sized figures of the past with a present which often seems flimsy and two-dimensional (like those stand-up cardboard pictures of celebrities), and trying to revive the present from its immovable ennui and aporia, I get knowhere but the same place I left off, a few words richer than before.

I have sat by the heater for too long, so I must move. There is always some other place for one to go.

Arrival

2006-02-13T10:48:00.000+09:00

Somewhere along Redwood Road, you turn off--
I forget if it is left or right--and there is Christina's house.
We are getting out now, or maybe getting in,
an old, polished white Cutlass--I forget the year.

This image comes back to me, I am too young
to remember it with clarity or depth.
It is a picture suffused by that year's spring light,
and, almost blinded by this light,
which passes through the spotless windshield
like water into a vase,
fire into wood,
I hold the flat, empty picture,
like all restless, powerful words,
in my heart. Because there is no choice
in being born.

Unravelling this mystery--
unthinkable suffering, confusion,
and joy beyond words or memory--
I curl up into bed, many years away,
finding it impossible to recollect
how I got here.

In the World, At Home

2006-02-06T14:36:00.000+09:00

The rain. It brings so many things back to life, both physical and mental. Buds on skinny, weather-beaten tree limbs, grass from damp soil, worms unearthed from that same soil, birds anxiously hopping along the wet earth, heads cocked as their eyes raze the damp grass for some grub. Later in spring, the birds sing early in the morning. Sometimes I am lucky to hear their songs. A nexus of memories accrued over years, then stored in a room of the mind's mansion that is seldom used, returns to the surface of consciousness, the veritable "living room." I inhabit this space for a moment, as though I were granted only a momentary glimpse at this--a token has granted me a five seconds' view of something vital and everlasting.

I was fascinated by a line at the end of Mishima's The Decay of the Angel in which he calls memory a "phantom mirror." It makes things that are far away seem close, things that are too far away to see appear in front of you. As I walked outside my school today, drained again by the comatose sensation of sitting and reading at my desk in the staffroom, the guilt of deferring my future to another day, and reading a book that is beautiful and provocative (already I presage the small, subtle grief I will feel when I finish the book and must move on), I confronted the song of the rain--an inimitable rhythm and melody, not just of sounds, but sights, smells, textures, even thoughts and words; yes time too has its share in the rain. I crossed the street, made it up the stairway to Brazilian Coffee (local coffeehouse), and suddenly, before I entered the cafe, was stopped in my step by a eviscerating sense of my past--of a place I once was, let's call it home, and a person I once was, let's call him someone who resembles me now, and of a time that once was, we can only call it the past. Standing there in the drizzle, caught at a standstill with my life in front of me, behind me, all around me, and in me, I continued into the coffeehouse, drank coffee and continued reading Haruki Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

The coffee was good. The book is better. This morning I thought about what job to pursue. Many lead to the same non-life, avoiding which is a very thorny matter. It is a "life" of 9-5 in an office, evenings at home in front of a television with a beer. Sleep and the next day. Already I have caught glimpses of it here, even though my experiences in Japan have been profoundly different on a qualitative level. There is the decisive element of inconsistency in this experience, of everything having never been done or seen before. This rawness, an experience of just coming into a world, is in many ways a mirror image, if it is only reflected in that 'phantom mirror,' of when one first came into the world. In many ways, the mirror also reflects the other end of ourselves. So, as a shadow looms over me--the decision that I will be forced by necessity to make in the upcoming months--I check to see if my shadow is there. I must say with extreme gratitude that I have not yet lost my shadow nor my mind.

2006-01-31T14:32:00.000+09:00

Secret

Someone is hiding something.
I don't know who. I don't know what.
If I knew that I'd know everything.
I hold my breath and cock my ear.
Rain patters on the ground.
It must be hiding something.
It falls to let us know its secret
but I can't decipher the code.
I sneak into the kitchen, peer around
and see my mother's back.
She's hiding something, too,
minding her own business while grating a radish.
I'm really curious about secrets
but no one tells me about anything.
When I look at the hole in my heart
all I see is the cloudy night sky.

from Naked byTanikawa Shuntaro

Imaginig Yesterday

2006-01-29T13:32:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I woke up around 10:30, took a shower, and went to Mr. Donuts for coffee, doughnuts, and reading. There I spent two hours reading Yukio Mishima's The Decay of the Angel. Like the other four parts of Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, The Decay broods and swells like a unnerved, restless, ecstatic ocean of myths, thoughts, images, things, words, places, sounds, and, most intensely, visions. Mishima's visual descriptions, in particular his chapter long ruminations on how the sea lives and grows into darkness at dusk, startle and subdue at the same time. Its always a strange mix of the transcendent and the physical world in Mishima, and then the single swoop, like that of the sword, that cuts one off from the other.

Anyways, after getting bored with books and sweets, I went home, did some laundry and went to the gym. I had a nice long workout, doing some exercise for every part of the body, and then went home. I took a shower, I ate a bit of natto, I continued Mishima's book. At night, I had the wonderful idea to go out for yaki tori (for all you Japanese neophytes out there still not in the know, yaki tori simply means "grilled chicken" and is probably the best cuisine on earth). Waiting to meet up with some Wakayaman friends, I went to get a drink at the cafe across the street from me while I read The Oxford History of Christianity. Yes, I know what you are saying now. My reading tastes vary quite a bit. I wasn't able to focus on my book, for their was a young woman, sitting with two of her friends at the table adjacent to mine, who stole my attention. There is an unsettling element when first encountering beauty. It is not necessarily bad, but it can be. I was attracted to this girl tremendously, but couldn't manage to say a word. She started to talk to her friend about San Francisco, my cue to initiate some form of verbal contact. My book, my mouth, remained shut.

This morning I woke up sweating with my electric blanket on full blast. I realize how sudden my thoughts shift from the metaphysical sublime to the the utterly puerile. I wrote some poems today that are not particularly noteworthy. I will share them here, for they are humiliating and they are true, no matter what I think of them. They are honest. Following these childish poems is a poem that seems to be a lyrical crystallization of my state of being in the last few years, written by the late Oakland/Berkeley/San Francisco poet, Robert Duncan. It is from his book "Roots and Branches," originally published by New Directions in 1964.

I Remember

The young woman in the blue skirt
with her hot legs
makes me shiver,
as though my life, as is,
is cold.

Never again will I know
this pressure felt from a body
and a mind not my own,
that willed a succession of words
and found itself nothing.

Yes, she will be tomorrow's someday,
a recurrent dream,
a hope for consciousness raised,
reflected in visions seen and not heard,
life making this perfect sense.

Imagining

I imagine a light different from the sun
and a world other than this one--
imagine your life, a new life, and waiting here
I imagine what I would say were I there.
As you talk, I imagine your silence,
your hand running across your leg sends
a part of the world to me, imagining.
I imagine you with a ring and imagine
you imagining in an imagined world
what we would we say were it the truth.
This speaking being too real for words,
I cannot imagine this world.

----------------------------------------

Come, Let Me Free Myself

Come, let me free myself from all that I love.
Let me free what I love from me, let it go free.
For I would obey without bound,
serve only as I serve.

Come, let me be free of this master I set over me
so that I must exact rectitude
upon rectitude,
right over right. Today

I am on the road, by the road,
hitch-hiking. And how, from one side,
how glad I am no one has come along.
For I am at a station. I am at home
in the sun. Not waiting, but standing here.

And, on the other, I am waiting,
to be on my way, that it be my way.
I am impatient.

O let me be free now of my way, for all that I bind to me
--and I bind what I love to me,
comforting chains and surroundings--
let these loved things go and let me go with them.
For I stand in the way, my destination stands in the way!

From Roots and Branches by Robert Duncan

Multiple Choice

2006-01-25T15:14:00.000+09:00

Did it just happen,
this life and its sudden disclosure?
Or was it raised
in ages, a glacier filling the entire valley?
Or perhaps a third choice,
an unimaginable vision past one's furthest dream?

If not two, then one.
If the one we have chosen appears true
but later we have forgotten this choice,
forgotten those first unequivocal mornings,
racing to the television with cereal and cinnamon toast,
the sound of mother's voice calling one inside
--it's too dark outside--
forgotten too that we were taught the opposite--
that light is something external,
not to be seen in others,
but by which to see them,
then this life can no longer be just one,
and it will continue to follow the road
that splits three ways.

The first word I ever spoke
must have borne a truth
and must bear it still.
From where I now stand
it is a long way back.

Symbols and Real Things

2006-01-16T10:13:00.000+09:00

Just past halfway through the month of January, I have caught myself in the act of division. January--a month whose name comes from the two-faced, backward and onward-looking god Janus--has entered upon the world bearing such strange gifts. There is the mystery of my visit to Viet Nam--the fact that it is beginning to recede from the lucidity of the present to an ambiguous, longed-for memory of the past. Like a dream, the two weeks I spent there passed by like a single frame of a film whose length is undetermined. Being back here in Japan in the chill of a more conventional winter climate, I have reached out to words in order to not lose what I feel is gradually moving away.

In truth, I have only one face. That face is my life, my orientation to the world (however disoriented it may be), a vector which cannot be isolated or stopped like a movie frame and analyzed to such intricate, piously scientific depths that it no longer seems to be one anymore. There are no mythological figures of which I spoke of that can claim hold on my being. Moving along, I carry with me everything that I have brought and leave only my footprints behind. There is a figure of me now, different every day, carrying these images through time with the hope of sharing them with other people. Though I admit an irresistable nostalgia, I resist the temptation to let that nostalgia fester into an aimless and blinded search for that which has been changed long ago or recently. I feel that no one should be what Kenneth Burke called "a hippopotamus feeding in the miasmal swamps of time." In Burke's book, Permanence and Change, written in the early years of the Great Depression, the "True Church" incurs this stark analogy. I think now of the difference between "progess" and "progression"--between the orientation or our movement in time to a single fixed ideal and the orientation of our movement in time to the reorientation of our orientations.

Is it more appropriate to say that morality is letting oneself be open to constant revision or to judging the world and oneself (often there tends to be an unconscious generosity here) to one's fixed understanding of what "being moral" is? I did not mean to let this reflection end up in the realm of morals, or a debate of permancence vs. change, which I realize is problematic and inconclusive.

Today I have a runny nose. There is one class today at the end of the day. I think about what the class will be on and have decided to make a "New Year's Resolutions" theme class. Most likely the students will be unenthusiastic about anything in which they have to express whatever they are thinking at the time. There is a balance somewhere between this reversion towards expressing onself and what I have groomed in myself as a reliance on expression (to the point of being handicapped in often subjective, abstract, and rhetorically flat language).

I think about my life--where it has been and where it will be--and sit here blowing my nose every minute or so.

Vietnam (Part two: Images)

2006-01-15T15:09:00.000+09:00

In a Restaraunt with Friends of the Foundation. I don't know why I look so stoic with my warm Tiger Beer.

Next is a picture of the rural countryside of Vietnam, near the border of Cambodia. My face, unshaven, you may see in the foreground.

Tuyet is a friend I made at the mother of the program director's house. Here we are on Christmas Day talking about life, with the aid of Lonely Planet's Vietnamese Phrasebook, of course. There is also a giant grapefruit keeping us company.

The sunrise on the morning after Christmas illuminated the neighborhood in a beatific light. It was difficult for me to part with this place and the people I met here. However, the day went on, as so do we all.

The landscape of Tay Ninh as see from the Black Lady Mountain, or something like that. I wasn't paying close enough attention during some of the history lessons we received.

Thinking of this place, the world, on the beach at Nha Trang--the last stop on our journey.

Viet Nam (Part One-Initial Reflection)

2006-01-04T14:48:00.000+09:00

Today marks my second day back from Viet Nam. A mixed emotion in me persists upon my returning to Japan--of both immense, humbling gratitude for this recent experience and of unappeasable longing to stay where I just was. Two weeks were not enough and yet more than enough. Many of the people I met in Viet Nam seemed to have mastered the art in which these two ends are balanced--they have very little, but so much shows in their smile. Today as I bike around the cold, quiet streets of Wakayama City, an endless procession of images resonates within me like the perpetual stream of motor scooters on the streets of Saigon.

The question that confronts me now: "What next?" When subsumed by such a strong yearning for something past and gone, is it appropriate or wise to direct all of one's energy toward the act of forgetting? In many ways, that is what the modern world has taught us--to repress sentimentality, nostalgia, sincerity and affection; to replace it with a constant urge for the new, the 'cutting edge,' the 'key to success'--which is aligned with an ambiguous and destructive desire for that which is not myself. The desire to not be myself is despair, as Kierkegaard once wrote in The Sickness Unto Death. If one word would surface from the many that are apt to describe the spiritual condition of our present age, I would most likely choose despair. When life "ceases to be a joy and becomes an affliction," it is a sign that we have "renounced the act of being" for something that is always disappearing. Throughout my trip in Viet Nam, I participated in the life of a society, seeing everywhere signs of a hidden wholeness. Though our world now is indeed a broken world, everywhere in it are people who are trying to mend the fissures caused by war, ignorance, and poverty. In a similar manner, I am responsible for the same rehabilitation in my own life. My heart, my will, and my effort at living for truth has atrophied for some years now. Regardless of whether it involves Viet Nam, a country I hope to go back to and work in someday, it is unavoidable that I must change my life, must return to me. We make ourselves real by telling the truth.

As The Crow Flies

2005-12-18T14:57:00.000+09:00

So the year is coming to a close. Bid farewell to the cock and make way for the dog. Wan! Wan! (sound a Japanese dog makes, for those who think I've gone mad) In two days I will be flying south, and a little west, to Viet Nam. There I will spend two weeks travelling around the south part of the country, giving school supplies, money, and time to children in poor, rural areas, visiting hospitals, elderly homes, orphanages, and also taking part in educational trips to study the country's history. Two weeks is a pretty short time, depending on how you look at it. I have a presentiment however that what will be fit into two weeks will seem, will end up being, a lot longer of an experience. In terms of quality, not quantity. So for now, I wish anyone reading this (or reporting it to others) to have a peaceful Christmas holiday, wherever you may be.

Until 2006,

Jefu

View From the 7th Floor

2005-12-16T19:59:00.000+09:00

Sunrise over the eastern hills of Wakayama...

...and the setting sun's rays illuminating this illustrious city...

...one can even spot my school's dirt lot on the left (where virtually every "field" sport is played) as well as the classroom building to the right, where I "teach" every day...

...and the sun about to dip away from sight, shadows cast by the NTT building's antennae and other random apartment complexes...how grandiose...

The worst movie

2005-12-15T15:24:00.000+09:00

ever made throughout the fairly long history of film is "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Having been dragged to the movie theater late on a Wednesday night against my will, I succumed to watching this entirely superfluous action movie, which cannot even bear that somewhat respectable title seeing as the aformentioned flick didn't even have the most rudimentary element of an action movie--a plot. Thus, I can only describe the experience as a keenly disturbing and gratuitous homage to the money that festers in the deep vaults of Hollywood. The final product of this experiment is a nearly two hour barrage of special effects, vapid dialogue, and jokes, scenes, and characters of such an unthinkable caricaturish hue that one cannot even laugh at how ridiculous it all is. If you are fed up with Hollywood's lack of decently interesting, slightly thought-provoking work, or it's lack of entertainment, than please do not watch this film. It would be similar to eating a double fudge sundae with extra cream and chocolate for a diabetic--just too much.

Just before watching this film, I was approaching the end of "The Brother's Karamazov." A very stark contrast indeed, an afternoon in which my mind underwent the chiaroscuro of the modern and transcendent. Please, anyone considering watching this movie, see something else. Please...

The Inexplicable Subtleties of the 忘年会　(Boukenkai）

2005-12-12T10:16:00.000+09:00

One unique feature of Japanese culture that I have experienced quite a few times, now in various capacities of sobriety and drunkeness, is the drinking social, or 宴会 enkai. Throughout the year, there are various points in time at which all members of a company, school, or any community of workers (see a past entry on society, 社会 and companies 会社 for rambling, American-oriented reflections about Japanese socialization perspectives/routines) gather to offer libations to the deities of hard work and persevarance. Ok, it is possibly just an excuse to get really drunk among your co-workers and make a complete ass out of yourself, all with no conseqeunces whatsoever. The wildest of these parties is the 忘年会 bounenkai, or end of the year party (literally it means "forget the year party"). Last Friday, I attended Koyo High School's bounenkai at the lovely, but very tacky Hotel Granvia. Though I didn't manage to forget the entire year, I did forget a huge chunk of the evening, such as calling and emailing friends in the city late at night with strange messages, biking home, buying more liquor, looking at a friend's photo album while squinting and mumbling indecipherable drunken babble to the interlocutor in my head, and finally passing out on a couch upon which I asserted that I would not sleep. Maybe they should change the title of the party under discussion to 忘夜会 bouyakai or "forget the night party." Among the many neologisms I have coined in Japanese, this is yet another which the Japanese refuse to incorporate into their lexicon. Why they don't accept my linguistic innovations, I don't know. Maybe I am still babbling to that person within.

Speaking of babbling, a very interesting phenomenon, which has a legitimate nelogogism, i.e. "nomunication" (a pun on "nomu"--to drink, and therefore more "open" talks we have when under the influence), astonished me at the most recent enkai. Among others, I spoke to the principal of my school (we have never had a conversation before) about sake and about the Japanese word for motivation, 志 kokorozashi. The top half of the character (士) means "samurai," "fighting spirit," or is also a suffix for job titles (i.e. "A ----er") and the bottom half (心）　means "mind." So it was interesting to talk about this, about how this character--志--does not have the same implications for the modern Japanese "character"--at least as it is seen in the youth. But this is all "characterizing" human beings, right? Even though Principal Taniguchi asserted that young Japanese people are not as cognizant of this older concept of unflinching drive for an ideal, a singular purpose--a concept closer in time and affinity with 武士道 bushido, the way of the samurai--it still seems to be a vast generalization to say that all is lost of 志.

As pertaining to that sense of things being lost, or irretrievable, my beef with a lot of travel writing on Japan stems from the same presumptions that people make in general. Though a writer begins with very specific and concerete things he or she has seen and done, the narrative concludes with or hints at a sweeping generlization, more often than not spurred on by marketing demands, about human beings in a particular society. Thus we see books titled "Lost Japan," "Dogs and Demons," "The Pink Samurai" (actually recommended) etc. It is all incredibly fascinating writing in which the authors care a lot about the country they feel might be "lost," but it seems strange to think of a place as lost when it is right here in front of our eyes. I am being very elliptical and vague about what I want to say, yes. Let me try to put it a simpler way. I feel that what is "lost" is not a culture, a civilization, a value system, etc. Instead it is the individual who hasn't found a fulfilling way to deal with change on this earth--living things and non living things; plants, animals, and people; languages, the many forms and contents which are expressed in and by them, and the space in which they occupy, are all passing over into something new.

Gosh, I sound a bit lost myself. Returning to this 忘年会 thread that I have unravelled, I had many conversations last Friday with people whom I have seen but never met. Though the theme of the night is forgetting, there is much to remember, such as what comes next...

I take off for Ho Chi Minh City and south Vietnam in a little over a week. There are many preparations to be done, such as packing, sending off Christmas gifts/cards to family, and making sure to turn my electric blanket off. So, after two hours of sleep right now, I must sign off. Until next time, stay posted for pictures and more tediously long ruminations on things that are not very tangible or important to the general population.

Test Taking Spills

2005-12-05T09:06:00.000+09:00

Over the past month or so, my blog entries have been darkened by the looming shadow of the JLPT test. Well, now it is over, and I believe I have caught yet another cold this season. I have lost count by now. The wind has picked up, and over the course of one weekend, a blink of the world's eye, it has turned from autumn to winter here in Wakayama. Anyways, before the more objective results--i.e. my failing marks--are released sometime around February of next year (by which time I will probably deny ever having taken the test), I shall in this brief entry unpack my initial gut-reactions to the eviscerating and emasculating experience that I went through yesterday, also known as section 3 (Reading Comprehension and Grammar) of the level 2 Japanese Proficiency Test.

Up until lunchtime, things seemed to be going very well. After having flown like a phoenix through the first section (Kanji and Vocabulary), I had spare time in the 35 minute time period to space off, mostly letting my eyes wander towards the front of the room, where a very cute Korean girl was taking her test. Bad, Jeff. Then at breaktime, the aforementioned fellow test-taker started flirting with me outside of the building. It was a chilly morning, but I felt rosy. The listening section of the test, part 2, went by with little uncertainty. Perhaps three or four questions stymied my up to then nearly impeccable performance of Japanese linguistic mastery. Turning in my answer sheet and test booklet, it was down to the bakery for lunch. After a heavy dose of carbos and cheese, I was back in the test room, ready to face my arch-nemesis: "Reading and Grammar." 読解,文法ー Oh, how I loathe thee! Opening the booklet, I was face to face with a page and a half article on something I couldn't understand. I dug in. Taking the approach that I understood everything, I didn't realize how slow I was moving. Although I brought a watch, I never once looked at it. I was in the zone. A little mix up on the chart reading problem took me over ten minutes to resolve, so it seems. Finally finished with the reading problems with a relatively safe degree of correct answers, I was ready for the grammar problems, which I had studied vigillantly for last four months or so. Now on problem 40 out of 58, I was ready for these last 20 problems. Banzai!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then an announcement was heard, the voice heard around the world, err...the classroom:

"後五分です." ("Five minutes left.")

I could not believe my ears. Where had I gone? Was this some strange Matrix-like experiment? Where did thos 65 minutes go? How could I finish 15 problems in five minutes or less? I hurried frantically to answer questions, getting snubbed around number 46 or 47. The announcement for the test to finish rang clearly through the warm classroom. I put my pencil down, not able to look at the 10 blank questions I did not get to.

Later on, as all of us were walking towards the station, looking for a place to drink and eat our sorrows away, I made a comment on the numbing cold that has arrived, "I can't feel my face." Brad then made a brilliant comment , much more apropos: "I can't feel my failure." Now, I have nothing to be stressed about. The test is over, I am here in the teacher's room on test day (for the students, thankfully), and I am warm. Inflicted with a very sore throat, I am hoping to take it easy. Off to Vietnam in a little over two weeks. Wow.

I have been having strange dreams lately. Beautiful, endless images of people that I am around currently on a daily basis. Quite different from dreams I had when I was a child. Different and the same, yes.

Back to Dostoyevsky, manga, and hot coffee. Oh yeah, and maybe some short fiction to come.

A Long Day

2005-12-03T20:25:00.000+09:00

I went to bed at 5:00am this morning. One cannot say this is an effective preparation technique for taking the level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Waking up at around 11:30 or so, I hungrily and hungoverdly scarfed down a tasty but bite-size burger at Il Fait Beaux, or something like that. I cannot remember how to spell anything in French. Then it was a failed attempt to study at Mr. Donuts. I merely stared at my textbook and coffee, and that was that. Tomorrow will most likely bring me failure on the test, but I feel some sense of merit in that I have at least progessed in my reading and speaking abilities of Japanese since August.

Today I also made a detour to the bookstore to look at a volume of Shuntaro Tanikawa's poems. The collection is called "夕方”　or "twilight." There was a poem called "さようなら" or "Goodbye." In the course of the poem, the speaker bids ado to things both here and not here, to sundry elements of an individual's experiences and imagination. There was a line that read something like this:

"Goodbye to the mother who will always be upset with me."

I thought to myself, Tanikawa, now in his late 80s or so, probably still struggles with the thought that his mother is still angry at him for something. Only now I am sure he embraces it in a way I cannot imagine it as a young, slightly rebellious sapling of almost 24 years.

In the evening, I put on Peter Apfelbaum's cd, "It Is Written." The last song features a tenor saxophone solo by Jessica Jones, a famous Berkeley-bred saxophonist who used to teach my jazz ensemble workshops in high school at various locales--Ashkenaz Dance Cafe, The Alice Arts Center, and even the Church of Unitarian Universalists. Hearing her "voice" again after many years was an inexpressible rush of nostalgia, a profoundly painful recognition of my childhood being long gone--I cannot remember the last time I was enthusiastic about anything like I was about playing drums in her classes, tucked away in the rehearsal room at the back of Ashkenaz. I would always walk out of those classes wanting to stay and play more, listen more. Her and Khaleel Shaheed, the other teacher of those classes, were probably some of the first people who really got me to hear music on a deeper level than that of most background, or "mood" music. The capoeira classes would be in full swing when we got out, the sounds of the berimbau bidding me farewell as the setting sun glimmered outside the windows facing west to San Pablo Avenue and the San Francisco Bay.

I could get caught up in these recollections for an indefinite period of time, a lifetime in fact, and that realization scared me today. Something that is dangerous to look at now, so it seems. It is like the face of Eurydice, who sits peacefully and eternally in some other world, which I must leave, must have left, some time ago.

落柿舎, Rakushisha

2005-12-01T20:04:00.000+09:00

Winter has arrived, and upon entering 師走 (shiwasu), or December, the month of "running teachers," I have had the chance to observe the last few leaves fall from the trees outside. Last Saturday, I made a trip to Kyoto's Arashiyama district, where I stopped by an old hut formerly inhabited by Mukai Kyorai, a student of Matsuo Basho. Here are just a few glimpses of "The Hut of Fallen Persimmons" (Rakushisha):

Hut with permissons "before the fall"...

Ahh...kirei da ne...so pretty...

Not Thinking

2005-11-26T21:17:00.000+09:00

Well, this is a drag. I ran out of money tonight. That is probably the least of my worries though. It only means that I cannot buy anything to eat or drink for the rest of the evening. I will survive. Yes. Survival.

But often us humans need more than survival. Some say it is love that keeps us going. Is it love that also keeps one in a perpetual argument with oneself over what is love and how to act upon such a definition? I have been accused on this very evening of being unable to act in the spirit of "human kindness." A very big accustation, indeed.

When one is accused of something that is unbearable, there is the choice of a) violent and righteous revolt against such a dreaded mistake in the act of thinking and feeling or b) self-destructive acceptance of all that is wrong, embracing with an especial tenderness the thoughts wrought upon oneself with utmost ferocity. I have, like Dmitri Karamazov, been linked to choice b), like the ball at the end of my chain. Were it not for a certain unabashed sense of things to come, an intimation beyond all that is given at any one moment, a place I know to be my home somewhere in the world I create and which has created me, then it would be far too much to digest. But seeing as there is some sort of sense beyond that which I taste and see, I have no choice at all it seems. I have decided a long time ago.

And when the waters subside, the flood is reduced to a small creek in a muddy valley, I will sit down, rest my feet in the stream, and ask myself again why I had to go through all of that just for a moment of peace.

My time is up tonight. I must pay the bill.

The Education of a Recovering Spendthrift

2005-11-18T13:51:00.000+09:00

The other day I realized how much money I spend on food here in Japan. Too much. I will grant myself some things--I have a more sizeable appetite than most Japanese, I have a generous income, and most decisively I have no culinary inclinations whatsoever to counteract this downward spiral of eating out every other night, "other night" meaning "a night in which I don't want to cook." All of this has changed now, for the time being at least, as I try to raise money for future travelling, for myself down the road past the fork that marks the end of my JET career and the beginning of my toils with financial stability.

What was on the menu this week?
Monday: Spaghetti with canned tomato sauce
Tuesday: Instant ramen with Bok-choy and raw egg
Wednesday: Mah-boh Tofu (stir friend tofu with chili meat sauce)
Thursday: A Big Mac, McDonalds salad & leftovers from Wed. (I am stooping very low, folks, to save precious yen)
Friday: What shall I cook tonight? How about natto sitr fry?

Even all of this is not interesting to me. I spent most of my Thursday night studying Japanese grammar for the level 2 JLPT test. It took me three hours to review the 173 points that I have mastered (more or less) for the test. The disheartening fact is that my reading ability of Kanji, what I thought was my strong point, is not so impressive. After two practice tests and many drills, I can't seem to get over 55-60%. I must, I must, I must increase my vocabulary. Here I am taking giant steps toward that goal. Each minute I spend here at the computer another Chinese ideograph fades from my short term memory.

Why can't I install my electronic dictionary into my brain? Maybe I just have to wait a few years for that. Until then, I will remain content with my borderline test scores. Captain Kanji, signing off...

Reflection on a Spring Evening

2005-11-11T15:17:00.000+09:00

As the rain ceases, the wind blows,
clouds float by, the moon hides.
Everyone, this is a spring evening.
The raw-warm air blows past.

From somewhere a deep sigh,
a kind of distant vision,
emerges, but I cannot take hold.
No one can speak of this

No one can speak of this--
but this in particular,
is it not life itself
which no one can lay bare?

In this way, people, one by one,
feel in their heart, looking at each other's faces,
perhaps even grinning,
how life passes.

As the rain ceases, the wind blows,
clouds float by, the moon hides.
Everyone, this is a spring evening.
The raw-warm air blows past.

中原中也 Nakahara Chuuya

This is a recent, and very raw, translation I did in my spare time at school. I am thinking of a better word for "reflection"--the word in Japanese is "感懐,”　or kankai. It means "feeling" and "nostalgia," but put together it means what? Finding a single word for this is impossible. A legitimately "deep thought," as opposed to the sketch on Saturday Night Live that got old, but was profound in its repetition. Anyways, the moral is my translation sucks. Maybe next time.

Looking for Windfalls

2005-11-07T15:17:00.000+09:00

Unimaginably fatigued today. Yesterday, I rode my bike down the busy avenue outside my house (Miyakaido) to a restaraunt for dinner. There had been rain earlier in the day, but as I left the skies were clear and a warm breeze rustled through my hanging laundry. I took no umbrella with me. After my meal, I went outside to find my bike slightly damp. It was drizzling, but I could still make it back to my apartment (a two or three minute ride) without getting very wet. About halfway through my ride, a sudden downpour began. For a full two minutes I was riding my bike underwater. My entire body and clothes saturated in the rain, I finally reached home and dried off, changed clothes, etc.

Today I woke up, still sleepy after 8 hours of sleep. Now I have a headache, a fever, a stomachache, and a sore left shoulder (probably unrelated to the other symptoms). I probably suffer from every malady that I have put down on a worksheet for my students when they study how to talk about sicknesses. What should I do? Rest in bed, take some medicine, see the doctor, drink some soup, etc. Anything but ride in the rain again.

I have had a lot of time at school today to ponder life & why I am feeling so stoic about my life these days. My class was another average one. I read the paper at lunch, finishing half of the crossword, giving up by default because I fell asleep. Then I glimpsed at a presentation I am making on teacher self-development, which is a ton of baloney. I hope the workshop goers like baloney. Later Bokui-sensei, a teacher who refuses to teach with me, asked me to narrow down the students' essay topics to three titles from which they choose one. There is a reason why I insist on keeping the words "Free Choice" on top of the essay worksheet. I do not think I can stand to read 300 identically uninspired essays--again. Even if they are bad, it will be a diversity of errors. That, I feel, is a much more welcome burden to carry. Finally, I studied my book of grammatical points for the Level 2 Japanese Language Proficiency Exam, which I am taking next month. This I also left incomplete.

Having no energy to finish anything today, I came back to the computer to continue the one thing in life that never will be finished, but is always worth continuing.

Following the Past

2005-11-04T14:07:00.000+09:00

I went back to Shimizu Town yesterday to celebrate this year's Culture Day. On my way up the mountain, I remembered many mornings on the bus--rising at 6:00am sharp to ride sleepily in the heated bus up the windy road along the Arida River. Those mornings were full of joy. The one boy who commuted from Wakayama City (roughly a two and a half hour commute) was always too shy to speak with me, but still grinned in appreciation for my speaking to him. Then there was Rumiko, who always wore a very lovely perfume and sat in front me. She always slept with her head drooping straight down, her chin at the point where the collarbone meets in the center. I was always excited to be going to that quiet place where the sounds of leaves, wind, and an occassional bird are the only sounds you can hear from the school building windows...Anyways, yesterday I stumbled unawares into Shimizu Bunko's High School Festival, at which I enjoyed chanko nabe, a stew served for sumo wrestlers with various veggies, meaties, eggs, miso, kimchee, etc. After the festival, I headed to Shimizu Onsen for an hour of roasting in the sauna, dipping in the ice cold water, then soaking up the hot spring water in a 15 minute rotation. The air from the cedar forests was pungent and cool. It was perfect.

When I went back home via Kibi, I made a stop at the Hayashi residence, a home just next to my old flat out in the mikan yards. There I met Ryoko, the youngest daughter (24 or 25) and her one son, Sora (maybe 3). Soon Kaede (6) and her younger brother Soya (1 or so) came running out from the back of the house and the jungle gym was officially declared. For the next half hour or hour I was their climbing apparatus, which they all used to the fullest extent. Then Hiromi, the second daughter of the family (27 or 28) and mom of Kaede and Soya, came out with her two month old baby boy, Ryu. Seeing a chance for a break, Hiromi plopped Ryu into my lap. After I held Ryu for a while I started to get the feeling that probably anyone would have in my situation"...Awww...I want a child someday as well..." Ryu being the inexplicable miracle that he is, I was reminded of that secret wish of mine to have a family. Anyways, I had some tea, spoke with the grandmother, moms, sons and daughters of the entire family and then went on my way back to the city, my bag full of mikan and instant ramen packets.

What a beautiful day it was. I was reminded of the fact that I will remember that first year living in Kibi for my whole life, a year in which I felt something very deep and strangely wonderful. There is no way to ever put it into words, but there it is--always before me.

Osaka Halloween Train

2005-11-01T21:40:00.000+09:00

Doraemon before he leaves the "dokodemo" apartment.

All of these losers showed up...

And then things started to look better after I switched cars for the fifth time...

Godzilla and Doraemon befriend each other after many rounds of G&T on the train...

On a less crowded train, Doraemon sits alone, wondering where Nobita and Shizu-chan went off to at this time of night...

Doraemon has trouble flagging down a taxi outside of Namba. Perhaps the reason Doraemon can't is that Doraemon has no fingers.

A Bizzare Ride Through Osaka

2005-10-31T11:07:00.000+09:00

"He who by reanimating the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher."
-Confucius

This past weekend passed by as quickly as the short-lived pop and fizzle of a cheap firework. Though I will refrain from calling last Saturday and Sunday a "dud," they certainly weren't what I had made them out to be, which is yet another lesson on the cafeteria-like buffet of life's humbling experiences. We, as creatures full of expectation, lick it all up to the last drop.

As my friends Peter, Mac, Ben, and I made it to the Loop Line platform at Osaka Station just in time, I perceived people who were remarkably similar despite their costumes. In fact, many people wore the same costume (I even had a Doraemon twin, who attempted to bond with me by relating the fact that we had purchased our costumes at the same chain of multi-purpose retailers, "Don Quixote"--I wasn't that impressed). The train pulled up to the platform. Drunken gaijin (most with attendant Japanese girlfriends) flocked into the train cars, goaded on by some sense of revelry that the occassion allowed. En route to the first stop, I found it hard to breathe. My mind turned back to magazine images of a soccer crowd in some South American country swarming a fence and crushing a few of the lowest members to death. Ok, the crowd in the train was certainly not that extreme--neither in zeal nor in magnitude. At the first stop, people got out of their car and ran into a different one. Why? A bored excuse for retaining some sense of ritual (i.e. trick or treating would be a little too childlike and unfruitful) in a land where a Westerner's orientation--rules, reasons, methods, and explanations--are not part of Japan's homogenous social fabric. After about four or five of these "changes" (which all involved the same thing), I got bored. Thus I befriended two witches--aka Harumi and Asami. We talked about Japanese literature--mostly Natsumi Soseki--while being pressed against the windows of the muggy JR train. At Tennoji Station, everyone deboarded the train. Confusion broke out within our group: Pete and Ben got back on the return train, Mac and I got out at Tennoji (missed the train because the process of relieving ourselves took some effort in our costumes), and I continued my talk with Harumi. During the separation, Godzilla (aka Mac) took it upon himself to terrorize the couples of Osaka with a roar that struck fear into the hearts of all passerby. Finally, after an hour of waiting and various Halloween antics outside Namba station, we met up with Super Mario and Friends again. An unhealthy and mazui dinner from Royal Host in our tummies, we set off to find our car, our place to sleep, and our peace of mind.

In the morning, I felt as if I was somewhere in old Japan. Waking up to the smell of fresh tatami, the sound of birds, the feel of a hard bed (thin futon on said tatami mat), the sight of early sunlight through the 障子--or shouji (sliding paper-screen door)--filtering onto my eyelids, and the taste of cool, dry autumn air in an unheated room, I found it hard to believe I had been in a Doraemon costume in a crowded Osaka train the night before. Perhaps I was imagining things for a second--a scene from a different life, or from a Beat Takeshi film. I got up, opened the screen door a crack, and observed a peaceful garden scene of close-trimmed dwarf pines and some small birds playing. Then a van drove by, blasting an advertisement for some product out of a bullhorn (only five or so feet from the window where I slept). It was only 7:20am.

So now I am into a new week. Things will start feeling November-like soon. Leaves will turn a deep red, then fall off their branches. I will travel a bit, drink more hot drinks (the switch from beer to shochu and hot water is a welcome one), write more, study more, continue to expect things and encounter the unexpected.

Pictures to follow...

Full Moon and Kinky Reggae at Bagus

2005-10-17T18:20:00.000+09:00

Those present yesterday at Shin-Wakaura's Bar Bagus from 3:00 to 4:00 witnessed my debut as a reggae drummer. Though I have listened to all kinds of music for many years--that of Jamaica included--I have pigeonholed myself as a drummer by playing jazz exclusively for most of my formative years. Now then, when Nori-kun of The Redemptions (Wakayama's ONLY roots reggae band) invited me to join the group, little did he know that my lack of experience would be such an obstacle for the seemingly simple task of laying down a solid one-drop groove tune after tune. Anyways, enough self-flaggelation. Here is a short review of the concert, which took place at the full moon festival last night.

Bagus is a quaint, family-run bar/cafe/performing and visual arts center (i.e. a vertiable hippie mecca for the greater Osaka area) which lies in the southern part of Wakayama City. It is underneath an old school 旅館, ryokan (Japanese inn), and the deck/bar is literally 5 to 20 feet from the water (variant with the ebb and flow of the tide). Here we see the view looking out from the audience's perspective, our special MC, You Key Man, on your left unwinding with hands on his head..

As the performance started, my nerves were at an all time high, but seeing as most of the friends I had invited could not find Bagus (due to its cryptic location and my even more cryptic directions), it could have been worse. After a very tense rendition of Marley's "Want More," my right forearm muscles knotted up. It seemed that all the years of practice were washed out with the low tide. Next, we went through our set with lots of energy, but wavering in the musicianship department. Here are a few photos from The Redemptions' show:

Rastafied Drumkit (courtesy of Nori-kun)

Afterwards, the festivities continued well into the evening. It was a great time--hot chai tea with rum, homemade Japanese and Indian food (even some mysterious tacos showed up), a full moon, a large crowd of friendly people, and all of this culminating in the lantern-lit, fully hippified and elegant performance of Haruko: O-TSUKI SAN
A wonderful way to end the evening...

Autumn Rain 秋の雨

2005-10-11T13:30:00.000+09:00

Last night, as I biked through the rural district of Takamatsu in Wakayama City, the smell of wet earth and chimney smoke reminded me of my winters in Berkeley when I was a child. There are certain vivid associations that each person makes with particular smells or groups of smells encountered throughout childhood. The damp, freshly rained-on smell of wet pines and wet roads combined with the burning wood smell of chimney smoke that the Japanese describe as 香ばし, or kobashi, took my mind away from the tasks at hand--ride bike down street, stay upright, study Japanese tonight, etc. Instead my mind flitted away like a moth at the flame.

Kobashi fits this smell with precision, whereas any English combination would include a long list of so-close words like smoky, balmy, fragrant, pungent, redolent, etc. Anyways, there is a certain smell coming with the first real rain of the cold season--not the rain of early summer, tsuyu, which is quite tropical--that without fail produces the pangs of memory that I feel in some unlocatable center. Somewhere back inside me, though every year it is covered up a bit more, lies the first few years of Christmas in Berkeley--the dark purplish hills hidden in a dense, opaque fog, my eyes trying to see past Monterey Ave. to the next block. Is that a man walking towards me? Is it a deer? A bush? Today there is little fog in Wakayama, but the rain by itself is more powerful in producing images than an album of baby pictures. When the rain comes, people huddle inside to stay warm by the fire, and I am reminded of a home that I used to be a part of. Now in search of a new, habitable home--where I am to go next--I must continue to relive these moments even if they work contrary to the act of looking ahead. Time to throw another log on the fire, even while the first one is still burning.

A Song After Tea

2005-10-08T18:09:00.000+09:00

Some days I wake up and see my life,
before me there is someone whom I meet
everytime I begin to run away.

Today there was heavy rain.
An upright river pounded
against the streets and buildings.

The soil too took it all in,
the grass saturated, satiated,
I waited for nothing more.

Now it has ceased.
Giant trucks slosh through deep pools
on the uneven road.

When I finish my cup of tea
I clean all the dishes
and put them on the shelf.

Besides me, there are many people in this world
always trying to finish something
even at the very point beginning, we sing:

"Tip me over and pour me out."

A Day in My Pants

2005-10-06T15:43:00.001+09:00

What calls us to come back to the world, after floating so long out on the border of another place (which we could call the destination of transcendence)? After a few days of a break-down of my function in the world, I have regained some peace of mind, albeit momentarily, from this day of being hungover and reading the work of Flannery O'Connor.

The school chime sounded the end of the last morning test as I strolled off campus on a toasty October morning. Down the street lies ブラジリアンコーヒー, or in bastardized English, Burajillian Kohii (I think it is supposed to mean "Brazilian Coffee"). In this antique-looking coffee shop is woman who cooks a wickedly hearty tonkatsu lunch. I indulged my love for deep-fried pork in a sweet gravy-like sauce, but as I waited for the food to come, I read "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Connor. It is a very short story about a one-armed con-man who, by the end of the story, is undermined by his own "tricks." This man, Mr. Shiftlet, picks up a hitchhiker on the road (this is after he has ditched his recent bride--a charming, but deaf 30-year old "girl"--in the previous diner) and starts to rue his ever leaving his mother. I quote the little exchange between him and the hitchhiking boy just because it hits hard and suddenly, like a linebacker or like a moment of catharsis. Maybe y'all won't appreciate it or nothin' but here goes:

"'My mother was a angel of Gawd!' Mr, Shiftlet said in a strange voice. 'He took her from heaven and giver to me and I left her.' His eyes were instantly clouded over with a mist of tears. The car was barely moving.
The boy turned angrily in his seat. 'You go to the devil!' he cried. 'My old woman is a flea bag and yours is a stinking pole cat!' and with that he flung the door open and jumped out with his suitcase into the ditch."

Well anyways, I had something interesting to say today but it fell out of my head, kind of like this boy into the ditch.

"Intellectual insomnia is still quite a long way off." -Mortimer J. Adler

Happy Birthday!

2005-10-04T14:05:00.000+09:00

Todaｙ　Mujoukan (無常観)　turns 1 year old. Happy Birthday to my blog! Sniffle, sniffle...

Dream Road

2005-10-03T11:09:00.000+09:00

Should my dream road ever mark
The footprints of my way at dawn

The path leading to your window
Would wear out even if it were of stone

Alas, there's no trace for me to follow,
The dream dissolves and is gone

-Yi Myonghan (1595-1645)

Saying Goodbye to September

2005-09-30T10:09:00.000+09:00

On the verge of October and Autumn, there has been a unbelievably beautiful stretch of clear, warm, and in every sense perfect weather here in Wakayama. This past month some really great things have happened to me, or rather, I did some great things. There were also some incredibly painful absences which grew greater as the distance between myself and the present seemed to grow. I think it was Hermann Hesse's Emil Sinclair who had the same kinds of struggles with accord within the self.

Well, goodye to September. What a strange thing to say, but a fitting end no matter what is thought of it by you or me.

Korea

2005-09-27T22:54:00.000+09:00

Never in my life have I ever encountered the expected upon going somewhere I have never travelled before, my most recent journey through Korea being no exception to the rule. In fact I perceive similarities among the narratives of each brief trip into the unknown: initial befuddlement, followed by gradually inurement, then the final beatific denoumet which leaves me a bit wistful and unprepared for reentry into the sharply defined world that I had left. And though I expect to go back to Korea while I still am a temporary resident in East Asia, I feel the need to look back, if only at a glimpse.

Wednesday 9/21/2005

I land in Incheon International Airport at about 8:30pm, the first things to catch my eyes are the bright neon signs in Hangul, a written script whose indecipherability I recall from my first meeting with Japanese hiragana. In the airport lobby, I head to the convenience store for some bottled water. My first social exchange with the Korean teenager at the counter went something like this:

Clerk: (In Hangul) "Hello, how are you? 800 won please."
Jeff: -- [hands 10,000 won note over to clerk]
Clerk: "Thanks, have nice day."
Jeff:--

I feel like a teenager who is face to face with first love, dumbfounded by the mystery of utterance. Next, we ride into Seoul on the bus, which smells of kimchee, old synthetic leather, and an odor I cannot identify. Off the bus stop, we are instantly lost, greeted by smells of garlic, chili pepper, roasting meat, and various dishes being prepared by the street vendors. A Korean man pretends that he wants to help, but really he wants to practice English. He doesn't help, but he talks with us for a bit, crosses the street with us, and leaves just as lost as before. Finally we get to Traveler's A, our youth hostel, where we meet an old lady who is reading the newspaper on the floor. She has no chair to sit in. Our exchange is propelled by improvised sign language and an assumed foreknowledge of why we are here and who we are.
Before sleeping, Kathy, Lalindra, and I head to a Korean eatery, not very traditional, but still open at 2:00 am. There I try a dish of unbearably spicy rice cake, seafood, and onions. They have napkins in Korea, and I indulge myself to the fullest. This is my first taste of Korea, and grogginess aside, it is unmistakably wonderful.

Thursday 9/22/2005

Wake up call is early. Out of the hostel we make it to the subway, where our assignation with the fourth member of our group is set. We have agreed to meet on the green line, at Euljiro 3-ga Station. Apparently there is a mistake. Waiting for almost three hours in morning rush hour in downtown Seoul is not what I had envisioned as my first morning in Korea, but it is an eye opening experience nonetheless. The smell of frying bacon intermittently changing to rancid meat and sewage stench is more than I can take. I am a little unnerved:

Next there is the beatiful train ride across the Korean peninsula to Pusan, the second biggest city on the southeastern end of the country. This city reminds of San Francisco, fog, steep hills, quaint, old buildings, shops that are run down, cozy little neighborhoods, but there are a lot more high rise apartment complexes in this city.

Certainly the theme of this trip was "good food," and with good reason. My first lunch was a tasty bowl of Bi Bim Bap, a bowl of rice, veggies, egg, meat, and all you can handle spicy miso paste that adds color. Getting adjusted to our travels, we spent the day slowly, roaming around town and getting our bearings set. At night, it was barbequed beef, the first feast of the trip. Not much is needed to say about this except this:
Cutting the meat up with scissors was interesting, but I got the hang of it. It's just like seventh grade art class, with really thick construction paper. Then it was drinking--Korean Soju, and lots of Hite, a very light Korean beer that goes well with all the heavy meat I am stuffing myself with. At night we roam the streets, which are very similar to Osaka, but less obnoxious guys with Rod Stewart hairdos.
Friday 9/23/2005

Off to Gyeongju, the Kyoto of Korea, but a lot more inaka. Before we make it there, we had a good day at the Pusan Fish Market and then Beomeosa Temple, a restored temple (everything has been destroyed at some point in time by the Japanese) that sits atop a hill in north Pusan. Here we hike up into dense fog, and at the top we meet a gate, beyond which I may never know what lies...

At night, we arrive in Gyeongju, where Mr. Kwon greets us cordially and with great humor. What a great man Mr. Kwon is, and I will only find out this as I stay overnight, reading Korean poetry on the couch in the hostel lounge.

Saturday 9/24/2005

Morning: Conversation with Mr. Kwon and his son Clint. Mr. Kwon is adept at many arts, be they Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, or whatever. He is a remarkable calligrapher, and I have some of his works to attest for that. Here is his hand in action:

The day goes along beautifully--my favorite day of the trip. We head out to the temple in Gyeongju whose name I forget. I meet some adorable kids on the bus--Justin, Jillian, and Esther--whose English is impeccable. I want to hang out with them for hours, learn their secrets, play tag or hide and seek, but we are soon off the bus and out to roam the glorious, but restored, temple precincts. After we finish taking pictures, walking around, breathing the air, we head across the street to a restaurant for the best meal in Korea. I trysome bulgolgi, or marinated beef with veggies. We go a little overboard on the homemade rice wine, though, and soon I am passed out under the shade of a tree. There is grass in Korea, and yes, you could say it is greener. bugolgi drinking too much

where I woke up

Then it was fun on tandem bicycles, a nice end to a beautiful day:

Sunday 9/25/2005

After some trouble with our intended Youth Hostel (i.e. very shady Korean guys proposing to take Kathy out for a night at the club--for 10$), we make it to a very classy hotel (ok, not so classy, but definitely worth the wait--bedtime was around 3:30-4:00). In the morning, we head out to central Seoul, where I meet a new friend, waiting for me at the gate (the beard is definitely a fake): Finally, we have a fun night out at the nicest Pizza Hut that I have ever seen (a bit weary of all the beef eating, we decided to switch gears). Sleeping soundly after a few drinks of Confucian Family Liquor (horribly strong).

Sunday 9/26/2005

It is morning and time to go back. Sigh...

This entry was very long, I know. It took me a while to get all the pictures set in place, but I am still regretful that I couldn't include more. My favorite picture will have to wrap up my reflections on a recurrent theme of the trip--the toilet. Unlike Japan, Korea seems to be comfortable with letting us "outsiders" feel welcome, even at the public restroom. I saw this and had to take a picture. Luckily I didn't take a picture of what occured within my stall:

Nowhere, Now Here

2005-09-27T09:05:00.000+09:00

if I am nowhere now
than here is like a goodbye
that two children gave me
I saw them running down the street
brother and sister holding hands
looking back at me bashfully to wave
they skipped away and I was back in this world
old friends apologetically offer reason to greet
measure their distance from each other
in vain prostration justify touch or absence of
their hearts somwhere else
or here undecided.

Shishimai Matsuri 獅子舞祭

2005-09-18T20:23:00.000+09:00

I survived, folks.

Two days (one full day, one half day) of drinking incessantly and uninhibitedly--from cold cans of Asahi beer to Okinawan awamori to the communal sake that is passed around the crowd while fellow matsuri participants take turns hoisting the 100+ kg. portable shrine through the drizzly streets of Takashiba neighborhood in Nachi-Katsuura Town (I had a few carries with the shrine, though not as many as an NFL running back, and I managed to thoroughly bruise my shoulder in the most intoxicated hours).

After a mind-numbing train ride down the coast of the Kii Peninsula (1. I forgot my discman, 2. Dostoyevsky was just not my cup of tea on this Friday afternoon), I arrived at Taiji station late Friday night and ended up drinking in impressive quantities (had to catch up to the others) until about 12:00 or 1:00 or so. The next morning we got up at 5:50. Nick and I stumbled half-awake out into the cool morning and into the procession just as it started on this foggy and drizzly Saturday morning.

Picture this:

Nick joins the flute ensemble without missing a beat. I am struggling to take clear photos with my outdated camera, struggling to see clearly after last night's drinking. Nonetheless it is a peaceful morning: the Ota River washes out into the currents of the Pacific, I can hear a few gulls, their calls mingling with the droning songs of the taiko and flutes, the damp streets and dew filled cedars by the shrine all cool the blood, which is hot from last night's drinking. The scene is much different from anything that I have experienced in Wakayama City, and I am grateful to be there. I am glad that we got up this early.

As the day moves along, it becomes more and more drizzly. We parade through the streets of the town, receiving the appropriate libations with the appropriate ceremonials--the Shishimai dances looking good at every spot and the music bringing the many generations of this town together. Sekiya san was my favorite taiko drummer, getting into all the matsuri chants and grunts when the music is smoking. Here he is in action on the street:

He is on your right, rocking out on the low drum, while in the foreground sits Katsu--taking a break on the sidewalk with me (photo taker).

Throughout the whole festival, I had a bit of trouble with my Japanese sandals. Sekiya lent me his pair since they were broken in (the new ones I had on originally were so painful it felt like my toes were going through a meat grinder). Here's me trying to walk in the first pair of sandals:

After lunch break, which involved heavy drinking of just about every kind of Japanese alcoholic beverage, we headed out for what was in my opinion the best part of the matsuri: the hour when all of the matsuri goers, or men at least, carried the extremely heavy portable shrine through the streets at the peak of our drunken stupor. I didn't bring my camera out for this for obvious reasons, but you can take my word for it. After that, we went back to the community center, where NHK filmed the performances and I passed out for about 15 minutes in the middle of the crowd (I was seated, such a position allowing me to discreetly doze off while everyone's attention was drawn to the dances and music). Then it was more parading and drinking and ending up passed out again, this time in someone's Mini Cooper just a few blocks from the dances. When I was woken up by Nick and friends, I had a terrible headache, so I drank some tea this time and caught the last few acts of the nightime festivities. After that, it was onsen time and oyasumi.

Today the weather was beautiful. I sweated off a few of the thousands of calories I have consumed from beer and snacks, then put more on with, you guessed it, beer and snacks. I watched four more performances, some involving some strange special guests. Would you trust you children with this man?

I am not so sure if he was part of the Shishimai Matsuri of yesteryore, but it sure was a strange and funny way to wrap up the matsuri.

Anyways, the weekend was a spectacular event, a very auspicious way to kick off these next few weeks--my school festival, trip to Korea, etc. I made some new friends, saw some old ones, and just had fun getting my feet wet in the life of a small town tucked away on the beautiful southern tip of the Kii Peninsula. There was even an old house from the Meiji era that I got to take some photos of. The photos however do very little justice to the weekend, so you will have to imagine the rest...

Junji and me.

Shishimai in action.

Rina and Maiko

Early morning beer...

Meiji era House

Leaving Early

2005-09-12T15:20:00.000+09:00

I must have left the game earlier than I thought, for the final score actually ended up to be 21-2. Even though I missed seven runs on my half-awake train ride back down the coast of Osaka Bay, I still think I got my money's worth. Next time, I will have to watch the premature inebriation a little more closely. Maybe a day game would be nice.

Back to the grind at school on Monday. I file like a big pile of shit with flies swarming on it. Why I am so lethargic today, I am not quite sure. Instead of lesson planning (which has been done for some time, just no lessons for which to enact the plan), studying Japanese, or anything else which falls under the category of "productiveness," I ate bannana bread with my miruku kohhii and read some Kierkegaard in between mamouth emailing sessions and dozing sessions. Only one class today, which involved my "best" class acting up and speaking in Japanese the whole time. The new exchange student from Sri Lanka won the romance game, which made me a bit happy and a bit defiant, like "Pooh to all you materialistic kids who only want to look at pictures of you and yourself and go shopping for yourself with every chance you get!" I don't actually think this way most of the time, for my kids are adorable. I am just going through a period where I have been seeing things a little more clearly and thus undergoing the aftershock of conscience that follows such a consciousness.

This week: Sports Festival, the Shi-shi Mae Festival in Nachi Katsuura (Lion Dance Festival brought to Japan from China long, long ago).

Week after this: School Festival & Korea (well, the South).

One Hundred Types of Prosperity

2005-09-11T13:54:00.000+09:00

Not to be confused with William Empson's Meisterwerk--"Seven Types of Ambiguity"--this exhibition, called "百寿", consists of 100 different renditions of the character for prosperity, 寿 (kotobuki) and now hangs in a glass case in the lobby of my school's main entrance. I decided one day to take pictures of it, for I thought it was quite a wonderful thing to look at:

I am not so sure about this one:

It is certainly creative, though I cannot tell if the artist was aiming at birds, fish, trees with eyeballs, nerve endings, or what. In any case, pondering such imponderables (or at least ambiguities) such as what an artist's intention was is unfruitful and takes up a lot of uneccessary space. I guess the same could be said about this blog, especially the most recent posts, which have been encumbered by the author's abuse of the photograph posting option. Anyways, enough apologetics for my lack of things to say. More pictures.

Yesterday I went to a Hanshin Tigers game at the oldest professional baseball stadium in Japan, the legendary Koshien Stadium (in between Osaka and Kobe, hence the name Hanshin--the railway which runs between Osaka and Kobe ("Han" 阪 is also the "saka" isn Osaka, and "Shin" 神 is the "Ko" in Kobe). In my unchecked enthusiasm for this experience, I got off at Koshien Station at about 3:00, though the game was scheduled to start at 6:00. There are no tailgate parties at Japanese baseball stadiums, but plenty of small 食堂 shokudou (dining spots serving beer, noodles, donburi and oden) along the way between the station and the stadium. I popped into one to do some pre-game mingling with the die-hard Hanshin fans, but in the process I ended up flirting with the cute staff at the shokudo and getting way too drunk. By the time I was in the stadium, my bladder was in sheer agony, but I didn't miss most of the action. My favorite Hanshin player, catcher Akihiro Yano (#39), hit a two run blast in the bottom of the third inning. By the end of the fourth, Hanshin was up 13-2 on the last place Hiroshima Carp. This meant another bathroom break and more beer. When I came back, Yano was up again. This time he was beamed in the head by a very high fastball, and the benches cleared. In America, most likely punches and kicks would have been abundant, but in the Japanese big leagues, there is a strangely reserved group huddle and discussion about the proper way to handle the situation. I left Koshien sometime in the later innings (I forgot exactly when) with the score 14-2, way too drunk for my own good and with just enough money to get back to Wakayama. It is a good thing that the Tigers have started eating "Hanshin Tigers Natto" (photo courtesy of my kitchen). Maybe this will help them into the playoffs:

Now then, there isn't a whole lot of excitement like that during the week: homeruns galore, drunken revelry, legendary baseball stadiums, players being carted off the field left and right, etc. Mostly during the week I read books (recently the work of Walker Percy and Soren Kierkegaard), study Japanese, and if I am lucky, catch a remarkable sunset over the not so picturesque cityscape of Wakayama City:

Kaisou for Breakfast

2005-09-09T08:30:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I embarked on what is called "shutchou" in Japanese, i.e. a "business trip." I got off at Shirahama Station to be greeted by the amicable Misumi-sensei, the most friendly, dedicated, and competent Japanese teacher of English that I have come across in Japan. We worked together at Shimizu Bunko (Branch) High School during the Fall/Winter of my first year. I will always remember his classes because he would just let me speak about anything for the first five minutes of class. Those classes were probably my favorite classes, during which I often was found gazing out the isolated school building's third floor window down at the cedar forests, the limpid Arida river, the few houses and one road in this inexpressibly quaint, wonderful town. Some mornings I thought I could live in a place like Shimizu until my greying, wizened years of convalescence.

Anyways, I got side-tracked. After the "top secret" work was finished by about 1:00, I met up with Mr. Katz, and we headed to Shirahama Beach. What a perfect day to be at the beach--the sun very warm, not hot, a slight breeze, the beach not packed with people like the weekend crowds; of course, even with the small turnout on a Thursday afternoon, there were too many beautiful girls to count or think about or even talk about here. The water was not cold at all, in fact, it was perfect. In the water, I didn't think about much, enjoyed the current's pull on my body, swam a little against the current, floated along in the afternoon.

Then, at night, after many beers and Chu-his, I passed out in my bedroom at about 10:00, the air conditioning on a very low temperature, my light and stereo still on, my clothes still on. After getting up to brush my teeth, disrobe, and make the appropriate adjustments on all electrical appliances, I had some vivid dreams. The image with which I woke up with was driving down the road that leads into Shimizu, a very windy, narrow road lined on both sides by symmetrically planted cedar forests. The driver was my Kocho sensei (principal), the car was an old MGB convertible, like the one my dad used to drive, which still sits on my front lawn, unable to move. Kocho sensei said to me, "You should eat kaisou for breakfast." This morning I looked up かいそう, or kaisou, in my dictionary:

会葬：　to mourn or attend a funeral
回送：　to send on; to forward; off-duty
回想: reminiscence, retrospect, memory
快走: a race
改装： to renovate, remodel, or convert
海草： seaweed, kelp
階層: rank, class
壊走： flight, rout; to take flight

Now granted that dreams may be full of random associations, and granted that most of the entries in this list of possible things I can have for breakfast are not edible (plus I vehemently dislike kelp), I cannot make much sense of the last line of the dream. But it has been a while since I have dreamed in Japanese, and especially in such a vigorously lucid sequence of images. Maybe it was the sun. Maybe it was the chu-hi. Maybe it was from studying Kanji more ardently in the past few weeks. Maybe it is some deep, impenetrable mystery that I am always working on as I live my life.

In any case, I am going to the Hanshin Tigers game this weekend. They are playing the Hiroshima Carp. I promise an update and some pictures, along with the promised photos of my calligraphy club's exhibition (there might even be a guest work of yours truly included in this magnificent sight).

To be continued...

Where am I going?

2005-09-04T17:58:00.000+09:00

So a child asks father or mother, one question that can and does mean many things. What are the answers that mom or dad offer? Is it one that can be reconciled with the child's need to find the answer for his or herself? Or does it work as a propellant, an impetus from whose impact one finds oneself running full speed down a hillside in the dark, not caring where the feet fall. Then, after many close-calls, a voice comes from afar. It was one that was so close so long ago. It is barely audible. There is only a murmur, like the faint running of a brook miles away, like the flow of traffic from the street outside. This voice says the same thing that was once extremely clear, vital, but now it is barely noticeable. It is not a senseless voice, but ambiguous to the highest degree.

Everytime I want to write something, I try to listen to this voice and gradually, though sometimes in a flash, my words echo its indistinct sounds. It all sounds pretentious, doesn't it? But even the light left in the sky will not go away for some time.

Form Without Content

2005-09-02T08:44:00.000+09:00

One has lost count of how many times the Japanese's punctilious obsession with detail, when it comes to formal matters, has disturbed me to the point of an ambiguous, enraged laughter. Take the 自己紹介, jikoshoukai, or self-introduction. This morning, some alumni of my high school arrived fresh from their highly rigorous university study (more subdued and disturbed laughter, if not tears, here on this issue as well) to shadow teachers around for a day. They MUST, as mandated by a Japanese code of business etiquette, give a self-introduction. What makes the scene farcical, if not just sad, is listening to four different teachers check with these two COLLEGE students about whether or not they can say their name, place of study, and stand here, no here, no there. "Can you say your name? Stand here, ok?" x 4 = something a bit ridiculous. One would be led to believe that these two young adults were not competent enough to be able to state their name and current place of residence in formal Japanese. One would also be right. After much fear and trembling, the young woman holding the microphone stumbled over her name and the word "Shizuoka Daigaku," which is the name of her college. After all that attention to detail, it goes to waste. But no one really cares about the quality of the jikoshoukai anyways, or about the signfied content. There is only the form. As long as it's there, who cares about what really happens.

Then, in my prolonged, agonizing ramble concerning this matter, there is the most recent issue (brought up in the last 15 minutes) of taking nenkyu during the school year. I have read the same contract 3 years in a row, and in no place does it state something to the effect of: "ALT may not request nenkyu for travel abroad during the school term." Of course, I can take all the nenkyu I want if I am in Japan. Heck, I could spend a month in Okinawa for all they're concerned, as long as I don't go "outside." It beats me that they leave out a very important detail like this, one which is in my interest but perhaps means nothing to them (as I do).

Anyway, my rant is over. I really hope that you haven't made it this far, but if you want to know the denoumet to this conflict, my supervisor, Kaino sensei, the coolest Japanese teacher of English on the planet, has worked the system so that I can go to Korea. So perhaps I will be off eating kimchee (and hopefully not dog) somewhere in the mountains near Pusan.

I am beginning to think I am not wanted here by the teachers. Still, I feel close to the students. Am I right to feel this, or just have problems with being subjected to unreasonably and comically exaggerated excercises of authority? I sometimes think of Yosemite Sam and my Kocho Sensei in the same oversized shoes. I am, of course, no Bugs Bunny.

It Will Be September Soon

2005-08-30T10:51:00.000+09:00

It was in winter, last year,
the fog sagged over the campus,
we walked through the soundless grove,
nothing remained visible except you.

You, my friend, looked at me through the mist,
which has now passed and given way to the sun and sky.
We left the grove and walked out across a field,
our sneakers muddy in the dewy grass.

I must admit I cannot see myself in myself.
I could not seek the sky, it was not there.
Were I to build wings and fly above the motionless brume
I would not see any more than what it was I left.

You have been gone for a long time,
and everytime I remember your voice's soft, echoless pitch,
the smell of dead eucalptus leaves and anise caught in the air,
the roar of the bus in which I watched you leave that morning,

I fall back into the season that creeps in
like the early fog that leaves, but looks back.
If I could not see you still, I would never be able to see
that I can see today.

Late August

2005-08-26T08:57:00.000+09:00

I find myself in August, 26. This month has flashed before me in an instant, an apparition that was here and then not here. Wakayama is still suffering from the late-summer lassitude which drags its feet in the post-matsuri ennui. Could this be a repetition of something said before? Japan is hot and humid during the summer, yes. The forty or so children in the classroom stare vacantly at their desks, sometimes--Praise the Lord!--at me. Yesterday a kid named Kohei had a conversation with me in front of the whole class (transcribed quite accurately):

"Kohei, what is your answer for number four?"
"Eh?"
"Kohei, your answer for number four..."
"Eh?"
"Kohei, number four...your answer..."
"Eh?"
"Number F-O-U-R...your answer...your KOTAE..." [Japanese slipping out]
"Eh?"
(Hand holding up four fingers) "Number FOUR! ANSWER...READ..." [pantomime of someone reading]
"Eh? Wakaran..."

So now I head into a long day of classes with junior high school students, coffee in hand and donughts already consumed. Next installment, pictures from the calligraphy club's exhibition...

Examining the Cultural Divide, or Hung Out to Dry

2005-08-20T08:01:00.000+09:00

Revisiting the past two weeks of being back in Berkeley, I have found through much introspection (this done while hanging seemingly endless loads of laundry on my 7th floor balcony) that there is much to think about. But what is there to say?

In the States, I was asked of my experience, "What is Japan like?" or "How was Japan?" as if this experience sizes with that of seeing the newest production of Thorton Wilder's "Our Town." Granted these questions are safe conversation starters, and show signs of caring about the fact that I am still alive even while not present, I find the project of answering them to even the slightest degree of vividness to be immeasurably complex. The twenty hour plane trip, with a four hour layover in Hong Kong, highlights the difficulty in "bridging" the two cultures. It would be one long bridge...

So, to start off, let's start with the first meal of the day. Breakfast. Back at home I often eat something like this (photo courtesy of Albany's most delectable and indelibly retro eatery, The Royal Cafe):

Of course the breakfast that followed this brilliantly-baked scone and coffee, a Greek egg white scramble, was worth a thousand pictures (all of which are witheld due to photographer's hunger and said breakfast's unbearably warm, appetizing smell). Now I am back in Japan, and though the traditional breakfast foods here offer much in terms of fighting colon cancer, they lack in certain transcendental qualities of the American breakfast, i.e. tastiness, hardiness, texture, and just plain (or with raisins) goodness:

For those of you who are new to this type of food, it is called natto, which has now become a dietary staple for me in Japan. I look at all the spiderweb-like goop, the snotty residue that sticks to the beans, to one's chopsticks, one's chin, and one's napkin, and think that this must be the culinary equivalent of the Tao--a continuous substance that runs through all of life, interfusing everything it touches. Tell me it doesn't look like the food of the Gods...Go ahead, tell me...

After breakfast has been consumed and the appropriate cleanup processes enacted, I ride my bike for 30 minutes through the 32 degree (Celsius) Wakayaman humidity across the Kii River to a new shopping mall, wherein lies my second source of pleasure for the day: foreign beer. At home, this little expedition of mine means very little, or perhaps sounds a tad absurd. This is not your 3 minute drive to Beverages and More for a six pack of anything brewed on the face of this earth. I am talking about my sense of worth in the world (read: Wakayama) here, folks: Corona, Bass, Chimay, Grolsch, Leffe, and more--all priced outrageously high. Biking home through the Kii River's stubborn headwinds (it seems that all wind in Japan blows directly against the path of the determined gaijin) with 30$ worth of beer (just enough to get drunk) in a plastic bag, I negotiate every turn, bump (there are many), and reckless taxi driver as I make my way home through the streets of Wakayama. The bottles clink a heavy, full-of-beer-don't-break-me kind of sound. I make it home, sopping with sweat, my hand shaking from holding the heavy bag of beer in my right hand the whole way, and now it's time to shower.

For lunch it was a peanut butter and jelly sando-weechi, a pear, and some beer. Boring, yes. Then off to the gym for some bench press and a conversation in Japanese about San Francisco's weather, the American diet, and the more "unmentionable" gym topics of conversation that I am glad I don't understand completely.

At night, I decided to get fancy as well as beef up on protein. Tofu steaks batter-fried with shrimp and teriyaki glaze, kimchee and chicken breast stir fry, salad, rice, many beers, and naturally natto! Then for desert, it was my 5$ bottle of Chimay and a wonderful, air-conditioned evening. I read a bit of "On the Road" (almost off that road) and a page or two from "The Oxford History of Christianity." That was my first day back in Japan.

On Monday, I am back at school with these kids... V ( ^ ^ ) V

If only every day could be spent camping, or at least in a lodging in some vast wilderness. I would go there. It would be lovely...

Berkeley Review

2005-08-17T03:16:00.000+09:00

Now I am looking back at my recent stay in Berkeley. Last night I woke up at some ungodly hour yelling and slamming a door at someone, but I cannnot remember if this really happened or if it was a dream. Never again can I stay at this home where I have lived for too long already.

The dense San Francisco fog is lifted from the Berkeley hills as if the day's hands pulled slowly, effortlessly at cords, raising the morning's thick, wooly, grey curtains. Now these curtains have disappeared and there is a stage. I do not know what will happen on it. I do not expect much--some people eating lunch. They are family. Talking to each other in words that evade all things important, their exchange will lead them to no new understanding of themselves or their relationship to each other. After that lunch will be over, they will all sigh with relief and go back to their reliable shadow, their huddled existence in an office, a room, or place where no one is. I will be back on an island thousands of miles away from here, and I will still be in this one life of mine. I cannot seem to lie to other people, nor can I tell them the truth. If there is such a thing as a truth that springs forth from a lie, than maybe my words are honest.

Being "confused" means to put together, or fuse, incoherent or resistant elements of experience. I am certainly confused now, though it is nothing new. I am used to it, and I am used by it. There are two worlds that I am equally in, though in completely different orientations. Before I claimed to have one life, but that could in fact easily multiply, or be divided, or be subtracted from. Whatever the equation, I am still only in this overwhelmingly intense situation, and I must change myself accordingly.

The coffee's caffeine has died off now. My brain goes back to idling as I gaze out the window. There is a reddish-brown squirrel hopping from the oak tree to the metal post. Another one is looking for food among the fallen leaves. There are already so many fallen leaves in Berkeley. Perhaps all year round there are leaves on the ground in this city. It is perpetually Fall. That doesn't mean much. The same smells come back to me every time I revisit Berkeley in late summer--hot dogs, eucalyptus, rotting food and fragrant gardens. Whenever I am back, I smell these and I forget about my future. Than I am back in myself, paying my parking ticket, shitting in the bathroom at Zachary's Pizza, having inane conversations with people I don't really know, and being somewhat unsettled by things that shouldn't matter. I shouldn't care so much, but I do.

Ok, now it's time to head across the Bay Bridge for "Lunch in the City." No sex. I will be back in Wakayama the day after tomorrow, losing a day in the process...Goodbye August 17, 2005! I wish I could have met you, but I trust that you were a lovely day...

Time to get back to Sakon Biru, my cozy homestead, and Eigo no Jugyo! Ingurishu Kurasu! I am getting a running start, Wakayama, get ready to catch me when I jump across the water!

I am losing a lot of things now, perfecting this one art.

Broken Flowers & Such

2005-08-14T07:03:00.000+09:00

I am sitting down for a moment here in the basement of my parent's home after reading in the coffee shop for a few hours. I read a beautiful piece of writing in The Sun called "501 Minutes to Christ" by Poe Ballantine. After I finished reading, I went to Indian Rock to see Berkeley, the bay beyond it, the city across the bay, everything shrouded by a thin, yellowish fog, and nothing visible beyond that. I am hungover after a night of stiff drinks and vapid conversation with old friends, their new lawyer friends, and somewhat cute bartenders who could care less about my circuitous, uninteresting prattle. Upstairs my parents are engaged in a heated verbal scuffle about a light bulb. The sound they make is like that of the cats and racoons fighting late at night underneath the backyard's dying cedar tree. For perhaps the first four or so days I thought that twelve days was not enough time in Berkeley. But now on day eight, I know that I need to get out soon.

Yesterday I watched Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers," which was, as expected, very good and also a bit unfulfilling. His films always intimate the sense of experiencing something very deep and beautiful within the very human mystery of living in this present age, but they remain intimations, being films, of something that must be experienced, not observed. I liked the ending of "Broken Flowers," even though most of the audience at Shattuck Cinema sighed confused sighs and stood awkwardly to leave with puzzled looks on their faces. Recently I have thought a lot about my life in the same vein as Don Johnston's pseudo-Buddhist epiphany, which I won't spoil (deflower) for all you who have yet to see the film (I am not sure how many of my multitudinous readership plan to watch "Broken Flowers"). All in all, I am taking my days like the ending, and beginning, of one of Theodore Roethke's most famous villanelles:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Apologies,

2005-08-11T16:30:00.000+09:00

Tonight the A's won. That doesn't mean anything to my few friends in Japan, and it means very little to me. But I had non-Japanese beer, a high carbo dinner, and well almost forgot about the whirlwind of ideas and sentiments floating around inside of me.

Tomorrow I will have Thai food with some friends I have missed for a long time. I remember the best evening of my life spend with one of them, and I wonder if seeing her will bring back that unbearable nostalgia that I have just managed to bear lately.

OYASUMI...

Day Five

2005-08-10T10:45:00.000+09:00

About halfway through with my visit. Had a real American (i.e. Berkeleyan) breakfast today with homefries, toast, eggs, sausage, even sour scream on the side. One of the many pleasures of home that I will never find in Japan--a place that serves good, hearty breakfast. Next it was time to raid the bookstores--I found myself pillaging both Moe's and Cody's on Telegraph Ave. (for non-Berkeleyans to whom this means nothing, these are probably the two best bookstores in Berkeley), then out for an excursion on the UC campus. So many beautiful women go to this school, and I suddenly got tearfully nostalgic about the yesteryore of my collegiate glory (ok, it wasn't all that glorious considering I spent most of my days in an immobile position at a cafe reading books of poetry and literary criticism and not getting to know the aformentioned thousands of thousands of intelligent and beautiful girls at UC Berkeley). Bought a pair of shoes that fit me with no problem on my size.

I am thinking about what I can bring back, not materially, but psychologically and/or spiritually. Every time I come back to Berkeley, I want to leave right away after the first three days, then the rhythm of life here slowly sinks in and I feel again a pull to my home more deeply than my strong but indistinct attraction to life in Japan. Maybe I am still learning about why I like Japan (I cannot yet give a complete, clear answer to those here who ask me the ridiculous question of "Which place do you like more?"). In the case of Berkeley, I know why I love it, but that reason has lost a solid grounding with the present situation. Things, places, and people have changed and will change, and for this I must rediscover, or reinvent, my connection to home. I do not by any means mean the house where my parents live--for that, I have come to know very acutely, is no longer my home. I mean this area, some people call it the "Bay Area" (being by a Bay), which calls to me from a voice in the deepest parts of me. I cannot hear what it is saying or why it is saying it, but although I am sure as hell looking forward to going back to Japan for another year, I know that I will be unhappy in the long run if I stay there forevermore.

This has been a BIG ramble, I know. I will now cut this posting off, as there is still sun outside on this crisp, beautiful, tranquil Berkeley evening. Time for drinks with a friend from UC, which means talk about poetry, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and of course the less abstract things that we all take part in on a daily basis. Enough already, I set out into the current. Whoosh!!...

Back in Berkeley

2005-08-07T12:46:00.000+09:00

Day one and a half of Berkeley. Feel like taking a nap already, though it is only 8:00pm. Will have to survive a family outing at the not-so-local steakhouse (20 min. drive) before I can sleep a deep, deep sleep. But things have been strange, sometimes lonely and sometimes wonderful so far...

Friday, Dad forgot where the car was parked in the airport lot. Had to scour the many rows of SUVs and non-Japanese cars for half an hour before we spotted the old station wagon, covered with various bumper stickers from my college days. After that I went home, then back out for a burrito and coffee, not so easy on the stomach. Found a show by local jazz legends Will Bernard and Peter Apfelbaum at Berkeley's famous hippy dance spot, Ashkenaz. Blown away by good music, drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap, watching 50 something hippies in pseudo-Native American garb do riotously funny dance moves on the broad, empty dance floor, so I knew I was back in Berkeley. Somethings do not change, at least not so quickly as others.

Today I saw Tim Burton's version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There were strong overtones of Michael Jackson in Willy Wonka's sickly and jaded-childhood character, which made for a darker, more interesting, but maybe less sympathetic portrayal of the legendary confection wizard. Maybe I am darker and less sympathetic, I do not know. Then in the late afternoon, as the fog rolled in across the San Francisco Bay, I had a few pints at the local pub, talked with a 66 year old bi-polar architect who is on Depricode, which also made me feel quite wholly in Berkeley. Now I am at home, awaiting a greasy and stomach-troubling dinner with the family, checking my email for no reason and hoping that I will motivate myself to do things and go places while back here. I have wheels--four now instead of two--so I should get a move on.

More touching, shocking, and boring details of my stay to be posted later. Keep posted. Oyasumi, world...

夏ばて Summer Exhaustion

2005-07-15T13:20:00.000+09:00

Hello, friends. Recently I haven't been blogging, which most likely means more things are happening in the world, both locally and globally--whether it is the ceaseless killing in Iraq, suicide bombings in London, the Bush administration's willingness to destroy, damage, deplete, or just deviate from any thing or action that could bring peace to this world and the human beings in it (ok, maybe a few people at the top rung have their slice of Elysian repose, for now), or just the troubles between my mom and my older brothers, the dawn of Japan's hottest two months, and now being caught between sentiment and reason in my beautifully simple (yet ever so unavoidably and heart/mind-rendingly complex) feelings for Yuka. In the process of feeling, seeing, hearing, reading about, taking part in all of this--i.e. the present moment--I have forgotten my habit of putting a little of it down for someone (often myself) to (proof)read.

Last night, after hitting the gym and running a bit along the train tracks between Wakayama Station and Miyamae Station, I got home, took a cold shower, and went for some grilled chicken at the local yaki tori spot. But really what I felt was needed was an ice cold 生ビール.
Lots of 生ビール. By the end of my meal, I was quite tipsy and stuffed with all that chicken and beer. I decided to walk around the neighborhood, as sweltering as the air was. I made it to Family Mart, where Tsuji-san, the coolest and friendliest of the Family Mart staff (also hands-down the most 英語ぺらぺら), greeted me as cordially as ever. However, I just wasn't feeling the same after so many long and emotionally up and down talks with Yuka, that I could barely speak to him. I mumbled an ”暑いですね” and an ”ありがとう” and parted with a few cans of plum and orange flavored Chu-hi. It is probably a bad thing when, on a Thursday night alone, one spends five minutes at the beverage cooler scanning the labels of each Chu-hi for the best mixture of highest alcohol content and good flavor. I just can't stomach so much lemon Chu-hi. Does this make me picky? Well, now in 南太田公園, the park just behind my apartment, drinking Chu-hi, talking to Yuka on the phone, getting bit by mosquitoes left and right, top to bottom, overhearing the fascinating but incomprehensible conversation between the two fellows who sleep in the park every night (I had a slight flashback of Berkeley's People's Park), I felt a strange mixture (not just the spirits imbibed) of being blessed and being cursed. That is, though I always make my problems to be worse than they are, I have been lucky to make it this far, to sit in a park on a hot summer night getting drunk, bit by mosquitoes, and even seeing a few stars from the depths of Wakayama's neon glow. Today I have had stomach problems, yes. I drank some strange stomach medicine given to me by the school nurse, manufactured locally and resembling rabbit feces. Yes, it's not what you would want or expect stomach medicine to look like, but it did seem to help just a little bit. Much cold barely tea later, a few wonderful junior high classes later, a bunch of cold buckwheat noodles later, I am able to be here now, still writing and saying goodbye to my bloghood temporarily. The next two weeks I will be in 勉強-land, participating in Kansai International Center's Intensive Japanese Workshop. It might feel good to become a real student again as opposed to grumbling in all my half-assed attempts to really study Japanese. After that, I will go on a camping trip in Misato, a small mountain village southeast of Wakayama City. There I will make handmade udon, then curry udon, swim in Kishigawa, hang out with the 中学校 kids. They are an absolutely wonderful group of kids. I need to figure out how to put pictures up on this blog. I managed it once, but it was not really me who figured out how to do it. My technologically defunct ways need some instruction, but I just haven't put much effort into this whole "using the computer" thing lately. After camp, I am off to Berkeley for a short 12 days, then back to Wakayama and the start of the Fall semester. For now, take care friends of Wakayama, of the world. Have a nice おぼん, Japanese festival of the dead, 花火 season, and summer holiday.

Signing off for some time...

Though it is a sad one, I really liked this poem, written by Louise Bogan:

At midnight tears
roll into your ears.

Not Knowing Will Do

2005-07-07T14:34:00.000+09:00

The hand falls short of what it is pointing to,
a word somehow misses the soft target;
who one is on one edge,
and what one made on the other;
there are two places to be at the same time,
one puts another before oneself,
in these acts we see another left behind.

I am thinking of what to do while not doing anything.

This afternoon, blank screams of joyful teenagers echo
across campus, through the windows, I listen to them--
from a distance their sound is fainter than the taste of barley tea
or the smells of the playground in fourth grade--
spilt nacho sauce baked into my navy blue corduroys,
the water fountain's metalic-tasting water,
woodchips, buttercups, and pussy willows;

I follow and you come back, you move on and I follow.

A Whole Lot of Nikujaga

2005-07-06T13:12:00.000+09:00

Last night, I managed to scrounge up some culinary aptitude from the depths of my being, a being which is often found in Family Mart or one of the many yaki-tori restaraunts in Wakayama, not wanting to cook because I am utterly lazy sometimes. Looking in the Japanese cookbook I got from my predecessor (one of the many useless things I recieved from him, but one of the very few that I kept until now), I decided to concoct for Yuka and myself a delectable improvisation of the traditionally winter-themed dish of 肉じゃが (literally, "meat & potatoes"). Opting to bypass the devil's tongue option for my specialty dish (this ingredient being one of the most tasteless and disturbingly squishy food items I have ever consumed) , I got into the thick of things when it was dashi time. Going heavy on sugar and mirin, a little lighter with the shoyu (soy sauce) and sake, the food was, as my dining guest proclaimed "最高”ーfabulous. This afternoon, I brought the leftovers to school to eat as lunch (saving a very significant 350￥in bento money), stuffing myself full of more meat, potatoes, rice, and a few straggling onions and carrots. Maybe not as 美味しい as last night, but hell, I must not complain now that I have 350￥extra to spend on useless items at the 100￥Plaza. Taking a mid-afternoon alfresco lunch break, I made my way to said paradise of cheap (with nuance of "shitty quality" definitely applicable to all) goods, and indulged my penchant for buying useless Doraemon goods that I will probably never use. Considering that Japan is a country pervaded by Doraemon paraphernalia, I find no end to my collector's ambition, nor do I really have one. But, to add to my Doraemon towel, teaspoon, coaster, balloon, comics, I now am the proud owner of a 100￥ Doraemon whistle and a chewer of extremely sugary and untasty Doraemon gum.

Now I am stuffed and realizing that I have a lot to do this afternoon, the most important thing not being to toot my Doraemon whistle. Time to go back to work, oh I am still here. Reading along in many books, studying Japanese, finding life mysterious and beautiful in Japan, as anywhere. The rain stopped today after almost a solid week of sticky, muggy, rainy days. Tomorrow is 七夕、ｔanabata, "the star festival" celebrated on 7/7 to commemorate the meeting of two stars, Altair (the shepherd) and Vega (weaver)--in Japanese it is Hikoboshi and Orihime--who meet on this evening and this evening alone. According to the story, Orihime's benevolent father allows her to marry the boorish but sincere Hikoboshi, but after they neglect their work, they are separated from each other and can only meet on this one evening. Maybe in some way it is significant of loving someone romantically--you want to see them more than time or work or any other limit allows. Even if you had every second to spend of your life with someone you love, still there is a feeling that that would not be enough. Traditionally people will write wishes and proverbs and poems on strips of paper and tie these to bamboo branches in order to have them come true, or to make offerings to the god of good handwriting. Maybe I will go see the stars tomorrow night, if I am lucky. They certainly beat the lights at the Tokyo Pachinko down the street.

Good Things Happen by the Sea

2005-06-30T13:37:00.000+09:00

Once again last night I found myself on the shore of Wakaura Bay, overlooking the waters of the Pacific Ocean as they flow calmly north into Osaka Bay. A serendipitous encounter in Mr. Donut's on Tuesday afternoon led me to this moment--standing on the deck of the lighthouse overlooking Wakaura, Kainan, Shimotsu, and Arida, mosquitoes revelling in round two of the "Jeff's Blood Buffet," talking with a new friend about my life, where I have been, where I could be going; looking into her eyes and then, as I look away to the cobalt and saphire waters, forgetting where I am, where is home, only having this sea, these eyes to look into and to look into me. There I am, my life not flashing before me, but life flashing before us, the green light across the bay blinking like a serene and wordless onlooker. Things don't normally look, feel or sound as good in Wakayama City as they did last night, or today. I even enjoy the sweltering humidity (I am sure this joy won't last). Everyone says to travel in August, but where? Confused this afternoon after thinking hard about where I am going to go. Two currents crashing into each other, I am a bit fatigued by it. We will see. We have seen.

Beers on the Beach at Night

2005-06-29T12:50:00.000+09:00

The slow week goes by ever so tediously. I now find myself with some things to do, but instead I have grown so accustomed to the rhythm of reading philosophy and studying Japanese every day that is hard to get going on the minimal amount of lesson preparation that is required of me. I wonder whether or not putting more time into lesson preparation would yield a class better than some of my best ones up until now. I mean, everytime I put in extended hours on getting materials ready for a class, the teacher usually shoots down my ideas as "too difficult" for the students to comprehend. I think to myself "Little does she know that these kids don't know little." Finally, I acquiesce to the teacher's textbook-thinking, making games that are fun, but sometimes a bit perversely obvious in their simplicity.

Last night, I had a few beers on the beach, where lots of mosquitoes gorged themselves on my gaijin blood. It was nice to just kick back on the shore, talk it up with someone I hadn't seen in a while, and listen to the water. Cold beer, sweltering summer night, the sound of waves, the darkness of the sea. I slept very well last night.

"18 Years Old"

2005-06-27T12:27:00.000+09:00

Let's start with this weekend's recap:

Friday night--started with a rather civil eating, drinking, and chatting outing with a friend at a newly revamped "Birdman" (Burakuri-cho's hip yaki-tori joint). Later in the night, a stop at "Bird" bar (Burakuri-cho seems to be keen on the avian theme), then drunken biking home. I stop in the Family Mart beneath my apartment, and before I can buy what I came to buy, I am off to go drinking with one of the staff members (now off duty, but because she can't get enough of the extremely air-conditioned, "three songs on repeat" atmosphere of FM, she has decided to "come play"--遊びに来る--at her workplace). Anyways, I find myself drinking at a very empty spot in the vacuous heart of Burakuri-cho, a place whose name I forget; for all I know it has no name, being the blackhole of Wakayama's central entertainment area. More things happen...do not remember the night's end distinctly, but somehow I woke up...

On Saturday I had a mammouth Uno tournament with Kazuto and Naoya--two brothers about 11 and 14 respectively. We were using comparatives and superlatives to review a lesson that we spent a couple weeks on earlier this year. It devolved into quite a verbal scuffle, "Naoya is the ugliest boy in Japan." "Kazuto is the smallest boy in Japan." etc. I had to put an end to their war of words so the new rule was that we could no longer compare the members of the group to anyone or anything. Then, after that lesson, I sat in a new bookstore for two hours reading the work of Shuntaro Tanikawa, who wrote an essay called スケベ or "Pervert" which was funny to read (i.e. skim). Among other poems I read were ones about his mother's death, about adolescence (from the formerly unpublished collection of early poems called "18 Years Old"--which the author wrote at that age), and about the universe. He covers a lot of ground with his poems, his life. Afterwards, I strolled over to Wakayama Castle to read in the park from the aforementioned Tanikawa book I had purchased, and to do some writing. Mosquitoes and dragonflies swarming in the steaming late-June air, a boy and his father practicing soccer on the center field, which was otherwise empty (two months ago there was barely anywhere to sit here during the peak of cherry-blossom season). At this time, I felt something big upwell from underneath me, from all around me, and I sat there reading, smoking, writing, sweating, being subsumed in something beyond me, before me, and in me.

Sunday was spent going to a cafe way up on a mountain in Nokami-cho, a mountainous town southeast of Wakayama. Here I had a spectacular view of the Kii Mountains, of the seacoast by Kainain, and of course, the distant smokestacks of Kainain/Shimotsu. I had a pretty interesting (there I go using an adjective that Japanese friends and students overly misuse) conversation with my friend Kyoko at the cafe atop the hills, then an even longer one with the lady who runs the bakery across the street from my lovely apartment building (she seems to be the first Japanese person that I have ever managed to have a really profound heart to heart talk with in Japanese). Finally, a crappy band practice and an decent night's sleep. Today, nobody at school, as the students have gone home. I studied Japanese this morning and graded a few late essays. Now reading more from the Tanikawa book and killing the time writing this. Oh, what a tediously concrete blog it has been! Trying desperately hard to weed away abstractions and typos, but most likely I have failed at eliminating either one or both.

The End Fin 終わり

Lighthearted Ruminations on Japanese Words

2005-06-24T15:22:00.000+09:00

In the process of applying for a 10-day intensive Japanese workshop, held in the armpit of southern Osaka prefecture in a no-man's land of strip malls and highway (it is known as "Rinku Town"...famous to Wakayama JETs for having Northface and GAP stores, though I have--obviously enough--never been there), I was required to compose an essay in Japanese, using no dictionary and no helper. The topic "Some Japanese women quit their jobs after marriage, and some continue their work. Which type do you agree with? Why?" As I wrote my answer, which was in the form of questioning the fact that many strictly human qualities--subjective, mysterious, and irreducible appurtenances--are "typified" in our culture of specializing, classifying, and labeling, I came across a word that tripped me up, fascinated me and struck me as odd. The word for "objective" (not as in a "goal," but the contrary to "subjective") in Japanese is comprised of two characters, 客観, or kyakkan. The first character, 客, means "customer" or "guest." The second character, 観, means "viewpoint, perspective, or understanding." So when one is objective, perhaps one is looking to another not as a subject, 主観, and "owner" of one's life and body, but as a customer, a guest, and temporary patron. In fact, that is why I am perturbed and disturbed by living so many days of my life as a customer, as someone without an identity, without weaknesses, strengths, thoughts and feelings that deviate from the script. It is fun to talk to people in stores in Japan not as a customer, but as a friend. Part if not all of the novelty is being foreign, but somehow I think, or hope, that these "friends" I make are not disturbed but a bit relieved to find something outside of the rote machinization of "いらっしゃいませこんばんは！”etc etc. Part of the downside of being in one school here is getting TOO used to my students, and then I start seeing them as customers, very unwilling customers, of the project of learning a foreign language. What I need to keep in mind is the fact that each kid has something different in their 言いたい箱　（"Things I Want to Say" Box), and probably very few of these are what I want to teach or am expected to teach. This is all going against my first impression of the students' thoughts from the fact that they write nearly identical essays: "My name is . I am 15 years old. I like to reading comic books and going shopping in my free time. I have few free time than my childhood. I have free time two hours day. English is very difficult. But I like English. I do one's best."

So where am I getting with all of these long, pointless, or poignant, blogs about things beneath the surface of life in Japan? Should I talk about actualities, things that really happen and are happening? Yu, a first grade student in 中学校, junior high school, threw her lunch and book bag into my bike basket today as I passed by her and her friends on the way to school. Not knowing if she was giving me her belongings or just utilizing my services as a transporter, I continued on my way, little Yu (think Wizard of Oz, and then imagine in Munchkinland a cute, scrawny, and precocious Japanese junior high student named Yu among their ranks) scurrying along after me. That was the only contact I have with students on test day, which is sometimes alright. At least I am not reading the script.

Class Cancelled...

2005-06-23T10:07:00.000+09:00

Recently test week has dawned on Koyo High School, which means nothing to me except the ever disappointing fact that my classes start getting cancelled--the teachers adverse to team teaching have to "catch up" on the grammar lessons necessary for the test. This thrusts me into the soul-searching dilemma of trying to find out what to do, how to do something with my free time. First, I plowed voraciously through the 250+ English compositions that my first graders so eloquently produced while communing with their Muse. Many cups of coffee later, my eyesight blurry, my neck stiff, and my mind just slightly more than numbed from reading the same thing 250+ times, I come to the realization that I need to go to a class today. What joy! The past few days, I have been crashing classes, sometimes just helping out the third year students with self-study, or wandering into a PE class and playing basketball with the second graders. Forgetting that high schoolers are a lot shorter here than back at home, I found myself the giant on the court, the wheezing giant (Oh! Woe that I must suffer the agonizing sprints of full court basketball!!)After building up a healthy sweat, I came back to the chilly teachers room, overly air-conditioned and permeated by the smell of Yata-sensei's burning camphor coil. Today, one class after lunch. Perhaps I can sneak into the PE class next period. It might help me burn off the calories I load up on eating Family Mart treats, drinking coffee, and blogging my morning away. Kocho sensei has appeared, must look busy--even though he probably hasn't noticed I am here. Sometimes I think of the Invisible Man, the way my Kocho sensei looks through me, as though I was never here. Ohhh! what cold eyes! Anyways, he's bald and has nothing interesting to say in Japanese, so let him be. For all of you out their planning to translate this blog and thus send it to my Kocho sensei, I wish you luck...it probably wouldn't change a thing...which is what I desperately need now, anyway...a change...

Slow Weekend in Nachi

2005-06-19T10:55:00.000+09:00

Finally getting out of Wakayama City, although I did go to Kamitonda last weekend, makes me feel a little bit more like myself again. What do I mean by that? Ok, the sound of gulls chattering among themselves on a peaceful, slightly rainy, but cool Sunday morning. Speaking with locals in the countryside, catching about 25% of what they say in their slurred, colloquial Japanese. Listening to music that touches me, not music that unsettles me with the fact that I have heard the same Japanese pop song on average four times a day (these four times happening in the hour and a half I spend at the gym). I can only commiserate in my imagination with the friends I have made at the downstairs Family Mart, who are exposed to the incessant soundtrack of advertising tunes that drone away at the vending booth offering tickets to just about everything in Japan (if I could learn how to use it I'd probably be at a concert now, or a baseball game, or maybe in the audience at one of the comedy variety shows in which Koike Eiko stars). That is, not wasting my time in a bar drinking away money and time that I could be spending, saving, or savoring some other way than alone, murmuring thoughts to myself in the Bird Bar or some other, at best, uninspiring venue. But all of these images are recent, and I talk about them like that is all there is in Japan that I am seeing, doing, being seen doing, etc. Even though no one reads this blog, or close to no one, it is still important to keep writing. Perhaps I will print it all out someday and read it when I am bored and working at a convenience store back home, one which plays no music at all; reading and listening to the soft humming of the refrigerators and the echoes of all I have been through and go through still...

どこでもドア,"The Anywhere Door"

2005-06-13T11:15:00.000+09:00

Often I realize that my life is not something I can understand in its totality, be it through books that I read (but do not remember), things that I do (but do not mean to), or thoughts that strike me as beautiful and true, however ephemerally and cryptically they surface and founder (I, of course, proceed to handle these thoughts in the process of disclosure as an untrained butcher would, botching the most painstakingly delicate cuts). Whatever I think of as "my life," it comes down to finding a way or ways to take part in this world, a sort of ex-istence, or going out, so that the meeting point is both here and now, and forever. Whoa, where did that last word come from? What was that? I was talking about ephemerality, but had to sneak eternity through the back door. As I struggle also to sneak out of this paragraph, I hope to keep in mind 1) the importance of the imagination 2) the difference between a mystery (which is different thing within each individual and within each instance) and a problem (an objective situation requiring an objective solution).

I have two English conversation "students" that visit my dinky seventh-floor apartment every Wednesday from 6:00-7:00. They are both elementary school teachers, mid-50s, generous, and open to learning. Often they feign a childish awe at the fact that they didn't know something about the world outside Japan. I think this wonder at being taught something new from someone half their age reveals a significance about being here, about one's life, about participating in the moment when you meet another person, whether it is the first, last, or just another time, on the street, at work, home, in bed, in heaven or hell (a dream?); as friends, enemies, lovers, family, strangers, souls separated at the birth of the world, etc. What does it mean to meet someone? To exchange names, some pertinent information about oneself that can be used in a classification index (birthdate, age, sex, country, religion, etc)? How often does one say that one "knows someone" but doesn't distinguish this from "knowing something about someone"? Whatever name or aspect through which one identifies a relationship with another, there are periods, spaces, between each meeting, just as their are pauses between sentences. There are stops and starts in our lives just as there are in language--places where something unstated, unexperienced, has transpired. These are what we call mysteries. Robert Duncan calls it "the scene of what cannot be revealed." If there is no way to reveal this, there is at least the undeniable fact of taking part in it, whatever it may or may not be.

Some months ago, one of my aforementioned "students," Keiko-san, mentioned the deep philosophical teachings contained within one of my favorite Japanese comic books, Doraemon. We found ourselves in this conversation as Keiko, in response to some problem I had at the time, suggested I needed Doraemon's "どこでもドア--dokodemo doa (anywhere door)." { To review, Doraemon is the blue, robotic cat from Futureland, who comes to the present via a desk drawer and befriends Nobita-kun, the protagonist of the series. Doraemon, in the spirit of homo faber, produces inventions which assist and estrange Nobita during his childhood crises--being bullied, being punished by his parents, being in love with his childhood flame, Shizu-chan, and many other situations one knows too well. } One of Doraemon's tools is his "どこでもドア"--a door to anywhere. This door takes us anywhere, or to Anywhere. Perhaps this is the beauty of relationships, that one never knows where one is going to be taken to. When in relation to another human being, one must realize the possibilty of irrevocable folly and of unexpected, inexplicable, and immeasurable joy. To keep this door open, then, is what one may always do. One has to choose.

After all this, after "Anywhere Door"s and gadgets of all shapes and sizes, I wonder why Nobita's problems never come to a close. Many of the endings of the comics are a comedic recapitulation of the same problem that appeared to have been resolved by the end of the episode. That we can laugh at the irresolved things in our lives, that we can find joy in something that won't end but hangs around and is always changing, that we use language to pacify and excite; to extol, expose, and exhume, shows that our words are the real "Anywhere Door," that they too have to, as abstract as it may sound, remain open, or at least unlocked.

Wasting Time

2005-06-08T15:32:00.001+09:00

If anyone wants to read the thoughts of someone who is convinced that I am wasting time and money, and why I agree with him, please read this

The End of May

2005-05-31T13:17:00.000+09:00

Things have started to look promising again, much like life was at the end of May last year. For some strange reason, May 28 has been, in consective years, quite an auspicious date for me. Last year I met my former girlfriend Rie (at the time it seemed fortuitous, yes). We dated for an ephemeral 3 months, still keeping in touch, though in an awakward way. This year, I feel (as usual) humbled by something going good for me. Whenever something happens like this, I instinctively hold my breath as if the one moment I have long been waiting for will come soon enough. So now, let me quit this stupid reaction of mine. Let me breathe. Day by day, I tell myself (now on the third day of quiting smoking). What am I talking about? What happened? Love? To be honest, I really don't know yet. I met a lovely girl in Osaka by the name of Kanako, with whom I have yet to spend much time with. But the prospect of doing so has made my hours a little more lightened, peaceful, and my thoughts are a bit clearer. As long as I can focus on other things, on my life ,that is, I think I will be safe from making most of the mistakes that I have kept on making until now.

This year's rainy season, in contrast with last year's, has been creeping into being in a meticulously coquettish manner. By this time last year (the 1st of June, which will fall tomorrow) Kibi was thick with the gray haze of humidity, with the rice paddy frogs' chant of ceaselessly droning vespers (late into the night), sudden, one-day storms, soaked clothes, sweaty clothes, close calls riding my bike through the muddy, puddly, insect-infested mikan fields; a month was spent being lonely and staring out the screen door every night not wanting to do my laundry because of the risk that opening the screen meant--increasing my apartment's mosquito population dramatically. However, a new year has come, and so far I have not felt the rainy season 梅雨, as hard. Every day is slightly warmer, more humid, the breeze hasn't kicked down, but fails to cool me as much as before. I find myself sweating again in class (a lot), which is a good thing (unless I forget to wear deodorant). Overall, the entry into summer has been a gentle one this year. I run the risk of employing a pathetic fallacy if I were to say that my current state of mind is similar to this year's rainy season. Last year was a plunge in the purest sense--in a dark, restless, urgent state of mind, hurling myself into and out of relationships as though I were riding my bike through a typhoon. This year, my emotions have begun to settle, even if my words are still too unclear, abstract, free floating, and inconcrete.

For exammple, take the act of eating watermelon in the sun. One of the best fruits in the world, try a few slices of watermelon on a hot day, especially when hungover, There is something about the texture and flavor of watermelon that resembles the emotional equivalent of a hopeful, grateful forebearance. "It's all good!" Was the catch phrase some few years ago. Maybe it is. If it isn't, well this here, this present moment, still can be good.

broken silence

2005-05-27T09:22:00.000+09:00

that is why you call out
from the solitude that you have befriended
to see if this image dissolves
when exposed to the passing looks
of other solitudes, who feign an interest
in themselves or you, you cannot know;
because, in truth, it is a limp neither,
you shudder for a second
under the burden of thinking,
looking away for a moment
in the meantime a shadow flashes behind you,
your thoughts turn, as they do
and in all these pictures, these human eyes,
looks of strength and weakness
resistance and surrender to the dance
of all that happens within and without;
there were words we once used to listen
now we only speak to others of ourselves
as though it were still the same person
as yesterday, the day before,
prattling at length the life-lies that break
the heart you have & every good silence,
when there is no more food we order more.

Aches and Pains

2005-05-27T08:51:00.000+09:00

It's probably not so hot today, but my body is quite warm. Nothing to post about today except that it is a marvelously clear day. I wonder where it is going--this day. If I can wake up, I will take part in it.

電子辞書！Hooray!

2005-05-24T14:27:00.000+09:00

O! Joyful Day!!

Thus I commence with the first full day of christening my new toy, a purchase resulting from my quasi-book wormishness (or, upon looking in my newly-acquired 電子辞書, my 本虫さ). Yes, I shelled out the big bucks (a daily occurence in Japan, whether its a toilet roll or a Rolls Royce) yesterday for an electric dictionary, which I can't seem to use very well for reading uknown kanji. But hey, it's great for looking up Japanese words and getting detailed explanations of them in English! Just keep my ears peeled for new words that I hear and maybe I will start making progress after having frozen for a while in my study habits. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to impress my neighboring teacher, Mr. Hiramatsu, whose dictionary doesn't hold as many volumes as mine. With a whopping 90 dictionaries crammed into my pocket-sized reference powerhouse, nothing can stop me from assembling the most extensive, cryptic, and impractical Japanese lexicon this side of the Kinokawa! Nothing except the Facts: I can't read most of the Kanji that shows up on the screen, or if I can, I usually forget it in a few days. If there were only a Kanji pill to take which would allow our brains to absorb Kanji like a sponge fills with water. Maybe I do that every day, only to have the process of sleeping, or doing anything else besides studying, ring my brain dry. Yes, learning to read (we'll leave writing alone for now) Kanji is like trying to drink the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon, but hell, even if I feel like I have gorged myself so far, I know that all these human beings who call themselves Japanese also do not know every single kanji in the world. It's like every time you learn one new character, you take a bite from a piece of chocolate cake that gets bigger and bigger, richer and richer. "Please, no more!" I please, but kanji is like the crack for many gaijin in Japan with spare time and an abnormal predilection for learning such bizarre things like words. So now, without further ado, I return to my extremely unfruitful 探究 (search, quest)、my 閲覧すること(browsing, reading, and researching for pleasure), which has probably left my Kyoto sensei quite skeptical about my utility as an Assistant Language Teacher. How about changing the acronym to make it more suitable to what we really do? That is, Always Leaving work early To go home.

Early Summer Rainー五月雨

2005-05-18T13:52:00.000+09:00

On almost every afternoon that I find myself with nothing to do at work, I become unspeakably groggy. Some feeling envelops me, as though I am being swallowed whole by a leviathan that lurks somewhere in the dusty corners of the dead-silent staff room. Just now, I awakened to notice that someone was using the copy machine--and I thought to myself, "maybe I should do something today, maybe I should write down a thought or two on my blog, just to revive myself." Lately I have been away from this blog, opting for a pad and pen to share my thoughts with myself. That has been working, but I haven't. So it's back to this old junk...

Recently my life life in Japan has taken part in the following (of course in varying combinations): drinking almost every night, reading many novels at once (right now I am on "The Girl I Left Behind" by Shusaku Endo, "The Asian Mystique" by Sheridan Prasso, and "Robinson Crusoe"), writing more about things that provoke me--spiritually or merely superficially, going to a random train station in the countryside between Wakayama and Osaka for an unanticipatedly risque assignation, and, in the course of all this, losing any idea of what do at the end of the week.

I realize now how many of my high school students feel in class--this hebetude which weighs your head and heart (in Japanese it's just one word, 心) down to the floor. Every day I have the feeling that getting a Japanese high school class of 40 students to become active, enthusiastic, creative, etc. is like trying to light a water-soaked log on fire with a couple of stones. Maybe I underestimate my materials, but I am pretty much as nonflammble a spark as one can get. This cool and windy early summer day has brought on an effusion of recollections, so now I am wondering if I will remember what I had planned to do in the afternoon.

Back to the existential drawing board. What's on for tonight? Maybe a private English lesson for the two older ladies that I meet with once a week. Then, food, alcohol, tobacco, sleep. Maybe defecation will interrup this seemingly unbroken chain of consumption...

Ecphrasis

2005-05-10T12:06:00.000+09:00

"Ecphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one art tries to relate to another art by defining and describing the essence and form of that original art, and in doing so, "speak to you" through its illuminative liveliness. A descriptive work of prose or one of poetry, a film, or even a photograph may thus highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening, or what is shown in, say, any of the visual arts, and in doing so, may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. The kinds of art described in this way may include painting, photography, sculpture, architecture, etc." from Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia

In the seemingly excess amount of free time here at school, I have decided to write poetry, both of the sacred and profane. Here is an indulgence of mine, however ill-crafted, of the aformentioned poetic practice of ecphrasis. Recently I read an article about Izima Kaoru's photography exhibition "Landscapes With a Corpse," in which I came across a picture in a section entitled "Koike Eiko wears Gianni Versace."

A Picture of Koike Eiko

The pupil-like silver balls, overflowing the plastic pink baskets and glowing machines,
teem like fish from a net onto the glimmering floor, over her body,
her full breasts spilling out too from a feathery turquoise dress, legs limply crossed,
eyes almost fully closed, lips barely drooping open like a dreaming child's,
a bellied-up belle whose drowning form convokes the plug-in noise to join the silent current;
you watch the balls scatter further across the floor, they enter your thoughts--
covering the scene and converting it, the voiceless multitude subsumes her body,
the empty hall, this picture, some rolling into Koike's mouth, some dribbling off her exposed thighs,
her body carried by this tide through the tunnell of empty seats;
still there are more in the machines, an endless flux of praise--all of them hers--
the flood of these balls, indistinct, unending, like beads on a string,
like the river of time--from an unseen when to an unseeable when--
coursing over her still warm body, her dream comes true.

On the Wagon

2005-05-09T11:15:00.000+09:00

I had a strange Golden Week in Yokohama. Many people there, all configured in couples, holding hands, sharing intimate moments in the port area of Yokohama Bay. I spent the days roaming around the city, enjoying museums, parks, boat rides, coffee, local talk with some Kanto natives, and the evenings drinking in solitude (for the most part). Back in Wakayama, I haven't done a great deal. School finally started today. I almost lost my cool in my first class back--the students talking non-stop and refusing to be quiet. Perhaps I ran a risk of raising my voice with the one class that I have bonded with in Kobe, etc. Well, it's not the end of the world if they're scared of me now. We'll see the next time around.

Now it's back to studying Japanese--another task that I have left off for so long, leaving my reading ability in tatters and my spoken ability at an 80% rate of being misunderstood. Unfortunately, for most girls that I have met in Japan, being understood is not the act that is valued in relationships, but rather impressing is deemed the standard of winning someone's heart. Even if your facade is entirely spurious, malicious, or oblivious, it is still of more worth than expressing how one truly feels at any given moment. A bit of a bigger mystery that I will never figure out, as the problems of existence will never be few enough to write on the label of a bottle.

Back to writing poetry again...One beautiful day after the next...

Unnamed Flowers

2005-04-26T10:39:00.000+09:00

There is a type of flower that is blooming now throughout Wakayama. Perhaps it is blooming all over Japan, the earth, the universe. I don't know this flower's name. In the school garden at Koyo High School, there are voluptuous congregations of these flowers--a congregation celebrating nothing but this particular time of year. There are other flowers at school, such as the beautiful sight that is above the unused picnic table (which is next to a carpless pond)--a thick grove of the hanging wisteria vines rustle noiselessly in the wind. The aforementioned flower is a light, almost burning purple. I think if I were to know its name, it would be a bit more objectified--that is "such and such" a flower. It is wonderful to have mysteries like this--something which we see and experience without having to name. I feel this way with people sometimes--that if there is a mutual understanding between two people, it cannot have a true name. Or rather, the name by which it goes, changes from day to day.

So, now I am on my way to class. I have a terribly sore back from too much squatting at the gym. The day is a beautiful one, the view from the classroom lightens the spirit, as do the kids in my first grade classes. Even though certain heavy thoughts return to me on a regular basis, I feel an acute lightness right now, as if I were a fish jumping upstream.

Daily Life

2005-04-15T11:38:00.000+09:00

This has been the first day in a long time when it is actually cooler inside the staff room than it is outside. I grew accustomed to returning to the teachers' room for warmth, weak coffee, and the ever so wonderful bento (they just came as I type away). But now I find myself with loads of time here without classes (I will finally start on Monday with two whole classes in the afternoon), so I have been strolling in the sun, checking out the various trees, plants, and a variety of bicycles in the front parking lot of my school.

I wonder what it would like if someone were to videotape my daily routine on these days without classes and then speed up the tape.

{Jeff sitting and reading/studying, stand up to get coffee, sit down and stoudy, stand up and walk around, sit down and study, go over to the computer to write a blog, sit down at desk and study, make another trip to the bathroom down the hall (with the faint hope of running in to the new music teacher), sit down and study...eat bento...refill coffee...sit and study...walk around....sit....no more studying...sitting)

Well, it is a beautiful day. English Camp in a few hours. My hangover is fading away slowly, but I am definitely going bowling again.

Time for an ever so productive weekend of English Games, perhaps tea or coffee with a friend on Saturday, and then digging up bamboo shoots on Sunday.

Kaisha and Shakai

2005-04-14T12:24:00.000+09:00

I was sitting at my desk (now at different desk typing) this morning, studying Japanese during my spare hours (the classes have started, but unfortunately I cannot start teaching until the official schedule is released). I noticed that the word for civilian and worker, society and work, are the same two kanji flipped around. 会社 or kaisha means "company" or "business." 社会 or shakai means "society." Perhaps the whole country, if you are dislexic, is one enormous corporation, thus making all members of society employees of some unseemingly immanent bureacratic body. What am I getting at, though, in this strange, perhaps obvious, comparison between Japanese "society" and "companies?" Does this little point of linguistic irony mean that Japanese speakers think of society as a giant company, or vice versa? Am I merely reading my way into things that Japanese people have never considered? Sometimes I think that perhaps even little things like this, that is, words that we use to represent who or what human beings are, self-identifying words, deserve some, much more, attention. After all, the 50-something, balding bodybuilder at the gym still refuses to call me by name. Instead, he uses "へんな外人" hen na gaijin (strange foreigner, or, strange stranger). Perhaps this man has killed many brain cells in his years of lifting and drinking shotchu into the wee hours at a local snack bar (God forbid I should ever do that), but I had to confront him in my functional but nonetheless inadequately inarticulte Japanese. Anyways, these words, 社会 and　会社, have led me to think about why Japanese workplaces seem like their own world, and why their world runs like a well-oiled machine...sometimes.

Though this sounds like I may be critiquing Japanese culture as a whole, I find that I have grown tired of critiquing, or beginning to critique, my own culture. Maybe no criticism is necessary. Maybe I am not criticizing, but in an inexplicable way, appreciating that which is simultaneously wonderful and unceasingly troublesome in this world.

Last night I had one of those dreams that sweeps one through a myriad of settings, situations, encounters with people, etc. Now, awake , just about one of ever two people I see seems to remind me of some part of those dreams. Back to strange, suggestive reflections on the idea that, at the moment of death, we see our entire life flash before us. Well, not my whole life flashed before me, but let's just say enough flashed before, behind, above, or below me to make me wonder about my life in relationship with the people I have met thus far.

Forgetting what I Remember

2005-04-13T12:16:00.000+09:00

This morning I read on article on "the wane of reading" in America. Upon finishing my perusal of such an articulate article, I felt as though I was able to return to a place that I left a long time ago. This is place is "a made place"--the imagination, and it serves an often unobservable purpose, which is that of reflection, of looking again at experience and seeing more than what appears initially on the surface (sometimes this "first impression" involves nothing at all). Perhaps what has brought on this wave of laziness, lack of patience, lack of concentration are the instant yet transitory rewards (if we may call them by such a positive name) that television, the Internet, computers, video games, leave us with. Well, one cannot say that I have indulged in much of these technological splendors in Japan (I don't watch TV, I email far less than in the states, the expensive hand held video game unit that I purchased was a mistake), but yet I don't feel all that more reflective. Yes perhaps there is something deeper than just these machines coaxing us into the virtual space of who we would be if we weren't ourselves. It seems like people spend a lot of money these days, perhaps because they have more money as well as time, on things which help them avoid themself. The pursuit of an ideal image is what I mean--the you after a genie has granted you three wishes (note: this outcome can, obviously enough, have its own pitfalls). So, while we find more ways to be happy, we start spending more money on it. We find more ways to communicate, but we communicate less. There are more places to find books, a greater need to read them, but we read less. And now, I am typing away at a jounral that won't do much for anyone, maybe myself, maybe a random figure that looms in my future--a person that will skim these archives and find something that flickered in luminosity for a second, helping him or her with some crisis of great or small proportions.

Falling Petals

2005-04-11T12:02:00.000+09:00

I have by now often discussed, heard, read, felt, and seen the acknowledgement, acceptance, and celebration of ephemerality in Japanese culture, known as 物の哀れmono no aware （lit. sympathy for things), or, as I have adopted it for the title of my blog (which will also prove to be an ephemeral thing), 無常観 mujoukan (awareness of impermanence). Maybe I do not need to be aware of impermanence, and that it is this negating character 無 mu that works doubly--meaning that a full realization is an unrealization of impermanence, that we are talking about a non-awareness, not ignorance, but in lightness, in the absence of a logic that demands everything that life involves us in to fit into the objective space of the known and knowable; it is a positive freedom that does not drag one down with the weight of one's thoughts and fears. There is an old proverb in Japanese that represents this way of living: 行雲流水 ko-un-ryuu-sui (a cloud moving across the sky, and a river flowing on land). As I move on through life, I notice something here, something there, and keep moving.

Why did I start today's blog with this long,very thought-heavy reflection on words that I have randomly come across in my many days of scanning dictionaries, handbooks, etc. for interesting words? I do not know.

Last Saturday was the pinnacle of hanami season this year. It was a calm, almost windless day, the sun shining in a sky with few clouds, the trees stretching their arms wide, seemingly struggling to hold up the fully opened blooms. I stumbled into a friend's barbeque party, helped to ignite the charcoals, and for a moment or two there was peace there in Wakayama Castle park. Looking out over the vista of sakura, I could see Wakayama in the late afternoon light. The sound of drunken friends echoing up the castle walls along with a strange music whose players I could not see. There are times like these when things come into fullness, like the sakura, and then depart. We are thankful for them, and that is all.

April 7, 2005

2005-04-07T14:43:00.000+09:00

Today I have finally made time to write a blog. The last two weeks were a seemingly interminable blur of taking trains with my brother, drinking while waiting for the train, while riding the train, and while waiting for many buses after getting off the train (some of which took us too regions in Kyoto we never anticipated visiting). Now it is spring--the sakura flowers are an ineffable sight. As trite as it sounds, the simple process of these flowers blooming assuages the many fears, reservations, and dejections I harbor within me--harbor for no reason other than that nasty "pack-rat" instinct that the human conscience can sometimes inflict upon the conscientious. All in all, it gives me a feeling of lightness to stand outside, see all of my students' faces, talk with some of the less shy, and breathe in this warm, slightly humid spring air.

What did I do on my trip? Well, much. However my second night in Kyoto, at the prison-like Higashiyama Youth Hostel, was probably the most memorable, for a reason that has almost nothing to do with Kyoto, or with the reason of my trip (which was to entertain/show parts of Japan to my brother). After a healthy feast of Japanese style hambaagu (meatloaf), I sat in the dining room by myself reading poems from Robert Duncan's book "Roots and Branches." I was drinking my instant coffee (with lots of artificial creamer) and reading the poems when a strikingly beautiful young girl sat a few chairs down from me (note the entire 16 person table was empty). If you can imagine a diagram of vacant seats, the setting would have looked like this:

X X X X Ayako X X X
X Jeff X X X X X X

It reminded me of the scene in the first Batman when Bruce Wayne eats dinner with Vicky Vale across a vast table (in an even more spacious dining hall). It was kind of silly to sit like that in silence, so I asked her a very trivial question. Then we talked about our travels. Her voice and smile abolished the paltry amount of concentration that I was able to muster for reading poetry on that evening. But the conversation that ensued, all four hours of it, is something far more valuable than a poem, though far more transient and mysteriously beautiful and painful. After a few minutes, I asked Ayako if she would like to sit at my table (seeing as there were plenty of seats), and I offered the seat across from me. Instead she got up and sat right next to me, which was a joy and a surprise. We talked about blackberries (originally a discussion about cakes), about poetry, about music we loved (and hated), about Yokohama, about California, about languages, about old jokes that old men play on little children (the one which started this was the "I got your nose" gag), about life at home, about just about everything we thought of and felt at that moment. Many coffees later, well after lights out, we had to part. I exchanged contact information with her, knowing that she was 19 and lived in Yokohama. After a while I couldn't sleep, so I wrote her a letter that night. Knowing that there is a great chance that I will never see Ayako again, I wrote her this letter and included a small gift with it. I tried to express the wonder at meeting her so randomly and so perfectly on an evening with nothing to do. It is certainly far past melodramatic to say that I fell in love, especially "love at first sight," but this evening left me with a realization of love's reality, at holding something so dear that one can let it go. I don't know if that makes sense to you or to me, but I spent an intense few days afterwards not being able to speak coherently to my brother, not being able to focus on anything involved in our trip, not being able to keep my tears from rolling down my cheek at night (especially with the amount of alcohol imbibed).

Yes I know I am melodramatic. I am trying to change this, or in some way I am keeping it there, but either way I am living with whatever it is because this is me.

Since then, the Pope has died, the sun has come out, my brother has left, and I feel ok despite the constant increase in losses that come with time.

Today's blog, like all of mine, has been strange and perhaps impenetrable. But, that is because I am too am trying to dig deep, as for a treasure or an artifact lost long ago.