Timing

Lately, I've noticed that my strongest impulse to make blog posts seems to come within 15 or fewer minutes of a lesson starting with one of my students. In fact, as I write this, I have a lesson 10 minutes away. This seems like a pretty absurd thing to have happen as it guarantees I won't be able to finish before the student shows up, so I've wondered what this is all about.

I'm a relatively nervous and compulsive person when it comes to preparation for a task and I tend to want to have all my ducks in a row (so to speak, no actual ducks are used in my lessons though it'd be a lot cooler if they were) long before the lessons are due to start. I'm guessing the timing of my posts being started is connected with the fact that I get the preparation out of the way and find that there is still a bit of time left. The mind starts tiptoeing through the tulips of my thought fragments and trips over one that hasn't been discussed yet and I sit at the keyboard and start working.

In my experience, creativity cannot occur unless one has periods of idleness. In fact, I've noticed that a lot of my blog pieces and my Carl pieces tend to gestate while I'm standing in the shower waiting for the conditioner to penetrate my hair. The fact that I can measure my idle moments in minutes rather than in hours (or half hours even) is slightly disturbing and something I believe I should attempt to rectify sooner rather than later.

The irony is that, as a "housewife" who works freelance and part-time, it'd seem that I should have a lot of free time, but it doesn't work that way. Being female and being in the house all day is an invitation to spending more time cleaning. Also, I suffer from something I'd term "Japanese housewife syndrome". This is when your household tasks take a lot more time because of the limits of living in a culture which makes labor saving of all sorts much more difficult because there's not enough demand for it in a culture where women are expected to use their "free" time for housework.

Additionally, there's something about being in a space a lot of the time (in addition to working in it) which makes me even more compulsive about keeping it clean and tidy than I otherwise might be...and I'm already pretty compulsive. So, time is being vacuumed up in large chunks by all the myriad of "little" things I need to get done and all the piecework I do leaving only the finest dusty fragments in the corner for me to spend on creative pursuits.

Anecdotal Lives

Sometimes I get very interesting questions from my commenters (and luckily I almost always get excellent comments as well). The questions which get me thinking rather deeply about something sometimes spawn their own post are among my favorites, but they also place me in a somewhat precarious position when answering.

Recently, I got a truly excellent question (which I'll address in a subsequent post) which I'm keen to answer, but I felt obliged to place a lot of caveats in front of the answer. In fact, I think so many "warnings" needed to be put in place that I figured it'd add about a quarter to the length of the answer, and my posts are already pretty long!

When I answer questions which have broad applications (and implications), I want the reader to keep in mind that I'm speaking in general and not about anyone specifically. While generalities are very useful in forming a theoretical framework and developing an overview of the world, they don't apply to any one person or situation. All of our lives are anecdotal, and I don't wish to lay claim to dispensing all encompassing wisdom.

And, honestly, I also don't want to come across as asserting that I'm "right". Like everyone else on the planet when considering an issue, I take all my experiences, ideas, and thoughts and collect them into a little pile, then sort them out into what seems to be the best answer available to me at the time. It's not the only answer. It's not the best answer among all the people you could possibly ask in the world. It's not even the same answer I'd give 10 years from now, but it's what makes sense to me right now at this moment.

Reflections

A home-style design on the 1959 book.

Teaching students privately is a dual-edged sword. On the one hand, you tend to get a better quality of student who is diligent, more personable, and more goal-oriented. Teaching such students is several cuts above the dead-eyed, lifeless experience of teaching in fast food English conversation schools which are quite often catch-alls for people who have to study rather than a large group of people who really want to.

One of the two books my student has (from 1961), with whimsical artwork.

On the other hand, there's a lot more time spent in preparation for such students which is off the clock. While you don't have to do extra work for such students, depending on their specific needs, you really should if you want to give them a good lesson. However, there's often something in this extra preparation for the teacher if she approaches it with the attitude that learning for the sake of the student is also a form of learning for the teacher.

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my students wants to be a journalist and she wants to write about Betty Crocker for a lifestyle magazine. To that end, I've been investigating Betty Crocker cookbooks so that I can help her (hopefully) develop an article that will be accepted at some point. Since she's particularly interested in the '60s books because of their style, I've also been researching what are considered the hallmarks of 1960s style.

A book from 1972 with rather funky text (reflecting '60s psychedelic style).

Doing this has actually been more difficult than one might imagine since the focal point of most articles is on the psychedelic and drug-based counterculture of the late '60s and not on more mundane aspects of domestic life among the non-hippie generation. While those elements were certainly a big part of the '60s, there was also a strong thread of transition from the '50s leading into the early '60s that tends not to get any attention, but you can see it reflected in the items targeted at housewives throughout the decade. Also, a lot of what is considered '60s style is actually early '70s style.

A book from 1980 which is starting to see a cleaner look, but still using relative bold text elements.

Most interestingly though, by looking at the covers of the cookbooks and the titles, you can actually make a very good guess as to when they were made. The style of the era is reflected not only in the artwork, the photographic style, and types of dishes, but also in the fonts used. You can see a definite trend from somewhat plain with country or home-style designs with a bit of a flourish to overly-stylized to sophisticated in the text styling and layout. There's also a transition from a focus on entertaining and catering to guests in the book's titles to a focus on faster meal preparation for the family that reflects the changing roles of women from the '50s to the '90s.

White tends to be used more in the most modern layout styles as it has been accepted as more of a use of space for design purposes rather than a byproduct of not wanting to do full color printing. This book from 1996 reflects that.

I'd like to persuade my student to make the article she's writing about either the way the books reflect their times in terms of food, style, and women's roles, but I believe she's fixated on the two cookbooks she has and the artwork in them. The main problem with this is that I'm not sure there's enough to say in this regard, especially after I had to disabuse her of the notion that those two books represented the entirety of "Betty Crocker" styling throughout the decades of the company's release of cookbooks. If nothing else, I now have a deeper understanding of why her original article was rejected. The suppositions she made and the claims she asserted were simply based on too little research and a lot of erroneous conclusions.

Few Are the Choices We Make - part 2

Part 1 is here.

The way in which our lives are shaped by environment is something which happens not only on an individual level, but on a cultural level as well. People place the choices one culture makes on a pedestal and deride the proclivities of another, but it's very often the case that the "good" in a great culture or the "bad" in a less refined one have nothing to do with any sensibility of the members of that culture. The choices the culture makes are shaped by factors beyond personal aesthetic taste or sophistication and the individuals involved are neither to be praised nor "blamed".

As an example, we can look at food culture. Food culture is shaped by a variety of factors. Primary among them is available food sources, agricultural options and techniques, and food preservation technology. The first item is often recognized but the last one is probably one of the much bigger shapers of what people grow accustomed to and enjoy eating. Why does Japan have a culture with a lot of raw, super fresh food, dried food and pickled food? It's because refrigeration and newer forms of food preservation technology have not been around for a lot of their long history. Their tastes have ridden the tide of history to the present with small adjustments as each generation passed on the tastes of the former one to its children. There's a solid base of food culture though in what history and environment have yielded which will likely echo for centuries to come.

Conversely, why do Americans favor mushy, overcooked, overly salty or sweet food? It's because a lot of America's short history of food culture includes canning as a food preservation technology and the country is sprawling. There was a need for food that could go the distance during expansion and growth as well as keep it free of spoiling as it is carried from areas it is grown in to areas where it is consumed as a non-indigenous food. The first canning factory in America appeared in the early 1800's and canned food saw America through the Civil War through two world wars and into the present. Canned food meant a great deal to American troops in the past. It is also notorious for being overcooked, preserved in sugary liquids, or preserved in salty brine.

The favored cuisine of most people is built around what they grew up with. We like what we ate as kids for the most part and tend mainly to embrace variations on what we already like. While some people diversify their tastes, they are many people for whom food is not important enough to be worth the investment in time, effort, money and research to sample other more adventurous dishes.

On a massive scale, it's unrealistic to expect an entire culture to transcend its roots in a historically-speaking brief period of time. It's also absurd to go around judging any culture for such choices as they are mired in their culture and aren't responsible for either its general negative or positive aspects. Food, of course, is only one example of this. And there are exceptions, but they tend to be based on large scale disruptions to a culture from wars, occupation, major technological or economic breakthroughs, etc. You don't tend to see wholesale replacement of basic cultural elements such as language, religion, or food.

That is not to say that individuals can't break free (as many do), but the overall shape of a culture as mirrored in overall trends and options is molded by what came before and what is around its people, not by any innate superiority or inferiority of the people who populate a culture. To believe otherwise is to place unwarranted faith in the ability and energy of great numbers of individuals to actively seek and accept change en masse. It's unrealistic to expect people to chase down the best elements of other cultures and seek to actively adopt them as replacements for the "lesser" elements of their cultures. That doesn't make them narrow-minded or unsophisticated as it's natural to live in the environment in which you are surviving comfortably and to enjoy the things which bring easy satisfaction. It just makes them human.

Few Are the Choices We Make - part 1

I remember the day the nail went in the coffin of my Christian beliefs. I was sitting in a history class with one of the most boring teachers in our high school and there was excited talk amongst the students about that date being the day that the world was supposed to end according to one prognosticator or another. Back in the 70's in rural neighborhoods, it seemed like everyone was a great fan of predicting the end of the world. My grandmother liked to talk about it more and more as she aged, and all the parents who were frightened by the infiltration of heavy metal music into youth culture that they burned records were sure this was a sign that Satan was about to take over. As an unsophisticated kid who grew up indoctrinated in a particular belief system, such talk really scared me.

On this particular day, my class was supposed to be reading silently and one of the students decided to say something to the teacher about this end of the world prediction. This particular teacher was all business most of the time. He never shared his personal life or joked or showed any sign of being anything but a date-writing, history-talking drone. I recall how odd his response was because he showed more emotion than I'd ever seen before or after. With great earnestness and conviction, he said that we'd know it wasn't the end of the world if we had read the bible as the signs of the apocalypse had not unfolded as had been foretold.

Besides being very surprised by the way in which this teacher showed he was a human being in his response, I also felt relieved. End of the world talk genuinely scared me when I was in my early to mid teens. Though my memory may be hazy on this point, I believe I was 14 or 15 at the time of this experience. This experience set off a thought process which concluded with my considering that people who grew up elsewhere and didn't have experience with the bible would have no idea about such theories or signs regarding the end of the world. How was it that we were so blessed with knowledge that would "save" us while they were damned because of random factors?

This thought pretty much severed whatever tenuous hold Christian doctrine and dogma had on me. I don't wish to be misunderstood in what I'm saying though. I have no problems with Christianity or Christians. I believe all spiritual philosophies from Paganism to Christianity to Atheism have good points and bad points and I'm not about knocking any of them. However, I understood at that point with great clarity that who you are, what you like and dislike and what you believe is shaped far more by where you are born and how you are raised than by the conscious choices you make.

I'm sure that a lot of folks will take issue with that final statement because we have a strong desire to believe we make the lives we live through our choices. While that is true to some extent, the breadth and composition of the palette of choices we're offered is shaped by factors beyond our control. For instance, if you grow up in a culture which is dominated by one particular faith and you grow up only educated in the principles of that faith the chances that you'll adopt another one which is practiced only by people on the other side of the planet is pretty slim. There are some options that you simply aren't going to be presented with or even find through active searches. And let's say you do find some of those options. Their roots may be so esoteric that you can't understand or relate to them sufficiently to embrace them.

(To be continued in part 2)

Competition

While sitting on my bike at a pedestrian crosswalk, waiting for the little man to go from red man standing patiently at attention to change to the happy green man in mid-stride, I had an experience I have had many times in the past. A pedestrian came up behind me and paused at the light. He made sure to stand in front of my bicycle wheel and just to the right of me. He watched the opposite traffic light and jumped off the mark just before the green man made his appearance. He strode quickly for a grand total of 5 seconds then slowed down to a turtle's pace and blocked the sidewalk by standing in as central a position as possible.

Common sense tells everyone that a bicycle rider is going to go faster than a pedestrian yet I constantly find that male pedestrians, particularly middle-aged and older ones, will position themselves such that my moving at all soon after the light changes will guarantee I collide with them as they cross, or have to half shortly after moving to prevent doing so. What is more, it's almost always the case that the fast pace which they start off with dies a rapid death once they get out ahead of me by about 10 yards.

After years (literally) and hundreds of experiences (again, literally) with this phenomenon, I've concluded that this is a pointless act of competition. It's not important that these men get going as they always slow down. It's only important that they get ahead of me and block me so that they get across first.

As of late, male competitive urges have been a topic which has been on my mind lately as I've noticed that I tend to prefer female bloggers over male ones, by and large. There are some very notable exceptions (you know who you are - many of your regularly comment here), but I've noticed that male bloggers tend to be far more aggressive and competitive in how they handle themselves. For one thing, they are far more likely to boast about site traffic statistics. For another, they are much more likely to post reactive and argumentative content. That is, they don't tend write about their lives, thoughts or experiences but go find something someone else wrote or said and take issue with it. On occasions when they do address something original, the posture is often one of "informing" people of the accurate way of seeing or understanding something. They're also far more likely to leave nasty, condescending, or snotty comments when they disagree rather than to simply present another explanation or viewpoint.

It's well-known in psychological circles that males are generally more competitive than females, though I think it's a tendency that women experience far less in the real world than in anonymous Internet-based forums. Personally, I'm growing pretty tired of this competitive nature in some males. It's irksome to deal with other folk's negative energy over petty little things because they have an ego issue and need to "win" at a non-existent competition just like it's tiresome to have to wait for or navigate around those guys who feel they have to stop me from getting across the street first. I guess that it's a little harder for a man to be aggressively competitive to a female in person and still feel like a big, puffed-up "winner" than it is to do it through the ether.

Nonetheless, just like the men who cut off my bike and stride ahead, it's all pointless and proves nothing about a man's superiority. I'm just going to go sailing by them either way and go about my business.

Products of Rampant Individualism

Lifted from the site which sells them. Candy for those who hate Valentines Day.

Lately, I've been seeing various ads and articles leading up to the commercialism storm that is Valentine's Day. Some of the articles I see are aimed not at people who are romantically inclined and considering what to do to celebrate the holiday, but toward people who hate Valentine's Day. There are a lot of people who see it as a sadistic attempt to make single and lonely people feel bad about themselves or put them in a position to defend their solitary state.

Though I am married, and probably am one of the most deliriously happy married people on the planet (and yes, I know you are tired of reading it and I'm so incredibly obnoxious for saying it again, in my defense, this time I actually have a point in tossing this bit of information out there again), I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. The main reason for this is that my husband tells me he loves me everyday, several times a day and brings me little gifts all the time. In a good relationship, you don't need an artificial reason to show your affection for one another. So, I don't think that even happily coupled people necessarily feel Valentine's Day is a day for them. It seems to me that the holiday is really for shy people to find a framework through which to express the feelings they have trouble saying. Mind you, I'm not saying that's how it's dealt with commercially, but just rather perhaps the purist intent of it all. Every holiday has been and always will be commercially exploited and you can choose to be put off by it or do things your own way and enjoy any given holiday for the opportunities it offers you (or not).

However, I'm digressing to some extent in explaining that I think Valentine's Day has nothing to do with making single people feel bad, and that's the point to which I want to get back. A lot of the focus of the vitriol single folks have is aimed squarely at couples and deriding partnered life as a festival of petty and bitterly accepted compromises. Among the many benefits of single life that I've read are things like being able to rent the movie you want, being able to eat the last cookie in the box, and not having to ask for "permission" to go somewhere, do something, or buy something.

I mentioned these types of articles to one of my students and had a very hard time getting her to comprehend the objections being mentioned. The notion that anyone would worry about who drank the last beer in the refrigerator or what was being watched on T.V. as a drawback to being in a committed relationship was completely off the radar for her. She just couldn't fathom why anyone would care so much about such small things that they'd prefer being alone to companionship. She sees family on one side and last piece of pie on the other and thinks there's no question which is more important. In the end, she concluded that these things were of value to Western folks because they grew up in a culture which focuses on individualism.

While I believe that my student definitely is hitting at the core of why people come to value having every little thing their way, I think that for many people there's also an element of dissatisfaction in general with a relationship (or all relationships) which starts to get attached to any sort of compromise. Even though I grew up in a culture centered on individualism, I could care less who eats the last treat and my husband and I use headphones when we want to listen or watch something that the other person isn't interested in. There's no problem for us with these little issues because we've worked out the larger issues and aren't looking to power play on a micro level. One of the things I realized early on in our relationship was that there are two ways to deal with problems. One way is to hold onto the conflict and insist on standing your ground and the other is to focus your energy on the shortest path to a solution. You'd be surprised how many people will take the path of most resistance rather than a straightforward solution which requires minimal sacrifice and compromise. This way of dealing with relationships isn't one that I learned from the Japanese, but I think it's one they perhaps come by more naturally than many Western folks because theirs is not a culture which endorses willfulness as an indication of personal strength. Of course, often in Japan, this sort of compromising results in one person caving in to the other based on whoever is perceived to have the higher status so it's not exactly a healthy compromise.

Getting back to Valentines Day, one of the interesting things about opposition to this holiday is how personally people take it. Rather than get angry about it, one wonders why people don't just ignore it or any other holiday which annoys them. Most of the backlash seems to be in response to the overall trend in society toward pressuring people to couple. Apparently, busybodies who keep asking folks when they'll marry or if they've found a significant other grate on the nerves of single folks such that they are pretty much ready to explode by the time February 14 rolls around. It's ironic that Western culture supposedly embraces a variety of roles and lifestyles as having relatively equal value (within limits - they still don't exactly think househusbands are acceptable) yet some single people still feel so oppressed that they turn into snarling, defensive beasts around this time of year.

Cultural Contributions - part 2

(Part 1 is here)

A good indication of how mainstream some elements of Japanese culture are in the U.S. is reflected in sales like the one pictured above.

In terms of what I see as Japan's long-lasting impact on other cultures up to this, I tend to see much of the obvious. Since I currently reside in Japan, it's a bit difficult for me to pick up on things which have had a subtle impact as I'm seeing through the eyes of the media rather than as someone residing in a country other than Japan.

The strongest influences that I believe Japan has had are those on popular culture. Mainly, I think they've shared their culture in these areas:

• Anime-style artwork and action. I've noticed that traditional comic book-style has been altered or supplanted in many ways by huge-eyed, tiny-chinned looks. Even when some looks aren't direct copies, many are distorted to fit a similar look. I don't think this is going away any time soon as it dovetails very nicely with the move in the West to infantilize everyone and everything popular. If you look around at trends, you'll notice that everything seems to be moving toward removing all signs of maturity from pop icons including body hair and hints of wrinkles. Also, most actors are considered physically most desirable if they fit the "Q-tip" ideal - big head, tiny body which is also a part of anime. While I realize big heads are a part of all cartoons, it wasn't the norm that long, skinny bodies sat were the norm before. It was usually big heads on stubby, funny bodies or huge grotesquely muscled ones. Anime-style suits this trend very well though I don't believe Japan is in any way responsible for the trend toward infantilizing people and promoting it as attractive or an ideal.
  
• Food culture. I think Japanese cuisine has only partially penetrated most cultures but it will continue to do so, though most likely in a modified format for each culture that adopts it. The main impediment right now to Japanese cuisine going completely mainstream around the world is a lack of a fast food equivalents with high name recognition and low prices. One of these days, someone is going to work out a formula for dumbing down the core cuisine and serving it up cheap and fast and it'll find even broader acceptance than it has already. I think the push to move away from meat and foods high on the food chain may aid this as soy-based foods will hold more and more appeal as long as they are modified to suit Western tastes.
  
• Karaoke. I think this is going to be around for awhile and, like sushi, will be something that is always going to be a part of the Western cultures though clearly it'll be more or less popular in certain areas.

Ironically, I think there are some aspects of Japanese culture which I believe would be good if they rubbed off on Western culture but I don't believe they will be conveyed. In fact, I think that individualism and the resulting effects will continue to infiltrate Japanese culture. A few of the things I've noticed about Japan which I think would be good would be:

• A greater sense of responsibility at a younger age. I've noticed that Japanese young people, while they tend to remain more dependent into adulthood, face their lives with a greater sense of personal and interpersonal responsibility. Their attitude is not as self-centered as you tend to see in the West. They don't address every experience with a "what's in it for me" attitude.
• Fiscal conservatism. The Japanese are world-class savers and expert at deferring purchases in cases where making them would require them to go into debt. They have extremely low credit card debt on a per capita basis. While you do have people blowing money on expensive name brand goods, you don't have them racking up debt to do it.
  
• Food portions and menu diversity. This is a point of culture which the West, and America in particular needs rather badly, but it's unlikely to make in-roads for a variety of reasons. First of all, diversity requires more time and effort and people in the States have seen food as something that should be gotten out of the way rather than labored over. However, I think that the tendency among most people to eat a mix of items in small portions is part of what contributes to longevity in Japan.

Cultural Contributions - part 1

In the comments section of one of my other posts, Michael asked me what I felt was Japan's cultural direction and/or contribution to the rest of the world and whether or not I believed that Japan was headed in one direction or another or just wandering aimlessly. I wrote a long and involved answer thinking all the while that maybe a post would be a better way to answer it and, as I was reviewing my answer in a preview, Blogger disconnected me and trashed the entire reply. So, I concluded that fate had intervened and maybe a post (which will auto-save as I work on it) would be a better way to answer this interesting question.

Before I get to the answer(s), I'd like to make it clear that I'm only offering a perspective and an opinion and I'm not presenting myself as any sort of definitive expert on this topic. To be honest, I think no one, even a researcher on culture, is really qualified to answer it because it's too vast a question covering much of the world. Even if you could be well-versed in the movement of a culture, you couldn't be well-versed on the impact that culture has had world-wide without the perspective of a lot more history. Life is simply too short. So, before undies become tightly-wadded and keyboards grow hot with venomous rebuttals, keep in mind that these are just a few ideas from someone who has lived here awhile doing her best to answer a question a nice fellow asked her. Feel free to offer your ideas as well in the comments, but remember that none of us are any more qualified than the rest of us in this regard, no matter how confident we may be in our status as armchair experts on Japan and that any jerks will be bounced in comment moderation. Without further adieu, I will finally get to the point.

I arrived in Japan during the last few years of its economic bubble. For those who are not well-versed in what this is, I will tell you that Japan enjoyed a brief time when their economy expanded rapidly and it seemed they had a Midas touch when it came to making successful products. Those who are outside of Japan may remember it as the time when Japan went around buying up real estate and pricey artwork around the world and people in the U.S. started smashing Japanese-made goods in protest of how bad their success was making us look. Money was so plentiful in Japan at that time that local governments were thinking of ways to waste the money they were raking in, possibly on gold-plated statues and what-not. The perception was that the Japanese were a force to be reckoned with that could eventually unseat the U.S. as the biggest economic power in the world.

Being here when the bubble started was a good time for expatriates. Wages for teachers were high and conditions relatively cushy, both because the Japanese had money to burn. It was before everyone and his brother came here to work for a year or so and the market wasn't as saturated. The Japanese you taught were generally pretty arrogant about Japan's superior work ethic, education system, and product quality. This attitude was famously parodied in various comedy programs as Western actors pretended to be Japanese and denounced Americans as lazy, stupid, and incapable of making high quality products. While this attitude wasn't necessarily shoved in our faces all the time, it wasn't hidden or subdued when the topic happened to come up. If you have lived in Japan for any length of time, you know that humbleness and subtlety are the order of the day and, for anyone to express superiority in an overt fashion is not the norm.

The bubble eventually burst as the personal computer and Internet boom were peaking over the horizon. Japan still lead the world in cars, televisions, personal stereo equipment and VCRs, but it didn't have a toehold in the burgeoning computer business. As Japanese electronics companies struggled to make their mark in the computer industry, and only Sony really got a decent footing internationally and NEC domestically, the smug started to wear off of the Japanese sense of superiority. Instead of leading the world, they were starting to follow, and feeling a bit like they couldn't keep up.

It's not like Japan wasn't still owning or doing well in certain markets like console gaming systems and cell phones, but rather that the money was no longer being dumped at their feet in huge piles and they were being edged out of new markets and seeing demand for their old market goods wither. As time went by, the superior attitudes I experienced when I first arrived vanished and were replaced by expressions of concern about a certain level of inferiority when it came to adjusting to the demands of the marketplace and their ability to innovate. In particular, a lot of the old Japanese businesses who made a strong mark domestically started to have stronger concerns about brand awareness and being able to meaningfully break into world markets.

I wasn't here before the bubble, but based on what I know about what Japanese culture values in terms of personality, I wonder if this was a full circle for Japan. That is, from post-war defeat and feelings of inferiority to smug and superior and back to feelings of inferiority. The puff up didn't last all that long from a historical view. However, in terms of lasting impressions, I believe Japan has left its mark. For one thing, people used to associate Japan with the sort of cheap, low quality goods which are currently associated with China. I would be surprised if the image of Japan as a producer of efficient, high technology, small, and well-designed goods changed any time in the near future.

In terms of the question I was asked about the direction Japan is headed, I think that there are a lot of possibilities, but my best guesses are:

• Japan will continue to be associated with high technology and particularly with robotics. I think it will make this move because of the diminishing population and a desire to compensate for a lack of labor with mechanical assistance. I don't think it will make it's mark in homes worldwide with its technology as I don't believe that the Japanese developers can accurately market domestic products abroad as the needs of those living in Japan are different from those in other countries and most developers lack cross-cultural experience. I do believe they will license their core technologies and have a heavy influence on industry worldwide.
  
• Japan will gradually (and reluctantly) start to attempt to integrate more foreigners into the population. This change will occur at a glacial pace in terms of actual rights and acceptance of foreigners, but a faster pace in allowing more (legal) manual labor from Asian countries. I think it will continue to be seen around the world as insular. The population will continue to consider being Japanese as a matter of blood rather than of breeding.
  
• Japan will continue to be seen as America's lackey though it will very, very slowly inch away from that position as the U.S.'s status world-wide diminishes. However, until the North Korean political situation looks a bit less intimidating, Japan will continue to allow the U.S.'s foreign policy to heavily influence it and it will not be seen as any sort of world leader politically.

Generally speaking, I think Japan will continue in the same direction as it has for years now. That is, it will remain irrelevant in shaping policies or playing a part in world leadership and tend to follow wherever the stronger powers go. I think Japan will continue for a long time to come to be relatively insular and more interested in isolating themselves while still availing themselves of the advantages of being a part of the world market.

(to be continued)

Cultural Limits

One of my students works creating subtitles for whatever television shows and movies come her way. Sometimes she works with bad B-movies (or worse) which go straight to DVD and are of extremely dubious quality. At others, she works with American television shows or documentaries. In her most recent lesson, she was working on subtitles for an episode of a BBC series for the first time.

My job when working with her is to take the parts of the script which she can't understand due to the obscurity of the reference or the cultural connotations. In most cases, this isn't much of a problem for me. However, dealing with a British-made show brings more challenges to the experience as there ultimately are references to things I'm not familiar with like the names of specific establishments that have not been popularized in America (or Japan). As one example, I can say that before this lesson, I'd never heard of "The Baron of Beef."

I'm actually quite a great fan of British television and these days spend more hours watching British drama than American thanks in large part to the Mystery Channel (for which, not so coincidentally, my student was subtitling the show we discussed) and the fact that I'm not keen on much current American drama aside from House and Lost. I'm particularly keen on A Touch of Frost (which I recommend strongly to anyone who can find it in their T.V. listings) and Poirot, though both of these are rather old now. It does take awhile for things to make their way to Japan from any country.

Despite a fair amount of viewing experience with both drama and comedy made in England, I can't say that I'm very well-versed in some of the jokes and their references. At times, the only thing I can do is guess then turn to Google during the lesson to confirm my suspicion. I'd say I'm correct about 90% of the time. For instance, I'm still not sure why someone would say "hello, sailor" when encountering a drowned dead body in the water except that being in the water is connected with sailing. My only exposure to the phrase "hello, sailor" has been through Monty Python and the context for the joke was quite different.

I think my students figure that we all speak English so we all understand anything said in English, but there are clear cultural differences. Actually, I'm pretty sure my British friends wouldn't even agree that "we all speak English" in regards to Americans. If you watch enough of another country's popular media, you can start to see some of the threads which commonly run through their collective consciousness to which they can relate and to which you may not. One of the biggest examples of this that I've noticed is that Oscar Wilde's life or quotes make an appearance far more often in British shows than an American might expect. He was mentioned in the crime drama I just saw a bit of in my students's lesson and also in The Thin Blue Line which I saw last week (and, of course, is in a Monty Python sketch and mentioned in Black Adder). I'm not sure that I've ever heard him mentioned or quoted in an American show except obliquely as a reference to The Picture of Dorian Gray. I imagine similar references to politicians and presidential peccadilloes which run through many U.S. shows in particular may be a little obtuse for some.

In Japanese job advertisements for teachers, some schools will request a "North American native English speaker" or a "British native English speaker" and this can get feathers ruffled amongst those who want to apply for the job and don't fit this seemingly arbitrary criteria. While I'll grant that some of these preferences are a bit frivolous, I can also see where sometimes a particular person or group of people may be better served by someone who grew up in one particular cultural environment or another. In the case of my student and for this one lesson, she may have been served a little better by a British teacher, but only this one time. ;-)

Fiction Is Harder Than Fact

This is a verbal hazard light to warn those that some unadulterated navel-gazing is ahead and reader discretion is advised.

I've always fancied myself a good writer. Now, before anyone feels obliged to step up and testify on my behalf or scoff at the absurdity of my statement, keep in mind that I'm not asking for a virtual pat on the back (or spit in the face), but simply prefacing what I'm about to say with an assertion about my mindset. That means I'd be most grateful if both those inclined to offer applause and jeers could hold themselves in check. I'm pretty sure this won't place any undue strain on anyone.

At any rate, despite my confidence in my ability to write about life, my opinions, or develop a theory, I've never had any confidence whatsoever in my ability to craft fiction. Perhaps this stems from the fact that I'm one of the worst liars in the world and am too self-conscious to spin a good tale. Perhaps it's just something I'm really crap at because, after all, no one is good at every aspect of something. There are people who are great bakers but can't cook, so perhaps I'm good at non-fiction and poor at fiction. The only thing I'm sure of is that it's not related to a lack of imagination or a dearth of creativity.

To be honest, it's always been my opinion that a lot of fiction authors aren't actually all that good at fiction either. In fact, I think a good many fiction authors write as if they were living out their personal fantasies and acting on deep-seated psychological needs in a relatively predictable and pedestrian fashion. On the occasions when my husband and I have read the same novel, I can almost always tell him how it will end or what lays ahead long before the conclusion.

You've reached the next sequence of hazard lights warning you that (potentially pretentious and irritating) references to novels you may never have read or heard of are about to come. You can detour to the paragraph after next if you'd like to continue on and avoid this particular bumpy portion of the road.

For instance, in the Dark Tower series, I knew what was going to happen to Roland when he entered the top level of the tower and I knew what was going on with Ender in Ender's Game pretty much from the start of his recruitment. The main difference is that Stephen King took me down a long and unpredictable path before I guessed the end and Orson Scott Card seems to be playing out the same battle with his repressed/suppressed homosexual impulses in every series he writes. Card is the ultimate example of someone playing out his stale needs and wishes again and again in his fiction. It's a rare author who can surprise me, and an even rarer one who can hold my interest through multiple novels. I think part of the reason Kurt Vonnegut has always held appeal for me was that he was so screwed up that it'd probably take another schizophrenic to divine his story's conclusions.

Because I believe writing good fiction is so challenging, I have great respect for anyone who can do it well and am pessimistic when folks talk about how they believe everyone (mainly themselves) has a "good novel in (them)." I think most people have pretty crappy novels in them. The only difference between myself and those types is I've never had a desire to weave a tapestry of my needs in the cloak of a fictional story and proudly offer it to others for their entertainment. I think we should be focusing on using our fantasies mainly to entertain ourselves internally and that really great fiction comes from having a great story or idea at its core, not the author's need or wish fulfillment.

At any rate, that's not to say I hate all fiction or fiction writers but just that I think it's a far greater challenge than nearly any other sort of writing. This is a fact that has been brought home to me as of late because I started a site for fun devoted to some fanciful "in" jokes that my gaming friends and I have had for years. While I tend to find writing for this very site that you're reading now (provided you weren't diverted by the hazard lights) very easy and posts pretty much roll easily from brain to fingertips, writing for this new site has been a serious challenge as the content is fictional. Fortunately, it's fiction which serves a select audience of 4 (me, my husband, my sister, and my friend Shawn) and is always written around a central concept so there's a focal point to work from. However, even so, a short post there can take several days to develop. It's a good challenge, mind you, and an immensely gratifying one when I think a post "works".

So, perhaps I'm too hard on fiction writers and the efforts I make on the other site will teach me some respect and empathy for what they face. Somehow, I doubt it.

Christians and Christmas

Bart Simpson once said that "“Christmas is the one time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.” Some people would say that he is half right. Many people celebrate Christmas (96% of Americans do), but some of them don't do so in order to worship Jesus Christ. As of late, there has been a lot of arguing over who "owns" Christmas and whether it has been changed into a secular holiday rather than a religious one. The most recent White House Christmas card is only a small part of the ongoing debate about Christianity and Christmas and how intermingled the two should be in public spaces. (Note: The White House Christmas card is not funded by American tax dollars, but by private contributions to the Republican National Committee so it is not an example of communication with an obvious religious message being spread via public funds. It is, however, communication with a presidential seal on it that carries a religious message clearly and intentionally marking it as a governmental communication with religious content.)

As is often the case, how people perceive the issue (of the Christian or secular nature of Christmas in this case) is a matter of perspective. People tend to view Christmas through the prism of their own beliefs (or lack thereof). Christians feel Christmas is a very Christian holiday. They see nativity scenes, hear songs which praise God or the birth of Jesus, and talk about church attendance numbers and the percentage of Christians in the U.S. Non-Christians feel it is a secular one. They see Santa Claus, cite the pagan roots of many Christmas traditions, and hear songs which are festive (e.g., Jingle Bells), but in no way reflect religion. The truth can't be found in subjective perceptions, anecdotal bits of information supporting one side or another, or in wishful thinking that reality will bend itself to suit one side's will. "Truth" is in objectively-obtained statistical information which reflects the whole rather than its parts, particularly when the parts are so heavily influenced by their own agendas and biases.

Finding objective data regarding this issue is actually quite difficult. Most polls tend to be conducted by groups with a vested interest in one outcome or the other. Such groups usually poll small and highly-biased samples. Christians tend to poll church goers. Atheists tend to poll from organizations or via web sites which attract like-minded people (e.g., scientific web sites). Fortunately, there are some organizations which conduct such polls without bias and that use scientific sampling methods.

Gallup has been doing such polls for decades and, despite some rather ignominious failures ("Dewey defeats Truman"), has been quite reliable, particularly in terms of predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. Fortunately, their techniques have been refined since their most famous failure and their results are reliable within a predictable margin of error. The margin of error, for those who aren't familiar with statistical information, means that the results can be wrong either either way by a certain percentage. In the case of most Gallup polls, the margin of error is plus or minus 3%. That means that a poll showing an opinion is held by 45% of people can be believed to be held by as few as 42% or as many as 48% of people, and that is quite unlikely that it is held by less than the lowest or more than the highest of those percentages.

In order to address the question of how "Christian" Christmas currently is, I decided to turn to the Gallup poll results from a 2005 survey. It's not only a reasonably reliable polling agency but also one of the few (non-biased) organizations that asked the questions I was interested in having answers to. A Gallup poll that asked the question, "thinking of the way you personally celebrate Christmas, is it a strongly religious holiday, somewhat religious, or not too religious," showed that Christmas is considered a "strongly religious" holiday by 47% of people in the United States overall. As a good example of how perspective introduces bias, Christmas is seen as "strongly religious" by 80% of regular churchgoers. If they were to believe everyone views the holiday as they do, they'd believe nearly everyone celebrated Christmas as a "strongly religious holiday."

Before anyone concludes that this is evidence that religion is being removed from Christmas, keep in mind that 30% of those polled said that their Christmas celebrations are "somewhat religious". That means religion is part of 77% of celebrations of the holiday. That means 23% of those who celebrate Christmas do so with no or very little religious component. Clearly, there is little danger (for the time being) of Christmas being celebrated as an entirely secular holiday by the majority of Americans.

The interesting thing to me is that people find it necessary to argue over the validity of the Christian aspect of a Christian holiday in the United States. Only in America would people argue for the secular hijacking of one of a religious group's most sacred holidays (the only one which is held in greater esteem is Easter). It's not that people don't want to celebrate Christmas because they are not Christians or are arguing to reserve their right to observe the holiday as a secular one, but rather that they don't want anyone to associate the holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ with religion.

Mind you, I have no problem with people choosing to celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. After all, I'm not a Christian and I celebrate Christmas, but I'd never feel that the holiday should be or has been divorced from it's religious connotations because I have personally abandoned those aspects. I see the debate to strip Christmas of it's religious elements as the absurd extension of political correctness in the U.S. where nothing can be referred to in any way which may make any group feel the slightest bit uncomfortable (no matter how far-fetched their concerns are) and a backlash against the (undeniably) inappropriate influence of the religious right on conservative politicians. However, I think that trying to pretend Christmas is no longer a Christian holiday isn't going to accomplish anything.

Girl Bullying

While reading "Odd Girl Out", a book about how girls act aggressively toward one another, I recalled a lot of memories about my experiences in elementary and high school. As I'm sure is the case with most kids, I experienced a lot of teasing, much of it quite cruel. However, I'm pretty sure that I got teased more than other kids for various reasons.

My family was poor so my sister and I didn't get the best clothes, shoes, or accessories. We were also relatively unsophisticated compared to other kids because we lived relatively far from anyone else. Most of my peers were either "townies" who lived close to one another and in walking distance of the schools or at least in proximity to a few neighbors. They could communicate about what was popular in music, television, or in teen magazines. Most of the time, I didn't know what other kids were talking about. Keep in mind that this was about 30 years ago before the Internet leveled access to media.

Kids living in relative isolation from other kids like us tended to hear the music their parents listened to and wear the clothes their mother chose up until around their early teens. Townie kids listened to modern rock and pop and modeled their dress on whatever was in fashion magazines. My parents were relatively conservative about such things and wouldn't allow make-up or anything resembling fashionable clothes before age 16, and, in fact, frowned on things like shaving one's legs. All in all, I think my parents were both uncomfortable with anything that indicated we were making a transition from children to adults because of the hints of sexual maturity that came along with it. My sister and I were tailor-made to be the dorky kids everyone at school could delight in tormenting.

As far back as I can recall, I was the victim of malicious teasing. The worst of the bullies was a triumvirate of popular girls. One of them was the prettiest in our class. Another was very athletic and the last was a bit of a hanger-on who was a cheerleader in her later years, but probably represented the least talented and attractive of this little clique. The last girl was the one who seemed to spearhead most of the nastiest attacks and attempts to humiliate me. After reading "Odd Girl Out", I realize that this was her means of solidifying her position in this trio since the other girls had beauty and sports success on their sides. It's not unusual for less desirable (from a friendship perspective) girls to ingratiate themselves to more popular girls by amusing their girlfriends with acts of cruelty against other girls.

In "Odd Girl Out", the author talks about how unpopular girls will often do whatever it takes to get popular girls to like them in the hopes of advancing socially. She never talks about the victims of their torment who decide after being bullied that they have no interest in currying favor with the members of the elite cliques. One of my experiences shows how not everyone will sell their soul to make the popular girls like her. At the very least, I wouldn't.

When I was in 5th grade, I was in the girls' bathroom with the prettiest girl in our grade. She was spending her time primping in front of the mirror after spending her time in the toilet stall combing her hair. I know she was in there styling herself because, in the process, she managed to drop her comb in the toilet. When I came out of my stall to wash my hands, she told me to fish her comb out of the commode. She didn't ask me to do it. She told me to. I refused and she took up an exasperated posture and said, "it's only water!" To this, I retorted something along the lines of, 'if it's only water, why don't you get it,' and walked out.

At the time, being a kid and all, I didn't think about the psychology behind this. I just knew I wasn't sticking my hand in a toilet for anyone, and, if I were inclined to do so, it sure wouldn't be for some extremely vain girl who was a source of almost daily suffering for me. Thinking back on it, I'm impressed (unfavorably) by the ego that must have been behind her request. She sincerely expected a person she treated like crap to do an extremely unsavory task at her request because of her beauty and popularity because she was so accustomed to everyone doing anything they could to please her. In retrospect, I'm sure that, had I done as she'd "asked", she would have used it as a jumping point for making fun of me even more. No doubt many jokes about my willingness to play in toilet water or possibly bathe in it would have been my reward for complying.

Around our sophomore year (when we were 15), the prettiest girl in the class got pregnant. This was at the beginning of what would be a snowballing trend of high school girls getting knocked up and at a time when it was still a major embarrassment to be so young, unmarried, and pregnant. Being in this situation was bad enough considering the time period but it was worse in a heavily Christian rural town. In fact, I'm pretty sure this girl was the only one who had ever managed to put herself in this position and not decide to either drop out of school or get an abortion during the six years I was in our high school. The circumstances leading up to her predicament made up some pretty major gossip among students and much was made about whether or not she'd marry and quit school. She ended up doing neither.

This girl's situation completely broke her group apart. Her friends distanced themselves from her and she had to endure the daily embarrassment of a swelling belly and having to wear maternity clothes. People were nice to her face, but it was all really forced. I'm sure that if a less popular girl had gotten pregnant at 15, she would have been treated far worse. At that time, I can recall nothing but relief that her situation had smashed apart a group which caused me a lot of distress for so long. I didn't really experience any schaudenfreude, but I also felt zero compassion or empathy for her situation. I simply didn't care about the difficulty she faced.

I'd like to think that karma settled a score for me, but I know karma doesn't work this way and the consequences of being sexually irresponsible as a teenager had nothing to do with me or the suffering said teenager and her cronies put me through.

Know It All

When I was about 12, my cousin and I were making cupcakes at my grandmother's house. We mixed the batter up in a big plastic bowl and were about to tip the bowl so that we could pour the contents into the individual slots in the muffin tin. As we went to pour it, my grandmother told us that we were never going to manage to pour the batter into the small holes of the tins without it overspilling because we couldn't pour a thin enough stream from such a wide bowl.

Since we were every bit the insufferable, know-it-all snots that most pre-teens are, we said we were sure that we could manage it. My grandmother, who knew a good bet, told us that she'd give us a dollar if we managed it and we'd each owe her a dollar if we failed. Confident in our ability to carefully pour the batter into each muffin cup, we made the bet and tipped the bowl over only to pour a not insignificant amount outside the first cup. Being cheap, insufferable, know-it-all snots, we claimed that the terms of the bet were not clearly defined and refused to pony up the dough.

Any person who is honest with herself is going to remember a time and an age when she thought she knew it all and the wisdom of those with more age and experience fell on her very deaf ears. Any person who has lived long enough will remember being that person more than once. I particularly recall spending a few college years thinking I knew as much as I was ever going to need to or could and that no one had much left to teach me nor was I far from being fully self-actualized. My cluelessness is quite striking in retrospect.

At this point in time, I'd say that the only true wisdom we can all possess is the irrefutable knowledge that there are serious limits to our wisdom and knowledge. This is a notion which is sadly lacking in the population of the Internet. The recent flap over (another) school banning Wikipedia for academic purposes reminded me of this. You will never meet as big a group of know-it-alls as you will find on the Internet. There are a good many people who appear to believe the collective knowledge of layman who sit behind their keyboards digesting tidbits of information on the web sites they browse makes them authorities on the topics they have a passing interest in. Mind you, most of these people don't even read a newspaper site on a daily basis and are gaining information in a way not too dissimilar from reading the backs of Trivial Pursuit cards. These people are outraged that Wikipedia isn't considered a legitimate source of information. They delight in deriding the validity of their textbooks and sniff at the indignity of having to go to some musty, old cavern of a library. Personally, I get the feeling these people haven't been to a library since the late 1800's since I haven't seen one that was dark, musty, or out-dated in my life-time. Most of them look very modern and have banks of computers.

The scary thing about the people who believe they know it all is that they lack awareness or understanding of what the difference is between the people who write textbooks and the people who make Wikipedia entries. They believe that the notion that information in books and journals has more academic value than what is freely available on the Internet is an elitist sentiment and implies that only intellectuals can offer up useful information. They fail to see that there's a difference between people who devote their lives to exploring a corner of a field and apply research principals to their work, write it up at length (taking years sometimes to complete their work), submit it for professional editing and peer review, and have it published and people who edit Wiki entries when they have some free time.

Recognizing the authors of scholarly journals and texts as credible and Wikipedia information as far less credible isn't a matter of believing knowledge can only be imparted by the well-educated and elite. It's about quality control and depth and recognizing that Internet sources are, by and large, lacking in both. When it comes to finding out what a word or concept you never heard of means for curiosity's sake, Wikipedia is your place to go, but it's not the place to research term papers or mine for thesis material.

The main problem with Wikipedia is that it's fast food information. It isn't even a really good source for pointing you to other good sources as its references are to other shallow Internet information sites. If you've ever done any real research in a college library, you'd know that the citations you get from journals are far better ways of pointing you to other sources than checking out links on Wikipedia. Those who feel Wikipedia is a first stop on the road to research don't have any idea how poor a resource it is because they don't know how vastly superior other resources are.

Wikipedia (for academic purposes) advocates are little different from my cousin and I trying to pour that batter out of a huge bowl into a small muffin tin slot for the first time. Our grandmother knew better than us because she had cooked and handled her bowls more than us. People who have actually done true research know how much better it is than researching on the Internet but, you're never going to convince the know-it-alls that they don't know it all. That includes knowing that banning Wikipedia for academic paper writing is probably a very good idea.

Christmas Decorating

In my family, Christmas decorations usually went up the weekend after Thanksgiving. It wasn't an attempt to rush into the season but rather a practical issue. Thanksgiving usually affords people back home a 4-day weekend so it provides ample time to dig out boxes of decorations, untangle them, and arrange them as artfully as possible around the house.

In retrospect, I'm sure that my decorating wasn't all that great, but I was the one who usually applied myself to such tasks with great enthusiasm since I love the atmosphere of the Christmas season. My mother, father, and sister may have been happy with the fruits of my labors, but they couldn't really view doing it themselves it as anything more than a chore. Over the last few years, I pretty much felt the way that they did and ended up depressed and giving the holiday a miss. Part of the reason for that was that I didn't exactly feel showered with spirit by anyone around me (given that this is Japan and the holiday is not celebrated the same as in the U.S.) and part of it was plain old winter depression. After awhile, even the peppiest Christmas spirit can be dampened by all the negative talk and blah responses from those around her. I must admit that part of what did it was cynical talk of how commercialized the holiday has become (it's true, but we don't have to buy into it) and how lazy the internet and computers have made people about traditions like sending cards.

This year, I decided I wasn't going to let myself get bogged down in low spirits and I pushed myself to drag out my box of dwindling decorations. A few years ago, the box was bursting at the seams with a 3.5 foot artificial tree purchased many years ago in a little rundown shop in Tokyo, several strings of lights, a large tin full of ornaments suitable for a small tree and more candles than our dinky apartment could accommodate. The candles got used up. The lights died. The tree got tossed out about 4 years ago when years of hot lights melted too many of it's plastic "pine needles" and quite a few of the little snap on faux pine bits were lost. The state of that tree gave me too much of a sad Charlie Brown feeling and it depressed me to look at it so I had to let it go.

Christmas plates my husband gave me.

Since then, I unfortunately, have not seen an artificial tree like it anywhere so we've been treeless. That left me with all the tiny ornaments and the remaining bits and pieces that I still had on hand. I made the best of what I had and felt quite a bit better for having done so. About half of the items I've kept were gifts, most of them from my husband and putting them out where I can see them reminds me of how much he cares and wants me to be happy. It also reminds me that he has always loved the way I regarded Christmas and enjoys how I set up the apartment at this time of year.

A big vanilla candle I bought this year from the FBC surrounded by little pine candles my brother-in-law gave me some time back.

One thing I realized is that the decorating is a way of slowly wading into the cold waters of the holiday season. It's not really about the stuff I'm draping around the apartment so much as how it makes me think and feel as I go through the process. Also, a lot of the items hold certain memories and connections which are greater than the quality or appearance of the items themselves


Some of the most unimportant thing have stories behind them which I'd forgotten. The picture above is of a bunch of Coca-Cola polar bear ornaments that were distributed on 1.5 liter bottles of Diet Coke about 12 years ago. While the ornaments themselves aren't any great shakes, they are souvenirs of my recovery from severe back pain at that time. When I first started having unbearable pain, the doctor I went to told me I had to stay in bed for 2 months in order to get better. I did as he suggested but didn't seem to improve. At some point, I decided that he was wrong and initiated a plan for my own recovery which included increasing amounts of exercise and walking in particular. After about a week, part of the routine I established was walking to a store once a day and picking up one bottle of Diet Coke at a time. These ornaments were on the necks of those bottles at that time.


After that experience, I realized that doctors sometimes don't always know what they're doing when recommending treatment. I don't know what would have happened if I'd have continued to just lie in bed but clearly the time had come for me to work on the muscles a bit and move on from rest. Doctors may know more about bodies and how they work than we do but, in the end, they're just making educated guesses and sometimes those guesses are wrong. I hadn't really thought much about that memory until I dragged out my box of Christmas ornaments.

At the end of my decorating, I felt as if the process had done me a lot of good and I feel much better going into the Christmas season than I have in quite awhile. I'm hoping to do more of the things I used to do before I got into a rut a few years ago.

The World According to Gene

(Warning: Portions of this post are not "family-friendly" and discuss "indelicate" topics that those with sensitive dispositions may find offensive. If you're squeamish about anything related to sex, I suggest you turn back now.)

The other day, I was listening to an NPR interview with Gene Simmons conducted by Terry Gross. As a lapsed KISS fan, I sometimes take an interest in what the band members are up to. I am also very familiar with Gene's pontificating on the nature of men and women and didn't really want to hear it again, but the site that had brought this interview to my attention (Confessions of a College Call-girl), had mentioned that, unlike most boot-licking interviewers, Ms. Gross wasn't going to chuckle amiably at his half-baked notions and egotistical statements. Ms. Gross did indeed point out how obnoxious Gene was being and the interview was good for a chuckle even though little new ground was covered on the Simmons front. About the only thing he added to his usual repertoire of philosophizing on (what I refer to tongue firmly in cheek as) gender issues is a vague mockery of intellectualism, NPR, reading books and the serious pursuit of education rather than going out and rocking and rolling all night and partying every day.

Part of the mantra that often comes out when Gene's mouth opens and he spews his philosophy of life is the notion that men are genetically-engineered not to monogamous. As one who has boasted of bedding over 4,000 different women with accompanying Polaroids to prove it, he uses this to validate his promiscuity as well as his absolute conviction that any man who professes he can love one woman forever or wants to be with her for anything besides the contents of her trousers is an absolute liar. I'm going to set aside the possibility that Gene is playing a character who says these things in order to present a specific public persona since I've heard him deliver his speeches on this topic about a hundred times with a straight face and an air of absolute conviction. Since I've seen him act, I know he's not that good an actor so I'm guessing this is all his (alarmingly) genuine belief.

One of the interesting points about listening to him talk is that his view of humanity (or at least the male half of it) is incredibly narrow. He is absolutely convinced that all men operate with the limited emotional maturity and lack of sexual control that he does. Anyone who does not share his perspective is simply a liar in his opinion. All men are dogs governed by the raging needs of their genitalia. He doesn't even entertain the idea that his mental machinery operates differently from other folks out there who also possess a penis. His myopia is remarkable because he is clearly a person who has had at least somewhat of an education (though he does seem intent on suppressing any expression of it) and has traveled the world. Of course, I'm guessing that his experiences while abroad were not exactly ones of cross-cultural enlightenment and may have been measured in how many photos he added to his collection of sexual conquests.

I often write of ethnocentrism and how it colors ones view of other cultures. People often are stuck in their own view of what is "right and wrong" or "good and bad" based on the environment they were raised it. It takes not only experience but mental effort to break free of this tendency. Such tendencies are not limited to perceptions of other cultures. A fair number of people are so incredibly ego-centric that they can't conceptualize that other people may not perceive the world just as they do. Enter Gene Simmons who apparently perceives the world through his penis and cannot believe there is any other truth than the one he espouses. His notions aren't actually offensive to women but are offensive to men as it reduces them to nothing more than slaves to their libidos and minimizes their ability to form deep and meaningful relationships with women. I guess that if you are incredibly egocentric and you can't form meaningful relationships, make lasting commitments, or relate to women as anything other than mothers or whores, then no man is capable of more than you.

Several posts back, I mentioned something about thinking which is one-level deep and I'm not surprised to have heard that Mr. Simmons applies such thinking to his theories of why all men are promiscuous. The notion is that, when we were cave folks, men who successfully sowed their seeds among the most fertile females would win the genetic lottery whereas monogamous men would find their material passed on at too low a frequency to produce a genetic legacy. As surface thinking, this works. However, it doesn't quite work when you start thinking a bit more deeply about the implications. First of all, impregnating any woman you can find doesn't help if your off-spring don't survive long enough to produce their own off-spring. Considering the vulnerability of pregnant women or those attempting to feed and protect a child, the chances of one successfully rearing a child to puberty without the support of a stronger partner who could provide food, security and support for survival seems pretty low. Serial monogamy suits the idea of ensuring your genes get passed on better than rampant promiscuity.

Gene also offered that "we'd all be retarded" if men weren't humping anything that moved but that also doesn't wash. Primitive people were nomadic and tended to travel in groups (as it was better for survival) with relatively limited exchanges of members between other groups. If a man produced too many off-spring within his limited group, there would be an increased chance of half-siblings mating with other half-siblings and then there's be a higher incidence of genetic defects. I guess Gene doesn't know that the average "caveman" didn't get around as much as the 20th century rock star and probably didn't encounter so many leg-spreading babes. However, thinking through a few of the other possible ramifications of the genetic theory of male infidelity would muddy up his limited world-view so there's no point in his going through the trouble.

There are many people like Gene out there in the world though they don't tend to confine their convictions to the way men perceive women. It's only Gene's incredible preoccupation with sex which makes him focus mainly on this particular aspect. These are other people who also are trapped in the notion that their own world-view is the correct one and that there is one and only one truth to be applied to various situations in life. They reject other perspectives as dishonest, ill-informed, uneducated, or simply "wrong". These are the types of people who enjoy the innocence and simplicity of a world divided neatly into black and white and reject all the unnecessarily complicated greys.

My readers might ponder why I even consider Gene's rantings or bother to refute them. Part of the reason for this is that I used to respect and admire him. Before he made his transformation from make-up-wearing, goth rock God to sleazy, pathetic shill intent on squeezing every penny out of his band's image with singing toothbrushes, customized coffins, and cheesy concept coffee houses, he used to be a relatively decent role model for teenagers, particularly in regards to avoiding alcohol and drugs and advocating people work hard, be smart (education didn't used to be something he regarded disdainfully) and pursue their dreams.

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Two related asides...

• People probably rarely lived in caves. The whole caveman thing is pretty much a modern myth. Ancient people were hunter-gatherers who traveled to places where the food was until agricultural practices were understood well enough to feed people. At that point, they built structures. Caves were likely temporary shelters at best during times of extreme hardship or prolonged weather upheavals.
  

• Gene is writing a book about prostitution. When he visited Japan around 1989, there was a quote from his bandmate (and the one KISS member who still has dignity, creativity and class) Paul Stanley where he said all the band members got coupons for a Japanese soapland. The coupons entitled the bearer to a professional monkey spanking. Paul said that the experience was extremely intense and immensely pleasurable and encouraged Gene to avail himself of the services. Gene said that he would never, ever engage in any sexual behavior for money. Paul countered that they didn't have to pay as the Japanese promoters provided the tickets, but Gene still refused as he would never have sex for money no matter who was footing the bill. This also jives with the fact that Gene is Jewish and, despite the fact that he downplays his connection to his faith, he's fairly observant of its traditions. Judaism forbids the patronizing of prostitutes. This leaves me wondering what qualifies him to write such a book on either side of the issue. The only tenuous connection he has to sex workers is that his long-time girlfriend (and now plastic surgery victim) Shannon Tweed is a professional masturbatory aid.

It's Not All Japan

Naming your blog when you first start it is a difficult task. You do not yet know what you're going to write about or what shape your posts are going to take. Mine started as a vague wish to document my thoughts and experiences so I could share them with family and friends as well as track my own perceptions and thought processes. It wasn't really my wish to educate or enlighten anyone about Japan though it's a bit difficult not to sound that way when you're noticing a lot of differences between you and the people around you. Ultimately, such things are going to be foremost in your thoughts and part of any log of your ideas and musings.

This is my roundabout way of saying that I don't present any of my ideas or anecdotal experiences as gospel on Japan, its people or living here. This is just what I think, feel, and believe at this point in time. Part of the point of writing it all down now is knowing that my thoughts will change as time goes by and I'll have the chance to look back and compare how I've changed.

That being said, not everything in my life relates to being in Japan. In fact, a lot of things don't relate to it and sometimes I think this blog, because I tend to favor writing about developed notions rather than random thoughts, misrepresents the extent to which my life is entangled in the cross-cultural experience. Most of the time, life is just a sequence of normal tasks and events which consume time but are unremarkable.

My daily routine, aside from the fact that it involves living in an environment which is rather different from the one I grew up in, is relatively similar to that which others might live back home. I get up, make breakfast, help my husband prepare for work, clean dishes and house, work a bit, use my computer a bit, shop a bit, do laundry, attend to my personal needs, and sleep. Occasionally, a cross-cultural point will snag my attention and I'll roll it over in my mind but the truth is that this happens no less with issues which aren't related to life in Japan in particular. Often similar ideas or notions which set me to pondering occur in relation to life back home or elsewhere. I just don't tend to write so much about those things, but perhaps I should to show more clearly that it's not all about Japan. Part of the reason I don't cover these points is that it seems like there's so little time to write each day (particularly these days) and those other random thoughts seem less important to recollect and are less likely to significantly change as time goes by.

The truth is that I'm extremely unhappy at how I named my blog because I feel a bit confined by it at times (and I think it's painfully trite). That being said, it's not exactly inaccurate and I'm pretty sure being labeled as a "Japan blog" probably drives a certain amount of traffic my way and attracts people who can offer me their insights about living in Japan so, on balance, it's probably a good thing.

I've Reached the Point

Lately, I've been having to search my own blog more and more to make sure that I haven't told a story or presented a certain perspective already. Often, a thought occurs to me and I think a particular topic would make a good post but I don't always have the time to sit down and write when the thought is in mind. At this point in time, I can't always easily recall if I've just thought of writing about the topic or actually written about it.

It seems I've reached the point where I'm in serious danger of repeating myself so I'm searching for keywords and trying to track down previous posts on similar themes. While I don't mind writing something new on a topic I've discussed before, I am annoyed at the idea of actually repeating myself like some doddering old grandma who tells the same story again and again to an audience doing its best to politely stifle a yawn.

In fact, in real life, this is something that I seem to find myself doing more than in the past. While the first (and perhaps obvious) conclusion to reach would be that my bulb is growing dimmer as I journey over the age of 40, I think the real reason for this is that I'm talking to more people about varied topics than ever before. It's easy to forget who you've told what stories or bits of information to when you're talking to 10-15 people a week. I've noticed that my husband, who talks to vastly greater numbers of people than I, suffers from this problem as well and has taken to prefacing his news with things like, 'have I told you before...'.

While I'm doing my best to always offer a different perspective, idea, or tale in each post, I'm sure there will be times when I fail to track down a previous post because I've used the wrong keyword or missed a paragraph as I scan back through old entries. I hope my kind-hearted readers will be patient with this old grandma when she tells the same story again as it will inevitably happen.

Politics

For those of you who are already stifling a yawn, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not actually going to be talking about politics. I'm going to talk about talking about politics. While that may not sound a great deal more promising, I'm hoping you'll bear with me.

When we first got married, my husband was a ravenously politically-interested sort while I was fairly indifferent. Since we live in the same domicile and we're both very talkative sorts of people, his political knowledge naturally trickled down to me (or, it may have been a process of osmosis since we sleep in the same bed and no one can really say what goes on while you sleep). While I am interested in larger issues, politics has been something which I cannot bear because it's one of those things which should be extremely important but is so full of manipulation, maneuvering and power playing that it's reduced to a game. Seeing so many rich people playing transparent verbal games in order to maintain or acquire positions of power leaves me rather heartsick.

This morning, nothing demonstrated how pointless political discourse can be better than the Democratic candidates debating on CNN. We were treated to the same usual parade of non-answers, attacks, empty promises, and posturing. In the back of your mind, you know that even the most genuine-sounding candidate isn't going to act on his or her convictions once the election is won. To be fair, this isn't entirely the candidates' fault. Issues that politicians have to deal with are actually very complex and the attention span and scope of interest of the average person are quite limited. Truth be told, people prefer simple answers to complex questions that fit in with their particular world-view. If you haven't decided I'm a big liar who has tricked you into listening to a talk about politics and turned away, I'm getting to the part where I'm talking about talking about politics and the aforementioned, while perhaps a bit boring, actually applies to what is to come.

Several months ago, I got a new student. He's my second retired gentleman who studies English and the first student I've had privately who has expressed an interest in discussing political and social issues. Since I'm not particularly politically minded, it's been a bit of challenge for me to keep digging up fresh material about which I can converse in a reasonable fashion given my limited knowledge of such things. Fortunately, the spillover from my husband's interest, which has actually waned quite a bit over the years as he's also grown a bit dispirited with the whole matter, keeps me at a level whereby, if I read an article, I can discuss the content adequately.

One thing that has happened on more than one occasion is that this student, who is a very nice fellow, has been emphatically critical of other Japanese folks for their relatively passive approach to politics. He has often lamented the fact that Japanese people forgive and forget (or at least forget) rapidly and keep the same corrupt people and parties in power. He's also disappointed that he cannot discuss serious topics with his friends and peers when they get together and that most people seem to be mainly interested in trivial matters.

On these occasions, he also says how much he admires foreign folks because they tend to discuss serious issues when groups of them congregate. I actually tried to mildly disabuse him of this notion as I'm not so sure this is true of all or most foreign people. I've known a lot of people who are equally obsessed with dumb little things as Japanese people. I think one of the main differences is that western folks are able to take a trivial matter and blow it up into a (supposedly) huge societally relevant one. For instance, in a recent Consumerist post, it was noted that Starbucks was rolling out Christmas-themed cups, music, and decorations very early. The average Japanese person probably wouldn't notice or care but the average American can take this tiny little bit of information and turn it into a rant about how the commercialization of Christmas is getting worse and worse and we're all being manipulated by corporations to extend our enhanced consumption around the holidays. It's amazing what sort of havoc a few cups, a few yuletide tunes and some tinsel can create if your mind is working overtime to justify your ire about such things making a premature entrance in your anything but humble opinion.

My student is not to be dissuaded from notions that Americans are all political animals, but that's really not the topic at hand. I merely lacked the focus to keep this topical car on the proper track. The issue is how we talk about politics and, when I say "we", I mean my student and I. While discussing the current relationship between Iran and the United States and remarks made by George Bush and Tony Blair, my student suggested that the U.S. should not have removed Saddam Hussein from power but sought to gradually limit his powers through sanctions. He and I have discussed before that sanctions tend mainly to harm the innocent and he's essentially indicated that war does much the same. However, when I mentioned that the other problem with sanctions is that no matter who imposes them, there will always be some other power that would be more than happy to undermine such sanctions in an act of opportunism thinly-veiled as political opposition. For example, if the U.S. placed sanctions on Iran, inevitably, some powers (I'm looking at you, France) would be sneaking up to the back door, knocking quietly, and offering to trade whatever it is that the U.S. was attempting to prevent entry of into the country in exchange for some nice, tasty oil.

This sort of point always stymies my student. All of his answers to political and social problems are relatively simplistic and show a limited understanding of the complexity of these sorts of problems. There's one problem. There's one solution. He's very much a reflection of the audience politicians tend to pander to. It's very gratifying to think that there's a workable, clear solution to world and national problems. Any candidate who muddies the picture with a series of hypothetical pitfalls to any potential solution isn't going to hold the listeners' attention for long and may be seen as avoiding making a decision.

The problem isn't that my student lacks the knowledge to discuss such topics as world issues as I'm sure he has far more than I. If we were to take part in a pop quiz on current events, he'd likely run circles around me in a head-to-head factual competition. The problem is that most Japanese folks are not schooled to ask all the "what if" questions that western folks are educated to consider. The limits my student has and his resulting frustration that he cannot answer my questions or respond to my points is a direct result of growing up in an educational system which emphasizes rote learning and answering every question with one and only one correct reply rather than applying critical thinking and debating a variety of points.

Having discussions with students that show that they have thinking which often goes only one level deep is something both my husband and I have experienced time and again in our interactions with them. It makes discussing topics of any depth very hard when teaching because the students reach dead ends rather rapidly when offering their ideas and are at a loss for words when you bring up alternative issues. It's also one of the most important points that the Japanese educational system needs to address if they want to continue to compete with the rest of the world as they've long passed the point where working overtime and getting high test scores is going to be enough to keep up with other countries. Unfortunately, change is very slow in Japan and I don't see a generation of people with excellent critical and analytical thinking coming along any time soon.