My Spidey-sense is tingling...

Did someone call for a precipitous lurch towards nationalism?

LDP, New Komeito OK 'patriotism' definition

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The ruling coalition agreed Wednesday to a definition of patriotism to be included in a bill to revise the Fundamental Law of Education, which the government hopes to submit to the current session of the Diet, sources said.

The issue over how to define patriotism--aikokushin in Japanese--has attracted attention as the focal point of the law's revision.

The Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito reached an agreement that would define patriotism as "a mind that respects tradition and culture, loves the nation and homeland that have fostered them," according to the sources.

Although the minority party member of the ruling bloc requested that "the nation" not be specifically referred to as the government that administrates to it, the final draft didn't seem to make that distinction.

Does anyone else feel the slightest twinge of anxiety when a bill is presented requiring teachers to instruct children so that they will "love the homeland that fostered them?"

Trash Day

Well, one of four trash days, actually. Today was the recyclables and non-burnables day. But the nylon mesh sack that's supposed to be for the "non-burnable, soft plastic" was missing from my apartment. So I went about 10 yards up the street to dump my stuff at the next drop off point. It was there I met one of my neighbors... who wanted to know if I was planning on putting my trash into her drop point.

Turns out that in addition to the ridiculously strict rules about how you're supposed to prepare your trash (you have to wash plastic before you throw it away, discarded cloth materials should be folded and/or cut into pieces no larger than 50 cm...) and when you're allowed to throw it away (designated days only, no more than 6 hours before the official pick-up time...) it turns out that you're limited as to where you can throw it away too. She went to great pains to explain that the garbage point I was so callously planning on using was reserved for the four houses at the end of the block. When I pointed out that my building no longer had the mesh sack for plastics, she proceeded to accost one of the other people who live in the neighborhood to ask his opinions on A) where the dividing line was for the trash point she was protecting, B) where I should be taking my trash, C) what might have happened to the mesh collection sack and D) what should be done next.

All told, it didn't take much more than five or six minutes to decide that I should just leave the bag in front of my assigned trash point and hope that the wind didn't scatter my washed, disposable, non-burnable plastic all over the neighborhood.

About an hour later, the trash guys came by and picked up all the plastics in the neighborhood and put them all in the same part of the back of the same truck.

What was accomplished? Not a damn thing, near as I can tell.


Seems to be a bit of a theme in my life lately...

Minimally Important News

Prehistoric Worm Droppings Found
AFP
April 14, 2006 — Swedish scientists have found half-billion-year-old droppings thought to be from an aquatic worm and hope the discovery will contribute to the understanding of prehistoric ecosystems, researchers announced on Wednesday.
"We have found fossilised excrement dating back 500 million years," Lund University researcher Fredrik Terfelt told AFP.

Seriously. This was really important to a bunch of people somewhere.

More on following instructions...

I took this picture a while ago, but in thinking about that last post, it came to me again in a different light.

To me, hot dog assembly seems like a pretty self-explanatory thing. But what about in a society that makes it a point to tell children how best to get in order to line up to go outside together for their class exercises done in unison? Maybe there's a serious fear for well meaning mothers that they'll be making hot dogs for their kids, and the kids will break down in anguished tears because they must be the only children in Japan with a mother so degenerate as to prepare them with barbecue sauce or chopped onions or something. What kind of pressure to conform are these people living under?
As a foreigner I'm pretty much expected to behave in an societally unacceptable way. C'mon, I wasn't lucky enough to have been born on the blessed island and at some point I'll be expected to leave because, well, I'm not Japanese. So I really have no idea how it feels for people who have grown up in this whale-bone corset of a society.

Don't Stand on Ceremony (addendum)

It occurs to me now that the most disastrous lesson activities I've run in Japan have been the ones that ask students to make up their own responses without first having seven or eight examples for them. From the first days of nursery school the kids are told what to do and when to do it so that they won't fall out of step with the rest of the class. Pretty much all of their education is presented in the following format:

1. Teacher explains task
2. Teacher demonstrates task
3. Teacher explains demonstration
4. Students mimic demonstration
5. Repeat until all blanks on worksheet are completed

Now that I think about it, maybe those ceremonies of repetition serve some purpose other than boring me senseless. Maybe it's like a reminder that things are still going according to plan and that everything is still under control.

Of course, I could be quite wrong. Maybe the point is to bore everyone into an easily controllable state of submission. You never know.

"go enryo naku shi-te kudasai"

It means something like "don't stand on ceremony; relax, be comfortable." In effect feel free to do what you'd like. Perhaps modern linguistic theory has moved on from the assumption that social tendencies are revealed in the language, but it's a damn tempting idea to hold in Japan.
I mention this because the school year ends in March here. So the last couple weeks have been a time to prepare for conclusions. And the sense of preparation is never omitted here. At the junior high where I work, the third year students had their graduation ceremony on Wednesday the 15th. (Mandatory education in Japan is only 9 years total. In theory, the junior high graduation could be their official entrance into adult life. Most kids choose to go on to high school for an additional three years of schooling, though.)
So to finish up the year we needed a final chorus festival, in which each of the homeroom classes, five classes for each of the three grades, performed both of the songs they'd been practicing during the third semester, a graduation ceremony, and an end-of-school-year ceremony. But before each of those ceremonies, there had to be a practice session to make sure than everyone knew how and where to enter and exit each of the venues. And each rehearsal took the better part of a morning.
Just to sum up, each ceremony, of which there were three, required a rehearsal for entering and exiting. And to top it off, each rehearsal was treated as a school-wide gathering, which means the protocol for organized seating by class and gender as well as opening and closing remarks by the head teacher must be observed.

Really, hearing "don't stand on ceremony" must be an immense relief.

Manufactured Nostalgia?

The Japanese school year starts in April and ends around mid March. So the current school year is just about over. And the schools are all in the middle of their end-of-year events. But at my junior high they'd scheduled a special song event. It seems that this school is really good at, and proud of, its skills in chorus-style singing. So last week was the school chorus contest. Each class in each grade sang two songs: one they could choose and one mandated by the head music teacher. Then they were graded on performance and conducting, and the best class from each grade was chosen.

Yep. Two songs times sixteen classes plus the 3rd year mixed choruses groups A and B equals 36 songs in a poorly ventilated town hall auditorium. But most shocking was the end of the day. After choosing the winning classes and the best student conductors, there was a photo-retrospective for the 3rd year students to remind them of all the good times they had over the years.

Followed by a video message from their teachers from the first or second years that had gone to other schools.

Followed by a skit by the underclassmen showing their appreciation.

Followed by an interview session with the teachers chosen most popular by the class and their comments on the third year students.

Followed by a final song with choreographed group dance performed by the entire 3rd year class.

Can you imagine that? Like in one of those made for Family Channel movies, the entire class ran up on stage and started singing and dancing along to some radio-friendly (Japanese) pop song in unison.

. . .

I'm glad these kids have a good enough school environment for them to enjoy so much about being students here. And I can't honestly begrudge them actually liking most of their teachers, the lucky little bastards. But I do have to wonder about what receiving so much ready-form memory-fodder does to their ability to process unscripted events.


Eh, maybe I just can't let go of my hatred over being forced to watch Grease.

Just... I mean... it's...

Go ahead. Try to deconstruct this and tell me where it leaves you.

I have chosen to live in a country that has some people who have, in the most literal sense of the word, profoundly weird hobbies.

The program title says it all...

So far, my favorite Japanese TV show is "Trivia no izumi," or "Fountain of Trivia." Each week they examine a little-known bit of information, and explain why it's true. Each of the points is researched in a painfully sincere manner. For example, this tidbit about the last Emperor of China, prompted an interview with a scholar of Chinese history and a trip to China to visit the imperial grave. All so they could announce with authority that the final meal of the Last Emperor of China was... instant ramen.

There's other entries worth bringing up, but this one was easiest to explain.

Sweet?

Apparently, this is a succesful way to sell chocolate in the UK.

It's just chocolate. What's so manly about that? There's no raw meat in it, no cutouts from a Snap-on Tools calendar, it doesn't even burst into flames.

Whatever else in life may be casting doubt on your masculinity, putting this big, long, thick, piece of chocolate in your mouth is the thing to set the record straight.