Bang for your Buck/Yech for your Yen

Let's say, for argument's sake, that you had around �5000 to spend. You've been a hard-working little squirrel, and now you have some spare acorns to fritter away. Well, what might you do?

You could spend it on some personal grooming. You know, try and keep the ladies looking and whatnot. And what better way to start than with updating that stodgy old haircut. And the hip look in Tokyo these days is a sort of 60s-Shag revival:


Of course, not all styles are suited to all faces. Maybe something with a little less...wig is in order. How about the chappatsu look that's swept the nation.


And finally, like most hard-working acorn gatherers, you could spend that money on booze for a quick fix of fun!

Just don't get so drunk you forget whether or not skin outranks steel wire on the Mohs Hardness Scale.


Whoo-Hah!

Futility

Tonight I'm going to work a half shift at the conversation school. Of the four students on my schedule, at least two of them have pretty much given up on studying grammar, vocabulary or idiom, and have opted instead to "enjoy conversation and have fun speaking freely."

I wouldn't mind that so much if I wasn't suffering from hay fever. Thanks to reconstruction-era construction plans, there were enourmous numbers of Japanese Cedar trees planted that were meant to be harvested for building and construction. Of course, about four years after WWII, most construction shifted to reinforced concrete and steel framing, which meant most of those trees were never harvested. So now Japan is enjoying the earliest, strongest, most widely spread pollenation season ever. And I was feeling it hard. Which was why I took a non-drowsy allergy medicine.

Please bear in mind, "non-drowsy" only means it won't make you sleepy. There's nothing in there about not feeling fuzzy, out-of-focus, or mildly stoned. Not exactly the best frame of mind from which to feign interest in someone.

Tonight ought to be interesting. To impartial observers, anyway.

Fuck you. Fuck you all very much.

My contract to teach English at (and engage in international exchange events with) the elementary schools of Chiyoda ward, Tokyo is almost over. Two more weeks and I'll be done. And now, after what seemed to be an endless supply of futile repetition, frustrating setbacks, injuries and insults, I'm finding out what the response has been. It looks as though I was appreciated by the teachers, who rarely could be bothered to raise their heads when they were in the class with me, and the parents, whose snot-nosed children apparently managed to retain a line or two of English after spending the class screaming like sugar-addled Tourrette's sufferers or staring sullenly into the blank expanse of obedience and consumerism that would make up the rest of their lives.

What kind of bullshit is this? If you really think that what I was doing was worthwhile, then get off your flat, lazy ass and shut your students up when they spend the class teasing anyone who can muster the confidence to try and speak. And when your children come home and want to continue playing games where they slap anyone and anything in their field of vision to see what will pay them any attention, correct those mucus-smeared little apes. After a year of putting up with all kinds of crap, hearing "we really appreciate what you've been doing" seems like the most obnoxious, bald-faced insult I could imagine. If they really appreciated it, why didn't they make any effort to help me?

One thing I've learned fairly thoroughly about Japan is that the more polite, respectful and honorific the language gets, the less it has to do with the actual feelings of the speaker. "We're most ashamed for being unable to explain this undesired situation" is most often used by your supervisor who isn't even going to explain why you're about to be screwed, refused or abused in the name of the company. "It is truly awful that your situation has become so difficult" means "since no easy solution is at hand, I'm going to assume you'll be too polite to ask me to do more than say how bad your situation is." "You must have become exhausted after completing such a working day" is another way to say "Oh, you're leaving before me."

This year I've had up it to my neck. And now the good people of Chiyoda ward along with my dipshit managers are just all a-gush with compliments and gratitude and "hail-fellow-well-met" bonhomie. They can jam it all right up their collective ass.

Yawning chasm

So, tell me, how often do you get sick of doing the same things over and over?

No, that's not quite right. What determines how quickly you get sick of some things? For example, last month I went to Hokkaido and I ate ramen from the original outpost of my favorite ramen shop three times in two days. I can play Tekken 5 until my eyes dry out and lose the ability to focus, and I have re-read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle until the spine broke. But I became bored with the recommended, tested and proven profitable (for the owners, anyway) teaching method at this one crappy eikaiwa within six weeks. Living on the outskirts of Tokyo lost its luster in less than a month. Within five minutes it became obvious that my supervisor was a dolt of limited perception, unshakable ignorance and possessed of breath that could knock a buzzard off a shit-wagon. Knowing he would soon become tiresome took no great amount of thought.

But what worries me most is the prospect of a lifetime of employment that will leave me bored for the vast majority of it. I don't imagine you want to hear more about it than you already have, but it's all gotten old very quickly. With the exception of that one week I was paid to look after my neighbors pets in 7th grade. 'Cause, y'know, they gave me a key to the house and I'd never really seen a pet rabbit before, and it was the first time I'd had access to someone else's home in their absence. Which is a rush almost as valuable as the goods you take while you're there.*

*Actual value of rush is not likely to exceed a positive value of $10, or a negative value of 18 months per count of breaking and entering.

Feedback

You know, like that screechy sound you hear when that jackass guitarist on open-mic night thinks he knows better than the sound guy and turns his output up too high? Yeah, feedback. And I finally worked out how to turn on the comments functions here. So you too can produce your own high-frequency response to my inchoate gibbering. And I solemnly swear* to read them all. Really.

Just click that bit at the bottom marked "comments" to get started.

*By "solemnly swear" I mean "intend to, until boredom overtakes me..."

Local Foreigner

The school year in Japan runs from April to March of the following year. Which means that most schools in Tokyo are now preparing for the end of the current school year. And my first year at elementary school is almost over too. And I have got to say that I am quite ready to be done with it. Just in case you've forgotten, or never read my complaints before, or didn't care enough to remember it the last time I started bitching about it, I am contracted to teach "International English/Culture Exchanging for Introduce of Lesson" at six elementary schools in the Tokyo area. I go to each school once a week and teach one lesson to each class in each grade from Kindergarden to 6th grade, with a poorly thought-out goals of:

1. Introducing the children to the existance of foreign people in a safe, non-threatening way to improve percieved feelings of fear of meeting/interacting with/existance of foreign people, especially as compared with other East Asian nations (not officially named but in particular, South Korea),

2. Beginning introduction to and practice in English speaking and understanding with the long-term goals of

2a. improving average performance of Japanese students in English speaking, especially as compared with other students in East Asian nations (not officially named but in particular, South Korea),

2b. reducing students' fear of and/or embarassment at using English, especially with foreign people,

2c. imparting to the students a feeling that English can be a fun and useful subject, to prevent declining interest in the required English studies in later grades (particularly as emphasis shifts from spoken English in grade 7 to English used on multiple-choice examinations in grades 8 through 12),

2. (cont'd) but with the short term suggestions that the classes avoid writing, spelling or phonics topics, as studies of high school and college students have shown that those topics are very difficult for them, and they feel uncomfortable using those skills, particularly with foreign people,

3. and having fun while getting to know the children and experience life in a Japanese school while engaging in exchange of international culture.

So imagine the feelings of success when, after an entire year, in almost every class in every grade, the children , as well as a few of the more courageous parents, are still asking me how tall I am, where I live, what my real job is, how tall I am, why I can (sort of) speak Japanese, how tall I am, when I will go back to my country and how tall I am.
Yes, I am a big person. In case you missed it, about 194 cm and 95 kg. But I also stopped growing several years ago. I did not suddenly shoot up over the summer. I have been this height for the entire year. And the kids have made it a point to ask me how tall I am at least once every day.
But that's not entirely fair. Yes, I get asked that everyday, but not by the same kids since I'm never at one school for more than five consecutive days. In fact, I only see each group of kids for about 40 minutes, once every six weeks. Which is why I don't know any of their names. Or 98% of the teachers' names. I was never in any place long enough to become a part of that school. Which is why my classes were viewed as break periods from "real school," both by students who wanted an excuse to act up for 40 minutes and for teachers who wanted a 40 minute break to grade papers, sleep in the corner, or sneak out for a smoke.
The point of all this is to say that for almost a year I have had a steady job as a regularly scheduled, irregularly appearing guest host with a mission to teach these kids English without using phonics, spelling or grammar and to help them get used to meeting foreigners by spending time with them for an average of 8 minutes per kid per year. Not surprisingly, I feel a very low sense of accomplishment in my work. Fortunately, I have so much else going on in my life that I still feel like a well-rounded, successful human being.

And I know where to find a tree big enough to suspend a 100kg weight over 2 meters off the ground for at least, oh, 10 to 15 minutes.

Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005

Hunter S. Thompson is dead, and the net is already oozing tributes, op-eds and "what Hunter meant to me" stories. Unfortunately, this is going to have to fall into the latter category. Because I think something is being missed in this outpouring of fan-lamentation, paeans and "why I have LONO vanity plates" stories.

Yes, he glorified drug use, firearms, sex, violence, gambling, drunkenness, debauchery and general high-risk behavior. He inspired legions of hacks, wannabes and groupies. He created one of the most clearly understandable, and therefore easily misused phrases in modern American writing with "Fear and Loathing." His persona has inspired two films, neither of which has inspired many kind reviews. By all accounts he was a singularly difficult person to be around for any length of time, and few would say he was pleasant. Kind, loyal and honest, yes, but not pleasant at all.

But that's not why we needed him. There are too many pleasant, boring, useless people already. As long as we had Hunter Thompson, we knew there was one person who couldn't breathe without challenging the rule that says "obey." From the most important defenses of constitutional rights all the way down to blaring obnoxious music across the hills around his home, he would not stop disobeying. And his reasoning was simple: "I am a free human being, and no one has the right to tell me what to do."

Without him, there's one fewer standard bearer for that cause. There's one fewer voice screaming at the top of his lungs for individuality. There's one fewer person who will fight, tooth and claw, for his own personal autonomy, and by extension for all of us, too.

Underneath what passes for grief in the strange world of gonzo fandom is another, heavier feeling. It's the knowledge that Hunter S. Thompson is no longer out there, howling in the mountains, trying to hold on to the frontiers of our autonomy. It's the knowledge that if we want to keep our own freedoms, we'll each have to carry a little bit more of the weight he held every day.

Fuzen?

New name.
The game remains the same.

Howling

Last month the US Army completed the court-martial and sentencing of Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. For his role in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal he'll face 10 years in the stockade, at the rank of private, with no pay, and a dishonorable discharge when he gets out.

I didn't know what a "Reserve Spc." was, so I looked it up. They used to call it "Technician" back in WWII. And assuming it's in something like electronics, it seems to be roughly equivalent to an associates degree from ITT Tech. Now, as I understand it, the army has to invest a fair amount of time and money in it's "human assets." Even if they're in the reserves, these people don't get trained, outfitted and shipped all over creation for free. Since the military has to make do on a measly $420.7 billion in 2005, one would be curious about how its property, even damaged property is dispensed with.

The point I'm trying to reach is what level of investment the military has in its soldiers and how it can so easily write off one or two or ten of them. Of all the military mottoes I could find on-line, none of them said anything about "leaving the laggards," "ready to downsize our own," or "tribuo in turbatus vicis." And for all the claims about esprit de corps or unit loyalty, there wasn't much about scapegoats, abandoning the losers or leaving that one guy hanging.

This is not to say that I think that Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. should not be punished. If you abuse someone who has been remanded to your care, you will earn very little respect or consideration from me. But that's not my point here. I'm curious why problems with groups are resolved with the excision of individuals. If there was so much wrong with what happened there, why is cutting out two or five or twenty bad apples enough? Why isn't the entire system for military imprisonment dragged out into the daylight and examined? If a few dozen priests were molesting children, why isn't the church vivisecting all of the procedures that surround the problem? If there is a problem within a system, why are only a few individuals separated from that system and strung up as if that would be the end of it?

Again, I don't think that systemic problems are excuses for individuals to act like animals. But it doesn't make any sense to me to take a person acclimated to a system, punish him for something he did within that system, then not look any closer at why and how he did what he did. The military has problems. Big, deep, metastasized problems. So does the Los Angeles police department, the Catholic Church, the UN peacekeeping organization and almost every government on earth.

All these monstrous aggregates of policies, red tape and devoted company men get to keep on ensuring their own continued existence. And I want to know why it's okay to value these rancid, tumor-riddled dinosaurs that keep enabling abuse, crime, cruelty and the on-going degradation of the individual.

All right, let�s get this over with.

I'm not trying to sound as though the second leg of the US trip was a chore. On the contrary, it was more fun than I've had in quite some time. But typing it up is a bit of work. Especially with all the other things that seem to take up far too much attention and energy. But I promised to put it here, and promises oughta be kept, even if it was only made to myself.

Especially if it was only made to myself.

Anyhow, Albuquerque is a good place to be, especially after a place like Tokyo. Most big cities can be criticized for ignoring human scale. Which is a reasonable complaint in a place where a million people have been crammed, usually vertically, into a space that would comfortably hold maybe a fourth of that number. If you want to keep Wall Street, Victoria Road or Ginza humming at full capacity, you have to load a maximum number of people into a building footprint. That means either going up or down, and not too many people can justify paying Wall Street, Victoria Road or Ginza rents for an office sunk down in the bowels of the earth. So people have to work in buildings that dwarf any sense of human interaction.

Take Roppongi Hills, for example. This stunning bit of futuristic architecture looks like Delta City from Robocop. But as cool as it must have looked on the architects' plans or as one of those foam-core models that usually winds up in a plastic box in the back corner of some office lobby, it completely exceeds any human sense of scale once you're within a half mile of it. It fills your field of vision vertically and spreads across four city blocks. And once you're actually in front of it, the place is surrounded by escalators, elevated walkways, parking access ramps and monolithic slabs of concrete stamped with the development's name. There are few obvious entrances, and the people surrounding the buildings seem to be move as if they were almost unaware of them. As if the disparities in size made the people unable to interact with the structures. They are out of human scale. And if you step back a bit, most of Tokyo is similarly out of scale. And spending too much time in places like that makes me feel not like a cosmopolitan city-dweller, but like I've been caught in a very large Habitrail� set.

But that's not the point I was originally intending to make. Tokyo is big, and the buildings are big, and I can't see enough of the horizon to feel comfortable. Albuquerque is nothing like that. Placed near the southern end of the Rocky Mountain Range, Albuquerque sits across a section of the Rio Grande valley, and has a central elevation of around 5,000 feet above sea level. But that doesn't mention that the town occupies two sides of a valley, and that the city limits on the west side of that valley are around 5,800 feet and in the Northeast fall at around 6,500 feet. That's a fairly steep slope, and it makes for some expansive views. You can see for miles. Literally from within the city you can look north, west or south and see peaks over 35 miles away. Your field of vision can cover 900 square miles. The land feels wide, spread out beneath an enormous dome of sky. And that's why I'm usually happy to go back there.

The previous paragraph was paid for in part by the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the Albuquerque Tourist Board. �Albuquerque: we're more than just a wrong turn!"

So I was happy to spend the post-Xmas-to-New-Year's-Hangover-day period there. My friends were fine, my family was feisty and, in general, aspects of all acquaintances could be alliterated alluringly.

Not really, but we had a very good time before preparing for our journey west.

January 2-3: Been through the desert on a horse with no name.
But we couldn't get out of the rain. The worst winter storms in a couple of years drenched the southwest the entire time we were there. Otherwise arid areas were covered by thunderstorms in the south and blankets of snow in the north. The otherwise beautiful drive from New Mexico to LA was continually cloudy and interrupted with frequent, lashing rainstorms. Dramatic, but they did limit the view a bit.

Wait, I thought Detroit was the motor city...
There are a ton of things that suck about Tokyo's mass transit system. Riding it at certain times sucks in profoundly life-altering ways. But it is a mass transit system that moves huge masses of people quickly, cheaply and fairly. LA just can't compare. So you have to drive everywhere all the time. Which meant I did a lot less drinking than I otherwise might have.

But it was strange having to actively raise my language filters again. In Japan I really can't just read things; it takes an active effort to decode what the (few) symbols (that I can understand) mean. So I have to leave my input filters open more, if that makes any sense. I understand far less of my surrounding information field, so I need to take in more data. But for me, in the US there's no effort required to understand the meaning of stuff I could see. That shit just leaked all over the place. So I found myself having to actively ignore signs, advertisements, radio DJs and television promos. That was a little tiresome.

But otherwise, it was good to be back. I needed to see some familiar and deeply missed places. The food restored my faith in good. and the people were, well, the same jackasses that I remembered so fondly.

Then it was back to Japan.
There. Will that cover it?

Feh. Next time: more pissing, moaning and run-on sentences that go all around a topic, using all sorts of unusual, or generally unnecessary, clauses deemed appropriate at the time to explain a point which most people probably would have understood if given half a chance to just get to the point of the original idea that was supposed to have been ever-so-apro