Rachel and I convinced ourselves we would be Bad Americans if we didn't watch the Republican YouTube debate this morning. We tried to convince Brett this was a valid reason to go to work late, but he decided to be a Bad American/Good Japanese Worker instead. It was weird to watch a debate first thing in the morning, but I made pancakes and we watched in our pajamas, which was fun.
(I really try to avoid posting domestic political commentary because I know I don't have anything fresh to bring to the table and lots of people can do it so well, whereas only I can unveil horrors of nama gomi and the complexity of my bathroom. However, sometimes I can't help myself.)
This was the first time in my political consciousness there's been a Republican presidental primary. I had one happy moment at the very begining of the debate where I thought "ooh, a variety of smart Republicans, new." This rapidly changed to "eeeww, xenophobia." I think I tend to be overly emotional in my support for amnesty policies, and I can understand the side, but I thought a lot of the tenor of the debate was anti-all-immigration rather than anti-illegal immigration. And fences? Assimilation? What ever happened to open borders and salad bowls? In Tancredo's own words, they were all trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. It made me upset when Guiliani and Huckabee had to defend strategically sound, humane policies. Who does it serve to deny access to the children of illegal immigrants?
It was interesting what a strong domestic focus the debate had. While it was refreshing it wasn't all Iraq and terrorism all the time (not a lot of "verb noun 9/11"ing), I think it speaks to the fact that we are lacking strong mass foreign policy constituencies.
I thought Huckabee did the best. I disagreed with nearly everything he said ("fairtax?") but it seemed as though he really believed it and wanted to stand by the policies he thought were best rather than trying to win over voters. I was glad Ron Paul was there to be a voice for withdrawing the troops.
Two of my friends and I once had an extended conversation on the elliptical machines that became a running joke about litmus test questions we could ask on first dates that would ensure we didn't date people who's political views were reprehensible to us. (The conversation started because one friend wanted to be sure not to date anyone who would disown a transgendered child. Long story.) My litmus test boiled down to "do you believe in progressive taxation?" but I could never come up with the appropriate first date lead-in. Watching the Republican debate reminded me to add "So, do you believe in torture?" to the list. An asterik, "waterboarding counts" is also clearly warranted.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tribalism, Anarchy, and All Sorts of Commitment
This could also be titled: Interesting things I read today.
-Bush and Maliki have been negotiating plans for a permanent US presence in Iraq. When the tunnel fills with water, keep digging and plug the door? Rachel-my-boss pointed out this could make Iraq an effective non-issue in the 2008 campaign by hamstringing the candidates.
-This article appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1957. It was written by a Smith grad about the dating challenges faced by the modern co-ed. What I find so surprising about it is how cold and calculating the relationships she describes seem. It feels like some contemporary ideas (romantic love, not dating around) are more "traditional" (word choice) than the fifties relationships she describes. I guess there's room for more complicated stories once women are not something to be gotten or won.
-I've been trying to learn about the Afghan-Pakistan border and I came across this article by Robert Kaplan. (A similar, older piece by him was more helpful.)I've had to do battle against "The Coming Anarchy" five or six times by now in political science classes, and these essays have a very similar theme: "globalization is allowing tribes to mess with national borders. Doom!" I sort of like reading Kaplan, because I think he's a very good writer, but I disagree with the way he builds his arguments and his conculsions make me furious. He counts on certain key phrases (backward, primate, tribal, mideavil) to do all the work in indicating the "harm" he describes rather than explaining the problems with tribalism or what "backwards" means. (A Uzbek translator who slurps his soup is crude, but I wonder if the decidedly untribal Japanese would get the same treatment.)
His take-home conculsion from this piece is that democratization efforts should take into account the social structure on the ground rather than try to impose one from the top down. Great. So far, so good. I get a little irritated when he describes Iraq as "among the most backward parts of the Ottoman empire." Because it was backward, it was tribal, apparently. He goes on to explain that the Durand line is a very tribal area and while there are nice things about tribes, they are very mideavil and anti-democratic and therefore we should be prepared to bribe them and accept second best solutions to build peace.
I don't want to sugarcoat the situation-- and I don't know enough to put a very accurate glaze on it anyway-- but my understanding is that Pashtun political customs like the Loya Jirga are based on representative decision-making through consensus. (Because of the emphasis on agreement, meetings can last for days, and there's no nuclear option for you, Senator Lott.) I think if we go around looking for elections as the hallmark of democracy in largely illiterate societies, we're going to be disappointed (many of the electorate in the 2005 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan didn't know who they were voting for). We have to stop behaving as though Western style democracy, anarchy and authoritarianism are the only options. His conculsion reads like: "because they are tribal over there, we can't expect them to get our democracy and therefore, let's settle for something less." I think a more flexible idea of what a democratic institution looks like would result in a more successful, less imperalist approach.
-Bush and Maliki have been negotiating plans for a permanent US presence in Iraq. When the tunnel fills with water, keep digging and plug the door? Rachel-my-boss pointed out this could make Iraq an effective non-issue in the 2008 campaign by hamstringing the candidates.
-This article appeared in Atlantic Monthly in 1957. It was written by a Smith grad about the dating challenges faced by the modern co-ed. What I find so surprising about it is how cold and calculating the relationships she describes seem. It feels like some contemporary ideas (romantic love, not dating around) are more "traditional" (word choice) than the fifties relationships she describes. I guess there's room for more complicated stories once women are not something to be gotten or won.
-I've been trying to learn about the Afghan-Pakistan border and I came across this article by Robert Kaplan. (A similar, older piece by him was more helpful.)I've had to do battle against "The Coming Anarchy" five or six times by now in political science classes, and these essays have a very similar theme: "globalization is allowing tribes to mess with national borders. Doom!" I sort of like reading Kaplan, because I think he's a very good writer, but I disagree with the way he builds his arguments and his conculsions make me furious. He counts on certain key phrases (backward, primate, tribal, mideavil) to do all the work in indicating the "harm" he describes rather than explaining the problems with tribalism or what "backwards" means. (A Uzbek translator who slurps his soup is crude, but I wonder if the decidedly untribal Japanese would get the same treatment.)
His take-home conculsion from this piece is that democratization efforts should take into account the social structure on the ground rather than try to impose one from the top down. Great. So far, so good. I get a little irritated when he describes Iraq as "among the most backward parts of the Ottoman empire." Because it was backward, it was tribal, apparently. He goes on to explain that the Durand line is a very tribal area and while there are nice things about tribes, they are very mideavil and anti-democratic and therefore we should be prepared to bribe them and accept second best solutions to build peace.
I don't want to sugarcoat the situation-- and I don't know enough to put a very accurate glaze on it anyway-- but my understanding is that Pashtun political customs like the Loya Jirga are based on representative decision-making through consensus. (Because of the emphasis on agreement, meetings can last for days, and there's no nuclear option for you, Senator Lott.) I think if we go around looking for elections as the hallmark of democracy in largely illiterate societies, we're going to be disappointed (many of the electorate in the 2005 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan didn't know who they were voting for). We have to stop behaving as though Western style democracy, anarchy and authoritarianism are the only options. His conculsion reads like: "because they are tribal over there, we can't expect them to get our democracy and therefore, let's settle for something less." I think a more flexible idea of what a democratic institution looks like would result in a more successful, less imperalist approach.
There's Always a Future in Plastics
Around this time last year, my friends and I spent a lo of time talking about what it meant to "sell out." Was selling out entering the private sector or was it about settling for a job you weren't passionate about? At the time, we were still in the bright eyed stage of sending out resumes and we didn't realize just how long we would have to wait to hear so little. I liked this column by my classmates, but my friends and I typically took a less forgiving stance. To me, "selling out" was also taking a job that was "safe" rather than one that pushed me in some way.
That conversation seems very far away now, and it's hard for me to recapture why it felt so important to discuss at the time. What remains relevant is a conversation I had a few months prior to that conversation while in Tanzania about the choice between direct service, policy making and advocacy.
My friend Rachel always speaks about "activist division of labor." In its original incarnation, this meant that it was ok I'm not interested in spending my life working on saving the enviroment and it's fine she doesn't want to spend hers shaping policy towards the developing world. I think the division of labor argument can also apply to all the different roles people can play in developing and enacting the same policy. Academics and journalists get to shape and extend the conversation about the problems the world faces and the scope of the solutions. Legislators, lobbyists and advocacy groups develop a policy, and a third group of people carry out the policy.
I'm really unclear what group I'd like to be in. I think I've felt the most fulfilled when directly helping someone, and there's a slightly immature part of me that feels like I'll always be selling out a little bit unless I wind up handing out food in an IDP camp in the northern DRC. On the other hand, the "problematic" bells started sounding in my head as soon as I typed that. I think part of what is appealing about that is the level of deprivation invovled which makes it feel like a more heroic act even though my comfort level doesn't impact my efficacy. Then I remember everything I've read about the aid machine being self-perpetuated, etc. Farewell, Constant Gardener style fantasy. Stop raining on my daydream, Swarthmore College.
I also think I tend to get very frustrated with imperfect systems (this works just great in college but is a potentially unattractive and arrogant trait in a 22 year old, so I bit my tongue).They are neither as bad nor as avoidable as nama gomi. After volunteering for a campaign, my friend Jon and I would spend thirty minutes privately debriefing on their poor volunteer stewardship or inefficient allocation of flashlights. He'll make a good marine officer. Our friends got sick of our endless treatise on loopholes in the RA selection process. It was painful.
I credit some of this to my mother. I think my mother ran my third birthday party better than most government agencies are run. Therefore, I'm always left asking whether a thing would go better if my mother was running it. The answer is almost always yes.
Personal neuroses aside, I think people who spend their lives in direct service have to be very good emotional boundary setters. They have to be able to accept that they only have resources for a limited number of people, and can only do a limited amount for those people. I think I'd really struggle as, say, an English teacher in Tanzania. You can't teach everyone, and you can't give everyone shoes, and you can't feed everyone, and yet every day the barefoot and hungry would come into your classroom. Clearly, there are limits on resources no matter what, but I don't think I have the type of emotional strength required to set those limits every day without going insane and reinventing the facts.
My current job is a great opportunity and I'm glad to be able to learn so much! I think learning is the most valuable thing right now. In the long run, though, I want a job more interactive and direct than the one I have now. I think in general, I'm most effective and happiest one-one-one or with small groups.
I've been thinking about law school for a while. I enjoyed the tort and contract law parts of my law and econ class, which I'd been told was the "bad part" of law school. I happily ate, slept and breathed con law for the second semester of my senior year, so I think I'd enjoy law school. I also have this hope that law could be a good fit for me because a good lawyer can directly help their clients but they can also create precedents that shape legal policy in other cases. At best, it could be a way to help individuals while simaltaneously reshaping the framework that societies operate within, bridging the direct/indirect gap.
On the other hand, I don't know much about what international case law looks like, and professors give me the "it doesn't really exist" vibe. Maybe I'm just being naive, but I do believe we're going to see the development of a stronger international legal infastructure in the next decades and I'd like to do some of the building.
Sometimes I get the feeling all this ambition and life angst is sort of silly, a post college version of my seventeen year old self carefully examing my body in a mirror. I think maturity comes less from knowing who you are and what you want, and more about not feeling like those are the important questions. On the other hand, I do have to make big decisions about my future and graduate school in the next year, so it's impossible to entirely avoid.
That conversation seems very far away now, and it's hard for me to recapture why it felt so important to discuss at the time. What remains relevant is a conversation I had a few months prior to that conversation while in Tanzania about the choice between direct service, policy making and advocacy.
My friend Rachel always speaks about "activist division of labor." In its original incarnation, this meant that it was ok I'm not interested in spending my life working on saving the enviroment and it's fine she doesn't want to spend hers shaping policy towards the developing world. I think the division of labor argument can also apply to all the different roles people can play in developing and enacting the same policy. Academics and journalists get to shape and extend the conversation about the problems the world faces and the scope of the solutions. Legislators, lobbyists and advocacy groups develop a policy, and a third group of people carry out the policy.
I'm really unclear what group I'd like to be in. I think I've felt the most fulfilled when directly helping someone, and there's a slightly immature part of me that feels like I'll always be selling out a little bit unless I wind up handing out food in an IDP camp in the northern DRC. On the other hand, the "problematic" bells started sounding in my head as soon as I typed that. I think part of what is appealing about that is the level of deprivation invovled which makes it feel like a more heroic act even though my comfort level doesn't impact my efficacy. Then I remember everything I've read about the aid machine being self-perpetuated, etc. Farewell, Constant Gardener style fantasy. Stop raining on my daydream, Swarthmore College.
I also think I tend to get very frustrated with imperfect systems (this works just great in college but is a potentially unattractive and arrogant trait in a 22 year old, so I bit my tongue).They are neither as bad nor as avoidable as nama gomi. After volunteering for a campaign, my friend Jon and I would spend thirty minutes privately debriefing on their poor volunteer stewardship or inefficient allocation of flashlights. He'll make a good marine officer. Our friends got sick of our endless treatise on loopholes in the RA selection process. It was painful.
I credit some of this to my mother. I think my mother ran my third birthday party better than most government agencies are run. Therefore, I'm always left asking whether a thing would go better if my mother was running it. The answer is almost always yes.
Personal neuroses aside, I think people who spend their lives in direct service have to be very good emotional boundary setters. They have to be able to accept that they only have resources for a limited number of people, and can only do a limited amount for those people. I think I'd really struggle as, say, an English teacher in Tanzania. You can't teach everyone, and you can't give everyone shoes, and you can't feed everyone, and yet every day the barefoot and hungry would come into your classroom. Clearly, there are limits on resources no matter what, but I don't think I have the type of emotional strength required to set those limits every day without going insane and reinventing the facts.
My current job is a great opportunity and I'm glad to be able to learn so much! I think learning is the most valuable thing right now. In the long run, though, I want a job more interactive and direct than the one I have now. I think in general, I'm most effective and happiest one-one-one or with small groups.
I've been thinking about law school for a while. I enjoyed the tort and contract law parts of my law and econ class, which I'd been told was the "bad part" of law school. I happily ate, slept and breathed con law for the second semester of my senior year, so I think I'd enjoy law school. I also have this hope that law could be a good fit for me because a good lawyer can directly help their clients but they can also create precedents that shape legal policy in other cases. At best, it could be a way to help individuals while simaltaneously reshaping the framework that societies operate within, bridging the direct/indirect gap.
On the other hand, I don't know much about what international case law looks like, and professors give me the "it doesn't really exist" vibe. Maybe I'm just being naive, but I do believe we're going to see the development of a stronger international legal infastructure in the next decades and I'd like to do some of the building.
Sometimes I get the feeling all this ambition and life angst is sort of silly, a post college version of my seventeen year old self carefully examing my body in a mirror. I think maturity comes less from knowing who you are and what you want, and more about not feeling like those are the important questions. On the other hand, I do have to make big decisions about my future and graduate school in the next year, so it's impossible to entirely avoid.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Thanksgiving in Japan
This weekend was essentially absorbed into procurring, preparing, cooking and cleaning for our Thanksgiving feast. The food shopping started in earnest Friday, when Rachel and I went shopping for American equipment essentially like rolling pins (beer bottles don’t quite do the job), a masher (mashing thirty potatoes with a dining fork seemed like a recipe for disaster) and a peeler. Miraculously, after spending a few hours wandering around Tokyo Hands (which has nothing on Target) we found everything. It might have gone faster, but I got really distracted by the “robo mop,” kind of a donut-shaped swiffer pad with a battery-operated ball in the middle that pushed the “mop” around. It was way too much fun to play with.
The biggest challenge was finding a big pot for making the soup and potatoes in. With the exception of drinks and ramen, almost everything in Japan is very small. I’m not a particularly big eater, but I wind up going through half a Japanese-family-sized yogurt container for breakfast. Serving size? I laugh at serving size. What we thought was “a very big pot” in the store wound up being pretty small once we removed it from its home environment. It could no longer benefit from being scaled against the other tiny equipment.
Our next challenge came in the form of telling the chicken butcher that we needed approximately two liters of chicken fat for the gravy and the stuffing (I don’t even want to think about this). Japanese people eat a lot less fat and grease than Americans in general, and he looked at us in horror as though we had asked him “So, along with the turkey, could we have two pounds of its feathers please?” His response was apparently something along the lines of “I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible, but I don’t understand why you would want it.” He went home that night and researching gravy recipes and came back with an alternate solution. He offered us both what looked basically like liposunctioned chicken fat (eewwwww) and a very concentrated chicken stock (success!). Next, we were the talk of the town at the local grocery store when we bought five bags of potatoes and twenty-two apples. My backpack was essential.
My primary responsibilities were apple butternut squash soup, which I’ve made for large groups several times before, mashed potatoes, which are pretty idiot-proof, and apple pie. I was quite nervous about the pie because I haven’t baked much and sort of see recipes as suggestions. I don’t think I’m a terrible cook, I think my instincts are ok, but I’ve definitely had some unpleasant ventures into creativity/complete abandonment of common sense. The worst of these happened in 7th grade when I tried to turn lemonade pink through the use of red vinegar. I also once tried to bake three hundred cookies for my dorm holiday party after midnight (such is the stuff of the true all-nighter). I then realized I didn’t have a bowl large enough for all the ingredients—this was about halfway into the mixing process and all the way into the “I am covered in flour and don’t understand what I’m doing!” process. I had to be rescued by a friend who studied chemistry. I added the last bit so I can pretend I was making very complicated and high level mistakes.
I fully intended to stick to the recipe when making the pies, but then I got bored and thought they’d taste better with more egg and brown sugar. I understand baking isn’t the time for improv. Oops. Anyway, the pies were delicious and my lattice looked good, so I wasn’t an embarrassment to myself.
We also had the roast chickens we ordered, potato bread, stuffing, gravy, green beans, and cranberries. It was a very through Thanksgiving. Rachel can’t cook (once, she tried to make brownies and when it said, “flour the pan” she used the two cups of flour the recipe called for to coat the pan, then threw the rest away) so she made a beautiful “craft corner” of activities for the Motoguchi kids, so I have an array of hand turkeys with katakana script hanging from my walls now.
We wanted to tell them the story of Thanksgiving. I had an interesting conversation with my friend Sarah yesterday about how one can tell the Thanksgiving story. Like so many holidays, it’s hard to boil it down a tale that is both intellectually honest and morally satisfying. It seems hollow to describe the first Thanksgiving to people who have little knowledge of American history without mentioning the many things that happened to the Indians after they shared their food. On the other hand, describing the Trail of Tears and the Battle of Wounded Knee makes it very difficult to conclude the story with a celebration. Unlike Columbus Day, which I think is just a bad holiday, there’s something valuable about reflecting upon what we are thankful for with people we care about. I once went to a humanist seder that told the story of Passover as though it was an allegory for the liberation of all people from all oppression. I think a similar universalizing of Thanksgiving could be appropriate, and be a way to offer the Motoguchis thanks for their hospitality.
Rachel had to tell the Thanksgiving story in Japanese, which was a challenge because the idea of being “grateful” without being grateful TO someone was difficult to convey, and she wanted to avoid religious overtones. I think we wound up with a harvest story, which worked out well.
The Motoguchis brought over speakers for us to use. Each speaker was cubed shaped and about 2 inches square. I admired them because I thought they’d be an excellent fit for my nomadic life, and asked Tauru where they bought them. He promptly told me they were a present for me and I couldn’t refuse. They’re excellent speakers and so light that I’ll be able to take them anywhere, but I have to be more careful what I compliment and I definitely need to get them a nice goodbye present. Rachel and Brett advise I wait till I’m on my way to the airport to avoid a return gift. They are such a sweet family and their kids are adorable. Leon, who is ten, fell asleep on the couch immediately after eating, while Sue-chan wanted to be pushed around in the captain's chair.
Our other guests were Peter, who is from England, and James, from New Zealand. They’ve both been over here in Japan for about four or five years, teaching English. They worked for a program called NOVA, which employed over eight thousand English speakers teaching English throughout Japan. The program recently went bankrupt because it overextended itself, and my gmail-generated ad kept saying: “Job opportunities for NOVA teachers in China!” I guess its scanner picked up that I was a young English speaker living in Japan and went for it. Peter intends to stay on in the hopes that NOVA is able to right itself, and James has a job teaching business English for the next six months, then he plans to go back home.
All in all, Thanksgiving-in-Japan was a success and as a result, my apartment has Christmas lights (with eight different settings) and tons of leftovers. I’m excited about these last few weeks. This Thursday, Rachel and I are watching the Republican youtube debate with pancakes (it’s 9 am our time), Saturday is a neighborhood Buddhist festival, and Sunday I’m going to Kamakura.
The biggest challenge was finding a big pot for making the soup and potatoes in. With the exception of drinks and ramen, almost everything in Japan is very small. I’m not a particularly big eater, but I wind up going through half a Japanese-family-sized yogurt container for breakfast. Serving size? I laugh at serving size. What we thought was “a very big pot” in the store wound up being pretty small once we removed it from its home environment. It could no longer benefit from being scaled against the other tiny equipment.
Our next challenge came in the form of telling the chicken butcher that we needed approximately two liters of chicken fat for the gravy and the stuffing (I don’t even want to think about this). Japanese people eat a lot less fat and grease than Americans in general, and he looked at us in horror as though we had asked him “So, along with the turkey, could we have two pounds of its feathers please?” His response was apparently something along the lines of “I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible, but I don’t understand why you would want it.” He went home that night and researching gravy recipes and came back with an alternate solution. He offered us both what looked basically like liposunctioned chicken fat (eewwwww) and a very concentrated chicken stock (success!). Next, we were the talk of the town at the local grocery store when we bought five bags of potatoes and twenty-two apples. My backpack was essential.
My primary responsibilities were apple butternut squash soup, which I’ve made for large groups several times before, mashed potatoes, which are pretty idiot-proof, and apple pie. I was quite nervous about the pie because I haven’t baked much and sort of see recipes as suggestions. I don’t think I’m a terrible cook, I think my instincts are ok, but I’ve definitely had some unpleasant ventures into creativity/complete abandonment of common sense. The worst of these happened in 7th grade when I tried to turn lemonade pink through the use of red vinegar. I also once tried to bake three hundred cookies for my dorm holiday party after midnight (such is the stuff of the true all-nighter). I then realized I didn’t have a bowl large enough for all the ingredients—this was about halfway into the mixing process and all the way into the “I am covered in flour and don’t understand what I’m doing!” process. I had to be rescued by a friend who studied chemistry. I added the last bit so I can pretend I was making very complicated and high level mistakes.
I fully intended to stick to the recipe when making the pies, but then I got bored and thought they’d taste better with more egg and brown sugar. I understand baking isn’t the time for improv. Oops. Anyway, the pies were delicious and my lattice looked good, so I wasn’t an embarrassment to myself.
We also had the roast chickens we ordered, potato bread, stuffing, gravy, green beans, and cranberries. It was a very through Thanksgiving. Rachel can’t cook (once, she tried to make brownies and when it said, “flour the pan” she used the two cups of flour the recipe called for to coat the pan, then threw the rest away) so she made a beautiful “craft corner” of activities for the Motoguchi kids, so I have an array of hand turkeys with katakana script hanging from my walls now.
We wanted to tell them the story of Thanksgiving. I had an interesting conversation with my friend Sarah yesterday about how one can tell the Thanksgiving story. Like so many holidays, it’s hard to boil it down a tale that is both intellectually honest and morally satisfying. It seems hollow to describe the first Thanksgiving to people who have little knowledge of American history without mentioning the many things that happened to the Indians after they shared their food. On the other hand, describing the Trail of Tears and the Battle of Wounded Knee makes it very difficult to conclude the story with a celebration. Unlike Columbus Day, which I think is just a bad holiday, there’s something valuable about reflecting upon what we are thankful for with people we care about. I once went to a humanist seder that told the story of Passover as though it was an allegory for the liberation of all people from all oppression. I think a similar universalizing of Thanksgiving could be appropriate, and be a way to offer the Motoguchis thanks for their hospitality.
Rachel had to tell the Thanksgiving story in Japanese, which was a challenge because the idea of being “grateful” without being grateful TO someone was difficult to convey, and she wanted to avoid religious overtones. I think we wound up with a harvest story, which worked out well.
The Motoguchis brought over speakers for us to use. Each speaker was cubed shaped and about 2 inches square. I admired them because I thought they’d be an excellent fit for my nomadic life, and asked Tauru where they bought them. He promptly told me they were a present for me and I couldn’t refuse. They’re excellent speakers and so light that I’ll be able to take them anywhere, but I have to be more careful what I compliment and I definitely need to get them a nice goodbye present. Rachel and Brett advise I wait till I’m on my way to the airport to avoid a return gift. They are such a sweet family and their kids are adorable. Leon, who is ten, fell asleep on the couch immediately after eating, while Sue-chan wanted to be pushed around in the captain's chair.
Our other guests were Peter, who is from England, and James, from New Zealand. They’ve both been over here in Japan for about four or five years, teaching English. They worked for a program called NOVA, which employed over eight thousand English speakers teaching English throughout Japan. The program recently went bankrupt because it overextended itself, and my gmail-generated ad kept saying: “Job opportunities for NOVA teachers in China!” I guess its scanner picked up that I was a young English speaker living in Japan and went for it. Peter intends to stay on in the hopes that NOVA is able to right itself, and James has a job teaching business English for the next six months, then he plans to go back home.
All in all, Thanksgiving-in-Japan was a success and as a result, my apartment has Christmas lights (with eight different settings) and tons of leftovers. I’m excited about these last few weeks. This Thursday, Rachel and I are watching the Republican youtube debate with pancakes (it’s 9 am our time), Saturday is a neighborhood Buddhist festival, and Sunday I’m going to Kamakura.
Nama Gomi
Lest you think less of me, let me start this off by emphasizing that in general, I’m not a squeamish person. I don’t have an issue with spiders or snakes or blood. I’ve been called on to perform emergency evacuations of cockroaches and bats. In college, when the light was out and my roommates complained they could hear mice, I’d usually sleepily roll over and ask what they wanted me to do about it.
There is one thing I’m terribly squeamish about, however. In Japanese, there’s a word for it: nama gomi. Nama gomi (lit: fresh or live trash) is the food that winds up at the bottom of your sink drain. The food no one wants to eat. Think about it: all the potato peels and chicken skin and green bean ends and yogurt curds becoming slimy together and intermixing with soapy water. Now, this would be all very well and good if the nama gomi was mixing in a trash bag or a compost heap. But no. The problem with nama gomi is that you have to reach in and pull the slimy out of the sink drain with your bare hand and then dump it into a bag.
It’s somehow somewhat acceptable for a woman to ask a man to kill a spider, or for someone to pale at the sight of blood. However, asking someone to take care of the nama gomi comes across as just plain spoiled. I also know it’s a silly fear—I’ve met people who’d probably be thankful for my nama gomi, who’d rinse it off and recook it and make it into something approaching delicious. This isn’t anywhere near as gross as the fact that we waste enough food for it to be someone else’s meal.
I still can’t get over my gag reflex though, so prevention is the best defense. I try very hard not to let nama gomi wind up in my sink and usually scrape plates and peel potatoes into my trash. The only good nama gomi is no nama gomi. However, when preparing a feast with several other cooks, there’s no legitimate way of saying “I’m sorry, I’m afraid of potato peels in the sink. Can you peel into this full-to-bursting and inconveniently located trash bag instead?”
We decided to put yesterday’s cleanup off till today, and I went to bed with a sinking feeling, envisioning the nama gomi that awaited my hand in the sink drain. Whole pieces of chicken carcass, plastered with apple seeds! Lurking orange pulp mixed in with squash peel! I was nominally tempted to open one of the bottles of wine our guests had brought over before approaching the beast, an occasional strategy for cleaning up other people’s vomit, but then Brett pulled out handfuls of nama gomi when he was filling up the sink and bagged it before I had to touch it. Now it’s safely outside of my apartment! One day, I'll grow up, but till then, back to prevention. I'm happy there's a word for it.
There is one thing I’m terribly squeamish about, however. In Japanese, there’s a word for it: nama gomi. Nama gomi (lit: fresh or live trash) is the food that winds up at the bottom of your sink drain. The food no one wants to eat. Think about it: all the potato peels and chicken skin and green bean ends and yogurt curds becoming slimy together and intermixing with soapy water. Now, this would be all very well and good if the nama gomi was mixing in a trash bag or a compost heap. But no. The problem with nama gomi is that you have to reach in and pull the slimy out of the sink drain with your bare hand and then dump it into a bag.
It’s somehow somewhat acceptable for a woman to ask a man to kill a spider, or for someone to pale at the sight of blood. However, asking someone to take care of the nama gomi comes across as just plain spoiled. I also know it’s a silly fear—I’ve met people who’d probably be thankful for my nama gomi, who’d rinse it off and recook it and make it into something approaching delicious. This isn’t anywhere near as gross as the fact that we waste enough food for it to be someone else’s meal.
I still can’t get over my gag reflex though, so prevention is the best defense. I try very hard not to let nama gomi wind up in my sink and usually scrape plates and peel potatoes into my trash. The only good nama gomi is no nama gomi. However, when preparing a feast with several other cooks, there’s no legitimate way of saying “I’m sorry, I’m afraid of potato peels in the sink. Can you peel into this full-to-bursting and inconveniently located trash bag instead?”
We decided to put yesterday’s cleanup off till today, and I went to bed with a sinking feeling, envisioning the nama gomi that awaited my hand in the sink drain. Whole pieces of chicken carcass, plastered with apple seeds! Lurking orange pulp mixed in with squash peel! I was nominally tempted to open one of the bottles of wine our guests had brought over before approaching the beast, an occasional strategy for cleaning up other people’s vomit, but then Brett pulled out handfuls of nama gomi when he was filling up the sink and bagged it before I had to touch it. Now it’s safely outside of my apartment! One day, I'll grow up, but till then, back to prevention. I'm happy there's a word for it.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
What Our Friends Say About Their Neighbors
I was in the UAE when Iranian President Ahmadinejah spoke at Columbia, so I watched coverage of the event on Al Jazeera, and got to talk about Iran a lot with others in the UAE. The emirati I talked to-- mainly fairly religious young people-- were positive about Ahmadinejah. They respected his populist vibe (although I understand he is criticized by many in Iran for failing to fulfill domestic campaign promises and instead focusing on the United States) and pointed out how his relatively austere, restrained lifestyle was in keeping with his politics.
A criticism of their own government may have been implicit in their remarks, or maybe I just heard what I wanted. In either case, there is a major difference in the governing structure of a state that has flawed elections in which case people elect a leader who tells them they deserve more as citizens and a state in which the non-elected royalty reward their population with non-obligatory largesse as they see fit.
I have to take political opinions in the UAE with a grain of salt because there is so much censorship and propaganda. In general, I'm finding it hard to get information I trust about Iran. I'm confident Ahmadinejah has made choices I would consider reprehensible. However, he has support for a reason, and I think it's important for the US to move beyond demonizing him to examine whether he is popular because of his criticism of America, or because of his efforts to combat inequality.
In a way, the way I feel about China is similar to the way I feel about Iran. Understanding both better is crucial to shaping our policy, but I can't get a handle on how much we should worry-- and in what ways. In Japan, there seems to be a lot of below-the-surface fear about China, but I haven't gotten to really discuss it with Japanese people yet.
I'd read about China's military and economic rise, and the arguments critiquing its strength, and at first to me it read a little like a play for attention by old school political scientists who hadn't been able to escape the Cold War mindset. It reminded me of John Mearshiemer's argument that Germany would rise again and rue the day! There were also concerns that Japan was going to eat us alive during the tail end of its financial boom.
Then I went to Dar es Salaam. Almost every businessman I saw in Tanzania was Chinese. Every single major construction project was built by a Chinese company. Brand new roads stretched across Northern Tanzania, courtesy of China. Yes, the point of the roads was often to get ore from the Mwanza area to seaside ports faster, but people also used them to get their goods to market, go to secondary school and see distant relatives.
One of my traveling buddies was half Chinese and half Caucasian, and she fielded a lot of questions about whether she spoke Chinese and whether she had ever been to China. Rumor had it that wealthy Tanzanians wanted Chinese nannies for their children so that they would grow up speaking Chinese. Even in more rural parts of the country, people were fascinated by China. They saw it as the "developing country that could."
For most of the twentieth century, even when people disliked the policy of the American government, I think they liked or admired things about "Americanness." We were the land of plenty, of possibility, of dreams. We were internally conscious of this. There's a body of literature that claims the Supreme Court was heavily influenced by the way segregation lend itself to effective anti-American Soviet propaganda. I'm nervous to make this claim-- I sort of feel like anyone born after 1980 has to struggle to get a handle on the Cold War-- but I do believe we won the Cold War because of the strength of our system of government, not the strength of our military or economy. (That was a set up for an argument about hard power versus soft power, but I'm skeptical of the dichotomy and will save it for another ramble.)
This is the decade when the world is falling quite out of love with America. We can engage other countries more in diplomacy, overhaul economic policy in an effort to save the dollar or pull out of Iraq, but I think a shift in attitudes towards Americanness (rather than America or the American government) is alarming because you can't prescribe a solid fix for a shift in attitudes.
A large part of this shift is undoubtedly due to the Iraq War and our Middle East policies. There's a story told that leaders like Ahmadinejah dislike America because of its secularism, but I think this is usually a way to escape critically examining our policy decisions. Some of it may be due to the rise of alternate powers like the EU and China (gotta love the fairy tale potential of the developing country that could). I think it's plausible, though, that part of it is due to increasing inequality within the US. We look more and more like the land of inequality and less like the land of plenty.
I once read that while Communist states during the Cold War could profess to offer equality of outcome, the United States could promise more equality of opportunity. I imagine any story about racial profiling gets substantial global media playing time (it definitely did on Al Jazeera) and this pokes holes in the idea of the American dream. So does our ever increasing Gini index and the fact that the children of rich people tend to stay rich and vice versa.
Of course, there are many reasons to be concerned about inequality in America other than the fact that it may reduce our global capital, and there are many reasons we have less global capital besides domestic inequality. I just think the potential links is interesting.
A criticism of their own government may have been implicit in their remarks, or maybe I just heard what I wanted. In either case, there is a major difference in the governing structure of a state that has flawed elections in which case people elect a leader who tells them they deserve more as citizens and a state in which the non-elected royalty reward their population with non-obligatory largesse as they see fit.
I have to take political opinions in the UAE with a grain of salt because there is so much censorship and propaganda. In general, I'm finding it hard to get information I trust about Iran. I'm confident Ahmadinejah has made choices I would consider reprehensible. However, he has support for a reason, and I think it's important for the US to move beyond demonizing him to examine whether he is popular because of his criticism of America, or because of his efforts to combat inequality.
In a way, the way I feel about China is similar to the way I feel about Iran. Understanding both better is crucial to shaping our policy, but I can't get a handle on how much we should worry-- and in what ways. In Japan, there seems to be a lot of below-the-surface fear about China, but I haven't gotten to really discuss it with Japanese people yet.
I'd read about China's military and economic rise, and the arguments critiquing its strength, and at first to me it read a little like a play for attention by old school political scientists who hadn't been able to escape the Cold War mindset. It reminded me of John Mearshiemer's argument that Germany would rise again and rue the day! There were also concerns that Japan was going to eat us alive during the tail end of its financial boom.
Then I went to Dar es Salaam. Almost every businessman I saw in Tanzania was Chinese. Every single major construction project was built by a Chinese company. Brand new roads stretched across Northern Tanzania, courtesy of China. Yes, the point of the roads was often to get ore from the Mwanza area to seaside ports faster, but people also used them to get their goods to market, go to secondary school and see distant relatives.
One of my traveling buddies was half Chinese and half Caucasian, and she fielded a lot of questions about whether she spoke Chinese and whether she had ever been to China. Rumor had it that wealthy Tanzanians wanted Chinese nannies for their children so that they would grow up speaking Chinese. Even in more rural parts of the country, people were fascinated by China. They saw it as the "developing country that could."
For most of the twentieth century, even when people disliked the policy of the American government, I think they liked or admired things about "Americanness." We were the land of plenty, of possibility, of dreams. We were internally conscious of this. There's a body of literature that claims the Supreme Court was heavily influenced by the way segregation lend itself to effective anti-American Soviet propaganda. I'm nervous to make this claim-- I sort of feel like anyone born after 1980 has to struggle to get a handle on the Cold War-- but I do believe we won the Cold War because of the strength of our system of government, not the strength of our military or economy. (That was a set up for an argument about hard power versus soft power, but I'm skeptical of the dichotomy and will save it for another ramble.)
This is the decade when the world is falling quite out of love with America. We can engage other countries more in diplomacy, overhaul economic policy in an effort to save the dollar or pull out of Iraq, but I think a shift in attitudes towards Americanness (rather than America or the American government) is alarming because you can't prescribe a solid fix for a shift in attitudes.
A large part of this shift is undoubtedly due to the Iraq War and our Middle East policies. There's a story told that leaders like Ahmadinejah dislike America because of its secularism, but I think this is usually a way to escape critically examining our policy decisions. Some of it may be due to the rise of alternate powers like the EU and China (gotta love the fairy tale potential of the developing country that could). I think it's plausible, though, that part of it is due to increasing inequality within the US. We look more and more like the land of inequality and less like the land of plenty.
I once read that while Communist states during the Cold War could profess to offer equality of outcome, the United States could promise more equality of opportunity. I imagine any story about racial profiling gets substantial global media playing time (it definitely did on Al Jazeera) and this pokes holes in the idea of the American dream. So does our ever increasing Gini index and the fact that the children of rich people tend to stay rich and vice versa.
Of course, there are many reasons to be concerned about inequality in America other than the fact that it may reduce our global capital, and there are many reasons we have less global capital besides domestic inequality. I just think the potential links is interesting.
Thankful
We aren't really celebrating Thanksgiving here until Saturday, but I figured since it was Thanksgiving back in the states, I'd take a moment to write about the things I am thankful for. (If the 'corny post' warning wasn't clear from all that, you haven't had your first cup of coffee or tea or shower or whatever does it for you.)
I'm thankful for the first amendment. I'm thankful for four years at Swarthmore, RAing two fantastic halls, great professors and unending Sharples meals. I'm thankful for liking myself enough to laugh at myself. I'm grateful for getting to see so much of the world, and the new friends who have tried to make me feel at home on several continents. I'm grateful for dogs, fall days, long books, good infastructure, cuddling, curry, and green apples.
A boy in my Truman class, Andrew Hammond, recently won a Rhodes Scholarship and he closed his response to the slew of congratulatory emails with "Stay in touch when you can and when you can't, know that there are others slogging through public
service all over the world, and there are many more who do not have the luxury to choose service." I am grateful to have had enough security and joy in my life to want to spend it making the world better. That's obviously a nearly impossible choice to make if you are struggling to survive, but I think it's also a much more difficult choice if one had a financially insecure childhood in the US, etc. Public service is a luxury choice or a very brave one.
I'm also grateful that all the sacrifices I've had to make are small ones. It's sometimes difficult to be away from my family and friends but in the long run, I haven't had to give anything up to do what I want to do. Part of me thinks you aren't really an adult until you learn that you can't have everything, but I'm very thankful for a life without painful choices so far.
I'm thankful for the opportunities I have had. Over the last two years, several different people or organizations have been willing to invest money so that I could have various opportunities-- working on a project with refugee children in Vermont, going to Tanzania, traveling to remote Northwestern Tanzania, getting the Truman, this job. I'm very grateful for this and sometimes in order to justify it, I take a determinist approach: I must be given this opportunities for a reason, because I am intended to do something. Ultimately, though, I don't believe that the events in our life ever deliberately guide us to any final destiny. Therefore, it's my job to make the most of everything that happens to me and to justify it through what I take away from it.
Most of all, I'm thankful for the incredible wealth of people in my life. I'm grateful I have friends who inspire me, who can understand the things I'm not ready to say, and who believe in me even as they laugh at me. I'm grateful for parents who I know will always love me and who always ask the right questions, a sister who teaches me to be more honest with myself on a daily basis, and an extended family that shows me just how many ways there are to lead a meaningful life.
The theme of our graduation speech was about leaping into the proverbial net while also being the net. This sounds like a cliche, but when one is just about to venture out into the wide, wide world and one hasn't slept in a week, it can really get you. I've thought about it a lot since, especially since taking this job. I'm thankful to be loved enough and feel safe enough to believe in endless possibility and not be afraid of risk.
I'm thankful for the first amendment. I'm thankful for four years at Swarthmore, RAing two fantastic halls, great professors and unending Sharples meals. I'm thankful for liking myself enough to laugh at myself. I'm grateful for getting to see so much of the world, and the new friends who have tried to make me feel at home on several continents. I'm grateful for dogs, fall days, long books, good infastructure, cuddling, curry, and green apples.
A boy in my Truman class, Andrew Hammond, recently won a Rhodes Scholarship and he closed his response to the slew of congratulatory emails with "Stay in touch when you can and when you can't, know that there are others slogging through public
service all over the world, and there are many more who do not have the luxury to choose service." I am grateful to have had enough security and joy in my life to want to spend it making the world better. That's obviously a nearly impossible choice to make if you are struggling to survive, but I think it's also a much more difficult choice if one had a financially insecure childhood in the US, etc. Public service is a luxury choice or a very brave one.
I'm also grateful that all the sacrifices I've had to make are small ones. It's sometimes difficult to be away from my family and friends but in the long run, I haven't had to give anything up to do what I want to do. Part of me thinks you aren't really an adult until you learn that you can't have everything, but I'm very thankful for a life without painful choices so far.
I'm thankful for the opportunities I have had. Over the last two years, several different people or organizations have been willing to invest money so that I could have various opportunities-- working on a project with refugee children in Vermont, going to Tanzania, traveling to remote Northwestern Tanzania, getting the Truman, this job. I'm very grateful for this and sometimes in order to justify it, I take a determinist approach: I must be given this opportunities for a reason, because I am intended to do something. Ultimately, though, I don't believe that the events in our life ever deliberately guide us to any final destiny. Therefore, it's my job to make the most of everything that happens to me and to justify it through what I take away from it.
Most of all, I'm thankful for the incredible wealth of people in my life. I'm grateful I have friends who inspire me, who can understand the things I'm not ready to say, and who believe in me even as they laugh at me. I'm grateful for parents who I know will always love me and who always ask the right questions, a sister who teaches me to be more honest with myself on a daily basis, and an extended family that shows me just how many ways there are to lead a meaningful life.
The theme of our graduation speech was about leaping into the proverbial net while also being the net. This sounds like a cliche, but when one is just about to venture out into the wide, wide world and one hasn't slept in a week, it can really get you. I've thought about it a lot since, especially since taking this job. I'm thankful to be loved enough and feel safe enough to believe in endless possibility and not be afraid of risk.
Achilles' Lament
I got through college without a running injury (that is, if you don't count the death of several toenails) without stretching, so I thought my legs were especially ergonomically suited for running. This fall has called that theory into question. So far, I've already had two: a pulled hip muscle in Greece and now Achilles' tendonitious. I'm blaming it on the pavement and the hills.
I keep getting "old person" injuries-- a pulled hip, tight tendons-- instead of normal runner injuries like shin splints or knee joint inflamation. I think it's a sign I need to start actually stretching instead of pulling my ankle back and pretending I'm stretching. I already have an "aren't you flexible" pose-- sitting down on the floor with bent knees open on either side of me and then leaning back all the way until my head is on the floor-- but showing off aside, hyperflexible hips apparently don't make for an injury free runner. Darn. Life's too short for stretching.
I love endomorphins so I go a bit nuts when I can't run, especially when I don't have gym access. I keep taking a day off, deciding I've 'rested' and then running the next day. I'm going to try to take the rest of the week off and do a better of icing in the meantime. I wish there were more injuries you had to apply heat to instead of ice. I considered icing my ankle with a Chu-hi in a hot bath, but then I decided that was probably counterproductive.
I keep getting "old person" injuries-- a pulled hip, tight tendons-- instead of normal runner injuries like shin splints or knee joint inflamation. I think it's a sign I need to start actually stretching instead of pulling my ankle back and pretending I'm stretching. I already have an "aren't you flexible" pose-- sitting down on the floor with bent knees open on either side of me and then leaning back all the way until my head is on the floor-- but showing off aside, hyperflexible hips apparently don't make for an injury free runner. Darn. Life's too short for stretching.
I love endomorphins so I go a bit nuts when I can't run, especially when I don't have gym access. I keep taking a day off, deciding I've 'rested' and then running the next day. I'm going to try to take the rest of the week off and do a better of icing in the meantime. I wish there were more injuries you had to apply heat to instead of ice. I considered icing my ankle with a Chu-hi in a hot bath, but then I decided that was probably counterproductive.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Pink Cheeks and Ripped Up Jeans
Every few days, I'll have a moment that reminds me just how little of what's going on I understand. On one of my first days here, I could hear someone broadcasting something on a microphone outside and saw a ton of helicopters overhead. I assumed the most dramatic: missing person, axe murderer on the loose, major earthquake. Later, I found out that the outdoor broadcast is a drive-by advertising strategy and the helicopters were just a coincidence.
The other day, I was on a walk and two very sweet-seeming older women stopped me. They pointed to my cheeks-- which were probably pink from the cold-- and discussed them at length, and then commented on the bottoms of my jeans, which are pretty ripped up. I stuck to my canon of polite incomprehension phrases for about five minutes, and then we said good bye. The conversation could have gone something like this:
"You have such lovely rosy cheeks! Are you cold?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"We're worried you're going to trip over your jeans. They look ripped up. You should be careful."
"I request your kindness."
Or it could have looked more like this:
"Your cheeks are a very unnatural color! You must either have roscea or wear too much blush."
"Thank you."
"It is very disgraceful to go out in such tattered jeans. Look how elegantly and respectfully Japanese people dress!"
"I would like to speak Japanese."
Given the 'if you don't have something nice to say...' mindset of most Japanese people and the kindness I have recieved, I think the first is much more likely, but they could have been talking about something else entirely unrelated and I could have misunderstood their gestures. I should just stick to pointing to my nose.
Rachel and I went on a turkey search today ("ho-luh tuh-keh" if you ever need to get one in Japan) and were surprised that people knew what we meant. Apparently, turkey's caught on as a Christmas food, but Thanksgiving has yet to follow Halloween in jumping the Pacific (the lack of blue laws is a testament the pilgrims never made it this far) so no turkeys are available yet. We decided roast chicken would be an adequate substitute, but the oven in the apartment is too small for roasting a bird, so we had to order one. While we were consulting with a man at the grocery store, a young women who spoke excellent English offered to help us, and explained the seasonal turkey dilemma. She directed us to another store, where the butcher on the first floor led us up several floors to where we finally ordered chicken. People are so helpful! Tomorrow's goal is finding cornmeal.
The other day, I was on a walk and two very sweet-seeming older women stopped me. They pointed to my cheeks-- which were probably pink from the cold-- and discussed them at length, and then commented on the bottoms of my jeans, which are pretty ripped up. I stuck to my canon of polite incomprehension phrases for about five minutes, and then we said good bye. The conversation could have gone something like this:
"You have such lovely rosy cheeks! Are you cold?"
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"We're worried you're going to trip over your jeans. They look ripped up. You should be careful."
"I request your kindness."
Or it could have looked more like this:
"Your cheeks are a very unnatural color! You must either have roscea or wear too much blush."
"Thank you."
"It is very disgraceful to go out in such tattered jeans. Look how elegantly and respectfully Japanese people dress!"
"I would like to speak Japanese."
Given the 'if you don't have something nice to say...' mindset of most Japanese people and the kindness I have recieved, I think the first is much more likely, but they could have been talking about something else entirely unrelated and I could have misunderstood their gestures. I should just stick to pointing to my nose.
Rachel and I went on a turkey search today ("ho-luh tuh-keh" if you ever need to get one in Japan) and were surprised that people knew what we meant. Apparently, turkey's caught on as a Christmas food, but Thanksgiving has yet to follow Halloween in jumping the Pacific (the lack of blue laws is a testament the pilgrims never made it this far) so no turkeys are available yet. We decided roast chicken would be an adequate substitute, but the oven in the apartment is too small for roasting a bird, so we had to order one. While we were consulting with a man at the grocery store, a young women who spoke excellent English offered to help us, and explained the seasonal turkey dilemma. She directed us to another store, where the butcher on the first floor led us up several floors to where we finally ordered chicken. People are so helpful! Tomorrow's goal is finding cornmeal.
Maybe you should drink a lot less coffee
My computer saga has continued, and I don't think I'll have my own functional computer back until I return to the states. Rachel has kindly given me her backup to use as a sub, and although it relies on a Japanese operating system (maybe I'll leave knowing the kanji for "save as" and "this program needs to shut down!"), it works very well. However, the sound isn't as good as on my computer, which has resulted in a few changes in my post-work internet diversions.
In the evening, I used to read the news and legit political blogs for a while, and then switch over to America's Next Top Model Re-runs on Youtube or free Heros downloads. Now, rather than watch ANTM without sound and miss the crucial in-fighting, I've had to do some revamping. I usually start out with legit news-- which devolves into reading about countries I don't know anything about on wikipedia (Tajikistan looks beautiful)-- to obsessively googling primary polls. I'd say this is a step up, but I'm a little alarmed by how easily I can sub out reality TV for primary coverage.
In November of 2006, I had an argument with one of my favorite Political Science professors. He was teaching a class that met once a week from 7 pm to 10 pm (read: midnight) on Tuesday. Several students in his class wanted to reschedule the class on Election Day so they could watch the results come in. He thought this was a superficial element of participation, watching the results come in like a sporting event. He was disparaging of the trend of staying up all night in order to get instant information, pointing out that the result would be the same in the morning regardless of how many people had slept.
I was indignant and argued that a lot of the students had been working on the election for months, and it was difficult to not have a level of emotional investment after that degree of involvement. Even if their watching would not change results, to wait until the morning would be akin to putting your college admission letter on a shelf and not opening it for a week. Even if you found out you were waitlisted (“too close to call”), better to sleep knowing that than nothing at all. He then asked the class if we believed the election results really made a difference, and people answered enthusiastically.
I also pointed out that if he didn’t let his class watch, people were likely to be distracted and text their friends for results or take advantage of the wireless zone on their laptops-obsteniably-brought-for-note-taking. Sometimes I really like technology.
I think he ultimately bought my argument. The next day, he let us take 20 minutes at the begining of (the six hour) class to watch Rumsfeld's resignation speech. To be honest, every minute of that class was solid gold, and retrospectively I wish I had discussed Nicaragua for twenty minutes more instead. At the time, though, the exilheration was worth it.
Still, I left the conversation wondering to what extent closely following polls and fundraising totals is like watching a sporting event, just good competitive entertainment rather than bona fide engagement. I don’t mean pulling up Clinton’s healthcare policy and contrasting it to Edwards', or watching the youtube debate —the things you do to be an informed voter or volunteer. I'll never say politics is just a game. I’m more calling myself out on my obsessive tendency to check polls in primary states on a daily basis, information that doesn’t affect my decisions and that I can’t affect from Kikuna, Japan.
Political commentators who I respect a lot, like Atrios, seem very frustrated by the primary. I suspect that if I were cooler, I'd also be bored by the primary and have a minimalist facebook profile and listen to bands before they sold out. While I could make a case for the primary-- candidates can articulate a much broader scope of policy options than would be acceptable in general debate-- I don't think this is necessarily what happens.
In 2004, I was so into Dean--and so frustrated with the other candidate' attacks on him--that it took me a long time to be geuninely excited about Kerry. While it's important not to rally around a candidate before the primaries even start, the months of un-electable-mongering and dubious matchup polls and campaign gossip and hypothesizing and criticizing and attacking from supporters, media and candidates alike aren't productive. I was so planning to not get hooked on this primary season and hold off until the general election, but it's too late.
I can't blame it all on the lack of sound on my computer. I did the same thing the last two times around. I also have this bad habit of needing to announce my findings to whoever is in earshot. Rachel, my sophomore roommate, pretended that this was useful and she misses it now. Rachel, my boss and current victim, agreed, but I think they are both just nice people.
I guess as addictions go, it's cheap and harmless and more useful than most. Youtube debate next week?
In the evening, I used to read the news and legit political blogs for a while, and then switch over to America's Next Top Model Re-runs on Youtube or free Heros downloads. Now, rather than watch ANTM without sound and miss the crucial in-fighting, I've had to do some revamping. I usually start out with legit news-- which devolves into reading about countries I don't know anything about on wikipedia (Tajikistan looks beautiful)-- to obsessively googling primary polls. I'd say this is a step up, but I'm a little alarmed by how easily I can sub out reality TV for primary coverage.
In November of 2006, I had an argument with one of my favorite Political Science professors. He was teaching a class that met once a week from 7 pm to 10 pm (read: midnight) on Tuesday. Several students in his class wanted to reschedule the class on Election Day so they could watch the results come in. He thought this was a superficial element of participation, watching the results come in like a sporting event. He was disparaging of the trend of staying up all night in order to get instant information, pointing out that the result would be the same in the morning regardless of how many people had slept.
I was indignant and argued that a lot of the students had been working on the election for months, and it was difficult to not have a level of emotional investment after that degree of involvement. Even if their watching would not change results, to wait until the morning would be akin to putting your college admission letter on a shelf and not opening it for a week. Even if you found out you were waitlisted (“too close to call”), better to sleep knowing that than nothing at all. He then asked the class if we believed the election results really made a difference, and people answered enthusiastically.
I also pointed out that if he didn’t let his class watch, people were likely to be distracted and text their friends for results or take advantage of the wireless zone on their laptops-obsteniably-brought-for-note-taking. Sometimes I really like technology.
I think he ultimately bought my argument. The next day, he let us take 20 minutes at the begining of (the six hour) class to watch Rumsfeld's resignation speech. To be honest, every minute of that class was solid gold, and retrospectively I wish I had discussed Nicaragua for twenty minutes more instead. At the time, though, the exilheration was worth it.
Still, I left the conversation wondering to what extent closely following polls and fundraising totals is like watching a sporting event, just good competitive entertainment rather than bona fide engagement. I don’t mean pulling up Clinton’s healthcare policy and contrasting it to Edwards', or watching the youtube debate —the things you do to be an informed voter or volunteer. I'll never say politics is just a game. I’m more calling myself out on my obsessive tendency to check polls in primary states on a daily basis, information that doesn’t affect my decisions and that I can’t affect from Kikuna, Japan.
Political commentators who I respect a lot, like Atrios, seem very frustrated by the primary. I suspect that if I were cooler, I'd also be bored by the primary and have a minimalist facebook profile and listen to bands before they sold out. While I could make a case for the primary-- candidates can articulate a much broader scope of policy options than would be acceptable in general debate-- I don't think this is necessarily what happens.
In 2004, I was so into Dean--and so frustrated with the other candidate' attacks on him--that it took me a long time to be geuninely excited about Kerry. While it's important not to rally around a candidate before the primaries even start, the months of un-electable-mongering and dubious matchup polls and campaign gossip and hypothesizing and criticizing and attacking from supporters, media and candidates alike aren't productive. I was so planning to not get hooked on this primary season and hold off until the general election, but it's too late.
I can't blame it all on the lack of sound on my computer. I did the same thing the last two times around. I also have this bad habit of needing to announce my findings to whoever is in earshot. Rachel, my sophomore roommate, pretended that this was useful and she misses it now. Rachel, my boss and current victim, agreed, but I think they are both just nice people.
I guess as addictions go, it's cheap and harmless and more useful than most. Youtube debate next week?
Monday, November 19, 2007
Among the best smells ever
Wood fires you can smell in people's houses when you walk by on cold days.
Among the best inventions ever: kotatsu tables. People drape a blanket over a table with an electric heater under it and then sit with their legs and feet under the table. The blanket keeps in the heat. It's right up there with my bathtub and clothes steamers.
Among the best inventions ever: kotatsu tables. People drape a blanket over a table with an electric heater under it and then sit with their legs and feet under the table. The blanket keeps in the heat. It's right up there with my bathtub and clothes steamers.
Sankeien Garden and Back to the Future
On Saturday, I went to Sankeien Garden, a park a little south of Yokohama that houses the oldest pagoda in the region and has period houses from throughout Japanese history. It was located in a part of town that housed all the foreigners in the second half of the 19th century, and there was still a large ganjin presence. Poor Rachel had work to do, so Brett was kind enough to take me.
The park had a lake in the middle, an inner garden and an outer garden. Arched bridges over the lake connected the two to each other. Towards the far side of the inner garden, there was a tall hill with the pagoda at the very top. The colors have changed slowly this year in Japan, so the whole hill was light green with pops of orange where there were particularly precious trees. When I used to fly home for fall break in October, landing in Manchester was almost like descending into a fiery ocean because all the trees would be so bright. I bet the park would be even prettier in a few weeks once the colors change, but it was neat to see the begining of that.
I wanted to cross all the bridges. My favorite two were a bright red bridge that arched over the lake and a massive flat stone that perfectly fit across a stream. We went up the hill to look off the observation deck-- from where we could see the Pacific ocean and Yokohama's many lovely factories. I had some oxygenated water. Oxygen is delicious but I think I prefer lemon flavor.
On another peak of the hill was the pagoda. Around its base, people had made hundreds and hundreds of stacks of small, flat rocks, stacking three or four rocks on top of each other as though paralleling the style of the pagoda. I'm still trying to figure out what this was online. Maybe it was an offering. Maybe one day some parents wanted to take a lot of pictures of the pagoda and their kids got bored so they told them to make a mini-pagoda out of rocks and then lots of other kids thought it was a good idea and then it became the customary thing for kids to do while their parents took pictures of the pagoda.
The houses were all absolutely beautiful. When I go into stores in Japan, I'm overwhelmed by the clutter and the information overload coming from all decorations, but I think when something is intended to be beautiful in Japan, it is elegantly minimalist. If I ever designed my own house, I think I'd want to incorporate a lot of Japanese elements. I love the mats on the floor, the rice paper panel walls, and the tables which stand a foot or two below the floor.
We were allowed to go inside an Edo period house that had belonged to a wealthy samurai family in the Hida region. I was struck by how much social space there was- a huge central audience room for town meetings, a fancy reception room for important visitors, and an entry room about the size of my kitchen and living room combined. In Yokohama nowadays, houses are so small that people rarely entertain guests at home. Population growth, I guess.
We decided to walk back to Minoto Mirai, the "port of the future" about 45 minutes away. It was fun to walk towards, because we could see its lights all the way there. Behind the central park, there's a tall building that Brett calls "the apple wedge" that reminds me of the ship hotel in Dubai. The architects designed Minoto Mirai to look like "the future," and it looks almost eeriely like the UAE from far away.
I've been to Minoto Mirai a couple of times, but don't think I've ever really done it justice here. It's a hard place to describe. It's a futuristic ocean-side shopping mall complex/park/fairground/museum. Its train station is on the bottom floor of one of the malls and the train goes straight through the mall. It's home to one of Japan's biggest "clocks"--giant ferris wheels with huge digital clocks in the center. (I rode it with Saori a few weeks back.) In the daytime, it feels campy and at night, just plain exciting, but it's well enough executed to escape tacky entirely. At this time of year, all its plazas and stairs were covered in perriwinkle lights which were reflected in the fountains.
Somehow, Japan has gotten me in a holiday mood already. I'm blaming it on all the lights. This weekend, we're having a modified-Thanksgiving-in-Japan with the Motoguchis (who gave me my hashi)and some friends from England and New Zealand. I'm attempting to make an apple pie from scratch as well as mashed potatoes. Advice is very much appreciated
The park had a lake in the middle, an inner garden and an outer garden. Arched bridges over the lake connected the two to each other. Towards the far side of the inner garden, there was a tall hill with the pagoda at the very top. The colors have changed slowly this year in Japan, so the whole hill was light green with pops of orange where there were particularly precious trees. When I used to fly home for fall break in October, landing in Manchester was almost like descending into a fiery ocean because all the trees would be so bright. I bet the park would be even prettier in a few weeks once the colors change, but it was neat to see the begining of that.
I wanted to cross all the bridges. My favorite two were a bright red bridge that arched over the lake and a massive flat stone that perfectly fit across a stream. We went up the hill to look off the observation deck-- from where we could see the Pacific ocean and Yokohama's many lovely factories. I had some oxygenated water. Oxygen is delicious but I think I prefer lemon flavor.
On another peak of the hill was the pagoda. Around its base, people had made hundreds and hundreds of stacks of small, flat rocks, stacking three or four rocks on top of each other as though paralleling the style of the pagoda. I'm still trying to figure out what this was online. Maybe it was an offering. Maybe one day some parents wanted to take a lot of pictures of the pagoda and their kids got bored so they told them to make a mini-pagoda out of rocks and then lots of other kids thought it was a good idea and then it became the customary thing for kids to do while their parents took pictures of the pagoda.
The houses were all absolutely beautiful. When I go into stores in Japan, I'm overwhelmed by the clutter and the information overload coming from all decorations, but I think when something is intended to be beautiful in Japan, it is elegantly minimalist. If I ever designed my own house, I think I'd want to incorporate a lot of Japanese elements. I love the mats on the floor, the rice paper panel walls, and the tables which stand a foot or two below the floor.
We were allowed to go inside an Edo period house that had belonged to a wealthy samurai family in the Hida region. I was struck by how much social space there was- a huge central audience room for town meetings, a fancy reception room for important visitors, and an entry room about the size of my kitchen and living room combined. In Yokohama nowadays, houses are so small that people rarely entertain guests at home. Population growth, I guess.
We decided to walk back to Minoto Mirai, the "port of the future" about 45 minutes away. It was fun to walk towards, because we could see its lights all the way there. Behind the central park, there's a tall building that Brett calls "the apple wedge" that reminds me of the ship hotel in Dubai. The architects designed Minoto Mirai to look like "the future," and it looks almost eeriely like the UAE from far away.
I've been to Minoto Mirai a couple of times, but don't think I've ever really done it justice here. It's a hard place to describe. It's a futuristic ocean-side shopping mall complex/park/fairground/museum. Its train station is on the bottom floor of one of the malls and the train goes straight through the mall. It's home to one of Japan's biggest "clocks"--giant ferris wheels with huge digital clocks in the center. (I rode it with Saori a few weeks back.) In the daytime, it feels campy and at night, just plain exciting, but it's well enough executed to escape tacky entirely. At this time of year, all its plazas and stairs were covered in perriwinkle lights which were reflected in the fountains.
Somehow, Japan has gotten me in a holiday mood already. I'm blaming it on all the lights. This weekend, we're having a modified-Thanksgiving-in-Japan with the Motoguchis (who gave me my hashi)and some friends from England and New Zealand. I'm attempting to make an apple pie from scratch as well as mashed potatoes. Advice is very much appreciated
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Still Abroad in Yokohama's Chinatown
This week, I've explored three very different places in the Yokohama area. Wednesday night, I met my friend Saori in Yokohama's Chinatown. Saori and I were friends back in ninth grade, when her family was living in the states for a few years. I thought I'd never see her again, so it's fun to be just a few trainstops away after eight years. She's in her last year of vet school, the exact job she wanted when she was fifteen.
When the Yokohama seaport opened for international trade in the mid-19th century, there were special designated areas in which foreigners could live. Although those laws have long since been abolished, there are still high concentrations of foreigners in these zones, such as Yokohama's Chinatown and Motomachi, which I'll write about later. Yokohama has the largest Chinatown in Asia and one of the largest in the world. It had several wide pedestrian streets with gates arching over each entrance, and then a plethora of winding side alleys. I think of Chinatown as having red gate-arches, like the Chinatowns in Philadelphia and New York, but Yokohama's Chinatown had arches in silvery green and purple as well as the traditional red.
I was surprised by how somehow very Japanese Yokohama's Chinatown felt. I don't think I could have purchased bootleg DVDs there or a small turtle that might give me samonella. I am sure I couldn't have found a slightly sketchy but very efficient bus service that could take me to Kyoto for under a thousand yen. The food reflected this difference too-- Chinese food in Japan seems to contain less spice, sauce, and grease and more seafood than American Chinese food. There are foods I thought of as "things available in Chinatown"-- ie mochi with red bean paste--that are available everywhere but Chinatown in Japan. My Japanese friend told me that Chinatown in New York frightened her because you could see plucked chickens hanging to be cooked.
My experience in American Chinatowns has been limited to semesterly trips on the Chinatown bus and dim sum for the most part, and I never had the illusion that I was anywhere but a cool part of New York/Philly/DC. But going to Chinatown in Yokohama brought home the perhaps obvious point that Chinatown in every city reflects back its setting, both because of market demands in the city, and because of the adaption and diffusion of culture. (There's probably an interesting book on how each Chinatown has been shaped based on which era and part of China most of its inhabitants came from, too.) I guess on some level, I expected a universal "Chinatownness" and instead found an interesting hybrid of what the Japanese would like in a Chinatown and what Chinatown's inhabitants have adopted from Japan.
I'm going to stretch this a little into a somewhat related thought on hybridization and authenticity. When I think of Indian food, I think of chicken tikka massala, although I learned earlier this fall that that dish is in fact a hybrid invented because the British balked at the spiciness of Indian food. Now it's one of the most popular dish in Britian. While this makes me feel kind of dumb for thinking of it as Indian food, I think labeling it as "inauthentic" food makes Indian and British culture static and ignores the possibility of Indo-British culture.
I'm going to go to bed, but tomorrow I'll write about seeing a historic village and garden and Minoto Mirai.
When the Yokohama seaport opened for international trade in the mid-19th century, there were special designated areas in which foreigners could live. Although those laws have long since been abolished, there are still high concentrations of foreigners in these zones, such as Yokohama's Chinatown and Motomachi, which I'll write about later. Yokohama has the largest Chinatown in Asia and one of the largest in the world. It had several wide pedestrian streets with gates arching over each entrance, and then a plethora of winding side alleys. I think of Chinatown as having red gate-arches, like the Chinatowns in Philadelphia and New York, but Yokohama's Chinatown had arches in silvery green and purple as well as the traditional red.
I was surprised by how somehow very Japanese Yokohama's Chinatown felt. I don't think I could have purchased bootleg DVDs there or a small turtle that might give me samonella. I am sure I couldn't have found a slightly sketchy but very efficient bus service that could take me to Kyoto for under a thousand yen. The food reflected this difference too-- Chinese food in Japan seems to contain less spice, sauce, and grease and more seafood than American Chinese food. There are foods I thought of as "things available in Chinatown"-- ie mochi with red bean paste--that are available everywhere but Chinatown in Japan. My Japanese friend told me that Chinatown in New York frightened her because you could see plucked chickens hanging to be cooked.
My experience in American Chinatowns has been limited to semesterly trips on the Chinatown bus and dim sum for the most part, and I never had the illusion that I was anywhere but a cool part of New York/Philly/DC. But going to Chinatown in Yokohama brought home the perhaps obvious point that Chinatown in every city reflects back its setting, both because of market demands in the city, and because of the adaption and diffusion of culture. (There's probably an interesting book on how each Chinatown has been shaped based on which era and part of China most of its inhabitants came from, too.) I guess on some level, I expected a universal "Chinatownness" and instead found an interesting hybrid of what the Japanese would like in a Chinatown and what Chinatown's inhabitants have adopted from Japan.
I'm going to stretch this a little into a somewhat related thought on hybridization and authenticity. When I think of Indian food, I think of chicken tikka massala, although I learned earlier this fall that that dish is in fact a hybrid invented because the British balked at the spiciness of Indian food. Now it's one of the most popular dish in Britian. While this makes me feel kind of dumb for thinking of it as Indian food, I think labeling it as "inauthentic" food makes Indian and British culture static and ignores the possibility of Indo-British culture.
I'm going to go to bed, but tomorrow I'll write about seeing a historic village and garden and Minoto Mirai.
CNN: Apparently not a girl's best friend
I've trying to figure out how I feel this story about the girl who asked Senator Clinton the final "diamonds versus pearls" question in the CNN debate. The girl, Maria Luisa, later explained that this question had been the fluffiest of the bunch she submitted, and CNN told her to ask it instead of a vetted question about Yucca Mountain.
The biggest problem, of course, is that CNN was vetting questions for the debate and then telling participants which of their questions to ask. This reduces the value added by audience participation and questioning to mere entertainment and raises questions about how much of the entire debate was scripted.
Perhaps because I have known a few 20 year old Truman finalists (and was one myself for several weeks) -- and don't know any network news executives-- I find myself most frustrated with my peer. Although she argues CNN forced her to ask the question, hypothetically she could have refused to ask at all, or asked her earlier question. Rocking the boat is really hard, and I can imagine it might be hard to think that quickly on her feet surrounded by cameras and mere feet from presidential candidates.
I made what I retrospectively think was an ill-advised and sleep deprived decision to let PBS's Gwen Ifill broadcast election coverage from our post-election party at Swarthmore in 2006. In some ways it was great-- free publicity for Swat, free food for election-watchers, and I found out one of my best friends is a natural on TV-- but the scripted nature of everything put me forever on guard. Between assembling the students they wanted for the "diverse non-partisan" panel (a struggle at a school that'll break green before it'll break red) and trying to keep an audience of exhausted and amazing volunteers "silent but enthusiastic looking" so we could make a nice backdrop for Gwen, it felt a bit like an ongoing and dishonest mess. We broke out the Andre the second the camera crews left. I got cold feet about the broadcasting as soon as they tried to make me promise to get the audience to cheer in a nonpartisan manner (not within my powers, sorry) but because it was a major news network, I was swept up enough to keep my mouth shut. It was no scripted debate, but it also wasn't the party I wanted to throw volunteers-- and I guess that eperience allows me to feel some sympathy for Maria Luisa.
Gettting swept up in the big moment aside, I don't understand why she submitted the question about diamonds versus pearls. She mentions that they were asked to submit several light-hearted questions. To be fair, this is kind of a hard category of questions for a presidential candidate (The best I can do on the spot: "how many times have you had to sit through The War Room?"-- definitely necessary to refrain from asking if George Stephanopoulos was that cute in real life...) because it shouldn't exist and is a waste of everyone's time, but I think although anything would have been better than writing "a question that quizzed the first credible female Presidential candidate on her taste in jewelry." Really expensive jewelry. ("Don't you know there's a war on?' say the tradesmen with a grin.") If she writes questions that bad, that's her fault.
Also, not going to fault Clinton for a short and funny response to a dumb question-- and this is neither the time or place for this issue-- but I do wish there was more of a progressive consensus that diamond engagement rings are not that cool.
The biggest problem, of course, is that CNN was vetting questions for the debate and then telling participants which of their questions to ask. This reduces the value added by audience participation and questioning to mere entertainment and raises questions about how much of the entire debate was scripted.
Perhaps because I have known a few 20 year old Truman finalists (and was one myself for several weeks) -- and don't know any network news executives-- I find myself most frustrated with my peer. Although she argues CNN forced her to ask the question, hypothetically she could have refused to ask at all, or asked her earlier question. Rocking the boat is really hard, and I can imagine it might be hard to think that quickly on her feet surrounded by cameras and mere feet from presidential candidates.
I made what I retrospectively think was an ill-advised and sleep deprived decision to let PBS's Gwen Ifill broadcast election coverage from our post-election party at Swarthmore in 2006. In some ways it was great-- free publicity for Swat, free food for election-watchers, and I found out one of my best friends is a natural on TV-- but the scripted nature of everything put me forever on guard. Between assembling the students they wanted for the "diverse non-partisan" panel (a struggle at a school that'll break green before it'll break red) and trying to keep an audience of exhausted and amazing volunteers "silent but enthusiastic looking" so we could make a nice backdrop for Gwen, it felt a bit like an ongoing and dishonest mess. We broke out the Andre the second the camera crews left. I got cold feet about the broadcasting as soon as they tried to make me promise to get the audience to cheer in a nonpartisan manner (not within my powers, sorry) but because it was a major news network, I was swept up enough to keep my mouth shut. It was no scripted debate, but it also wasn't the party I wanted to throw volunteers-- and I guess that eperience allows me to feel some sympathy for Maria Luisa.
Gettting swept up in the big moment aside, I don't understand why she submitted the question about diamonds versus pearls. She mentions that they were asked to submit several light-hearted questions. To be fair, this is kind of a hard category of questions for a presidential candidate (The best I can do on the spot: "how many times have you had to sit through The War Room?"-- definitely necessary to refrain from asking if George Stephanopoulos was that cute in real life...) because it shouldn't exist and is a waste of everyone's time, but I think although anything would have been better than writing "a question that quizzed the first credible female Presidential candidate on her taste in jewelry." Really expensive jewelry. ("Don't you know there's a war on?' say the tradesmen with a grin.") If she writes questions that bad, that's her fault.
Also, not going to fault Clinton for a short and funny response to a dumb question-- and this is neither the time or place for this issue-- but I do wish there was more of a progressive consensus that diamond engagement rings are not that cool.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Ends, Means, and Iraq
One of my favorite professors at Swarthmore just posted an interesting commentary on people who kind of sort of supported the Iraq war but now say they didn't. (Specificially, people like Ignatieff who made arguments to the effect of "good war, bad administration, bad plan"-- I think this is very different than saying "good cause, bad war...")
Burke argues that you can't build a liberal society through war and military occupation, and then examines the pyschological process through which the idea of doing just this has been so appealing. People look to strengthen the liberal secular modern state through military action even though that is antithetical to its liberal foundation.
I'm no utilitarian but I have a weakness for ends-justify-means style arguments. People often say that acting in an ends-justify-means paradime means that the means cheapen or ruin the ends. Other than the obvious (a mother shouting at her child to be quiet, bombing campaigns to stop violence), I've never been able to dig into this argument. It always seemed to boil down to afterschool special lessons "The cookie won't taste good if you lie to get it" or the undeniable and unavoidable "Winning World War II without killing anyone would have resulted in a much less bittersweet victory." I think this post made me appreciate how the wrong means can entirely invalidate the ends.
Burke's post is about the United States attempting to create liberal societies through military action, but it also made me think about the way a country could become iliberal through an effort to domestically impose liberalism or secularism. I struggle a lot with the relationship between church and state in the United States but I think ultimately our premise allows for more individual freedom (and also more room for error) than laicism as practiced by France and Turkey and most of Europe. Enforcing secularism through headscarf bans is decidedly iliberal.
Burke argues that you can't build a liberal society through war and military occupation, and then examines the pyschological process through which the idea of doing just this has been so appealing. People look to strengthen the liberal secular modern state through military action even though that is antithetical to its liberal foundation.
I'm no utilitarian but I have a weakness for ends-justify-means style arguments. People often say that acting in an ends-justify-means paradime means that the means cheapen or ruin the ends. Other than the obvious (a mother shouting at her child to be quiet, bombing campaigns to stop violence), I've never been able to dig into this argument. It always seemed to boil down to afterschool special lessons "The cookie won't taste good if you lie to get it" or the undeniable and unavoidable "Winning World War II without killing anyone would have resulted in a much less bittersweet victory." I think this post made me appreciate how the wrong means can entirely invalidate the ends.
Burke's post is about the United States attempting to create liberal societies through military action, but it also made me think about the way a country could become iliberal through an effort to domestically impose liberalism or secularism. I struggle a lot with the relationship between church and state in the United States but I think ultimately our premise allows for more individual freedom (and also more room for error) than laicism as practiced by France and Turkey and most of Europe. Enforcing secularism through headscarf bans is decidedly iliberal.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
It's Christmastime in the City
After dealing with computer-mayhem on Sunday, I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Tokyo. Tokyo may have the longest Christmas season in the world. Festive trees and lights were everywhere, and there were lots of 5th Avenue style church displays. Contemporary American Christmas decorations were mixed in with red and crème paper lanterns running along the sidewalks. I’m a little overwhelmed by the consistent sensory overload but it also makes every block feel exciting. Fast food vendors were out, selling hot dumpings and okonomiyaki and yakitori. It smelled amazing. It put me in a festive mood. I'm excited to have the Motoguchis (the family who gave me the haishi) over for Thanksgiving.
I wandered around for awhile. I’m not really sure exactly where I went although I’ve tried to retrace my steps online. Two older men in business suits separately stopped me during crowded street crossings to tell me I was beautiful, that they made a lot of money, and would like an hour of my time to get coffee. On the one hand, I can imagine that this sort of thing would happen to Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation (which I still haven’t seen) which is flattering, on the other hand, I was surprised and somewhat offended. I can’t really figure out how much leniency to give because it’s really hard to flirt in a second language but there’s also a lot of hype about ”compensated dating” in Japan. I don’t know how much credibility this has or how common it ever was, but maybe there’s more blurring of the line between dating and prostitution.
I wound up near the Harajuku temple just at sundown. It was surrounded by a park that was very much like a more groomed version of the park I ran through the other day. Again, I was surprised by the contrast between the frenetic climate of the street and the elegant calm of the park just 20 meters away. I didn’t go in the temple because it looked as though something important involving dressed up people was going on but I’d like to go in a temple sometime soon.
On my way back, I got nervous the train was headed the wrong way, and asked my neighbors if we were going to Kikuna. They were very sweet, and from then on, they told me at every stop, “This is not Kikuna. There are seven more stops” etc. At one point, I buttoned up my coat and I think they were worried the ganji girl had misunderstood or was impatient, so they affirmed that it was not Kikuna. I get lost a lot, but have never gotten that much directional support before
I wandered around for awhile. I’m not really sure exactly where I went although I’ve tried to retrace my steps online. Two older men in business suits separately stopped me during crowded street crossings to tell me I was beautiful, that they made a lot of money, and would like an hour of my time to get coffee. On the one hand, I can imagine that this sort of thing would happen to Scarlett Johansen in Lost in Translation (which I still haven’t seen) which is flattering, on the other hand, I was surprised and somewhat offended. I can’t really figure out how much leniency to give because it’s really hard to flirt in a second language but there’s also a lot of hype about ”compensated dating” in Japan. I don’t know how much credibility this has or how common it ever was, but maybe there’s more blurring of the line between dating and prostitution.
I wound up near the Harajuku temple just at sundown. It was surrounded by a park that was very much like a more groomed version of the park I ran through the other day. Again, I was surprised by the contrast between the frenetic climate of the street and the elegant calm of the park just 20 meters away. I didn’t go in the temple because it looked as though something important involving dressed up people was going on but I’d like to go in a temple sometime soon.
On my way back, I got nervous the train was headed the wrong way, and asked my neighbors if we were going to Kikuna. They were very sweet, and from then on, they told me at every stop, “This is not Kikuna. There are seven more stops” etc. At one point, I buttoned up my coat and I think they were worried the ganji girl had misunderstood or was impatient, so they affirmed that it was not Kikuna. I get lost a lot, but have never gotten that much directional support before
Coming through a little fuzzy
I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend who had also recently graduated in which she commented that we didn’t have any hobbies . I thought about it and was forced to agree. Everything I can chalk up as a hobby falls into the banal (running, reading, travel, friends), sub-catogories in my major (domestic politics, international politics, comparative politics), “likes” (dresses, cheese, colorful shoes, spicy food), or deliberately quirky and obscure (haploid maps of the world, looking for cheap flights, bad makeup videos on youtube, improbable currency unions). I don’t think any of that ultimately says much about me.
There was a time when I had proper, concrete hobbies but I think since early adolescence I’ve defined myself in a community-based way. I am what I mean to people. I am the composite of these social roles and relationships. Every interaction with a friend reflects us back at ourselves.
It’s not the same as being 13 and having angsty conversations with yourself about who you are. There’s no tense internal struggle. It’s also not about trying to find my place in the world. It’s more like looking at my hand underwater or feeling like I could melt into a fog or disappear in a Tokyo crowd. It isn’t a bad feeling, it’s sort of vague and pleasant, but it still leaves me with the impression that I am redrawing the line between who I am and who I’m not with every statement I make, including the ridiculous (“I was really obsessed with the Basques in middle school French”) and mundane (“I always eat breakfast.”). Each post I write is a piece of a definition. Maybe it’s just that this level of introspection is really new to me.
The closest parallel I can think of is this: if you ever had a point in your life where you thought something you do now was a big deal, or something you’d never do, think back to that. Then think of the first time you did it. Maybe it was waking up hung over the second weekend in September your freshman year of college, and thinking, “oh, I am someone who gets drunk.” Or “I am someone who can drive.” “I am someone who is married.” “I am someone who has an apartment.” And then that just becomes part of everyday life and you stop thinking about it, but there was a moment when you had to reconceptualize yourself to fit in the new bit of who you are.
Maybe adults do this all the time, or maybe they define themselves by what they do or who they love. Or maybe people don’t have the time or energy for this degree of introspection.
There was a time when I had proper, concrete hobbies but I think since early adolescence I’ve defined myself in a community-based way. I am what I mean to people. I am the composite of these social roles and relationships. Every interaction with a friend reflects us back at ourselves.
It’s not the same as being 13 and having angsty conversations with yourself about who you are. There’s no tense internal struggle. It’s also not about trying to find my place in the world. It’s more like looking at my hand underwater or feeling like I could melt into a fog or disappear in a Tokyo crowd. It isn’t a bad feeling, it’s sort of vague and pleasant, but it still leaves me with the impression that I am redrawing the line between who I am and who I’m not with every statement I make, including the ridiculous (“I was really obsessed with the Basques in middle school French”) and mundane (“I always eat breakfast.”). Each post I write is a piece of a definition. Maybe it’s just that this level of introspection is really new to me.
The closest parallel I can think of is this: if you ever had a point in your life where you thought something you do now was a big deal, or something you’d never do, think back to that. Then think of the first time you did it. Maybe it was waking up hung over the second weekend in September your freshman year of college, and thinking, “oh, I am someone who gets drunk.” Or “I am someone who can drive.” “I am someone who is married.” “I am someone who has an apartment.” And then that just becomes part of everyday life and you stop thinking about it, but there was a moment when you had to reconceptualize yourself to fit in the new bit of who you are.
Maybe adults do this all the time, or maybe they define themselves by what they do or who they love. Or maybe people don’t have the time or energy for this degree of introspection.
Cellphone as Wallet: Forget the iPhone
I've been a bit hard on technology lately because of all the problems with my computer, so I decided to take a break from that and discuss all the cool things that Japanese phones can do that my American cell phone can't.
I got a phone a few weeks ago and picked out the absolute cheapest kind, the kind that came free with my plan. It's a shiny red razor-style phone that I'm still trying to figure out, but it was free! (My first 'free' American cell phone looked kind of like a metallic brick. When it broke, someone on my hall wanted to start a riot by throwing it through a window.)
-My phone has about 30 different alarm sounds, including my favorite, "tequila" which sounds like a bunch of happy people interupting a vaguely South African song.
-You can insert over 500 pictures and images into text messages and emails.
-People check the internet routinely through their cell phone and even have special separate email accounts attached to their phone.
-Ads/billboards have an embedded code so if you point your phone at them and press a button, your phone opens up the website affiliated with that product so you can learn more/buy it.
-Video conferencing is a standard feature on free phones.
-Free streaming of weather reports, news headlines and sports statistics (This was the case in the UAE too).
-MP3 capabilities
-Instant Messager
-Ability to watch TV or movies for a fee
-You can pay your bills through your phone.
-Phone as ID
-A prepaid rechargeable train pass embedded in your phone so you can swipe your phone where others would insert a ticket.
-The ability to use a phone like a credit card, swiping it in restaurants, grocery stores, and bars.
I think the e-commerce (i commerce? cell commerce?) function impresses me the most. I held off on getting a cell phone until January of 2005 when a friend convinced me I was inconviencing others. I think I should avoid sharing this, lest I seem like a technology-barbarian.
I still have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the cell phone. I like to be with the people I'm with and not feel obligated to answer a ring. I usually keep my phone on vibrate. One thing that impresses me in Japan is that people very rarely talk on phones on the train or in restaurants. I guess there are enough other things to do with your phone here.
I don't understand why the US is so far behind in terms of affordable cell phone technology. It's not just the phone-- my reception was more consistent in the Serengeti than it is fifty miles out of Burlington.
I got a phone a few weeks ago and picked out the absolute cheapest kind, the kind that came free with my plan. It's a shiny red razor-style phone that I'm still trying to figure out, but it was free! (My first 'free' American cell phone looked kind of like a metallic brick. When it broke, someone on my hall wanted to start a riot by throwing it through a window.)
-My phone has about 30 different alarm sounds, including my favorite, "tequila" which sounds like a bunch of happy people interupting a vaguely South African song.
-You can insert over 500 pictures and images into text messages and emails.
-People check the internet routinely through their cell phone and even have special separate email accounts attached to their phone.
-Ads/billboards have an embedded code so if you point your phone at them and press a button, your phone opens up the website affiliated with that product so you can learn more/buy it.
-Video conferencing is a standard feature on free phones.
-Free streaming of weather reports, news headlines and sports statistics (This was the case in the UAE too).
-MP3 capabilities
-Instant Messager
-Ability to watch TV or movies for a fee
-You can pay your bills through your phone.
-Phone as ID
-A prepaid rechargeable train pass embedded in your phone so you can swipe your phone where others would insert a ticket.
-The ability to use a phone like a credit card, swiping it in restaurants, grocery stores, and bars.
I think the e-commerce (i commerce? cell commerce?) function impresses me the most. I held off on getting a cell phone until January of 2005 when a friend convinced me I was inconviencing others. I think I should avoid sharing this, lest I seem like a technology-barbarian.
I still have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the cell phone. I like to be with the people I'm with and not feel obligated to answer a ring. I usually keep my phone on vibrate. One thing that impresses me in Japan is that people very rarely talk on phones on the train or in restaurants. I guess there are enough other things to do with your phone here.
I don't understand why the US is so far behind in terms of affordable cell phone technology. It's not just the phone-- my reception was more consistent in the Serengeti than it is fifty miles out of Burlington.
Monday, November 12, 2007
And then Pinochet got mad
I used to think that jobs weren't stressful. (I also have this illusion that 25 is a stress-free age because you have figured life out, but I'm not letting go of that yet.) I imagined that some jobs could be stressful-- for instance, being in charge of something, or having your pay based on sales commission or working in a dangerous enviroment-- but somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, I thought the majority of jobs were pretty stress-free.
One of my friends who works for a certain government agency happily confirmed this. She said she left her work at the door every day at five and didn't think about it again until she came back. She told me this during a particularly stressful part of senior year, and I think it was supposed to make me feel better. It weirded me out. I still can't really get my head around it.
It's crunch week at Swarthmore (isn't it always?) and I can report that so far, my job commands fewer all nighters and much less racing to meet deadlines than college. However, I think there's a different kind of stress. Although extracirrcular and interpersonal duties may impact other people, a major part of stress-in-college is about stuff that only affects yourself. It won't impact anyone else's semester much if your paper is in late (except in seminar, but that's a seperate tangent) With most (all?) jobs, anything you do poorly then impacts other people, which is a different kind of pressure.
I started thinking about this because last night I had my first work-related nightmare. It started when I dream-woke-up to discover I had twenty more endnotes to write in an afternoon that we'd somehow forgotten about. In real life, I'd substantially changed an endnote about Pinochet because I felt that in trying to be neutral, we had wound up sounding too sympathetic. In my dream, Pinochet was very angry with the changes I had made. How dare I change "modernize the economy" to "liberalize the economy!" Only "some" critics accuse him of human rights abuses, not "many!" He refused to ever be interviewed by us, and was starting a law suit. I tried to remember what I had learned about public figures and libel but I wasn't sure whether we'd be tried in Japan, the US, the UK or Chile. In the meantime, my list of endnotes had grown, spanning several pages, and all the while, Pinochet was marshalling his evidence. (In my dream, he definitely didn't have Operation CONDOR at his disposal. That would have made it a much worse nightmate.) It was all my fault!
I woke up, hugging my knees, to remember that Pinochet had died on December 3rd, 2006, four days before Jeane Kirkpatrick, UN ambassador and Reagan advisor who advocated US support for authoritarian governments so long as they were anticommunist. My Latin American politics class may have been briefly inspired to hum "ding dong the witch is dead" upon discussing the 91 year old Chilean dictator's death, but I promise that didn't make it anywhere into the endnote. Back to sleep.
One of my friends who works for a certain government agency happily confirmed this. She said she left her work at the door every day at five and didn't think about it again until she came back. She told me this during a particularly stressful part of senior year, and I think it was supposed to make me feel better. It weirded me out. I still can't really get my head around it.
It's crunch week at Swarthmore (isn't it always?) and I can report that so far, my job commands fewer all nighters and much less racing to meet deadlines than college. However, I think there's a different kind of stress. Although extracirrcular and interpersonal duties may impact other people, a major part of stress-in-college is about stuff that only affects yourself. It won't impact anyone else's semester much if your paper is in late (except in seminar, but that's a seperate tangent) With most (all?) jobs, anything you do poorly then impacts other people, which is a different kind of pressure.
I started thinking about this because last night I had my first work-related nightmare. It started when I dream-woke-up to discover I had twenty more endnotes to write in an afternoon that we'd somehow forgotten about. In real life, I'd substantially changed an endnote about Pinochet because I felt that in trying to be neutral, we had wound up sounding too sympathetic. In my dream, Pinochet was very angry with the changes I had made. How dare I change "modernize the economy" to "liberalize the economy!" Only "some" critics accuse him of human rights abuses, not "many!" He refused to ever be interviewed by us, and was starting a law suit. I tried to remember what I had learned about public figures and libel but I wasn't sure whether we'd be tried in Japan, the US, the UK or Chile. In the meantime, my list of endnotes had grown, spanning several pages, and all the while, Pinochet was marshalling his evidence. (In my dream, he definitely didn't have Operation CONDOR at his disposal. That would have made it a much worse nightmate.) It was all my fault!
I woke up, hugging my knees, to remember that Pinochet had died on December 3rd, 2006, four days before Jeane Kirkpatrick, UN ambassador and Reagan advisor who advocated US support for authoritarian governments so long as they were anticommunist. My Latin American politics class may have been briefly inspired to hum "ding dong the witch is dead" upon discussing the 91 year old Chilean dictator's death, but I promise that didn't make it anywhere into the endnote. Back to sleep.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Misbehaving Computers, Perfect Parks, and Korean BBQ
I've been in an on-going (although I suspect resolveable) battle with my computer (I'm on Rachel's backup computer now). It has a acute neurological condition that impedes its ability to recieve sensory imput (from me). It starts with the left mouse button and then spreads until it ignores all my input whatsoever. My father suggested I take the battery out and then put it back in, and this helps it for about twevle hours, but then the neurological disease wins again! Tomorrow I'm going to take it to the Acer center in Saitama, a suburb on the other side of Tokyo. (If anything exciting happens, I'll be sure to post about it, but I don't get a "bloggable" vibe from computer repair.) I feel bad, because the people at the computer store don't speak English, which means Brett has to come with me. He's being very nice about it, but I hate to be a burden when they are already hosting me.
My frustration prompted me to go for what turned out to be my favorite run yet in Japan. Brett had mentioned a park a few miles a way, and I decided to try to find it. Japan is full of pretty parks, but this one takes the cake. The base of the park was built around a large pond with waterlilies and other flowers. A dark, wooden boardwalk crossed over the pond. Apparently, it's so picturesque that it was part of the set for a popular TV show. It was raining just a little bit, and I could hear frogs croaking in the pond.
Behind the park was a nature preserve stretched up a hill, and I could run along a number of ridges overlooking the park. (Yokohama is a bit like one big stadium run; it's hard to run for more than a third of a mile without running up a steep hill or several flights of stairs. While this makes it hard to fight an easy run, it also means it's hard to have a run without some amazing views. I always find myself on top of some hilltop, looking over rooftops in a valley I hadn't known existed.) I got up to the ridge by running up through the neighborhood alongside the park, but I zigg-zagged down flat paths bookended by flights of stairs.
It reminded me a little bit of running on Roosevelt island in DC-- to get to Roosevelt island, you run past the Kennedy center and the Watergate hotel, over this long highway of a bridge. Then you reach the island, and there's this thick canopy and it's humid and lush and primordial and it feels like you could see dinosaurs around the corner. This park had the same moist otherworldly quality. It was a quarter mile from downtown Myorengi, with its neon signs and 7/11s and nearly constant train traffic. Running through Myorengi is an exercise in lateral movement.
Tonight for dinner, we went to a Korean barbeque downtown. I'd never had Korean barbeque before, and really enjoyed it. There's a grill in the center of each table, and you order thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and vegetables, and grill them. There's a special brush you can use to dust the mushrooms with soy sauce once they are on the grill. It was delicious, and flipping the slices over was excellent Haishi practice. I even tried tongue, which was surprisingly good (although a little chewy. Ok, full disclosure, I put a LOT of lemon on it but apparently that's normal). I may be the world's worst former vegetarian. My only defense is that I only eat meat when I eat out.
I think food that is inherently communal--fondue, shabu shabu, Ethiopian food, Korean barbeque--is the most fun to eat. One of my friends used to joke about opening a restaurant that served a different communal dish every night of the week, and if she ever goes through with it, I'm glad to have an insider connection. I also think it's interesting that, while we eat soy sauce in the US, it's usually not mixed with other sauces, while in Japan, it's often mixed with hot sauce, lemon, or wasabi-- and the better for it. (My sister and I used to put lemon juice and soy sauce on our popcorn when we were growing up.)
My frustration prompted me to go for what turned out to be my favorite run yet in Japan. Brett had mentioned a park a few miles a way, and I decided to try to find it. Japan is full of pretty parks, but this one takes the cake. The base of the park was built around a large pond with waterlilies and other flowers. A dark, wooden boardwalk crossed over the pond. Apparently, it's so picturesque that it was part of the set for a popular TV show. It was raining just a little bit, and I could hear frogs croaking in the pond.
Behind the park was a nature preserve stretched up a hill, and I could run along a number of ridges overlooking the park. (Yokohama is a bit like one big stadium run; it's hard to run for more than a third of a mile without running up a steep hill or several flights of stairs. While this makes it hard to fight an easy run, it also means it's hard to have a run without some amazing views. I always find myself on top of some hilltop, looking over rooftops in a valley I hadn't known existed.) I got up to the ridge by running up through the neighborhood alongside the park, but I zigg-zagged down flat paths bookended by flights of stairs.
It reminded me a little bit of running on Roosevelt island in DC-- to get to Roosevelt island, you run past the Kennedy center and the Watergate hotel, over this long highway of a bridge. Then you reach the island, and there's this thick canopy and it's humid and lush and primordial and it feels like you could see dinosaurs around the corner. This park had the same moist otherworldly quality. It was a quarter mile from downtown Myorengi, with its neon signs and 7/11s and nearly constant train traffic. Running through Myorengi is an exercise in lateral movement.
Tonight for dinner, we went to a Korean barbeque downtown. I'd never had Korean barbeque before, and really enjoyed it. There's a grill in the center of each table, and you order thinly sliced meat, mushrooms, and vegetables, and grill them. There's a special brush you can use to dust the mushrooms with soy sauce once they are on the grill. It was delicious, and flipping the slices over was excellent Haishi practice. I even tried tongue, which was surprisingly good (although a little chewy. Ok, full disclosure, I put a LOT of lemon on it but apparently that's normal). I may be the world's worst former vegetarian. My only defense is that I only eat meat when I eat out.
I think food that is inherently communal--fondue, shabu shabu, Ethiopian food, Korean barbeque--is the most fun to eat. One of my friends used to joke about opening a restaurant that served a different communal dish every night of the week, and if she ever goes through with it, I'm glad to have an insider connection. I also think it's interesting that, while we eat soy sauce in the US, it's usually not mixed with other sauces, while in Japan, it's often mixed with hot sauce, lemon, or wasabi-- and the better for it. (My sister and I used to put lemon juice and soy sauce on our popcorn when we were growing up.)
Thursday, November 8, 2007
On Being Flapped
I was talking to my friend Eleuthera, of Dumbledore theory renown, about culture shock the other night. Before this fall, I thought I was fairly immune to culture shock（The term I used was unflappable, but I might have spelled it unflaapable.） This may seem like a naïve thing to think, but I had a few fairly hard-core travel experiences in Tanzania, including washing myself in a bucket of water heated over a fire and hiding in the trunk of an armed car as we drove near the Burundian border because there had been reports of Congolese bandit activity. In Tanzania, I was never confronted by my difference so much as my privilege. I ended every day heart-broken by how hard the lives of the people I met were, how optimistic about the future they were, and how little I could do for them. My time in Tanzania was a period of emotional growth but it didn’t force me to reevaluate the way I saw the world in the same way.
I’m learning a (obvious) lesson— differences between cultures aren’t about different foods or different languages or holidays so much as about different ideas. I knew this in principle, but it feels a little different than criticizing the oversimplification of multiculturalism in practice. On the one hand, I feel like I’m getting to learn what my country does well (public radio!) and what it fails at (public transit!) better. On the other hand, I think I sometimes wind up being more judgmental than I mean to be.
I'm not sure how to capture this, so I'm going to focus on two areas: one is gender and sex, and the other is civic engagement. Both really deserve more attention than I’m about to give them, but I want to hold off till the end of this trip.
I posted a little bit about this before, but I feel like at this point, I’ve gotten a handle on the things I like and don’t like about the way we handle gender and sexuality in the United States and I feel ready to dish out judgments. I struggle with the things that are unfamiliar in other places—from homosexuality and flirting being illegal in the UAE to twelve year old porn stars in Japan. Are those laws enforced? Is the U15 idols just a special case? Do the extremes say something about society as a whole or are they just extremes?
One thing I’m coming to believe is that one thing that is very special about the United States (I can’t say unique, because I think I might observe the same thing in parts of Europe or India or Latin America, and I won’t say immature, but it’s what I grew up with and I love it) is our belief in fairness and our capacity for outrage. I know we’re apparently in a quarter-century long civic engagement slump, but I do think we live in a country where people get angry when bad things happen to them—or to others-- and want to act on those things. It’s not about actually rioting, protesting, writing a letter to the paper, walking out, or running for office, but even contemplating taking those actions in a fit of anger. In the UAE, people can’t do that because they are afraid, and in Japan, harmony is assigned the highest value. The acceptance that you can’t change your world is a challenge for me to swallow, and I never know where to take the conversation next.
I understand why my trips to Europe didn’t force me to reassess my views in the same ways as being in the UAE or Japan has. Views about smoking in public places aside, liberal Democrats make great Europeans. I can’t really figure out why being in Tanzania didn’t challenge me in the same way, though.
In some ways, Tanzania was much more ‘western” than either Japan or the UAE—they may have been occupied and drilled for oil, respectively, but they never were anyone’s colony. Another factor was probably being there with three friends, and being able to experience and talk over the differences with them as we all encountered them. A third variable may be that I had studied Africa—especially Tanzania—for years, and obsessively read travel accounts and Peace Corps memoirs—so was prepared for the things that had surprised others. Although Japan and the Middle East are both pretty popular obsessions—and pretty amazing places-- I never caught that bug and went to both places armed with just what I could cram.
I think the biggest difference may be that I saw the differences in Tanzania as “differences in level of development” rather than “alternative choices.” In a way, I think this is an accurate lens, but I also wonder if it reflects my own bias. Was I unwilling to see Tanzania as deliberately different?
That’s a dangerous type of jingoism. ‘Everyone would be like us if only they could afford to be.”
Overall, I’m really enjoying this feeling of being flapped. There was a moment in 10th grade history when we learned about Locke’s treatises on government and the social contract and it felt like my whole head was exploding. I thought I suddenly understood the foundation for revolution and rebellion and legitimate government. In a great college class, you can count on a moment like that every two weeks. Now, I feel like I get a moment like that almost every day.
I’m learning a (obvious) lesson— differences between cultures aren’t about different foods or different languages or holidays so much as about different ideas. I knew this in principle, but it feels a little different than criticizing the oversimplification of multiculturalism in practice. On the one hand, I feel like I’m getting to learn what my country does well (public radio!) and what it fails at (public transit!) better. On the other hand, I think I sometimes wind up being more judgmental than I mean to be.
I'm not sure how to capture this, so I'm going to focus on two areas: one is gender and sex, and the other is civic engagement. Both really deserve more attention than I’m about to give them, but I want to hold off till the end of this trip.
I posted a little bit about this before, but I feel like at this point, I’ve gotten a handle on the things I like and don’t like about the way we handle gender and sexuality in the United States and I feel ready to dish out judgments. I struggle with the things that are unfamiliar in other places—from homosexuality and flirting being illegal in the UAE to twelve year old porn stars in Japan. Are those laws enforced? Is the U15 idols just a special case? Do the extremes say something about society as a whole or are they just extremes?
One thing I’m coming to believe is that one thing that is very special about the United States (I can’t say unique, because I think I might observe the same thing in parts of Europe or India or Latin America, and I won’t say immature, but it’s what I grew up with and I love it) is our belief in fairness and our capacity for outrage. I know we’re apparently in a quarter-century long civic engagement slump, but I do think we live in a country where people get angry when bad things happen to them—or to others-- and want to act on those things. It’s not about actually rioting, protesting, writing a letter to the paper, walking out, or running for office, but even contemplating taking those actions in a fit of anger. In the UAE, people can’t do that because they are afraid, and in Japan, harmony is assigned the highest value. The acceptance that you can’t change your world is a challenge for me to swallow, and I never know where to take the conversation next.
I understand why my trips to Europe didn’t force me to reassess my views in the same ways as being in the UAE or Japan has. Views about smoking in public places aside, liberal Democrats make great Europeans. I can’t really figure out why being in Tanzania didn’t challenge me in the same way, though.
In some ways, Tanzania was much more ‘western” than either Japan or the UAE—they may have been occupied and drilled for oil, respectively, but they never were anyone’s colony. Another factor was probably being there with three friends, and being able to experience and talk over the differences with them as we all encountered them. A third variable may be that I had studied Africa—especially Tanzania—for years, and obsessively read travel accounts and Peace Corps memoirs—so was prepared for the things that had surprised others. Although Japan and the Middle East are both pretty popular obsessions—and pretty amazing places-- I never caught that bug and went to both places armed with just what I could cram.
I think the biggest difference may be that I saw the differences in Tanzania as “differences in level of development” rather than “alternative choices.” In a way, I think this is an accurate lens, but I also wonder if it reflects my own bias. Was I unwilling to see Tanzania as deliberately different?
That’s a dangerous type of jingoism. ‘Everyone would be like us if only they could afford to be.”
Overall, I’m really enjoying this feeling of being flapped. There was a moment in 10th grade history when we learned about Locke’s treatises on government and the social contract and it felt like my whole head was exploding. I thought I suddenly understood the foundation for revolution and rebellion and legitimate government. In a great college class, you can count on a moment like that every two weeks. Now, I feel like I get a moment like that almost every day.
When it comes to fashion, Paris has nothing on Japan
Someone asked me to write more about Japanese fashion based on a comment I made in an earlier post, and I take requests.
In general, there’s a strong visual orientation in Japan. The food in the grocery store—especially the fruits and vegetables—looks almost too pretty to eat. (I keep imagining orange farmers in California going ‘This orange is perfect. I’ll send it to Japan. This orange…a little brown…they’ll never accept it in Tokyo. To the East Coast it goes!”) I’ve heard some Japanese importers are gaining interest in production in India because Chinese manufacturers are more interested in targeting quality for price than refining small details.
Given this visual orientation, it’s unsurprising Japan is a very chic country. Both men and women dress creatively and elegantly. I don’t know much about high fashion, but I’m really impressed with everyday style here. The basic ‘uniform’ among women consists of a neutral colored top, usually black, a colorful skirt, rounded out with a pair of carefully coordinated knee high boots or pumps with black knee-highs. (A daily dilemma: do I try to blend in by wearing heels because almost all Japanese women seem to, and look ridiculously out of place and tall, or do I wear less chic shoes?) In general, tops are modest and shins are covered, so the focal point of most outfits is the leg, from the knee to the mid/upper thigh, which is almost invariably bare. Now it’s getting colder, the ensemble is topped off by blazers or trench coats. Women wear jeans, but much less frequently than in the States or Europe.
Variations on the schoolgirl outfit are also popular—pleated skirts, white blouses with navy sweaters, knee socks. At first I was confused and thought maybe college women wore uniforms in Japan, and then I realized that women far older than myself were dressed this way. (I’m trying so hard not to have an opinion yet on what this means. See my above post.) School kids usually wear uniforms—the younger boys wear navy shorts and knee socks. They have two different colors of cap, one which they wear when walking to school, and one which they wear coming back. Apparently, this is so members of the community know which way the child is supposed to be going, and can look out for them (or maybe prevent them from skipping class?).
Among men, the two dominant styles I’ve seen are punk rock or business wear. Suit jackets have three buttons rather than two, and Japanese men typically wear all buttons closed. I’ve heard that this style of suit jacket’s become popular among the Late Night Shots crowd in the states, but I imagine Japanese men pull off the slim cut a little bit better. The punk rock style involves skinny jeans, graphic tees, often white belts, and a mane of orange hair.
I’ve attempted to go clothing shopping twice in Japan, and both times made me feel like I was going through puberty all over again. (It’s sort of like a special Franksteinian abnormal puberty though, with out the accompanying booklets about growing up.) The largest size of jeans is a 28—which’ll fit but then be way too short. Tops are just an out-and-out disaster. If I wore them out, I’d definitely be an embarrassment to myself. It’s too undignifying to go into, but I’ll leave it at I’m glad I don’t need to go bra shopping. I’m a pretty easy fit in the states, so it’s an odd feeling to be in a place where I’m built so differently from the average person that all clothing looks so wrong. I think it was one of the times I’ve been the most conscious of being a minority here. All in all, I’m glad I shop for the sake of recreation and not necessity.
In general, there’s a strong visual orientation in Japan. The food in the grocery store—especially the fruits and vegetables—looks almost too pretty to eat. (I keep imagining orange farmers in California going ‘This orange is perfect. I’ll send it to Japan. This orange…a little brown…they’ll never accept it in Tokyo. To the East Coast it goes!”) I’ve heard some Japanese importers are gaining interest in production in India because Chinese manufacturers are more interested in targeting quality for price than refining small details.
Given this visual orientation, it’s unsurprising Japan is a very chic country. Both men and women dress creatively and elegantly. I don’t know much about high fashion, but I’m really impressed with everyday style here. The basic ‘uniform’ among women consists of a neutral colored top, usually black, a colorful skirt, rounded out with a pair of carefully coordinated knee high boots or pumps with black knee-highs. (A daily dilemma: do I try to blend in by wearing heels because almost all Japanese women seem to, and look ridiculously out of place and tall, or do I wear less chic shoes?) In general, tops are modest and shins are covered, so the focal point of most outfits is the leg, from the knee to the mid/upper thigh, which is almost invariably bare. Now it’s getting colder, the ensemble is topped off by blazers or trench coats. Women wear jeans, but much less frequently than in the States or Europe.
Variations on the schoolgirl outfit are also popular—pleated skirts, white blouses with navy sweaters, knee socks. At first I was confused and thought maybe college women wore uniforms in Japan, and then I realized that women far older than myself were dressed this way. (I’m trying so hard not to have an opinion yet on what this means. See my above post.) School kids usually wear uniforms—the younger boys wear navy shorts and knee socks. They have two different colors of cap, one which they wear when walking to school, and one which they wear coming back. Apparently, this is so members of the community know which way the child is supposed to be going, and can look out for them (or maybe prevent them from skipping class?).
Among men, the two dominant styles I’ve seen are punk rock or business wear. Suit jackets have three buttons rather than two, and Japanese men typically wear all buttons closed. I’ve heard that this style of suit jacket’s become popular among the Late Night Shots crowd in the states, but I imagine Japanese men pull off the slim cut a little bit better. The punk rock style involves skinny jeans, graphic tees, often white belts, and a mane of orange hair.
I’ve attempted to go clothing shopping twice in Japan, and both times made me feel like I was going through puberty all over again. (It’s sort of like a special Franksteinian abnormal puberty though, with out the accompanying booklets about growing up.) The largest size of jeans is a 28—which’ll fit but then be way too short. Tops are just an out-and-out disaster. If I wore them out, I’d definitely be an embarrassment to myself. It’s too undignifying to go into, but I’ll leave it at I’m glad I don’t need to go bra shopping. I’m a pretty easy fit in the states, so it’s an odd feeling to be in a place where I’m built so differently from the average person that all clothing looks so wrong. I think it was one of the times I’ve been the most conscious of being a minority here. All in all, I’m glad I shop for the sake of recreation and not necessity.
Google Analytics, narcissism enabler
I have this google tracking program that lets me look at how many unique hits I get each day and where they come from. I’m completely addicted. I think this is a further sign of my dependence on social feedback.
Currently, I get the most total (but not unique) hits from Vermont (I think my parents might miss me) and PA and NY are in an ongoing dead heat for second place. Most non-US hits are from Japan or Europe.
Dear reader from Reykjavik: I bet you are an American friend of mine who briefly stopped in Iceland on route to Europe, but I like pretending you randomly stumbled across the blog. In either case, it was super exciting when Iceland was colored in on my tracking map.
Currently, I get the most total (but not unique) hits from Vermont (I think my parents might miss me) and PA and NY are in an ongoing dead heat for second place. Most non-US hits are from Japan or Europe.
Dear reader from Reykjavik: I bet you are an American friend of mine who briefly stopped in Iceland on route to Europe, but I like pretending you randomly stumbled across the blog. In either case, it was super exciting when Iceland was colored in on my tracking map.
Imagination (Part I)
I powered through our final proofs today, and re-read a lot of the transcripts about the US’s role in the world back in the late nineties and early 21st century. It was interesting how different the conversation was pre-9/11 or even pre-Iraq-invasion. One ‘rhyming chorus’ I did find was that people argued that the United States was involved in the 1998 Kosovo bombing campaign to establish strategic military control in the region.
One theme that jumped out to me in several pieces was world leaders—Clinton, Peres, and a few others—who all called for more imagination in shaping the future. I usually think of imagination as being the province of inventors, writers, and children, but I really think there’s something there. I know we can’t have better policy without better analysis and a deeper understanding of history. I buy that a critical mistake in the execution and the conception of the Iraq war was the lack of discussion of Iraq’s history. I spent a lot of college trying to learn modern world history and only got more aware of how little I understood. I also came to realize that “understanding” history could be misconstructed to create bad policy—the emphasis on age old tribalism in early journalism about Rwanda and Kaplan’s book, Balkan Ghosts—particularly when it makes the present seem inevitable rather than logical.
But as crucial as history is in understanding the world today, I’m starting to feel like imagination is what’s crucial in moving forward, and one big thing that’s missing. Whenever I hear American leaders talk about foreign policy, it’s in this very narrow frame of pull out/stay in Iraq, engage with Iran or North Korea or don’t engage, trade with Cuba or don’t, ignore Sudan or promise to act at some future date. Maybe it’s a lack of vision or a lack of knowledge, but I think it’s also a lack of imagination.
The Marshall Plan always strikes me as really radically imaginative foreign policy. I don’t know if it was in its time—maybe it just seemed inevitable then—but it was so different than the way that every other victor had ever treated every other loser in world history. Other nominees for imaginative policy: the creation of the UN, the Berlin airlift. I also think the idea of “smart sanctions” or “luxury sanctions” is innovative. My understanding is that when accompanied by a very narrowly targeted bombing campaign, they were fairly successful against Milosevic.
One theme that jumped out to me in several pieces was world leaders—Clinton, Peres, and a few others—who all called for more imagination in shaping the future. I usually think of imagination as being the province of inventors, writers, and children, but I really think there’s something there. I know we can’t have better policy without better analysis and a deeper understanding of history. I buy that a critical mistake in the execution and the conception of the Iraq war was the lack of discussion of Iraq’s history. I spent a lot of college trying to learn modern world history and only got more aware of how little I understood. I also came to realize that “understanding” history could be misconstructed to create bad policy—the emphasis on age old tribalism in early journalism about Rwanda and Kaplan’s book, Balkan Ghosts—particularly when it makes the present seem inevitable rather than logical.
But as crucial as history is in understanding the world today, I’m starting to feel like imagination is what’s crucial in moving forward, and one big thing that’s missing. Whenever I hear American leaders talk about foreign policy, it’s in this very narrow frame of pull out/stay in Iraq, engage with Iran or North Korea or don’t engage, trade with Cuba or don’t, ignore Sudan or promise to act at some future date. Maybe it’s a lack of vision or a lack of knowledge, but I think it’s also a lack of imagination.
The Marshall Plan always strikes me as really radically imaginative foreign policy. I don’t know if it was in its time—maybe it just seemed inevitable then—but it was so different than the way that every other victor had ever treated every other loser in world history. Other nominees for imaginative policy: the creation of the UN, the Berlin airlift. I also think the idea of “smart sanctions” or “luxury sanctions” is innovative. My understanding is that when accompanied by a very narrowly targeted bombing campaign, they were fairly successful against Milosevic.
And Democratization (Part II)
(Punctuation Pun: Democratizing our foreign policy, not democratization: our foreign policy.)
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how elite-dominated foreign policy formation tends to be. In international politics, we addressed this a little bit. We talked about the “democracy defecit” and the EU (as well as other international institutions). While the EU has representatives from member countries who get to vote and debate, these representatives aren’t elected, which could serve to make people feel detached from the body or unable to exercise control over its policies. There’s also, of course, “democratic peace theory,” the idea that two democracies never go to war with each other. (You have to define democracy very carefully to make this work, and one of my friends pointed out in study group that a “communist peace theory” worked equally well.) One tenant of this theory is that democracies are less likely to go to war, period, because the leaders who send a country into an unpopular war will be held accountable.
Despite this, it seems like there’s not that much discussion of the fact that fewer and fewer people make foreign policy decisions. This is worsened now that the decision to go to war is the sole purview of the president and doesn’t go through Congress, but I think it’s very applicable to the non-headline-news decisions too. Although international service trips and cultural exchanges remain popular, ‘diplomacy” remains very much in the hands of the elite. I think one reason for this is that there are fewer organized constituencies for foreign policy than domestic policy. The ones that exist (the Israel lobby, forces for and against free trade) get more playing time because there isn’t a market place of ideas.
I’m trying to figure out why this is:
-We’re a big country and so we don’t need to care as much because the international sphere affects us less.
To some extent, this makes sense. It’s frustrating how a lot of people in other countries know more about American politics than most Americans know about the entire rest of the world, but it makes sense because American politics may ultimately have the potential to have a greater impact on their life than domestic politics in their home country. It also can explain the presence of a security-forced constituency—‘we’ll care when it affects us.’
-We’re a nation of immigrants, and thus we should be full of people who have opinions and ties to the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s just that recent immigrants have too hard a time gaining political power or just getting by. It could also be that people don’t want to look like they have contradicting loyalties.
-Compared to foreign media, our own is myopic.
This is sort of a chicken-egg problem.
-It’s hard and complicated and requires too much education.
To me, the best refutation of this is the degree of passion around issues like social security privatization or tax policy. I’ve taken a minor-sized bit of econ and I feel like I can still only grasp the corners of these issues, but people are able to understand enough and develop opinions that shape their vote.
One thing I wonder is whether most foreign policy constitutencies would always vote in self-interest, resulting often in increased isolationism, because money and time spent abroad means less money and time domestically. However, a broad cross-section of Americans don’t vote in favor of their self-interest as is. There’s the whole “What’s the Matter with Kansas” thing and then there are wealthy people who vote in favor of economic justice and equality. I don’t know how value-based constituencies get shaped but it seems possible.
I should probably organize rambles like this one better before I post them. I’m just used to talking about these little thoughts walking back from the dining hall with a friend, or in the hallway outside my room when procrastinating on a problem set.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how elite-dominated foreign policy formation tends to be. In international politics, we addressed this a little bit. We talked about the “democracy defecit” and the EU (as well as other international institutions). While the EU has representatives from member countries who get to vote and debate, these representatives aren’t elected, which could serve to make people feel detached from the body or unable to exercise control over its policies. There’s also, of course, “democratic peace theory,” the idea that two democracies never go to war with each other. (You have to define democracy very carefully to make this work, and one of my friends pointed out in study group that a “communist peace theory” worked equally well.) One tenant of this theory is that democracies are less likely to go to war, period, because the leaders who send a country into an unpopular war will be held accountable.
Despite this, it seems like there’s not that much discussion of the fact that fewer and fewer people make foreign policy decisions. This is worsened now that the decision to go to war is the sole purview of the president and doesn’t go through Congress, but I think it’s very applicable to the non-headline-news decisions too. Although international service trips and cultural exchanges remain popular, ‘diplomacy” remains very much in the hands of the elite. I think one reason for this is that there are fewer organized constituencies for foreign policy than domestic policy. The ones that exist (the Israel lobby, forces for and against free trade) get more playing time because there isn’t a market place of ideas.
I’m trying to figure out why this is:
-We’re a big country and so we don’t need to care as much because the international sphere affects us less.
To some extent, this makes sense. It’s frustrating how a lot of people in other countries know more about American politics than most Americans know about the entire rest of the world, but it makes sense because American politics may ultimately have the potential to have a greater impact on their life than domestic politics in their home country. It also can explain the presence of a security-forced constituency—‘we’ll care when it affects us.’
-We’re a nation of immigrants, and thus we should be full of people who have opinions and ties to the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s just that recent immigrants have too hard a time gaining political power or just getting by. It could also be that people don’t want to look like they have contradicting loyalties.
-Compared to foreign media, our own is myopic.
This is sort of a chicken-egg problem.
-It’s hard and complicated and requires too much education.
To me, the best refutation of this is the degree of passion around issues like social security privatization or tax policy. I’ve taken a minor-sized bit of econ and I feel like I can still only grasp the corners of these issues, but people are able to understand enough and develop opinions that shape their vote.
One thing I wonder is whether most foreign policy constitutencies would always vote in self-interest, resulting often in increased isolationism, because money and time spent abroad means less money and time domestically. However, a broad cross-section of Americans don’t vote in favor of their self-interest as is. There’s the whole “What’s the Matter with Kansas” thing and then there are wealthy people who vote in favor of economic justice and equality. I don’t know how value-based constituencies get shaped but it seems possible.
I should probably organize rambles like this one better before I post them. I’m just used to talking about these little thoughts walking back from the dining hall with a friend, or in the hallway outside my room when procrastinating on a problem set.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
No more horror stories
Today I came across an essay by Matthew Yglesias on advocating for future progressive foreign policy. His basic premise is that progressive ideas need to be presented in a progressive way, and that it's remarkable how few leading Democrats are willing to make statements like "'starting a war with Iran would be a strategic disaster for the United States,'...'Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt founded the UN because a strong UN is good for the US,' 'getting other countries to follow non-proliferation agreements is going to require us to follow them too,' or 'reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process would make it easier for us to find Muslim allies.'" (The actual essay is only about 4 paragraphs so it's a quick read.)
Here's the thing: Over the past three years, I've been guilty of, when backed into a corner, making arguments along the lines of: "It's important to pay attention to Africa because our experiences with terrorism in the 90s (see East Africa Embassy bombings) show that failed states, war, and extreme poverty create a power vacuum in which it's easier for terrorism to flourish. {see Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan]" I don't think this is total BS, but my belief that we need a comprehensive approach to foreign policy in the developing world isn't really based on concerns about short-term security threats. Tanzania may be poor, but it's certainly no power vacuum. There may be war in the DRC, but they aren't attending American flight schools.
Yglesias argues that people need to make the point that "good things can happen in foreign policy and will happen with smart leadership, it's not just a realm in which scary people try to do scary things and we try to stop them." My earlier argument does sound a little bit like "Look, not only the Middle East can be scary! Africa can be scary too! Love it!" Competitive horror stories should be reserved for Halloween and camping trips.
However, it's almost impossible to have a conversation about seemingly distant wars and inequities without someone asking "Why should we care?"
The response I want to give is the impassioned and emotional one, citing moral obligation, chilling statistic, and heart-breaking anecdote. At bottom, I think we should care because it's just plain wrong to turn our backs on suffering. This is the sort of answer that's hard to give without eliciting sneers from would-be hardened realists, though. On the other hand, in order for progressive arguments to gain traction, we have to drop "the assumption that liberal ideas won't fly politically and need to be kept hidden under layers of macho posturing, and, instead, actually try to build progressive messaging around progressive ideas."
Another tactic is the "because we are responsible" tactic. I think this is usually more polarizing than persuasive, and it also relies on heavy-handed use of the counterfactual. Has the CIA done great wrong in assisting dictators like Saddam Hussein or Mobutu? Yes. But I'm uncomfortable tracing all current problems in the DRC back to the moment of US interception.
I think there's a bigger, better argument I should be making about restructuring the world and non-locking regimes and chaos theory and soft power, but I'm too tired.
Happy Election Day, USA!
Here's the thing: Over the past three years, I've been guilty of, when backed into a corner, making arguments along the lines of: "It's important to pay attention to Africa because our experiences with terrorism in the 90s (see East Africa Embassy bombings) show that failed states, war, and extreme poverty create a power vacuum in which it's easier for terrorism to flourish. {see Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan]" I don't think this is total BS, but my belief that we need a comprehensive approach to foreign policy in the developing world isn't really based on concerns about short-term security threats. Tanzania may be poor, but it's certainly no power vacuum. There may be war in the DRC, but they aren't attending American flight schools.
Yglesias argues that people need to make the point that "good things can happen in foreign policy and will happen with smart leadership, it's not just a realm in which scary people try to do scary things and we try to stop them." My earlier argument does sound a little bit like "Look, not only the Middle East can be scary! Africa can be scary too! Love it!" Competitive horror stories should be reserved for Halloween and camping trips.
However, it's almost impossible to have a conversation about seemingly distant wars and inequities without someone asking "Why should we care?"
The response I want to give is the impassioned and emotional one, citing moral obligation, chilling statistic, and heart-breaking anecdote. At bottom, I think we should care because it's just plain wrong to turn our backs on suffering. This is the sort of answer that's hard to give without eliciting sneers from would-be hardened realists, though. On the other hand, in order for progressive arguments to gain traction, we have to drop "the assumption that liberal ideas won't fly politically and need to be kept hidden under layers of macho posturing, and, instead, actually try to build progressive messaging around progressive ideas."
Another tactic is the "because we are responsible" tactic. I think this is usually more polarizing than persuasive, and it also relies on heavy-handed use of the counterfactual. Has the CIA done great wrong in assisting dictators like Saddam Hussein or Mobutu? Yes. But I'm uncomfortable tracing all current problems in the DRC back to the moment of US interception.
I think there's a bigger, better argument I should be making about restructuring the world and non-locking regimes and chaos theory and soft power, but I'm too tired.
Happy Election Day, USA!
Monday, November 5, 2007
Harajuku
There's an urban legend that if everyone in Tokyo came down from their apartment or office at the same time, there wouldn't be enough room on the streets for everyone to fit. I believe it. The only experience I've had that even comes close to approximating Saturday afternoon Tokyo pedestrian traffic is walking back from the Mall after the 4th of July fireworks in DC. At the train stations on the Tokyu line and along pedestrian throughfares, there are posters that show how a lit cigarette in an arm extended down is at just the right height to burn a child's face. I was a bit skeptical of the likelihood of this event, but am starting to wonder if there out to be signs demonstrating that a studded belt is at just the right height to take a child's eye out.
I spent last Saturday afternoon exploring Harajuku, a Tokyo neighborhood about twenty minutes from Shibuya. It had a lot of fun pedestrian side streets, with well-edited second hand clothing stores, vendors selling international treats like kebabs and hot dogs, and a lot of orange-haired people with facial piercings. Some of the pedestrian streets were striped down the middle by fenced-in playgrounds that stretched on for several blocks. I saw a couple of girls sporting the Gothic Lolita style. I continue to be surprised by the youthfulness of Japanese mainstreet fashion, so I think the girls-dressed-like-dolls were less surprising than the woman-dressed-as-schoolgirls.
The main street through Harajuku is called Omote-sando and is comparable to Paris' Champs Elysee (Nell, if you're reading this, you know which song to cue up). It had the regular major designers, but the buildings they were in were more note worthy than the window displays themselves. (I'm much more prone to noticing clothes than architecture at this point in my life, so these buildings were really special.) One store offered a modern twist on a Japanese castle, with a large rock base and then narrower upper-stories made entirely out of reflective glass. Another had an almost blinding window display with what looked like eight foot neon glow sticks in an array of colors dangling down from the ceiling. Another clear-glass building had glass turrets and a tall, slender, tapered tower ending in a point. It looked like an ice castle. Along the sidewalk, there was a shallow stream with a concrete bed about six inches below the sidewalk. The sidewalk extended over it at the entryways to shops and restaurants. I can't tell if it was modern art, or a pretty drainage system, or both.
Some of the shops themselves were intriguing. At one, I was handed a "how to shop" guide, written in both English and Japanese with detailed pictures, at the door. The store was minimalist, with a row of t-shirts hanging on a rack straight down the middle, and a lot of LED displays above what appeared to be shelves of tennis balls on all the walls. My "how to shop" guide told me (least I be an embarrassment to myself) that customers were to browse through the t-shirts in the middle and when they found one they liked, take note of its id number. The LED displays I'd seen were the t-shirt ID numbers around the wall. Customers found the t-shirt they wanted, went to its section, and bought the canned t-shirt labeled with the right size and color. I didn't like the shirts much, but I was impressed by the concept.
Most benches in Tokyo aren't like American benches at all. They are like a double-decker railing angled slightly on its side. I wouldn't have known it was a bench if people weren't sitting on it, but it was surprisingly comfortable. (I had to try.)
I spent last Saturday afternoon exploring Harajuku, a Tokyo neighborhood about twenty minutes from Shibuya. It had a lot of fun pedestrian side streets, with well-edited second hand clothing stores, vendors selling international treats like kebabs and hot dogs, and a lot of orange-haired people with facial piercings. Some of the pedestrian streets were striped down the middle by fenced-in playgrounds that stretched on for several blocks. I saw a couple of girls sporting the Gothic Lolita style. I continue to be surprised by the youthfulness of Japanese mainstreet fashion, so I think the girls-dressed-like-dolls were less surprising than the woman-dressed-as-schoolgirls.
The main street through Harajuku is called Omote-sando and is comparable to Paris' Champs Elysee (Nell, if you're reading this, you know which song to cue up). It had the regular major designers, but the buildings they were in were more note worthy than the window displays themselves. (I'm much more prone to noticing clothes than architecture at this point in my life, so these buildings were really special.) One store offered a modern twist on a Japanese castle, with a large rock base and then narrower upper-stories made entirely out of reflective glass. Another had an almost blinding window display with what looked like eight foot neon glow sticks in an array of colors dangling down from the ceiling. Another clear-glass building had glass turrets and a tall, slender, tapered tower ending in a point. It looked like an ice castle. Along the sidewalk, there was a shallow stream with a concrete bed about six inches below the sidewalk. The sidewalk extended over it at the entryways to shops and restaurants. I can't tell if it was modern art, or a pretty drainage system, or both.
Some of the shops themselves were intriguing. At one, I was handed a "how to shop" guide, written in both English and Japanese with detailed pictures, at the door. The store was minimalist, with a row of t-shirts hanging on a rack straight down the middle, and a lot of LED displays above what appeared to be shelves of tennis balls on all the walls. My "how to shop" guide told me (least I be an embarrassment to myself) that customers were to browse through the t-shirts in the middle and when they found one they liked, take note of its id number. The LED displays I'd seen were the t-shirt ID numbers around the wall. Customers found the t-shirt they wanted, went to its section, and bought the canned t-shirt labeled with the right size and color. I didn't like the shirts much, but I was impressed by the concept.
Most benches in Tokyo aren't like American benches at all. They are like a double-decker railing angled slightly on its side. I wouldn't have known it was a bench if people weren't sitting on it, but it was surprisingly comfortable. (I had to try.)
Overly Intelligent Design
Tonight's a bit colder than the last few nights have been, and I bought some tea at the conveni. I don't have a tea kettle, so I figured I'd make it the same way I made chai before I had a tea kettle in college-- by pouring in very hot water from the sink. (This is probably a crime against tea.) My Japanese sink has a cool-- and deceptively simple-- control panel that allows me to pick exactly how hot I want my water. Pleased with myself, I filled my cup up and set my tea to steep and settled down to write another blog post about my weekend.
Then I heard water running in the bathroom.
I went in and didn't see water coming from the sink or from the bathtub. I slid my under both faucets just to be sure, and felt nothing. I was about to conclude it was all in my head, or just water rushing through the pipes, when I noticed water going down the drain in the bottom of the tub.
I guess I accidentally pushed some panel when I was heating up the water in the sink that causes the tub to fill. (And, interestingly, apparently the tub can fill from bottom up.) I know I said I'd have the whole bathroom figured out by the end of October. I do, I promise-- everything but the kitchen sink. I didn't know that was part of the picture.
I'm just going to pretend my apartment is like the castle in Beauty and the Beast. My applicances noticed I was heating up water for tea, discussed it among themselves, and decided I probably was going to want a warm bath. Why thank you, appliances. That's an excellent suggestion.
Then I heard water running in the bathroom.
I went in and didn't see water coming from the sink or from the bathtub. I slid my under both faucets just to be sure, and felt nothing. I was about to conclude it was all in my head, or just water rushing through the pipes, when I noticed water going down the drain in the bottom of the tub.
I guess I accidentally pushed some panel when I was heating up the water in the sink that causes the tub to fill. (And, interestingly, apparently the tub can fill from bottom up.) I know I said I'd have the whole bathroom figured out by the end of October. I do, I promise-- everything but the kitchen sink. I didn't know that was part of the picture.
I'm just going to pretend my apartment is like the castle in Beauty and the Beast. My applicances noticed I was heating up water for tea, discussed it among themselves, and decided I probably was going to want a warm bath. Why thank you, appliances. That's an excellent suggestion.
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Puritanism, Sashimi and Karaoke
Friday night, I met up with Brett and three of his colleagues at a restaurant in Naguro in Tokyo. The set-up was really nice-- each booth was curtained off by a hanging bamboo panel with a space at either side for the waiter to put the food in and clear dishes. The tables each had a bell you rang for service. It had a much more private feel than the typical restaurant, sort of like eating in someone's home.
Brett's colleagues ranged in age from about 23 to 28, and they all spoke English very well, which was nice for me. We ordered the way people seem to do everywhere but the US--lots of small dishes that everyone shared and that came out bit by bit. (I'm completely sold on this, but our Greek friend Theo complains he prefers eating the American way. "I want a big steak that I know is mine and that no one else can touch.) Highlights included bamboo shoots in chili powder, fish intestines in chili powder (ok, this wasn't a highlight, but I wanted to mention it for bragging rights), chicken meatballs rolled in raw egg, yakitori, okonomiyaki, and sashimi. I've been a little bit scared of sashimi throughout my trip-- fish is a newly acquired taste in and of itself, and raw fish just seems wrong--but last night I discovered how good it was when dipped in soy sauce mixed with ginger and wasabi.
It was also the first time I'd tried sake (believe it or not, I never drank ouzo in Greece), which tasted a bit like white wine and was very good. We also had something that everyone wanted me to believe was tea, but Brett eventually told me (much to his colleagues' dismay) that it was Japanese whiskey mixed with tea.
We talked a bit about places I ought to visit in Japan, and then they asked me about the front-runners for the 2008 election. I asked them what they thought of the new Prime Minister, Abe, but it was generally agreed that Japanese politics was too boring to warrant discussion. Two of Brett's colleagues, Taku and Nobu, had lived in the United States, and we discussed the unfairness of the fact that American men like Japanese women, but American women are usually uninterested in Asian men. Nobu said that he was extremely sick of American women patting his head and calling him cute. Yeah, ouch. I asked what they thought of American women, and they said that we dressed terribly but had nice proportions and long legs.
Nobu said he believed American society was inherently contradictory because of the tension between liberal democratic values and Puritanism. I think we discuss this a lot in the States, but it was interesting to hear a foreigner express this, because I've wondered what side of America comes across more. In the UAE, where I was so careful not to show too much leg or arm, I felt like American was loose and wanton in contrast. Still, in some ways, we seemed like an early-to-bed country, with speed limits and smoking bans.
I sometimes feel like young American women walk a tightrope between seeming like nice girls and like sexually comfortable women. (Is this a self-imposed dichotomy rather than a reflection of other people's views? Yes, to some extent.) Social success is about getting the balance just right. I think the only way to erase this dichotomy is to act like it doesn't exist, but, honestly, I can't let go of wanting to come across as a nice girl. In Japan-- and in a lot of Europe-- I get the impression these two things aren't in tension at all.
I was going to tell Nobu that I saw a similar tension in Japanese society-- the culture of shame, the six day work week, the extreme politeness and formality as opposed to the binge drinking and sexual liberation. So many Japanese businessmen pass out on benches on weekends that you can buy ties and boxers at almost every train station. Sex is openly part of public life and provides another venue for commercialization. However, I realized that it was a reflection of my own lens that I saw these two elements as dichotomous.
I think Japan has a great social formula-- people are judged on how they treat others and how hard they work, not their personal decisions. If allowed to pick and choose, I think I'd import Japanese attitudes about sex but leave the binge drinking. However, I'm finding it much more of a challenge to my self-conception of myself as personally socially progressive than Swarthmore ever was. It does everyone a disservice to label sex as "bad," but I think there is a lot of value in classifying it as "serious." Are the two inseperable as a social message?
I'm curious what I'll think about all this in a month. I've read some people accuse Japan of having sexual liberation without sexual equality (fodder for Catherine McKinnon), but I haven't talked to enough people to even comment on this.
Anyway, after dinner, we all went out to a karaoke place. I imagined an American-style karaoke bar with a stage where one person got up at a time and everyone else watched. My ability to sing is, well, on par with my ability to use hashi, dance, drive, and write in cursive. I tried to see it as an essential rite of passage.
The karaoke place we went to had small rooms that each party went into. The rooms had a table facing a screen, and a circular booth around the table. Someone picked a song and then we all sang, passing around the two cordless microphones. The singing was more like shouting, except for Brett, who was pretty good--or practiced. Favorites included "Complicated," "Hips Don't Lie," "It's My Life," "American Pie," and a Japanese song with an English chorus that went "You're got to be lucky and you've got to be strong." Eventually, we all started dancing. It was really fun.
It's been a really good weekend, and Rachel just got back from her trip to Ottawa, so the week ahead will be less lonely than this one. Tomorrow, I'll try to write about Harajuku, a funky So-ho-like shopping area in Tokyo, bizarre store concepts and terrific buildings. It made me feel like there's just more imagination in Japan than anywhere else I've ever been.
Brett's colleagues ranged in age from about 23 to 28, and they all spoke English very well, which was nice for me. We ordered the way people seem to do everywhere but the US--lots of small dishes that everyone shared and that came out bit by bit. (I'm completely sold on this, but our Greek friend Theo complains he prefers eating the American way. "I want a big steak that I know is mine and that no one else can touch.) Highlights included bamboo shoots in chili powder, fish intestines in chili powder (ok, this wasn't a highlight, but I wanted to mention it for bragging rights), chicken meatballs rolled in raw egg, yakitori, okonomiyaki, and sashimi. I've been a little bit scared of sashimi throughout my trip-- fish is a newly acquired taste in and of itself, and raw fish just seems wrong--but last night I discovered how good it was when dipped in soy sauce mixed with ginger and wasabi.
It was also the first time I'd tried sake (believe it or not, I never drank ouzo in Greece), which tasted a bit like white wine and was very good. We also had something that everyone wanted me to believe was tea, but Brett eventually told me (much to his colleagues' dismay) that it was Japanese whiskey mixed with tea.
We talked a bit about places I ought to visit in Japan, and then they asked me about the front-runners for the 2008 election. I asked them what they thought of the new Prime Minister, Abe, but it was generally agreed that Japanese politics was too boring to warrant discussion. Two of Brett's colleagues, Taku and Nobu, had lived in the United States, and we discussed the unfairness of the fact that American men like Japanese women, but American women are usually uninterested in Asian men. Nobu said that he was extremely sick of American women patting his head and calling him cute. Yeah, ouch. I asked what they thought of American women, and they said that we dressed terribly but had nice proportions and long legs.
Nobu said he believed American society was inherently contradictory because of the tension between liberal democratic values and Puritanism. I think we discuss this a lot in the States, but it was interesting to hear a foreigner express this, because I've wondered what side of America comes across more. In the UAE, where I was so careful not to show too much leg or arm, I felt like American was loose and wanton in contrast. Still, in some ways, we seemed like an early-to-bed country, with speed limits and smoking bans.
I sometimes feel like young American women walk a tightrope between seeming like nice girls and like sexually comfortable women. (Is this a self-imposed dichotomy rather than a reflection of other people's views? Yes, to some extent.) Social success is about getting the balance just right. I think the only way to erase this dichotomy is to act like it doesn't exist, but, honestly, I can't let go of wanting to come across as a nice girl. In Japan-- and in a lot of Europe-- I get the impression these two things aren't in tension at all.
I was going to tell Nobu that I saw a similar tension in Japanese society-- the culture of shame, the six day work week, the extreme politeness and formality as opposed to the binge drinking and sexual liberation. So many Japanese businessmen pass out on benches on weekends that you can buy ties and boxers at almost every train station. Sex is openly part of public life and provides another venue for commercialization. However, I realized that it was a reflection of my own lens that I saw these two elements as dichotomous.
I think Japan has a great social formula-- people are judged on how they treat others and how hard they work, not their personal decisions. If allowed to pick and choose, I think I'd import Japanese attitudes about sex but leave the binge drinking. However, I'm finding it much more of a challenge to my self-conception of myself as personally socially progressive than Swarthmore ever was. It does everyone a disservice to label sex as "bad," but I think there is a lot of value in classifying it as "serious." Are the two inseperable as a social message?
I'm curious what I'll think about all this in a month. I've read some people accuse Japan of having sexual liberation without sexual equality (fodder for Catherine McKinnon), but I haven't talked to enough people to even comment on this.
Anyway, after dinner, we all went out to a karaoke place. I imagined an American-style karaoke bar with a stage where one person got up at a time and everyone else watched. My ability to sing is, well, on par with my ability to use hashi, dance, drive, and write in cursive. I tried to see it as an essential rite of passage.
The karaoke place we went to had small rooms that each party went into. The rooms had a table facing a screen, and a circular booth around the table. Someone picked a song and then we all sang, passing around the two cordless microphones. The singing was more like shouting, except for Brett, who was pretty good--or practiced. Favorites included "Complicated," "Hips Don't Lie," "It's My Life," "American Pie," and a Japanese song with an English chorus that went "You're got to be lucky and you've got to be strong." Eventually, we all started dancing. It was really fun.
It's been a really good weekend, and Rachel just got back from her trip to Ottawa, so the week ahead will be less lonely than this one. Tomorrow, I'll try to write about Harajuku, a funky So-ho-like shopping area in Tokyo, bizarre store concepts and terrific buildings. It made me feel like there's just more imagination in Japan than anywhere else I've ever been.
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