Kyoto is a city with so many temples that at this time of year the whole city smells like a mix of wood fires and incense. It feels like a truly timeless city. I'm amazed by how everything in Japan seems to escape the plastic stamp of tourism-- the only junkie souvenirs are trinkets to protect wearers against traffic incidents and bad grades, and all barriers between people and the exhibits they look at are natural and blend in with the surroundings. This is particularly true in Kyoto, where most sites are shrines that are still actively in use. The streets are full of young women in Kyoto, and they aren't there for tourists to photograph. Some are contemporary geisha, others are maiko (geisha in training), but most are Japanese college students putting on their kimonos for a trip to the old capital.
I regretfully slept through most of the shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto, but Rachel woke me up at one point to point out Mount Fuji. We were very close to the base (although apparently there's a special magnifying effect at the time of year that makes it appear closer than it is), and it loomed crisp and snow-covered above the surrounding villages. I'm still not used to the sight of volcanic mountains as opposed to the ones formed by plates colliding-- it's strange to see a mountain standing all by itself, scraping the clouds, without being surrounded by other mountains.
After putting our bags in a locker in the train station, Rachel and I walked through the Gion district of old Kyoto. Gion developed in order to meet the needs of visitors to the Yasaka shrine, which was built in the the century, and historically has been the entertainment district.
It consisted of a series of winding, narrow, hilly streets full of visitors and merchants. Although some merchants sold novelty t-shirts with Japanese characters, others sold fans, kimono, kitchen sets, and I could imagine similar storefronts back in medieval times when Gion first developed. Several vendors sold sweet bean paste sweets wrapped in green tea-flavored mochi dough. Sweet bean paste is better than chocolate, and I've missed it since being home. In my excitement, I mistook a carefully sliced wax copy for a sample. Luckily I didn't damage it too much when I bit into it. Still an embarrassment to myself.
We then rode a series of old-fashioned trains outside of the city to see the Golden Temple. I apologize for the constant comparisions, but from time to time, I'm surprised by how much parts of Japan look like Arusha. I think it's just the low-lying buildings, a contrast in up-keep but probably built during the same post-war period set against the mountains and the occasional smell of wood smoke. If I knew more about plants, I might say the plants were similar too. Of course, there are major differences. I felt much less safe in Arusha than in Dar es Salaam, whereas Rachel and I didn't hesitate to walk two miles to the Golden Temple at dusk.
My Japanese friends have told me that the best time to view the Golden Temple is at dawn, but given the fact Japan is in sort of an artificial time zone, I expect that would mean waking up painfully early and probably before the trains were even running. We arrived at the Golden Temple just as the sun was setting over it, and the rays lit up the gold, brightening the temple's reflection in the surrounding pond. The pavilion was built as as a shogun villa in the 13th century and was later converted into a temple. In general, I think gold structures are usually a bad idea (see: gold palm trees in Dubai airport), but given the pavilion's well-forested setting, its gold leaf exterior was striking and entirely avoided Dubai-airportitis.
After that, we headed to a ryokan outside of the city for the night. We ordered sake to go with our dinner and the host asked Rachel if we'd prefer one "go" or two "gos." Rachel assumed a "go" was a drink and ordered two. We should have known this was a problem when the host looked shocked. For future reference: a "go" is one of the metal tea kettle containers sake comes in and one "go" is just fine for two or three people, post honors exam celebrations aside.
Kyoto adventures will continue tomorrow, along with other stuff. Have a very happy New Year!
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Home Sweet Home
I just arrived in Burlington a few hours ago and can happily report I survived my trip. My computer is mysteriously working again. I'm not terribly optimistic this trend will continue, although I can envision a scenario that looks something like this: My computer gets terribly homesick and, like a small child, doesn't have a way to tell me this. Instead of engaging in productive dialogue about how it misses English-speaking computers, it instead throws a fit and ignores all commands from me. Now we are home, it is behaving better.
During the trip home, I slept pretty much whenever the plane was in motion. I even slept through meals, which is a first. Plane food is rarely good, but once I got this delicious masala-and-mini-chapati dish on an Emirates flight that was actually spicy. As a result of this experience, I'm eternally hopeful. I also like looking at how it's all packaged, although that seems less ingenious post-Japan then it did before.
The hardest part of the trip was the UAE layover, which was around 17 hours. It was much too long to wait in the airport, but I had huge bags and there were no lockers in sight. This September, I'd rarely thought of the UAE as a beautiful place, but the cab ride from Dubai to Abu Dhabi proved to me just how beautiful it was at the time of year. It even looked as though it had rained recently and there were tons of flowers along the edge of the highway. I read three books while waiting in the Abu Dhabi airport and got rounds of Turkish coffee with a succession of Lebanese guys going home for Christmas.
When I finally landed in Vermont, there was snow all over the runway, which was lit up by low-lying indigo lights, Tokyo club style. There must be almost a foot of snow all over the ground. It feels really good to be home and see my parents. It's time for some horizontal sleeping now (the best kind), but I plan to write about Kyoto and Osaka tomorrowish.
During the trip home, I slept pretty much whenever the plane was in motion. I even slept through meals, which is a first. Plane food is rarely good, but once I got this delicious masala-and-mini-chapati dish on an Emirates flight that was actually spicy. As a result of this experience, I'm eternally hopeful. I also like looking at how it's all packaged, although that seems less ingenious post-Japan then it did before.
The hardest part of the trip was the UAE layover, which was around 17 hours. It was much too long to wait in the airport, but I had huge bags and there were no lockers in sight. This September, I'd rarely thought of the UAE as a beautiful place, but the cab ride from Dubai to Abu Dhabi proved to me just how beautiful it was at the time of year. It even looked as though it had rained recently and there were tons of flowers along the edge of the highway. I read three books while waiting in the Abu Dhabi airport and got rounds of Turkish coffee with a succession of Lebanese guys going home for Christmas.
When I finally landed in Vermont, there was snow all over the runway, which was lit up by low-lying indigo lights, Tokyo club style. There must be almost a foot of snow all over the ground. It feels really good to be home and see my parents. It's time for some horizontal sleeping now (the best kind), but I plan to write about Kyoto and Osaka tomorrowish.
The Remains of the Would-Be Novelist
I read “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro during part of my layover in the UAE and loved it. For those who haven't read it, it's the story of a British butler who was employed by a British lord accused of having Nazi sympathies during the interwar period. The frame for the story is the butler's road trip across England, during which he reflects back on his past.
I went through a stage where I tried to write short stories about anti-heroes. An anti-hero is very different from a villain. The anti-hero is a good person who wants deeply to do the right thing but attaches himself to a futile, worthless or sinister cause without realizing it and lives his life in vain.
The literary hero can also take wrong actions, but there is a process of struggle and realization present in the hero that can only come to the anti-hero at the end. The conflict undergirdding the classic hero narrative is the hero’s struggle with his wrong choices; whereas the conflict framing the plot of the antiheroic tale is the anti-hero’s struggle to perform his unheroic actions and win his unepic battles. In this sense, Ian McEwan’s novel “ The Innocent” is not an unheroic tale, but instead a story about a hero who commits great evil and who the reader must sympathize with anyway and feel we could do no other were we in his shoes.
In general, I only like stories where the writer accords her characters with a certain amount of respect; I find Nicholas Hornby addictive but it took me a little while to get over his shabby (but hysterical) treatment of his protagonists. I think Ishiguro is particularly masterful in “Remains of the Day” because he treats his main character with so much respect, and forces readers to feel concern for the daily drama of the butler.
I went through a stage where I tried to write short stories about anti-heroes. An anti-hero is very different from a villain. The anti-hero is a good person who wants deeply to do the right thing but attaches himself to a futile, worthless or sinister cause without realizing it and lives his life in vain.
The literary hero can also take wrong actions, but there is a process of struggle and realization present in the hero that can only come to the anti-hero at the end. The conflict undergirdding the classic hero narrative is the hero’s struggle with his wrong choices; whereas the conflict framing the plot of the antiheroic tale is the anti-hero’s struggle to perform his unheroic actions and win his unepic battles. In this sense, Ian McEwan’s novel “ The Innocent” is not an unheroic tale, but instead a story about a hero who commits great evil and who the reader must sympathize with anyway and feel we could do no other were we in his shoes.
In general, I only like stories where the writer accords her characters with a certain amount of respect; I find Nicholas Hornby addictive but it took me a little while to get over his shabby (but hysterical) treatment of his protagonists. I think Ishiguro is particularly masterful in “Remains of the Day” because he treats his main character with so much respect, and forces readers to feel concern for the daily drama of the butler.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
My Life as An Airline Food Reviewer
I mentioned earlier that there's a reasonable way to fly home from Japan and an unreasonable one. Due to complications ensuing from the fact that my return ticket was purchased back when we thought we'd be in the UAE for the year, I believe my itinerary blazes new trails into the absurd. One of my friends joked that it sounded like my sister was just showing off how many cities she knew.
Tomorrow morning, I head to Kyoto with Rachel by shinkansen (bullet train). After spending two days there, I'm going to Osaka, then flying from Osaka to Dubai. I have a nineteen hour layover in the UAE, during which I have to take a cab from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. I fly from Abu Dhabi to Frankfurt where I have a six hour layover, Frankfurt to DC, and DC to VT. The odyssey spans three days and three airlines.
It's basically an accelerated version of the last four months of my life in reverse, and it would be nice to think this literary symmetry would be reflective and filled with deep thoughts about space and time. I suspect all I will be thinking about is how much I want to change out of my clothes and lie down all the way.
I'm extremely excited to go home, but am also getting a bit sad to be leaving Japan. I've gotten pretty close to Brett and Rachel and I'll miss living with them and their exuberant golden retriever, Abby. I have a bad track record with recent departures: I cried when I left Swat, I cried when I left DC and I cried when I left Vermont. I have a feeling the trend will continue.
I doubt I'll post while in transit, but I'm planning to post about Kyoto, Osaka, the trip and what I think of the term 'global citizen' when I get home. I also have some ongoing thoughts about civil society and participatory/popular democracy I've been meaning to write about for a while as soon as I can organize my thinking better. Maybe I'll be inspired to write transit survival advice.
Tomorrow morning, I head to Kyoto with Rachel by shinkansen (bullet train). After spending two days there, I'm going to Osaka, then flying from Osaka to Dubai. I have a nineteen hour layover in the UAE, during which I have to take a cab from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. I fly from Abu Dhabi to Frankfurt where I have a six hour layover, Frankfurt to DC, and DC to VT. The odyssey spans three days and three airlines.
It's basically an accelerated version of the last four months of my life in reverse, and it would be nice to think this literary symmetry would be reflective and filled with deep thoughts about space and time. I suspect all I will be thinking about is how much I want to change out of my clothes and lie down all the way.
I'm extremely excited to go home, but am also getting a bit sad to be leaving Japan. I've gotten pretty close to Brett and Rachel and I'll miss living with them and their exuberant golden retriever, Abby. I have a bad track record with recent departures: I cried when I left Swat, I cried when I left DC and I cried when I left Vermont. I have a feeling the trend will continue.
I doubt I'll post while in transit, but I'm planning to post about Kyoto, Osaka, the trip and what I think of the term 'global citizen' when I get home. I also have some ongoing thoughts about civil society and participatory/popular democracy I've been meaning to write about for a while as soon as I can organize my thinking better. Maybe I'll be inspired to write transit survival advice.
The Kindness of Strangers
This evening, I went to a party in Tokyo with some people from Brett's work and others I'd met at the party last week. In general, people don't have the space in their apartments to host large gatherings, so people rent out rooms for these events. The room was dimly lit by purple and blue lights close to the floor and there were couches along all the walls with banquet tables of food in the middle.
I asked one young woman about her job, and she said she was a "socialist." I was a little confused and asked if she worked for the socialist party. She was confused in turn and pulled up her phone dictionary (yet another feature of the amazing Japanese cell phone) and reported back that she worked on "personal affairs." Mysteries I may never solve.
One thing that struck me throughout all the conversations was how hard the average young Japanese professional (yjpie) works. Many of the people I talked to reported waking up at six am and getting home from work at ten. A couple said they rarely got home before one or two. I'd dismiss this as hyperbole, but everytime I ride the train, I see people falling asleep while standing up. I've wondered why Japan isn't higher on quality of life indexes (The Economist puts it at 17, behind the United States, Italy, and Singapore among others). The hours worked must be part of the answer. A lot of the people my age I talked to were interested in improving their English so as to get jobs with foreign companies, which offer comparatively flexible hours.
I was really touched by the inclusiveness and kindness of the people at the party. There was a moment when I didn't have anyone to talk to, and a girl named Hiromi came over and grabbed me by the wrist and led me across the room to a table with her friends. She then rearranged the table so I was sitting between the two English speakers while pouring everyone a round of drinks. I'd met Hiromi for the first time that night, and we'd had a conversation in which we revealed that the extent of our ability to understand each other was to say we didn't understand and laugh about it. Despite this, she broke Japanese taboos against boldness and physical contact to help an outsider feel less alone.
I used to intern at the refugee relocation center in Vermont, and the volunteer coordinator, Judy Scott, always said she had felt drawn towards helping new Vermonters because her own children traveled so much and were so dependent on the kindness of strangers. For me, the draw was that these were people who'd repeatedly lost everything through no fault of their own.
After spending more time abroad, I can appreciate the reciprocal framework too. I'm a grateful beneficary of the kindness of strangers. Sometimes this is bittersweet, like when the people in a dusty Sukuma village south of Lake Victoria wouldn't let us leave until they'd filled the trunk of our car with sweet potatoes, even though it was clear they had nothing else to eat. Other times, it's just plain sweet, like all the people who have made me feel a more like a friend than a stranger.
I asked one young woman about her job, and she said she was a "socialist." I was a little confused and asked if she worked for the socialist party. She was confused in turn and pulled up her phone dictionary (yet another feature of the amazing Japanese cell phone) and reported back that she worked on "personal affairs." Mysteries I may never solve.
One thing that struck me throughout all the conversations was how hard the average young Japanese professional (yjpie) works. Many of the people I talked to reported waking up at six am and getting home from work at ten. A couple said they rarely got home before one or two. I'd dismiss this as hyperbole, but everytime I ride the train, I see people falling asleep while standing up. I've wondered why Japan isn't higher on quality of life indexes (The Economist puts it at 17, behind the United States, Italy, and Singapore among others). The hours worked must be part of the answer. A lot of the people my age I talked to were interested in improving their English so as to get jobs with foreign companies, which offer comparatively flexible hours.
I was really touched by the inclusiveness and kindness of the people at the party. There was a moment when I didn't have anyone to talk to, and a girl named Hiromi came over and grabbed me by the wrist and led me across the room to a table with her friends. She then rearranged the table so I was sitting between the two English speakers while pouring everyone a round of drinks. I'd met Hiromi for the first time that night, and we'd had a conversation in which we revealed that the extent of our ability to understand each other was to say we didn't understand and laugh about it. Despite this, she broke Japanese taboos against boldness and physical contact to help an outsider feel less alone.
I used to intern at the refugee relocation center in Vermont, and the volunteer coordinator, Judy Scott, always said she had felt drawn towards helping new Vermonters because her own children traveled so much and were so dependent on the kindness of strangers. For me, the draw was that these were people who'd repeatedly lost everything through no fault of their own.
After spending more time abroad, I can appreciate the reciprocal framework too. I'm a grateful beneficary of the kindness of strangers. Sometimes this is bittersweet, like when the people in a dusty Sukuma village south of Lake Victoria wouldn't let us leave until they'd filled the trunk of our car with sweet potatoes, even though it was clear they had nothing else to eat. Other times, it's just plain sweet, like all the people who have made me feel a more like a friend than a stranger.
Friday, December 14, 2007
The Kanagawa Wrap Up
I have one day left in Yokohama, and then will be headed out to spend two days in Kyoto and a day in Osaka before flying back to the states. (I'll post more about my crazy trip home soon, but let's put it this way: There is a reasonable way to return home from Japan. It invovles a flight across the Pacific and a brief stopover on the West Coast. This is not the way I'm going home-- I'm going the unreasonable way.)I took Rachel and Brett out to the Korean bbq today to thank them for their hospitality, and was once again bowed over by the deliciousness. Meat aside, I'd eat grilled onions all by themsleves.
Just when I think I've got Japan better figured out, I made two mistakes today. I took the train the wrong direction from Yokohama-- a trip I make almost four or five times a week-- towards Mitomirai instead of Kikuna. It was luckily easily fixed, but I am still an embarassment to myself. The Korean bbq place we go to is called Xzcaca (I'm sure it's spelled differently, sorry) but I asked Rachel, "How long does it take to get to Yukata?" Hi boss, how long does it take to disrobe?
Tomorrow will probably be absorbed by packing and cleaning, and then an office party in Tokyo. I found out most of Brett's office thinks I'm pretty cute, which is flattering. Another perk of being exotic.
Japan is my second full-on experience with being in a racial minority, and I don't think I've found the experience as striking or as illuminating as I would have expected. It hasn't really helped me to understand what it's like to be a racial minority in America at all. When in Tanzania, our whiteness and racial difference really stood out to one of my friends, but I felt like we stood out due to our privilege before our race. (In a poor country, I don't think money is any harder to read than skin color.)I was never as conscious of my paleness as I was of the money in my belt. I don't think we should assume race is an inherently meaningful distinction but it assumes meaning in relation to the symbols and history associated with it.
Japan is known for being a relatively closed society, and there are many policies which can apparently make life hard for foreigners. Landlords sometimes refuse to rent to them on the grounds that they won't understand how to properly sort the trash (to be fair, it's a complicated system). Sometimes, their parents have to vouch for them before they can participate in programs, and people often need Japanese sponsors before they can rent apartments. In Okinawa, there are bars where foreigners aren't allowed because of drunken incidents near the bases.
I haven't experienced any of degree of this (and am also not trying to rent an apartment). Every time I consider going clothes shopping, I'm somewhat bitterly reminded of real physical differences, and babies tend to stare at me on trains (this is definitely another perk of being exotic because the babies are so cute). In general, though, I feel like the degree to which I "stand out" in Japan is more complimentary than alienating. I think it's akin to the pretty exchange student from the former Soviet bloc who doesn't speak English treatment.
Language can be a huge alienating factor though. The other day, while we were making our bookings for the Kyoto trip, all the travel agents were mysteriously on the phone when our number was called. The manager bustled over, and when Rachel demonstrated that she could speak Japanese, agents were instantly free. I don't think this is xenophobia; people are just afraid of making a mistake and doing their job badly.
In addition to friends and family, cheese, gym workouts, and my red coat, I'm really looking forward to being able to understand all the conversations and read all the signs at home. Information overload has its own appeal.
Just when I think I've got Japan better figured out, I made two mistakes today. I took the train the wrong direction from Yokohama-- a trip I make almost four or five times a week-- towards Mitomirai instead of Kikuna. It was luckily easily fixed, but I am still an embarassment to myself. The Korean bbq place we go to is called Xzcaca (I'm sure it's spelled differently, sorry) but I asked Rachel, "How long does it take to get to Yukata?" Hi boss, how long does it take to disrobe?
Tomorrow will probably be absorbed by packing and cleaning, and then an office party in Tokyo. I found out most of Brett's office thinks I'm pretty cute, which is flattering. Another perk of being exotic.
Japan is my second full-on experience with being in a racial minority, and I don't think I've found the experience as striking or as illuminating as I would have expected. It hasn't really helped me to understand what it's like to be a racial minority in America at all. When in Tanzania, our whiteness and racial difference really stood out to one of my friends, but I felt like we stood out due to our privilege before our race. (In a poor country, I don't think money is any harder to read than skin color.)I was never as conscious of my paleness as I was of the money in my belt. I don't think we should assume race is an inherently meaningful distinction but it assumes meaning in relation to the symbols and history associated with it.
Japan is known for being a relatively closed society, and there are many policies which can apparently make life hard for foreigners. Landlords sometimes refuse to rent to them on the grounds that they won't understand how to properly sort the trash (to be fair, it's a complicated system). Sometimes, their parents have to vouch for them before they can participate in programs, and people often need Japanese sponsors before they can rent apartments. In Okinawa, there are bars where foreigners aren't allowed because of drunken incidents near the bases.
I haven't experienced any of degree of this (and am also not trying to rent an apartment). Every time I consider going clothes shopping, I'm somewhat bitterly reminded of real physical differences, and babies tend to stare at me on trains (this is definitely another perk of being exotic because the babies are so cute). In general, though, I feel like the degree to which I "stand out" in Japan is more complimentary than alienating. I think it's akin to the pretty exchange student from the former Soviet bloc who doesn't speak English treatment.
Language can be a huge alienating factor though. The other day, while we were making our bookings for the Kyoto trip, all the travel agents were mysteriously on the phone when our number was called. The manager bustled over, and when Rachel demonstrated that she could speak Japanese, agents were instantly free. I don't think this is xenophobia; people are just afraid of making a mistake and doing their job badly.
In addition to friends and family, cheese, gym workouts, and my red coat, I'm really looking forward to being able to understand all the conversations and read all the signs at home. Information overload has its own appeal.
All Gone to Look for America
Instead of packing today, I made a playlist for my trip, which is almost the same as packing.
Going Home Mix
1) Closer to Me (Dar Williams)
2) Carmen Sandiago (Rockapella-- completely breaks the tone of the mix, but oh well)
3) Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver--ok, Chantal Kreviazuk)
4) Unwritten (Natasha Bedingfield)
5) All That I Want (The Weepies)
6) The Blessings (Dar Williams)
7) Hotel Song (Regina Spektor)
8) America (Simon and Garfunkel)
9) California (Joni Mitchell)
10) Iowa (Dar Williams)
11) Omaha (Counting Crows-- strong opinion: someone needs to write a Vermont song but I have a sustained ten year love for this song)
12) So Close to My Heart (Dar Williams)
13) Happiness (The Weepies)
14) Heaven When We're Home (The Wailing Jennies)
The Daily Gazette ran an article about my friend Jon and other swatties serving in the military. I think the article slightly misrepresents Jon's interest in the military--I think he sees economic diversity within the armed services as as critical a goal as political diversity-- but it's an interesting topic.
Going Home Mix
1) Closer to Me (Dar Williams)
2) Carmen Sandiago (Rockapella-- completely breaks the tone of the mix, but oh well)
3) Leaving on a Jet Plane (John Denver--ok, Chantal Kreviazuk)
4) Unwritten (Natasha Bedingfield)
5) All That I Want (The Weepies)
6) The Blessings (Dar Williams)
7) Hotel Song (Regina Spektor)
8) America (Simon and Garfunkel)
9) California (Joni Mitchell)
10) Iowa (Dar Williams)
11) Omaha (Counting Crows-- strong opinion: someone needs to write a Vermont song but I have a sustained ten year love for this song)
12) So Close to My Heart (Dar Williams)
13) Happiness (The Weepies)
14) Heaven When We're Home (The Wailing Jennies)
The Daily Gazette ran an article about my friend Jon and other swatties serving in the military. I think the article slightly misrepresents Jon's interest in the military--I think he sees economic diversity within the armed services as as critical a goal as political diversity-- but it's an interesting topic.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
The Idiot Reader
When I was a freshman, I took a creative writing workshop with Gregory Frost in which we coined the term "idiot reader." For every story shared in a workshop of twevle, there is always someone who just can't gain purchase on your style or material. I love minimalist prose and understated endings, but will reject a story without a second chance if the author doesn't let me get inside the character, or deliberately creates an unsympathetic character even though I understand this can be a stylistic choice.
Announcing "I think I'm the idiot reader" is a way to explain you were unable to connect with a story without directly criticizing the author's stylistic choices or content. If a writer has several idiot readers, they then may want to reassess.
I'm sometimes the idiot reader outside my fiction workshop. Cars are sexy? I'm the idiot reader. Umbrellas are useful? Idiot reader (and a stubborn one). Diamonds are pretty? Idiot reader.
I discovered today I'm also the idiot reader when it comes to the importance of tracing Alexander the Great's family tree. Let me backtrack. I was fantasizing about trips I could take the summer before grad school, and started looking for Silk Road backpacking trips. This led me to look up the Kalash, an ethnic group living in Chitral, Pakistan, near China.
There's a lot of contraversy over whether the Kalash are the descendents of Alexander the Great, a claim they themselves make. Some visitors have found similarities between them and ancient Greeks, and as always, there's the Western fascination with a fair complexioned group where it isn't expected.
I am in no position to assess the acccuracy of this claim, although it sounds plausible given a lack of contact with other groups (mountaineous region). I'd sort of doubt cultural similarities would last that long in isolation, but the Kalash have such a distinct religion that makes me wonder.
The wikipedia talk page on the Kalash takes me head on into the first Alexander the Great contraversy I can't understand (I'm only the idiot reader as to the importance of this connection-- I can understand why it's interesting), the Macedonia/FYROM controversy. Sure enough, whenever the Kalash are discussed, the Macedonians and Greeks go at it in the forums.
I've never really understood the search for the lost tribes of Israel-- but I can also understand how if you're Pashtun or Ethiopian, having your family discovered and aided by a wealthy country is a plus. Therefore, I can understand part of why it's a powerful and contested identity struggle.
I like speculating about the waves of early human migration in a Kon-tiki kind of way, but I get nervous when origins are traced back to shadowy legendary events, like the Hamitic Myth in Rwanda. 19th century explorer John Speke postulated that the Tutsi were a superior invading class not-native to Rwanda descended from Noah's son Ham. This myth informed the entrenchment of an ethnic division under colonial rule. I also wonder if the poor treatment the Hazara in Afghanistan recieved under the Taliban was in part justified by the legend that they were descended from remnants of Gengis Khan's army, installed in Afghanistan through brutality.
But the birthplace and descendants of Alexander the Great? I'm struggling to understand even sinister or commercial explanations for why this is so contested. I'm the idiot reader.
Edit: Maybe it's about proving early "civilizedness," sort of like Afrocentrism and the split over Egypt? Gotta love conquering as a yardstick of advancement.
Announcing "I think I'm the idiot reader" is a way to explain you were unable to connect with a story without directly criticizing the author's stylistic choices or content. If a writer has several idiot readers, they then may want to reassess.
I'm sometimes the idiot reader outside my fiction workshop. Cars are sexy? I'm the idiot reader. Umbrellas are useful? Idiot reader (and a stubborn one). Diamonds are pretty? Idiot reader.
I discovered today I'm also the idiot reader when it comes to the importance of tracing Alexander the Great's family tree. Let me backtrack. I was fantasizing about trips I could take the summer before grad school, and started looking for Silk Road backpacking trips. This led me to look up the Kalash, an ethnic group living in Chitral, Pakistan, near China.
There's a lot of contraversy over whether the Kalash are the descendents of Alexander the Great, a claim they themselves make. Some visitors have found similarities between them and ancient Greeks, and as always, there's the Western fascination with a fair complexioned group where it isn't expected.
I am in no position to assess the acccuracy of this claim, although it sounds plausible given a lack of contact with other groups (mountaineous region). I'd sort of doubt cultural similarities would last that long in isolation, but the Kalash have such a distinct religion that makes me wonder.
The wikipedia talk page on the Kalash takes me head on into the first Alexander the Great contraversy I can't understand (I'm only the idiot reader as to the importance of this connection-- I can understand why it's interesting), the Macedonia/FYROM controversy. Sure enough, whenever the Kalash are discussed, the Macedonians and Greeks go at it in the forums.
I've never really understood the search for the lost tribes of Israel-- but I can also understand how if you're Pashtun or Ethiopian, having your family discovered and aided by a wealthy country is a plus. Therefore, I can understand part of why it's a powerful and contested identity struggle.
I like speculating about the waves of early human migration in a Kon-tiki kind of way, but I get nervous when origins are traced back to shadowy legendary events, like the Hamitic Myth in Rwanda. 19th century explorer John Speke postulated that the Tutsi were a superior invading class not-native to Rwanda descended from Noah's son Ham. This myth informed the entrenchment of an ethnic division under colonial rule. I also wonder if the poor treatment the Hazara in Afghanistan recieved under the Taliban was in part justified by the legend that they were descended from remnants of Gengis Khan's army, installed in Afghanistan through brutality.
But the birthplace and descendants of Alexander the Great? I'm struggling to understand even sinister or commercial explanations for why this is so contested. I'm the idiot reader.
Edit: Maybe it's about proving early "civilizedness," sort of like Afrocentrism and the split over Egypt? Gotta love conquering as a yardstick of advancement.
Hakone, Ryokans and Onsens
This past Monday and Tuesday, I went up to Hakone, a mountaneous area south of Yokohama that is famous for its hot springs. To get there, we had to go on two local trains, and then a little red switchback train through the mountains.
Fall seems to come a bit later in Japan (apparently it also takes longer to get warm in the spring) and like everywhere else, Japan's been experiencing unusua climate patterns lately. Even though it was early December, it felt like early-October-in-Vermont in Hakone. All the trees were turning orange and red and the air had that crisp mountain feel. As we went into the mountains, I could almost pretend I was back home, except volcanic mountains (which I don't think I'd ever seen before) are shaped really differently from VT mountains. Volcanic mountains are much more dramatically shaped and less sloping. I still think northwestern Tanzania looks more like Vermont than anywhere else I've been. As we got further into the mountains, we could see steam pouring off some of the slopes, a sign of volcanic activity.
We got off the train at Gora, the last stop before the monorail. It seems Hakone revovles around the hot springs (onsens) and the domestic--and few foreign tourists--who come to use them. There was also a large local handicraft industry fueled by the onsen traffic. We walked by a huge open air sculpture museum that had pieces by Rodin (my favorite), Calder and Picasso. It looked pretty cool in the dramatic setting-- there was even a cool midair walkway over a cliff--but it seemed a little odd to put a museum so far from urban centers where most people could access it. We also saw what may be my all-time favorite cafe concept--it centered around a foot hot bath that people sat around while they enjoyed food and drinks.
As it was getting dark, we checked into our ryokan. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn with tatami mat floors where everyone sleeps on futons on the floor. It's very elegant and customer service oriented. Every room is assigned a maid, and when you check in, you tell the front desk what time you would like dinner and breakfast served at. The maid brings in your courses at the appointed times, and then clears the table and lays out your futons (which are stored in a closet) while you are in the onsen. (The experience also reminded me how weird it feels not to tip here, but it's very taboo.)
Our ryokan was located in the valley below the nearest train station. We checked in at the top of the train station, and rode this little cable car down through the forest for five or six minutes to get to the ryokan. It was located right on the hot springs, a spread-out clump of pale buildings with red trim just on the edge of the cliff.
After drinking tea in our room, we put on our yukata (a yukata is roughly the same shape as a kimono, but it is made out of thin cotton. It's a bit like a thin, long bathrobe with kimono sleeves. It's important to cross the left side over the right side-- the reverse cross is only done on the dead) and our hopi (kimono sleeved bed jackets that tie at the waist) and headed down to the onsen. I struggled a little to put on my split toe socks, but by the end of the visit, I mastered it. Our maid scolded us if we left our room without our hopi for fear we'd catch cold.
In contemporary Japan, onsen for men and women are almost always seperated, but my understanding is that before the occupation, unisex public baths were common. The onsen itself is procedure heavy, and there were lots of signs explaining the process in English, Japanese, and naked-person-cartoon (I guess it doesn't quite count as a manga). First, after undressing, everyone squats on wooden stools about 9 inches off the ground in front of a series of faucets (this is probably among the most unflattering positions ever, but were I more properly focused on thoroughly cleaning my toenails--a Herculean task for sure-- I wouldn't have noticed). After a very through scrub and rinse, one enters the onsen. A critical point of etiquette as highlighted by the signs is "let's not dunk our towels into the onsen." I was a little mystified as to why this was even a concern, but I guess it's more of a problem on the men's side where "vanity towels" are common during the scrubbing. The towel then is positioned on the head while in the onsen.
There are indoor pools which are VERY hot and outdoor polls that are quite hot. I prefered the outdoor pools because as it got darker, I could look up and see the stars, and I liked the contrast of the very cold air and the hot water on my skin. There was also a great view of the springs from the bath itself. Although I went to a Turkish bath once to clean up after an all night bus ride, this was my first time seeing a hot springs, and I really enjoyed it. We went in before and after dinner and breakfast the next day. My skin still feels very soft.
Meals were both very good and kind of terrifying. It's considered very rude to not finish all the food, and can result in not being invited back. However, Rachel and Brett are both allergic to shellfish, so we plastic-bagged and flushed a lot of food. We felt a little guilty about this because it's all very fresh, gourmet Japanese food, but it's also very intimidating. Dinner consisted of assorted sashimi (including really good tuna), tofu with a silver of beef decorated with pine nuts, an abalone with mushrooms and peppers that cooked on a burner at each place, mini ramen, a dumpling in a soup, tempura crab, plum wine and many other things I forget. One 'goal' of the ryokan is to never show you the same serving/eating dish twice, and the dishes everything came on were equally beautiful. My favorite was shaped like a boat.
I haven't really adapted to the Japanese attitude towards rice. I'm alright with rice as a vehicle, but in general, I stop eating my rice when I run out of curry to soak it in, and I believe the optimal curry to rice ratio is very high. I can taste the difference between good rice and horrible rice, but I'm blurry on the whole spectrum. In Japan, rice is the most important part of the meal and is often served after the rest of the food, intended to be eaten all by itself or with pickled vegetables. I was entirely too full to eat my rice (bad Japanese person!) and considered the plastic bag approach before Brett voluntered (good Japanese person!).
Breakfast was pretty difficult. I'd bragged to Julie I had no qualms about a tuna onigiri in the morning, but a steaming tofu-fish pudding was another story and Brett and Rachel took pity on me. Please don't take my non-picky eater card away. I'll do better next time, and I did enjoy a broth-with-clams, a mini omelet dumpling in broth, and even a small fish with its head and tail. (Come on, everyone, you know that's really scary. It's almost a live fish. Even though it doesn't smell fishy, there's the knowledge it COULD smell fishy. I could have eaten some part not intended to be eaten. I couldn't tell the nama gomi from the delicious. Also, fish look kind of like monsters when they are dead.) It was actually very good.
Almost everyone staying at our onsen--except us and an Iranian man named Jimmy who was married to a Canadian Japanese woman-- was Japanese, so it was cool to get the traditional Japanese ryokan experience. I debated whether going to an onsen was a good choice given the limited amount of time I had, but Brett and Rachel were enthusiastic and it was a really good trip.
After a final dip, Brett had to head into Tokyo for a business meeting and Rachel and I took the train up to Gora, and then took a monorail/funnicula/cable car higher up the mountain. It was much colder up there, and even though the sky was perfectly clear, there were drops of rain. I've tried to look this up online to no avail, but my best guess is that it is volcanic steam condensing. After exploring and enjoying the view, we hiked down to Gora and then did some shopping before heading home.
Fall seems to come a bit later in Japan (apparently it also takes longer to get warm in the spring) and like everywhere else, Japan's been experiencing unusua climate patterns lately. Even though it was early December, it felt like early-October-in-Vermont in Hakone. All the trees were turning orange and red and the air had that crisp mountain feel. As we went into the mountains, I could almost pretend I was back home, except volcanic mountains (which I don't think I'd ever seen before) are shaped really differently from VT mountains. Volcanic mountains are much more dramatically shaped and less sloping. I still think northwestern Tanzania looks more like Vermont than anywhere else I've been. As we got further into the mountains, we could see steam pouring off some of the slopes, a sign of volcanic activity.
We got off the train at Gora, the last stop before the monorail. It seems Hakone revovles around the hot springs (onsens) and the domestic--and few foreign tourists--who come to use them. There was also a large local handicraft industry fueled by the onsen traffic. We walked by a huge open air sculpture museum that had pieces by Rodin (my favorite), Calder and Picasso. It looked pretty cool in the dramatic setting-- there was even a cool midair walkway over a cliff--but it seemed a little odd to put a museum so far from urban centers where most people could access it. We also saw what may be my all-time favorite cafe concept--it centered around a foot hot bath that people sat around while they enjoyed food and drinks.
As it was getting dark, we checked into our ryokan. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn with tatami mat floors where everyone sleeps on futons on the floor. It's very elegant and customer service oriented. Every room is assigned a maid, and when you check in, you tell the front desk what time you would like dinner and breakfast served at. The maid brings in your courses at the appointed times, and then clears the table and lays out your futons (which are stored in a closet) while you are in the onsen. (The experience also reminded me how weird it feels not to tip here, but it's very taboo.)
Our ryokan was located in the valley below the nearest train station. We checked in at the top of the train station, and rode this little cable car down through the forest for five or six minutes to get to the ryokan. It was located right on the hot springs, a spread-out clump of pale buildings with red trim just on the edge of the cliff.
After drinking tea in our room, we put on our yukata (a yukata is roughly the same shape as a kimono, but it is made out of thin cotton. It's a bit like a thin, long bathrobe with kimono sleeves. It's important to cross the left side over the right side-- the reverse cross is only done on the dead) and our hopi (kimono sleeved bed jackets that tie at the waist) and headed down to the onsen. I struggled a little to put on my split toe socks, but by the end of the visit, I mastered it. Our maid scolded us if we left our room without our hopi for fear we'd catch cold.
In contemporary Japan, onsen for men and women are almost always seperated, but my understanding is that before the occupation, unisex public baths were common. The onsen itself is procedure heavy, and there were lots of signs explaining the process in English, Japanese, and naked-person-cartoon (I guess it doesn't quite count as a manga). First, after undressing, everyone squats on wooden stools about 9 inches off the ground in front of a series of faucets (this is probably among the most unflattering positions ever, but were I more properly focused on thoroughly cleaning my toenails--a Herculean task for sure-- I wouldn't have noticed). After a very through scrub and rinse, one enters the onsen. A critical point of etiquette as highlighted by the signs is "let's not dunk our towels into the onsen." I was a little mystified as to why this was even a concern, but I guess it's more of a problem on the men's side where "vanity towels" are common during the scrubbing. The towel then is positioned on the head while in the onsen.
There are indoor pools which are VERY hot and outdoor polls that are quite hot. I prefered the outdoor pools because as it got darker, I could look up and see the stars, and I liked the contrast of the very cold air and the hot water on my skin. There was also a great view of the springs from the bath itself. Although I went to a Turkish bath once to clean up after an all night bus ride, this was my first time seeing a hot springs, and I really enjoyed it. We went in before and after dinner and breakfast the next day. My skin still feels very soft.
Meals were both very good and kind of terrifying. It's considered very rude to not finish all the food, and can result in not being invited back. However, Rachel and Brett are both allergic to shellfish, so we plastic-bagged and flushed a lot of food. We felt a little guilty about this because it's all very fresh, gourmet Japanese food, but it's also very intimidating. Dinner consisted of assorted sashimi (including really good tuna), tofu with a silver of beef decorated with pine nuts, an abalone with mushrooms and peppers that cooked on a burner at each place, mini ramen, a dumpling in a soup, tempura crab, plum wine and many other things I forget. One 'goal' of the ryokan is to never show you the same serving/eating dish twice, and the dishes everything came on were equally beautiful. My favorite was shaped like a boat.
I haven't really adapted to the Japanese attitude towards rice. I'm alright with rice as a vehicle, but in general, I stop eating my rice when I run out of curry to soak it in, and I believe the optimal curry to rice ratio is very high. I can taste the difference between good rice and horrible rice, but I'm blurry on the whole spectrum. In Japan, rice is the most important part of the meal and is often served after the rest of the food, intended to be eaten all by itself or with pickled vegetables. I was entirely too full to eat my rice (bad Japanese person!) and considered the plastic bag approach before Brett voluntered (good Japanese person!).
Breakfast was pretty difficult. I'd bragged to Julie I had no qualms about a tuna onigiri in the morning, but a steaming tofu-fish pudding was another story and Brett and Rachel took pity on me. Please don't take my non-picky eater card away. I'll do better next time, and I did enjoy a broth-with-clams, a mini omelet dumpling in broth, and even a small fish with its head and tail. (Come on, everyone, you know that's really scary. It's almost a live fish. Even though it doesn't smell fishy, there's the knowledge it COULD smell fishy. I could have eaten some part not intended to be eaten. I couldn't tell the nama gomi from the delicious. Also, fish look kind of like monsters when they are dead.) It was actually very good.
Almost everyone staying at our onsen--except us and an Iranian man named Jimmy who was married to a Canadian Japanese woman-- was Japanese, so it was cool to get the traditional Japanese ryokan experience. I debated whether going to an onsen was a good choice given the limited amount of time I had, but Brett and Rachel were enthusiastic and it was a really good trip.
After a final dip, Brett had to head into Tokyo for a business meeting and Rachel and I took the train up to Gora, and then took a monorail/funnicula/cable car higher up the mountain. It was much colder up there, and even though the sky was perfectly clear, there were drops of rain. I've tried to look this up online to no avail, but my best guess is that it is volcanic steam condensing. After exploring and enjoying the view, we hiked down to Gora and then did some shopping before heading home.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
We Will Rock You
Today I went into Tokyo to meet up with Julie, a fellow Truman, who’s from Wisconsin and who has just embarked on a post-graduate trip around the world with two friends. They are starting out in Tokyo, then going to South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, India, Nepal, Thailand, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. I got a East Africa craving just thinking about it. It was really nice to see Julie.
We spent the afternoon wandering around a park between Harajuku and Shinjuku. The park had a major pedestrian thoroughfare which was lined by bands playing and people performing. The bands typically played for exposure, not money, although some were also selling CDs. Crowds gathered around better bands, sitting down or standing in a circle around silently clapping (at first we clapped too loudly and everyone stared at us). Male bands were almost exclusively watched by females, and vice versa. I'm struggling to capture the degree of interesting chaos, so I'll revert to a list. Particularly noteworthy were:
-a group of people dressed in jeans and plaid (think Sixteen Feet) doing heavily choreographed “footloose” style dancing while filmed.
-Two people doing karoke to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” alongside the street.
-Five particularly pretty Japanese boys in dark jeans and leather jackets danced and played invisible instruments to a string of hit songs. Mysterically, the instruments disasppeared—and the song continued—whenever the chorus came on and they danced to it.
-Several tiny dogs on a bench wearing sunglasses and matching sweaters.
-A bunch of Amnesty volunteers wearing bright orange jackets urged us to “get in bed for Darfur.” They had a huge make-shift bed and they were talking pictures of people in it holding up signs calling for intervention in Darfur. They would then send all the pictures to the UN. I’ve seen college groups adopt the same picture taking strategy with pledge signs, but this was definitely one step further. Julie and I happily got in the bed (how could you not) and held up the signs. Make love, not war. I think this was the first CSO I’ve seen in Japan, which was interesting in itself. I wished we had more language in common, because I’m curious what their base of support is like, how much coverage Darfur gets in the Japanese news, and what the position of the Japanese government is. I guess I can look the latter up online.
-Men dressed as frogs, cartoon characters, and horses with reindeer antlers.
-While listening to the bands, the Japanese girls danced by making small jumps from side to side. I might be able to do that! I have a feeling I’d wind up coming down on someone’s foot though.
--Julie’s friends who live in Japan have a comedy routine, and had a sign with them that said “Hugs—500 Yen.” They used it to bargain at the flea market and to get in a ‘fight’ with a Japanese improve group.
It was a colder day than I was prepared for, so on my way home I got in touch with my inner Japanese schoolgirl and bought a pair of knee socks.
On Friday night, I went to a “young person’s party” in Tokyo which very similar to every other good house party I’ve been to. I met a Japanese guy who, lo and behold, had attended Springhurst elementary, my alma mater, a couple years before I had. I also met two Japanese girls who’d just graduated from American colleges. One of them attended Hofstra University and had a thick Jersey accent—something I never expected to hear in Japan.
I want to post more, but I have to get up early to go to Hakonei tomorrow. I'm not taking a laptop with me, but will be back by Tuesday night, Japan time.
We spent the afternoon wandering around a park between Harajuku and Shinjuku. The park had a major pedestrian thoroughfare which was lined by bands playing and people performing. The bands typically played for exposure, not money, although some were also selling CDs. Crowds gathered around better bands, sitting down or standing in a circle around silently clapping (at first we clapped too loudly and everyone stared at us). Male bands were almost exclusively watched by females, and vice versa. I'm struggling to capture the degree of interesting chaos, so I'll revert to a list. Particularly noteworthy were:
-a group of people dressed in jeans and plaid (think Sixteen Feet) doing heavily choreographed “footloose” style dancing while filmed.
-Two people doing karoke to Queen’s “We Will Rock You” alongside the street.
-Five particularly pretty Japanese boys in dark jeans and leather jackets danced and played invisible instruments to a string of hit songs. Mysterically, the instruments disasppeared—and the song continued—whenever the chorus came on and they danced to it.
-Several tiny dogs on a bench wearing sunglasses and matching sweaters.
-A bunch of Amnesty volunteers wearing bright orange jackets urged us to “get in bed for Darfur.” They had a huge make-shift bed and they were talking pictures of people in it holding up signs calling for intervention in Darfur. They would then send all the pictures to the UN. I’ve seen college groups adopt the same picture taking strategy with pledge signs, but this was definitely one step further. Julie and I happily got in the bed (how could you not) and held up the signs. Make love, not war. I think this was the first CSO I’ve seen in Japan, which was interesting in itself. I wished we had more language in common, because I’m curious what their base of support is like, how much coverage Darfur gets in the Japanese news, and what the position of the Japanese government is. I guess I can look the latter up online.
-Men dressed as frogs, cartoon characters, and horses with reindeer antlers.
-While listening to the bands, the Japanese girls danced by making small jumps from side to side. I might be able to do that! I have a feeling I’d wind up coming down on someone’s foot though.
--Julie’s friends who live in Japan have a comedy routine, and had a sign with them that said “Hugs—500 Yen.” They used it to bargain at the flea market and to get in a ‘fight’ with a Japanese improve group.
It was a colder day than I was prepared for, so on my way home I got in touch with my inner Japanese schoolgirl and bought a pair of knee socks.
On Friday night, I went to a “young person’s party” in Tokyo which very similar to every other good house party I’ve been to. I met a Japanese guy who, lo and behold, had attended Springhurst elementary, my alma mater, a couple years before I had. I also met two Japanese girls who’d just graduated from American colleges. One of them attended Hofstra University and had a thick Jersey accent—something I never expected to hear in Japan.
I want to post more, but I have to get up early to go to Hakonei tomorrow. I'm not taking a laptop with me, but will be back by Tuesday night, Japan time.
Diffusion on the Tokyu Line
I’m on a Milan Kundera kick, so on the train into Shibuya I sat reading “Of Laughter and Forgetting” while wearing Turkish earrings and drinking ostensibly Kenyan coffee. Our lives are full of these moments, but every now and then it hits me again how recent this all is. I think we underestimate the “first wave” of globalization and the long-standing trade network across Asia through the silkroad and the amount of trade across the Indian ocean, but I don’t think so many things were ever this casually integrated before.
I used to rhapsodize about this in high school. I thought cultural diffusion and globalization boiled down to New York City girls in Chinese embroidered flats and Indian bracelets eating Mexican food (like many, I left Africa out of my global daydream at the time), a fusion that was sure to spread ever outwards. (Giuliani assures me NYC is a microcosm the world—or at least the country.) Intellectually, all I can stick with from this is I think we too often characterize cultural globalization as the spread of Western products and images, when in fact there’s more multi-dimensional integration.
Also, of course, looking at the integration of consumer products as the hallmark of globalization is cheap. Trade exists without equal power relations, and an exchange of goods doesn’t necessarily lead to an exchange of ideas. (Theory: if there’s trade between two relatively equal countries, there has to be an exchange of ideas. Case in point: corporate reorganization and assessment in the US and Japan. Maybe the difference lies in competing corporations in two counties versus trade through a multinational corporation.)
At any rate, even if we shouldn’t draw too many conculsions about the state of the world from one American girl’s reading material and jewelry and coffee on the Tokyo subway, it is a fairly new and growing snapshot. It also makes me so happy to be living in this era.
I used to rhapsodize about this in high school. I thought cultural diffusion and globalization boiled down to New York City girls in Chinese embroidered flats and Indian bracelets eating Mexican food (like many, I left Africa out of my global daydream at the time), a fusion that was sure to spread ever outwards. (Giuliani assures me NYC is a microcosm the world—or at least the country.) Intellectually, all I can stick with from this is I think we too often characterize cultural globalization as the spread of Western products and images, when in fact there’s more multi-dimensional integration.
Also, of course, looking at the integration of consumer products as the hallmark of globalization is cheap. Trade exists without equal power relations, and an exchange of goods doesn’t necessarily lead to an exchange of ideas. (Theory: if there’s trade between two relatively equal countries, there has to be an exchange of ideas. Case in point: corporate reorganization and assessment in the US and Japan. Maybe the difference lies in competing corporations in two counties versus trade through a multinational corporation.)
At any rate, even if we shouldn’t draw too many conculsions about the state of the world from one American girl’s reading material and jewelry and coffee on the Tokyo subway, it is a fairly new and growing snapshot. It also makes me so happy to be living in this era.
In a Bright and Distant Town
This has been my favorite week in Japan in some ways. I’ve gotten to feel really comfortable with Rachel and Brett and I’m not always an embarrassment to myself in public. I loved Kamakura and enjoyed the party and meeting up with friends this weekend. I also am beginning to be able to conceptualize a fulfilling social life for myself here (this is guaranteed to happen right before one leaves a place. Guaranteed).
It’s also been a hard week though. My grandmother recently had surgery and had to return to the hospital due to complications. I hear that she’s doing better now but it’s hard to be so far away from home and I wish I could be with my family.
I’m also realizing I committed an error in putting a friendship before a friend. One thing that frustrates me is how much of the last six to eight years I’ve spent thinking about relationships and how little I’ve spent thinking about how to be a good friend or a good daughter. I think this is worth posting about (and sorry if this sounds preachy) because I think this is pretty common among people my age. I don’t know that the solution is spending more time doing comprehensive social analysis (yeah, mock me for this sentence), but it seems like there was a lot of waste somewhere.
It’s also been a hard week though. My grandmother recently had surgery and had to return to the hospital due to complications. I hear that she’s doing better now but it’s hard to be so far away from home and I wish I could be with my family.
I’m also realizing I committed an error in putting a friendship before a friend. One thing that frustrates me is how much of the last six to eight years I’ve spent thinking about relationships and how little I’ve spent thinking about how to be a good friend or a good daughter. I think this is worth posting about (and sorry if this sounds preachy) because I think this is pretty common among people my age. I don’t know that the solution is spending more time doing comprehensive social analysis (yeah, mock me for this sentence), but it seems like there was a lot of waste somewhere.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Sumimasen
There's quite a few things I'd planned to post about tonight--including friendship, a round two on comparative civil society, the consequences of demographic shifts in Japan and a 'college party' in Tokyo, but it's been a really exhausting week and I think I'm too tired to write anything readable right now. I definitely plan on major postage tomorrow. I'm meeting a friend in a part of Tokyo I've never been to, so I may have something to say about that too.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Balancing Better in the Land of Pedestrians
If I was actually probably learning Japanese, I'd write "Daily Life" in Japanese, and then you could all be impressed/have no clue what I was writing. Unfortunately, I'm stuck at the word-of-the-day level. I can describe all objects as lively, pretty, cute, dangerous, tasty, green or purple. I request your kindness. It's my fault. There is no need to say thank you.
On the bright side, I'm doing much better with my hashi than I was at first. The score for tonight: no noodles on lap/floor, only one noodle down shirt. This means my hashi skills roughly approximate my silverware abilities. My next goal is to learn to properly cut meat in the US without having to lean into it.
Some of my long-standing foibles are par for the course in Japan. R often comments on the degree of "consensus culture" and the degree of consulting that goes into social planning. People will typically call each other five or six times over the course of an evening to develop mutually acceptable social plans. I don't think I'd notice this if it weren't pointed out to me-- after all, what is gchat for?
I also have a tendency to be overly diffident and diplomatic when making small scale plans: "Oh, I really don't have a preference. Whatever you decide sounds good to me." I think I take this far enough so that it may become annoying rather than polite at home, but it definitely is the acceptable way to make decisions here.
I really like the strong pedestrian orientation of everything. Not only is space an issue, but drivers' licenses cost around 5,000 dollars, so cars are much less common than in the states. All the streets are very narrow and there are a lot of very hilly neighborhoods through which only one car could drive through at a time. There are neighborhoods not accessible by car at all, and stairs that connect lower and higher neighborhoods.
I noticed the different layout--and the uber efficient train system-- much earlier, but have only recently noticed some of the other effects of the scarcity of cars. At the grocery story, the only carts are sort of half-sized double decker carts that are used to tote a heavy basket, and most customers carry baskets. No point in buying a cart full of groceries you will then be unable to carry home, probably over several hills. Anything larger than groceries can be delivered.
I'm in Japan until the 18th, and then will be back in the states for the holidays and at least some of the winter. I'm going to Hakonei, a mountain town with lots of onsen, this weekend, and will go to Kyoto and Osaka shortly before leaving.
On the bright side, I'm doing much better with my hashi than I was at first. The score for tonight: no noodles on lap/floor, only one noodle down shirt. This means my hashi skills roughly approximate my silverware abilities. My next goal is to learn to properly cut meat in the US without having to lean into it.
Some of my long-standing foibles are par for the course in Japan. R often comments on the degree of "consensus culture" and the degree of consulting that goes into social planning. People will typically call each other five or six times over the course of an evening to develop mutually acceptable social plans. I don't think I'd notice this if it weren't pointed out to me-- after all, what is gchat for?
I also have a tendency to be overly diffident and diplomatic when making small scale plans: "Oh, I really don't have a preference. Whatever you decide sounds good to me." I think I take this far enough so that it may become annoying rather than polite at home, but it definitely is the acceptable way to make decisions here.
I really like the strong pedestrian orientation of everything. Not only is space an issue, but drivers' licenses cost around 5,000 dollars, so cars are much less common than in the states. All the streets are very narrow and there are a lot of very hilly neighborhoods through which only one car could drive through at a time. There are neighborhoods not accessible by car at all, and stairs that connect lower and higher neighborhoods.
I noticed the different layout--and the uber efficient train system-- much earlier, but have only recently noticed some of the other effects of the scarcity of cars. At the grocery story, the only carts are sort of half-sized double decker carts that are used to tote a heavy basket, and most customers carry baskets. No point in buying a cart full of groceries you will then be unable to carry home, probably over several hills. Anything larger than groceries can be delivered.
I'm in Japan until the 18th, and then will be back in the states for the holidays and at least some of the winter. I'm going to Hakonei, a mountain town with lots of onsen, this weekend, and will go to Kyoto and Osaka shortly before leaving.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Not About Doves
In Little Women (or at least the 1994 film version), there's a scene where Jo gets into an argument with a man who believes women should have the right to vote because they would be a good moral influence. The timelessly kickass Jo March responds: "I find it poor logic to say that women should vote because they are good. Men do not vote because they are good; they vote because they are male, and women should vote, not because we are angels and men are animals, but because we are human beings and citizens of this country."
I spent today working on notes for a R is giving on women and international security and came up with an almost parallel theme. Throughout most of the 20th century, the desire to invovle women in foreign policy or security decisions stemmed from the fact that people believed that women would be a force for peace. It's a fairly archetypal story, stemming back at least to the sex strike against the Peloponnesian War in the Greek play Lysistrata. There was Jeanette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against World War II who commented that commented that “As a woman, I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”Most of the feminist IR theory I read in college claimed that war (and particularly the military industrial complex) was a singularly masculine construction and the male-dominated nature of the defense establishment contributed to an unhealthy separation between conflict and emotion.
I think a couple of factors have changed this argument in the last fifteen years. First, as more women have held high positions within security-oriented institutions, the idea that women are inclined towards pacifism has been challenged in practice. Within the United States, Albright advocated for US military commitment in Kosovo. Rice has been active in the execution of the War on Terror. Hillary Clinton strongly supported the 2003 Iraq War. One explanation is that there are few inherent psychological differences between men and women, and women are as disposed to conflict as men. Another theory is that in order to gain power and respect, women must present themselves as men present themselves, taking care not to seem “weak on security.”I can buy either, and they could both work if we argue that women are socialized to be more uncomfortable with confrontation, but the women who gain power are the ones less affected by this.
I also think that the painful prevalence of gender based violence (the slaughter of thousands of men in Srebrenica, the mass rape of Bosnian Muslim victims, the propaganda about Tutsi women and the ensuing sexual violence) in ethnic cleansing campaigns in the 1990s forced organizations like the UN to reevaluate their predominantly male peace-keeping structure for different reasons. Because gender can play a huge role in the execution of conflict and the affected populations are both male and female, it seems short-sighted to have security decisions made and executed by men alone. I think this is the rationale the UN was moving towards with resolution 1325, and it's a way to argue that gender integration is essential without being, err, essentializing.
I spent today working on notes for a R is giving on women and international security and came up with an almost parallel theme. Throughout most of the 20th century, the desire to invovle women in foreign policy or security decisions stemmed from the fact that people believed that women would be a force for peace. It's a fairly archetypal story, stemming back at least to the sex strike against the Peloponnesian War in the Greek play Lysistrata. There was Jeanette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against World War II who commented that commented that “As a woman, I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”Most of the feminist IR theory I read in college claimed that war (and particularly the military industrial complex) was a singularly masculine construction and the male-dominated nature of the defense establishment contributed to an unhealthy separation between conflict and emotion.
I think a couple of factors have changed this argument in the last fifteen years. First, as more women have held high positions within security-oriented institutions, the idea that women are inclined towards pacifism has been challenged in practice. Within the United States, Albright advocated for US military commitment in Kosovo. Rice has been active in the execution of the War on Terror. Hillary Clinton strongly supported the 2003 Iraq War. One explanation is that there are few inherent psychological differences between men and women, and women are as disposed to conflict as men. Another theory is that in order to gain power and respect, women must present themselves as men present themselves, taking care not to seem “weak on security.”I can buy either, and they could both work if we argue that women are socialized to be more uncomfortable with confrontation, but the women who gain power are the ones less affected by this.
I also think that the painful prevalence of gender based violence (the slaughter of thousands of men in Srebrenica, the mass rape of Bosnian Muslim victims, the propaganda about Tutsi women and the ensuing sexual violence) in ethnic cleansing campaigns in the 1990s forced organizations like the UN to reevaluate their predominantly male peace-keeping structure for different reasons. Because gender can play a huge role in the execution of conflict and the affected populations are both male and female, it seems short-sighted to have security decisions made and executed by men alone. I think this is the rationale the UN was moving towards with resolution 1325, and it's a way to argue that gender integration is essential without being, err, essentializing.
Royalty and Remakes
Ok, I give up,I officially hate primary season. Can I be cool now? I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was in kindergarten. A little fishy.
I've always thought it was a good thing that American didn't have royalty, but today while we were watching coverage of the Guiliani NYC scandal, R made an interesting point. She argued that while Guiliani clearly used city resources inappropriately, the coverage of his sex life was over the top, although it was a long shot from the attention paid to Clinton's scandals. In contrast, in Europe, monarchs can be the moral face of a population so the public is less concerned with the morality of politicians and more concerned with their policies. (Or maybe whether they'd done business with people who harbor al Qaeda operatives.) I'd always thought Europe was just less puritanical, but maybe it is helpful for a country to have non-elected dignitaries who can be morally accountable celebrity representatives.
Also, this story sounds kind of like high school students decided to remake the War of 1812 in the style of a Wishbone episode for their final, setting it in the present day. They swapped out press ganging for extradition and got confused about who was doing the kidnapping. Aren't there treaties with our allies for that?
I've always thought it was a good thing that American didn't have royalty, but today while we were watching coverage of the Guiliani NYC scandal, R made an interesting point. She argued that while Guiliani clearly used city resources inappropriately, the coverage of his sex life was over the top, although it was a long shot from the attention paid to Clinton's scandals. In contrast, in Europe, monarchs can be the moral face of a population so the public is less concerned with the morality of politicians and more concerned with their policies. (Or maybe whether they'd done business with people who harbor al Qaeda operatives.) I'd always thought Europe was just less puritanical, but maybe it is helpful for a country to have non-elected dignitaries who can be morally accountable celebrity representatives.
Also, this story sounds kind of like high school students decided to remake the War of 1812 in the style of a Wishbone episode for their final, setting it in the present day. They swapped out press ganging for extradition and got confused about who was doing the kidnapping. Aren't there treaties with our allies for that?
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Kamakura
Today I went to Kamakura, which is a seaside town south of Yokohama. It was briefly the capital of Japan during the 13th century. (I just looked up Kamakura on wikipedia to check the date, and learned something really interesting: People think it was the fourth largest city in the world back in the 12th century. It's built in an ideal location for an old city-surrounded by mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth.)
Kamakura is famous for its giant bronze Buddha, or daibutsu, which was built around 1252 and is almost 14 meters high. On our way into see the daibutsu, we were stopped by three young men and a woman who asked if they could talk to us for a moment. I thought they were probably trying to sell something, but we stopped anyway. They explained they were students at a nearby universities who volunteered to give tours in order to improve their English. They were members of a cross-cultural club, and they took turns doing this each weekend. This was a little bit of an only-in-Japan moment for me. A sign one is in an economically secure country: volunteer tour guides don't try to charge you.
Before we went to see the Buddha, there was a well of water with several tin dippers placed across it. Our guides instructed us to first wash our left hand, then our right, then our mouth. We then saw the Buddha. One of my favorite moments was when one of our guides described his third eye as a laser. It's completely hollow, so we got to go inside the belly of the Buddha. Looking up, I could see the indentation of each knot of his hair inside the casting of his head. To one side of the Buddha were giant straw sandals that must have been about six feet long. There were several bronze statues of the lotus flower on either side, each with blooms ranging from fully closed to part way open to in full flower. Our guides explained that this symbolized the past, present, and future.
(I think there was a time I knew a lot more about Buddhism. I think when I was 15, I knew more about existentialism, the Indian Subcontinent, the Russian and French revolutions and post colonial literature than I know now. When I was three, I knew a lot of things about dinosaurs I have long since forgetten. Information about marine mammals, the Salem Witch trials, and human evolution has also been left along the wayside somewhere in favor of backbending labor supply curves and learning to apply eyeliner, things I expect to forget in the next ten years. It's a little sad to think about losing knowledge. I guess it's relearnable.)
Our guides were great. They were freshman and sophomores who were studying economics and cross cultural relations. Throughout the tour, they strived to find their own themes for transcedent conversations. Did I like music? What "man type" did I like? What kinds of Japanese food had I tried?
After the daibutsu, we went to Hase temple, which is famous for its giant wooden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. There was also a golden buddha statue with offerings like sake and oranges around its base. People tossed coins into the offering box in front of the statues and made wishes. There was a beautiful writing room with rows of low-lying tables and cushions and large windows. Each table was stocked with elegant writing paper and ink, and people sat on the cushions and wrote wishes, which they later tied onto wooden frames. I was worried I'd make a mess with the ink, so I stuck to the more familar coin wishing approach.
What made the Hase temple unnerving and eery were the small stone statues in rows and rows everywhere. As I understand, women purchase the statues to "give peace to unborn children." Amid the rows of identical statues was occasionally a flash of color-- one statue was wearing a red knit cap. Another wore a pink sweater. Another had crackers left at its base. There were small childrens' toys everywhere. It was a little bit chilling, but I guess if it allows women to make peace with themselves while still acknowledging their abortion or miscarriage, it's certainly a powerful idea. It reminded me a little of the tomb of the unknown solidier somehow. Graveyards commemorate people who have been known, whereas this temple commemorated the idea of a person.
But, then, I'm not sure if this is the goal of the temple grounds at all. Perhaps memorialize and commemorate are entirely inappropriate words to use. Perhaps by putting a statue there, one is protecting oneself against a ghost. The truth is lost in the vagueries of my pamplet for english-speaking tourists.
At the base of the temple was a cave filled with more stone statues, and other, large sculptures. The cave itself was carved out of the rock and was very old. We had to crouch-walk thought most of it. After emerging from the cave, we climbed up the hillside to an overlook where we could see the ocean and the town of Kamakura below us. Through the climb, there were lots of signs urging people to be quiet because it was a meditative place. Even though the site was packed, almost everyone was silent. (I was also impressed by the number of people making the trip in heels; the woman in front of me didn't falter in boots with four inch silettos. A meditation on balance, I guess. )
The top really highlighted what a protected bay it was. We could see the mountains on three sides of us, then straight across the bay and out to sea. Back when Kamakura was the capital and there was an ongoing threat of Mongol invasion, I could imagine a lookout scanning the horizon line for ships. It reminded me a little of Rumeli Kavagi, an old fortress at the north of the strait of Bosphorus in Turkey-- or the view from the acropolis in Greece.
Kamakura is a beach town as well as home to major Buddhist sites, and we wound up on the beach. It's been an unseasonably warm December, and I have a hard time seeing ocean without going in, so I rolled up my jeans and did some wading. A lot of people were braver then me-- there were tons of surfers and windsurfers bracing themselves against the cold in wetsuits. I was jealous.
We ended up at the "Seedless California Beach Bar" (I guess the seedy one is down the round) where I discovered that my thumb is not big enough to fill to cover the top of a Corona bottle when trying to mix in the lime. Oops. I probably could have looked at my hand and figured this out, but at least my already salty jeans were the only victim of my experiential learning style.
Kamakura is famous for its giant bronze Buddha, or daibutsu, which was built around 1252 and is almost 14 meters high. On our way into see the daibutsu, we were stopped by three young men and a woman who asked if they could talk to us for a moment. I thought they were probably trying to sell something, but we stopped anyway. They explained they were students at a nearby universities who volunteered to give tours in order to improve their English. They were members of a cross-cultural club, and they took turns doing this each weekend. This was a little bit of an only-in-Japan moment for me. A sign one is in an economically secure country: volunteer tour guides don't try to charge you.
Before we went to see the Buddha, there was a well of water with several tin dippers placed across it. Our guides instructed us to first wash our left hand, then our right, then our mouth. We then saw the Buddha. One of my favorite moments was when one of our guides described his third eye as a laser. It's completely hollow, so we got to go inside the belly of the Buddha. Looking up, I could see the indentation of each knot of his hair inside the casting of his head. To one side of the Buddha were giant straw sandals that must have been about six feet long. There were several bronze statues of the lotus flower on either side, each with blooms ranging from fully closed to part way open to in full flower. Our guides explained that this symbolized the past, present, and future.
(I think there was a time I knew a lot more about Buddhism. I think when I was 15, I knew more about existentialism, the Indian Subcontinent, the Russian and French revolutions and post colonial literature than I know now. When I was three, I knew a lot of things about dinosaurs I have long since forgetten. Information about marine mammals, the Salem Witch trials, and human evolution has also been left along the wayside somewhere in favor of backbending labor supply curves and learning to apply eyeliner, things I expect to forget in the next ten years. It's a little sad to think about losing knowledge. I guess it's relearnable.)
Our guides were great. They were freshman and sophomores who were studying economics and cross cultural relations. Throughout the tour, they strived to find their own themes for transcedent conversations. Did I like music? What "man type" did I like? What kinds of Japanese food had I tried?
After the daibutsu, we went to Hase temple, which is famous for its giant wooden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. There was also a golden buddha statue with offerings like sake and oranges around its base. People tossed coins into the offering box in front of the statues and made wishes. There was a beautiful writing room with rows of low-lying tables and cushions and large windows. Each table was stocked with elegant writing paper and ink, and people sat on the cushions and wrote wishes, which they later tied onto wooden frames. I was worried I'd make a mess with the ink, so I stuck to the more familar coin wishing approach.
What made the Hase temple unnerving and eery were the small stone statues in rows and rows everywhere. As I understand, women purchase the statues to "give peace to unborn children." Amid the rows of identical statues was occasionally a flash of color-- one statue was wearing a red knit cap. Another wore a pink sweater. Another had crackers left at its base. There were small childrens' toys everywhere. It was a little bit chilling, but I guess if it allows women to make peace with themselves while still acknowledging their abortion or miscarriage, it's certainly a powerful idea. It reminded me a little of the tomb of the unknown solidier somehow. Graveyards commemorate people who have been known, whereas this temple commemorated the idea of a person.
But, then, I'm not sure if this is the goal of the temple grounds at all. Perhaps memorialize and commemorate are entirely inappropriate words to use. Perhaps by putting a statue there, one is protecting oneself against a ghost. The truth is lost in the vagueries of my pamplet for english-speaking tourists.
At the base of the temple was a cave filled with more stone statues, and other, large sculptures. The cave itself was carved out of the rock and was very old. We had to crouch-walk thought most of it. After emerging from the cave, we climbed up the hillside to an overlook where we could see the ocean and the town of Kamakura below us. Through the climb, there were lots of signs urging people to be quiet because it was a meditative place. Even though the site was packed, almost everyone was silent. (I was also impressed by the number of people making the trip in heels; the woman in front of me didn't falter in boots with four inch silettos. A meditation on balance, I guess. )
The top really highlighted what a protected bay it was. We could see the mountains on three sides of us, then straight across the bay and out to sea. Back when Kamakura was the capital and there was an ongoing threat of Mongol invasion, I could imagine a lookout scanning the horizon line for ships. It reminded me a little of Rumeli Kavagi, an old fortress at the north of the strait of Bosphorus in Turkey-- or the view from the acropolis in Greece.
Kamakura is a beach town as well as home to major Buddhist sites, and we wound up on the beach. It's been an unseasonably warm December, and I have a hard time seeing ocean without going in, so I rolled up my jeans and did some wading. A lot of people were braver then me-- there were tons of surfers and windsurfers bracing themselves against the cold in wetsuits. I was jealous.
We ended up at the "Seedless California Beach Bar" (I guess the seedy one is down the round) where I discovered that my thumb is not big enough to fill to cover the top of a Corona bottle when trying to mix in the lime. Oops. I probably could have looked at my hand and figured this out, but at least my already salty jeans were the only victim of my experiential learning style.
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