Adventures and Misadventures

Questions of Faith

2008-03-25T01:05:00.005-04:00

My friend has an interesting post on Obama and faith. He lives in small-town Arkansas so he comes in contact with a very different segment of the voting block than I do. He describes conversations with someone who believes Obama's a closet Muslim, evangelicals who are considering pulling the lever to the left, and a "self described third generation secular humanist" who will remain nameless who doesn't think Obama is particularly religious.

I think one thing this post really demonstrates is Obama's ability to be all things to most people (I guess this charm doesn't work as well on the first group). I think McCain does this too, and these chameleon-like skills leave some voters with the odd false belief that these two are similar in substance. People are able to project their ideal candidate fantasies onto them.

Although I didn't start out an Obama supporter, I feel more positively about his candidacy as the campaign wears on. In theory, it isn't a bad thing for a politician to be able to convince a majority of the electorate he's speaking to them and agrees with them. However, it reminds me of my initial unease about Obama. Will he be a great progressive leader? Is his foreign policy as good as I think it will be? I was uneasy when he revived the social security debate earlier this fall. I think I was immune to the winks and nudges he was sending the rest of the progressive left.

In time, I've come around. I'm quite sure he's winking at me, and sometimes, he's out and out brave. I don't think this is a case of drinking the koolaide, but rather, respecting a candidate more as he is challenged and tested. However, in the end, despite analysis, research, and a far longer-than-usual campaign season, guessing what type of president a candidate will become will always involve a few leaps of faith.

Samaria, Judea, and Tibet

2008-03-24T00:54:00.004-04:00

After listening to a radio story about Tibet, my father made an interesting argument about post- World War II conflict and souvreignty that's stuck with me throughout this week.

He argued that since the end of World War II, only two nations have conquered previously sovereign territory and incorporated into their state. The two cases were China (Tibet) and Israel (the West Bank). These instances aren't perfectly parallel-- on the one hand, China had more recent territorial claims to Tibet than Israel had to the West Bank, but on the other hand, Israel claimed the West Bank as a buffer zone in the content of a larger war and never gave it back whereas China took control of Tibet in the absence of a surrounding conflict.

There have been other states that have controlled territories that had sovereign claims, such as the former Soviet Union. However, these territorial encroachments occured before or at the onset of the post-war period and they have gained independence since. There have also been prolonged occupations (like the current US position in Iraq) but although that occupation invalidated Iraqi sovereignty and does n't seem likely to end soon, the US never claimed Iraq was now part of our state, and has argued that Iraq should be sovereign.

At first, I worried that this argument was limited because it excluded most of Africa because few modern African states had sovereignty before World War II. However, I can't come up with any cases in Africa, either.

There have also, of course, been sovereignty movements by groups within states that have been repressed by the state (Basques in Spain, etc) but this isn't the same as the state conquering sovereign territory. If anyone can think of another case besides China and Israel, let me know.

If this argument is true, I think it has two important implications:

A. The UN charter has been successful in creating a norm in which states do not conquer; they do not claim sovereign territory. This is different from the world before the charter (colonialism, German aggression, etc) and the fact that war over land and boundaries continues to exist suggests that the difference cannot just be attributed to the decreasing bounty gained from territorial war.

B. Both the exceptions to this rule may have benefited from the UN structure which may enable them to be exempt from the dorm. China has a security council veto and Israel is closely allied with a country that has a similar veto. I think this buttresses an argument I made on one of my honors exams; the UN's weaknesses are more due to dated structural weakness within as declining external support, corruption, or the "unsuitability" of IGOs to the current world order.

Trouble with Polylingustic Blogging Technology

2008-03-23T23:56:00.002-04:00

Some readers may remember that while in Japan, I was consistently
outsmarted by my plumbing. I like to pretend that such laspes only occur when I'm at a linguistic disadvantage-- would YOU know how to talk to a Japanese toilet?-- but, as my close friends would no doubt tell you, I have similar difficulties stateside.

Among the most recent of these is an ongoing frustration with the inflexibility and intelligence of blogspot. While I was in Japan, blogspot picked up on the fact I was in Japan, and decided to speak to me in Japanese. While I'm very impressed both that a) blogspot is so aware of its environs and b) blogspot speaks Japanese, I'm frustrated at blogspot's unwillingness to recognize it has returned home to the United States. Either that, or it has decided I'm a Japanese speaker.

I've tried to convince blogspot (through verifying the language setting on my computer, etc) that we have, in fact, returned to the states, and I do, in fact, speak English, but alas, the program is stubborn.

Ok, I know this isn't quite as funny or novel as the talking shower, but it explains why I can't change much on the site (all the prompts/menu options are in characters) and I needed a warm up post.

Obama and Nativism

2008-02-29T03:28:00.009-05:00

I've been reading a lot on the web that it seems the dominant line of attack against Obama in the general election would be to challenge his patriotism and loyalty to the United States, with varying hues of sophistication. Hence the dissection of Michelle Obama's 'proud comment' and the circulation of pictures of Obama in traditional Somali clothing and the repeat use of his middle name.

I have a friend who's a Clinton supporter, and throughout the early primaries, he emphasized how most of Clinton's support seemed to be coming from the white Democratic working class rather than the more white-collared Obama supporters. While it seems this pattern was somewhat shattered on Super Tuesday, the argument gave me, as a former Edwards supporter concerned with growing economic inequality, some pause. Were Clinton's policies more pro-poor? Were working class people just more comfortable choosing the white woman over the black man?

I don't think the differences in their economic policies are significant, and I think racism transcends class differences in the US, it just may take different forms. I wound up leaning towards both a preference for competence/experience and nativism as the major explanations for the early class gap among white blue collar voters.

Over Christmas break, an aunt of mine who lives in Virginia told us that many of her friends didn't want to vote for Obama because "he was Muslim." I think that while it's easy for us to laugh off these stories-- or be disgusted by them-- inside DC, they have a real impact on many voters. However, it would be short-sighted and unfair to blame the current tide of nativism solely on shallow prejudice.

Over the past few years, the average American has not seem much good that comes from other shores. We can take 9/11 and the spectre of Islamo-terrorism completely out of the picture and still make this claim. People have gotten poorer, and I think they see their wealth going overseas in two ways.

First, while free trade is not the bogeyman in this election and seems unlikely to become one, immigration certainly has the potential to be. (My father commented that a lot of conservative pundits don't like McCain because they had hoped to make immigration the general election wedge issue that gay marriage was in 2004 and his vote on the immigration reform act this summer makes that difficult.) I think the following myth is fairly common: "I am worse off and my taxes are going to help out illegal immigrants."

Second, America is spending billions of dollars abroad fighting an unpopular and unsuccessful war. People see this loss both in terms of their tax dollars and in terms of the lack of social programs that could otherwise be in its place.

(On a slightly different note-- and discussing a different portion of the electorate--I think it's important to note that due to the weaker dollar, fewer Americans may be traveling abroad than in the past, and this may also weaken America's affection for the rest of the world.)

I think there are seeds for a preference for soft isolationism among both the Democratic and the Republican electorate, and the strategy to paint Obama as a foreigner-- a man who grew up outside of the US, who isn't white, who has a funny name and is from a rioting country-- could definitely continue to have legs. In 2004, the Manchurian candidate threat could have held more weight, but I think the bulk of the insinuation this time around can be much softer. "He isn't one of us; he's from somewhere else."

To me, this potential rising isolationism and nativism is one of the biggest battles we foreign policy people (SAIS kids who don't vote and liberal economists too) are going to have to fight in the next decade (and it's not one we can win, or even understand, by labling our opponents as intolerant or bigoted). It's not just about rebuilding the world's faith in America, but rebuilding our own faith in the world and our place in it.

I think it's actually one of the best reasons for Obama's candidacy. I think we need a candidate who can credibly assert that our relationships with the rest of the world can be based on more than fear and protection. Although I'm pretty weary of the hope rhetoric, I'd like to see a candidate inject a little hope into the foreign policy debate. I don't know if Obama will do this-- it might be a bold step when McCain's predictions are so scary-- but I think he has the ability and opportunity to.

(I hate to make grand speculations about what candidates will do [and Obama supporters are particularly guilty of this] but I do think Clinton has forced herself to play more of McCain's game on foreign policy because of her Iraq vote, etc...)

Otter Creek and Magritte

2008-02-29T03:02:00.004-05:00

Earlier this week, I met some high school friends-- and their friends at SAIS-- at Brickskeller, a place in DC famous for having over 3,000 beers.

There was a temptation to try to show off by ordering Tusker or Efes or Mythos or Kirin, but I decided it was a good rule of thumb not to try to out-worldly future potential career diplomats, and I stuck to Otter Creek. It was also the cheapest thing on the menu.

(Otter Creek is a town near Burlington. Back when I was in high school, they had the best debate team in state for a year. Their champion debater had an extremely low, calm voice that really stood out as everyone else raised their voices as the round continued. I always envied that voice, and as a result, wanted to try the beer. Somehow, I don't think this has broad implications as a marketing technique.)

In general, the SAIS kids didn't vote and were proud of it. I promise, this is not my only topic of conversation, and in this case, I didn't bring it up, I swear, but of course, once it came up it had to be argued about. It's really depressing that people who will probably have a fair share of influence over American foreign policy-- and would certainly like to, at least-- don't think it's important to make it to the polls.

On the bathroom wall, someone had written "this is bathroom graffiti." Someone else (A 20th century art student? A freshman encountering Foucault for the first time? Someone with a brand new and tantalizing sharpie who was too drunk to be clever?) wrote under it "This is not bathroom graffiti." I thought it was just a Magritte spin off and then I realized it was different from the painting of the pipe. The painting was not a pipe because it was a painting. The bathroom graffiti was bathroom graffiti. I spent a little while trying to think what this meant. Then I was glad I didn't major in philosophy.

Another Reason Florida Mattered

2008-02-18T01:00:00.002-05:00

I was talking with my friend Rachel the other day, who's considering going into electoral reform activism. I think electoral reform is really, really important, but it's not something I ever want to do myself, so it's a little like playing tag. If I convinced her to do it, I wouldn't have to feel guilty about not doing it. She believes the job of an organizer is to bring together and empower grassroots movements, and a lot of her hesitation about taking up the issue was she felt like there was no grassroots movement to back it and that it was mainly a concern of the elite. She might be right, but I think there's a lot of evidence that the average voter (especially the average minority voter) worries about disenfranchisement.

One of my friends voted in a historically black neighborhood in Atlanta and said the young woman in front of him brought four photo ids to the polls because she was so worried someone would keep her from voting and she wanted to vote for Obama so badly.

In PA, there were frequently reports from minority would-be voters who had been registered but mysteriously never received their voter reg card.

The other day, I was meeting a bunch of friends for breakfast and didn't feel like getting properly dressed so I just threw on my Dean sweatshirt. On the train, the guy sitting next to me asked who I was voting for. When I responded, he said, "well, I'm not going to vote for Obama just because he's black. I'm going to vote for the person who promises me my vote is going to get counted. Why doesn't anyone talk about that anymore? I haven't heard anything about that. Bush stole the election in 2000, you know that? I haven't voted since then. Not going to vote this time, either."

He was from New Orleans and he still didn't have a permanent home. There were a myriad of reasons he could have been angry at the government. The one he picked was the very oldest scandal, the Supreme Court decision that won Bush the presidency, the failure to recount the votes of Florideans.

I made some pretty feeble "not voting isn't a good way to protest the system" arguments but he got to me a lot more than I could get to him. If you're afraid your vote isn't going to count, why vote?

Mambo Vipi Kweli, Tanzania?

2008-02-18T00:02:00.005-05:00

President Bush has spent the last five days visiting
Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia. I'm a little bitter it takes being a lame duck and plummeting approval rankings to get the President to make his second (somewhat promotional) trip to African in eight years, but it's something...

(The title from the entry comes from the fact I'm actually kind of impressed Bush greeted Tanzanians with the hip "mambo vipi?" Most Americans say "Jambo," which is acceptable in Kenya but considered a little rude in Tanzania, where people prefer the more formal "Hujambo?" The "kweli" means really or truly, but I might have put it in the wrong place. Eleuthera?)

I think it's interesting Bush is entirely bypassing Kenya. If the trip took place three months ago, I wonder if he would have visited Kenya instead of Tanzania. For the most part, conflict in Kenya is bad for Tanzania, but on the other hand, it may mean Tanzania can seize more of Kenya's tourism, marketshare, and headpatting for being a beacon of democracy in East Africa.

The tour is primarily promoting the Millenium Challenge goals and counter AIDS/malaria relief rather than confronting the political turmoil. I think there's space to criticize the Millenium Challenge goals-- the program reminds me a little of No Child Left Behind in that it incentivizes "good results" without providing the tools to get there-- but I think it's done more good than ill and is one possible way to combat corruption. Based on my time in Tanzania, it was hard to see how this translated into any poverty reduction, but I didn't have an comparison point.

There's a lot to criticize about PETFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. In addition to funding delays and dependence on expensive antiretroviral drugs rather cheaper South African generic drugs, PETFAR shifted funding away from AIDS programs that promoted condom use to programs that emphasized monogamy and abstinence. I wrote a column last year
that criticizes PETFAR. It was my first column, so it's a bit too dry, but it explains some of the reasons the plan isn't as good as it sounds.

Of course, no one in Tanzania is going to say that because money is better than no money and a president visiting is better than no president visiting. There's this hope, that maybe if they are very welcoming and maybe if he sees just how hard things are, maybe the United States will help a little bit more. (How can it not?) And if not, then they can tell their children they saw the American president. The American president can get coverage more friendly than he's gotten in months. And for the most part, everything will stay the same.

I don't mean to be cynical, I'm just sad.

Why Do Gyms Have Free Coffee, Anyway?

2008-02-17T23:22:00.004-05:00

I've made two exciting discoveries about my gym over the past month;
1) There is good free coffee
2) The conditioner is higher quality than the conditioner I buy for myself.
Given that I'm both a caffeine addict and I have a lot of hair, I figure I can turn my gym membership into a way to save money. By showering there, I'll go through conditioner at home more slowly and my hair will look better. I can save the money I would have otherwise spent on coffee, and the whole system further incentivizes going to the gym. (This sounds a little like something Macon Leary in The Accidental Tourist would have done. Oh dear.)

I'm not that cheap, I just like buying shoes and Ethiopian food more than I like buying conditioner and coffee.

Argonauting

2008-02-16T23:23:00.004-05:00

I figured it was time for a location update. Although at this point, I don't take anything for granted till I have the plane ticket in my in-box, I'm pretty sure I'll be in Greece for the summer. I'll be in DC until late April or early May (and can see the famous cherry blossoms, hurray!) and then will be on the road again.
I imagine blogging will pick up again then. It's harder for me to do in DC without falling into the trap of blogging about the primary. I'm certifiably obsessed with the primary, but really can only act as an internet echo machine (which I do anyway), so I probably won't post more than once or twice a week until I have a lot of slice-of-lifey things to write about again.

When the NATO project was first discussed, I wasn't thrilled by it because my academic interests have more traditionally been tied to the developing world. The more I think about it, the more excited I get, though. I was reading an interesting article in The Economist at the gym about how, in the event that Kosovo declares independence from Serbia, this may have some bearing on other "frozen conflicts" within Europe, particularly the Georgia-Ossetia conflict because it will change the precedent. (Nationalism is a contagious, contagious business, apparently.) I don't know very much about this, but plan on reading more this weekend, because Serbia forecasts Kosovo will declare independence in the next twenty-four hours.

My mother pointed out that being in Greece makes my blog title extra appropriate. I originally came up with it just because the argonauts traveled (I think the VT part is self explanatory). Then, boredom in the UAE drove me to wikipedia the argonauts, and I discovered the golden fleece is sometimes seen as an allegory for truth. I love being accidentally profound.

Access versus Depth

2008-02-09T23:06:00.001-05:00

I'm from Vermont, so I have a sentimental attachment to town meeting day. It seems almost as close to pure democracy, bypassing the representation, that exists. For a while, I thought caucuses were almost like town meetings-- a chance to interact with other people and discuss candidate preferences gives each person the opportunity to express a more nuanced political opinion than pulling a lever. I love the way systems like instant run-off voting let voters rank preferences rather than just vote for their top candidate, and in a sense, caucuses are closer to this model.

However, caucuses are not a discussion of issues and solutions, or an airing out of concerns. They take much longer than the two minutes required to rank candidates and leave the voting booth. Instead, they are a multi hour process completely inaccessible to those who can't find a sitter for their small children or can't get the night off work. They are unappealing to those who work long hours and dread the thought of tagging on a few more. They're a challenge to people who plan to vote differently than their boss, husband, or best friends-- all people who may caucus at the same place.

Because of the time and political capital investment required, caucuses substansialy increase the cost of each individual's vote. They limit the types of individuals who can participate in the political process.

All these points about caucuses have, of course, been made over and over again by people far more knowledgeable and articulate then me. The point I want to make is not that caucuses are less democratic than primaries, but that in their best forms, a caucus and a primary represent two different democratic ideals. Is it more valuable to have a deeper discussion that may allow for a more nuanced representation of issues or to allow more people to participate? I tend to favor access over depth-- I think it's just a more democratic principle-- but I do think there's a real debate to be had there.

Guess Which Amendment is My Favorite

2008-02-09T21:30:00.001-05:00

One thing I regret not studying more in college was democratic theory. I had this mistaken conviction that democratic theory classes would focus on, say, GOTV techniques. Whenever people start to explain GOTV to me, I zone out, furtively try to figure out where they put the Box o'Joe, and impatiently wait for them to finish and give me my walk sheets. Said exercise did not seem like the best use of college tuition.

My senior year, I took a Latin American comparative politics seminar that clued me in on the fact that democratic theory was not, in fact, about which doors to knock on. Nor was it just about elections, period.

Increasingly, I realize that just as I thought democratic theory was the study of electoral engagement, the United States seems to think democracy is elections. I don't think a democracy can exist without elections, but I have no doubt elections can exist without democracy.

Elections are often (and this goes back at least to El Salvador two decades ago; it's not a new phenemenon in Iraq and Afghanistan) hailed as not only a signpost on the road to democracy, but as the pinacle symbol of a democratic society. I think in part this is because elections are so tangible; one can quantify their success by the turnout, the lack of violence, the level of enthusiasm. A couple bloggers and authors also argue the United States tends to focus on elections because we have for so long; we know how to build reliable election systems (really?) whereas developing a participatory society from scratch is something that a) outsiders are less equipped to do and b) we've been a democracy for too long to understand. Personally, I'm a sap for the lovely romance of one man, one vote-- the idea of each and every person having the same amount of voice to make their own private choice (we'll leave campaign contributions and the electoral college out of it). It's hard not to be touched-- nor should we be anything but-- by the stories of formerly disenfranchised people, allowed to vote for the first time ever, lining up outside the polls.

The emphasis on elections as the hallmark of democracy rather than, say, a deeper democratic society is one reason we are quick to uphold results-- people voted, right?-- even in cases, like the recent Kenyan election, where it seems clear there was a lot of fraud. (There's probably space here for a whole separate digression about whether we value stable, predictable outcomes over democracy...)

(I think there are some interesting challenges involved in elections themselves: what do ballots look like in a country with a low literacy rate? If political parties don't exist and there are hundreds of candidates-- as was the case with the 2006 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan-- how can people possibly vote on anything other than tribal affiliation? Historically, in Mexican elections, voters have a finger inked at the polls to prevent voter fraud and repeat voting. However, this also allowed the PRI to check up on voters and punish non-voters. If we assume the decision to not vote is a legitimate one-- and that the choice is private-- then to mark voters contributes to potential coercion.

For the most part, though, challenges associated with elections themselves are technocratic and specific rather than philosophical.)

The challenge I find the most gripping is how to create a climate in which elections are meaningful. A friend of mine who's family is originally from China argued that democracy just wouldn't work in China because people weren't interested in events outside of the family and didn't think about how things should change. My Latin American politics teacher convinced me that democracy is not neutral but is a value-driven system, but I don't think I'll ever be convinced it's a peculiarly western institution.

I think it's impossible to make claims about what people think or do not think in a nation in which free speech and free of press and freedom of access to information don't exist. I believe these freedoms are the basic foundation of democracy and must be in place before one can even talk about elections. (Even without a structural move towards elections, I think freedom of expression would eventually lead to a change in goverment; I know some people argue that this is not the case if the country is well off enough-- people don't riot over votes, but instead, bread shortages. However, if this was the case, there would be no need for repression and censorship in the UAE.) There can't be a developed meaningful difference of opinion-- key to a legitimate election-- without speech. Issue based platforms and corresponding support can't exist without the ability to discuss possibilities different than those currently persued by the government.

Corresponding conditions are wide access to information (radio's great) and a state monopoly on force. A constitutional guarentee of free speech becomes meaningless if paramilitary gangs can punish you for its execution.

I guess one could argue that free expression is a pecuilarly western institution, even if democracy is not, but I think it's important to remember that free speech is relatively new, somewhat rare, and very fragile throughout the west as well.

In the end, I think supporting democracy is a worthy goal for American foreign policy, I just think our current instruments and assessments are ill-suited to achieve it. Generating support for free speech overseas is much subtler than supporting elections. I think at the very least, we need to strengthen domestic civil liberties so as to be able to lead by example, and we must resist the urge to bolster stability at the expense of democratic processes abroad.

(I also like the 13th-15th amendments a lot, especially their mid-century rediscovery.)

Missing Piece of the Puzzle

2008-01-30T21:17:00.000-05:00

The other day I was reading (I forget where, a hazard of reading too many blogs) that youth turnout was also extremely high (both in general, and for Obama) in South Carolina. The blogger who posted this information pointed out that this major plotline has been ignored in the media's haste to make the primaries about race and gender. Although it certainly is a historic race, it isn't the first time large numbers of blacks or large numbers of women have voted, or the first time they have had an affinity for a particular candidate. However, it seems that historic "firsts" are occuring with respect to youth turnout.

I've been trying to figure out why this is. One possibility is that gender and race are more sexy and contraversial than age. Another theory I have is that in a sense, stories which focus on the campaigns as a battle of identity politics diminish women and blacks and also the strength of the support for the candidates they are turning out for. The implicit argument is along these lines: "Women are only voting for Clinton because she is female." "Blacks are only voting for Obama because he's black." This then makes it seems as though the support isn't based on substansive policy, and a reasonable (white male) is the only one sufficiently disentangled from identity politics to objectively judge the candidates.

It's harder to make the identity politics case with young voters. A narrative in which voters between 18-25 jump up and down about Obama because he's 14 years younger than Clinton (and a mere 22 years older than them) just doesn't seem plausible. There are four competing narratives, one of which is infinitely more appealing.

First, young people could like Obama because he seems cool and hip and has the support of Obama girl. In this storyline, any boost in youth turnout in the general election next November can be traced to, like, political "debates" on facebook, and the youtube debate. Message: package old ideas in a new and sexy way and the kids'll come out. I feel pretty unqualified to comment on the veracity of this explanation-- my 18-25 year old circle is more wonky than hip-- but I'm not thrilled by the implications.

A friend pointed out a second explanation to me today. Obama's youth support comes from college campuses. That's the mechanism through which youth voters are typically registered and reached. Only half of Americans are able to afford a college education. We already know Obama does well among wealthier, better educated liberals. His youth support may just reflect the general class trends in the primary.

Being moderate became very cool sometime when I was in college, maybe a little after the 2004 election when Bush bashing felt trite to some people. (I guess people don't want to stay on the losing side too long...) I think people who considered themselves 'intellectuals' or 'reasonable' liked to label themselves as moderate because it seemed intellectually rigorous and less ideologically driven. I thought we were done with that trend after 06, but some of Obama's support among young people could stem from his claims of post-partisanship.

The story I like the best is that youth support for Obama is because young people are tired of staleness and looking for something new and different. If we must set it up as a vision vs experience debate, they are looking for sweeping vision. I also think (and if anyone has confirmation of this, I'd love to see it) that youth are likely to be the most angry about the Iraq war. First of all, all wars are fought by young people. Second of all, it's gone on for our entire adulthood. I think we may also be less likely to accept or appreciate political calculus and compromise, therefore Clinton's voting record on foreign policy seems more atrocious to us then it might to someone who was willing to see it as "politics as usual."

Witnessed Courtship in a Maryland Diner

2008-01-28T22:41:00.000-05:00

After making the rounds last Saturday night, my friend Jon and I found ourselves unexpectedly hungry at 2 am. Because Sunday's my major grocery shopping day, our only solution was to go to the near-by "American City Diner," which has all the neon signs, jute boxes, giant shakes and general kitsch one would hope for in a diner of that name. When we first got there, all the other patrons were cool high school kids with generous curfews but by the time we left the patrons were older, and the large groups had been replaced with couples.

The couple behind us didn't seem to know each other that well. She wore a floor length, crinkly brown dress under a jacket with a parka with a fake fur collar, and he wore a blue blazer that I think was supposed to be ironic in some way. He was black and her family was originally from Mexico. She was either a little bit drunk or very energetic. They sat on opposite sides of the table, and she passionately gesticulated over their shakes as she explained her objections to CAFTA. He kept calling it Kafka and she kept correcting him. Kafka, she explained, was the guy who wrote about the man who turned into a bug.

At one point, she raised her voice and informed him that he should stop trying to paint some radical, and her positions were quite mainstream. They talked about the primary, and Jon speculated that they both liked Obama but one of them was pretending to like Clinton so they could just keep arguing. We made up a lot of things about them and I think we were mostly correct.

When we left, they were sitting on the same side of the booth, and he had his arm around her, and she was drinking from his milkshake.

Have I mentioned just how much I like this city?

DC Village

2008-01-24T01:02:00.000-05:00

DC is surprisingly small for a city of 600,000. I thought this was because I've mainly been sticking to Northwest and the Eastern Market area, but then I realized that was also the same size as Vermont, and you know, all we Vermonters know each other.

My friend Eleuthera was down from New York for the weekend, and over the course of two days, we accidentally ran into five swatties ranging from class of '05 to class of '09. We even ran into the same swattie twice, once in an art museum, and once biking on U Street wearing an intimidating ski mask. It's an invasion. I feel like we're running the city. If FISA gets through, I'm looking at you, Swarthmore Poli Sci department. Hmph.

Someone I meet for the first time one evening will be in my metro car the next day. I'm so glad Swarthmore taught me the swivel. I use it. A friend from the summer knows someone who used to work with my aunt. A girl I met at a party works with a friend from Swarthmore. There's less of a bubble, but a healthy dose of tact remains essential.

We aren't quite sure what the best term for the District of Columbia is. I go by "DC" but E thinks non-swatties may tend to say "Washington." I've been trying to catch locals referencing their home, and am considering "the District" as an alternative. I was under the illusion that's what the cool people call it, but have been told that's what Hollywood wants me to think the cool people call it. Next thing you know, I'll be dying my hair blond.

Women and Men of 2038

2008-01-22T20:45:00.001-05:00

After watching the South Carolina debates last night, my friend Jon and I spent a while talking about what we hope the US will look like in 2038. One thing that struck me was that it was much easier for me to come up with social goals than economic goals or international goals. I think in part that's because I have a clearer sense of what my social "end vision" is whereas I don't know exactly where on the spectrum between a complete free market economy and a socialist command economy is ideal. Our role in the global sphere is even harder to project because there are so many other variables.

Here are some of the things we settled on, or that I thought of afterwards. We tried really hard to be realistic:

-universal healthcare coverage
-access to college: both that everyone can attend college and that cost is not a variable that constraints people's college decisions
-less of a wealth gap, both domestically and globally
-lifting the specter of severe enviromentally catastrophe
-societal prioritization of the need to restore clean water, air and ecosystems
-general era of peace, where the US military has only limited engagements
-an international criminal court and greater support for global legislation enforcement, whether it be about human rights, labor, or the enviroment
-a parallel commitment to open borders, and a rollback of ag and textile tariffs in the developed world
-I'd like to see a greater access to free information that still incentivizes the creation of information and art. It seems almost inevitable that we're moving in this direction, but I'd hate to see intellectual property laws that attempt to get around advances in technology and roll back the other way.
-the abandonment of the word 'gay' to describe negative things (Jon started off the conversation with this one. I guess his buddies at the Basic School find many objects attracted to other objects of the same sex. Or long runs. Male long runs are only attracted to other male long runs, I bet, especially if they are wearing gear. Gear is sort of like accessories, and therefore, particularly gay.)
-a constitutional framework for abortion and gay rights that is based on equality, not privacy. Maybe this means the ERA or maybe it means revisiting the intent of the 14th amendment.

Essentially, this is a progressive's agenda with a bit of a free trade, globalist emphasis.

A last wish I have for 2038 is that we expand the way we look at masculinity as a society. I'm not entirely sure how to get there-- Jon pointed out that probably many Americans think our current idea of masculinity is already too expansive-- but I think it's a change that's got to take place on the household level before it can take place on the national stage (although policies such as paternity leave would help).

When I was fourteen, I got my first job working as a bookshelver at the library. It was, other than RAing and dinners in Greece, the most fun I've ever been paid for. However, one thing that continually struck me was how critical parents were of their sons' choices. Babysitters' Club was a "girl's book." So, incidentally, was anything by Beverly Cleary, Rumor Goden, or Tamara Pierce. I see why J.K. Rowling dropped the Joanna before Harry Potter's debout and I see why she made Potter a boy. You can't really blame eight year old boys for rejecting books about girls if that's the message they have gotten from their parents and peers all their life.

I very rarely heard a parent to tell a girl to put down a book because it was a "boy's book." I think now (at least among my generation) a certain amount of tomboyishness is acceptable, or even encouraged in young girls. I doubt most of my male peers had their reading choices censored this way, but I think that right now there are more ways to "be female" than to "be male." Disney can make movies with female warriors decades before they make movies with princes who are not warriors. I think in general, uniqueness is more tolerated among female children than male ones. (I don't think this is true globally, of course, or cross cultures, and I'm willing to concede if someone wants to argue it's only true in certain socio-economic classes.)

I'm certainly not arguing it's easier to be female than to be male (although I wouldn't swap). I once talked this over with my friend Allie, and she commented that although we are no longer telling girls they must be this, or must be that, instead we are sending the message that they must be everything, and I think this is spot on. I obnoxiously, earnestly, and unnecessarily spend hours stressing about how I'm going to balance a family and a career (I want to help change the world and make awesome Halloween costumes, help!), even though now I don't have a boyfriend or a job I'm going to stick with in the long run. I expect I'll spend a far part of the next twenty years worrying about the same thing, hopefully less obnoxiously. I think some traditionally female problems-- such as worry about the approval of others or body image-- have become more equal-opportunity problems (gotta love those races to the bottom), but still affect women more.

(One thing that makes me a little sad for guys is that I know very few men who had childhood, and particularly adolescent, friendships as close as my own friendships. I don't really buy maturity gap arguments (my mother is convinced I have that teenage guy risk-loving hormone), but if there is one, I think it exists for that reason. It has to be a bit emotionally stilting to not have anyone to call when upset. Sometimes I think some guys want girlfriends so they can have a really close friend as much as anything else.)

There is more general consciousness of way our society needs to change in its treatment of women. I think these large scale changes can't come about without
redefining masculinity in a way that hinges less of aggression and leaves more room for having feelings and being nurturing. It would be a safer world to be female in. There would be fewer limits on what it was socially acceptable for a guy to do or say. I also think it would be easier and less stigmatized for men to take paternity leave or stay at home with children which would both open up more options for most couples and would put women who choose to take time off at less of a disadvantage.

Soup of the Week

2008-01-17T13:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Senator Leahy,

I appreciate the sentiment, but next time, pls make your endorsements before the primary next door, Jim Douglas-style.

Thanks,
Bree

I have this new scheme where I make a different soup every Sunday (ok, so far have only done this once, but...) and then freeze it and eat it each day for lunch. It's snowing out now, and Sunday's chili couldn't be more delicious. I find it pretty challenging to eat enough produce while just cooking for myself, and a soup with a lot of veggies helps. I think I also want to try using leftover salad vegetables, post-chop-up, in omelettes. My friend Michele thinks the solution for cooking for yourself is to eat the exact same thing every day, so you don't wind up with ill-suited leftovers. Katie thinks the secret is a dinner composed of no-prep snacks-- a rice cake here, a yogurt there. I really want to learn to cook though, so I'll keep you posted if I develop any brillant strategies.

Any candidates for the next soup of the week?

Rootlessness and Americanism

2008-01-17T00:02:00.000-05:00

While wandering through old Kyoto, Rachel and I were struck with how alive and universal the sense of ritual seemed to be. It feels as though there is a certain way to be Japanese -- to go to neighborhood shrines, to live with your parents after college, to prepare bentos for your children's lunches, to eat certain foods in certain ratios, etc. While this seems very confining (when I talked to Japanese girls who'd studied in the US, they worried they were too "individual" to continue to work and live in Japan, at the same time it felt like there was a common sense of belonging, a united identity.

For a brief moment in the old city, I craved a common history, an external identity accompanied by ritual. I guess some people find this in religion and others find it in culture and nationalism. On a personal level, I've always sort of valued having a level of distance from the divides and limits these identities create, but in Kyoto, I thought about the limits of not having one.

I think it would be so interesting to live in a place where one felt that all the people they saw went home and ate rice just like you, or also woke up at 5 am for the first of five prayers and believed in the same god. The first time I had sex, I spent weeks amazed that this was something everyone did, a common private activity binding me to the SWILies making out in their long capes and the 40 year old biology teaching with the wedding ring. (Whenever I try to explain the way I felt about this relevation, friends stop me at that point.)

When it comes to countries, I'm less divided. I'd much rather live in a country with a plethora of contradicting traditions and identities than a larger, potentially exclusive one. (Even in this, I'm clinging to my own particular idea of American diversity, a part of my own identity.)

I find it much easier to describe what a Japanese person does or what an Emirati person does than what an American does. Clothing styles, food preferences and houseware are easier to generalize. Part of this may be that its harder to stereotype groups one belongs to, but I really do think American identity is more diffuse.

When I was in Tanzania, the questions people asked me about America included "Do girls really starve themselves?" "Where do the cowboys live?" "Does everyone have plastic surgery" "Does everyone own a gun?" When we tried to give correct, narrowly tailored answers to these questions, people then asked us what America was like. If not cowboys with rhinoplasty, then what?

I don't know. The truism that one never feels more American than when they are abroad certainly applied to me, but I still don't know what that means.

(to be finished tomorrow)

As I write, I recognize that everything I characterize as American-- our brand of democracy, our cultural pluralism-- is up for debate. And I like that, too.

Doing Capitally in the Capitol

2008-01-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

(I have a sneaking suspicion that one of three people is going to email me and tell me that the spelling "capitol" can only be used to refer to the building, not the whole city. However, the bigger issue here is that this title is really too corny for use. Bear with me all the same.)

I arrived in DC last Friday, and am really excited to be back. I'm living with my aunt and uncle and cousin out in Chevy Chase. They have a basement apartment under their house with a separate door and kitchen, so it's pretty ideal.

In the last week, I have characterized DC as a social mecca, cornucopia, buffet, grail, basically any word that encapsulates an abundance of interactive goodness. I like that I can do a different interesting thing with a different interesting person every night of the week if I like. Over the summer, this became a bit exhausting, but I think I could wind up a DC-for-lifer if I had a place like VT to escape to.

I saw a friend from the summer this weekend, and she said she felt like seeing each other was one of Madeline L'Engle's wrinkles in time. Seeing one another made it feel like all the time we'd been apart was folded up between us and the time we'd lived together felt like it was the closest thing to the now. I like tesseracts.

I've noticed that people always get a lot cooler> after they stop running for president. Predictable, I guess. I think Kerry makes this point very well; Democrats (and, um, everyone else) should never be the party trying to suppress turnout.

In all the campaigns I've worked on, I've always believed turnout was a good sign. For the most part, if you don't at least feel that way, you're working for the wrong person. (Although maybe I'd feel differently if in a swing state when the ballot initiative was tailor made to turn out evangelicals.)

Human Rights, Glass Elevators and Heights

2008-01-11T00:41:00.000-05:00

The next morning I took the train to Osaka, where I parted ways with Rachel. I left my stuff in a locker, and set off to explore Osaka. The day got off to a pretty rough start---I lost my airport shuttle ticket immediately after purchasing it, I consequently had to take out yen on my last day (the calculus of having just enough foreign currency to last through a trip without running out or going over eludes me yet) and it took me roughly two hours to figure out how to navigate the station. Finally, I purchased a ticket and rode the circular route out to the Human Rights museum, feeling very independent, relieved, and triumphant.

The Osaka Human Rights museum was one of the best museums I have ever been to. Admission only cost about two dollars, even without a student membership, and at the door, the guides offered me a free headset that had an English translation of all the exhibits. (I'm still trying to figure out how the museum was funded. I think it's virtually impossible that the Japanese government funded it-- the exhibits were too critical. My best guess is that a Korean businessman who was successful in Japan during the postwar period but had to hide his identity sponsored it.

The museum was broken into three parts, the first section which discussed the way certain norms were enforced in Japanese culture, resulting in the exclusion of whole segments of the population. The final section had a series of narratives by people who were marginalized and the victims of human rights abuses. The middle section, my favorite, dealt with the historical and contemporary status of disadvantaged groups within Japanese society. The groups discussed included: women, people who were queer, victims of enviromental disaster, people with disabilities, slum dwellers, Koreans, Okinawans, people living with AIDS, the Ainu, and the burakumin (ghettoized descents of leather workers and undertakers who have continued to be treated as a seperate caste within Japanese society long after the caste system was abandoned).

I liked that the museum combined these disparate groups. I thought that offered a very sweeping perspective of human rights in Japan rather than, say, just looking at dissents or just focusing on members of a particular minority group. I was impressed by the museum's honesty in approaching these struggles as ongoing rather than historic battles the country has moved beyond. (The Museum of the American Indian in DC also does a nice job with this.) I also think it's very challenging to create exhibits about people who have been victims without creating a one-sided narrative in which they become agency-less objects, and are dehumanized. While it's also bad to create a fake story in which people who could not fight fought back, this museum did an excellent job of contextualizing the ways in which people had resisted oppression. It told stories of victims of enviromental discrimination who had sued, both losers and winners. It featured video of speech contest in which all the participants spoke Ainu. It had pictures of Burakumin youth drummers who spoke to communities about the way they were treated.

The curators at the museum were excellent, and I was really glad to go. I feel like I got a taste of Japanese history and culture that I otherwise would have completely missed. I think the discriminated-against in Japan face a very uphill battle because: a) sameness is so valued (how can such a conformist society also be so creative?) b) breaking consensus-- ie, complaining-- is frowning on and could bring further shame on one's family c) politics is not a forum through which every day people can exercise any will.

I ate some curry at the museum, then spent the afternoon wandering around Osaka. I meant to go to the aquarium but accidentally wound up at the water conservation museum instead. I think it was geared for enviromentally conscious Japanese-speaking ten year olds, but props that they have a free, interactive water conservation museum.

Osaka felt a little bit poorer and more industrial than Tokyo to me. Homelessness is nonexistant or invisible in all the parts of Tokyo I've been to, but in Osaka, there were people sleeping under bridges and taking shelter against the wind under cross-paths over the streets. There was occasional graffiti, although it still seemed a lot cleaner than most American cities. The city itself spans a river, and unlike Yokohama, which doesn't seem to quite know what to do with it's waterfront, there were lovely parks along the water and running trails. Rachel says Osakans are like the "Greeks of Japan" and are known for being more demonstrative and friendly.

That night, I went up to the "Floating Garden Observatories" in Shin-Umeda. There were two towers linked by an open observation deck at the very top. First, visitors rode up in an enclosed elevator, and then switched to a glass encased elevator offering a great (but sort of scary) pararoma of the city. On top, there was an indoor photo exhibit and a cafe, then a staircase that led up to the open deck. I walked around outside for a bit, then went inside to the cafe to watch the sunset over the city before boarding my flight home.

Kyoto III

2008-01-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

After seeing the Roman aqueduct, we rode back in to downtown and wandered around Pontocho alley. Back in the days when Kyoto was the capital of Japan, Pontocho alley was on the other side of the river, officially outside city limits. Officials and visitors would cross the bridge over from Gion for debauchery, and pretend it all wasn't happening in the capital. (All the historical signs around the alley cite it's long history as a "gay area" where people met to meet prostitutes. I think somehow the distinction between a 'gay district' and a 'red light district' got a bit blurred in translation.) When we arrived there, it was just getting dark, and the narrow streets, lined with restaurants and well-lit signs, were just coming to life. It's still a major going-out area for young Kyoto residents, and reminded me a bit of the Latin Quarter in Paris.

After a while, Rachel and I realized we were in an actual red light district (some things need no translation) and headed back to the main road. We stopped at a little bar/restaurant off the main road. When we saw that the place was nearly empty, we intended to just get a drink and some sashimi and then go elsewhere for dinner. The owner had other plans, and prepared a delicious meal, course by course. I think, in the end, it was my favorite meal I ate in Japan.

It began with tuna and mackerel sashimi, and I'd finally gotten acclimated enough to enjoy it (I've missed it since getting home). It also came with delicious, very fresh-tasting leaves to wrap it in. Next, he served oden, something I've been fascinated by in convenience stores, but don't have the communication skills to order. Next to check out in Japanese convenience stores, right next to the sweet bean mochi, is a big tub of heated broth with stewed fish cakes, boiled egg, daikon (radish), etc, floating in it. After the oden, we had a thumb-sized bit of carefully cooked chicken, followed by tempura eggplant, green beans, and the same fresh-tasting leaf. I'd never really think of frying those vegetables, but I'd love to learn how now. The meal inevitably ended with rice, and green tea ice cream. We were glad we'd apparently lost agency. The owner-- who was quite young and had World Cup paraphenial all over his restaurant-- adopted the greviances of a much older man. He was distressed that young Japanese people prefered Chu-hi to sake and conventional entertainment to the traditional.

Our hotel that night had co-ed floors and women's floors. As women traveling along, we were shuttled off to the woman's floor, which had careful signs on the door leading to the elevator which made it absolutely clear no men could escape through. The hotel room had a 1950s style decor, as well as button-up light brown pajamas for the guests.

Fates Worse than Nama Gomi

2008-01-10T23:11:00.000-05:00

I think it's clear I like to think of myself as a pretty tough kid. I think if you first met me, you wouldn't buy this and would think I was a fairly soft-spoken girl who wears a lot of skirts and high heels. I like to tell myself, though, that in circumstances that require it, I summon up the emergency spirit pretty well.

However, I have my share of personal phobias. I have discussed one of these at length previously. The other one is packing.

My sophomore roommate, Rachel, was a little astounded when-- after doing my best to keep my chin up through an up and down year-- I broke down at the end of the year sobbing when I tried to pack my stuff. She did an amazing job of being encouraging:

R: "Wow, Bree, it's terrific you folded that t-shirt. That must have been really challenging!"
B (sitting amidst the wreckage of her room, reluctantly folding): "This is impossible!"
R: "That's one less t-shirt to fold!"
B: "But how do I know how many t-shirts to fold? Maybe I should just get rid of them all!!!"
R: "I know, it's so hard."

Of course, she also offered to help many times. But the truth of my difficulty in packing renders this unviable. I'm pretty messy. I'm not diiirty; I don't like food mess or dirty clothes mess or mess to mix, but I tend to shove things in drawers.

And somehow, every time I try to pack, I force myself to go through the long process of sorting these things. I find a note from my best friend from 9th grade, discretely written in gel pen in math class. I think she was a universe to me once but we haven't talked in years and it's probably my fault. Then, I find love letters from an old boyfriend I lost touch with. Much too painful not to read. Then come the honors papers-- were they as good as I thought they were at the time? Better re-read...why did I forget Salinas' name!

In truth, I should just get rid of all this stuff so it stops slowing me down (except maybe my honors papers. I wrote them too recently to be too critical) but I like having a record of life too much.

Then there's the panic of cramming everything into a suitcase, etc. One would think I'd have come to gripes with all this after the past few months. In some ways, I'm a better packer. I get by on fewer clothes. I wear comfy things on planes and put my passport where it's easy to get. But, I'm no better at the normal life to suitcase stage.

I'm moving down to DC tomorrow, and spending tonight writing about packing instead of doing it. Predictable. I'll try to focus, but will probably finally finish posting about Japan.

Notes from the Granite State

2008-01-07T00:45:00.000-05:00

I spent the last weekend canvassing in Manchester, New Hampshire with two good friends, and discovered that primary canvassing is much more fun than general election canvassing because there isn't really an enemy. At best, the primary is a "discussion" of what our country needs and what people want to see in a leader, and that's a fun conversation to have with people. Although I had a couple of the "is canvassing ever really effective" moments, I also had a slew of interesting conversations.

-I took a bus to the Manchester airport, and while waiting for my friend to arrive, I saw Patrick Murphy (D PA-8) who had endorsed Obama working the line of people going through pre-flight security, encouraging them to endorse his candidate. When it was his own turn to take out his laptop and place his shoes and blazer in the bin, he kept right on going, trying to persuade the airport security workers. It seemed like he was very successful in engaging them. While I'm no politician, I tried to use this as inspiration to engage with everyone, not just the people on my walk lists.

-A pretty cracked out young man buying cigarettes at a convenience store who wanted to talk with us and echoed back Democratic talking points. It's almost the first time I've gotten "liberal" talking points from someone who doesn't seem political invovled instead of "conservative" ones. Maybe we're doing a better job with message then we think we are.

-A young man who opened the door wearing tight boxer-briefs and a Temple University sweatshirt who wanted to compare Edwards and Clintons' anti-poverty agenda for 20 minutes and yet couldn't be bothered to put on pants before opening the door. Eye contact, eye contact.

-A Republican who was voting for Romney because he was the most "genuine" candidate. They are out there.

-I'm always a little amazed by how many voters seem to focus on personality over issues. Several older women wanted to talk about how Edwards was a "very nice man."

-We met a sherif who had done the security check for all the cars going into the debate who had gotten to briefly meet all the candidates. Most arrived in limos, although some came on their campaign buses and Ron Paul arrived in the backseat of an SUV. Only slightly more newsworthy than candidate eating habits, but an interesting slice of life.

-While waiting for lunch, an out-of-towner in a leather jacket asked me if I was working for Edwards (the sticker and the lit are sort of a give away). I said yes, and then launched into a more conversational version of my spiel. "Too bad the focus has been on Clinton and Obama," he said. I agreed, and we discussed the irresponsible media coverage throughout the campaign (at this point, I'm pretty disgusted by the Clinton treatment). At the end, I ventured to ask who he was supported. "Oh," he said, "Off the record, I'm a member of the irresponsible media."

-Saturday night, we went to a rally/visibility event downtown. At first, it was just us and a group of men from the steel workers union, who were funny and very interesting to talk to. The 'part' of the Democratic party I've had the most extended contact with as fellow campaigners is the, um, sushi eating, latte drinking part. (Incidentally, the same culinary propensities describe most of the Republicans I know. College towns.)
Many of them had worked on campaigns since 1972, and it was interesting to hear about their strategies and commitment because like churches, I think unions are such a credible force in the community that is much more effective at GOTV and persuasion than a campaign could be. I was surprised by the intensity of their hate for Senator Clinton even though they described themselves as lifelong, diehard Democrats.
As is to be expected, we didn't see eye-to-eye on protectionism, although we recent graduates kept our mouths shut. Trade seems like such a small rift within our party when the Republican party seems to be facing such an identity struggle.
One of the men seemed particularly concerned about the lack of women among their political leadership although he said 30-40 % of the union was female. It's encouraging that they are discussing the need to have a leadership that reflects the population it serves.

-The best one-liner of the weekend came from a young waitress at the Airport Diner in Manchester. She saw our stickers, then told us about her friend who wanted to vote for a Republican, probably Romney. "I said to her, 'Honey, you're a single mom. You aren't a Republican."

Etiquette for Canvassing

2008-01-07T00:43:00.000-05:00

Although the old adage about not discussing politics at the dinner table or in polite company makes me a very rude person, I do think there is a need for greater etiquette concerning canvassing.

For those in heavily canvassed areas (any early primary or swing state), I can understand how frustrating and intrusive the repeated door knocks, phone calls and lit drops would be. While it's part of the price for getting to be more important than everyone else for months, there are things the geographically well-endowed can do to at least minimize the intrusion.
1) First off, you never have to answer a door for a canvasser. If you see them walking up and down your street and you just woke up, got out of the shower, have the flu or don't feel like talking, just don't get the door.
2) There's a more polite alternative to this strategy which will also grant you greater peace and quiet. You can hang a polite sign on your door which says "No canvassers, please." Alternate versions-- "no soliciting for my business, my vote, or my faith" or "don't knock-- sleeping baby" also work well.
a) This is MUCH more effective than telling individual canvassers to take you off their list. Campaigns are often a day or two (or more) behind in entering in data like that from canvassing. Additionally, people from several different campaigns or organizations (the frustration of not being able to coordinate with PACs in 2004 and covering the same turf: endless) may all be covering your neighborhood and they cannot coordinate with one another.
b) An even nicer twist on the sign is one which gives the canvassers the information they want. "No canvassers please. I plan to vote for candidate X" or "Please do not disturb. I'm firmly committed to voting on Election Day." Such specificity reduces the risk that the canvassers will 'code' you on their sheets as not home or undecided, and, with competent data entry, should take you off their phone banking lists.
c) If canvassers ignore such signs and still knock/ring the bell, carte blanche to be annoyed.
3) If you don't have a sign up and answer the door, please don't yell at canvassers. You can tell them you'd rather not speak to them, but there is no reason not to be civil. (In my experience, most people are very nice and supportive whether or not they agree with you, but the one person who shouts "GET OFF MY PORCH NOW" can ruin a day.)

For canvassers:
1) Don't walk on people's lawns. Use pathways.
2) Never, ever throw lit on people's lawns. Do you really want people picking up litter with your candidate's face all over it?
3) Similarly, place lit under a door mat, inside an outer door or secure it in some ways so that it is unlikely to blow away and become litter. However, don't EVER put lit in a mailbox. This is illegal.
4) Park in a place where you aren't in people's way. And if you have out of state plates, think about parking outside of your turf.
5) Ditch the script, speak from the heart, don't waste people' time, and get them talking. The most successful canvassing is a two way dialogue in which they speak at least as much as you do. This may not seem like an etiquette point, but it's rude to talk 'at' an equal.
6) Affirm turnout. Affirm participation, even by the opposition.

A pet peeve of mine is people in the crowd at rallies who get to the front by holding the "right" signs and then holding up signs for an opposition candidate as soon as the media showed. This technique was a favorite of Santorum's failed 2006 effort to hold on to his senate seat, and I was shocked to see Democrats doing it to other Democrats in New Hampshire. I think this is extremely tasteless and ineffective. It's important to remember that when you are out publicly supporting a candidate, everything you do reflects on that candidate. Undecided voters vote with their gut as much as their head, and being polite and charming leaves them with a favorable impression of your candidate. Being rude-- trampling lawns, littering, being overly aggressive-- does just the opposite. "Attack tactics" like destroying the lit of other candidates, etc, are even worse.

Kyoto II

2008-01-04T13:31:00.000-05:00

I think the best way to see a new city is by foot, and we did a lot of that during my second day in Kyoto. The most exciting times in a new place aren't always the attractions you can read about in guide books and buy postcards of, but the neighborhoods you accidentally stumble into and aren't sure how to find again. I wish could capture that in here, but it's harder to describe a neighborhood than a site or a meal.

First we wandered around "new" downtown Kyoto, winding up in what I can only describe as a "covered bazaar" although I imagine there's a different term more appropriate to this part of the world. It had a mix of secondhand goods, new trendy shops and cute cafes. Rachel mentioned that one time she was in Kyoto, her father took a cooking lesson nearby with a young women who taught westerners to cook every weekend in exchange for the ingredients. At the end of the lesson, everyone sat down and ate the meal together. It seems like an usual (although attractive) arrangement, although I guess she benefited from the free food and the English practice. I guess it's also a way to make your life just a bit different in a very conformist society.

In the bazaar, I found a used bookstore where I bought four books for my flight for under twenty dollars. I was impressed by their selection, and I never would have known it was there.

After that, we took a train to the beginning of the "Philosopher's Walk," a path along a canal through the artist's quarters, named for a philosophy professor who used to walk the route every day while, well, philosophizing. It was a really beautiful stretch and there were interesting craft shops and temples along the way. Apparently, in the spring, the canal path is lined with blooming cherry trees. We stopped at a vegetarian coffee shop for lunch and Rachel and I argued about whether it was "so Burlington" or "so Northwest." The "Silver Pavilion" was along the start of the "Philosopher's Walk." It was supposed to be a counterpart to the Golden Pavilion, but they ran out of money before the silvering took place. It was made of dark wood and at the base of a forested hill and surrounded by zen gardens. Several of them had very large, complicated sand sculptures that were so well-kept that they looked like cement. I had to work really hard to resist the urge to touch one to make sure it was really sand.

At a temple on the other end, there were a lot of sculptures of frogs and other forest creatures. I know I've commented on the different attitude towards drinking in Japan before, but one thing that always surprises me about temples is the huge tanks of sake carefully concealed alongside the temple. I don't think the "blood and body of Christ" is an accurate comparision point but maybe it's a bit like all the ritual glasses of wine during passover.

At the end of the Philosopher's Walk, we were in a neat area with a lot of large old-fashioned buildings. Many of them have roof stone awnings (sorry I don't know a more technical term) that have a hump in the middle, slope down on either side, and curl up on the ends, sort of like the slope of a viking boat. We also saw a still functioning Roman aquaduct that made been built during the Meiji Restoration when Japanese architects were charged with the task of intimidating Western-style architecture. It was strange to see a Roman aquaduct loomig above the traditional Japanese rooftops. It would be a great National Geographic-style quiz: where in the world is this?

To be continued...

Mythic Turnout

2008-01-03T23:27:00.000-05:00

For most of the (short) time I've been politically conscious and active, the youth vote has been sort of like the green flash. The green flash is a light refraction that is supposed to occur just after sunset or before sunrise along the horizon line on the ocean. I've never seen it, but whenever I watch a sunset on the beach on Prince Edward Island, I suspect that this time, I might. Sometimes someone says they say it and everyone else assumes they just blinked.

Similarly, in 2004 and 2006, the youth were supposed to turn out. Much as I believed this, I had to later roll my eyes as youth political organizations claimed youth turnout this time around was special in this or that way in this particular district of this particular state. (I wish I had a saved email to show but I tend to delete things from non-swat mailing lists pronto. And yet I sign up for them.)

Despite being somewhat of an Edwards girl, I have to admit I'm pretty head over heels about Iowa. I find an Obama candidacy very exciting and the overwhelming overall turnout makes me optimistic about the general election. I think the youth vote statistics are the most exciting though. It was so frustrating to hear the way commentators questioned the value of Obama's youth support, as well as the "facebook users, not caucus goers" comment from the Clinton campaign, and the frustration stemmed from the fact that there was no good retort, no evidence to show that they weren't right. Maybe it's the youtube debates or Obama girl or maybe we are actually frustrated we've been at war for our entire adulthoods. At any rate, I hope the turnout trend continues...

(I also hope that bloggers keep making Chuck Norris-style jokes about the press' love for McCain.)

Green flash or no, I'll javascript try to keep down the redundant political commentary, but I'm headed to NH for the weekend, so there may be a brief pre-primary resurgence. I also still have a couple more Japan posts.

Searches Invovling Gloogloo

2008-01-03T10:53:00.000-05:00

Our host in Greece, Theo, used to refer to google as "gloogloo." As in, "Bree, gloogloo the capital of Azerbaijan for me."

I try not to rave too much about google analytics, because it's a vain hobby and I can also see how it could seem a little creepy. However, my very favorite feature is the one that allows you to see through which google searches people are directed to your blog.

I'm proud to be on the google list for some, like "nama gomi" and "the weepies happiness blogspot" and "pretty pink cheeks."

I figure I'm a disappointment to internet users who search for "knee sock fashion," "america's next top model," and "indian food eating with hands" (although I'll do that anytime, if anyone else is in the mood). I can't really answer questions like "why are my cheeks pink" although I wonder the same thing (but apparently it's pretty) and really really hope not be used as a definitive source on "latin american politics," "brady kiesling," "abortion," "laicism in france" or "kenyan situation" and "mombasa, kenya."

The searchers who looked typed in "jeans cheeks," "naked onsen" and "onsen naked" must be disappointed I'm not more of a photo essayist. Sorry.

I'm glad whoever searched for "adventure of cell phone" decided to keep reading, even though I try to keep my adventures and my cell phone isolated from one another as I never buy phone insurance plans.

Kenya riots

2008-01-01T15:10:00.000-05:00

I didn't read the news at all while I was in New York for a pre-New Year gathering, and so I missed much of the early-post-election rioting in Kenya. I returned to ask my father what was happening in Pakistan and he mentioned that Kenya seemed to be in a more uncertain state of turmoil (and, for me, feels "closer to home"). I've been trying to do some catching up since being home, and this letter is helpful background for people who find themselves in a similar situation.

(After re-reading the letter, I do feel compelled to comment that the impression I got of Kibaki from Tanzanians wasn't nearly so positive. On the other hand, many of them love Museveni, especially in the northwest along the Ugandan border. Although I think a certain level of corruption is par for the course in a developing country, I also worry about the ideological commitment to democracy of anyone who learned the ropes under Daniel arop Moi, Kenya's former President and a poster child for corruption and consolidation of power. Kibaki seved as Moi's VP from 1978 to 1988 and recently appointed his former boss as a peace envoy to South Sudan.)

I wish I could watch Al Jazeera's coverage at the moment. I can't really grudge the primary coverage at the moment because Iowa and NH both happen in less than a week and I'm terribly excited and all, but what happens to Kenya is really quite important. I think we often think of strategically important nations just in terms of the Middle East, and Kenya may lack the claim to global signifigance of Turkey, Egypt or Iran. However, Kenya has been one of a few lynchpins of stability in a very volatile region. It's just south of-- and shares a border with--Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. It also borders Uganda, and is close to Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC. I believe that the air campaigns for Operations Restore Hope and Provide Relief were launched from Mombasa, Kenya.

Additionally, Kenya was colonized more "heavily" than the other countries in its "family" (Tanzania and Uganda) and as a result, has a higher percentage of English speakers (differences between the TZ and Kenya education systems has probably exacerbated this) and stronger infrastructure. It has been a regional leader for integration, immediately rolling back its border tariffs while allowing less-developed Tanzania and Uganda a phase-out period. Kenya is perceived as an industrial powerhouse in East Africa and is South Africa's primary competitor for the processed goods market in much of Eastern, Southern, and Central Africa. It's possible that larger scale on-going disruption could seriously harm the supply chain-- and I mean of food, not computer parts-- for much of the region.

At any rate, it looks as though a move away from democracy is a more likely outcome than continued instability, which is also a major setback for the region.

It's Obama's fatherland. I wish he'd stop picking on his allies and use this time in the spotlight to divert some addition to a truly divided country. Or someone else would. Maybe Iowa would welcome the change.

Edit (1/2/08): Here's a post from a former professor that discusses the way "tribalism" is being covered in the US press.

Kyoto I

2007-12-21T21:57:00.000-05:00

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!

Home Sweet Home

2007-12-20T23:09:00.000-05:00

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.

The Remains of the Would-Be Novelist

2007-12-20T22:42:00.000-05:00

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.

My Life as An Airline Food Reviewer

2007-12-15T11:22:00.000-05:00

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.

The Kindness of Strangers

2007-12-15T10:07:00.000-05:00

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.

The Kanagawa Wrap Up

2007-12-14T12:08:00.000-05:00

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.

All Gone to Look for America

2007-12-14T11:48:00.000-05:00

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.

The Idiot Reader

2007-12-12T11:02:00.000-05:00

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.

Hakone, Ryokans and Onsens

2007-12-12T09:12:00.000-05:00

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.

Big Wall!

2007-12-09T20:22:00.000-05:00

I hope I'm supposed to think this is funny. I also think 40% of the vote from Latinos is looking like a thing of the past.

We Will Rock You

2007-12-09T11:10:00.001-05:00

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.

Diffusion on the Tokyu Line

2007-12-09T11:10:00.000-05:00

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.

In a Bright and Distant Town

2007-12-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

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.

Sumimasen

2007-12-08T10:37:00.000-05:00

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.

Balancing Better in the Land of Pedestrians

2007-12-06T10:44:00.000-05:00

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.

Not About Doves

2007-12-03T11:32:00.000-05:00

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.

Royalty and Remakes

2007-12-03T11:07:00.000-05:00

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?

Kamakura

2007-12-02T09:39:00.000-05:00

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.

Litmus Tests and Pancakes

2007-11-29T11:17:00.000-05:00

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.

Tribalism, Anarchy, and All Sorts of Commitment

2007-11-27T10:43:00.000-05:00

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.

There's Always a Future in Plastics

2007-11-27T07:35:00.000-05:00

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.

Thanksgiving in Japan

2007-11-25T11:32:00.000-05:00

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.

Nama Gomi

2007-11-25T11:27:00.000-05:00

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.

What Our Friends Say About Their Neighbors

2007-11-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

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.

Thankful

2007-11-22T07:55:00.000-05:00

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.

Achilles' Lament

2007-11-22T07:40:00.000-05:00

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.

Pink Cheeks and Ripped Up Jeans

2007-11-21T11:00:00.000-05:00

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.

Maybe you should drink a lot less coffee

2007-11-21T10:08:00.000-05:00

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?

Among the best smells ever

2007-11-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

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.

Sankeien Garden and Back to the Future

2007-11-19T10:09:00.000-05:00

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

Still Abroad in Yokohama's Chinatown

2007-11-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

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.

CNN: Apparently not a girl's best friend

2007-11-17T09:50:00.000-05:00

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.

Ends, Means, and Iraq

2007-11-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

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.

It's Christmastime in the City

2007-11-13T09:35:00.000-05:00

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

Coming through a little fuzzy

2007-11-13T09:33:00.000-05:00

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.

Cellphone as Wallet: Forget the iPhone

2007-11-13T06:07:00.000-05:00

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.

And then Pinochet got mad

2007-11-12T09:17:00.000-05:00

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.

Misbehaving Computers, Perfect Parks, and Korean BBQ

2007-11-10T09:25:00.000-05:00

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.)

On Being Flapped

2007-11-08T22:18:00.000-05:00

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.

When it comes to fashion, Paris has nothing on Japan

2007-11-08T22:09:00.000-05:00

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.

Google Analytics, narcissism enabler

2007-11-08T21:48:00.000-05:00

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.

Imagination (Part I)

2007-11-08T21:42:00.000-05:00

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.

And Democratization (Part II)

2007-11-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

(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.

No more horror stories

2007-11-06T10:36:00.000-05:00

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!

Harajuku

2007-11-05T08:44:00.000-05:00

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.)

Overly Intelligent Design

2007-11-05T05:25:00.000-05:00

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.

Puritanism, Sashimi and Karaoke

2007-11-03T09:25:00.000-04:00

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.

Halloween in Japan

2007-11-01T03:37:00.000-04:00

A couple of people have asked me what Halloween in Japan is like, so I thought I'd give it a shot. It's a very new holiday, and one of my friends told me it started at Tokyo Disneyland and then spread out from there. It's an ideal holiday for Japan-- cute, kid friendly, commercial, neighborhood-oriented, with the potential to make it sexier.

Houses aren't decorated like houses in the states yet, although I saw a few pumpkins and shopfronts were very festive. I also saw tons of Halloween merchandise in stores the past few weeks. I imagine there will be pretty fantastic sales tomorrow-- I think the merchants may have over-anticipated the demand for plastic pumpkins and ghost doormats. I'd consider going with an orange/black graveyard style decor for my apartment, except I really hate orange. The costumes I saw were very elaborate and adorable. My favorite was a felt crab costume that looked as though it had taken some parent the better part of the summer to construct.

There's a holiday in February that reminds me a little bit of Halloween in its seemingly pagan roots. On setsubun, the father puts on a demon mask and the children of the house attempt to drive him out by through dried beans at him, chanting, "let the evil out, let the good come in." It's celebrated in February 4th, and marks the changing of seasons-- I guess it's a bit like Groundhog Day. It also reminds me of the "Sing Back the Sun" spirit of solstice mummers festivals. I think the tale of St George slaying the dragon was supposed to suggest the defeat of winter and the return of the sun.

I used to start planning out my Halloween costume in June. It's funny how when you're little, the passage of time is marked by all these special days. I remember in elementary school, even St. Patrick's day was a big deal. I would wear all green, and build villages for lepruchans with the other kids in the neighborhood in the "meadow" across the street. Over the years, those days stop mattering as much. Valentine's Day? Drink wine in the dining hall. St Patrick's Day? Green earrings so your friend stops pinching you. Now, the landmarks are due dates for assignments and departure itineraries and visits from faraway friends. I don't think any of my favorite days in the last year have been holidays (except, possibly, Thanksgiving and a holiday a friend and I made up because we needed it). I agree that the commercialization of holidays-- and I don't really want more stuff or more candy or more decorations-- but I'm very pro-things-to-get-excited about. I guess this is the time in life to begin creating my own traditions.

I hear she's a woman.

2007-11-01T03:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I struggle to warm to the idea of a Clinton candidacy just because I'm already so sick of stories like this: "They really went from 'Let's talk about what I believe' to 'Let me try to do a gotcha against Hillary Clinton' said one Clinton advisor, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "Ultimately, it was six guys against her and she came off as one strong woman."

To be fair, this isn't Clinton's fault, but if that's how the campaign is trying to package it, I'm annoyed. Quotes like that make it seem as though the other candidates are ganging up on Clinton because she's female rather than because she's the front-runner. And "guys?" Do we have to call senators and governors "guys?" I feel like my inner seventh-grader is supposed to think "Oh yeah, I remember when the guys ganged up on me in social studies because they were intimidated too. Girl power!"

On the one hand, I'm thrilled we're finally in a progressive enough place to have a serious female presidential candidate. Particularly because this is such a seminal moment in American politics, it would be inappropriate (and probably impossible)to ignore Clinton's gender. I imagine both her campaign and the opposition and the media is struggling to figure out the most appropriate way to negotiate this. I just wish the discussion was taking place in more progressive terms and felt a bit less like a cheap effort to secure a empathy vote from the female electorate.

In other news, I accidentally tuned into a TV show that could basically be summed up as "Transvestites Dressed for Vegas Preparing Giant Seafood." I think I was missing part of the premise.

Culture and Development: three cheers for the all-ready wealthy

2007-10-31T00:35:00.000-04:00

Robert J. Samuelson has a piece in the Washington Post today reviewing a new book by Gregory Clark, "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World."

"Clark suggests that much of the world's remaining poverty is semi-permanent. Modern technology and management are widely available, but many societies can't take advantage because their values and social organization are antagonistic. Prescribing economically sensible policies (open markets, secure property rights, sound money)can't overcome this bedrock resistance....It's culture that nourishes productive behavior." Part of his thesis is that the Industrial Revolution accelerated the creation of the proper environment for capitalist growth because more successful men had more surviving children, who had learned attributes of success from their parents.

I have a strong negative knee-jerk reaction to pieces about the role 'culture' plays in economic development. So often, arguments about how cohesive families or forward-looking societies are necessary to fostering growth seem like a self-congratulatory excuse. The most pernicious forms of this argument are:
1) The lazy native argument (people in warm places don't work as hard because their lives are easier) mixed in with an abuse of Weber's Protestant work ethic (Protestantism places a value on hard work in and of itself that has been the key to Europe's success. The current state of the Irish economy compared to the rest of Europe pokes a major hole in this frame...)
2) The "loose families" argument used to explain the East Asian miracle. It goes something like: family structure is stronger in East Asia, therefore parents saved and invested money for their children's future and worked hard. In Africa, they have loose families so their economies suck AND they have AIDS. (I find this argument so upsetting I struggle to engage it productively. I do believe in looking at cultural variables, but this seems more like racism to me.)

To me, the central false premise is the idea that culture is immutable and behaviors are unchanging. This places culture on a glass-encased pedestal, one of my problems with cultural relativism too. Behaviors, especially economic decision-making, are as much the product of circumstance as anything else. I think family structure and 'morality' is a good way to look at this. In desperate times, poor women who can't feed their children sleep with men for money or food. It's an old story, and it was just as true during occupation and war in family-oriented East Asian tigers Korea and Japan as it is now in less-developed countries like Uganda.

I do believe a place can develop a "culture of corruption" that drives way investment, making economic growth nearly impossible. I have no clue how to lessen this, and I might be about to write myself into a chicken-and-egg trap. However, it seems to me that corruption is often a product of a lack of other opportunities or channels for entrepenerial activity. In both the UAE and Japan, it's very bad form to accept tips because it's considered a form of corruption. Decades ago, transaction gifts, whether cash or material, were common in both places. I think corruption inevitably lessens with broad-based development (an increase in opportunities, an increase in the educated population who can point out the corruption of officials) but this development won't take place without an increase in transparency. (Oh dear, I'm asking for the Big Push.)

Anyway, I think transparency comes from the strengthening of civil society and the birth of stronger institutions, not because successful parents passed on non-corrupt attitudes for generations. Lamarck is dead.

I don't have any big answers to the question the article begins with and tries to answer: Why are some countries rich and some countries poor? I do think US and EU agricultural subsidies remain a major obstacle to African growth. I do think unsuccessful Cold War policies set back many developing countries. However, it's also important to challenge the way local governments have attempted to take on poverty or lessen corruption and the (in)efficacy of international aid.

Before I went to Tanzania, I wrote an international economics paper on its prospects for growth. I was in love. I was wildly optimistic. It was, after all, a very stable democracy English-speaking democracy with a newly booming mineral and tourism sectors. The Gini index was low! Its neighbors had stopped fighting! Inflation was down and GDP was growing! Everyone should totally invest! My professor was a bit less Pollyannic. After spending a summer in Tanzania, I could better understand some of his skepticism. Corruption was endemic, and it was hard for even the bravest, most honest individuals to escape it because they were too desperate. However, I do believe that if we slashed agricultural subsidies, we'd be eating a lot more Tanzanian fruit-- and they'd be eating more, period.

I think there is some truth in the lead sentence in the article. Most of the world's remaining poverty probably is semi-permanent, due to shortage of resources if nothing else. However, blaming this inequity on intractible cultural variables is a convenient way to both get out of looking for solutions within our own society and a way to let developing-world leaders off the hook for corrupt practices. Don't mind Mobutu. It's just his culture.

The Ramen Museum

2007-10-30T10:16:00.000-04:00

After the rain stopped this weekend, I went to the Ramen museum in Shin Yokohama with Rachel and Brett and the Motoguchis, a Japanese family they are friends with. Before going, I had some misconceptions about both the ramen and the museum concepts and I thought we were just going there because there wasn't much to do in Shin Yokohama. I stand corrected.

Ramen in Japan means far more than the crunchy instant noodle packages we have in the United States. It's a thick soup with noodles and other accoutrements, and each region has its own speciality. It's an extremely popular dish (the museum was packed with adults who were locals at 7 pm on Sunday) and has become a cultural phenomenon. A friend told me there's a Japanese western about a ramen shop, and it seems there are dozens of blogs just about ramen.

Museum also isn't quite the right word-- upstairs there was a gift shop and exhibits featuring iconic moments in the history of ramen development (the invention of microwaveable instant ramen, a replica of the first-ever ramen dish eaten by a samurai in the 17th century), but downstairs was a historical noodle extravaganza.

Below the conventional museum was a two-story replica of a bustling Japanese town from around 1958. The dimly lit streets were packed with museum-goers and alongside there were pubs and even a 'love hotel' patrons could step into. Police, with thickly drawn-on eyebrows, stood ready to answer questions. As we stayed in the museum, the sky overhead grew darker. It was a little like MainStreet or Epcot, but with an attention to real life detail Disneyland lacks. I could hear the sounds of stray cats mewing and war planes-- taking troops south to Vietnam?-- overhead. It was so convincing that when I got "lost" in a dark ally I felt nervous momentarily (this was all inside the building.)

There were old fashion booths with shooting games, palinko, and this game where everyone was given a small, brittle piece square with a shape etched in it. The goal was to cut your shape out of the material using a needle while leaving both the inside and outside intact. If you were really good, you then tried to write your name on the surface of that cut-out. None of us got that far. The kids all played a game to win a prize where they went to each booth and played "rock paper scissors" with the booth attendants. If they won, they got a sticker on their card. If they lost, the attendant punched a heart-shaped hole out of their card. To win, they needed to get six stickers before losing three hearts. The Motoguchi kids were good at rock paper scissors, but the odds were against them. The attendants were unyielding, even in the face of five-year old Su-chan's tears. We later found out the prize was a lollipop with a bowl of ramen on it. Should have figured.

Eventually, we went to the town square, around which were ramen shops run by chefs from 8 of the best regional ramen shops in Japan. Part of the premise of the museum is that visitors can try all the types of ramen in Japan without leaving Shin Yokohama. I had a 'floor guide' with multilingual descriptions of all the varieties. The English translations are very cute, so I have to share some of the best excerpts:

-Id Shoten: "Pork bones boiled at high heat let out melting gelatin, emulsifying the fat in the soup, which gives the soy sauce base a mellow sensation."

-Keyaki: "Amber soup contrasts nicely with a pure white bowl. Fine stripes of cibol, chopped green cabbage, orange carrots and black Jew's ears make a colorful pile in the middle of your bowl. Having your stomach excited by the aroma of miso, you can't wait to sip the soup. First, you may feel the richness of the soup, and then the mildness in the far back of your tongue. You will also feel juicy of grounded meat and hot pepper in it, and you will not want to stop your spoon."

-Hachiya: "Hachiya has succeeded in making ramen of a powerful taste by adding grilled lard to the noodles and broth. The lard masking the surface of the broth will be a shock to those who visit Hachiya for the first time." Yum, lard and fat-emulsifying gelatin.

-Harukiya: "The bowl looks simple, but when you sip at the soup, you feel multiple levels of complex flavor and richness combined with fish aroma excite your brain. You will not come to yourself until you finish the whole bowl."

Our brains excited, we got Komurasaki (pork, chicken broth, seaweed, garlic) ramen first. It was delicious. You order from a vending machine, diner style, and choose between king size, regular, and sample size. Unlike Japanese convenience store food, even the sample sizes were huge, so we pretty much came to ourselves and were able to stop our spoons after two samples, despite the excitedness of our brains.

The Motoguchi family was politely encouraging of my efforts to use hashi throughout the meal. Su-Chan was justifiably amused by my chopstick-as-fork technique when I wound noodles around the sticks spaghetti-style, and I think they were embarrassed she'd brought attention to the fact I was an embarrassment to myself. On the way out, they gave me my very own pair of hashi they had bought from the museum gift shop. They are beautiful, and it was so sweet of them! Even though I have silverware in my apartment, I'm going to try to practice eating everything with them.

The world's not falling apart because of you

2007-10-29T09:16:00.000-04:00

This may have already came through in the other posts I've written about Greece, but the dominant thing I took away from the trip was a feeling of hope. There isn't anyway to write about this without being a bit corny, and I imagine when I'm twenty-six I'll find this post embarrassing.

I've always been interested in the concept of heroism, ranging from people who change the world and stand up to obstacles just in the way they live their lives. When I was in ninth and tenth grade, I wrote thousands of pages about the examples of heroism I saw in my friends, calling it the "Hero Project."

As I've gotten older, the people I have known have increasingly been able to shape more than their own lives. I'm grateful that no matter how throughly I've learned to, say, problematize a development initative, I've never lost the ability to be inspired by other people.

In Greece, I was surrounded by people who were interested in transforming available information in their countries. They wanted to tell true stories and wanted to hear the stories other people told. In parts of the former Soviet bloc, this is the first generation that has a free press. It takes integrity to report on business or economics in a place where traditionally businesses bribed reporters for favorable coverage. It's brave to be a reporter in a country where a Nobel Prize winning author was prosecuted for "insulting the Republic."

It was also really interesting to hear about the projects people were working on. The German participants, who were all university students, work for a student-run TV news project called "NGO TV." They do media trainings for people who have less media awareness and access, and then put together broadcasts collaboratively. They're just starting out, but they made a twenty minute documentary on the recent EU youth economic summit in Poland.

It felt like a 30 under 30 list, the civil society version.

At one point, I was having a conversation with some of the participants in the hotel lounge, and a young woman said something like, "Well, the world's going to end soon anyway from terrorism or nuclear war, so we might as well have fun in the meantime." She was just kidding, but I was still struck by the glib fatalism.

I just don't believe there are intractable problems-- or at least problems not worth the struggle of trying to fixing. Is this an America thing, or a Swattie thing, or a me thing? A couple of professors mentioned that structural explanations are much more popular in Europe, and Marxist models for understanding history are still academically in vogue, so perhaps there's just more emphasis on individual agency in America. (Let's single-handedly unseat dictators, who cares about waiting for structural change!)

The title of this post comes from a Dar Williams song, "The World's Not Falling Apart Because of Me." It's never been clear to me whether she's talking about keeping the world from falling apart through her actions, or whether she is instead mocking her inability to have a dramatic impact on the world.

I know there's a healthy dose of hubris in talking about fixing problems or changing the world. My best defense is that I feel this way because of the people I have known, and not because of what I believe I as an individual am capable of.

Chatting with the Graveyard Shift

2007-10-29T08:55:00.001-04:00

Japan is in what feels like an artificial time zone. It's thirteen hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, but should probably be more like fifteen hours. It gets dark around 4:30 right now-- I think December will be interesting, although I leave a few days shy of the shortest day of the year.

In the morning, I usually am more work focused, but as the afternoon wears on, I look for more of a break from work and sign on to gchat. Unfortunately, this coincides with the middle of the night back home. Luckily, in college, someone is always awake at 2 or even 4 am. In general, there are three possible scenarios: a) they are upset or restless b) they are very drunk or c) they are urgently trying to finish a paper/problem set. In the first case, I feel useful, in the second amused, and in the third, annoying.

The unfortunate thing is that my friends who have graduated from college and have real jobs are for the most part much more sensible than I am and go to bed shortly after I wake up. In general this is true of my family too, but lately my mother's been up late because of the Red Sox. Thanks for the long innings, Boston!

The Turkish draft

2007-10-28T11:59:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a little bit about the tenor of the Turkish response to the PKK attack on Turkish soldiers. A Turkish friend, Z, was explaining the situation: Turkey will respond "through patience and diplomacy! The fight against terror is a long one. But watching news of young soldiers killed by PKK terrorists infiltrating into Turkey from the north of Iraq hurts too much. They were only 20 or 21 years old. Some were newly married, some had new born babies. Pft that's not fair!"

There's something about this response that just strikes me as different than our response when American soldiers are killed. It's certainly not the sorrow or the anger. I think maybe it's the sense of unfairness. It almost reminds me of American responses to 9/11-- only smaller scale and without the shock.

Turkey has a draft. All I have is an anecdote for evidence, but I wonder if universal service blurs the military-civilian distinction in the minds of the people.

Actually a Dumbledore post

2007-10-28T09:44:00.000-04:00

My father and I had an argument about whether JK Rowling should have made it clearer Dumbledore was gay in Book 7. I argued that she was being cowardly by not-- and that Rita Skeeter surely would have mentioned it. My friend E, who I defer to on all things related to Harry Potter/cheese/shoes, wrote something that changed my mind. I imagine other people have been having the same debate, so I thought I'd post it.

"I know a lot of people have expressed dismay that Jo didn't take the opportunity to reveal Dumbledore's sexual orientation in the books themselves, waiting instead for the question to be asked. I've even seen her referred to, not by any of you but by other prominent fandom members, as a "coward" for only coming clean once the books were over and she was safe on her stage in Carnegie Hall. While I think it's silly to call her a coward for something I consider quite courageous (cue capslocked "DON'T -- CALL ME COWARD" moment :D), I did wonder whether it wouldn't have been more courageous, and cooler in general, to have made it clear in the books.

There are several good arguments for leaving it to the subtext (I'm not going to do any word play with that anagram, as much as I want to!). PS pointed out that it would have overshadowed Harry's story not just in context of the book itself but in the world's reaction; P mentioned that Jo might have been accused of pulling a cheap publicity stunt. I also think it would have looked like a heavy-handed attempt to include one gay character in her books somewhere -- much more so than the way she did reveal it, which has already drawn enough criticism for that reason.

When it comes down to it, there would really have been no realistic way in the seventh book to be explicit but casual about Dumbledore being gay. Harry's a seventeen-year-old boy who grew up in our imperfect world; as far as we know has never met a gay person in his life and was not taught tolerance as a child (who would have taught him -- the Dursleys?). Now, Jo could have chosen early on to make the wizarding world be different from ours in its view of homosexuality, and have Harry discover and come to accept this, but she didn't. She could have made homophobia a recurring theme, but she didn't. By the seventh book, there was no room for a Harry-coming-to-terms-with-homosexuality subplot. I'd like to think that the ways in which she does tell us about love and freedom and tolerance, through wizarding-world metaphors and a beautiful story, make up for the fact that she never championed the real-world political causes we care so much about.

I think the simplest and most reasonable argument against leaving Dumbledore's feelings ambiguous in the text, pointed out to me by V, is that if Grindelwald had been a woman, Jo would have come right out and said that Dumbledore loved him. I don't particularly disagree with this. I think, though, that if he had been a woman, Jo wouldn't have needed to say anything. With Gellert's gender switched and the text exactly as it is, everyone -- witches, wizards, readers -- would have assumed Dumbledore was smitten. Why, then, should Jo feel the need to tell us outright? Strictly speaking, we're never explicitly told that Snape had romantic feelings for Lily, either. Everyone just knows he did because of what we saw in "The Prince's Tale," and because he's a man and she's a woman.

Albus/Gellert is given similar treatment, but since we never get to see it firsthand, the indications are never as strong. I think it's appropriate for their relationship to be subtler. Snape's romantic love for Lily is one of the central mysteries of the series ("Finally, the truth"), while Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald is fascinating and enlightening backstory. It can stand to be subtle and ambiguous; I think being explicit about it would have been both clunky and unnecessary. I'll gladly admit that it's a little too subtle, and I wouldn't say no to some more delicious hints. But I'm sure it would have been clear to all if the dark wizard Grindelwald had been a witch."

Parliament by noon, nightclub by midnight (EMJI II)

2007-10-28T09:37:00.000-04:00

More Greece highlights:

-Most nights I was in Greece, we either had formal program dinners or I wound up going out to dinner with Rachel, Michelle, Theo and Theo's wife Aliki. This was lovely, and I think I got to eat in some of the nicest restaurants in Athens. However, I knew that all the students on the program were hanging out, etc, so it was nice to have a few nights off. On one of these nights, I went out to a Greek taverna with Konstadina, a Greek native and intern in the NATO office, a journalist from Romania named Antonia, and Konstadina's friends. The taverna had a roof and some walls, but the windows were just open air so the wind and sounds from the street could flow through. We drank warm honey wine out of these tiny thimble-like glasses and ate mezzes. Konstadina, who is one of the warmest people I've ever met, was a paragon of hospitality and basically hand fed me the choicest ones. I hope she visits me in the U.S. one day.
We wanted to meet up with the rest of the students at a club nearby, but had a hard time finding the place. Konstadina and Antonia were in the throes of parallel boy drama (I need more drama) and we dissected their situations as we walked around. I was surprised by the universality--I'm too proud to call him because I don't want him to know I like him that much. It was a really warm night, and I enjoyed seeing all the Athenians in their going-out finery. I have major European style envy. I felt less lonely than I'd felt in weeks.
Finally, we found the club and discovered that our friends had taken over the second floor. I'm becoming convinced there's an inverse relationship between the ease of life in a country and the ability of its citizens to dance. Some of these kids were fun just to watch (but they were so encouraging that I got dragged into the dancing anyway). At Swarthmore, I consider someone a good dancer if they stick to the rhythm consistently. These dancers had an electric creativity, rendering eclectic, almost awkward moves magnetic.

-We had several formal program dinners. One was at the US Embassy, which was much less stiff and more interesting than I'd expected. The acting ambassador was surprisingly candid-- especially about independence for Kosovo-- for a diplomat faced with a pack of young journalists. During the Q and A, I decided to ask him about how he handled tensions between his personal beliefs and his professional obligations. He admitted there was a tension, but that things are rarely black and white and there are more channels for dissent in the state department than there were five years ago. I think we were both implicitly referring to the resignation of John Brady Kiesling. When I was a freshman in college, I interviewed Swat alum John Kiesling, who left the State Department in 2003 because he was unwilling to continue to try to sell the Iraq war in Greece. I was barely eighteen at the time, it was my first big interview, and I had a huge admire-crush.

-Another night, we had dinner at the Greek Officer's Club, where we were served by Greek soldiers in uniform. I have a friend or two who would have gotten a huge kick out of that. I accidentally ate caviar (I thought it was a coarse olive paste and put a huge lump on a cracker-- ooops) and liked it. The embassies of all the students in attendance were invited to the dinner, and I sat at a table with a Turkish diplomat who had previously served in the US and New Delhi (we discovered he was on facebook!) and a Greek head of Amnesty.
They had a long discussion about the extent to which Turkey's human rights record is an excuse for not letting it into the EU. They also inverted the normal discussion in an interesting way. Maybe it's easier for European leaders to emphasize the unpopularity of allowing in a majority-Muslim country than to criticize Turkey for its human rights record. It allows both governments a convenient out: The EU can say, "we'd let you in, but our people aren't enlightened enough. Let's keep trading." Turkey can say "It's an all Christian club." This is potentially less embarrassing for both countries than direct tension over civil liberties in Turkey. It's a more out-there interpretation, but I think it's interesting. It reminds me of the multiple level trade negotiation models from International Politics that Robert Putnam developed.

-Most of our events and speakers were in English, but the two sessions in Greek were my favorite. In part, they were cool because we all got headphones to wear that had simultaneous translation. What really made the sessions was that the journalists asked really hard questions.
The first of these sessions was on the Greek fires. A governor from a province affected by the fires was on the panel, and I was impressed by the ways they had moved to rapidly aid and compensate the victims. A very young Greek media-lawyer (you can have a law degree in Greece when you're 23!) really grilled him, and asked him why the military hadn't intervened sooner. His answer was that the military was mainly made of nineteen and twenty year old boys who weren't trained to fight fires. She pointed out that fires, although usually less severe, were almost an annual occurrence, and asked why the soldiers weren't trained to respond. He couldn't answer.

-The next day, we had a session with five members of the new parliament, including the parliament's president and representatives of all five major parties. A Macedonian journalist asked a deliberately provocative question about Macedonia, and the far-right parliamentary shot him down for being disrespectful and not saying FYROM. We were worried we were going to get thrown out of Parliament for a minute or two. A Greek-German woman asked about immigration policy, and the Israeli journalist asked why there was so little anti-smoking legislation in Greece (Aliki calls it the world's last true democracy and blows smoke circles whenever this comes up). I asked the representative from the center-left party why they had suffered a larger defeat than expected and what their strategy as the major opposition party was. (The poor woman. Theo told me later that she was dismayed "the Americans" knew her party had done so badly. And she was my favorite!)It was a much faster paced, firey session that I had expected and there was very little empty speech. Conclusion: it's more fun to meet important people with journalists than with wanna-be important people.

-On the last night after the "graduation ceremony," we all had a party in one of the hotel rooms, spilling out onto the balcony and across the bed. The sink and the bathtub were full of ice as a cooler for the drinks, but then we realized we didn't have cups. Some people suggested we borrow some from the unlocked hotel bar, but everyone wound up going back to their rooms to get a few.

-After EMJI ended, Rachel and I stayed on a few more days in Greece and Theo got wrapped up in a whole lot of last minute Atlantic Treaty Association election tension. There's nothing like election tension. At one point, they asked me to make a score sheet to count off the expected votes (of countries, no less!) and I felt a little like I was in high school, trying to figure out if I had enough votes to run for something or other.

Ichi, ne, san, shi, go!

2007-10-28T08:57:00.000-04:00

Friday night, I went out to a local bar with Rachel and Brett where we met up with some of their friends and played a half dozen rounds of Yatzee. It was an ideal game for me because I'd just learned to count to five (ichi, ne, san, shi, go!) and could show off/practice. Everyone was very good humored, and the game descended into hilarity a few times as people struggled to master the differences between our names. (The shortened forms of our names wind up being much more similar in Japanese...Ray-chan, Bray-chan, Bree-chan. My name actually winds up being more like Badee-chan. I enjoy the way my name is reinvented in different languages. The Mudasiganas call me Bliss and in the UAE, people thought my name was Berry. It makes me wonder what I do to other people's names.)

I was talking to this man who had to be at least fifty. He asked me if I had friends in Japan, and I pointed to Bray-chan and Ray-chan and tried to indicate I had another friend named Saori somewhere. He then asked Rachel something I didn't understand and she answered, then he asked me a question and pointed to his nose. I really wasn't sure what to do, but I'd worn the phrase 'I'm sorry, I don't understand' out for the evening, so I figured I might as well also point to my nose.

Everyone burst out laughing. Apparently, in Japan, you point to yourself by touching the tip of your nose. He'd asked Rachel if I was single, and then asked me if I wanted to date him. I'd responded by looking bewildered and pointing to myself, diffusing a potentially awkward situation. There are perks to being too oblivious to be awkward!

One dynamic I'm struggling with a little bit here is how common and acceptable it is for older men to go after young women and girls. In the United States, we certainly idolize youth and it isn't uncommon for women to marry men ten or fifteen years older than them, but men in their thirties and forties don't date girls in high school and college. As a result, when a man who is 50+ talks to me, I assume he is being fatherly and not trying to hit on me. I would have assumed he was kidding if Rachel and Brett hadn't given me a crash course on vehemently expressing disinterest on the way home. Apparently he'd gotten really persistent, and Rachel had told him I didn't have a cell phone or an email account. We're not quite as far along technologically back in the US of A. The whole thing struck me as more funny than anything else, but it's good to bear in mind in the way I perceive interactions here.

Vanity

2007-10-28T08:47:00.000-04:00

So, when looking at tracking options for the OIR website, stumbled across Google Analytics, a cool tool that lets me track the number of unique hits and repeat hits a website is getting. I thought I'd give it a go here first, and I was pleasantly surprised by the traffic. In appreciation, I decided to fight my Luddite-like tendencies and learn how to make hyperlinks instead of pasting the whole link the way I've been doing. Overall, I'm surprised by how addictive posting is becoming.

Update: My mother complained the white-on-black was hard to read, so I changed the color scheme. I guess it's good a black screen isn't necessary more efficient anyway.

Rain on a Tin Roof

2007-10-27T04:55:00.000-04:00

Today's been a deliciously lazy day. There's a typhoon coming through (which apparently just means a large rainstorm, but typhoon sounds so much cooler) and it's almost too rainy/floody to go outside. I was out fairly late last night so I slept in virtually forever. I love mornings when you wake up and then go back to sleep and are just sleepy enough to fall back to sleep but not entirely so you have a little bit of control over your dreams. This is the first week I can remember where I've gotten enough sleep every night. I sort of went through college pretending caffeine and sleep were perfect substitutes, but now I'm realizing it's better when they are complements. In Greece, there were a few nights where I was so tired I fell asleep on my floor. If anyone ever tells you dinner ends at 2 or 3 am in Greece, believe them. I thought my boss was exaggerating!

My upstairs apartment is so nice in the rain. It makes fantastic sounds on the roof and I can hear the wind beating around the walls. I've spent most of the day upstairs reading a book about an American gangster in Tokyo after World War II.

I had to venture out to run errands earlier today. Unfortunately, I packed for Abu Dhabi where it never rains, so I had to settle for old gold flats and a borrowed umbrella. I think it might be time to buy more all-weather clothing. I succeeded in not being an embarrassment to myself because I discovered there were plastic sleeves outside the grocery store to put your umbrella in so it didn't drip. After you put your umbrella into the plastic sleeve, you then put a rubber band around the top to make sure it stays tightly on. Dryness is a serious business.

If the rain continues to be this bad, I'll probably post more later.

Happy 62nd, United Nations!

2007-10-25T11:04:00.000-04:00

I meant to post this yesterday, but October 24th was the 62nd birthday of the United Nations. Until sometime in late middle school I thought Kofi Annan was more important and powerful than the President of the United States, and part of me still can't let go of that as a normative goal. I know right now supporting the United Nations is very out of fashion. Even at my idealistic college, there was always someone who snorted when there was a serious discussion about UN policy or legitimacy.

As I'm going through the endnotes, I have moments where I feel very conflicted about the UN. I've studied ethnic conflict for the last four years, and I still can't read about Srebenica without wanting to cry. I guess I get swept up in a vision of what the UN could be, and frustrated with all the constraints it is hobgobbled by. I don't know enough (and haven't lived long enough) to evaluate all the merits and flaws of the UN, but I do believe we need a global organization to facilitate cooperation and develop international standards and laws, and it's better to work with what we have than start over.

A quick list of things I think the UN should be celebrating:
-Being a clearing house of easily accessible information about important trends around the world. (The Human Development Index is amazing. Before wikipedia, it was my favorite procrastination tool.)
-promoting self-determination before it was a given
-successfully helping Cambodia transit from decades of violence into a stable democracy
-leading the effort to end apartheid in South Africa
-prosecuting war criminals
-formulating international standards
-running refugee camps
-eradicating smallpox and helping contain epidemics like SARS
-serving as a forum for important conversation and collaboration, from fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS to climate change

Transcendent Conversations

2007-10-25T10:03:00.000-04:00

Last night, I went to a neighborhood bar with Rachel's husband, Brett, and met some of his friends. I had a mango cider, which was very delicious and on the house. I also got to do some research into my ever-evolving list of conversation topics that seem to span cultural barriers and don't necessarily require sophisticated or technical vocabulary. I apologize if this list seems stereotypical, especially when it comes to gender. There are also some topics that could be on other people's lists that don't work as well for me. For instance, in Tanzania (and to a lesser extent, other places) I felt like I would have had a lot more to talk about with people had I been more comfortable talking about religion, or had we shared a belief in god. I imagine having small children or an exhausting job is also good conversation fodder.

The List So Far
-The World Cup (more men then women, but I get a lot of mileage out of this one)
-Bad Breakups, Past Relationships and Current Crushes (more women)
-Pets (Japan)
-Friends and Seinfeld (seem to have achieved global popularity)
-Strange Things You Have Eaten or Drank (more men. My best is deep fried grasshoppers in Northwestern TZ)
-Things You Don't Like That Bush Has Done (I know there's an old rule about not discussing politics or religion with people you don't know well, but I think this one actually often makes people feel more comfortable. I'm also really bad at not talking about politics.)

This list is a lot shorter than I'd like it to be, but I figure it's an evolving project. I think the best way to interact with interesting people is always to ask a lot of questions, but sometimes I do that too much and part of building trust and friendship is having reciprocal conversations where both parties volunteer information.

Some of the topics above are just fun. Last night, the guy who owned the bar told us about a liquor with a snake inside of it. People drink the liquor and cook the snake. We then talked about tequila and worms. I also had a similarly light-hearted conversation with a bunch of women in the UAE about pranks we'd played on our siblings and had played on us.

My strategy for launching into more controversial topics is to wait for a lead in the conversation. For instance, if someone says something mildly against the war/the current administration, I'll say something to make it clear I'm not going to be offended. "I didn't support the war and worked for the Democrats, the opposition party, when I was in college. I think very few Americans support the war now. What do you think about..." If it's a perspective I don't agree with but want to hear more about, I'm torn between just asking a question and saying "I don't agree with that but would like to hear why you feel that way..." I usually settle for, "I've never heard that put quite that way before. What makes you feel that way?"

One subject that I've found very fruitful in the UAE, Greece, Tanzania and Japan is discussing what the roles of men and women should be like in the ideal society. Should women serve in combat? Should men take paternity leave? Should women with kids work? I like this subject because everyone is equally qualified to have an opinion and people often have varied opinions but the conversation doesn't usually devolve into personal attacks. I'm also almost always surprised by what is said.

La Vie Quotideinne

2007-10-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

One thing I really like about Japan is that it's socially acceptable to say, when apologizing, "I am an embarrassment to myself." I have had several noteworthy daily life successes this week, and I think they are in part due to the mastery of this key phrase-- because I often am.

The other day, I went to go visit a friend a few train stations away. I'd last seen her when I was in ninth grade, so it was fantastic to catch up. We rode a very high ferris wheel called a 'clock.' From the top, you can see all the way to Mount Fuji on a clear day. We ate at Subways for lunch. A critical difference from the United States: they put wasabi on the sandwiches. Yum.

On the way back, I had some ticketing confusion involving accidentally using a fare adjustment machine when I didn't need to. As a result, my ticket was just really messed up and the ticket machine wouldn't let me exit the station. I went into the little help booth to try to explain/pantomime the situation, an added challenge because I didn't really understand what had happened. After I had tried to act out trying to leave and the machine barring me from leaving (I could have used a volunteer, pretending to be me and the offending machine simultaneously was tricky)while repeating "I'm sorry. I don't understand. I am an embarrassment to myself," the station attendants decided I was lost. I was able to communicate that I did indeed live in Kikuna, and then they said a lot of stuff. I explained that I didn't understand and was totally an embarrassment to myself. They were enthusiastic and said a lot more stuff. Finally, they gave me an unnecessary refund and let me through a back gate. I think I was becoming an embarrassment to them too. I felt bad but I kind of count the interaction as a success because I was able to a) exit the station and b) convey that I felt bad.

Speaking of success stories, I've mastered my shower and my bathtub now! I'll confess, I don't know how all the buttons work, and have to fill my bathtub manually instead of setting it to fill to a certain number of cubic millimeters, but it's a far cry from falling and not being able to get up. My bathtub itself is phenomenal. I think it could fit three American-sized people in there. If it was deeper, there would be enough space to tread water. I've always been more of a shower person than a bath person, but Japan may convert me. I sort of just want to hang out in my bathtub with a book after work. In Japan, water is heated as it is used, so bathwater doesn't get cold and showers don't run out of hot water. In addition, no energy is wasted heating unused hot water.

One thing that I'm still adapting to is how rule-abiding people are. I took the train into Shibuye (downtown Tokyo) the other night and participated in "the Scramble" at Hachiko Crossing. It was chaos, made slightly more terrifying by the fact that it was raining and everyone was holding umbrellas that seemed aimed at my eyeballs, but decidedly organized chaos. Everyone waited until the signal to cross and people truly scrambled. There was none of this "I'll make the car wait for me" leisurely American stuff.

Closer to home, I live about a third of a mile from the train tracks. Ninety seconds before a train comes through, traffic barriers go down and a flashing light blinks. They sometimes go up immediately after the train passes, but if there's a second train following it, they stay down. This means that pedestrians, cars, and bicyclists wait two minutes between trains. Occasionally, I've treated the traffic blocks like hurdles when running , but all the people waiting the full two minutes for an "ok" signal looked at me with concealed horror. I get it. I'm an embarrassment to myself. I try to follow the rules better now-- time saving isn't worth the social stress.

Today for lunch, I went to a nearby Japanese diner with Rachel. At the door, there was a machine with pictoral representations of the food and prices. We decided what we wanted and pressed the corresponding buttons. Then we got tickets with our meal and drinks orders. (It reminded me a little of the sandwich machine at WaWa.) We took these tickets to the counter, and gave them a waitress/cook. A few minutes later, she brought out our meals, which were still cooking on hot plates. The procedure is like this: for the next ten minutes, you shield yourself from the oil/grease by folding your paper placemat in half and putting it in front of your dish and reach over the placemat with your haishi (chopsticks) to turn your meat over as it cooks. The food was delicious and I was not an embarrassment to myself!

Terry McAuliffe, Yasser Arafat and J.K. Rowling

2007-10-25T08:41:00.000-04:00

Today I was editing an endnote on the death of Yasser Arafat and I noticed that we didn’t mention the cause of death. I figured it could be worth including, so I did some research, and realized that for the sake of brevity and neutrality, we left it out for a reason. Apparently, his death is a somewhat of a mystery and is every bit as polarizing as his life. I can’t tell if the cause of death was actually as nebulous as some reports make it sound, or whether people were just looking for a way to eek out one more statement about Arafat. Many supporters claimed that Arafat had been poisoned a month before his death and had slowly died as a result of conspiracy. Several right wing sources argued rather triumphantly that Arafat died of AIDS, a claim the New York Times dismissed, but that led to a stream of chatter about the former PLO chairman’s sexuality.

Apparently, in former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe’s autobiography, he reported that Arafat had made a pass at him at a dinner party by stroking his leg. True or not true, I think it’s pretty cheap of McAuliffe to put it in his autobiography. At best the reason for including it is because sex sells. (I suspect that if a powerful woman included every man in a position of authority who made a move on her in her autobiography, the book would be longer and half as well-respected.) At worst, it seems like an extension of the sort of thing fourth graders do, making ‘gay’ into an insult. “You missed the goal. You’re gay.” “You failed the spelling test. You’re gay.” “You’re the leader of the Palestinians. You’re gay.” Even if McAuliffe didn’t see Arafat’s sexuality that way, he had to be aware that was the mindset he was playing into. I’m glad J.K. Rowlings’ 13^th hour revelation of Dumbledore’s sexuality at least offers a pop culture alternative. Happy coming out week, Swarthmore College.

Is it fun to speculate about Arafat’s sexuality? Kind of. Is it appropriate for an American leader (or journalists) to encourage such highly charged speculation in order to increase sales and media attention? I don’t think so.

EMJI Highlights Part I

2007-10-24T03:51:00.000-04:00

This post is just going to be the first of several collections of highlights from Greece:

-It was nearly impossible to live a meal sober; we all ate at a meze place after visiting the acropolis and when the waiter asked us what we wanted to drink, we said 'nothing.' "Nothing," apparently, means no hard alcohol, as we discovered when he brought over carafes of red and white wine. Ah well, not going to complain about free alcohol. This was about when I learned to say cheers in Serbo-Croatian: Zhi-val-ee. (In Japan, it's Kam-pie.)

-Bruce Clark, the international editor for The Economist, came to speak to us towards the end of the program. He talked about his experiences in the former Soviet block countries, and how difficult it was to make economic predictions without freedom of information. He asked the Ukrainian journalists whether it was still common for companies to offer journalists bribes for favorable coverage. They shook their heads, but the Lithuanian journalist, who covered business news, said it was still very common in Lithuania. "People my age, we just say, 'No thanks, that's why I have a salary.'," she explained. We could tell this story really touched him, and it was inspiring to see how corruption could end.

-At one point, a journalist from Cairo asked a panelist how journalists could best cover events, for instance, President Mubarak's illness, to minimize economic disturbance. Her question made it clear to me how different attitudes about the job of the press are in different parts of the world.

Cigarettes and Coffee

2007-10-24T03:45:00.001-04:00

I’ve read a lot in various women’s magazines about why Europeans are thinner (ops, I mean, healthier) than Americans. It usually seems to boil down to really enjoying what they eat, walking more, and eating more fresh produce. From a public policy perspective, this is a pretty compelling explanation: if people believe those are the reasons Europeans are healthier, they will make healthier lifestyle choices.

I’m not sure it adds up, though.

I am guilty of a couple of unhealthy behaviors. I certainly drink more caffeine than recommended, and probably more alcohol too. I think cheese should be eaten at every meal. I have to be forced to stretch and rarely get enough sleep. (I live dangerously, I know.) On the whole, though, my college friends and I would make excellent “healthy Europeans.” We eat produce several times a day and walk whenever it is remotely possible. This leaves me confused why an American size small is a Greek anything-but (Oh, just wait till Japan…) especially as most young Europeans seem to drink more and workout less than the typical young Americans. I still believe that the ‘healthier living’ explanation may be why there are fewer obese Europeans than Americans, but I think it falls a little flat when comparing young people.

One reason that may partially account for the European-American size gap occurred to me one morning at breakfast in our hotel. I was sleepily munching on a bowl of whole grain cereal, and noticed my tablemates were already lighting up their cigarettes as they picked at their pain au chocolate. Vindication.

Greece Background Part III: Turkey

2007-10-24T02:28:00.000-04:00

A final issue that was key during my time in Greece was Turkish EU accession. I have a feeling if I'd been in Greece a year ago-- or even six months ago-- this would have been an even hotter topic, but I think Turkey has lost some interest in the meantime.

Basically, Turkey wants to join the EU and its economy is in proper, EU friendly shape. (Between 2002-2006, the average growth rate was 7%, about four times the average EU growth rate.) Despite a long-standing dispute over Cyprus, Greece has been a key sponsor for Turkish EU accession. Turkey and Greece have a rocky history, but according to my Turkish journalist friend, things have been hunky dory since the 1999 earthquake, when Greece led the outpouring of support for its' Eastern neighbor.

There have been a couple explanations why Turkish EU membership has been so slow. I have my own biases-- I visited Turkey in January and just really liked it (of course, I wasn't a political dissent or a Kurd...), and am also cynical about the inelasticity of the European identity.

1) Cyprus negotiations. Turkey must open its ports to all (Greek) Cypriot planes and vessels before succession can take place.
2) "Turkey doesn't have the proper paperwork and records because it isn't a proper democracy." I heard this one a lot but I'm not sure what it means.
3) Turkish compliance with various EU protocol (for instance, food safety policy and intellectual property law) will take more time.
4) Human rights abuses and lack of freedom of press.
5) Turkey is a majority Muslim (99%) country and just "isn't European."

I think reasons (2) and (3) are excuses that make the delay look reasonable on paper. It's hard for me to believe that Turkey would have a harder time complying-- or worse record-keeping-- than some of the former Soviet bloc countries that joined the EU that have spent the past decade and a half rebuilding their infrastructure from scratch. I don't know enough about Cyprus to comment on reason (1) although it seems like a plausible roadblock. I think (4) and (5) are the most interesting reasons.

Public opinion in Europe, as gauged by the Eurobarometer, is against Turkish succession. Turkey has a population of 70 million and its population growth rate is much faster than that of most EU members. Allowing Turkey into the EU wouldn't be bringing in just a small Muslim country but could change the composition of the whole EU. I think the popular resistance to Turkish accession is based on fears about a shifting European identity. While this is depressing, I bet that in 1988, the year Turkey first applied for EU membership, it was hard to imagine Bulgaria and Lithuania as members, so it seems clear the European identity is in flux.

The human rights issue is a difficult one. Turkey is a democracy that holds free and fair elections, but the army last intervened because they didn't like the election result in 1997. Political dissents who go against the nationalist line are sometimes put on trial for their views. The Freedom House Index (which is addictive) gives Turkey about the same ranking as Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Moldova.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country=7291&year=2007
I wish the EU would be more strategic about using membership as a lever if this was the primary issue, though.

Greece Background Part II: What's in a Name?

2007-10-24T01:53:00.000-04:00

I stayed up late last night to finish a work related task because I was on a roll (hey, old habits die hard) so I have some wiggle time during the day today and have high hopes of finishing up with everything I want to say about Greece.

Right now, Greece has an ongoing dispute with the Republic of Macedonia over its name. Macedonia is a small landlocked country that was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 1991. Greece worries that Macedonia is attempting to appropriate parts of its history by its name (which is also a region in Greece), and by claiming that it is the birth place of Alexander the Great. Macedonia's first flag after independence had the Vergina sun on it, a symbol of King Phillip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father. Tensions increased when Macedonia named their airport Alexander the Great airport. As a result, Macedonia is identified as FYROM (the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) in most official documents. Because NATO and EU secession is dependent upon the resolution of this dispute, it's become a very serious issue.

More and more countries (around 181 now) recognize FYROM as Macedonia, so it seems clear that Greece will have to cave eventually. The Greeks I met often delicately referred to the Macedonian journalists as "the young men from Skopje," the capital city of Macedonia.

The issue was a difficult one for me to understand as an outsider. I think I could understand a little better if the dispute was conveyed in economic terms-- Greece didn't want Macedonia the country to steal tourists from Macedonia the region--but the Greeks I spoke with were extremely emotional about the issue, arguing that Macedonia was an affront to their identity.

A young journalist from Israel was equally bewildered by the issue and Michelle told me that at a conference once the Jordanian and Israeli participants started laughing when the Macedonia issue came up. When she asked them to calm down, they explained they wished all they were fighting over was a name.

One "facet" of the problem is that Macedonia was a kingdom in ancient Greece inhabited by ancient Greeks whereas Macedonia the country is inhabited by Slavs. Some Greeks worry the modern Macedonians are trying to claim a Greek identity or conflate Slavic and Greek identities. (Although I think different responsible ethnic historians have argued both that the Greeks ARE Slavs and that the Macedonians aren't Slavs--it's kind of blurry.) The issue of the birthplace of Alexander the Great is also a sensitive one: everybody loves a conqueror. Greeks also worry that the name is a precursor to Macedonian territorial ambitions to spread into Greek Macedonia. (Maybe they should jump this hurdle once they get to it.)

This may seem like a long treatise in something of dubious international importance, but I do think it's a pretty unique conflict and underpinned a lot of the political conversations I had in Greece. If anyone "gets it" or can think of a parallel instance, I'd love to hear.

Q&A

2007-10-19T11:20:00.000-04:00

Q: How do you meet expats in the Tokyo/Yokohama area?
A: Near the fare adjustment machine on the metro.

Crying Wolf in the Shower

2007-10-16T09:13:00.000-04:00

It's not listed on my resume, but I'm pretty good at squat toilets, if I do say so myself. I'm particularly skilled at using them in a skirt and heels. (This actually makes it easier.) I've also mastered the bucket shower. Therefore, I thought I had the international bathroom situation covered.

That was before I got to Japan.

The Japanese bathrooms I've encountered so far really want to make my life easier. They have a lot of things they'd like to do for me, if only I'd ask properly. This personification may seem like overkill, but the shower has a brain AND a larynx.

The shower has a panel of about eight buttons in different colors with Japanese characters written on them. I had an initial lesson in shower usage my first night, but I was too jet-lagged to remember it. Two control the temperature. I understand that part of the shower brain, and it's nice to be able to pick an exact temperature for my shower. When I press those buttons, the shower speaks. I assume it's telling me what temperature the water is.

There's also a button that fills the tub, and buttons you can use the specify how full you want the tub. Once the tub is filling, there's a button that controls whether the drain is open or closed. I think this button might do something different if the tub isn't filling, but I'm not sure.

My first few showers, I wound up pushing a lot of buttons helplessly and giggling at the shower as it told me lots of things in Japanese. Lo and behold, one of these buttons is a green "emergency" button for elderly people. As I put conditioner in my hair, the message "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" was broadcast over the house intercom over and over in Japanese. Poor Rachel and Brett debated whether to barge into the shower on the off chance that I actually had fallen and wasn't able to get up.

When this happened for a second time, I got a second tutorial on how to use the shower and have been steering clear of the green button ever since then. I hope to gain an in-depth understanding of the full shower/bath combo by the end of the month. The bathtub looks kind of amazing.

I went in a public restroom that had three or four buttons over the toilet. I was terrified (what if I fell and was unable to get up?) but finally took a lucky guess, pushed one, and ran.

Athens and the Acropolis

2007-10-16T08:36:00.000-04:00

I can imagine what it would be like to know you were back home with your eyes shut. I’m learning that each place has a distinctive smell and feeling to the air. I think I first noticed this when in Peru in high school, when we could feel the humidity as soon as we got of the plan. Athens was cooler than the UAE, but also slightly more humid. It smelled like pollution and occasionally I got a whiff of the gyros which were cooking on every block. It’s slightly gritty, helter skelter streets felt refreshing after Abu Dhabi. I also loved the fact that I would round a corner, turn down a normal street, and suddenly have a view of the acropolis, all lit up. A hole in the ground would at first look like construction, and then as I got closer, I'd realize it was the foundation of an ancient building.

There was a lot of homelessness in Greece. Before, I would have interpreted the lack thereof in the UAE as a good thing, but because I know there's extreme poverty there, it instead seems sinister that it is so invisible. It reminds me of an argument I read when writing a con law paper on public forums (fora?):

"In their article, “Begging to Differ: The First Amendment and the Right to Beg,” Cohen and Herschkoff argue that this discomfort is a valuable result of free speech. To deprive poor people of the right to beg does not only deny them of a way to earn money but also denies them the ability to make the public aware of their plight. Begging is an individual commentary on social order—the belief that it is the duty of the prosperous to help the less fortunate in their communities. It also provides the listener with valuable information about their opportunities to be charitable. Although begging is certainly partially financially motivated, so are other protected forms of expression such as movies, music and books."

It's a problem when people are denied the ability to communicate their need. On the other hand, the different could stem from the fact that the poor in the UAE are working: I'd bet a lot that unemployment is much higher in Greece. Also, marginalized populations in the UAE are there FOR work whereas some of the marginalized populations in Greece (the Roma) may be discriminated against in hiring. Anyway, this is all just speculation.

(And now for a lesson in contrast...)

On my first night in Greece, we ate at the Athens Club with Theo and Michelle, which was quite the introduction. The Athens Club is sort of an old school British gentlemen's club that only allowed women in a few years ago. Theo had decided that EMJI would have their graduation there, so we were scouting it out. It was there that I discovered that even zucchini is good with enough lemon. This made enough of an impression that I wrote my first Greece post about the wonders of lemon. We also had a Greek salad with lemon, feta and spinach pastries, and dolma in lemon sauce. There was an amazing view of the Acropolis from the roof, and at the table next to us, some cabinet members were discussing their choices for their new under-secretaries.

On Sunday, before the EMJI academic program started but after I'd prepared some materials for Rachel, I went to go see the acropolis with the journalists. It was a beautiful, very sunny day. In January, I went to see Ephesus in Turkey with my father, and I think the Acropolis itself was a bit of a let down for me after this. Maybe the Acropolis is more architecturally impressive or restored with more care, but Ephesus is really cool because it's a whole city. I liked imaging people meeting in the agora, going to the library or walking down mainstreet. The Acropolis is a temple where people went once or twice a month, so there's less scope for the imagination.

However, the view of Athens and the surrounding countryside from the Acropolis is absolutely amazing. Athens is a pretty big city--6 million out of Greece's 11 million inhabitants live there-- but from the Acropolis, you can take in the whole city and the mountains. It was clear enough for us to see all the way to the ocean. I'd have hiked up just for the view alone.

The Blessings

2007-10-16T08:06:00.000-04:00

I really like the singer Dar Williams, and one of my favorite songs is called "The Blessings." What I love so much about the song is that over the last year, I've found meaning in different verses depending on what was going on in my life. The end of the song is about being able to choose what you take away from an experience, what stories you tell. The following verse in the middle never really hit me until yesterday:

I had the blessings, there's nobody there, there's nobody home
Yeah the blessings, in the moment I was most alone
And aimless as a fooltime fool, the joke was on me.
I got all of those birds flying off of that tree, and that's a blessing.

I think people derive their happiness or sense of self from different things. (And this can be fluid over the course of a lifetime.) For some people, praise is really important, or good grades, or the approval of authority figures. For others, self-worth depends on being attractive to their preferred sex. For me, it's social feedback. I don't mean social approval-- I'm ok with some people disliking me-- I mean something a bit deeper than popularity and a bit shallower than being indispensable.

Not receiving this feedback is challenging for me, and I have some days where I'm quite lonely. I'll get sort of into being lonely, and think: Aha. This is what it feels like to be sad. Whenever I feel this way, there's always something small that happens and then suddenly I'm happy again. The things are trivial-- but there is always, always something. Yesterday, I was in a bad mood and went for a run and saw a bunch of kindergardeners walking in two lines up the hill. They were all wearing matching uniforms with yellow hats and started waving to me and shouting "Heddddo!" It was so cute that I was in a good mood for the rest of the day.

I think that's what Dar is saying about "all those birds flying out of that tree." To me, that's part of the difference between being happy and having a bad day and just being unhappy. I think true unhappiness is often characterized by an emotional inertia or numbness. I can tell I'm fundamentally happy because I still get excited over the birds in the tree.

I explained this to my friend and fellow Dar affectionado, Allie, who got what I meant, but sorry if I'm just rambling. I take lyrics pretty seriously, as you can see.

Chronicles of a Formerly Picky Eater

2007-10-16T06:44:00.000-04:00

I used to be a very picky eater. I went into college a vegetarian, although I (somewhat painfully) transitioned out of that before my trip to Tanzania. I didn't eat pizza until my junior year of college, or tomatoes. I didn't like (non-cheddar) cheese until I went to France sophomore year. (This is hard for me to imagine right now). However, this really only scraps the surface of my limited palette. Before college, my diet consisted mainly of yogurt, cereal, green apples, chick peas, grapes, carrots and ceasar salad. I don't know how my parents put up with me. When people invited us over for dinner, I politely asked if they had cereal.

I think I first discovered the joys of real food (read: cheese and nutella) when in Paris with my friend Eleuthera on spring break. Life without cheese seems pretty unpalatable now. The beginning of the end was probably the summer after my sophomore year, when I worked a lot with African refugee families and decided it was just plain rude not to eat the food they offered me. When I went after to Tanzania the next summer, we were frequently served nyama, an all-encompassing term that means "animal," and although we never learned to love it, we became able to eat a polite amount without wincing. As for ndizi (banana) cooked with tomatoes? Bring it on! We also discovered the wonders of Ethiopian food and I truly enjoyed meat for the first time.

In the past few weeks, I've discovered just how necessary my devolution from selectivity was. In Greece, I rarely got to choose my own food. When we went out to eat with Theo and Aliki, Theo inevitably ordered our food with input from Aliki. In some ways, this felt very old world-- I can't really imagine men routinely ordering for women in the U.S. On the other hand, it made sense because Rachel, Michelle, and I couldn't speak or read Greek. I came to trust that they would pick 'something good.' There's a small list of foods I still dislike-- like zucchini-- but I learned even zucchini is good if you put enough lemon on it.

I don't have a fridge in my apartment yet in Japan, so I often go to the convenience store ("Family Mart") to pick out healthy, cheap, ready made food. One of my favorites is onigiri, triangle-shaped rice balls with different fillings wrapped in seaweed. Luckily, they are color-coded so I can tell what's in them. The blue ones are my favorite-- they are filled with tuna, a food I thought I hated a week ago.

In general, though, my food shopping is hit or miss. Not only can I not read Japanese, but a lot of the food doesn't look like anything I've experienced before. I'm kind of intimidated by the heads of fish, but other than that, I'm never sure what I'm eating until I bite into it. I can't even reliably predict whether things are sweet or not. The other day, I accidentally bought sippable sweetened aloe vera yogurt for breakfast. At least now I know how to avoid it.

I know how to ask several helpful questions in Japanese: What is this thing near me? What is this thing closer to you? What is that distant thing? I imagine these could prove helpful at some future date. At this point, I could ask, but wouldn't understand the answers.

The only part of the food label I can read is the numerical part of the nutrition facts. Thus, I know my onigiri has 187 kcal, 5.5 g something and 3.1 g something else. My meal shopping is sort of like a mathematical scavenger hunt: find 600 calories. Go!

Another challenge is that what seems to be fairly extreme dieting here is so common that a lot of 'healthy' foods are insubstantial. I'm looking for a salad that has more than 54 calories to go with my onigiri after a long run, thanks. The solution is definitely mochi, a warm dumpling filled with delicious sweet red bean jelly.

The final grocery shopping challenge begins when I order mochi at the counter, where they are in a heater. "Mochi, I request," I say in terrible Japanese. Then I point to the pink one. This doesn't always work and there is a lot of confusion. "Sorry," I say. "I don't understand Japanese. Thank you." The cashier then has a lot of things to tell me about my food or its cost or the transaction in general. I'm not sure if these are expressions of surprise ("That is a very strange meal." "Thank you."), warnings about the food, ("The onigiri is no good today. It might make you sick." "Sorry.") or friendly conversation, ("Are you from America?" "Thank you" again.) but I stick to my stock phrases. Right now my favorite word in Japanese is ho-ten-ni, which means totally/very, but I haven't figured out a way to work that into my grocery shopping. I do totally request mochi, but I don't know which part of the sentence the adverb belongs in.

East African Runners

2007-10-16T06:40:00.000-04:00

I know this is old news, but I'm still in awe: His marathon time isn't so far off my half marathon time. Yikes.