A Wave of the Hand

Why Discussions Turn Into Arguments (or, People Don't Listen, Part II)

2012-02-09T20:17:00.003-05:00

A: Have you ever read a really interesting article online, but when people posted their comments it was obvious that they didn’t really understand what the author was saying and instead posted tangential comments based around the topic under discussion?

B: People make off-topic comments all the time, like male enhancement ads on the Rane forums.

A: I don’t mean off-topic like spam; I mean off-topic like they couldn’t quite grasp the writer’s point and were arguing in a different direction.

B: No, I know exactly what you mean. That happened a few weeks ago when I was reading a discussion about the Occupy movement and somebody posted about how Obama was being a socialist by not approving that oil pipeline.

A: No, you’re still talking off-topic.

B: I think that’s quite different than the male enhancement example.

A: Listen! Pick a random topic, say, Monopoly. Monopoly is a game based primarily on luck. If I’m the last person to roll in a five-player game, my odds of landing on unowned properties are greatly reduced. They’re reduced even further if one of the other players gets doubles and can buy a second property on the same turn. If I can buy fewer properties, I have a weaker chance of developing a strong position later in the game.

B: That’s ridiculous! Lots of games are based on luck! Settlers of Catan, for instance: if nothing but fours and tens come up, then the players who build on the fours and tens are going to get a shit-ton of resources every game. Cribbage is the same way: if I get a twenty-nine hand, it’s going to be pretty hard for you to beat me. Or in Hearts...

A: You see what just happened?

B: What?

A: I said that Monopoly is a game based primarily on luck, especially in larger games.

B: You didn’t mention anything about larger games.

A: I implied it. Anyway, I was saying that in larger games, Monopoly is based primarily on luck. You didn’t respond positively or negatively to that comment; you just went on to talk about how lots of games have luck in them.

B: Are you saying there’s no luck in cribbage? If we cut a starter card that gives me an inside-double run and helps you out not at all, isn’t that luck?

A: Of course it is, but I was only talking about Monopoly.

B: Maybe you weren’t being clear enough!

A: Do you think Monopoly is based primarily on luck?

B: In larger games?

A: In larger games.

B: Any game with dice or cards intrinsically involves some degree of chance! That’s the way of the world!

A: Yes, but do you think that degree of chance is substantial enough in a game of Monopoly to cause an imbalance?

B: In a large game, or a small game?

A: A large game.

B: How many players constitutes a large game?

A: I don’t know. Five.

B: You don’t know? This doesn’t seem like a well-thought out argument to me.

A: Fine! We’ll say more than four. Four or more players constitutes a large game.

B: You said five before.

A: Five is more than four! I’m trying to explain as best I can: Do you think that the degree of chance in a game of Monopoly involving more than four players is enough to create an imbalance for the player or players who are last to move their pieces?

B: I think the Chance cards have a lot to do with it as well.

The Mole That Poked His or Her Head Above Ground

2012-01-24T18:52:00.004-05:00

All of my co-workers consistently misuse the genderless plural pronoun in place of a singular pronoun, as in the following example:

Someone left their book on the table.

Their is a pronoun used for more than one person (They left their books on the table), but here, only one person left a book. You wouldn't say Cinderella left their slipper at the ball because that doesn't make sense either.

People talk like this everywhere, and it's a reality I've grown to accept, like the prevalence of pro football or the existence of Crocs. Today, however, I found this in a kindergarten newsletter:

Every group of moles has a guard. The guard mole pokes his or her head above ground and warns the other moles of danger.

I was aghast at such an awkward, though grammatically-correct sentence from one of my co-workers. His or her head? What had caused such a pedantic shift?

I've come up with two explanations, possibly related:

1. Because the subject in question was the guard, the writer felt more inclined to use singular pronouns, as the is generally only used for one of something.
2. Because the sentence is about an animal, misusing their in place of singular pronouns seemed less appropriate.

Whereas in previous centuries, the teacher's sentence would have been commonplace, our language is constantly changing (and whoever be he who thinketh othewife might best have his head cleft clean from his body), and the singular their may be here to stay. I predict that in a generation or two, the casual their will be formally regarded as correct, and blog entries like this one will seem as dated as they are condescending.

Want to learn more?
The Genderless Pronoun: 150 Years Later, Still an Epic Fail
The Epicene Pronouns: A Chronology of the Word that Failed

A Bizarre, Saturnalian Cover

2012-01-22T15:53:00.005-05:00

1967 Bantam paperback edition of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49*

I love old paperback art, and this one is no exception. Paisley designs should be integrated into far more book covers.

Also, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a bizarre, off-the-wall, novel that still manages to retain a concrete hold on its plot and characters. (It's also short!) Pynchon's prose expresses the most everyday actions in strikingly unique ways, and for that I adore it.

-------------------------
* I hate it when items that normally appear in italics (i.e. book titles) appear inside other items that normally appear in italics (i.e. picture captions) so that the italics cancel each other out and the former must then be unitalicized. It just looks wrong to me.

Relative Nostalgia

2012-01-15T11:51:00.003-05:00

More and more often, I see our generation united by common memories of mass consumer and pop culture from our childhoods (approximately 1983 to 1996), thus firmly establishing the popularity of sites like The Angry Video Game Nerd, the Nostalgia Critic, and this site examining awesome VHS covers from the ‘80s.

The ‘80s covers might be a different story, but were all those cartoons, movies, Nickelodeon shows, video games, and commercials really worth enshrining, or were we just at an impressionable age where even marginally serviceable entertainment would blow our minds? Is it possible that today’s mass culture (mediocre by our standards) has the same effect on kids, and in twelve years we’ll have a whole new generation talking about how cool the Geico gecko was?

Answer: not fucking likely.

Even Lincoln Had an Editor

2011-12-30T12:25:00.001-05:00

This country of ours was founded 87 years ago by a group of men who believed very strongly that freedom was the most important thing for their new nation, and also thought that all men and women were legally considered equal under the law.

During the Civil War in which this country is currently engaged, we’ve been put to the ultimate test of whether or not America can “make it,” so to speak. That battle occurred right here under our very noses. This battlefield is thus being dedicated today to honor those who died here to keep America going. I definitely think that this dedication is a good idea.

But, in a way, we can’t really dedicate this battlefield at all. The fact of the matter is that it’s already been dedicated by the brave men and women who died here, and there’s really nothing we can do to add to or take away from that. Everyone will probably forget today’s ceremony, but they should never forget what our fighting men did on that day. Actually, it’s our job to make sure that they don’t forget it. This is a pretty big job, and we should work even harder to remember all the people who we honor; so we’d better roll up our sleeves and do it, because it would be a terrible tragedy if all of those men died for nothing, and we should make sure that America—where the people have control over the government—remains united for a long, long time to come.

A Review of P.T. Anderson's film, "Punch Drunk Love," from 2002

2011-12-19T19:56:00.002-05:00

Directer Paul “P.T.” Thomas Andersons movie Punch Drunk Love is a film that CLEARLY does not even know what it wants to be. He uses Adam Sandler, who is a great comedian that always makes me laugh with such films as Click and Big daddy, so many people that rent or watched this film thought it would be a comedy when it clearly wasn’t. There are not enough funny parts to call this picture a “comedy.” For example, when the brother in law says that he is a dentist is one funny scene. Perhaps “black comedy” is a better way to describe this movie.

But also the movie tries to be a drama, like when Adam Sandlers character is going to Hawaii to find the girl and we don't know if he is going to get her or not. But this suspenseful point is clearly ruined after this, because afterwards Adam Sandlers character finds the girl and the suspense is ruined! Lots of good drama movies have suspense in them (like “The Shawshank Redemption” for instance), as it were, and suspense is clearly a good thing that drama movies can have a lot of. Also more important however, is the importance of good characters in a drama movie, so that the movie can be dramatic and the viewer can understand the deeper meanings of those characters. In Punch Drunk Love, though, the viewer cannot have these same feelings about the characters because they cannot understand them. Adam Sandler’s character Barry, for example, is the best example because his character changes Throughout the movie. At the films start, he is a plunger salesman who wears a blue suit, which is his business, but we don’t even know why he picked up an organ from the street! Then he gets angry and smashes many windows, but the moviegoers don’t understand why. We can’t understand his character at all! I think the reason is because he hates his many sisters, but this is never proven. Then, however, we start to understand his character more when he starts dating his girlfriend (played by the actress Emily Watson; who also played the blind girl in Red Dragon who couldn’t see) but then Barry becomes angry again at the men who beat him up badly with his girlfriend after the Car Accident Scene, and he runs around crazy because he wants revenge on the person that caused the problem in the first place. Clearly this is to many subplots together to understand his character. Also the sex hotline part makes no sense at all.

Because Barry called the phone sex hotline in the early section of the film, Adam Sandler’s character is considered very unlikeable. Clearly, if someone jerks off to some phone sex hotline, because he found it in a magazine, even giving his Social security number to do it, we think that he is a gross person for doing that. But then isn’t he also supposed to be the protagonist of this film? His characterization makes no sense because we clearly can’t like the films main character for the character that he is.

Also there is another story about the pudding, but in my opinion that part is very hard to understand because they explain it only in the early part of the movie and its not clear whats going on. Then later to his friend. I thought this part was interesting at first but later we never see him get the miles that he wants. This was a big Dissappointment because it was the only part of the movie I was interested in and then we can’t see how it ends. Also the cinematography in the supermarket scenes was pretty well done, I thought, and the director put in lots of good cinematography to make the movie more interesting. It reminded me a bit of the cinematography in “Blade Runner”, where the cinematography is very good and eye-catching. It really grabs your attention when you watch it, and you can clearly see that PT Anderson learned a lot about movies from watching Rildey Scotts films.

So, to sum up, Punch Drunk Love is a bad movie that has some points in it that make it good. It’s director should have picked a type of movie to make and made that movie and chose a different protagonist than Sandler to play his character. However, the cinematography is good, so I definitely recommend checking it out for that. Clearly though, you will be bored and confused by this movie, which is obviously not one of Sandlers best. (Some of the colored parts with music in the middle part were very “artistic” with their cinematography though.)

Inappropriate Conversations

2011-12-10T17:44:00.003-05:00

Me: (astounded) How can one guy possibly work the size of his own penis into conversation so frequently?

Brian: It depends. Like, this one time, we all went shooting at the sandpit with these dirty hippies from Maine, and Chase* started talking about how Russian chicks would really like him because he had such a large penis.

Me: What does that even mean? Like, Russian women care more about phallus size than other kinds of women? That sounds pretty racist to me.

Brian: (thinking) Yeah, I guess it does. Anyway, that’s just one example. He mentions it pretty frequently.

The others heartily agree.

Me: But why would someone willingly evoke such a shameless topic? It’s both wholeheartedly foul and ridiculously arrogant.

Chris: What kind of people do you associate with, man? There is a huge proportion of guys out there who not only love to talk about their penis sizes, but love to do it often. It’s a fact of life. If this is news to you, then your friends clearly represent a poor cross-section of society.

Me: (thinking) Well, I do hang out with a lot of well-educated people....

*Not his real name

---------------------------------

This conversation raises several issues. The first involves how we should view those who talk about their own penis sizes as an overly positive, or even a defining feature. Is it arrogant to announce one’s size (real or imagined) to others the way one might flaunt a high SAT score or a Gucci handbag? Or does it simply show a lack of concern for tasteful conversation? What should we think of those who, failing to stumble upon a natural opportunity to mention their penis sizes (as such situations, though far from common outside the bedroom, do occur once in a blue moon), go out of their way to create one? On the other hand, are there some people who can naturally discern a link between anything (i.e. dental floss, Roy Orbison music, disrespectful bank tellers, or the proper wording on a restroom sign that requires employees to wash hands before leaving) and their own penises?

The second issue (raised by Chris) is whether I am far enough removed from normal society so as to be unaware of a cultural phenomenon occurring millions of times a day among post-pubescent males. Do guys really talk like that? Does the topic frequently arise at parties where large amounts of Bud Light are consumed and professional sports are commented upon in raucous tones? I've heard similarly uncouth reports of male behavior (“And then he went right to sleep!”) that make me embarrassed to be associated with my own gender. Is there a swarm of other men out there giving us a bad name by exhibiting and—dare I say it?—encouraging such penile discussions?

Discuss.

On the Severity of Headaches

2011-12-06T17:34:00.002-05:00

I get bad headaches sometimes that impede my ability to do things that I’d like to do, and sometimes I make the mistake of telling people that I’m not sure whether they’re regular headaches or migraine headaches. If my interlocutor is prone to migraines, he or she will often respond belligerently, saying things like, “If you had a migraine, you’d know!” or “It feels like a NASCAR circuit is holding time trials inside your skull!” One of my friends from college suffered migraines that frequently made her vomit and kept her out of class for days at a time, which made it awkward when we wanted to use her roommate’s TV. Other people I know complain of migraines at work, saying that they’d love to stay the entire day—really, they would—but their migraines would make a half day much more manageable. It made me think that there were different levels of migraines, like different levels of earthquakes. But even on this head-pounding Richter scale, where does a regular headache end and a migraine begin? My migraine-suffering friends didn’t like my attempts at clever metaphors very much, though.

Eventually, I learned not to make conversation out of my personal ailments, because there would always be someone else who was worse off than me, and it was best never to get these people started.

A Thought

2011-11-29T20:35:00.006-05:00

I've been mulling over the idea, recently, of starting a new blogging project far greater than Corporate Takeover in that it would take up an entire blog, be written by a fictitious character whose view of topics would be drastically different than my own, and take place in a world completely outside my current reality. It would also make fun of hipsters pretty bad.

Perhaps one day you'll see the start of it here, without knowing what it is, and assume the voice is mine. On that day you may think that I've lost my mind. Or, if you're easily taken in by pretentious arguments, you may think I'm making a lot of sense. Or, if you're a casual skimmer, you might not even notice. Stay tuned.

We Want....Information

2011-11-16T20:24:00.002-05:00

This is what happened today:

A girl: Mr. Rogers, can you send my application to B____ B_____?

Me: Of course. Let's just make sure you're not missing anything. (skims over papers briefly) Looks like you forgot to put your phone number here.

Girl: Oh, it's fine. My sister goes there, so they can just get it from her.

Me: What?! This is an application to high school, which, along with college and job applications, is one of the most important documents you will fill out in your entire life! You have to fill these out perfectly! If they ask you for something, you have to give it to them, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. If they ask you which cereal was your favorite when you were six, you'd better tell them! It's a simple sign that you can follow directions, which is all these schools really care about anyway! The simple act of filling out the form correctly implies responsibility, and thus proves you will be successful at their institution. How can you be expected to expound upon the relationship between deism and quantum theory if you can't even take the time to fill in your phone number?

Girl: (writes her phone number in the blank) Can I go now?

Me: Yes

Writing Every Day

2011-11-09T18:28:00.002-05:00

These days I think a lot (and I know my fellow writer and former roommate Randall does too) about whether it’s better to write every day, or whether some days are just not worth squeezing creativity from.

“Do you write every day?” George Packard asked me once.
“Um,” I said, “I try to.”

I’ve heard from books, teachers, and peers that writing every day keeps us sharp, focused, motivated, and—most importantly of all—moving toward a goal. Being busy, they would say, is no excuse. If I really wanted to write, I would find the time. (I find that most of the things I really want to do I eventually get around to doing, and those I don’t get around to doing I don’t want to do all that badly in the first place—like visiting Niagara Falls or reading Crime and Punishment.) Being busy is no excuse. Or is it?

When I was unemployed, I didn’t write every day (see this blog post as to why ), so I don’t think it’s a simple matter of free time. Rather, I look at my ability to sit down at the computer (or notepad) with confidence. If I have something clear to say, if I believe in whatever that something is, and I have confidence in my ability to express it well, then it’s less daunting for me to switch into creative mode and make it real. But on days when I’m fearful, pessimistic about the future (much less often now), discouraged, lack confidence in my prose, or afraid that a certain project will never amount to anything greater than a blog post, I find myself lying petrified on my bed unable to develop the ideas, in their place a swirling fury of worries about my very real existence, and not the fictional one I’d like to be working on. Some of these are days when I would very much like to write, and I become frustrated when I cannot.

Other days I find myself too burned out and tired to even think about writing, if I’ve worked late or had a long week, or just been through some exhausting ordeal. Is it better to fight through the fatigue and force the words to come, like an angry lover after a long night of fruitless intercourse? Some of my worst work has come on days like this, but some people might argue that bad writing is better than no writing at all.

On still other days, I have things that I would like or need to do. The April Fool’s Mix CD Swap for instance, while a lot of fun and creatively satisfying, takes up a tremendous amount of time. I write a lot of e-mails to friends now, but am still forgetful about communicating with some. I also read less often than I did in high school, which is something I’m trying to change. Last week the school where I work had a snow day, and instead of writing, I touched up the paint on the door panel of my car. I enjoyed doing it, and the Volvo certainly looks better now, but was it a good use of my time?

I think the ideal solution lies in settling all this other stuff—whatever it may be—so as to leave as much time, energy, and confidence to allow productive writing time. If I lack free time, I should cut back on other activities. If I’m low on energy, I shouldn’t work as hard. And, if some outside factor is affecting my ability to focus positively on writing, I have to fix it.

Perhaps writing every day is less of an ultimatum to be adhered to and more of a goal worth shooting for.

Why I Hate Being Called Buddy

2011-10-18T21:56:00.002-04:00

I have several pet peeves, the one that occurs the most frequently being the use of the word buddy as a form of direct address, as in the following examples:

How’re we doin’, buddy?
Nice job, buddy.
Watch it, buddy!

though I take no offense to its use in reference to an absent individual, as in this example:

My buddy over in Halifax can unpeel a clementine in one piece.

There is something about being called buddy specifically that irks me in ways that being called man, dude, brother, son, or even the occasional guy or chief do not. (These last two are so astoundingly rare that hearing them is for me anachronistic, so that I would be more likely to comment on the curiosity of these words than on any specific feelings arising from their use.) People often say that if I don’t like being called buddy, then why am I okay with other terms of endearment that are also (arguably) meant to embody close relationships?

The best illustration is an example from writer/director Savage Steve Holland’s* offbeat 1985 comedy Better Off Dead. The moment occurs after the scene where Lane Meyer (John Cusack), starting his shitty new job at the Pig Burger fast food restaurant, has just created a dancing claymation cheeseburger that sings Van Halen’s “Everybody Wants Some.” The cigar-smoking owner, catching Lane burning his meat, becomes enraged and hurls a hapless Lane into the restaurant where he lands at the feet of the film’s jockish villain, Roy Stalin.**

A little background: Lane Meyer is a high school senior whose decidedly bizarre world is filled with desserts that crawl off his plate and Japanese drag racers who speak like Howard Cosell. Lane is ill-adept at building things, is comically-far behind the rest of his geometry class, and drives a shitty station wagon. Just about the only things he has going for him are his skiing ability and his girlfriend Beth—both of which are taken from him by the confident, charismatic (“Who wants to hold my clipboard?”) Roy Stalin, who is far more popular than Lane and attracts the admiration of everyone for his own superior prowess on the ski slopes.

As Lane lies pathetically on the floor of Pig Burger still wearing an embarrassing chef’s hat with a pig snout attached, Roy Stalin sits above him with one arm around Lane’s former girlfriend. The camera looks up at Stalin from below so that he appears to tower over Lane as he taunts him:

STALIN: Buenos dias! (He makes obnoxious pig snorting noises.) Lookin’ real good, buddy. Lookin’ real good.

Here we have a moment where a clearly stronger character is making fun of a weaker character while also addressing him using the word buddy, a careful choice of words by screenwriter Holland. Whereas the use of Lane’s name would imply a more equal relationship with Stalin, buddy here accentuates Lane’s inferiority. It is not a direct insult, but Holland inserts it to highlight Stalin’s superior, bullying attitude and mockery of Lane’s embarrassing situation just as he also used the lower camera angle. The word buddy here only goes one way: Lane cannot call Stalin buddy because Stalin is a stronger character than Lane is. Holland wants us to hate Stalin and empathize with Lane, and his careful choice of words makes that even easier.

I’ve heard buddy used in this context many times before, from experienced athletes addressing their unconfident teammates to the derisive way that adults speak to small children. Again, in both instances, there is an imbalance in the relationship: the less-experienced teammate has no business calling his superior buddy any more than a child would call a teacher buddy. When the word is spoken to me by my peers, even in the most casual or innocuous of situations, I too feel inferior, as if the other person is also deriding me on the floor of my humiliating fast-food job.

I know that not everyone who uses the word buddy uses it with these intentions. I have been told that many times by many people. But the image is one I cannot shake any more than the lover who feels an excited burst of energy at hearing his partner’s name, or the woman who feels a disgusted chill at hearing the word cunt shouted aloud.

----------------------------------------------

* I re-watched Better Off Dead recently and was struck by the daring nickname and double-crediting of Savage Steve Holland as writer/director of his first movie. Who was Savage Steve Holland, and what other quirky, creative gems had he produced to equal the masterpiece that is Better Off Dead? I jumped on the internet and, finding his filmography disappointingly short, sought out his second film, One Crazy Summer, again starring John Cusack alongside a St. Elmo’s Fire-era Demi Moore. I dismissed (or skimmed over) the film’s poor reviews and watched it one evening after work only to be utterly disgusted by one of the most insulting movie experiences of my entire life. This movie is so bad that it deserves a proper blog entry explaining how bad it is, and not just a footnote within a marginally-related entry. It’s not even worth watching to see for yourself how bad it is, nor is it worth watching with friends to make fun of a la She’s the Man with Amanda Bynes. The film is made worse by my confusion and disgust at how Holland went from portraying twistedly funny distortions of reality in Better Off Dead to churning out cheap jokes and sight gags slapped on to a clichéd teen movie plot barely a year later. The story is one you’ve seen a million times before: a guy has to win the girl and save a town from destruction by corporate greed, blah blah blah. But while ‘80s movies like UHF or The Goonies have similar plots, they at least have redeeming jokes and characters to support them, whereas One Crazy Summer has none. The animated scenes are uninspired, the theme of a character wanting to find love never resonates with anything, actor Curtis Armstrong (the “Sometimes you just have to say ‘What the fuck’” guy from Risky Business) is frustratingly underused, and one of the other sidekick characters is so annoying that I found myself constantly withholding the urge to punch him in the face. My suspicion is that this movie came out so abominably because Holland, newly-initiated into the world of Hollywood, forgot the natural creativity that allowed him to produce his first film and instead wrote and directed the movie he felt audiences wanted to see, because that’s what everyone else was making, and that’s how grown-up writer/directors made movies, right? (Think of it as an ‘80s Barton Fink.) Writers who lack confidence in their creative abilities (myself included, though moreso when I was younger) will often fall back on clichés and conventions to progress a story, fill out a scene, or even shape an entire work. Imagine an endless string of these conventions pieced together into a movie, and that’s One Crazy Summer.

** My attempt to locate this scene on YouTube only resulted in a video of the original “Everybody Wants Some” scene dubbed over with Creed’s “Take Me Higher,” which I will not be reposting here for obvious reasons.

Fiction and Memoirs of Japan: Some Reviews

2011-10-13T21:53:00.004-04:00

Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan by Bruce Feiler (1991)

This was the first book I read before going to Japan myself, and, simply put, it is not very good. Feiler taught with the JET program in Japanese public schools back when this was a new thing, and this book was the result. There is nothing wrong with the book, per se; Feiler accurately recounts the realities of both Japanese society and the Japanese school system while injecting his own reflections and anecdotes in a work that is polished, dignified, and teeming with poetic haikus that show Japan’s spiritual, insightful side.

Maybe that’s why I found the book so uninspiring: it’s too polished, too perfect. Feiler spends more time summarizing research unearthed for a thesis paper on Japan and less time recounting his struggles to adapt to Japanese life, leaving the reader feeling detached from him as a narrator. This book would have found a far better home as a series of informative nonfiction essays, but as a story unto itself it falls disappointingly short. When we do get Feiler’s personal experiences, they almost always consist of him having long conversations with Japanese people about Japanese-related topics, with occasional glimpses of him bumbling through the culture around him. Both narrative tactics get old very quickly. His attempts at self-deprecation aren’t self-deprecating enough, and his funny stories (the one exception being his discovery of Love Hotels) aren’t that funny.

Simply put, it’s an informative introduction to the fundamental differences in their culture, but readers looking to find the real Japan won’t find it here.

Rating: 3/10

The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto by Pico Iyer (1992)

Unnecessary subtitles aside, The Lady and the Monk is an insightful, beautifully-written, more personal look at Japan, this time through one of its most beautiful cities (i.e. one of the few not destroyed during World War II). Iyer has a keen sense of prose that makes this a pleasurable book to read as his words form a conscious melody complimented by the observant eye of the travel writer. Instead of boring us with abstract facts and information, Iyer shows us vivid images of Japan: the autumn trees of Kyoto, the deserted back alleys, the neon lights of the city, the quiet monks hidden in the temples.

There’s actually a bit of a plot, too. Iyer meets Sachiko, the dreamy wife of a workaholic Japanese salaryman, and tells the story of their friendship. Sachiko is fascinated by the world outside Japan, firing off pop culture references in her unique brand of garbled English that is all the more entertaining contrasted with Iyer’s otherwise careful prose. Sachiko is a living, breathing Japanese character who lets us into her world by sharing her hopes, frustrations, and reflections on the society around her, and this one character proves more valuable than a thousand textbook lessons.

Rating: 8/10

If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous (2010)

I’m ambivalent about this book. Marina (an apparently fictional narrator, though I spent half the book thinking this was just the Japanese mispronunciation of the author’s first name) and her girlfriend Carolyn come to rural Ishikawa as JET teachers as their relationship is strained by the challenges of the move and Marina struggles to deal with her father’s suicide. This has all the makings of a good story that could take place almost anywhere, and at times (especially when Watrous shares long, detailed flashbacks of her narrator’s family life back in America) the Japanese setting feels almost inconsequential. The difficulties of Japanese life (garbage laws, indirectness, avoiding confrontation, and blatant sexism) are covered well, but they almost seem an archetype for the difficulties of fitting in with any culture. Most of the writing is also overly sentimental, though after Marina commits several egregious blunders her pain and discomfort become almost painful to read.

Watrous’s world of dilapidated small-town Japan is described with bitter realism, though her background characters are mostly forgettable and underdeveloped to a point where a seemingly climactic and shocking incident is left on the backburner by happening to characters that readers aren’t really familiar with. Where Watrous shines is in her spot-on rendering of the way Japanese speak English: her Nihon-jin characters confuse their r’s and l’s, make realistic grammatical mistakes, interweave their conversations with Japanese words, and end sentences with ne? It’s just a shame that Watrous blurs the line between spoken English and translated English as Marina, who claims to struggle with basic Japanese grammar, is often seen conversing flawlessly with characters whose English is supposedly very poor. Thus, her ability to write realistic conversations spoken across cultural barriers is marred by their inconsistency.

This book is a decent read, but its numerous shortcomings kept me from enjoying it more. That’s a terrible shame, because I really wanted to.

Rating: 4/10

Charisma Man: The Even More Complete Collection, edited by Neil Garscadden, character by Larry Rodney (2010)

Back in print after a frustrating hiatus, this new collection brings together the Charisma Man comic strips that first appeared in The Alien (later rechristened as Japanzine) with some new stories illustrated by different artists. The premise is a superhero spoof of the clueless gaijin: Charisma Man was once a burger-flipping nobody back in Canada, but after arriving in Japan, he gains incredible confidence and good looks that make him irresistible to Japanese women (accompanied by a physical transformation reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes). The setting for Charisma Man is the world of the young eikaiwa teacher: a world of late nights, city streets, tedious English lessons, unpaid overtime, wild parties, binge drinking, and beautiful women. In their finest panels, the strips comment on both the darker moments and glory days of this life, along with the reoccurring theme that any bum can teach English in Japan and become a hero.

Sure, a lot of the gags are cheesy and the jokes repetitive, but maybe I enjoy Charisma Man so much because this was the life I lived for two years, as opposed to the life of the small-town JET teacher or the carefree wanderings of the meditating traveler. The writers know how boring English lessons can be, and don't disguise that the true purpose of hanami is to get blackout drunk in the middle of the day. They capture the zany moments with a humorous spin that makes me lol while beneath the surface there always lurks the harsh truth about the gaijin existence: no matter how great the Japanese may think you are, as far as the Western women are concerned, you’ll always just be a burger-flipping geek.

Read this book. I’ll loan you my copy if necessary.

Rating: 8/10

In Which the Author Proves by Mathematics that Implementing EZ-Pass in New Hampshire Was a Poor Financial Decision

2011-10-03T19:09:00.001-04:00

The busiest of New Hampshire’s toll plazas stands in Hooksett just north of the junction between the Interstate 93-293 division that one uses when driving south from Concord to Manchester, Salem, Nashua, or beyond to Lowell, the 128-I95 corridor, and Boston. From the north, one drives down a long, hilly, three-lane stretch unbroken by exits or signage, the only distraction being the state liquor stores flanking both sides of the highway where out-of-state patrons can purchase alcohol and tobacco products for much less than they’re accustomed to. After that, the road widens, the lines vanish, the cars slow down (but not to the extent required by law), and one is forced to choose between getting off at Exit 11 or merging into the Any Vehicle or EZ-Pass lanes.

EZ-Pass (for those readers outside the northeast) is a small, plastic transponder box that allows motorists to pay tolls without cash by fastening it to the inside of their windshields. The box is scanned by the reader when the car passes through the toll gate, automatically deducting the fee from the user’s EZ-Pass account. The system offers numerous advantages, specifically the benefit of not having to stop at toll plazas (traffic permitting), plus a 30% discount in New Hampshire. (Interestingly, Japan uses a similar system in which vehicle transponders require a separate highway card. The chief benefit of the Japanese system is that one card can easily be used in multiple vehicles, as opposed to the American system, which requires unfastening the EZ-Pass and having the passenger hold it crookedly against the inside of the windshield while the driver slows down enough to catch the signal.)

I do not deny that EZ-Pass is a fine system—my chief qualm is that it displaced New Hampshire’s earlier, more cost-effective system of highway tokens.

When I first became a licensed driver, these tokens were sold by operators in the Any Vehicle lanes of New Hampshire’s toll plazas, where motorists could purchase them as they paid their tolls. (The tokens were not advertised anywhere, I suspect, to keep them a secret from out-of-staters.) A roll of forty tokens cost five dollars. That’s twelve and a half cents per token. But the tokens were worth twenty-five cents each at the tolls. That means that using tokens, one could merge from Route 101 on to I-95 for only twenty-five cents, or pass through the Hooksett toll plaza for thirty-seven and a half cents (the cost of which has since been raised to a dollar). This is less than the price of a candy bar.

When New Hampshire adopted the EZ-Pass system in 2005 (before which time it was the only New England toll-collecting state not to offer an electronic alternative), it discontinued the token system. (It also eliminated the Exact Change lanes with the baskets you had to throw your coins into, though these can still be seen along the Everett Turnpike in Merrimack.) The savings rate was also reduced from fifty percent with tokens to thirty percent using EZ-Pass. That loss of twenty percent was presumably a trade-off for the convenience of the new system. Tokens had to go because it would silly to offer two money-saving alternatives. Besides, a twenty-percent difference is a small price to pay for convenience. Or is it?

Let’s say that a motorist commutes from his home in rural Hopkinton, through the Hooksett toll plaza, to the large, windowless manufacturing building off Exit 2 in Salem that houses his workspace. Let’s also assume that his company grants him one week off at Christmas during shutdown, plus another weeklong vacation of his choosing. (There are of course other company holidays and sick days, but to keep the numbers round, let us also say that he takes various unrelated trips through the toll plaza that cancel out these days.) That means that our hypothetical commuter crosses the toll plaza an average of ten times a week (once northbound and once southbound), fifty weeks a year, at the cost of one dollar per toll.

Using cash, this would cost $500.
Using EZ-Pass, this would cost $350.
Using highway tokens, this would only cost $250.

However, I have neglected to include the initial cost of the EZ-Pass, which the New Hampshire Department of Transportation currently sells for $20.95 (or $33.04 for exterior transponders). This raises the cost of using EZ-Pass to $370.95, meaning that tokens are now the cheaper option by $120.95 the first year.

This twenty ninety-five (which was actually less for those who purchased transponders during the transition period from tokens to EZ-Pass), can, however, be viewed as an investment for those who still want to save some money. Again, using the Hooksett toll plaza as an example, EZ-Pass users save thirty cents at each crossing. This means that users can recover their initial costs after approximately seventy trips. This is opposed to a roll of tokens, which pays for itself after five trips; or the equivalent $21 in tokens, which still pays for itself after only twenty-one trips. The reason for this striking difference is that EZ-Pass, as added equipment, puts only thirty percent of the toll fee towards recovering the initial investment, as opposed to tokens, which, as a form of currency, allow one hundred percent of the toll fee to go towards recovering the initial investment.

Let’s also consider the long-term impact of using EZ-Pass over tokens. Let’s say our hypothetical commuter lives in Hopkinton and works in Salem (or some other office complex in Hudson, Nashua, Merrimack, or Northern Massachusetts) his entire working life, from age twenty-two until age sixty-five, maintaining the same toll-use frequency outlined above. (This seems a reasonable estimate, considering that time spent living or working outside the toll zone will probably cancel out non-commuting trips taken between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, or between ages sixty-five and death.) Let’s also assume that the Hooksett toll rate stays at one dollar for those forty-three years.

Over his lifetime, using cash, that commuter would pay $21,500.
Over his lifetime, using EZ-Pass, that commuter would pay $15,050.
Over his lifetime, using highway tokens, that commuter would pay $10,750.

The tokens are now the cheaper option by $4,300 ($4,320.95 if one counts the initial transponder cost). I consider that a large price to pay for a little convenience.

Unfortunately, the issue isn’t worth debating, because tokens are gone forever and they’re never coming back. EZ-Pass of course frees motorists from having to roll down their windows and fish out their cash, makes sense in congested urban areas, and saves a lot of time (including the time it takes to buy tokens), but it also eliminated an option that saved people a lot of money. And not having that option bothers me. Like so many other cost-effective choices, tokens have been replaced by newer, more popular technology that people can use easily while feeling confident that they’re keeping up with the changing times. We live in a more expensive world, but mean incomes haven’t gone up very much in the past few decades. We’re also in the middle of an economic crisis where people are burdened by joblessness, high debt, mortgage foreclosures, home repossessions, large student loans, skyrocketing health insurance costs, strict borrowing guidelines, high gas prices, low savings rates, and an increasingly unreliable Social Security system.

I don’t think the government should force anyone to save money by using tokens instead of an EZ-Pass. But shouldn’t it at least have given them the option?

As a consumer who prefers saving money over convenience, however, I’ve made my decision. I’ll take Route 3A instead.

Kitchen Crimes

2011-09-26T20:28:00.004-04:00

- Unevenly scooping Neapolitan ice cream in parallel rows along the chocolate and strawberry sections resulting in a disproportionate remainder of vanilla.

- Throwing away the square clip ties that come with more expensive loaves of bread, as these are quicker and more efficient than using the cheaper twist-tie variety that must be laboriously looped around itself to reseal the bread bag.

- Returning empty ice cube trays to the fridge.

- Replacing empty containers of any kind in their usual spot after the last of the food has been drained from them, leaving future consumers in search of their favorite food or drink to excitedly grab the package before feeling the emptiness propel it upward at an unexpected rate that signals the victim’s disappointment at not being able to enjoy the desired portion of cereal, fruit juice, or Ritz crackers that he or she originally craved.

- Dirtying and placing in the dishwasher all of one type of dish before enough other dishes have been so dirtied, creating the predicament of whether to run a three-quarters empty dishwasher, individually wash the desired dish, or improvise using other items that may serve as an acceptable substitute.

- Not doing a proper refrigerator and pantry check before going to the supermarket, then erring on the side of over- rather than under-shopping so as to imbalance the ratio of perishable food items (for example: three dozen eggs, two gallons of milk, four pounds of liverwurst, two cabbages) to nonperishable ones and forcing cohabiters to use up those items in excess before they expire.

- In the aforementioned situation, consuming the perishable items with the later date rather than those closest to expiration, either through negligence, or on the grounds that the chosen item “probably tastes better.”

- Using Miracle Whip for any purpose other than immediate disposal.

A Summation of Everything I'm Working Toward, and a Reply of Enthusiastic Assent

2011-09-06T18:30:00.002-04:00

(a conversation among friends)

Me: Who cares if you're not making money off your creative projects right now?! They still bring personal fulfillment and motivate you to keep working. In the future, one day, with hard work and effort, we'll have achieved recognition for our work and establish ourselves so that we can quit our crummy day jobs and devote ourselves to doing our own work full time!

Brad: Any chance I could get in on this?

Waiting to Talk

2011-08-29T15:26:00.004-04:00

Long before DVDs took the spotlight, the videocassette special edition of Pulp Fiction included an after-the feature interview with Quentin Tarantino introducing some deleted scenes—a great idea I’m surprised more videos didn’t take advantage of. (Remember videocassette special editions? And boxed sets? They were clunky and huge and their oversized boxes included vast amounts of empty space. To carry one of those massive things home from the mall in your shopping bag was to know that whatever funds you’d managed to scrounge up that month had been well-spent.)

The best of the deleted scenes (which Tarantino describes as sounding “more like someone trying to write like me than me”) takes place right after Vincent Vega (John Travolta) arrives to take Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) to Jackrabbit Slim’s. Instead of the director cutting away, Mia comes out with her video camera to ask Vincent some interview questions. Is he an Elvis man or a Beatles man? Does he like the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family? In conversation, does he listen, or wait to talk?

The last question struck me then, as it does now, as one of the most insightful critiques of conversational style I’d ever heard. Mia implies that there are two mutually-exclusive ways of talking to people: contributing to a natural flow of conversation by responding to another person’s ideas (listening), or sharing your own ideas independently of what the other person has to say (waiting to talk). I think we’ve all spoken to people who nod incessantly, responding with a “Yeah” or a “Sure,” or possibly even a stock phrase like “Yeah I know, right?” because they’re not really paying attention. Conversations with these kinds of people are more akin to separate sharing of stories possibly (but not always!) related to the same topic. It’s frustrating, and I’ve never had any patience for it.

On the flip side, listening creates a balanced and more enriching conversation. We learn more by listening, and challenge ourselves by actually processing what the other person has to say so that we can add our own ideas to it. This is how ideas, stories, and information are shared and develop into more complex and even more enriching experiences.

Of course, occasionally we all find ourselves listening to someone incessantly rambling on in a blatantly uninteresting, ignorant, illogical, inexperienced, ineloquent, bigoted, easily disprovable, repetitive, off-topic, childish, obvious, boastful, spiteful, belligerent, self-deprecating, awkward, out of place, or rude way that forces our minds to drift away from the conversation. When our attention wanders far enough, the natural step is to plan out what we’ll say next. We all do it. It happens.

Think about it and ask yourself this honest question: Do you listen, or wait to talk?

Vincent Vega waits to talk. But he’s trying harder to listen.

Chemo Games

2011-08-22T19:41:00.002-04:00

I think real life professions would be more interesting if they involved bitter rivalries reminiscent of Twister or Raiders of the Lost Ark:

* * *

DR. ERIKSON

At long last, a surefire cure for cancer is within our grasp!

DR. ALEXI

You’ve said it, my dear man! I’m confident that this final combination of vaccinations will yield the solution we’ve been searching for these past nine years.

They each peer through microscopes.

DR. ERIKSON

Look, sir! The cancer cells are dissipating! We’ve done it!

DR. ALEXI

Yes, it would appear that the radiation is working its magic on the infected cells.

BEAT

DR. ALEXI (cont)

That’s strange...I’m detecting an irregular growth in the R5 sector.

DR. ERIKSON

What is it?

DR. ALEXI

I can’t believe it! It’s a new string of cancerous cells multiplying at an incredible rate of speed!

DR. ERIKSON

What?

He looks for himself.

DR. ERIKSON (cont)

I...I’m not certain, but it looks like the cancerous cells are spelling out some kind of message.

DR. ALEXI

(reading through microscope)

Not...this...time...Alexi.

An EXPLOSION rocks the laboratory, throwing DEBRIS everywhere. Show TITLE:

Chemo Games

Karate Church!

2011-08-16T19:37:00.009-04:00

When businesses expand or go under, their buildings are sold to other businesses who set up where their predecessors once ran, just as when one family leaves a home, another family moves in. But what happens when an old downtown church moves to a new location?

There's hardly a large number of fledgeling New England churches looking to set up shop in a cheap location, nor can one just demolish a house of God to make room for a new CVS pharmacy. The solution, then, is to rent out the space to a business who can use it, with curious results.

Master An's Tae Kawn Do Academy is located in Bedford, New Hampshire, just past the Everett Turnpike on the toll-skipping route between Manchester and Nashua. I stopped there on a Sunday to take some pictures.

As you can see, the door has been covered with a painting of traditional Eastern dragons, and the tall side windows painted with Chinese characters. I sadly did not get a chance to go inside and see how they had remodeled the main hall (if at all).

Afterward, I remembered that New Testament story about Jesus going into the temple and driving away all the peddlers and shopkeepers who were selling their wares there. If doing business in the Lord's house is wrong, then is it still wrong if the congregation has moved to a new location? When does a church stop being a church? (Think about this one for a minute.) If the congregation moves for a few years and then comes back, is the church still sacred ground while the congregation is gone? Is there a ceremony that happens after a church is shut down to desanctify the building? Or will a church always be a church long after the congregation has moved on to a large suburban location with a two-acre parking lot and a brand-new LED sign?

Other Uses for Old Churches I'd Like to See:

Movie Theater
Glow-stick Rave Venue
Family Fun Center
New location for the Bradford Junction
Water Park
Go-kart Amusement Area
Really big Goodwill/Salvation Army
Used Car Lot
Studio Apartment
Miniature Golf Course in which the player needs to hit the ball through the front door and out the back to win a free game
CVS Pharmacy

Gemini Rue: A New Life Awaits You in the Off-World Colonies

2011-08-10T17:30:00.005-04:00

Gemini Rue is an awesome game. And I’m not just saying that because I love Blade Runner.

That Joshua Nuernberger’s 2011 adventure game was heavily influenced by Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi film noir should be obvious to even a replicant with Mental Grade C. Gemini Rue’s protagonist Azriel Odin is a gritty, trenchcoat-and-necktie-clad cop in a crumbling city where it never stops raining and new opportunities await citizens in off-world mining colonies. However, if the game’s setting owes much to Blade Runner, it also embodies its own 1930s noir style lacking much of the sci-fi atmosphere and Asian influences of Scott’s film. Space travel and weather control aside, little on planet Barracus is actually drawn from science fiction. Azriel uses a surprisingly normal-looking handgun, busy receptionists staff mailrooms inside old brick buildings, Mafia-esque Boryokudan speak with New York accents, and residents still read about current events in their local newspapers. It’s an enjoyable, unique setting for an adventure game, though I was aghast at a shameless, shameless Blade Runner rip-off about halfway through that I’m surprised made it past the editors.

In Gemini Rue, players also take on the role of Delta-Six, who’s being rehabilitated for life outside the mysterious Center 7 prison facility. Since having one’s memory erased is standard procedure upon entering Center 7, Delta-Six and the player must discover the prison’s rules together, making for an entertaining immersion in the game’s world.

For most of the game’s second act, players can switch between playing as Azriel or Delta-Six, but this isn’t Gemini Rue’s only innovation. The game uses an interface strikingly different from the Sierra-style ones I grew up with. Just like in Phantasmagoria, players are alerted to usable game objects by moving the mouse over them. Clicking on these objects opens up a smaller screen where players can look at, operate, talk to, kick, or use an inventory item on the object. Though it took some getting used to, this system is incredibly efficient while allowing wiggle-room for different puzzles, and even the Foot icon can be used in a surprising number of ways.

As is also the case in Phantasmagoria, Gemini Rue makes excellent use of its medium to immerse us in the Gemini system that is the game’s world. Azriel’s conversations with other characters take place against the backdrop of the system’s history of civil war, revolution, and heavy crime, evidence of which we can also see by reading the game’s newspaper. Like well-timed exposition in a novel, players are introduced to Gemini’s history gradually, helping them to understand the world at their own pace. Those eager for more details, however, can use the search function on the city’s information terminals to read about people and places only briefly mentioned in earlier descriptions, proof that Nuernberger has certainly done his homework.

As impressive as Gemini Rue’s world is, parts of the game are far less interesting than others. In the third act, the excitement of the story increases in direct proportion to a decrease in the variety of the game’s puzzles to the point where most of the final challenges can be easily solved by shooting something, operating something, or moving a conveniently-placed box from one point to another, turning these sections into laborious chores as players eagerly await the next cut scene. Though the dialogue in these cut scenes is well-written and hooks players on to the story, more time could also have been spent on the mundane narration that guides us through the game. Consider, for example, a quick back-and-forth between characters:

Azriel: What do you know about Center 7?
Matthias: How should I know what the Boryokudan do these days?
Azriel: Because you worked with them.
Matthias: Well, back in my day, they used to kill the defectors. I don’t know what they do now.

Now compare it with some descriptions that players might encounter when tackling the weather station puzzle:

These chains are keeping the door in place.
This machine is off-line.
I don’t want to break it.
Got it.

Despite these setbacks, I still recommend Gemini Rue very highly, both as an eye-opening exploration of our own identities and proof that the indie adventure game scene is still alive and kicking. For a trailer, playable demo, and more information, check out the Wadjet Games website at http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html

Warning Signs

2011-08-04T10:24:00.004-04:00

(inspired by an episode of Matt Groening's Life in Hell strip)

Gap years
Trickle-down economics
Overuse of the word pretentious
Polo shirts
Store-brand purchases
Fetal positions
Responding to comments with "Yeah, I know, right?"
Pulling out (in a sexual sense)
Dog-eared pages
Excessive keychains
Referring to the pursuit of one's passions suffixed with the word thing
Pulling out (in a non-sexual sense)
Empty notebooks
Excessive ice-cream consumption
Use of the phrase "the real world"

No Furniture at the Shoppes

2011-07-26T16:06:00.002-04:00

Last week I was interviewed by two large men in polo shirts who looked like they spent most of their free time at the gym. The job was one for which I was neither particularly well- nor particularly ill-suited in that it required basic competence but no specialized skills, and I wanted the job because A)It paid money, B)It would be a stepping-stone to something else, and C)It probably offered some form of health insurance.

Salem North Shoppes is a small shopping center off the interstate with individually-sloped roofs and natural-colored siding that attempts to evoke the architecture of a bygone era when in reality it cannot be more than a decade or two old. Brittle trees (one of which afforded me some shade to park my car under) grow among thin sections of mulched land sloping out of its half-empty parking lot, for these are professional offices far removed from the retail and residential sectors. A single pizza place services the plaza; a poor substitute for the lunchtime options of a mixed-use downtown area.

A girl in a hooded sweatshirt was working behind the front desk when I walked into the office. It must not have been her desk, because next to the computer was a large and very ‘80s photo of a middle-aged woman with bright, obviously-dyed blond hair. There weren’t any other pictures or pieces of furniture in the room, so my eye was repeatedly drawn to the photo. Inside the owner’s office, the entire back wall consisted of large windows, evoking that of a powerful executive’s office in a tall skyscraper. Unfortunately this room too had only a desk and a chair for furniture, destroying the architect’s vision. An office can hardly be called professional if there is not enough furniture to fill it.

This was a relatively new company whose owner did not seem particularly experienced in giving interviews. I could almost see him glancing over at the sample interview questions on his computer, often interrupting the flow of a conversation to move on to the next one. He seemed confused about why someone from the education world wished to enter his field, and I spent a long time explaining how my skills were relevant to any line of work, real or imagined as this argument may have been. There was also a very noticeable attempt throughout the interview to see how I would fit in at such a place. He asked me what I did for fun, and I said that I enjoyed reading, movies, and hanging out with friends when in reality my hobbies are so numerous that I often have trouble listing them. What did I read? My mind flew to the very dry book on Russian history I’d been reading that morning. That may have been a bad answer for this situation. A better answer would probably have been something physical or sports-related.

At any interview there is always that extremely awkward moment of saying goodbye when applicants resort to excessive politeness in an attempt to make up for their shortcomings. I thanked the owner profusely for his time, bowing from force of habit as I walked past the girl at the front desk (the middle-aged woman’s photo still smiling at me), again saying that it was nice to meet him, and it was nice for him to meet me, and I looked forward to seeing him again, and he was thankful that I had come, and I wished him luck in his business, and he told me to have a safe trip home, and I told him to stay cool on the hot day, and then the door was closed and I was free once more.

Job Opportunity

2011-07-20T16:46:00.003-04:00

Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:39:06 -0400
Subject: Attention New Hire
From: staff-ID-I751@myemail7.cjb.net
To: ----------@hotmail.com

Hello
Thanks for getting back to us to let us know your interest in the positions we had listed on monster.com.

The postions your submitted resume matched to were.

Office Administrator- $16.00 - $18.00 Per Hour
Front Office Medical Receptionist - $12.00 - $16.00 Per Hour
Office Receptionist/Clerk- $15.00 - $17.00 Per Hour

We are in the middle of processing applications and currently we have 7 other applications along with yours that we are considering, so you can consider yourself on the short list to be hired.

Please help us to express-process your application by performing one of the two mandatory steps that our company must take for all new employees. Since we run both background and credit reports to verify work history on all applicants, you can help us by obtaining your own current credit report, speeding up the process immensely. We have found it's best if you have it in advance to make sure there are no surprises on it and confirm that your work history is correctly listed.

Both myself and the company would prefer that you use This Company to acquire your credit history because they're offering the check at zero cost to you (unlike other places) and their results contain the most precise details I've come across, but feel free to use any service that suits you.

When your finished please e-mail me back at (job-c42345@hotmail.com) with the subject "My Availability" to let us know you obtained a current copy of your credit history along with your availability and which job you are applying for and we will contact you the begining of next week to arrange an interview.
I'm looking forward to your quick response.

Warm regards,

Kara I | HR Dept.

From: ----------@hotmail.com
To: staff-id-i751@myemail7.cjb.net
Subject: RE: Attention New Hire
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:00:20 -0400

Hello,

You scammers make me sick. Kudos for trying though; at least your message used proper grammar and did not appear to have been written by a text-messaging seventh-grader. Here's a few tips that might help you next time:

1. Include the recipient's name. Job seekers become suspicious when a response is not addressed to them personally. That was my first clue.

2. Always include a company name. This one's so obvious you probably didn't even think of it! The first thing job seekers will do after getting a response like this will be to research the company, and if there's nothing to research, they'll smell a rat.

3. Know your characters. Does "Kara" have a last name? How about a phone number? E-mail address? Company name listed in her signature? (See above.) What professional would sign an e-mail like this with only her first name?

4. Avoid Excessive HTML. You guys just never learn: real people NEVER use a title to denote a website in an e-mail. Why? It's faster just to type a link as-is. And writing "This Company?" Come on! At least include a fictitious company name!

I could go on, but I think I've given you enough constructive criticism for one e-mail. Besides, I've got real job-searching to do tonight. Again, I would like to reiterate that you are all ignorant fools incapable of emulating the writing style of a real HR department. As a writer myself, I take great pride in my ability to copy different styles, and feel I captured the cold professionalism of an actual company e-mail in a blog piece I called Corporate Takeover: http://awaveofthehand.blogspot.com/2010/05/corporate-takeover.html.

Again, words can not properly convey the disgust I feel at your pathetic attempt to manipulate job seekers desperate for any lead they can get. Apart from getting caught for the illegal nature of your project, you deserve to be dragged out of your beds in the middle of the night and beaten with a blunt object as punishment for taking advantage of others.

I sincerely hope that you cease such reprehensible behavior and find something productive to do with your life,

Signed,

A Job Seeker

On One-Night Stands

2011-07-07T22:25:00.003-04:00

In the left-front pocket of my pants I carry a small notebook in which I write things I'd like to remember. These things may include, but are not limited to, names, quotes, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, physical addresses, roughly-sketched maps, ideas for the novel, ideas for short fiction, ideas that could be placed within fiction that hasn't been conceived yet, ideas that could be placed within nonfiction that hasn't been conceived yet, reading recommendations, passcodes of various sorts, and the occasional To-Do list. The other day I opened to a recent page and found this:

Blog idea: On one-night stands

Usually the sight of this kind of note is enough to jog my memory back to whatever I was thinking of at the time. However, in this instance, I cannot think of what I could possibly have meant to say about one-night stands. I don't think about them often (the concept itself is rather cliché), but I do make the occasional one-night stand joke that may or may not be funny.

Someone told me several months ago (citing Spike TV's MANswers as a source) that women in Sweden have more one-night stands than women in any other country. I have never been to Sweden, but would like to visit.

An Inpenetrable Barrier to All Rapport

2011-06-30T21:16:00.005-04:00

Several years ago I was at a party talking to a girl I was not romantically interested in but wanted to get to know. We were discussing a subject of mutual interest, and both of us were slightly nervous.

Suddenly a great BANG! came from outside and I turned to the window. Nothing.

In that split second she had turned her head, interpreting my surprise as a calculated sign of disinterest, and another girl she was well-acquainted with now held her attention. I wanted to protest that I'd been caught off guard and wanted nothing more than to talk to her, but it was too late. A mere forty degrees had created an impenetrable barrier to all rapport.

The Years of Wandering

2011-06-21T18:17:00.003-04:00

I've been reading a biography of Samuel Beckett written by Deirdre Bair (who some of you might remember as a guest teacher at Bennington back in '06), as I've become more and more curious about what my favorite authors were doing before they became authors. So far I'd just like to say that if you thought your life was horrible when you were a twentysomething, you've got nothing on Beckett, who was stuck on his parents' estate in Ireland with no money and no job until he was into his thirties. During this time, he also wrote an amazing poem, entitled "Gnome," that speaks pretty well for his feelings after leaving Trinity College and the Paris literary community:

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through the world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

Is it common for people to shun learning after that final graduation ceremony? In many cases, yes. Does the pedantic learning of post-secondary education turn out to be less useful than we thought it might be? Again, I think so. Is the rhythmic structure of those years of formal education far easier to face than the uncertainty of the big world outside? Definitely.

The Liberal Arts Students' Guide to Fitting In and Finding Success

2011-06-13T13:41:00.002-04:00

Are you tired of having your verbose diatribes on Euripides fall on deaf ears? Does your encyclopedic knowledge of Munch’s work leave you hapless and alone at parties? Do people simply not understand your undying passion for John dos Passos? Then maybe it’s time you pursued other conversational options.

In our hectic post-recession society of text messaging and electronic “e-books,” many liberal arts graduates are shocked to discover that their talent for sophisticated discourse is no longer in as high demand as it once was. Consider the plight of “Claude”:

“I spent three years of my life expounding on the root causes of the French and Indian War for my senior thesis. But when I tried to explain them to the waitress at Cracker Barrel, she just gave me a bored expression and said ‘That sounds complicated.’ Afterwards I was pretty sure someone had spat in my hamburger.”
- “Claude” 24, currently unemployed and living with parents

Claude’s story is a sad one, and he is not alone. Our nation’s finest educational institutions are no longer adequately preparing their graduates to face life outside the realm of academia. Rather, succeeding in today’s world requires a strong set of conversational skills suitable for communicating with the average American. But never fear! With a little training, even the most pompous of philosophy majors can converse happily with everyone from their community college-educated job recruiter to the greasy-handed guy changing their oil. The secret lies in casting aside the heightened critical thinking skills of the classroom and embracing a topic that brings people together more quickly than even the most ostentatious of poetry readings: professional sports.

Most liberal arts graduates are astounded when they discover the prominent position that sports occupy in most American homes. Americans watch sporting events on television, listen to them on their radios, read about them in the newspaper, and even view live matches in large stadiums. In fact, more people attended last year’s home season of the Milwaukee Brewers than saw Jean-Luc Godard’s last seven films in theaters worldwide. Some Americans love sports so much that they purchase expensive hats, sweatshirts, or player uniforms (“jerseys”) sporting their favorite team’s logo, often paying more than fifty dollars apiece for these items.

It should come as no surprise then that Americans talk about sports a lot. Outside of universities (and even inside those that encourage such behavior!) sports dominates conversations between friends, family members, coworkers, strangers, acquaintances, hiring managers, business partners, people riding buses, morning radio DJs, local news anchors, used car salesmen, and intrusive bartenders. Talking about sports, therefore, is the easiest way to open up the possibility of discourse with the greatest number of individuals, thus paving the way for the all-important networking opportunities that liberal arts graduates badly need to succeed.

“After I finished college, I spent a lot of time taking long walks and updating the Charles Dickens pages on Wikipedia. But then I ran into some coworkers at a bar who were talking about hockey. I remembered watching The Mighty Ducks as a kid and thought, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the game where they ice skate!’ so I joined their conversation. They must have mentioned the incident to my boss, because the next week at work he moved me into a bigger office and gave me a huge pay raise!”
- Cranley, 25, currently in a fulfilling relationship and proofreading technical manuals

Had Cranley not taken the initiative to connect with his coworkers, he’d still be working in his company’s mailroom. In his case, as in so many others, success in the workplace means being seen as “one of the guys” and not as a snobbish literature major who reads books by authors that no one’s heard of.

Though Cranley’s testimony speaks to the ubiquity of ice hockey, in general, baseball and football are the most commonly talked-about sports. It’s a good idea to develop at least a passing familiarity with both games:

Baseball, long known as America’s pastime, is played with a small, hard ball roughly three inches in diameter. Only about half the players are on the field at any given time, as one player from the offensive team attempts to hit balls thrown by a member of the opposing team (the “pitcher”) as far as possible so that he can run around all four bases to score a “run.” However, while the offensive player is circling the field, the defensive team is busily attempting to retrieve the ball and deliver it to the appropriate base to prevent their opponents from scoring.
Football is played with an oval-shaped ball and is really confusing.

Nearly everyone has a favorite sports team. It’s a safe bet that most people devote their attention to the team closest to where they grew up (or in some cases, where they currently reside). Therefore, a person’s loyalty to a team is more likely to be dependent on geographic location than athletic ability. It’s a good idea to learn the names of the baseball and football teams closest to where you live in order to open up conversation with the greatest number of people. However, some cities boast more than one baseball team, in which case you should consult the following guide:

New York has two teams: the Yankees and the Mets. Since no one cares about the Mets, discussing the Yankees is always a strong choice.
Chicago also has two teams: the Cubs and the White Sox. To determine which team to bring up, consider who you are talking to. If the person appears to make less than $75,000 a year, you should talk about the White Sox. If the person appears to make more than $75,000 a year, then he or she is probably a Cubs fan.

“See, with art, people tend to gravitate towards pieces that speak to them personally or that appeal to their aesthetic sensibilities. I learned right away that sports aren’t like that. People just pick the first team that they hear about and become diehard fans. It’s really funny to hear people argue which team is the best, because they’re all pretty much the same.”
- Rufus, 23, currently working for a large insurance agency

As Rufus can attest, discussing sports is not as daunting as it may appear to those most comfortable in the art world. Most academics find success by bringing up a player or team, and, when their interlocutor senses their interest, simply sit back and let him or her do most of the talking. Since sports are such a common staple in society, most people will simply assume that you know as much about sports as they do, and will interpret your nods and affirmative replies as agreement rather than disinterest. As your sports knowledge grows, you may find yourself contributing more than you ever thought you would!

A good way to prepare is to research some topics in the sports section of your newspaper. Or, visit your local library to find information about these prominent sports players: Tom Brady, Alex Rodriguez, Michael Jordan, Ken Griffy Jr., Joe Montana, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Johnny Unitas, Pete Rose, and “Shoeless Joe” Jackson. A little bit of research can go a long way, as it did for Herman after he left Bowdoin College with a degree in comparative religion:

“When I was little, I learned to tell the difference between different kinds of sports, so I thought I was all set. When I got older though, I kept hearing all these phrases that were strange to me: field goal, ground rule double, fifth down, stadium. I felt like an idiot! So I went to the library and started reading the rules of different sports. I learned a lot about the games, which helped me talk about them with people who had spent their time in college watching the World Series while I was busy writing papers. For me, researching sports was just another intro-level class, except that instead of having a test, you had to demonstrate your knowledge in the real world.”
- Herman, currently working as a museum tour guide while he studies for his GRE

The amount of effort a graduate puts into fitting in will dramatically affect his or her success. As a direct result of his research, Herman was hired for his current position after asking if his interviewer “had seen the Celtics game” the night before. So what are you waiting for? There’s a world full of opportunities out there for people willing to compromise! The more you read and talk with others about sports, the more successful you’ll become after college.

Why I Blog

2011-06-07T01:05:00.000-04:00

Back in college, I gradually became aware that though I had a lot of ideas for things to write, almost none of them ever made it on to the page. Most of these ideas (then, as now), were snippets, short pieces, or isolated moments that had no proper place. Instead of developing these ideas, I'd think about them for a length of time ranging from a few minutes to a few days, and unless I could develop them into a short story or integrate them into a project for a class (which almost never happened) I'd forget about them.

I started this blog as motivation, knowing that I'd be more likely to develop these ideas if I had somewhere (however isolated) to put them. I certainly write a lot more now than I did four years ago, so in that sense, the blog is a complete success. I always intended it to be more of a working studio than a finished gallery, with the goal that some pieces from here would eventually be revised, removed, and other homes found for them. Unfortunately I've never been very good at finding other homes for my writing. Call that a goal for the future. One of many.

Sometimes I worry that now I spend too much time writing things to post here, where I should be working on bigger projects (e.g. the novel or the Carcrash Parker adventure game) or smaller ones that could have a wider appeal. I could never be like John Wiswell, who posts hilarious, thoughtful, and clever fiction daily while still managing to develop other work. With real world problems looming large on the horizon, writing time is limited. That I might not be using it wisely is frightening.

But, I go back and forth on this issue a lot. It's always better to be writing something than to be writing nothing, and I'm in a much better place now than I was four years ago. I wonder if I'll ever be able to solve the problem of how to open up my work to a wider audience, and worry that I might spend too much time searching and not enough time writing.

This blog still gives me a forum to develop ideas, so I'll keep it around. The trick is how to expand. It's a problem with many solutions. All I need is one.

On "Spite"

2011-05-26T17:01:00.002-04:00

I don’t usually correct people’s spelling mistakes, especially since I make enough of my own as it is. But I couldn’t resist those times when, during my stint with my previous employer (whose real name I still dare not mention here, and instead call it by its anagrammatic pseudonym) the Kriasho Corporation, when the Head Office would send us some nonsensical business plan in a dogmatic attempt to control our daily routine. These orders came written in legalese that would give William Strunk a conniption (“Students will be placed in situations where they are encouraged to make the most of what they know in order to communicate”) and often contained errors ranging from article misuse to misplaced consonants.

Everyone (especially second language speakers) makes mistakes, but some days found me facing afternoon teacher’s meetings where my coworkers and I would pass thickly-stapled packets around the room and have them read to us line by line so that we might understand exactly what the Head Office wanted us to do that week. The Japanese staff treated these orders as sacred proclamations that no loyal employee was to criticize, ignore, question, rebel against, reflect openly upon, loosely interpret, or point out the flaws of. But if these orders were inviolable, why did they contain so many run-on sentences? Why couldn’t their creators use the word “utilize” correctly? And why didn’t anyone proofread them properly? Head Office grammar mistakes became, for me, proof that their ideas was fallible and thus meant to be questioned. For my own amusement, I took to boldly circling mistakes with my blue pen during meetings to prove the imperfections in Kriasho’s creed. I knew this was childish behavior, but it was the only way I knew to speak out against them.

The whole game struck me as a distorted version of the proofreading advice that teachers gave us back in school. Colleges and prospective employers, we were warned, would view any spelling or grammatical errors as evidence of a candidate’s carelessness, while God help those who used the same essay for two different colleges and forgot to change the name! These poor souls would be punished for their laziness when they were repeatedly passed over for jobs and college admission. If this rule held so true, why were those in power allowed to make the same mistakes and get away with it?

In writing this, I may be hinting at a universal truth: people on the outside have to follow the rules, while those inside can do what they want. Being on the outside, this makes me feel slightly ill. If I were on the inside, I’m sure I’d feel differently.

Spite

2011-05-21T14:19:00.004-04:00

Subject: position
Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 09:09:53 -0400
From: ________@_______.edu
To: ianmrogers@hotmail.com

Thank you for your interest in this position. You will be receiving a letter in the mail with the information below:

We regret to inform you that the search for the __________ _________ at ______ College has been cancelled. The search committee genuinely appreciated having the opportunity to review your materials but was directed to suspend the search process as the College prepares for anticipated budget cuts.

All applications will be maintained on file for one year should the situation change and a position becomes available at a later date.

R______ H________
Human Resource Assistant

From: ianmrogers@hotmail.com
To: ________@_______.edu
Subject: RE: position
Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 17:37:50 -0400

R______,

Thank you for getting back to me, and I'm sorry to hear the news.

Also, in case you haven't sent those letters out yet, you might want to double-check your spelling. In American English, "canceled" has one "l."

All the best,

Ian

Dilemma

2011-05-18T15:49:00.004-04:00

George Orwell once wrote (in The Road to Wigan Pier, I think) that it is impossible for people to focus on creative pursuits if they have to struggle to make ends meet. I'd love to reflect on this further, but I really should be seeking gainful employment instead.

Phantasmagoria: A Strictly Visual Adventure

2011-04-28T18:39:00.004-04:00

Last week I did something I should have done a long time ago. I played an adventure game.

It was the brainchild of Roberta Williams (known for such Sierra series as Kings Quest and Laura Bow), a horror adventure called Phantasmagoria. The plot was a straightforward Shining knockoff: young couple moves into old mansion, husband gets possessed by a demon, wife has to stop him. As the wife, you explore the mansion grounds while unraveling the backstory of the crazed magician who owned the place. In traditional adventure game fashion, there are rooms to unlock, characters to talk to, and a handful of items to pick up.

What makes Phantasmagoria stand out from other contemporary adventure games (for better or for worse) is that it was designed around the full-motion video technology that was all the rage back in 1995, technology that often took precedence over a game’s playability. (For some good examples, check out the Angry Nintendo Nerd’s review of the Sega CD.) Players still have control in Phantasmagoria, but the game’s extreme reliance on full-motion video limits their ability to interact with their environment. Each time our character did something as simple as wash her hands or open a door, the game had to show it in full video animation. Because this animation takes up a lot of CD space, the game limits how many things you can look at, pick up, or operate. To help players differentiate these few active objects from the background objects (and limit challenge), a single cursor turns a different color when the mouse is moved over an object with a definite purpose.

The giveaway mouse system prevents the puzzles from becoming very hard, and the structure (divided into chapters) makes the game ridiculously linear. Most of its challenges are less like puzzles and more like arbitrary actions to be performed so that time may pass and players can see more cinematic sequences. Epitomizing this is a bar graph that literally shows how much of the game players have seen. In this sense, Phantasmagoria is more of a playable movie than an open-ended adventure game.

The game’s heavy emphasis on visual effects is also striking to those used to traditional adventures where text reveals much of the game’s world. Again, because so little of Phantasmagoria is accessible to players, the game has little to say about the contents of a given room. Instead of a vivid description of a bureau’s contents, the game shows us a few jewels and a cigarette case. Players still get an impression of the bureau, but it comes through visuals, not words. This visual emphasis works to some extent, but as an experienced adventure gamer and lover of prose, I was disappointed.

The easy interface, lack of challenge, and heavy visual effects make Phantasmagoria easy to cruise through, but players who understand the bigger story will find it infinitely more enjoyable. Apart from the plot of Adrienne discovering that her husband is possessed, there is the backstory of the magician who found a cursed book and murdered a succession of wives in gruesome fashion. Said backstory is revealed by talking to people and watching cut scenes like in traditional adventure games, but a surprising amount of information can only be uncovered after stumbling upon hundred-year old letters and newspaper articles. Players must not only discover these sources on their own, but can do so at any point in the game. This is what makes adventure games special: whereas books and movies reveal information linearly, adventure games give players the opportunity to digest it at their own pace. It’s as active as exploring a story in the real world, and that’s what gives the medium real potential. Maybe it just took Phantasmagoria to remind me.

Beautiful Women

2011-04-20T12:24:00.002-04:00

In Japan, there were many beautiful women around for me to look at all of the time. Sometimes too many. Here, I look around and wonder where all of the beautiful women are. Perhaps they have gone someplace far away where I cannot find them, or perhaps they have all grown old, or perhaps they have covered themselves with great heaps of makeup and fake tans and blond hair dye and clothes unbecoming of their figures so that the beautiful people they once were are smothered forever. It pains me to see this terrible thing happening to them.

Push-Button Service

2011-04-11T16:51:00.003-04:00

“Are you all set, or do you need a few more minutes?”
“A few more minutes, thanks.”

It’s strange being back in the US because a lot of things aren’t the same anymore. I live in a different, smaller house now, where most of my things are still in boxes. My old car is in Los Angeles with my brother Kyle, who’s set out for new frontiers of his own. I see a lot of smart phones now, when before they were a novelty. Last week, I was riding down the streets of Concord when I saw—

“Are you guys ready to order yet?”
“Not yet. How about five more minutes?”
“Not a problem.”
(She stretches out the not in a way that suggests that it may, in fact, be a problem.)

What was I talking about? Right—changes. Things seem different at first, though when I really sit down and remember, they haven’t changed at all. Checkout girls at the grocery store always mumbled, avoided eye contact, and wore too much eye makeup. Certain people always spoke so fast that the words ran together. There were always guys with sideways baseball caps and those pants that weren’t quite shorts, weren’t quite pants. But there’s one thing I’m not used to because Japanese—

“Are you all set or do you need a few more minutes?”
“Uh, yeah." (picks up menu) "I’ll have the Reuben.”
“Did you want onion rings with that?”
“No, just fries.”
“O-kay. And for you?”
“I’ll have the Smokehouse Burger. Medium-well, please.”
“O-kay, I’ll bring those right out for you in a bit.”

Japanese restaurants always have plastic buttons next to the napkinholder. After taking your time to decide what you want, you can press the button (which sounds a satisfying ding-dong across the kitchen) and a waitress with a touch-screen tablet will dash up to take your order and read it back as fast as possible before—

“All rightee, here you go. One Smokehouse Burger?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“And one Reuben. Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
“Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, we’re fine, thanks.”
“Okay, gentlemen, enjoy.”

Wow this looks good. What was I...? Oh yeah—so it’s like they just want to get away as fast as possible so they can leave you alone. And when another waitress comes over with the food, she dumps it on the table—again as fast as possible—and drops off the check to eliminate another unnecessary interruption. If you want something else, all you have to do is—

“How’re we doing over here? Is everything OK?”
“Yes, everything’s fine.”
“That’s great.”

Fuck, where was I? [You were talking about how the waitresses come by as few times as possible.] That’s right. So they basically fix it so that the waitresses come by as few times as possible. The whole thing’s done really efficiently, and you don’t even have to tip. I guess it is pretty cold though, because the waitresses never want to chat with you or laugh at your jokes or anything like that.

“Okay, gentlemen, all set?”
“No, actually, we were just taking a break to talk.”
“Not a problem; take your time. I’ll just leave this right here for whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks.”

Dammit. Anyway, some restaurants don’t have a button, so you have to yell out Sumimasen, which means “Excuse me.” Usually the family restaurants—the ones that look like a Friendly’s or a Denny’s or something—have this drink bar where you can pay one price and go up to get any drink you want: soda, water, coffee, tea, and sometimes hot chocolate. We used to go there just to drink and hang out for hours—the waitresses’ll never say anything. And you’d see people there just reading comic books or studying, and once we even saw these people working on an elaborate craft project. And the restaurant is always open late, so unless it’s crowded it’s never a problem. I don’t even think they’d hassle you if the place was crowded, because the Japanese really don’t like confrontations. I feel like in America, though, they’d always come—

“Did you guys need any change?”
“No—we haven’t even paid yet. You said we could take our time.”
“That’s quite all right. Take as long as you need.”

I think they want us to go. Americans can be indirect too.

The Collapse

2011-03-29T13:16:00.002-04:00

This is the third of three tales from the Japanese workplace I wanted to share with a Western audience. All names and all identifying information have been changed.

Sakura was born in Yamanashi but went to college in Tokyo. Like most Japanese, she desired a distinguished position with a well-known company, and after graduation she took a job at a large insurance agency in the city.

She told me this inside the dark Japanese pub where we sat surrounded by boisterous groups bent over heaping plates of yakitori and torimotsu. Neither of us were very hungry. I drank red wine while she chain-smoked long white cigarettes and flicked the remains into a clay ashtray. Nearby, a group of four men in identical black suits laughed at jokes I couldn’t understand fueled by glass after glass of warm sake.

In the Japanese workplace, there are rules both spoken and unspoken. On paper, all employees at Sakura’s company were allowed a sixty-minute lunch break that they could take at any time. In practice, however, younger employees were expected to stay at their desks until the senior employees had already taken their lunch breaks. Sometimes, though, the senior employees took very late lunches: three, four, five, or six o’clock. There was no official rule preventing Sakura from standing up and taking a noon lunch break, but to do so would have defied all convention. No one else took their lunches early, so what made her so special? Sakura doesn’t care about the company, the others would whisper after she’d left. Sakura doesn’t respect her superiors. Sakura is selfish. They would remember this when it came time for promotions.

Sakura didn’t take early lunches, and sometimes she didn’t eat until she got home. This was difficult because she always worked very late. When you have a distinguished position at a well-known company, you shouldn’t walk away before the rest of the group, and usually the rest of the group stayed until eight o’clock. Sometimes they stayed until midnight. Sometimes they didn’t go home at all.

One month, Sakura worked one hundred fifty hours of overtime. In the middle of the day she collapsed on the floor and had to be taken to the hospital. The doctor said that she needed rest, so she stayed home. Her boss was concerned, and called her into work to talk. He was very sorry about the overwork. She’d been with the company for more than a year, and if there was a medical problem, she could take it easy from now on. No more overtime. But they needed her back at work. There were many projects to be done, and the company was falling behind. They were a well-known company and they had to sell more policies. They needed her.

Sakura went back to her apartment and never spoke to her boss again. She didn’t answer her phone and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. It was easier to just stay inside. Some days she didn’t even leave her bed. Sometimes Sakura’s friends brought her food and talked to her, but she still didn’t feel like going out.

Two months later Sakura went back to Yamanashi to live with her parents, but after she got back she didn’t want to leave their house either. She didn’t have a distinguished position with a well-known company anymore, and she didn’t want to face the awkward laughter and uncomfortable stares of the outside world. Why couldn’t Sakura work like a normal adult? It was childish to quit your job as she had. No one else complained about late lunch breaks or overtime hours, and none of her coworkers had collapsed in the middle of the office floor where everyone could see how weak they were.

After another four months, Sakura’s parents introduced her to a girl who wanted tutoring in English. The other girl didn’t like to leave the house either, but that was because an elementary school teacher had molested her a long time ago and no one had believed her. It was hard for Sakura to go out, but knowing that someone else had the same problem made it easier to talk. Not everyone had to have a job.

Eventually Sakura left the house, and after that she went to Vancouver to study. She met a lot of different people there. When she came back, Japan looked and felt different than Vancouver had. People in Vancouver didn’t care if you left work at five o’clock or ate lunch when you wanted to. Sakura decided to go abroad again. She didn’t want to work for a Japanese company anymore.

Sakura’s face was pale and her hand holding the cigarette trembled in the dim light and smoke of the bar. It was easier to tell this to someone who wasn’t Japanese. But I wasn’t looking at her; I was watching the men slouched over the counter behind her. They were all laughing in unison together, sharing the same jokes just as they wore the same suits and drank the same drinks and had left work at the same time to come here. They lived in a unity so complete that to defy it would have provoked a stigma more powerful than any Westerner could possibly imagine.

Hikkikomori is a uniquely Japanese phenomenon that affects thousands of young men and women who cannot leave their houses for months or years at a time. For more information about hikkikomori and Japan's other social problems, I strongly recommend Shutting Out the Sun by Michael Zielenziger.

Inactivity

2011-03-24T20:49:00.002-04:00

It's weird to be back. My first day outside of Japan, and even on the plane out of Narita, I felt uneasy and intimidated surrounded by all white people. It's strange not to always be the tallest, or the biggest, or the loudest in the room anymore. All of this takes some getting used to, and in Australia I found myself gravitating almost exclusively towards Japanese tourists to make conversation.

Everything seems to move really fast back in America, and I find myself overwhelmed wanting to look, listen, and respond to a million stimuli, most of which I would have simply ignored before I left (the opposite of what happened when I first went to Japan). It's like when you say the same word over and over until it loses all meaning, and then say it again a few hours later; the sound has a new freshness that your brain couldn't respond to on the sixtieth repetition.

Look for some updates within the upcoming weeks, though I'm not sure what effect my newfound unemployment will have on my posting frequency. I've had a few people asking me about the third and final Tale from the Japanese Workplace, and I assure you that it's on the way.

Last Entry from Japan

2011-02-22T21:36:00.004-05:00

Today is my last day at the eikaiwa where I work, whose name I shall not mention.

It has come to my attention that my attitude toward Japan recently, both in general and in this blog, has become an increasingly negative expression of my inner frustrations with this country through two years of exposure to Japanese culture from the perspective of a chain-school eikaiwa teacher. Though understanding the horrific aspects of Japan is important to understanding life here, it's dangerous to focus too entirely on the negative, because there are good things about living here, and there are people who can overcome the pressures of Japanese society enough to make their lives work.

There is still hope for Japan; it is only a question of whether the country can pull itself from the muck of bureaucracy and groupthink and create a better environment for the people who live here, Japanese and gaijin alike.

I'll be back in New Hampshire in mid-March. At that time, I hope to write about Japan with a viewpoint less inhibited by the daily stresses of living and working here. Look for my final tale from the Japanese workplace sometime next month. Look for a novel sometime after that.

Sayonara.

Workplace Violence

2011-02-11T08:49:00.002-05:00

This is the second in a series of three pieces on Japanese workplace culture. As with the others, all names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

It was Saturday evening and the night was filled with possibilities. We set off from under the neon lights of the station, I and my Japanese friends, through the crowds of short-skirted girls and drunken salarymen laughing as they strolled crookedly down the main street. Stars shone over the Yamanashi mountains through an empty lot where a building had been torn down. In the opposite direction the logos of Japan’s mightiest businesses projected their presence across the city. There was no moon.

I dropped to the back of the group to catch up with Hitoshi, a friend I hadn’t seen in several weeks. Tonight he seemed serious, yet firmly eager to engage in a rollicking night on the town. I asked him how he’d been.

“Not good,” he said. “My boss pushed me yesterday.”

A crushing sick feeling struck me in the stomach and a cold nervousness made me stop to shiver in the night. Hitoshi looked me straight in the eye; this was no joke. We stopped at an intersection and I asked him what had happened.

“My boss was very angry,” he said, “and he put his arm on my chest and pushed me, like this.” He placed a hard fist against my jacket and shoved me backward so that my legs buckled under me.

“Maybe he was stressed,” Hitoshi said.

I became very angry then for reasons I couldn’t explain. “That doesn’t matter,” I said. “Your boss should never, ever hit you. In America there are lots of rules about that. If your boss hits you, you can tell your boss’s boss, or tell the government or someone, and that person will be fired immediately. It’s not allowed. We never let that happen.” I realized suddenly where I was. “How about in Japan? Are there rules about that here?”

Hitoshi nodded. “Yes, I think there are some rules.”

Of course there were. I’d been silly to think that there weren’t. “Then you should talk to someone about it.

“Yes,” he said, his voice bursting with sudden confidence. “I will.”

At the izakiya we ate hot nabe and brightly-colored sashimi washed down with round after round of nama beer and I told everyone about what had happened to Hitoshi. “But that doesn’t matter,” I announced triumphantly, “because he’s going to do something about it. He’s going to change his situation and make things better, because no boss should ever be allowed to touch anyone, ever!” The others all shouted their agreement over a loud kanpai and the night was alive with hope, optimism, and power for the future.

Three days later I e-mailed Hitoshi to ask him if he’d talked to someone about the incident. His reply was short. He didn’t care about that any more, his e-mail said, because he was not a child.

We never spoke of it again.

Contracts

2011-01-26T20:44:00.004-05:00

This is the first of three stories about the Japanese workplace I've come across since arriving in Japan. By sharing these incidents, I hope to create a picture of the conditions the Japanese accept as the reality of their working world. In each case, the names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

Yoko was having troubles at her job, so she went down to the national employment office to talk to someone. She told them that though her employment contract promised her days off on all Japanese National Holidays, she was still required to work. She was already working eleven-hour days, with heavy pressure from her superiors to work unpaid Saturdays and some Sundays. She did something that the Japanese seldom do and tried to get back the working conditions she was entitled to.

The people at the employment office said that they were very sorry, but there was nothing they could do. There was a recession now, they said, and everyone needed to work harder to pull out of it. The government could not enforce its own laws about overtime and workplace harassment because businesses like Yoko's were what kept Japan alive. There was nothing they could do. They were very sorry.

As I write this, I'm torn between letting this incident (representing that I live in a world controlled by heartless corporations with no regard for the people that make up their lifeblood, where neither the government or the people can stand up against them, and that those corporations can do anything they want to maintain their stranglehold on the Japanese workforce until the country's soul has been completely extinguished) stand alone, or to comment on how people should stand up for their rights as I do at my job when my employers attempt to do dishonest things. Is it better to let the incident speak for itself, or to share my own opinions on the issue openly? I'd like to write more here, but I'm afraid there's nothing I can do either.

Still, there is hope. Japan is changing, and more young people like Yoko are trying to do something about their situation. I only hope there are enough of them to make a difference.

My First Aomori

2011-01-20T20:54:00.007-05:00

Japan’s new Bullet Train (Shinkansen) service to the northern city of Aomori opened on December 4th. To alert the public to this momentous event, the walls of every JR Railway station were plastered with advertisements featuring well-groomed railway employees standing stiffly at attention and smiling tourists happily exploring the sights of Aomori prefecture. This TV commercial sums it up pretty well:

I find this campaign hilarious for two reasons. The first is the name: My First Aomori. It sounds pretty normal at first, but the more you hear it, the more ridiculous it sounds. My First Aomori. Not “My First Trip to Aomori” or “My First Aomori Experience,” but just “My First Aomori.” It’s like there’s a subject missing. Are we to assume that the consumer is taking control of Aomori prefecture for the first time? Or does Aomori refer to some type of consumer goods that can be purchased and kept as a memento?

The second reason is the truth that, despite JR’s attempts to convince the public of the contrary, there’s not a whole lot to do in Aomori. There’s a little castle there, a handful of museums in the capital city, and some natural scenery in the rural northeast area where the Shinkansen doesn’t go. And in December, when Aomori is blanketed by a foot of snow, there’s even less to do. Despite northern Japan’s tendency towards inclement weather, I didn’t see a trace of snow in any of the posters or TV commercials. I like to think that some foolhardy tourists traveled all the way to Aomori only to be surprised that it wasn’t some sort of magical summer wonderland where the sun always shone and the grass was always green.

The one part that JR got right was the apples. Aomori is known for its apples, which are actually really good. I didn’t, however, think they were good enough to merit an entire trip to Aomori just to eat them, nor were they good enough to feature as prominently as they do in the shop windows, souvenir snack treats, character advertising, and yes, even the mailboxes.

Everything in Aomori was either about apples or the Shinkansen, which shouted its existence to the public on enormous banners hung from buildings and signs posted along the streets on Aomori city. The whole thing reeked of an elaborate attempt to make this otherwise ordinary section of Japan’s northeast region stand out. The Japanese government spent a lot of public works money on the new Shinkansen service, and I sensed a desperate need to get some of that investment back. Though, in Japan, construction is a way of life, as even the most rural roads are constantly paved with fresh concrete, its rivers dammed, its mountainside roads shielded by high retaining walls, and its tiny islands strung together with expensive new bridges. Perhaps the new bullet train is just another way for a nation heavily invested in the construction industry to spend its money. Or maybe Japan has a deep-seated need to prove to the rest of the world that it’s powerful enough to thrust its mighty Shinkansen as deep into the unspoiled countryside as physically possible.

Because, really, what does this remind you of?

Censorship, Maturity, and the N-Word

2011-01-14T08:01:00.002-05:00

As you may have heard, an Alabama publisher will soon be a releasing an edition of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that replaces the n-word (which, just so everyone’s on the same page, is “nigger”) with the more reader-friendly “slave.” Amidst cries of censoring what is arguably the most important work of American literature, editor Alan Gribben maintains that he changed the word to appeal both to a more general reader and to schools who wouldn’t feel comfortable teaching the book in the 21st century. I feel his intentions are honorable, certainly, as anyone who tries to make literature more accessible to the public usually gets a thumbs up from me. However, in this case the politically-correct edition is merely a way of avoiding the problem by limiting the scope of Twain’s vision.

I’m no expert on Twain, and I’m slightly ashamed of how few of his works I’ve read (especially when this blog has least one regular and one occasional reader that could comment on Twain’s character far more completely than I could), but I do know about using words in context. When 1930s editions of the Hardy Boys series use outdated stereotypes of Asians, African-Americans, or Jewish people as part of their narrative structure, those stereotypes are like a time capsule showing how the author embraced those stereotypes during that time period. In Goldfinger, when Ian Fleming has Bond go off on a tangent about how the abundance of “pansies” in modern society is the result of increased equality between the sexes, it does a lot to show Fleming’s individual opinions of homosexuality and women’s rights. And, if some blogger refers to an African-American as a “nigger” in a derogatory fashion, it means that blogger is just being racist.

However, racist language can also be used consciously in fiction and nonfiction to help readers understand the attitudes of both society and individuals. Skilled writers can put racial slurs into the mouths of their characters without having those words embody their own ideals, using the language as part of a vivid world in which racism is an inherent part. In Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, for example, he is not shy about having his racist white characters use racist language because he wants the reader to see them as racist. Simple, yes? Were he to hold back for fear of offending people, readers would not have a complete sense of how the controlling white minority in South America treated Mandela and the other blacks.

Shelly Fisher Fishkin summarizes this point far more coherently than I in a New York times article about the removal of the n-word from Huck Finn:

To understand how racism works in America, it is necessary to understand how this word has been used to inflict pain on black people, challenge their humanity, and undercut their achievements…to criticize racism effectively you have to make your reader hear how racists sound in all their offensive ugliness.

In literature, you simply can’t portray racist attitudes effectively without using racist language. Of course you could capture racism through another medium like sculpture or interpretive dance, but in writing the words have to carry the feeling. To shy away from that language is to create a weaker picture of racism on the printed page.

To use one of my favorite literary characters as a final example, Jason Compson, the paranoid, self-righteous, misogynistic, racist narrator from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, not only refers to all of the novels black characters as “niggers,” he treats women like trash. The latter opinion is summarized perfectly in his opening line of Part III: “Once a bitch, always a bitch, what I say.” Jason goes on to say and do terrible things to women, and as part of his overall character, of course he would use the term “bitch” to refer to the opposite sex. To remove this line because someone was offended by the word “bitch” is to destroy an integral part of Jason Compson, just like cutting out “nigger” tones down the realistic intensity of Twain’s racist characters.

Instead of worrying about offending students or the general public, responsible teachers and parents should show how these words are used in context, and responsible readers should make every attempt to understand the difference between Twain’s language and that of the Hardy Boys. Learning about how to control language is part of becoming a better reader and writer, and understanding which attitudes are worth considering and which aren’t is an important part of growing up.

Fortunately there’s still some hope. In order to preserve the author’s original tone, the Japanese translator of The Sound and the Fury chose outdated, racist Japanese to match the English that Faulkner so carefully chose. At least some editors are still aware of the power of language.

A Picture Essay of My Tohoku Trip

2011-01-07T07:43:00.016-05:00

ASPEX app.gre 23 a/45.html=READ ERROR 459B tohokuforupload.zip SORT 3/2 <> +ESD.html

For this New Years vacation, I decided to take one last great trip in Japan to the Tohoku (northeast) region, made possible through a JR bargain rail ticket but complicated by rural Japan’s infrequent local train schedules. Why would I embark on a trip to a bitingly cold part of Japan with little to offer tourists on a schedule that had me riding the trains almost as often as I was seeing the sights? I hadn’t been there before, I needed to think things over, and I wanted to see snow.

My first stop was Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region and a place devoid of museums or historical sights. A friend recommended I visit the Sendai Mediateque, an architecturally interesting building containing a few art galleries (closed for New Years), a large art library (all in Japanese) and an open exhibit of snow falling against a shadowed background. Along the street outside was the (apparently) famous Sendai Christmas illumination, which, though beautiful, would have been better with snow.

This is the Japanese ryokan hostel where I stayed in Sendai, complete with tatami floors, traditional Japanese breakfast, and flat-screen television.

This is Aomori prefecture at the northern tip of Japan, where I saw my first real snowfall. There was something remarkably peaceful about it. Last winter Yamanashi only received a few light dustings of snow, and I’d forgotten how the snow can make the landscape come alive by hiding the brown dullness of late autumn. Here you can see the Bay Bridge, an interesting landmark that connects two small pieces of land that could easily be crossed by driving around the block.

The Tyrell Corporation has also set up a branch office in Aomori city.

This is the Aomori Contemporary Art Center, an open art facility with a gallery and studios for working artists designed by Tadao Ando. The larger, half-circle portion on the left contains a gallery (free admission) filled with entrants for a recent print competition. You may remember Ando as the architect behind the Naoshima island museums I visited back in July, and I mention him again because his work has given me a new appreciation for architecture. This building, set against the snowy landscape of a northern forest, reminded me even more of a certain building from my college years.

This is the coolest izakiya I’ve ever seen. The shower scene cinches it.

The port city of Hakodate, on the northern island of Hokkaido, was one of the first Japanese cities open to Western trade, and was largely spared during World War II. As a result, many of the 19th century European-style buildings and churches still remain, including this one, the old Public Hall at the top of the hill.

For 10,000 yen, you can buy monstrous crab legs bigger than my hand. And I have big hands.

My travel pamphlet proudly boasted that the view from Mt. Hakodate at night is the greatest in the entire world. I’m hesitant to agree with such a grandiose statement, but it is pretty nice.

Hirosaki Castle in Aomori prefecture. Like most castles in Japan, the original burned down long ago, and this corner fortification is all that remains.

One of the temples of Chuson-ji in Iwate prefecture. The temple grounds were unbelievably peaceful in the freshly fallen snow, with a minimum of distraction from tourists.

Boat tour through the majestic Geibikei Gorge, also in Iwate. This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited in Japan, and, astoundingly, features a rock profile eerily similar to New Hampshire’s dearly departed Old Man of the Mountain. Our tour was lead by an old man in an umbrella hat who sang us a song on the ride back.

More Geibikei Gorge.

Matsushima, my final stop, and a site the tourist information board proudly labeled “Matsushima 3 Best View!” Matsushima is a group of about two hundred-sixty tiny islands rising out of the sea near Sendai, and was a fitting place for my New Years contemplations. It’s time to return to the States to face the future with courage in the new year. No more confused wandering or obsessive deliberation. As long as you keep moving in one direction, you’ll always get somewhere.

First Post of 2011

2011-01-04T04:35:00.002-05:00

Today, after much deliberating and procrastination, in fulfillment of the New Years Resolution I'd conceived after a week's wandering in the Tohoku region, I began writing the opening paragraphs of what, with a little luck, will ultimately become a novel. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Or, maybe just determined to capture something that's been kicking around my head for a long time, and I've finally realized that it's better to be actively working on it than dreaming about it.

More on this later.

What would Kevin Smith's "Clerks" be like if it had been made in Japan?

2010-12-23T09:04:00.004-05:00

INT. QUICKSTOP – NIGHT

Dante lies dejectedly on the freezer while Randal spins a tortilla chip in a jar of salsa.

RANDAL

Man goes into cage, cage goes into salsa. Shark’s in the salsa. Our shark.

BEAT.

RANDAL (cont)

Oh, what? What’s with you, man? You haven’t said anything for like twenty minutes. What the hell’s your problem?

DANTE

This life.

RANDAL

This life?

DANTE

Why do I have this life?

RANDAL
(passing him the bag)

Have some chips, you’ll feel better.

DANTE

I’m stuck in this pit, working for less than slave wages, working on my day off, the goddamn steel shutters are closed, I deal with every backward-ass fuck on the planet, I smell like shoe polish, my ex-girlfriend is catatonic after fucking a dead guy, and my present girlfriend has sucked thirty-six dicks.

RANDAL

Thirty-seven.

DANTE

My life’s in the shitter right now, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to stew a bit.

RANDAL

Yeah. Too bad there’s nothing you can do about it.

DANTE
(confused)

What?

RANDAL

As a clerk serving the public, your job is to uphold your responsibilities no matter what the cost. You shouldn’t have closed the store to play hockey, and you definitely shouldn’t have closed the store to go to Julie’s wake. You came in on your day off because you had to——you couldn’t say no to the boss. So what if somebody jammed gum in the locks? You had to make that shoe-polish sign. There’s no use complaining about your shitty wage either. Jesus Christ, Dante, you’re twenty-two! You’re too old to go back to school and too old to get another job, and even if you could it’d just be the same or worse than your present one. Besides, do you want to look like a fucking weirdo for quitting when you could stay here, maintain your job security, and retire with a hefty pension?

BEAT.

DANTE

(defeated)

It’s difficult.

RANDAL

So why don’t you stop complaining and do what your boss fucking tells you to do for once?

He jumps off the freezer.

RANDAL (cont)

Break time’s almost over. I have to brush my teeth and get back to work.

He exits, leaving Dante alone.

RANDAL (O.S.)

Fucking weirdo.

Snuck Sneaked In

2010-12-19T06:13:00.002-05:00

Fill in the blank with the correct form of sneak. Don't think too much about the question, just write your natural response:

Everyone in the house was sleeping, so he _________ across the yard. [sneak]

Some of you (or most of you, considering how much of this blog's readership comes from people I know personally) may have gotten this brief survey in their e-mail last week. The issue came up in my advanced junior high school class when we were reading about a nature photographer who snuck up on a baby lion to get the perfect photograph. The wording was a source of confusion for one student, who checked her dictionary to find that "sneaked" or "snuck" were both acceptable, the former listed as "more formal." This sounded wrong to me, for I, as a native speaker of English, would never use "sneaked," and told the class as much.

The matter bothered me, so I did what most eikaiwa teachers would never do: I looked it up. (Or did a quick Google search, if you want to get technical.) A majority of what I found seemed to agree that while "sneaked" was the original past form of "sneak," "snuck" had more recently become acceptable (though some people, like Jennifer Garner below, strongly argued the contrary).

I was curious to see if more people agreed with Jennifer Garner or me, so I sent out the survey. Roughly 80% chose "snuck" as their past tense form of choice, some strongly, and some through great deliberation. (A few did the same Google search I did, or discussed varying situations in which they would use "snuck" or "sneaked," and I did not count these in the final results.) My trusty Random House dictionary says that, "SNUCK has occasionally been considered nonstandard, but is now so common that it can no longer be so regarded."

Students come to me to learn common English for social situations and practical use. They want to express themselves, understand what they read, and speak natural English that will not cause them shame or embarrassment. I would never correct a student who used a past form of "sneak" that I didn't agree with, just as I would never correct a student who used "hopefully" to refer to a future wish, or who used "their" as a gender neutral possessive pronoun. These are mistakes that millions of native English speakers make every day, and that all but the strictest of grammar critics would brush aside in natural conversation. Occasionally I have students whose English is good enough to understand and appreciate such finer subtleties, but for the rest there's no point in correcting errors that don't sound brutally jarring to the average gaijin.

In Which the Author Recounts his Experience Taking the JLPT, and Promises Yet Again to Blog More Frequently

2010-12-13T01:33:00.004-05:00

I have a set pattern of advice I impart on fearful Japanese people before they take standardized tests:

1. Get a good night's sleep
2. Eat a good breakfast
3. Don't be nervous

After taking the JLPT, I can now confidently add a fourth entry to this list:

4. Don't daydream before the test

I was not at all nervous before the JLPT; I actually worried more about finding the test center than about my ability to pass. I arrived on an early train and sat in the Gakuin University courtyard reading Jessie's book on hikikomori (more on this later) while crowds of East Asian students flipped through test prep books and cheerful Brazilians posed for group photos. I was the only white person in the test room, and also the oldest, the majority being Brazilian middle-school students wearing a mix of neon and black. I read, reread, and attempted to understand the hiragana instructions on the blackboard, and watched the test proctor, a nervous woman who did her best to make her Japanese easy to understand, shuffle awkwardly around the room. She was assisted by a college kid who carried in the test booklets and watched over the room without doing very much. He wore a jet-black suit with a loosely-knotted pink tie and dirty tennis shoes that betrayed an obvious unfamiliarity with the post, a welcome break from Japan's usual flawless appearance.

I had arrived just before noon, and there must have been some rule about starting the test at exactly 12:45 because the proctor spent a grueling ten minutes staring at her watch while we waited with the test booklets in front of us. I used this opportunity to think about the book I'd been reading, silently make fun of the college kid's sneakers, look forward to other weekend plans, work some transitional issues out of a story I'm writing, think about women I'd like to sleep with, and worry about whether I'd remembered to turn off my cell phone so that I was shocked into action when the proctor finally gave the signal to hajimete. It had also been so long since I'd taken a standardized test (eight years by my count) that I'd forgotten the importance of speed over thoroughness. I wasted a lot of time in the Vocabulary section mulling over pieces of sentences that had no bearing on the actual answer, and deliberated over questions whose solution I could only guess at. I was surprised when the proctor called time and collected our answer sheets: I still had two questions to go.

That turned out to be a good thing because it showed me that this test, even though it was the lowest level, was still a force to be reckoned with. Success wasn't going to come easily. I spent the remaining two sections locked in a state of intense concentration, especially during the Listening section, which required me to reorient myself to a new set of instructions every ten minutes. (The whole test, by the way, was in Japanese, with nary a hint of English to help us figure out what to do.)

Maybe that was the challenge I needed to sharpen my focus. It occurred to me during the break that I've been taking the easy route too often lately, and that having a challenge again made me feel good. And why have I been avoiding challenges the past few years? Post-college burnout? Fear of failure? Massive derailment without a set structure to guide me through life? Or is it just plain laziness?

I'm pretty confident that I went on to smoke those second two sections, but even if I don't pass, that moment of enlightenment was reward enough. With the test out of the way I've been free to get things squared away for Christmas (which gets a lot more complicated when there's excessive mail order shopping involved), and when that's finally over with, I'll be able to focus on some other writing projects, both fiction and pieces for this blog. More on those projects later, but for now, I assure you that I will be posting more often, for serious this time.

No Ticket

2010-12-04T07:51:00.003-05:00

Just as I feared (i.e. predicted), my entry ticket for the JLPT was not delivered to my work address because, in a massive display of Japanese adherence to labyrinthine regulations, my name was not printed on the mailbox. This is entirely my own fault for not understanding the directions clearly (Travelers Tip: Understanding rules will get you far in Japan). I can't even make the excuse that I didn't see the part about marking one's name on the mailbox, since there is clear evidence of my having retyped it as part of a previous blog entry.

Fortunately, a co-worker's well-timed call to the Testing Center yielded me with a freshly-faxed ticket and vaguely-printed directions to the testing center at Yamanashi Gakuin University. In return, I agreed to decipher the loopy script of a letter from her elderly Australian host father. I wish I could say the latter task was as successful.

Wish me luck tomorrow.

Further Reflections on a Subject that Interests Only Me

2010-11-23T21:17:00.006-05:00

A few weeks back I picked up a copy of the McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar (and by "picked up" I really mean pulled off my bookshelf where one of my apartment's previous inhabitants had left it) and started devoting a morning or two every week to expanding my knowledge of grammar, usage, and all those pesky technical terms. This may have been a poor decision since the Japanese Language Proficiency Test looms forebodingly on the horizon and I already had a lot of grammar and kanji to brush up on, but I knew it would be helpful for my writing, my ability to self-study, and my job. The latter was really the biggest contributing factor, as students will often come to me with grammatical queries ranging from the commonplace to the minutely detailed.

"I have a question," asked a particularly curious high-school girl after the lesson had ended.
"Of course," I replied in a tone of utter confidence.
"What's a modal?"

My blood ran cold as I leaned over the grammar page of her textbook (which was thankfully in English) and read a note about how to adjust the structure of requests using modal verbs with an example that did not make at all clear what a modal was. The other students were attracted by her question and looked at me in intense anticipation of some useful bit of information they could only get from a native speaker. There was a dead silence in the room as I ran through the sentence trying to figure out which of those words could possibly be a modal, a term I knew I'd skimmed over lightly in grammar textbooks a dozen times without bothering to understand the meaning of.

I waited as long as I reasonably could keep up the charade of interpreting the textbook example, then feigned an exaggerated note of recognition. "Ah, I see! Here, a modal is a kind of special verb in English, but don't worry about this too much. Basically, this sentence means..." (Here I lapsed into an explanation of the example sentence using the grammar we'd covered in class while dodging the initial question, which yielded thoughtful nods from everyone in the room.)

This situation happens more often than I care to admit. It is particularly humiliating when the question comes from one of my junior high-school students, a precocious girl who is studying for several major English exams and is interested in nuances so subtle that they boggle my mind. There is an expectation inherent in every class that a native-speaking English teacher will always know the answer, and to admit that I don't dashes students' confidence to a crippling degree. It also makes me feel like a gaijin hack who gets by using only his natural ability rather than any actual knowledge of English grammar, and it is a sad reminder that any English-speaking idiot can come out here, hold up the cards, play the CDs, and be an eikaiwa teacher. I guess I just want to do it better than that.

Some interesting facts I learned from my foray into English grammar:

A modal verb is one of a special list of helping verbs paired off with other verbs to talk about the future or clarify other meanings: can, may, must, shall, will, and their past tense forms.
The only English verb without a past tense form is must.
In American English, commas and periods should always be placed inside quotation marks. However, in the rare case where a semicolon or a colon overlaps with quotation marks, it should always go outside. Question marks and exclamation points can go either way, depending on the situation.
Went, the past-tense form of go, comes from the older English word wend, which also means to travel.
Apostrophes were originally used only in place of omitted letters in words and contractions such as can't. During the Elizabethan era, grammar handbooks started recommending them for use in possessive forms as well, citing that the phrase Arthurs land was really a shortened form of Arthur, his land, and so the former needed an apostrophe: Arthur's land.
Even after carefully studying that entire book, there will always be grammar questions I can't answer.

Duck Under Glass

2010-11-18T09:49:00.003-05:00

Most Japanese restaurants store plastic replicas of their food inside glass cases out front so that passers-by can get a clear idea of what delicacies (or cheap noodle bowls) await them. This duck, which was the centerpiece of an all-you-can-eat restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown, is the largest and most elaborate one I've ever seen. There's something eerie about the plastic eyes staring back at you.

Plastic food in Japan has fascinated me since I've come here, though most of the good replicas have to be ordered directly from the manufacturer. The only ones you can buy easily are cheap keychains and tiny cuts of sushi. I want some very badly as a memento, and was determined to steal some from the old Italian restaurant in Kofu that went out of business a few months ago and took everything but their plastic food. I saw the sun-bleached pasta and pizzas every day on my way to work, but couldn't figure out a way to open the case without breaking the glass. (Ethical Note: It's not stealing if the owners left it behind.) However, said Italian restaurant was also located across from a police box and next to a well-lit taxi stand and a konbini, so even a late-night raid was risky.

Two weeks ago, workmen came to gut the building and take the glass cases of food away. They are probably in a dumpster somewhere now. Part of the sidewalk is closed off, and I hear drills roaring and see the occasional cloud of dust float down as construction crews shape the building into a new restaurant with pristine replicas to greet its customers; for there is no place left in Japan for the old and faded variety.

The Girl at the Bookstore

2010-11-07T03:21:00.001-05:00

One experience more than any other lead me to understand the artificial constructs of Japanese society. I was at the bookstore paying for a book when I was suddenly struck by the girl working the register. She had long, wonderfully straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail with bangs hanging low on her forehead and big bright eyes that shone as she smiled at me. And what a lovely smile it was. I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty smile; and the way her whole face lit up as she took my money, wrapped up my book, and graciously thanked me for my purchase sent my head spinning. I smiled coyly back and responded with a flirtatious you’re welcome in Japanese, to which she again bowed with that enchanting smile.

I was proud of myself—she was a beautiful girl, and here she had shown me such rapt attention. I turned to catch her eye again and saw her backed against the wall, arms folded securely in front of her as she stared vacantly into the distance ignoring me who had just flirted so successfully with her. She had become a completely different person. Our interaction had finished, and there was no further need for her to even acknowledge my presence. Her face, which had once radiated such bright energy, was now blankly devoid of all emotion. The change was so abrupt and so complete that it left me feeling confused and uneasy about what I had seen.

The girl at the bookstore had been ordered by her boss to smile and bow politely at me even though she didn’t want to. She did it because she had to. I see that attitude everywhere I turn now, and I can’t make it go away.

Last-minute Halloween Costume Ideas

2010-10-29T09:43:00.002-04:00

Two days left until Halloween and still no costume for the big party? Why not consider one of these cheap, easy, last-minute ideas:

- Man with Fly Unzipped
- Post-modernist "Kid wearing a really crappy ghost costume made out of a sheet" Costume
- Co-worker of the Opposite Gender
- High-school Version of Yourself
- Harry Potter Wearing Regular Clothes
- Barbecue Chef (a.k.a Man Wearing Apron)
- Bruce Willis's character from Die Hard 1
- Invisible Man
- Dress is an assortment of random clothes from your wardrobe and then when people ask who you are, answer, "What? You don't know?"

Happy Halloween, everybody.

My Neighborhood

2010-10-20T06:19:00.014-04:00

This is the unnamed street I live on, part of a faded though very functional community called Takara (treasure in Japanese) a ten-minute walk from Kofu train station. Like most of the communities radiating around the station area, the buildings are older, the inhabitants aging, and the shop wares dusty and out of style. I like it here a lot.

This is the building where I live (middle floor, far left). It's a lot brighter than any other building on the street. The tiling is pretty cool, as well as the circular stairs outside, which offer a nice view of the surrounding street, the hospital towering above, and the mountains beyond.

This is the stand where I buy my vegetables and eggs. The outside is heaped with great boxes of onions and potatoes that go bad quickly, plus fruit of dubious quality. Most of the produce inside is better and keeps for longer, sitting alongside old display cases stocked with canned tuna and pineapple. There is usually a woman of indeterminate age in the living room behind the store who comes out when she hears the door open. Sometimes we talk in Japanese. Other times an old man rings me up, and he always counts what I've bought with an abacus. It's pretty awesome.

The building on the right is a bakery down the street. They specialize in rolls stuffed with different kinds of filling, though I also buy bread from there sometimes. Like the vegetable stand, I have no idea how they stay in business because there's never anyone inside. I always buy from the day-old rack because day-old bread in Japan is the same as fresh bread in America. If I go on Saturday evenings they usually give me an extra roll or two for free.

To the left is a small bar with wood-paneled walls. I've never been inside because it's always either empty or filled with drunken middle-aged men. In the interest of curiosity I may give it a try before I leave.

This is the inside of the laundromat (koin randoree) on the next block. It has a musty smell and is usually filled with old coffee cans. I don't need to use it since I have a washing machine, but if I was ever in a pinch and needed a dryer, it's reassuring to know that it's here.

This is the small medical clinic across from my apartment. I'm not sure what kind of clinic it is but I know they must have patients sometimes because the front room has a bed surrounded by a curtain and several machines. One of the nurses who works there is kind of hot. I saw her making the bed after I took this picture.

To the right of the clinic is a barbershop that appears to be out of business. The sign and barber pole are still there, but no one ever answered when I knocked looking for a quick haircut. Instead, someone always parks a moped (not shown) on the front step.

This is the nicest house on my street. A young family with kids lives here, and I assume that an older concrete building was torn down to build this one before I moved in. To the left of this house there used to be a really cool old building that was also torn down last spring to make room for a less entertaining parking lot.

There are a lot of vending machines (hapi dorinku shoppu) here. The second one from the right has Mountain Dew.

In the other direction sits this boarded-up machine shop. I want very badly to sneak inside but cannot discern any simple methods of entry. There are some other shops like this one a few blocks away still in business, but everything there is really expensive and there's never anyone inside.

This is a really, really small bar up the street from the electronics shop. Only about four people could fit at the counter inside, and I think it's the kind of place where everyone who drinks there knows the owner. I think it'd be pretty cool if your friend down the street owned a bar that you could drink at whenever you wanted. You also wouldn't have to worry about driving home.

Like most houses in the older city, this one has about a million plants outside. It's pretty cool to walk down the gray concrete streets and have all this nature around you, even if it is in pots and on people's balconies. One day I was walking by and the guy who lives here had set up a display of alpine plants for sale. The plants all resembled ferns and were growing out of shelves of rock. The guy said they came from Nagano and explained in Japanese how to take care of them. I bought one for a thousand yen and put it on my balcony, where it flowers whenever there's a rainstorm.

This is just a picture of the other side of the street. In the distance you can see a small machine shop that always has a lot of scrap metal stacked out front, and past that is the corner where we put our recycling once a month (I always forget, though). The tall building on the corner looks like it might be really fancy inside. Most afternoons and some nights there's flute music coming from one of the apartments, which I think is someone actually practicing rather than a recording. The music gives the normally-quiet street an upbeat, exciting feeling. It is a sign that people live there.

On Oversimplifying "Karoshi"

2010-10-13T10:07:00.004-04:00

I have more than once been accused of oversimplifying topics in this blog that are complicated enough to warrant entire articles or lengthy essays in order to completely explore them. I like to keep things (fairly) short on here to fit (what I can only assume is) the span of the average internet viewer, which I'm afraid has turned much of my nonfiction writing into one-sided snippets that never allow the reader to become fully informed. To write proficiently about the topics I'm interested in, especially those related to Japan, requires more time and a higher word count than I've been allowing my entries.

With "Karoshi," however, I never intended to give a complete perspective of the Japanese habits of overwork, though I'm afraid some people might read it that way. I wrote it in an attempt to capture the horror and cruelty of the Japanese business world that I'm surrounded by every day. I see it in my own workplace, in the textbooks I teach, when I talk to my students about their jobs, in books about Japanese daily life, at the bank, on the street, and even in my own fiction (where do you think Corporate Takeover came from?). There are things here that irk me terribly, and the business world is one of them. I wanted to recreate the pain I see on people's faces after long, stress-filled days at jobs they're afraid to leave. I wanted to shock people the way I was shocked when a girl I knew suffered a nervous breakdown at her job and had to be sent back home. I wanted to scare people the way Orwell scares them in the final chapters of 1984. The way the business world scares me sometimes.

So, to do that, I oversimplified things. My dictionary translates karoshi as "death by overwork," which in English is a perfectly reasonable way of describing that end just as we might use "death by dehydration" or "death by vomiting" to describe a mode of death without a more convenient term. Overworking can cause death or serious health problems for Americans just as readily as it could for Japanese, and I certainly don't mean to imply that some linguistic barrier prevents us from recognizing that danger.

Perhaps my attempts to shock and horrify are best left to fiction, and not just my entries here that routinely blur that line. For all my talk of disguising fiction as fact, and vice versa, sometimes it can be detrimental to the way people read about unfamiliar cultural topics. It makes it much harder to recognize hyperbole. But in all seriousness, I want to address a topic as complex as Corporate Japan as honestly and thoroughly as I can in whichever medium is best. You haven't heard the last of me on this one.

Karoshi

2010-10-11T09:19:00.001-04:00

Language is an integral part of culture. A culture evolves language to express the values that it deems most important, and in turn, the framework of that language allows people to express those values more easily. By comparing different languages, we can see which values are important in different cultures. English, like most other Western languages, is concerned with defining specific notions of identity (a banana, the banana, some bananas, and so on), while Japanese is dominated by different levels of politeness (the word taberu, to eat, can be more politely expressed as tabemasu, to name but one of thousands of examples) to suit different societal relationships.

It is also vital to examine the extent of a language’s lexicon. Cultures create words to define those concepts that are most relevant to their lives. Consider some words expressing different manners of death in both Western and Japanese culture:

If a person goes with minimal or no food for a prolonged period, resulting in extreme malnourishment as the belly extends grotesquely outward and the skin becomes tightly shrunken around the victim’s increasingly brittle bones as the lack of caloric energy to fuel the body’s basic functions results in a slow, agonizing death, we say starvation. Japanese say ue.

If a person becomes submerged in water, even if they are capable of swimming for short or long distances, the desperate exertion to stay afloat eventually becomes too much to bear, and their body becomes weak and tired as the victim’s energy dissipates and the exhaustion becomes so much that they slide below the surface allowing the water to flow freely through their nose and mouth into their lungs, simultaneously suffocating and choking them, we say drowning. Japanese say oboreshinu.

If a person’s upper body comes in contact with a sharp object traveling at a rate of speed sufficient enough to slice off the victim’s head in a quick or gradual manner (as for such purpose as the French designed the guillotine) so that the brain cannot communicate with the rest of the body, leaving the victim’s eyes blankly empty as the brain’s neurons sputter and cease function even as blood spurts relentlessly from the victim’s still-warm neck, we say decapitation. Japanese say kubi o haneru.

If a person is prevented from breathing normally by any number of methods (such as having another person’s hands clenched around his or her neck, squeezing the windpipe sufficiently so as to cut off all oxygen; or having a pillow forced over his or her face so tightly so as to render respiration impossible) reducing the victim’s inhalations to quick, desperate gasps, so that said breathing eventually ceases as the brain becomes completely deprived of life-giving oxygen and the victim falls down dead, we say asphyxiation. Japanese say chissoku saseru.

If a person is subject to spending prolonged periods at their stressful job, where they are constantly belittled and talked down to by stern bosses, piled upon with unreasonable deadlines, and constantly engulfed in an atmosphere of absolute loyalty to the company so that they become obsessed with fulfilling their workplace duties, forcing the victim to work hour after agonizing hour of overtime, neglecting proper nutrition, exercise, and fresh air for the stuffy confines of a crowded office late at night, until the victim can focus on nothing but achieving the company’s goals to a point where stress, nervous tension, exhaustion caused by lack of sleep, claustrophobia, hunger, and eye strain combine in varying amounts to cause any combination of heart attacks, strokes, or serious illnesses leading to the victim’s untimely death; there’s no single word to explain this in English because most self-respecting Westerners possess the common sense to escape such a horrible fate.

Japanese say karoshi.

The Bombing

2010-10-04T10:40:00.003-04:00

One of my students is a 73 year-old man who enjoys discussing controversial topics. I asked him once what he remembered of the Allied bombing of Kofu during the war. After a short pause he wrinkled his nose in disgust and said, "Very bad smell."

You can't find that in the history books.

Beyond Belief

2010-09-27T10:21:00.004-04:00

View from Kitayokodake in Nagano prefecture.

I'll always remember that the greatest compliment someone ever gave me about this blog was that he couldn't tell what was real and what was fiction anymore. I've done a lot of experimenting here, and realized that I feel more comfortable now blurring the line between the two; leaving readers to decide for themselves like an old Fox gimmick show. Merely recounting my daily life would be too boring for even the most dedicated reader to face, whereas most of my pure fiction has always seemed to me trite, petty, and (at its worst) moralizing. The longer I stay here, the fewer inspirations I have for observational essays on Japan, which also in retrospect appear to have little to say beyond my very limited (and often flawed) viewpoint. I might be saying this because I've been reading Nick Hornby's 31 Songs and am blown away by his uncanny ability to describe the different layers of how we experience music; which simultaneously drives me to capture Japan in the same way and destroy every nonfiction piece I've ever written.

Of course, I would also be wise to take a cue from Randall and most other bloggers out there and share more of the cool stuff I find around the net (slightly biased in favor of things my friends are doing, of course). The problem with this is that most of my online time is spent in communicating with friends, or pursuing strictly goal-oriented tasks like buying birthday presents or tracking down that exact U2 music video I have a sudden demanding urge to watch again. Outside of these activities, I frequently feel an urge to unplug, not surf the net for cool stuff, hence my lack of interesting things to link. If I had more in the way of external stuff to post here, you'd probably have to wonder whether it was fact or fiction.

In which the Narrator registers for the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam, and of the Nervous Tension which resulted from it

2010-09-16T10:29:00.003-04:00

Pass/fail is determined for only those who take all sections of the test by both the total score and the scores for each scoring section. If you are absent from any test section(s), all other test sections, which you may take, will not be considered for scoring. If the score of any scoring section does not reach the minimum acceptable score (the least required score specified for each scoring section), you will fail however high your total score would be.

Japan has lots of tests. Students must take formal examinations to enter the college, high school, junior high school, and even some elementary schools of their (or their parents’) choice. University examinations are unique to individual institutions, and since each student may only take one exam in a given year, failure to pass means an awkward gap year after high school. From what I’ve heard, these tests make the SAT look like a Slylock Fox puzzle.

If you have a physical disability or other impairments and require special arrangements in taking the test, please call us at the Application Center to receive a Special Arrangement Request Form before sending your application, and submit the completed form together with your application as soon as possible, or by October 1 (Fri) at the latest. Please note that the Center may not be able to accommodate your requests due to test site conditions or other unavoidable reasons.

After graduation though, the fun doesn’t stop. Whereas most Americans will never touch another standardized test in their lives after college, many Japanese businessmen and office workers vie for the high score on the TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) that will open them up for promotions, pay raises, or simply ensure their job security in an environment of ever-increasing competition.

Incomplete applications are rejected.

I haven’t taken an exam in over seven years. Like hall passes and pastel cafeteria trays, they’re a hallmark of high school that I’ve long left behind. But after seeing so many of my students putting so much stock in their success on these tests, I figured I’d try taking an exam myself to understand this part of the Japanese experience.

Please note that changes to the test level and/or test area cannot be made after submitting your application regardless of the reason. Correctly enter the test level and area of your selection.

The JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test, or Nihongo noryoku shiken) was designed to test the Japanese proficiency of non-native Japanese speakers. I’ve been studying the language intermittently for nearly two years now, and thought that passing the December JLPT would give me something more impressive than broken conversation with nervous store clerks to show for my efforts.

The application must be placed in the application envelope, and you must go to a post office counter and send the application by delivery-certified mail (Tokutei kiroku yuubin). Ensure that you receive a receipt at the counter and keep the receipt until you receive your test voucher.

I don’t know enough kanji and am not confident enough with grammar to take the Level 4 exam, so I decided to take the basic Level 5 exam instead. I didn't want the higher certification badly enough to put in the extra study time required, nor did I want to waste my money on something I wasn’t going to pass.

The receipt is your proof of application in the event that the original application is lost in the mail. You will not be able to take the test if your application is lost in the mail and you do not have this receipt.

I picked up a test application booklet for five hundred yen at Rogetstudo bookstore in Kofu. Inside was a thick instruction manual written in four languages, a delivery-certified mail envelope, the sturdy cardboard application form, and a book of advertisements for test prep materials.

If you did not receive your voucher, or the voucher is lost, notify the Application Center of your fax number, so that the test voucher can be faxed to you. Inquiry Period: November 22 (Mon) – December 3 (Fri) (10:00-17:00). If you were unable to contact the Application Center during the above period, the test fee will not be refunded.

I read through the instruction manual carefully and found that for my application I needed a picture exactly three by four centimeters wide, taken against a white background, non-blurred, in which I had my eyes open, wasn’t wearing any hats or sunglasses, and my face was neither too big nor too small relative to the photo size.

Every year, there are examinees who do not receive their test voucher or notice of test results. Potential reasons for this are:

Fortunately, some helpful Japanese friends helped me get a photograph that met the necessary qualifications.

1. The examinee’s name is not displayed on the mailbox. (Your name must be displayed on the mailbox of your house/apartment in both kanji/katakana and Roman letters.) The test voucher and test results cannot be delivered if only the room number is indicated on your mailbox. In order to confirm your residence, your name must be displayed on the mailbox, otherwise the mail may not be delivered.

Back at home, I filled out the application form, looking up the specific numeric codes for my country, native language, occupation, test purpose, and number of study hours.

2. The examinee is living at someone else’s residence and did not write the property owner’s name (written as c/o + name) in the address column of the application form.

I filled out my name in block letters exactly as it appeared on my passport, and copied down my work address. For some reason, I was nervous about having anything sent to my apartment.

3. The examinee did not write the room/room number of their apartment on the application form.

After I’d quadruple-checked the application for errors, I made a list of the necessary steps to pay the testing fee and send that horrible cardboard application away forever so I could put this miserable ordeal behind me.

4. The postal code and address on the application form is written incorrectly (the chome and banshee numbers are omitted).

I would first have to make the required photocopy of the application for my records, then buy some white-out at the convenience store so I could fix the mistake in address I’d made on the official postal payment form before crossing back over to the post office to pay the test fee at the monetary service counter and carefully sort receipt A into the application envelope while keeping receipt B for my records so that I could seal the whole thing up and mail it via the Tokutei kiroku yuubin method that I’d been rehearsing in Japanese for the greater part of the morning.

5. The examinee has not completed the necessary change of address procedures. If you change your address, please report it immediately to your nearest post office.

I ran through these steps over and over before leaving the house, so afraid was I that I would muddle some horrendous mistake on the application that would cause me to embark on an epic series of phone calls, phone transfers, faxes, fees, application forms filed during the predetermined application window, fees, visits to the main post office, frantic protestations to the mailman, and more fees before I could finally recover my test voucher (maybe). I sweat profusely in the early September heat and regretted my decision to ever take this silly test.

A fee will be charged to reissue and resend undeliverable test vouchers or test results for reasons listed above.

I made it through all the steps despite my fears, and my breathing relaxed significantly after the round-faced man at the mail counter cheerfully took the envelope with a smile and handed me my receipt with both hands. With that taken care of, I was free to enjoy my free ticket to the Japanese flower arrangement display on the top floor of the local department store. The easy part was over.

How to Write "Well"

2010-09-07T22:47:00.002-04:00

I’d like to talk today about some of my biggest “pet peeves;” subjects that really “grind my gears,” if you will. These “epidemics” have become increasingly apparent in both the personal and “business-oriented” correspondence of our society, and I am writing this essay with the goal of improving our various “day-to-day” writing for the greater good of the community as a whole.

The first, and most glaring, subject about which I would like to talk is the use of “unnecessary” quotation marks. Quotation marks are a form of punctuation “invented,” as it were, to more fully integrate human speech with more “narrative” forms of writing. The “problem,” as far as I can see it, is when writers “overuse” quotations marks with words and/or phrases that don’t “necessarily” “take-on” the “usual” meaning that we associate with them. And what, may I ask, is the point of utilizing quotation marks in this manner? They merely confuse the reader into thinking that he or she is supposed to “interpret” the quoted phrase in a “different” or “unusual” way which is not always clear. And that, if I may be so bold, makes our correspondence all the more “convoluted.”

I would also, time permitting, like to reflect on another of these “problems;” this one being the padding of our writing with “clever” phrases which serve no apparent purpose. If something isn’t deemed “necessary” by the majority of readers, then, by all means, the writer should remove, or, more fittingly, “delete” it from his or her prose with the ultimate goal of making his or her writing more “concise.” Because, after all, if our writing becomes shorter, and, by pure proxy, “clearer” and “easier to read,” we can stop our precious time from “flying” and produce more higher-quality writing.

The last subject under discussion is the most “glaring” of all: hypocrisy. In today’s so-called “modern” society, people have become so “wrapped-up” in “capturing” the attention of their superiors, as it were, that they lose touch with the ideas they were attempting to convey in the first place. By trying “overly hard” to produce quality work, be it at the office, when writing a term paper, or when applying to college, people tend to place more importance on official-sounding “legalese” than on saying something useful. Thus, in conclusion, their “wholehearted” attempts at producing “appropriate” writing actually cause them to move further away from their apparent “target.”

The solution, it would seem, is simple: forget about sounding “important” or “businesslike” and just write in a straightforward way. Forget about utilizing all those fancy words and “business writing” styles that you inevitably “catch a glimpse of” everywhere you go, and just write what comes “naturally.” This, in turn, will help you become a better writer.

A Very Special Wave of the Hand 150th Post Clip Show

2010-09-02T11:21:00.008-04:00

I am not sure why people I know have a preoccupation with seeing me intoxicated.

I’m not going to be cliché and say that I don’t know what I want to do with my life, because that’s not true—rather, what’s thrown me off most is the loss of structure now that for the first time in seventeen years I don’t have formal education to plan my life around.

“The Dude” is really lazy and doesn’t seem to have a job, this is evidenced by his writing a check for creamer in the first scene in the movie. If he had had the money to pay for the creamer, he wouldn’t have had to have written a check to pay for it.

IAN. (Scanning menu) How about garlic? The garlic pizza’s wicked strong; it’s great.
TIFF. (Disgusted) No thanks.
IAN. How about pineapple then? Do you like Hawaiian pizza?
TIFF. I like pineapple, just not on pizza.
IAN. (In disbelief) Have you ever tried it?
TIFF. Yes.
IAN. Do you have any other suggestions?
TIFF. I don’t really care.
IAN. Mushrooms?
TIFF. Yuck.
IAN. (Slightly frustrated) Why don’t you suggest something then?
TIFF. I don’t really have a preference.

Vocabulary Word for the Day: triorchous (trī-'ör-kis), adj, having three testicles.

I was so taken aback by the idea of someone willingly sticking such a thing up their ass and not even getting paid for it that I was speechless.

Indiana Jones V (working title)
Scheduled for 2012, an aging Indy must outrace an army of Cuban revolutionaries on the trail of Noah’s Ark while attempting to save his failing real estate business.

The chief unwritten duty of a substitute is to keep students from wandering the halls, since today’s students have an obsession with leaving the room that borders on the pathological. Every day they swarm at me with their countless requests; and I have yet to figure out whether they actually need a break from the confines of the classroom (where they must sit for the excruciating period of fifty minutes), or if they exercise their right to leave just because they can. They ask to go to the bathroom, the nurse, to get a drink of water (I see fewer Nalgene bottles than I used to—coincidence?), to go shoot hoops at the gym, work in the hallway, make phone calls at the office, or go to the cafeteria to stuff their faces with Smores-flavored Pop-Tarts and king-sized cans of Arizona iced-tea. One would assume that Kearsarge consists chiefly of dehydrated, diabetic, hypochondriac students with microscopic bladders.

"Mr. Rogers, have you given anyone a detention today?"
"...Day ain't over yet."

In the short storty “To Build a Fire” By Jack london,” A man is walking to camp. He Has to walk in sevendy five degree Below zero wether. He tries to biuld a fire to warm up But it is on segsecful. Jack london thought man can’t beat naturl.

I like mocking people instead of complaining about them. One of my favorite online activities is making fun of the Adult Gigs on Craigslist (my latest find being an ad by the world’s biggest Lord of the Rings nerd looking for a woman willing to have her vagina and the surrounding area painted to resemble the Eye of Sauron for the laughable sum of twenty-five dollars).

“Utilize” holds the exact same meaning as the word “use,” but the former term is often utilized by people to appear more important.

“What about when you go to Japan? I bet you’ll meet a girl there you can marry.”
Everyone brings this up when they find out I’m going to Japan; as if it were a requisite of the teaching abroad experience to return home with an exotic Japanese bride in a kimono and slippers. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Yes it will!” She becomes noticeably excited. “Unless you’re....”
Her eyes suddenly become wide and she covers her mouth as if she has just heard an adult tell a lewd joke and needs to hide her understanding. She chooses her words carefully: “...unless you’re like my mom’s friends up the street!”

10:25: Buker announces that he can successfully hit the Boat Wash sign thirty feet away with a rock, then spends the next twenty minutes attempting to do so. The challenge takes even longer because he must hide his rock and look professional every time someone walks by.

In the quest for emotional fulfillment, we’re our own worst enemy, forced to tread on, regretting the decisions we’ve made, and driven to mind-bending extremes by thoughts of what might have been.
The other day I saw the first season of Kids in the Hall on DVD for ten dollars but did not purchase it.

There are the alleys and the side streets, the suburban blocks and the overpasses, the zig-zag intersections crossing every which way, and the narrow one-ways where cars squeeze between one another and bike-riders of all ages reign supreme; convenience stores and vegetable markets and electronics stores and hair salons with outrageous prices posted outside the windows next to restaurants with plastic food replicas in glass cases alongside tiny luncheon houses with long counters where businessmen and young people sit alone munching noodles with pachinko parlors on every street that draw my eyes with their colored lights and loud noises (for everything in Japan seems to flash, flash, FLASH! turning the streets into epilepsy-inducing spectacles that would put even the most spectacular American laser light shows to shame) and there are arcades too in the red (pink?) light district where the strippers dressed in skintight outfits stand outside calling out to the Japanese businessmen on their night out and still more posters list the girls promoting promises of pleasure inside and other shops that must sell sex next to the famed Love Hotels that charge by the hour and now all of us are getting wierded out and it’s time to turn around....

Those rocks [have/are] floating!

A familiar face at last.

Japan is filled with things like this that don’t function the way I’m accustomed, and thus turn even the most routine tasks into elaborate adventures. Is that slot on the subway ticket machine for inserting coins or for dumping out change? I had to push a button to open the door to the restaurant, but will it close again automatically? Where does the fabric softener go in my washing machine? Is this really flour I’m buying? And how the hell do I work this fucking rice cooker?

But it was always the world of old Hollywood that he created most vividly as his passion added a zany realism to a subject that in the wrong hands could become little more than a sequence of names, dates, and deteriorating celluloid. You could almost hear David O Selznick fast-talking his way to the top and see D.W. Griffith peeking down the blouses of the underage girls on set. That was his world, and to sit in a Steven Bach class or to read even a single page of one of his books was to lose yourself in that magic.

Q: Do Americans prefer Coke or Pepsi?
A: Both are equally popular. Most Americans will usually choose one or the other based on their mood, though they usually drink Moxie instead.

Me: In English, what do we call someone who doesn't eat meat, doesn't eat eggs, and doesn't drink milk?
(pause)
Another student: Allergic.

Sadly, Takahashi’s date comes to an embarrassing end when he prematurely ejaculates all over the backseat of Jake’s car and has to spend his New Years Eve wiping semen stains off the leather interior.

The juxtaposition of these vitriolic mysteries with a catalogue of the mundane only heightens our awareness of his intent. By discarding our preconceived notions of what a blog should be (for instance, in over one year of blogging the author only once stoops to answering a meme), the reader is granted leave of any exhibitionist prejudices, awareness of the mundane, or outmoded diversions. Reading this blog also makes you cool.

Man fishing in reservoir—how do you say "Any luck?" in Japanese?

I find most sensible individuals associate the word “corporation” with massive, inhumane, robotic, cold, merciless, unforgiving, ever-expanding, stubborn, bureaucratic, treacherous, manipulative, scheming, labyrinthine, unwieldy, selfish, antagonistic entities bent on tormenting the defenseless individual at every possible opportunity....I hope that one day I too have the opportunity to use this superbly loaded word in my own writing.

When I was a kid I had an older sister I don’t talk about very much. Her name was Sharon. When I was four years old we were playing at our house in Bridgeport, and our mother went inside to use the phone. Sharon and I were tossing a purple rubber ball back and forth when one of us (I cannot for the life of me recall who) let it bounce into the road. Sharon dove out to get it and was instantly struck by a brown van careening around the corner, her limbs twisting brokenly around her brittle body as her blood spattered a line across the pavement. (The image of her flying helplessly into that cracked road haunts me still when I see cars braking abruptly on urban streets.) In a panic I screamed and ran into the house where I was unable to explain to my mother that my sister had been suddenly killed and was never, ever coming back.

Ever watched dried seaweed expand in hot water? Trippy

Last month I took a trip to Tochigi and Ibaraki prefectures, in a region of Japan occasionally referred to by locals as the Kanto (I am not sure of the meaning of this word, but according to my Japanese dictionary, it may be derived from the word kantoku, or film director). Above you can see a cultural snippet of Japan from Oyama city in Tochigi, where electricity races down the wires faster than attractive girls fleeing a cosplay convention. Tochigi is famous for its gyoza, a small dumpling-type food that was probably brought over from China a long time ago (like most things in Japan that aren’t anime or co-prosperity spheres).

If you could be transported to any period of history, but only for a day, where would you go? In this scenario, nothing you do in the past can possibly affect the future in any way (including if you ran into your past self and gained the knowledge that you would someday be transported back through time for a day) because the time-traveling would be completely inconsequential. We’re also assuming that you can go to any geographical location, but not that you can embody any social status of your choosing (for example, were you to go back to the Middle Ages you couldn’t make yourself a king, but you wouldn’t necessarily be a poor peasant either, you’d most likely live out the day as a citizen of honest means, assuming that your current status is basically equivocal as such).
New York during the 1920’s.

A yellow-skirted maid in Akihabara handing out flyers for what I can only assume is some sort of prostitution front.

Today, over the course of the workday, I became aware of why sending kamikaze pilots to their deaths for the good of the country was a uniquely Japanese phenomenon in WWII.

“In which the author threatens to take away the chair of a twelve-year old student constantly hovering near sleep”

It is difficult to describe the stiff, uncomfortable atmosphere of a Japanese meeting; particularly on the days when some unseen committee at the Head Office has contrived some elaborate procedure for classroom management and passed it on to the Branch Managers, who’ve passed it on to the Head Teachers, who are holding a meeting to pass it on to the foreign teachers, who will promptly ignore it as soon as the meeting is over.

When Blogger was first acquired by the Erochikan Corporation, I wasn’t worried at all and ignored the news just like everyone else. But now I’ve noticed that [The following opinion is solely that of the writer, and does not necessarily represent a truthful or substantiated view of the topic under discussion. In the interest of providing the fullest treatment possible, certain passages have been flagged for removal and are currently undergoing revision. We appreciate your patience. Please check back soon for an updated, higher-quality version.]

Egregious feelings of overwhelming dread and moroseness are experienced by me as I lay in bed attempting to achieve vertical stature but lacking the capacity, for today is Monday and the awareness of my deadline looms over me like a choking sickness. Strange hoarseness of breath is exhibited when I go online knowing that some vicious notification of chastisement and ridicule awaits me. I break into cold sweats as I scramble through conflicting rules, categorically quadruple-checking every line for accidental transgressions that threaten my well-being. But that’s all in a day’s work. I write in a blog.

When I say it like that, it sounds like I'm having one hell of a week.

In Which the Narrator Actually, For Once in His Life, Completes Something Substantial

2010-08-30T06:17:00.004-04:00

...or, close enough. But I did have cause to celebrate today as I put the finishing touches on the first complete draft of the script for Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers, a project more than two years in the making. For those who may have missed my earlier posts on the subject, I'll give a quick runthrough:

The story thus far:

The summer before I came to Japan, my good friend Mike Rushia and I were looking for a project to fill the creative void in our post-college lives. Mike had been experimenting with the game design program Multimedia Fusion and wanted to try making something substantial. Somewhere in between one of our runthroughs of King's Quest V and our attempts to beat Shadowgate on NES, we started to talk more seriously about doing an adventure game. We had both grown up with the PC classics that had defined the genre in the '80s and early '90s, and knew the story-intensive, tongue-in-cheek style of the Sierra games backwards and forwards. All we really needed was an idea.

We started with a loose concept: a twentysomething classic gaming hound wakes up one day to find his Commodore 64 stolen by a gang of Larpers. From there, we planned out the puzzles, game design, and narrative tone together, while I tackled the characters and background story. Mike started on a point-and-click interface that would breathe life into the finished game, while I spent my evenings writing the game's script after working days painting walls and tutoring kids. I finished the first draft a few weeks before the monumental upheaval that was my departure for Japan, and only six months later did I feel adjusted enough to finally resume work on the project.

The current draft of Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers is by no means finished, but is significant for being the first complete version. I'd like to revise it further, iron out a few kinks, and fix some storyline problems within the next year with the ultimate goal of starting production sometime after I get back to America, but we're taking that one step at a time. Getting the game drawn and illustrated will no doubt be the biggest obstacle, and we've spoken to some friends about providing some artwork.

I hope that at the very least there will be some progress to report in the coming months, either on this blog or on another website specifically for that purpose. For now, though, I'm looking for anyone willing to give feedback on the current script draft, so if you're interested in reading through a lot of Larper jokes and sarcastic narration, e-mail me at mr_bean88@hotmail.com, or drop a comment in this post.

Also, if any artistically-inclined folks out there are interested in working on backgrounds, character animations, or still scenes for what will no doubt be an awesome adventure game, definitely drop me a line.

That's all for now. My next post will be the 150th on this blog, and I'm in the process of putting together something entertaining for this personally important milestone. When I say it like that, it sounds like I'm having one hell of a week.

Disorder

2010-08-20T10:07:00.004-04:00

In Japan, where the trains always run on time, the taxis are always spotlessly clean, convenience store food is always fresh, suits are always neatly pressed, the clerks always wear big smiles, and children never have learning disabilities, I am instinctively drawn to anything that doesn't fit in.

Who Comes to Eikaiwa?

2010-08-09T02:46:00.002-04:00

“Japanese people who study English aren’t typical Japanese,” Katy observed pointedly several weeks before she escaped the routines of teaching for a new life back in America. “I think everybody who comes to eikaiwas is a little different.”

Different—chigau, a Japanese concept hopelessly intertwined with the concept “wrong” in a world where deviation from accepted norms is rewarded with confused stares, uncomfortable laughter, flustered excuses, and awkward stigma. In Japan, marketing things that are unique won’t bring in any customers. That’s why NOVA, desperate to soak up Japan’s expendable income, pushed their advertising budgets to extravagant levels to make learning English fashionable and convince consumers that dropping by a NOVA school was just as trendy as driving a nice car or carrying the latest handbag. But NOVA is bankrupt now, eikaiwa income is dropping across the board, and learning English is going out of style. That begs the all-important question: who’s still going to eikaiwas?

At my eikaiwa, a typical student is a solidly middle-class adult anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-eight years old. Most of them are unmarried and live with their parents (a style of habitation that holds no stigma in Japan, and is advocated by many as a means of saving money), and many are unhappy with their white-collar jobs. Some of them speak of a loss of direction in their lives, of past confusion about their goals, or of all-consuming loneliness. They come to eikaiwas because they dream of teaching English to kids, because they want to travel to exciting new places, because they want to meet people, and because they want to have interesting conversations with others their own age. Some have lived abroad and seen things that most Japanese will never see, and find escape from the demands of their culture by speaking English. Other students find release through foreign movies, musicals, or friends. A few want to make a life change but aren’t sure how. At least one wants a foreign boyfriend.

I see in the eikaiwa students an excited passion that I don’t see among the stone-faced people walking on the street (although in Japan, you’re not likely to see any emotion on the street). They talk about all the things in the world they’d like to do but are held back from by jobs, obligations, traditions, and societal pressures; and in their eyes shines a light that separates them from the masses. They want something more, something different (something chigau?). Something is missing, and it frustrates them because they can’t define it. I can talk about with them the same things I talk about with friends back home who want to become great writers, actors, painters, musicians, sound editors, film directors, sculptors, biologists, illustrators, photographers, historians, senators, art teachers and psychoanalysts; the plight of enthusiastic twentysomethings who aren’t going to settle for a life of stagnation but who aren’t yet where they want to be. Their situation is not unlike my own, and we can relate because the world of black-suited salarymen sees us all as different.

This is what fuels the eikaiwa where I work, a small-city branch of a gigantic corporation desperate to stay afloat in a world of post-NOVA and Geos belt-tightening. There are of course other kinds of students across Japan whose money the eikaiwas have sought to capture: smiling kids, examination-cramming high-schoolers, curious college-students, bored housewives and international businessmen; but these students are merely transitory. Someday, when all the different twenty- and thirtysomethings are still exchanging ideas and looking to meet new people, the rest of the lot will have dropped eikaiwa the same way they dropped last year’s handbag.

The One with the Deep Mind

2010-07-26T00:51:00.004-04:00

Friday, 7:34 PM, Kriasho Kofu Office, Room 8.

I am teaching a Checkpoint lesson to two high school girls on advanced pronoun use and idiomatic expressions with "one." Ten minutes of drilling sentences describing cartoonishly-drawn characters in a prison line-up ("the one with pigtails," "the bald one," and the ever-difficult "the one in the floral shirt") have finally given way to a freer speaking activity. I swiftly secure to the whiteboard a series of pictures that previous teachers have hastily printed off the internet or clipped from fashion magazines: a businessman with a cell phone and striped tie, a preppy high-school student wearing a light-blue collared shirt and khakis, a glamor model with long black hair, a grave-faced office worker wearing clear-rimmed glasses, and this man:

I then come at the girls with my questions: Which one looks the most handsome? Which one looks the oldest? And finally, which one looks the smartest?

The younger girl answers first. "The one in the striped tie looks the smartest," she says hesitantly. As always, I ask why. She responds that she is not sure.

Then the older girl answers, pointing at Jim Carrey with a big smile. "I think the one on the far right looks the smartest." She too is at a loss to explain why, but fumbles steadily forward with the words to describe her feelings. "Because, he looks funny, and his face...his face is silly...but I think that...inside, he has a deep mind, and he can think of many ideas with a silly face."

Think about that.

Naoshima

2010-07-19T01:45:00.011-04:00

I miss a lot of things, not all of which I realize I miss until I'm around them again and am struck with the familiar pang of memories long past. One of those things is art.

Naoshima island has lots of art, carefully placed on beaches and on cliffs overlooking the Seto Inland Sea or packed haphazardly on the walls of the Art Houses scattered around the island. The Nao Shima sento (public bath) pictured above is a fine example of the massive throw-together of different objects I've always loved (as anyone who's ever been in my bedroom, dorm room, or current apartment can attest) set against the traditional Japanese wooden houses and narrow streets of the island (which, unlike the rest of Japan, was not obliterated during World War II). The inside was decorated with Japanese pulp covers, a blue and white ceramic collage of pearl diving, a desert landscape made up of potted plants, and a really big elephant.

Nao Shima would have nothing to offer except old houses and fantastic views had Japanese architect Tadao Ando and a handful of others not brought contemporary art and architecture to the island, with the end result being creativity blended with the natural environment unlike anyplace else I've seen in Japan.

We rode rented bicycles around the island, stopping at oceanfront fields to gleefully view sculptures and statues from all angles, then rush on to the next stone pillar or severed boat sculpture. We toured bizarre art houses ranging from temples with rock gardens and scattered flowers to clapboard structures with digital numbers counting down and waterfalls painted on dark blue walls. There was so much to see, and all of it was spread around the island in a place where people lived and worked, not roped off or into bright o-miyage-crammed tourism zones.

The greatest place we visited was Ando's Benesse House, the island's biggest museum and main attraction. Besides the awesome things inside (including a ring of Ultraman action figures and an ant farm made up of sand painted up with the flags of the world), Ando's architecture blends the concrete building with the natural arc and grassy outline of the surrounding hill. The courtyard above is hung with time-lapse pictures of the sunrise on the Seto Inland Sea, and in the still of the twilight I could see the other stout islands jutting out of the water and the bridge from Honshu to Shikoku stretching out over the horizon. I had not expected to feel this way, but the scene brought me back four years and across half a world to a hill in southwestern Vermont where the Green Mountains jutted above the tall cedar walls of the art studios, a rusty diving board stood guard in a forest grove, the occasional hovercraft lumbered across the lawn, and ceramic sea creatures rested on the shores of a peaceful, reed-filled pond.

That any place could remove me so completely from the mundane daily struggles of the post-college abyss is a testament to its power. The only thing left is not to forget.

Business as Usual

2010-07-12T07:36:00.002-04:00

After two months of counting words and making fun of people who incorrectly use the word "utilize," Corporate Takeover is finished. Overall I'm moderately pleased with how it came out, despite a few organizational and pacing issues, and feel like I took the project where it needed to go. (As always, any thoughts or feedback are welcome, via the comment field or e-mail.) With that out of the way it's business as usual here at A Wave of the Hand, and updates will probably slow down to about once a week (a quota I've tried unsuccessfully to maintain since starting this blog). You can expect a few more commentaries on life in Japan, some travel notes, and, in the coming months, a chance for some guest blogging that I'll post more about later (Teaser: It's a chance to break the one Erochikan rule I never successfully bent.)

I'd also like to take this opportunity to plug my friend Savannah Dooley's new show (like, one that's actually on network television) Huge, an hourlong drama about teens at a summer weight-loss camp. The show is a collaboration between Sava and her veteran writer/producer mom Winnie Holzman, who, whose past achievements include My-So-Called Life, the musical version of Wicked, and once paying for my lunch. The first two episodes had all the humor and witty banter I've come to expect from Savannah, plus a brutal honesty that caught me off guard. I highly recommend checking it out, and aren't just saying that because one of the characters is named after me. We're proud of you, Sava.

Those of you located within the US can watch episodes here.

Epilogue

2010-07-05T03:03:00.002-04:00

Probation Termination Notice
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: July 5th, 2010

It is a beautiful, warm, disgustingly humid day. Thick globs of sweat drip down the foreheads and collars of wandering pedestrians, and a murky haze blocks the mountains beyond the gray city streets.

Dear Mr. Rogers,

I, meanwhile, am inside eating cherries with the air conditioning turned up.

Due to your recent increased activity and adherence to Blogger’s new regulations, we are pleased to inform you that your blog has been released from Probation to High Alert status.

I take a walk up to the hills, where welcoming green trees block the scorching sunlight and a long-awaited breeze cools my damp skin. The city disappears into the haze as if forever, though I know beyond the metallic computer factories and bloated suburban shopping centers lie open rice fields and the great southern mountains.

Your increased attention to the User Guidelines has lead to a rise in high-quality entries on your blog, and we are pleased with your recent augmentation of output.

Above all, I do all of it without an iota of guilt.

We hope you see the lifting of your probation as an opportunity to further increase the quality of your entries so as to provide an even greater resource for readers within the Blogger community.

Back inside, I nonchalantly scroll through my e-mail, deleting the inevitable offers for cheap pharmaceuticals and wire transfer swindles. When they’re gone I pay them no mind.

Keep in mind, however, that as your account is still on High Alert status, your entries will continue to be monitored by members of Erochikan’s Quality Control Team for further infractions.

There is also an official announcement of some sort, but I hurriedly glance over that and trash it too.

Users should be aware that a second downgrade to Probation status will result in a longer Probationary period with stricter restrictions on which content they will be allowed to upload.

When I write, it is with new vigor, removed from limitations and secure in what freedom I’ve won. I’ll get the rest someday.

For further explanation of extended Probationary periods, see Publication PRO-7329G on the Quality Control website.

This isn’t a perfect world. If I could change the rules, I would, but I can’t.

We appreciate your continued utilization of the Blogger network, and thank you in advance for your cooperation. The support of bloggers like you is what makes our community so successful.

After all, the things we want don’t come easily.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

If they did, life wouldn’t be any fun.

Uniforms

2010-07-01T11:47:00.004-04:00

Order is achieved by imposing justifiable restrictions on the masses. Restrictions are utilized to provide profit and security to the strong. When people’s individuality is inhibited by order, they can either submit or rebel. Submitting is not a consideration of this writer. Instead, loopholes have been incorporated to create genuinely high-quality content.

I don’t think anyone from the company is reading this. If there was any doubt, I wouldn’t have written that last sentence. I think I’m on probation because a computer program scanned my links for advertisements and a low-paid entry-level worker found a trace of nipple in my Nagoya picture after scrolling through the thousands of images uploaded that day. I also think my “Output” entry was censored because I was stupid enough to mention a certain corporation by name. Links, word counts, and vocabulary are all things they can catch. There’s no program to scan for opinions.

I came to these conclusions after realizing that no sentient being would have allowed my last entry to slip by unmolested. I also realized that beyond sending me those official-sounding e-mails or deleting my blog, there’s not a whole lot that they can do to punish me. If they send e-mails, I can ignore them. If they delete my blog, I can go somewhere else. Maybe another site would be better than this one, but for now I like this blog and want to stay.

It’s like my student’s story about the high school whose strict dress codes were enforced exactly once a year. On the previously announced inspection day, the teachers would pull out their rulers to check whether each girls skirt was long enough, each boy wore the required jacket lining, and whether all of their buttons, belt buckles, shoelaces, and hair colors were in accordance with the densely-worded rules the school had enacted to better their own reputation. The students would put on their best uniforms, trim their hair, and remove their earrings for inspection, and the teachers would file their paperwork indicating that every student had met the dress code standard. The next day, the students went back to hiking up their skirts and unbuttoning their collars, and the teachers went back to doing real work. And no one ever got called out.

Maybe that’s what surviving in this world is all about. The notoriously well-behaved Japanese schoolkids knew which rules they could ignore, but possessed enough sense not to go around smashing windows or shooting heroin in the bathroom stalls. As clever beings with rational minds, we have the power to skirt an inflexible system whose sheer complexity and methodical inhumanity are its biggest weaknesses. I know how the game works now, and I won’t make the same mistakes again. I also know their computers can’t catch Samuel Beckett references: I must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. Laugh outloud.

Loophole

2010-06-24T11:47:00.003-04:00

I got an idea last night while lying in bed worrying about my various problems. This entry may never see the light of day for reasons that will soon become obvious, but just the prospect that it might fills me with hopeful glee as I run to the keyboard not with my usual dread, but with the same exhilaration I get when I’ve solved a difficult adventure game puzzle while far from the computer and must churn the solution over mentally until I can see it to fruition. My last few entries, distorted as they were, went unmolested by my superiors because I technically didn’t break any rules. Therefore, I should be able to produce this bit of nonsense and earn some freedom with my remaining 427 words. Feel free to skim lightly:

Advancement of categorical inherent qualities is merited by an excess of contemporary achievement. The goal of exhibiting high-quality consideration must be incorporated. Utilization of appropriate capacities is necessitated by mass standardization. The situation is rectified by careful fragmentation of the original usage. Countering commensurate commitments is candidly captivated covering chaste chicanery.

I’ve randomly assembled these fifty-one words together to fulfill both the passive voice requirement and the five sentences necessary for a full paragraph. I’ve used (perhaps “utilized” is more appropriate?) more than the minimum eight words from the required vocabulary list. The content is irrelevant, but there are no rules about content. So, as long as I don’t use any emoticons in the rest of this entry, I’ve technically done everything I needed to do. (The above picture also has no bearing on anything, and is just a screen cap Mike and I took from Microsoft Golf.)

I used to think that one could create beauty out of restriction and order, and though it may be possible for some, I’m not that talented, and lack the willingness to conform. There are also some restrictions that are near impossible to work around. For instance, I challenge anyone to coherently discuss a current event with only the following seven words: inopportune, six, assimilate, tungsten, magic, derogatory, paper. You can’t do it, can you? You could probably use an artistic flourish to turn them into an interesting poem, but I doubt you’d get much farther.

I realize my example is ridiculous, but there really are some things that not even the most talented of artists can make beautiful. More realistic guidelines can yield more positive results. Oliver Goldsmith wrote The Vicar of Wakefield (I mention this as a citation, not a reference) solely for money, using a familiar plot and style of the time. His restrictions were fairly loose, and the result was an entertaining and well-written novel. Sometimes you can deliver a final product in accordance with the rules, and sometimes you have to skip deftly through the loopholes to achieve your own ends. Like now.

Paranoia

2010-06-21T06:04:00.000-04:00

Egregious feelings of overwhelming dread and moroseness are experienced by me as I lay in bed attempting to achieve vertical stature but lacking the capacity, for today is Monday and the awareness of my deadline looms over me like a choking sickness. Strange hoarseness of breath is exhibited when I go online knowing that some vicious notification of chastisement and ridicule awaits me. I break into cold sweats as I scramble through conflicting rules, categorically quadruple-checking every line for accidental transgressions that threaten my well-being. But that’s all in a day’s work. I write in a blog.

My enemy is negatively possessed of the capability of being seen by me. It cannot be clearly imagined, and shifts seamlessly into disguises I swat at but can never catch. It controls all, and cannot be argued with, bargained with, or reasoned with. (Any similarity this sentence may bear to any film, literary, television, or other such quotation is purely coincidental.) My tracks have to be covered well. If the knowledge of how to counteract its tactics was possessed by me, I’d utilize it.

No rules were meant to be broken. The knowledge that the link was prohibited was not possessed by me, for I didn’t understand what they wanted. (If you’d really cared about doing a good job, you’d have read the rules thoroughly.) I was the recipient of confusion. (That doesn’t matter. It’s not your job to question the rules—it’s your job to follow them.)

Long ago, the foremost goal previously assembled by me was to write well. But there is this fear justified now by me (one that I’m certain was never there before, though maybe I always just ignored it) that this objective has been obscured behind lines of endless regulations whose sole purpose is to ensnare me. No—it’s more than that. Malice is not their primary consideration. It is some twisted, categorical attempt to mold perfection out of routine and order, as if creativity could be pounded out on an assembly line and innovation sold wholesale.

Creativity was previously possessed by me. Ideas necessitating to be utilized for allotment among the masses was a primary consideration of mine. (I just wanted to do a good job on this blog.) Contradiction is inherent in the juxtaposition of these two differentiating apperceptions. I am tied variously by loyalty and self-expression, and one of them has to go. (I could quit, but I don’t want to.) So, instead, my opinions are checked by me at the door. (You have to. It’s your job.) It would be done so that I might continue manufacturing these entries, though the burden of the rules combines with the constant hounding for more output, more words, more vocabulary, and more money. (I hear those words in my sleep; a casualty of overwork. Speaking of which, I mustn’t forget the final obligation.) Itterasshai.

Goals

2010-06-16T22:19:00.000-04:00

June Status Update from Blogger
From: achievement@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: June 16, 2010

Dear Blogger User,

It’s been another great month for Blogger! Your hard work and high-quality entries have made the site better than ever, and an increase in reader traffic is a clear indication of this result. Since we enacted the new User Guidelines, more and more readers have been turning to Blogger as their source of information, news, and opinions packaged in a concise, professional, easy-to read format.

Consider the numbers for May. Compared with April, site traffic increased 27.59%, with repeated blog viewings increasing an average of 43.62%. This has brought about an increase in ad revenue of over 63.2%, with the Advertising Department working harder than ever to achieve our goal of a 150% increase in advertising. Our ultimate goal is to become more popular than Google, and together we can do it!

Finally, the Quality Control Team would like to remind you to be brief in your sign-offs. The User Guidelines specifically require a one or two-word sign-off message to close out every blog as a way of making your readers comfortable. Surveying indicates that readers feel more personally connected to a blog where a familiar goodbye message awaits them at the end of every entry. However, a sign-off longer than two words is not only prohibited under the Guidelines, but also wastes valuable space that could otherwise be utilized for establishing more high-quality content, right?

We’re looking forward to another great month in June. Let’s all work hard to achieve our financial goals!

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Financial Management and Achievement Team

The Various Pieces and Patterns of Motion Involved in Shogi

2010-06-14T06:04:00.006-04:00

Japanese chess, or shogi, is a game necessitating multitudinous skill and consideration. It was discovered by me through conversations with various Japanese people, and though the majority of those spoken to professed some familiarity with the game, it appears to be played only by middle school students and the elderly. I recently acquired a cheap set on an excursion to Tokyu Hands, which is located in Shinjuku. (If I had the space, I’d write more details about that day because I really want this to be a good entry. I’ll try hard to make it so.)

Shogi is played on a nine by nine board, with some pieces maintaining similarity to Western chess pieces, and others bearing little resemblance. As a paragon, each player possesses nine pawns (would the Japanese name, fu, be more appropriate?) possessing the sole capacity of forward motion. The variance lies in the capturing of opponent’s pieces, an action which must be enacted by moving forward instead of on the diagonal plane. (Did my last parenthetical clause count as a sentence? Scrolling through dense rules attempting to find out leaves me more confused than before.)

One bishop and one rook are possessed by each player, though no piece resembling the queen has been incorporated into the game. Two knights are prohibited from moving backward, and progress forward in their customary pattern. Consequently, a player’s attacking power is inhibited by the number of pieces solely possessing short-range kinetic means. (That parenthetical half-sentence worries me. Does it break the rules? Will I be caught and subject to berating and revision by unseen hands?) These other pieces, though initially a confusing exhibition, require further explanation so that their function may be understood by the novice player.

One such piece, the lance, is placed along both edges and can only be propelled directly forward. (I have only 171 words left, and fear I will be unable to properly sort them into two five-sentence paragraphs with enough room for a final sign-off.) Initially flanking the king—whose locomotive patterns are identical in both versions—are two gold generals which move one space in any direction with the exception of backward diagonally. Two silver generals (I have a headache, but it’s nearly 7:04 and I must make my deadline) are utilized for backward diagonal defense. However, they lack the sideways motion necessary for expeditious flux along the back lines.

This combination of (I could revise and write this well—including all the number-crunching—if only I had more time) limited mobility achieves (It’s my own fault. I should have finished this yesterday instead of Skyping with Kyle and climbing Mt. Atago in the cool evening breeze. Work always comes first) a uniquely tight game (Taking those silly pictures took time too. I needed that visual) quite unlike the (I just want to be done) distant strategizing of Western chess. Itterasshai.

Bats

2010-06-10T11:47:00.002-04:00

Some nights I sit on my balcony and watch the bats fluttering over the rooftops. (Or, rather; some nights the bats are the recipient of observation by me, a goal achieved by the utilization of my balcony. I’m not quite sure which anymore.) I used to think they were late-flying birds swooping across the twilight horizon until I took a closer look, for their wing patterns and dark outlines are different; more menacing. As summer rolls in they become more and more of a companion to my free evenings.

I want very badly to write an extra word in the title of this entry, but cannot. It is an ordinary word that people utilize everyday (more common than some of the other language that has infested my writing lately), but pairing it with the subject of the previous paragraph would cause swift, invisible retaliation for reasons I’m not sure I’m allowed to explain. These words evoke my panicked mindset as I skim fretfully over sudden changes brought down while I’ve been away, or as I lose my breath in a dry panic at the e-mails darkening my Inbox with their professional grade-headers and polite bearings of chastisement and derision. But I can’t justify incorporating those two words into this entry. I’ve been told they don’t belong.

There are, of course, certain deadlines that have to be adhered to by me. It becomes more difficult to count paragraphs, sentences, words, vernacular, and bizarre shifts in narrative voice. I want very badly to talk about the bats but am not sure I can effectively do so in the space provided. There are other restrictions too that everyone else (I’m told) cheerfully follows with a carefree smile. Some even relish the challenge of forming newer, more creative ideas out of these restrictions. If I were a better writer, I could relish the challenge too, and express myself regardless of my circumstances. If I were a better writer.

When I think about giving up (which is often) I reflect instead on the glaring weaknesses that are so sternly pointed out to me, and want to overcome them. This is preferable to shutting down, going through the motions, and posting worthless drivel just to get the job done. (I wonder how many people resort to such just to finish their entries with that neat, orderly presentation that is so prized around here.) But this is my blog. I love it, and I can’t allow it to sink into standardized mediocrity.

In short, I feel driven. I am compelled to save this blog, to do the best I can, and to escape my horrendously inhibited predicament. I must forge through the murky gloom into which I’ve been enveloped. (Here I’d like very badly to quote the last lines of a novel by a certain favorite writer of mine. But that wouldn’t be appropriate.) Itterasshai.

Probation

2010-06-07T06:48:00.003-04:00

Your Account Has Been Placed on Probation
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: June 4, 2010

Dear Mr. Rogers,

Our Quality Control Tracking Program has indicated that your entry dated 6/4/2010 is in violation of one or more of Erochikan’s User Guidelines:

1. All Blogger users are reminded that they are now a part of the Erochikan Corporation, and must refrain from posting any opinions that may be considered damaging to Erochikan or its subsidiary companies.

3. Blog entries and comment fields are not to contain links to any website advertising a product or service.

See below for a more detailed summary of the above violation(s):

LYLTY-A01: User has posted opinions or accusations threatening the reputation and/or methods of the Erochikan Corporation.

ADV-M389: User has linked to a website whose content contains a percentage of advertisements and/or product solicitations in excess of the maximum allowance.

In accordance with Blogger policy, your account has been placed on Probation. Users on Probation are forbidden from editing past entries, posting links of any kind, or making changes to material marked as objectionable by the Quality Control Team. Your blog will also be marked with a warning for readers to proceed with caution. Subsequently, qualified Quality Control Team technicians will be actively screening your entries for oversights that may have been overlooked by our automated scanning software.

Blogs on Probation remain as such indefinitely at the sole discretion of the Erochikan Corporation. Please note that continuing to provide high-quality entries in accordance with the User Guidelines will greatly increase your chances of being downgraded from Probationary status expeditiously.

We hope you see this as an opportunity to more closely observe the User Guidelines.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: RE: Your Account Has Been Placed on Probation
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: June 7, 2010

Dear Mr. Rogers,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to your notice of probation. If we understand you correctly, it seems that you are unclear as to the reasons why your most recent entry was in violation of the User Guidelines. The reasons are as follows:

In order to protect its reputation for quality content, Erochikan encourages all users to refrain from posting negative or overly critical opinions pertaining to Erochikan or Blogger. (Of course, positive comments regarding Erochikan are perfectly acceptable.) To aid users who may have overlooked this policy, the Quality Control Team flags overly-sensitive passages for user revision. This is different from censorship in that each user is completely free to edit or not edit the flagged passages as they see fit. And of course, users deciding independently which thoughts they want to express online is a far cry from involuntary censorship, right?

In your case, users on Probation are not allowed to edit entries flagged by the Quality Control Team, and such entries will remain flagged until the user has reacquired the necessary editing privileges.

As to your second point, the website you linked to was determined to be in excess of the maximum allowance for advertisements and/or product solicitations under guideline ADV-M389. The maximum allowance is calculated by taking the total number of words pertaining to solicited matter divided by the total number of words on the website. (For details about how pictures are tabulated into the word count and how different websites qualify for different solicitation allowances, see the complete guide to ADV-M389 on the Erochikan Quality Control website.)

From the general tone of your e-mails and recent entries, Mr. Rogers, I don’t think you fully understand the seriousness of your situation. The User Guidelines are not negotiable and were not created to limit your freedom of expression, but to help users create the best possible blog entries. It is not your place to disobey them, nor to gamble with so-called “creative endeavors” on a blog that is owned and controlled by the Erochikan Corporation. It is important to ensure the well-being of the parent company, and that is why we utilize methods that are guaranteed

Remember that only by producing high-quality content will your account be taken off Probation. We consider the matter closed, and if you have any other concerns we encourage you to take them up with the Dispute Department.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

Output

2010-06-03T11:47:00.001-04:00

I haven’t felt much like writing lately. On the one hand, I’ve been inhibited by the flash rainstorm that drenched my modem through the opened window, leaving me bouncing between customer service lines battling to see who could transfer me to another department the fastest. I of course pleaded ignorance as to the source of the problem, and feigned confusion while the NTT repairmen tested connections with his large diode-covered box. He smiled delightedly when he plugged in the new modem and found the connection rectified, and I saw him off with many thanks. That’s one reason.

The other reason merits further consideration. When Blogger was first acquired by the Erochikan Corporation, I wasn’t worried at all and ignored the news just like everyone else. But now I’ve noticed that [The following opinion is solely that of the writer, and does not necessarily represent a truthful or substantiated view of the topic under discussion. In the interest of providing the fullest treatment possible, certain passages have been flagged for removal and are currently undergoing revision. We appreciate your patience. Please check back soon for an updated, higher-quality version.] providing the reader a higher-quality entry really [This passage is undergoing revision] standardized narrative voices are a clear sign of [This passage is undergoing revision] utilizing [This passage is undergoing revision] that put an end to [This passage is undergoing revision] low-quality [This passage is undergoing revision] independent thought.

Also, the gratuitous thank-you’s in their e-mails [This passage is undergoing revision] they’ve selected a list of business words that [This passage is undergoing revision] I think [This passage is undergoing revision] categorically [This passage is undergoing revision] do the Internet a lot of good.

But yet I’m compelled to keep writing because if I don’t [This passage is undergoing revision] producing a lot of entries [This passage is undergoing revision] I’ve never been worried about the number of visitors here chiefly because [This passage is undergoing revision] and I think people read this blog [This passage is undergoing revision] Honestly though, I know that I’m much stronger than [This passage is undergoing revision] and can beat them if a clear head and strong convictions are adhered to.

Other than that, I recently assembled a few new entry labels, because my Japan tag was getting far too ubiquitous to be of any use. I’ve also been (for the two people still interested) making a lot of progress on the second draft of the Carcrash Parker script, and am nearing the light at the end of the tunnel. I may be posting more about that in next month, and will be on the lookout for anyone willing to give it a readthrough. Finally, last month when I linked to some fellow gaijin blogs, I completely forgot about my friend Jessie, who came over here for graduate school back in January. Under the heading of Lady Lara Jones, her blog has an overwhelming amount of info on Japanese pop culture, video games, and cosplay, as well as her personal experiences, so I encourage everyone to click [The following link leads to an nonsecure website. It has been blocked by the Erochikan Quality Control Team and the blogger issued a warning]. Itterasshai.

Content Generation

2010-05-31T04:16:00.002-04:00

Blogger Post Frequency Announcement
From: content_generation@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: May 27, 2010

Dear Mr. Rogers,

Thank you again for all of your hard work and devotion to Erochikan’s Blogger network. We realize that keeping up the challenge of producing high-quality blog entries is not an easy one, and we want you to know that we appreciate your efforts. Thanks to you, readers across the world can enjoy all the interesting factoids and opinions that Blogger users share every day, and the advertisements placed within your posts and catered to readers’ needs continue to bring in the valuable revenue that keeps Blogger profitable.

We’ve noticed that your posting frequency is not as high as that of some of our more prolific bloggers, and that your post frequency is one or fewer times per week. Blogger’s new obligatory posting times were created to ensure a constant flow of content for all readers, and by posting fewer entries, you’re depriving readers of the high-quality information they’ve come to expect from Blogger.

We hope that you see this as an opportunity to increase the quantity, in addition to the quality of your entries, with the goal of making the Blogger community more fulfilling for everyone. We appreciate your efforts, and look forward to reading more of your work in the future.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Content Generation Team

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: RE: Blogger Post Frequency Announcement
From: content_generation@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: May 31, 2010

Dear Mr. Rodgers,

Thank you for taking the time to read through and respond to our previous e-mail regarding your recent number of blog entries. We are sorry to hear about the mishap with your modem, and hope that you are soon able to procure a replacement. We understand that your recent lack of internet has made it more difficult for you to continue posting, and we are sympathetic toward your predicament.

We suggest, however, that you do not let these temporary difficulties stand in your way. There are any number of other methods that someone in your position can utilize in order to obtain internet access. Have you thought about visiting a library, internet café, or computer center from which you could post your blog entries? Or how about borrowing a friend’s computer with internet access? Many of our bloggers also find it convenient to post using their workplace computers. A rainwater-soaked modem is no excuse; for the resilient blogger will always find a way to reach his or her audience. Besides, you’d hate to deprive your readers of the content that they’ve come to expect from “A Wave of the Hand,” right?

We’ve also noticed that your account is currently on High Alert status, and is being monitored by Erochikan’s Quality Control Team. Considering the circumstances, we’ve had them freeze your sentence at the date of your last recorded entry. Your sixty days will continue counting down when you begin posting again. We hope that this will provide you with more incentive to resume writing.

Thank you for taking the time to explain your circumstances, and we look forward to reading more of your work in the future.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Content Generation Team

Thin Ice

2010-05-25T10:12:00.004-04:00

Blogger Guidelines Initial Violation
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: May 10, 2010

Dear Mr. Rogers,

Thank you for your continued support of the Erochikan Corporation’s new and improved Blogger service. Our Quality Control Tracking Program has indicated that your entry dated 5/10/2010 is in violation of one or more of Erochikan’s User Guidelines:

2. All users are prohibited from posting pornographic content.

See below for a more detailed summary of the above violation(s):

PRN-A2679: User has uploaded and linked to one or more photographs incorporating animated images of partial nudity.

In accordance with Blogger policy, the violations in question have been deleted to rectify the situation. As our records indicate that this is your first violation, you have been issued a warning that will remain on your account for sixty days starting from the date of the initial violation. If three violations are accumulated within the validity period of the initial warning, your account will be put on probation and your entries personally monitored for High-Quality Content by members of Erochikan’s Quality Control Team in order to ensure future compliance.

Thank you again for your observance of the Erochikan’s User Guidelines. Your efforts help create a more worthwhile, enjoyable online experience for everyone.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blogger Guidelines Second Violation and High Alert Notification
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: May 14, 2010

Dear Mr. Rogers,

Thank you for your continued support of the Erochikan Corporation’s new and improved Blogger service. Our Quality Control Tracking Program has indicated that your entry dated 5/14/2010 is in violation of one or more of Erochikan’s User Guidelines:

3. Blog entries and comment fields are not to contain links to any website advertising a product or service.

See below for a more detailed summary of the above violation(s):

ADV-F2894: User has hyperlinked to a website known or suspected to include advertisements or links leading to subsequent websites utilizing indirect coercion methods to entice readers into purchasing one or more products.

In accordance with Blogger policy, the violations in question have been deleted to rectify the situation. Our records indicate that this is your second violation, which means that your account has been placed on High Alert Status. Your account will remain on High Alert for ninety days starting from the date of the initial violation. Any further violations will result in your account being put on probation and your entries personally monitored for High-Quality Content by members of Erochikan’s Quality Control Team in order to ensure future compliance.

We strongly recommend that you make an effort to comply with Erochikan’s User Guidelines, which have been enacted for the benefit of you and your readers.

Thank you again for your observance of the Erochikan’s User Guidelines. Your efforts help create a more worthwhile, enjoyable online experience for everyone.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

Sumo

2010-05-20T11:47:00.002-04:00

Sumo was observed by us this past weekend at a large stadium in Tokyo filled to maximum capacity. If you’ve never seen Japanese sumo wrestling, don’t feel bad, since most Japanese people haven’t either. Like many of the country’s traditional arts, sumo has been relegated to a kind of novelty status outside people’s everyday life. That didn’t make me any less inclined to see it, however.

Sumo is held every few months in different parts of the country during massive daylong tournaments with dozens of matches. Each match lasts anywhere between ten seconds and three minutes, though the bulk of the time is spent in elaborate psych-out ceremonies before each match. An elaborate routine of shifting their weight to one foot, throwing salt into the ring for purification, bending down, and staring into each other’s eyes is adhered to by the wrestlers (see top photo), and the match begins when both feel ready. This loose system of commencement ran afoul several times when one wrestler flew forward before his opponent was ready, and both immediately stepped back for several more minutes of psych out time.

The rules of sumo are simple. Unlike wrestling or boxing, there are no weight classes; instead, wrestlers are divided up by skill level. (My friends were not interested in watching ten hours of sumo, so we arrived only for the top matches in the last two hours.) After the aforementioned psych-out period, the actual match finally begins as the wrestlers struggle to either a)knock the other down, or a)shove the other out of the ring. Both methods were utilized for victory by numerous wrestlers. The winner received something I couldn’t see from the upper seats, and suddenly the next two wrestlers were in the ring psyching themselves up again.

Undoubtedly the funniest thing observed by me was the incorporation of advertising into a tournament otherwise made out to be traditionally Japanese. Every few matches (more often as completion was neared) a line of men carrying advertising banners would climb the steps into the ring and exhibit their wares for the consideration of the audience. Most of the ads were written in Japanese, but one of them featured a very modern-looking McDonalds logo. Hardly contemporary to Edo Japan, but justifiable considering those advertising slots probably cost a lot of money.

A good time was certainly had by all on this outing. I wish I’d gotten to take more photos (which would probably give me more to talk about in this blog entry), but most of my match photos didn’t come out well and my photos of wrestlers outside the arena were pretty lame. I would like to have researched this entry more thoroughly, but I needed to finish it before my deadline. With my limited knowledge, it’s kind of hard to think of things to say about sumo. I definitely recommend it though. Itterasshai.

Slight of Hand

2010-05-13T11:47:00.000-04:00

Though this blog exhibits little political commentary, manipulation of language in the media is an issue felt strongly about by me. It is said that writers (myself included) have the capacity for twisting language to express their points; and it is essential that the general public be aware of how they’re being coerced to believe one truth over another. With that goal in mind, we may better incorporate more high-quality verisimilitude. This is the fourth sentence of the first paragraph.

A particularly blatant instance was observed by me in David Frum’s article Wall Street Didn’t Cause Crash of ’08. I suggest this be given at least a light skimming before proceeding further. (Pauses in hopes that readers are actually inclined to read the article, even though they probably won’t.) I won’t discuss Frum’s main point; I’m interested in how he provokes the reader to accept his own hypothesis over other theories explaining the crash.

Scroll down to the fourth paragraph. (Pauses again with the objective that this will actually be done by the reader.) Here, Frum addresses a common explanation for excessive American debt before the crash:

Some like to tell a story of irresponsibility: We borrowed too much because we were self-involved yuppies who just could not deny ourselves the latest flat-screen doodad for our McMansions.

He opens with the phrase: “Some like to tell a story;” which strongly implies both the uncertainty and incredulity of what follows. This explanation thus becomes a kind of mythic folklore lacking legitimate grounds. And Frum goes on to use goofy, exaggerated language that distances the reader from that very legend. “Flat-screen doodad” evokes a ridiculous, wasteful image of the modern technology enjoyed by millions of Americans, while “McMansions” creates a cartoonish, materialistic view of middle-class suburbs. “Yuppie” is another loaded word used chiefly to portray Americans as greedy; and as if this weren’t negative enough, Frum intensifies it by utilizing “self-involved” as a modifier. All this hyperbole in a single sentence; and nothing in the article comes close to matching it. As if that weren’t enough, he follows by admitting that “Maybe that describes some people.” Thus, he acknowledges that some Americans were irresponsible while simultaneously discouraging the reader from accepting this hypothesis as truth. Now, cut to a thoughtful, easy-to-read, statistic-filled explanation for why the crash really happened, and Frum’s illusion is complete.

It’s silly to adhere to the belief that only one factor caused the ’08 crash. To truly understand it, one must consider hundreds of different phenomena, not blindly accept one bipartisan explanation. Whenever you read—especially news articles—be wary of which facts writers want you to ignore to give their own opinion more credibility. I direct interested readers toward [The following link leads to an nonsecure website. It has been blocked by the Erochikan Quality Control Team and the blogger issued a warning] for more info. I also hope it’s clear that the blockquote is part of paragraph three; otherwise I could be in trouble again. Itterasshai.

Nagoya

2010-05-10T06:04:00.000-04:00

This past Golden Week I headed west to Nagoya with the objective of seeing numerous museums and enjoying myself thoroughly. If you’ve never heard of Nagoya, don’t feel bad. Though it’s Japan’s fourth largest city, it’s not much of a tourist destination. There’s nothing special about the city really; its capacity for culture is low, and it’s mostly known for its regional foods: misokatsu (fried pork breaded with miso), tebasaki (fried chicken wings), and hitsumabushi (I’m not sure what this is because the line outside the restaurant was too long, and we were unable to achieve entrance).

Nagoya, however, is widely known as the birthplace of the Toyota Corporation. The company was started as a producer of high-quality looms and many cars are now manufactured by it. I took a shiny new commuter train out to the sun-bleached suburbs to see the Toyota Automobile Museum, which incorporates Japanese, American, European cars into its exhibitions. Most of the Japanese cars exhibited were post-WWII, as most of the pre-war cars were scrapped due to wartime metal shortages. One of the few pre-war Japanese cars at the museum, a Toyota model utilized by top military commanders, is pictured above.

The way in which people were dressed was observed by me to be the biggest difference between Nagoya and other parts of Japan. Whereas Yamanashi’s fashion-conscious population is inclined to dress mainly in darker, subtle tones; and fashions of all kinds abound in Tokyo and Osaka; Nagoya fashion was commensurate mainly to American teenage Hot Topic style. Poor English could naturally be seen on these shirts. Everyone wore those ridiculous white shirts with black script that I abhor, and bright colors mixed with subdued ones. And of course, there were the Crocs. Hundreds and hundreds of Crocs.

The utter stupidity of American hyper-consumerist fashion seems to have been embraced wholeheartedly by Nagoya. The fashion gave the city a very suburban feel (hip-hop looks were also embraced by many, including some infant children), and brought back unpleasant memories of American shopping malls. I wanted to tell all of them to diversify, but instead I saw them as an interesting curiosity. I also saw more tattoo parlors in Nagoya than I have anywhere else in Japan, and many people boldly displayed their arm and back tattoos in public; a very Western thing to do.

This image has been removed by the Erochikan Quality Control Team because of pornographic or otherwise objectionable content and its owner been issued a warning.

That’s not to say Nagoya is like a walk through suburban New Jersey. As the above photo indicates, they have their share of geeky manga cafes and scantily clad women posted outside their pachinko parlors. Outside my men-only capsule hotel I was also assaulted by several employees of girl bars providing suggestive tissue packets to passersby, and the same pink-light strip clubs were also walked hurriedly past by me. Said capsule hotel was also utilized by a transvestite in a blond wig, but that’s a story for another day. Itterasshai.

Corporate Takeover

2010-05-01T03:43:00.005-04:00

New User Guidelines
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: All Blogger Users
Sent: April 27, 2010

Notice to all Blogger Users,

As most of you already know, Blogger.com was recently acquired by the Erochikan Corporation as part of an exchange with Google. Our company is of course committed to providing the same levels of quality, service, and innovation that users received under the previous administration, and we hope to make this transition as seamless as possible.

One of our goals is to provide internet readers with high-quality blogs delivering a variety of information that users can enjoy at their convenience. In past years, however, Blogger has become a haven for questionable content; including but not limited to:

- Phishing schemes
- Spam advertising
- Pornographic matter
- Narcissistic rants
- Egregious spelling errors
- Fan fiction

Currently, we have employees working round the clock checking individual blogs and categorically deleting those that contain any of the above infractions.

In order to prevent an overrun of objectionable content and to ensure that the quality of blogs remains high, we have taken steps to guide writers in creating the best possible content for the reading public. With this in mind, we have assembled a set of Guidelines to which all Blogger users are to adhere if they wish to retain unrestricted use of their accounts:

1. All Blogger users are reminded that they are now a part of the Erochikan Corporation, and must refrain from posting any opinions that may be considered damaging to Erochikan or its subsidiary companies.
2. All users are prohibited from posting pornographic content.
3. Blog entries and comment fields are not to contain links to any website advertising a product or service.
4. Use of trademarked characters for the purposes of user-created fiction is prohibited.
5. All users are to abide by the rules of American English grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
6. Users are prohibited from utilizing commonly-used online acronyms, including but not limited to such examples as LOL, TTYL, LMAO, ROFLMAO, etc.
7. All users are expected to create a one- to three- word “sign-off message” (e.g. Farewell, Peace out, Shalom) with which to utilize as a closing to all of their entries.
8. All entries are to be exactly five paragraphs in length. A paragraph is defined as a distinct portion of written matter beginning on a new line and lasting at least four sentences.
9. All blog entries are to contain at least one, but not more than five, pictures; original or acquired from an outside source.
10. Users are forbidden from incorporating obscure references to songs, movies, TV shows, books, or other media content within the titles or bodies of their posts.
11. All entries are to contain at least five sentences written using the passive voice.
12. All users are expected to utilize at least eight of the following words in their posts:
achieve, acquire, adhere, appropriate, assemble, capacity, categorical, commensurate, commit, consideration, contemporary, counter, diversify, express, exhibit (v), goal, high-quality, inclined, incorporate, inhibit, justifiable, justify, objective, provide, recipient, rectify, regarding, standardize, usage, utilize.
13. To ease the onslaught of information during hours of peak Internet usage, all Blogger users have been randomly assigned two weekly posting times, and shall observe these times when posting new entries. Your randomly assigned times are 6:04 AM Monday and 11:47 AM Thursday, Eastern Standard Time.
14. All entries must be exactly 478 words in length.

These Guidelines shall take effect as of your first scheduled posting time after May 1st. After said scheduled posting time, any entry not in accordance with the above regulations will be deleted and the account user given a warning. Repeated warnings will result in account suspension.

We are excited about the positive effects the Guidelines are sure to bring, and look forward to providing more high-quality content for all internet users.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

Quality Control Response #2789FDE569-K
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: April 29, 2010

Mr. Rogers,

Thank you for your e-mail, and we appreciate your taking the time to read through and share with us your opinion regarding the Guidelines. As it appears that you have many concerns, allow me to address them individually.

First, the 478 word count was not at all random, as you imply. Through extensive customer surveys, we’ve discovered that most users grow bored reading lengthy entries and move instead to other websites. Likewise, entries which are too short are commonly described as uninformative or immature. At present, the attention span of the average internet user is 478 words, which our team found more than adequate to develop most topics. If you wish to address a topic which you feel requires more space, consider choosing something simpler that everyone can enjoy. Similarly, the five paragraph rule will help users to better organize their thoughts in a cohesive fashion, instead of using one long, difficult to read paragraph or leaping erratically from one line to the next.

Secondly, both the required vocabulary list and the passive voice requirement were incorporated to aid writers in producing more professional, dignified entries that would appeal to a more sophisticated readership. We want to help users build their vocabularies, and the easiest way to do that is to help bloggers use more advanced words, right?

We also understand your argument that literary and pop culture references can add humor and a personal touch to writing, but we’ve found that these references frustrate some readers. These readers often feel inferior or ignorant when faced with repeated references they don’t understand, and soon move on to more straightforward, no-nonsense blogs. Why go through all the trouble of making an obscure reference when only a select few will understand it?

Repeated surveying has also revealed that readers are more likely to follow a blog with a memorable sign-off logo than one that doesn’t. Since our goal is to attract more readers (which in turn leads to more advertising revenue), we suggest you come up with something catchy.

Finally, contrary to the argument presented in your e-mail, the random posting assignments actually serve a great purpose. By staggering the time at which bloggers post new entries, we’ve ensured that all users will constantly have access to new information even at odd hours or on holidays, making Blogger more convenient for everyone. In fact, you do not even need to worry about this rule because any entries you attempt to post at an alternate time will be delayed until your next scheduled posting time.

Most users have welcomed the new Guidelines, and found that the changes have aided them in producing higher quality work. We know they may seem strict, but we’re sure you’ll find them more conducive to constructing higher-quality blog entries.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

Re: RE: Quality Control Response #2789FDE569-K
From: quality_control@erochikan.com
To: Ian Rogers
Sent: April 30, 2010

Mr. Rogers,

Thank you again for taking the time to share your opinion regarding our response. These matters are not under discussion, and we again encourage you to give the Guidelines a try. Frankly, we find your perspective arrogant; for who are you to claim that you know better than our highly-trained, experienced researchers? You are a part of the Erochikan Blogger Corporation now, and we must all learn to work together to achieve the best possible outcome for the company.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank you again, because your previous e-mail reminded us that adding a ban on profanity to the Regulations List will help make Blogger more enjoyable for younger users and those easily offended by crass language. All users will be receiving an updated version of the Regulations soon.

Sincerely,

The Erochikan Blogger Quality Control Team

Cynicism

2010-04-27T22:54:00.003-04:00

I realize that recently this blog has taken a cynical turn when it comes to all things Japanese. I’ve been pretty stressed recently, and it’s only natural that these feelings would surface in the fiction I’ve been posting. Since I started this blog I’ve been wary of letting negative feelings worm their way into what I post; for, if left unchecked, negativity can easily turn into an all-out internet rant-fest the likes of which we’ve all seen on a thousand message boards and Facebook status updates.

However, that’s not to say that writers can’t harness cynicism to horrify, shock, inspire, inform, rouse to action, or simply to make people laugh at the stupidity of the system. Swift couldn’t have written Gulliver’s Travels if he hadn’t been just plain pissed off at the way humans were behaving, nor could Joseph Heller have written any of his novels without the skeptical eyes he constantly turned toward the world. Not that I am so arrogant as to compare myself to either of these writers; I mention them merely as examples of how cynicism can be used to create something meaningful, not annoying.

The project I’m planning for May was certainly born out of frustration, but I hope the end result will be something thought-provoking. I don’t mean to be mysterious, but look for an update sometime before the end of this month when I head off to Nagoya (a city known for its miso dishes, auto-production, and the birthplace of the Tokugawa regime) during my Golden Week vacation.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out two excellent blogs belonging to fellow gaijin. Life's Too Short for Cheap Whiskey is run by my friend Tom, who recently finished his contract with a certain eikaiwa corporation I shan't mention here. In only a few months he's written some excellent in-depth essays at Japanese cultural issues that are a must-read for anyone interested in modern Japan (and make my own blog seem cheerfully optimistic). For something more lighthearted but no less informative, check out fellow Bennington alum Heke's blog, Shiso Style. Hers provides an insider's perspective on the Japanese public school system and some fine anecdotes, all with a layout that's artistically-pleasing .

Finally, some of my readers (and by some, I really mean both) may have noticed a small change in some of my past entries. Nothing serious, just a little precaution I decided to take rather than risk attracting unwanted attention. After all, you never know who might be reading.

Weak Minds

2010-04-24T09:16:00.004-04:00

The following entry, like everything else in this blog, is completely fictitious, and any resemblance to any real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed by the fictitious characters within this fictitious entry are also purely fictitious, and are based on ideas the author has acquired by studying various anthropological studies of Japan. Any resemblance that these opinions may hold to any actual opinions of any actual people is purely coincidental, and these opinions are not meant to be taken as representative of any actual individuals or groups.

The English conversation school where I work occupies the fifth floor of a half-empty building located between a pachinko parlor and a soft-jazz izakiya. The first and sixth floors of the building house Leopalace, a nationwide chain of real estate developers whose hastily-built apartment complexes resemble miniature prisons. On the top floor is a school for teenagers who, for various reasons, have been deemed unfit for regular school. Sometimes I see them walking to the elevator, sporting hair tossed in massive waves and wearing brightly-colored, mismatched clothing; but I know very little about them.

One of the students from this school also comes to Kriasho. He is always eager, never afraid, to talk to foreign teachers, and from our conversations I’ve gathered that he is very intelligent. He speaks English moderately well but very slowly, often crossing his arms while he plots out his sentences. I asked one of my co-workers why he goes to a special school, and she didn’t know the English word to explain. She keyed a command into her dictionary and turned it toward me. “He has this,” she said quizzically:

bipolar disorder (n)

The other day at lunch, this student came up in conversation, whereupon another co-worker commented on his condition. “He seems so smart,” she said, frowning, “it’s a shame that he has such a weak mind.”

I had a sudden flash of everyone I knew who’d ever struggled with depression, who’d ever taken medication for a mental disorder, who’d ever talked to me about their problems; then of my own darkest moments; and finally of the day the ambulance drove away from Welling. I thought about how all but a few Japanese people avoid seeking professional help for mental problems. I chose my words carefully.

“In the West, we don’t believe that depressed people have weak minds, and actually, most people are quite comfortable—“

My point was lost as someone spilled a small portion of nikujaga and several frantic hands reached to wipe it up. The same co-worker picked up again:

“I think that really intelligent people often have weak minds. I would hate to be that smart if it meant that I would have a weak mind too.”

I cursed the nikujaga that had spoiled my argument but couldn’t gather my thoughts enough to respond coherently before the conversation switched to Japanese and my chance was lost. I wonder how much good it would have done had I been able to speak. (I like to think it would have done a little.) I wish this type of thing came up more often so that I’d have more chances to share my opinions, but unfortunately the Japanese people’s preferred method for dealing with these problems is to just not talk about them, I'm sorry to say.

And so, the Mighty Fall...

2010-04-21T11:27:00.004-04:00

The big news at the office today was that Geos (one of Japan's largest English conversation school chains, and my school's main competitor) filed bankruptcy earlier this week. The early warning signs (school consolidation, delayed salary payment, and most recently the closing of the company's Australian schools) have been muttered and chuckled over by gossiping gaijin since I've been in Japan, but I didn't expect the end to come this soon. It's too early to tell what this could mean for the eikaiwa business or for the hundreds of gaijin employed by Geos, but word has it that the same company who bought out many of the Nova schools is taking over a piece of the Geos empire. You can read more about the bankruptcy here and here (or peruse my entry on Nova's nosedive for some background info).

The fall of Nova and Geos within the span of three years raises further doubts about the ability of the giant eikaiwa chains to effectively push their cookie-cutter lessons and high-pressure sales strategies across Japan. Whether my own employer is destined to collapse is anyone's guess, but it'd be downright foolish to not consider the possibility as part of any long-term Japan plan. I'll be following this issue with great interest.

O-miyuki Matsuri

2010-04-18T08:57:00.006-04:00

As the lipstick, kimonos, and crepe-paper umbrella in the above photo may have made clear, Matt and I spent last Thursday morning at a local festival, compliments of one of our students. Though all of Kofu was rocked last weekend by the food venders and excessive crowds of the yearly Shingen-ko festival, Ichinomiya's O-miyuki festival was more of a local daytime affair (though with many of the same food venders selling yakisoba, takoyaki, and corn dogs). We had woken up at five AM and donned these classy costumes chiefly so that we could carry the Japanese o-mikoshi (portable shrine) shown below.

This bad boy weighed a leg-bending 800 kilograms (1760 pounds) and was supported by two sturdy beams, rather like a souped-up version of the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders. Two teams from local villages (of which Matt and I were naturally the only gaijin, and quite possibly the only gaijin to ever carry this particular o-mikoshi) supplied about fifty people, of which sixteen would switch off holding the shrine. Carrying it wouldn't have been so bad if the team hadn't insisted on bouncing it on their shoulders while shifting their weight from one foot to the other and chanting "Soko, dai!" (Our goal is over there!). It also didn't help that I was the tallest member of our team, and once made the mistake of joining a crew whose average height was about eight inches shorter than me.

The next day, as I was dealing with the effects of sore muscle groups I didn't know I had, one of my students brought in a copy of that day's Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun covering the festival, and lo and behold, one of the photos just happened to include me in the background carrying the o-mikoshi with a strained look on my face. I wouldn't say that it was one of my goals to be pictured in a Japanese newspaper, but it sure makes a good story. Sadly, I wasn't able to locate an online version of the article, although anyone with a lot of Japanese skill or free time is more than welcome to try.

Japanese Meetings

2010-04-13T11:27:00.001-04:00

The following entry, like everything else in this blog, is a work of pure fiction. The incidents and opinions do not refer to the author’s employer or any other actual Japanese company, and all sentiments herein are the compiled result of heresay and careful research. Any implied connection between modern corporate Japan and Showa-era aggression policies is also purely imaginary.

One of my students is a college professor at the local university. On this particular Friday evening he came into class with his head down and shoulders slumped after what he described as an egregiously boring meeting. Having that afternoon suffered through an hour-long meeting rife with excessive Head Office managerial control, I empathized.

“Are American meetings,” he said, thinking over each word before he spoke, “similar to Japanese meetings?”

The time it took for me to respond in the negative was approximately equal to the time it takes a beam of florescent light to travel from the Teacher’s Room ceiling to the hastily pinned up copies of this month’s Self Study Achievement Ratios. We had a good laugh over this.

“My image,” he continued, again choosing his words carefully, “is that Western meetings have some...purpose.”

Yeah, that sums it up pretty well.

It is difficult to describe the stiff, uncomfortable atmosphere of a Japanese meeting; particularly on the days when some unseen committee at the Head Office has contrived some elaborate procedure for classroom management and passed it on to the Branch Managers, who’ve passed it on to the Head Teachers, who are holding a meeting to pass it on to the foreign teachers, who will promptly ignore it as soon as the meeting is over. All decisions of any importance have already been made before the meeting starts, and the actual meeting is merely an assembly to formally pass on these orders to subordinates like yours truly. We sit in a semi-circle around the Head Teacher as she reads from neatly typed Head Office documents (which often contain simple English mistakes that I take great pleasure in circling with my blue pen) and nod robotically, mumbling the occasional hai, wakarimashita, or “I understand.” Breaks for questions are followed by brief silences where we stare uncomfortably at the floor; for to ask a question would be seen as admitting one’s weakness in not understanding orders; or worse: an attempt to oppose the Head Office’s wishes.

Orders from a superior have a kind of sanctity in Japan. For teachers to question an order from the Head Office, no matter how much it adds to their workload or how nonsensical it appears, would be unheard of. Other decisions made by Branch Managers, School Mangers, or Head Teachers carry similar weight; and should any employee be daring enough to point out some flaw in the plan or justify an alternate method, their argument would be immediately dismissed as going against the established order. In corporate Japan, your opinion does not matter.

It is no wonder then that I was so surprised upon coming here and seeing people nod mindlessly at their boss without so much as a stray comment; behavior that would be interpreted by most Americans as blatantly not listening. It disappoints me to see them accepting orders without critical thought, questioning whether the order is feasible, or attempting to understand the intentions behind it. Don’t even think about refusing, for that would be unheard of (people would look at you strangely). Theirs is a culture of obeying; often expressed in English by bosses with that ubiquitous phrase we need you to:

We need you to wear a suit to work every day.
We need you to talk to students in the lobby between every class, even if you’re busy.
We need you to schedule a counseling session with all students, whether they want it or not.
We need you to use the daily pronunciation practice sheet at the beginning of every lesson, no matter how good the students’ pronunciation already is.
We need you to finish these measurements by tomorrow morning, even if you have to work all night without sleep to do so.
We need you to go on a business trip to Seoul this weekend. We know you had vacation plans, but you’ll have to reschedule.
We need you to work six days a week until after ten PM. We know that you have a wife and children who you want to spend time with, but we’re very busy now and the work must be finished.
We need you to transfer to Osaka next month. We know that your friends, family, and your entire life are here, but we’re closing your branch and you have to go.
We need you to crash this special kamikaze plane into the foreign battleship, killing all of the enemy onboard and yourself. We know that you really wanted to live past age nineteen, but it’s imperative to our success in the war.

Shikatta ga nai. In Japan, these things happen.

Focus Point Unit 6, Day 2: Preposition Clusters

2010-04-06T10:44:00.002-04:00

First Exposure: Think of a problematic relationship you’ve had with a boss or teacher. Tell the class.

My sophomore year of high school, my old French teacher left to work at a different school. Her replacement was a lawyer without any teaching experience who focused solely on grammar and vocabulary without giving us any real experience in the language. Under her guidance, French class became a tedious series of rote memorizations. I didn’t agree with her teaching style at all, and wanted more of a chance to actually speak the French we were learning. I also missed the more creative activities the old teacher had given us, and recalled times when she would joke with our class all in French.

Even more frustrating was that the new teacher treated us like children, with assigned seating and excessive rules. My opinion differed from hers in that I believe that students perform best when given appropriate amounts of freedom, which teaches them more responsibility. In French class, I felt there were too many restrictions, so I refused to cooperate with the teacher. I made fun of her when she wasn’t around, acted out in class, and pointed out her mistakes whenever I could. She knew I hated her class, but there wasn’t much she could do. We were always at odds with each other.

I dealt with that teacher for two years, and it was a relief to finally escape from her class. The experience showed me how much I hate structure and regulation, but more importantly gave me a model for the type of teacher I never wanted to become.

Post-Sickness Reflections

2010-03-29T05:18:00.003-04:00

I know I've said this before, but after an extended lull, I'm back. The day after my birthday, I caught a nasty cold while traversing the streets of Kofu in an attempt to fix my glasses (see previous entry), which turned into a nasty inflammation that plagued me for most of the month and lead to a fever that had me down for three days.

It's amazing how much brighter the world looks after you've been sick. Excruciating pain and discomfort that make boiling teawater an extended chore are now replaced with the same healthy everyday feeling you've taken for granted your whole life--though now, the world seems ripe for the taking. Going through terrible experiences (sickness, unemployment, middle school) make the world seem so much more inviting. I always thought that overcoming tragedy must be the secret to true happiness, because I never feel so good as when I've put something terrible behind me.

However, someone recently pointed out to me the utter idiocy of this viewpoint. Overcoming tragedy to take pleasure in the mundane may be a quick fix, but it quickly leads again to discontent. Then we find ourselves looking for more problems to get over to regain that pleasurable feeling. No, real contentment lies in being satisfied, or even happy, with your life as it is and where it's going, not in mundane obstacles you've surmounted.

Damn. There I go again thinking things were going to be easy.

In the meantime, I've fallen behind on everything, chiefly the Mix CD Swap, the Carcrash Parker script, my Japanese study, and this blog. Never fear though; in the coming weeks, expect more of the usual ramblings, plus some more themed pieces, and an chance to introduce some Guest Bloggers further down the road. Stay tuned for further developments.

Titles to Unwritten Blog Entries from the Last Two Weeks

2010-03-11T20:49:00.003-05:00

- In which the author learns how to play shogi (Japanese chess) but is at a loss for a partner since the only people who actually play the game are junior high-school students.

- In which the author struggles to contain his dribbling mucus in a culture where blowing one's nose is considered rude.

- In which the author and a band of other foreigners (two of which are not quite certain on the rules) attempt to play poker around a small table precariously balanced on a tatami floor

- In which the author badly bends his new glasses and must navigate half-blind his way to and purchase food at an unfamiliar Japanese grocery store

- In which the author flirts with several Japanese women of low English-speaking ability, and finds more incentive to study their language

- In which the author fakes his way through a painfully formal business meeting by making jokes instead of real answers, and earns his superiors' disgust

- In which the author threatens to take away the chair of a twelve-year old student constantly hovering near sleep

- In which the author shamelessly rips off the lengthy chapter title homages used by J. Maarten Troost in his travel books, and makes subsequent apologies therein

How Eikaiwas Work

2010-02-23T09:39:00.003-05:00

The following entry, like everything else in this blog, is a work of pure fiction. No references to any actual people, events, or corporations (including that which employs the author) is intended; and any resemblance to such persons, events, or corporations is entirely coincidental. Any claims the author makes regarding the motivations or business tactics of any corporation are completely fabricated for the purposes of fiction. Copyrighted images of Duke Togo have also never been used in company advertisements without proper permission.

To advertise a discounted TOEIC test preparation class, one of the Japanese teachers at my school made magnetic signs featuring a grim-faced Golgo 13 and some flashy statements about the cheaper price. She stuck the signs in the upper left corner of the whiteboards in every classroom where they could grab the attention of students during lessons. Though it was pretty cool to have Duke Togo looking at me during the day, the sign got in the way when I stuck practice cards on to the whiteboard and took up space I needed for writing. My annoyance with the sign grew so great that I finally moved it to the lower left where it wouldn't obstruct my teaching. Some days, however, after another teacher had used my classroom, I couldn't help but notice that the sign would be blocking the upper corner of the whiteboard again. We played a back-and-forth game for about a week until I took to shifting the sign back to the upper corner myself every time I left the room for fear of getting a talking-to.

If that's not the perfect metaphor for how English conversation schools in Japan operate, I don't know what is.