Forecasts

Today we're going to have a little bitty culture lesson. (I'm going to get disclaimers out of the way quickly: writing about Japan is a minefield of inaccurate and infantalizing cultural assumptions. If you could get a nickel for every blog post or published book that pushes the idea of either Japan as a land of tradition, dammit or Japan as a land of crazy, then Japanese majors could fund their own college educations entirely on the back of the majority of their field in all its self-loathing essentialism.) Anyway.

Japanese shopping and service culture thrives on creating products you at first find strange, and then realize you can no longer live without. This isn't unique to Japan by any means--mint flavored toothpaste is a prime example of the power of suggestion (advertisement) and how it redefines what we view as practical. Mint toothpaste--artificially created demand, but pretty neat. Silicone fried egg shapers to keep your fried egg heart-shaped and English muffin-sized--artificially created demand, but also pretty neat.

This combined with a widespread (but not society-engulfing) value placed on identifying and maximizing seasonal pleasures has created one of my favorite internet passtimes. Fair readers, behold the tenki.jp (Japan's weather.com) indexes in all their glory.

First, because winter is coming, I give you the nabe index.

This week's stew forecast.

For the uninitiated, nabe is a fall and winter dish that's a lot like a stew, but without the day-long simmering. Add veggies and meat to any of the 20,000 flavors of nabe stock (miso kimchi is my favorite) and fish stuff out as it boils...and there you have it. The pot is cooked with a camper stove at the table, and the whole family just fishes out what they want.  Depending on what goes it, it can be really healthy, and it usually warms up the house a bit too.

This is an index about the best time in the near future to eat nabe, and what kind will be most delicious in your area. Today's potential for nabe-enjoyment is expressed as a four-out-of-five nabe pots, and it recommends a kind of bean paste made near Ibara castle. Tomorrow is only a three-out-of-five, but it says that if you like duck, you should totally go for it. Saturday the 10th looks like awful weather in the meteorological forecast, so it makes sense that the nabe index would be highest then.  I have a feeling that part of this is to keep people's morale up through the winter by suggesting progressively delicious food as the cold and dark set in.

Up next, we have the legitimately useful blanket index.

Oh bother, another four-blanket week.

This is based on the night and early-morning temperatures in each area of Japan. Tonight's note is that if I use a thick blanket, I'll probably be okay. However, I shouldn't be fooled by tomorrow's 40 blanket index--if I skimp out and use a thin blanket, I will be cold in the morning.

I trust this index implicitly because today it told my partner, who has been known to fling comforters across the room in her sleep, not to kick off the covers. 


Now we're really about to step across the threshold into "how did I live without this?".  In case you find yourself without a grandparent with outerwear ESP, tenki.jp has you covered. Pun!

You need all these clothes on your body this week. Sorry.

In this index, a 100 means that it's tank-top weather. The cold category expressed, apparently, by a desire to put on ALL YOUR CLOTHES AT ONCE, has the widest margin.  I have to say it resonates with my experience with winter in Minnesota. When you get down to it, inside the right jacket, 0F and -30F just feel pretty much the same. Today's note--don't allow anyone to go out without a muffler and gloves. Tomorrow's note resembles the blanket index. Don't be fooled, if you leave the house without that coat, you will be cold.

Maybe it seems like too much information, but I really like how it takes meteorological data and in a few infographics, gives you a picture of your week. Temperatures and rain forecasts are nice, but I have a much better idea of how to dress for Friday and Saturday knowing that although it doesn't necessitate any more coats or blankets than Thursday, I will probably want stew those days more than any other day of the week...or at least a need for stew on Friday or Saturday has been successfully implanted in my brain. 

So, what's the moral of the story? What's the cultural lesson here? My take on it is another question. Why face the seasons unprepared for all they have to offer and all the misery they could throw at you? We have the technology and the mental capacity to recognize not only patterns in the area and how they affect our comfort (blanket and coat indexes) but also our desires. Since weather is one of the most primal shared experiences, why not predict the effect of weather on us as well? It's an interesting cultural perspective on the utility of quantitative data in the more subjective aspects of our lives--there are different lines between the "sciency" and the "non-sciency" in different societies.

I guess it all depends on how you view the variable, in this case, weather. Is it a shared experience or a series of data?

Nine O'Clock and All Is Well

All of my apartment’s (many) windows are single-paned. Luckily, energy saving measures spurred by the Tohoku earthquake have lead Japan to explore winterization and insulation wrap, so hopefully this won’t completely eviscerate my electricity budget this winter. It’s been warm here—highs have been 21C (69.8F) since late September—so I’ve been leaving my windows open in the evening to air out the place and enjoy the crisp evening weather.

Starting in mid-October, though, I started to hear strange noises coming from the town below. At around 8:30 or 9, I heard bells. These weren’t occasional peals from the big bells from the temple next door like I hear sometimes on Buddhist holidays. This is someone walking with a single handbell: ring, step, ring, step. I looked out my window every time I saw it, hoping to see one of the monks walking around. I never saw a monk, but the noise continued.

Around Halloween, I was riding back from visiting a friend. It was very dark, but even though they don’t have streetlights, the roads through the acres of rice fields a few blocks from my building are less crowded and therefore safer than the main streets. I went down a different road this time, one that goes through an old residential area before it opens up into the rice fields. Then, I heard a new variation on the same noise: clack, step, clack clack, step, clack. I actually followed the noise this time. An older woman was walking down the road with two wooden blocks, clacking away and looking somber. Once or twice, she muttered something I didn’t quite catch. I tried to greet her and ask what it was all about, but she didn’t seem to notice I was there.

The sound faded away as I biked off through the cut-down, dried out rice fields and rows of fruit-laden persimmon trees. What was that? Was she making noise to scare away stray cats from the garbage sites? Was it a religious thing, the muttering a prayer? What if I interrupted some sort of special rite she was doing? Or…what if she was a ghost? It was dark and the moon was peeking through the clouds in a very Halloween-ish sort of way—the thought did cross my mind.

From then on, I heard the clacking from my apartment at night soon after the bells. It went on for more than a week. In fact, I’m sure once it hits 8:30, I’ll hear it again tonight.

I finally asked one of my teachers about it today. She didn’t know at first, which kind of creeped me out. I was about to try to ask one of the Japanese history teachers too when she remembered.

Apparently it’s really rare, but some neighborhoods carry on the tradition of beating wooden blocks and saying 火の用心 (hi no youshin, careful of fire) to their neighbors during fall and winter nights. Long ago, people did this all over Japan to remind their neighbors to put out their cooking fires and be careful heating their homes through the night. Given that houses in Japan are traditionally made of fire-safe materials like pine wood, tatami mats, and paper screens and that they were built so close they almost touched, if one house caught fire, everyone suffered.

No one uses cooking fires anymore, but the areas of Komatsu nearby are mostly comprised of traditional style homes. Combine that with a high percentage of smokers, kerosene heaters in every big room in winter, and lots of ungrounded plugs, and…you have ample reason to remind your neighbors to be careful of their fire-related things at night.

Now that I know the history, I think this is one of my favorite local traditions. Sometimes these little windows open into the past and I realize just how old everything is here. Electricity and firetrucks are very, very new in the history of Japanese cities, particularly out here. How many tens of times older is this now-rare tradition than an electric stove, and yet, it vanished so quickly. I love it when things from the past leap up, grab me by the collar and give me no choice but to reflect on the way people lived their lives generations ago.
So, no ghosts save the ghosts of times long gone.

Also, if you want to read something awesome today, look up firefighters in Edo-era Japan.

IOU: New House!

Back in June, I switched apartments. My old place was about 25 square meters (269 square feet), which actually had its upsides--it was fairly easy to regulate the temperature, I didn't gather more stuff than I needed, I could clean it in about an hour, etc. However, I couldn't have people over for dinner because there wasn't room in the place to have a shelf and table in the kitchen, or a more than two person table and a bed in the living/bedroom. The functional part of the kitchen/laundry room was one IH burner and a tiny sink, so cooking took a lot of improvisation. It was also really dark, and dark rooms and I aren't friends.

This was the whole apartment, taken sitting down on the bed. You can't see a table to the left or the sink/burner and washing machine behind the right wall. That door with the blue bag was my front door.


So, once I recontracted, I set my sights and my budget on getting a place that a) had a view of something besides a wall, b) had a kitchen counter, and c) was just big enough to have people over.

I got so, so lucky. My building is huge and rather empty, so once the landlord heard I wanted to move, he showed me all the bigger apartments I could move into without paying key money (non-refundable $1000+ housing deposit) again. The first one he showed me had a kitchen with three glorious gas burners and fish oven, a tatami room, a separate toilet and bath, glass sliding doors all around, and a roof balcony the size of the apartment again that I would have all to myself. I was in love. It's mine now, all 49 square meters of it.

The kitchen:

The balcony:

The view:

I'm short on good pictures of the tatami room and kitchen post-move in. The only problem I've had has been with the hot water heater. As the repairman put it, "its heart gave out." I got a new one free (!) and fancy control panels for my sink and bath that let me pre-program a full, 40c bath for when I get home. Not much trouble, really.

Clearly, luck and landlord were on my side. Now, off to fully appreciate my kitchen by making dinner and messing it up.

using exercise, a chance to use our skill!

Living in Japan is, in so many ways, absolutely amazing. The people in my town are nice, the food is delicious, and no matter what the season or weather, it's always stunning outside. However, living in Japan also brings forth a daily barrage of attacks on my self-esteem. These come when I look in a window and see myself in the reflection next to a Japanese woman my age, or when I try to shop for a nice work skirt, or when some bratty kid thinks I don't understand でぶ (fatty)...or, most recently, when health checks roll around.

The logical part of my brain recognizes that I'm in a country where an L or LL (XL) size is an American size 8.  Unfortunately, my logical brain is always busy with, you know, operating in Japanese when I'm out. This means it can't shut up my emotional brain when it looks at the LLL tag on a piece of clothing and sobs, "I'm a whaaaaaaale!" On a good day, I can believe it when I remind myself that hey, LLL is 10-12, what I've worn since forever.

School health check BMI charts are similarly problematic. They're adjusted for what's perceived to be the average Japanese build, and then applied to everyone--including foreign women with naturally bigger builds than some of the men. I'd lost 7 kilos since arriving, and that was still the most embarrassing doctor's appointment of my life.

It all adds up. I took a good, long look at my bankbook and family medical history and decided, fine. I'll join the gym.

Japanese gyms are mind-blowing. At least at first. Then you realize that it all makes sense.

The best way to explain this is through the WiiFit. (The WiiFit is a balance board connected to a Wii fitness video game program that measures your weight and balance and has game-like exercises.) Stay with me. When you start using the WiiFit, it measures your weight, BMI, and balance. It then begins to track all of it, requiring the user to weigh and measure themselves each time they wish to play. When I signed up for my gym, they had me stand on a body comp analysis machine that read my weight, fat percentage, musculature, and balance rations and even provided me with my base metabolic rate and an explanation of how it related to my muscle density. A personal trainer then explained it all to me and came up with a set of exercises meant specifically to address imbalances and help with my weight.

Like with the WiiFit, every time I go to the gym, I have to weigh myself and take my blood pressure before the personal trainers let me on the machines. They record my weight and make a pencil and paper chart to show me that I'm improving, quarter kilo by quarter kilo. They come by while I lift and ask how much I'm lifting compared to last time. They tell me how exactly to use the weights to hit targeted areas. They recommend speeds on the bike and elliptical. They ask what I ate for lunch.

Even at my skinniest and most fit, no one with expertise ever really helped me make the connection between the actions of eating well and exercising and the results. They drew the weight loss graph a scale that made the small amount of weight I was losing a day--less than half a pound--seem like a big step because little steps are big steps. At American gyms, unless you pay through the nose, you get one or two sessions with a trainer. Here, there are 3 on staff at 11 at night. The gym is invested in its members' wellness on a personal level, and knowing that when I go the gym next a trainer will be there with that graph and words of encouragement motivates me to swap the sugary drink for tea and bike the long way home.

Americans view weight loss as a sudden, transformative event often entirely disconnected from any process that involves learning about their bodies or food. You see this in plastic surgery procedures, Hollywood diets, fad diets, and before and after pictures. You hear, "she ate grapefruit and lost 20 lbs in 2 months!" more than you hear "she got a solid fitness plan from someone with medical training and found a way to monitor her progress." Moreover, weight loss is seen as an entirely individual endeavor-- "she went on Atkins" or "she started running." Groups like Weight Watchers that use humans' basic need for affirmation from a social group for any change are often mocked or dismissed as the resort of the weak-willed, even when research shows they are the most effective.

How much, I wonder, would America benefit if we changed our outlook on weight loss? How much healthier would be be as a people if we viewed it not as a cosmetic miracle, but a process geared just toward feeling a little stronger and more energetic and physically capable every day? How much money and pain would we save ourselves at the doctor's office if we let go of all the shame we hold around our bodies and just join that walker's group or that dance class?

I used to have no idea why Japanese people are, by and large, so much healthier than their counterparts across the Pacific. I thought it was diet until I saw just how much rice and just how many fried things people here seem to eat. Recently, I've come to think that it's more about how people think of their bodies and more importantly, how much they're willing to learn about their bodies and what their particular body needs to feel its best. If that's the secret, maybe it's not so miraculous or even all that hard.

excuses excuses

Over Memorial Day weekend, my Dad's side of the family had a reunion/mass baptism. While they told me about it, I realized just how long it has been since I've updated this blog and how disproportional my blog frequency is to how much I miss my family and friends and want to share my experiences with them.

By way of explanation, I have a confession to make: I can't find my camera cable.

This is a big problem because the camera I used to take pictures of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara and also of Gifu and Komatsu's spectacular hanami (cherry blossom viewing) seasons doesn't use a removable memory card. These pictures were to be the stars of my next posts, examples of how life goes on after national catastrophes, but...no cable.

I like blogging linearly. The thought of passing up the picture posts and moving on to less gorgeous things made me sad, so I opted to pretend like I didn't care and wait for the cable to realize it was being ignored and promptly reappear again.

Then I moved. I packed: no cable. I finished unpacking yesterday after a flurry of studying, English competition preparation, and lesson planning. Still no cable. It turns out my (surprsingly effective) habit of almost sociopathically passive-agressive commentary toward my internet connection doesn't get results with camera cables.

I think it's time to eat crow and head over to Yamada Denki and see what they sell. Incidentally, why does every digital camera seem to have a different port? Cables don't make companies that much money. Clearly the wide variety of ports exists as part of a vast and systematic conspiracy to further modern man's sense of alienation and puzzlement over the irrational rationality of a technological world.

Speaking of which, I've tried adding to this blog from my iPhone, but blogger compatible apps I've tried have left a lot to be desired, including picture posting. So far the best mobile blogging tool interface for photos has been Tumblr's, but I loathe Tumblr's self-referential reblog-as-comment format.

So, here's what I'm thinking for how to share my next year in Japan with everyone:

1. This blog, with the photo-sharing pressure off, as a way of sharing stories and happenings, plus
2. A picture a day on Tumblr to actually show people what my life looks like.

How does that sound?

tests

I've been dithering, but I've finally committed: I'm going to take the JLPT N3 this July.

The JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test, or 日本語能力試験) is the granddaddy of Japanese language tests. There are others, but this is the one people know about. They changed it from four levels to five just this last year, sending publishers and students alike into a panic.

The levels are something like this:

Passing N1 means you know as much Japanese as a native speaker who is way, WAY too into their language. N1, the Foreign Service exam, and a background check gets you an embassy job in Tokyo. The people who write the test do their best every year to make sure no one passes N1. Think of it as academically fluent.

Passing N2 means that you can work in the Japanese private sector with almost no trouble understanding what is going on around you. It means you know pretty much all the vocab and grammar that will come up in your average day, and can understand native speakers at a natural pace in both formal and informal settings. N2 means you can read a newspaper. It means you know the 2,000 kanji characters that define literacy in Japan. Think of it as advanced or functionally fluent.

N3 is the new level, created because of the giant gap between the old N3 and N2. means that you can understand most of what's going on around you, as long as the people around you are using simple Japanese. The N3 level is when you can get by in Japan, even if you can't keep up with the level of Japanese in your workplace. Think of it as proficient.

Passing N4 and N5 mean that you're on your way. N5 is after a beginner's run through. N4 is after an introductory level course. You can get by, but you will be confused. Think of these as beginner and intermediate.

To put the difficulty of these tests in context, I'm doing N3 after getting As in 300 level college Japanese. Granted, I had two years where I wasn't in any Japanese classes before I came here, and most of it escaped. However, there are grammar points, vocab, and characters that are not in any of my previous textbooks...at N3 level.

I have 11 weeks to prepare. I'm taking private lessons and have a legion of textbooks--some from home, some bought here. My instructor is going to hit me with a practice test next Thursday, to find my weak spots.

Having been a student all my life until now, I find it refreshing to have an academic goal again. I never thought I would miss tests, but I'm looking forward to the weekly quizes, reviews, and grammar epiphanies. But most of all, I'm looking forward to applying what I'm learning every day. There have been so many times when I hear a grammar point I just studied the next day in a classroom or in the staff room. It's practical in a way I haven't experienced until now.

Wish me luck. 頑張ります。

Let me make something clear...

If you're following American news media about the recent events in Japan, what you are hearing and seeing is--regardless of whether it comes from CNN, FOX, or MSNBC--a big overreaction.

Japan is a small country, but the earthquake, tsunami, and fallout have only directly affected a small bit. When newspapers, newscasters, and websites say "Japan," they mean "the Northern quarter of Honshuu, the main island." The reason they generalize is simple--before the quake, very few people knew where Sendai city (or Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukishima prefectures) was located.

I promise not to launch into a rant about The State of Journalistic Integrity and Media Madness. However, I would like to point out the ENORMOUS GAP between the newsfeeds and actual life here.

1. Fukushima is NOT the next Chernobyl. It's not even the next 3 Mile Island. Here's what I have heard from JET supervisors, embassies, and people who live in affected areas.

• Radiation in prefectures that neighbor the Fukushima plant is one-tenth the level of the radiation present in a chest x-ray.
• Tokyo has electricity and running water. Food shortages have occurred because of people running to grocery stores and buying more than they need. My partner's host family in Chiba says that sometimes they lose power or water for a little bit, but overall, their lifestyle is the same.
• The drinking water in Tokyo is within acceptable levels for adult consumption. The city and national government has recommended that infants and pregnant women not drink Tokyo tap water because the level has risen.
• Precautions against eating dairy and produce from around Fukushima are just that--precautions. There have been no deaths from eating the food in the area.
• The US is only evacuating people from the tsunami-affected areas and from the areas within about 50 miles of Fukushima.

2. The real problem is NOT the Fukushima reactor. The real problem is the damage done to Sendai city and to Miyagi and Iwate prefectures by the tsunami. This is what caused the death toll and flattened towns. This is why people are displaced.

3. Where I live is physically unaffected by both the tsunami and the reactor. Yes, we felt the earthquake, but only very lightly. Nothing swayed, fell over, or cracked. Animals didn't freak out beforehand. We were at least 250 miles away from the epicenter. There are mountains and a peninsula between Komatsu and any fallout, weak though it is.

Think of it this way. If a 9.0 earthquake struck Seattle and did equivalent damage, Spokane would feel only tremors. Komatsu is 270 miles away from Sendai; Spokane is only 220 miles away from Seattle. Like Spokane is from Seattle, Komatsu is seperated from Sendai by vast distance and high mountains, and gets its water and food from different places.

If a 9.0 earthquake struct Seattle, it would be insane to flee Spokane, right? It's in the same state, but practically a world away. You would only recommend evacuating Seattle and its surroundings. It's common sense. Accordingly, no one in either government has mentioned evacuation except to people who are in Touhoku, that northern quarter of Honshuu.

This spring break, I'm travelling southwest to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka for a little while. These areas felt less tremors than Ishikawa, being over 400 miles from the epicenter. Though traditional rivals with Tokyo and the northeast region, Osakans are leading the Japan-based relief efforts. Tourism from within Japan is especially important in Kyoto and Nara this year, as thousands of would-be travelers from abroad and from affected areas have cancelled their plans. Life only goes on if people continue to live it.

It's almost cherry blossom season. Lest this read like a complete nonsequitor, cherry blossoms symbolize hope and new beginnings. Japan is not hording, looting, and blaming in the aftermath of the earthquake. People are banding together to help out, giving as much as they can, and showing reverence by not wigging out.

Many people have remarked on how stoic people in Touhoku appear to be in the face of tragedy. Natural disasters happen here frequently, all over Japan, and so from a young age people are taught to keep calm and carry on. You help no one by freaking out; you help everyone by taking responsibility for yourself and your community.

In that vein, rather than worrying about whether or not I should stay in Japan, I'd like to ask my family and friends instead to look into the disasters that hit your area and find out how you can prepare your family and community. Where would you go? How would you contact relatives to tell them you were alright? Where would your water and heat come from? Are there public resources for you and your family? Where would you go to recieve them?

For news on Fukushima and the Touhoku coast, I would recommend the BBC online site rather than American news outlets. Their reporting has been timlier and less sensational.

This is going to be my last earthquake-related post. You know where to go to give aid, and my area is unaffected. Since all people hear about Japan now is misinformation about how it's exploding/falling apart, I'm going to use my piece of internet to help people differentiate between the affected areas and the unaffected areas.

I want everyone to see that while all of Japan is strong, at least 2/3rds of this country is still safe, healthy, and beautiful.

Where are the Japanese Charities?

In light of the recent devastation in the Touhoku region (Sendai, Miyagi, Iwate, and Fukushima), many of you are probably wondering what you can do to help. The internet response to the earthquake and tsunami has been amazing to watch—Google has a front page link to the Red Cross, and Facebook has English, Japanese, and Korean-language news updates automatically set on the homepages of people living in Japan. Everything that the world learned about viral aid relief after Haiti is being applied to Japan, and many people here in Komatsu have commented about how impressed they are with the rest of the world’s thoughts and prayers.

Yet, the international response is also a bit disorienting. We are used to a very set pattern of donors and recipients when we think of aid: the rich countries or parts of countries give to poor countries or parts of countries. The G8 send money and helicopters and special teams to Africa or Southeast Asia. People in suburbs or wealthy parts of cities hold benefits for struggling inner-city or rural communities. A whole system—a whole industry, even-- exists to turn concern into money or supplies, and move that money or those supplies where they are most needed. Churches, charity offices, and secular non-profit organizations act as conduits to get aid delivered.

In the case of run-of-the-mill disasters (war, hunger, AIDS, poverty, inequality) these conduits follow said set pattern. In the case of the US, aid programs were deliberately privatized in the 1980s, which is why there are so many private charities to help America’s poor. In the case of the world aid system, private charities exist to help countries whose governments simply do not have the stability or resources to help their own. Usually this is because these governments are so new, and are starting from scratch after being under colonial rule that left them with little sustainable infrastructure.

The countries that support third-world development are, with the exception of the US, success stories of development aid themselves. Japan and the European countries that most benefited from the Marshall Plan are the world’s top donors, behind America. Japan, Germany, Sweden, France, and these other big global donor nations got assistance to their governments in the 1950s and proceeded to use their subsequent economic success to make a vast network of social programs for their citizens. Where churches and thousands of private charities in the US redistribute money as aid, it is often government programs that do this in places like Western Europe and, yes, Japan. This has worked out well for the standard of living in these countries, if not for the national balance sheets.

If you skimmed all that, here’s what you need to know: When disasters hit the US or Third World Countries, the way aid has always operated (donors in rich place --> non-profit in rich place--> distribution networks in poor place) provides a simple structure for getting donations to the victims.

Enter Japanese history and culture.

How Japan does aid and nonprofits is vastly different from how Europe, the US, and Canada do aid and nonprofits. In the US, people donate to charities, many of which are religious. US government money goes to foreign aid, too, but only about 1%...a helpful total in the developing world, but a MINISCULE taxpayer burden. In Europe, people donate to charities and a larger chunk of their taxpayer dollars go to development aid. The tradition of donating to charity is old in Europe and North America, and has its roots in tithing. Donating came first, before government aid, because of the church. It established a pattern of giving to local charities, even as they became secularized. Government aid to suffering communities and developing countries came much, much later.

In Japan, aid happened differently on both the local and global scale. There was no big organized Church to redistribute tithes. Communities looked after each other on a case-by-case basis, often refusing to accept help from outside after disasters. Local temples and shrines provided assistance and moral support, and encouraged stricken communities to pull through independently. Until its defeat in WWII, Japan did not receive foreign aid. It was a new (and kind of humiliating) experience…keep this in mind when reading that the Prime Minister said the recent earthquake is the biggest disaster since WWII.

Japan’s war reparations debt to the parts of Asia it invaded and destroyed was called in as it still received aid from the US. The began the policy of keizai kyoryoku—giving aid (war reparations) while building its economy so it could stop receiving aid. Long story short, Japan paid off its debts in helpful Japanese products, stimulating its own modern manufacturing economy while providing Asia with infrastructure and engineers. This came from citizens in the form of taxes, not tithes. Aid, to Japan, is a matter of creating regional and global economic prosperity and cooperation. The Japanese aid model is really helpful for developing countries, but doesn’t have the warm fuzzy feeling of the American/European way of giving, which stresses people rather than progress.

Again, what you need to know: Japan thinks of aid as a government issue, not as a charity issue. As a result of its history and culture, Japan has way, way less non-profits than the US, Canada, and Europe. The nonprofts it has simply act as a way for people to give more money to the same style of aid the government gives. Japan does not have many non-profits that specialize in aiding Japanese people. Most of them are—you guessed it—almost entirely local, just like how Japanese people concerted their efforts since they came to the archipelago.

Case in point: in the Kobe earthquake, Japan refused aid. The Japanese people believed it was for their government, not charity organizations, to handle. Japan’s government was the second richest in the world at the time—why would they possibly want to receive development aid when they themselves give it?

Fast forward to March 10, 2011. Japan has one of the largest national debts in the world. It just lost its second-biggest-economy status to China. The Japanese people are losing confidence in the ability of the government to keep Japan at its current standards. Then, it is hit with a 9.1 earthquake and one of its biggest northern cities, surrounded by some if its most rural prefectures, gets hit with a tsunami. Whole towns go missing. The world watches.

Then, the world offers to help.

Haiti had organizations already there on the ground ready to mobilize. So did Chile, and the Pacific Islands hit in the tsunami there. Japan has its own government, budget shaking before the earth did, and its small local organizations. They can’t do it alone any more, not this time.

How should Japan accept these offers? Even though the government has accepted foreign agencies and foreign volunteers, they face a huge language and cultural barrier.
Japan has never, been on the receiving end of a giant private aid operation. It has always been a giver in the global aid system—it’s never had an armada of private charities and nonprofits line up to give it volunteers, medicine, blankets, or money.

Japan decided what to do—it will let them all in as a supplement to its own efforts and hope for the best.

Meanwhile, Japanese nonprofits want to help, and can do so without running up against the language and culture barrier, but don’t have a base like foreign charities do.

I have been searching far and wide for Japanese non-profits to support, and found two to share with all of you. If you can, please donate to Japan Emergency NGOs (JEN) or Association for Aid and Relief (AAR Japan). These are great organizations that have helped internationally with earthquake relief, and now are additionally helping their own. They are less funded than big international organizations, and could really use donations.

Donating to them is difficult from abroad—you’ll need to do an international money wire, and the dollar is far weaker than the yen. Yet, these nonprofits can operate faster and more flexibly than the Red Cross. If you live in Japan now, please consider these first.

If wiring money to these organizations is out of the question, please support organizations in your country that are reaching out to Japan…by not earmarking your donation. There are so many other crises in the world, and Japan will recover years before places like Haiti that faced similar disasters.

Update

I'll get back to regular posts after this--I just wanted to reiterate that the area I live in hasn't been hit by any of the recent earthquakes. We're not experiencing any tsunami, power outages, food shortages, significant train delays, or building damage. What earthquakes we've felt have been of the "hey, is the ground rocking a bit or am I just dizzy?" variety.

People in Touhoku (and now Shizuoka) are not so lucky. Because of quake-related structural damage, tsunami, and now the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, thousands and thousands of families have lost their homes.

While Japan's compulsive earthquake preparation measures mitigated this, the damage to people's lives is great.

If you've been wanting to do something to help, awesome. Because shipping items takes a long time, I would suggest monetary donations. It doesn't have to be a lot, but please put it in the right place! The Red Cross has a history of sitting on monetary donations for a long time (up to three months!), especially the by-text donations. Consider giving to Direct Relief, Doctors Without Borders, Mercy Corps, or Medical Teams International (religiously affiliated, formerly Northwest Medical Teams).

Thank you for keeping Japan in your thoughts and prayers, but as the saying goes: pray for the best, work for the rest.

There was a 7.9 mag earthquake off the coast of Northeastern Japan about 45 minutes ago. In Ishikawa, we felt some rocking, but it was very slight.

Note to family: I'm fine. I just wondered if someone was trying to squeeze by and rocked my chair, then listened to everyone play the news reports on their phones.

Sendai and the other cities in Northeastern Japan are prepared for these earthquakes, but people are scared nonetheless.

The government has issued tsunami warnings for the other side of the country. Near the epicenter, the waves weren't bad, but they give these things a lot of notice and a lot of time. If you know anyone on the Eastern side of Japan, check in with them.

Inside Students' Heads

I'm often surprised by what goes on in my students' heads at all the schools where I teach, but more so at the elementary school. I asked them if they knew any American folktales and they said "Tom and Jerry!" I told them that Portland is two hours away from the sea and that people consider that close, and they uniformly freaked out. I told them I have an uncle who is a cowboy, and they fell into two camps: half were convinced I was lying, because clearly cowboys don't exist any more, and and half were totally unphased, if not disappointed that all my relatives weren't cowboys and cowgirls.

Today I told them an old Native American folk tale from the Northwest, the story about how Raven stole the sun from the Sky Chief, who appears to professionally hoard celestial objects. I started off by showing them a painted carving from the Sk'klallum and having them guess where it came from.


To see more pictures like this, check out the Pacific Northwest Native Flickr Photostream.

Their first guess was Japan, which seems odd until you take a look at Ainu art. (The Ainu are one of Japan's indigenous groups, closely related to the Small Numbered Peoples of the Russian North and the First Nations of Alaska.) Then they guessed New Zealand. The US was their third guess, and Canada their fourth.

For the folktale, I decided to try and translate it into Japanese first--that way, the corresponding English would be easy enough to learn from at their level. One of my teachers proofread and edited my translation. Then I bought Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest as an ebook and used the pictures and my simplified text to make a PowerPoint.

After they heard the story, it was their turn to tell me a Japanese folktale in English. We went over basic folklore sentences like "she saw a ~~," "they became ~~,"and "they said/asked." There were many gestures, including a boy acting like a bullied turtle. This was the high point of the lesson for them, since they were really stoked about getting to be the first people to tell me about Momo-Tarou, Kin-Tarou, and Uroshima-Tarou.

The folktale lesson was for the sixth graders, some of whom I won't see again. The school is on the intake boundary between two middle schools--some will go to the one I teach at, and others will go to a different one. There were pictures and messages scrawled on the back cover of their paperback English workbooks.

With the fifth grade class, who I'll see next school year, there were speeches. The vice principal (who substitutes for a substitute homeroom teacher just for English classes, and has taken extra English lessons privately to feel qualitified) asked them if they had anything they wanted to say. English for them is games rather than grammar, and several students said (in Japanese) that they were nervous about English, but aren't any more because English class is fun.

The strangest part of my job is effect that I'm supposed to have. I'm supposed to be proof that the students need to know another language to communicate with the rest of the world, and I'm supposed to personalize (and personify) the Anglophone world. It's easy to get caught up in lesson planning and schedules and forget that in a day, up to 150 kids are learning from me...and forming opinions about language, culture, and even their own ambitions based on what I bring to the classroom, whether it's a folktalke, holiday presentation, or just how enthusiastically I can chant about what people had for breakfast.

It's weird to be responsible for making kids want to learn about something, and even weirder to get a peek inside their heads and see that you're actually having an effect.

The nice things they said about my class and about me as a teacher haven't made me think that I just must be good at; rather, they've made me realize just how much better at it I should be, just because they're soaking everything in.

Posts Owed: Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival)

In mid-February, the city of Sapporo in the northern island of Hokkaido turns its snow and ice into something awesome. The Yuki Matsuri is one of Japan's biggest festivals, and it attracts people from all over the world. I went with Erin and three of my friends from Komatsu over a four-day weekend. We flew from Komatsu to Tokyo, and taxiing in, saw the Pikachu Plane. We talked about what it would be like to ride it and took pictures. Then we got to our gate...

...AND REALIZED WE GOT TO RIDE THE PIKACHU PLANE TO SAPPORO.

(Photo by Suoh Sato, not me. But you get the idea.)

That set the tone for the trip. Hokkaido is famous for its beer, the quality of its seafood and veggies, and also for how open people are to visitors. The people at our hotel were super nice, and our stay included free drinks at the bar and breakfasts. Something I learned last time I went to Japan (with my college choir) is that upper-mid range Japanese hotels are serious about breakfast. There's an equal array of Western and Japanese breakfast foods, and most of the Japanese foods have a pedigree--there were signs about where the rice, miso, and veggies came from. Some of the Western foods seem a bit out of place--breakfast salad, anyone?--but were all tasty. The hotel would have been out of our price range entirely if not for early booking through a travel agency...which still exist here and do decent business.

The main attraction of the Yuki Matsuri is the snow and ice sculptures. These were all intricate and gorgeous beyond words, so I'll let them do the talking.

Yes, those are real fish.

You can see more on my Flickr page and (soon) my Picasa page, which won't limit me to 200 photos to share with you without paying. I recommend the "Yuki Matsuri by Day" set, which has the entries from Sapporo's sister cities.

The food was amazing: salmon dumplings, crab shells full of fresh crab meat, seafood gumbo, and what the meat-eaters described as amazing ramen. Erin and I have plans to go back to Sapporo in the summer for the food and giant beer garden alone.

Incidentally--I like to think because of the beer and tasty food--Portland and Sapporo are sister cities. All of Sapporo's sister cities entered snow sculptures, including Portland. The piles of snow mask the detail, but not the hilarity of the title.

Dear readers, I give you: Spawning for the Future.

Yes. That is what it is called. To be fair to it, its design is covered by about three inches of powder snow. I'm sure the future and the spawning are much more discernible once it's dusted off.

The other sister city sculptures' designs weren't hit so hard by the snow...at the snow festival.

All in all, the trip was fabulous. I was expecting freezing cold, but it stayed around 0 to -4 degrees celsius (32 to about 26 fahrenheit) the entire time we were out and about. Drinking in public is legal in Japan, so we had plenty of beer and hot wine from the booths to keep us fortified.

Yuki Matsuri is one of those things that sounds gimmicky, but, now that I've been, I can say for certain that it's worth the trip!

Elementary, my dear Walker

The fifth-grade teacher at the elementary school I sometimes teach at deposits a stack of thin paperback books on my desk. Combined, they weigh as much as two or three of my high school textbooks. Most of them seem to be about half illustration, filled with blindingly clear timelines and diagrams or black-haired manga-style children bandaging simple injuries and doing science labs.

This stack of 8 by 11 sized books represents the standard Japanese fifth grade curriculum.

Basically, one of these books—Eigo Note, an activity book for very simple spoken English lessons—brought along all of its friends to help out with today’s lesson. Today is school subjects. Because of the surprising variability of Japanese school schedules, I see this class only about half the days that I’m at the elementary school. The homeroom teacher fears that they don’t know the subjects, and figured that the best way to teach them is through associating them with the books they see every day.

Every class has its unforeseen difficulties. Once lined up on the blackboard chalk shelf, there are more textbooks than subjects mentioned (in Japanese) in the book: English, Japanese, Social Studies, Science, Math, Gym, Health, Home Economics, Calligraphy, Arts and Crafts, and Moral Education.

Maybe I’m a victim of my major, but as I model pronunciation for the fifth graders, I’m thinking, budget cuts, education policy, socialization. When they reproduce their own schedules in their activity books and report, “On Monday, I study…” it becomes impossible not to compare. Their books are tiny compared to the hardback brick I had for prealgebra in fifth grade, or the history textbook we sometimes got to use. They don’t read whole novels for homework. Look at all those classes with hands-on activities! What’s even in the moral education textbook?*

The teacher must notice the way I’m staring at the books, and asks the question that always makes my classes go over time: what’s this like in America? The students’ eyes get wide and they start whispering rumors to each other. “I heard they have school buses” tops the charts.

I don’t explain that I moved in elementary school, that I did a two-year science magnet, or that I was possibly the most cynical fifth grader my school district had ever seen. I don’t explain about small schools and blended classrooms.

I do explain that we didn’t have periods and bells. They ask how the kids knew that they had a break between subjects, or how the teachers knew when to change subjects. I explain that we didn’t have breaks, and that we knew the times for when we had to move to things like math or PE.

They are surprised that we had math for an hour every day compared to their 45 minutes, and that people moved to different teachers depending on their math ability. Some of the students like the idea. They’re really shocked that we had not one, but effectively three English classes: a session for literature, a session for writing, and a session for vocabulary.

Next come the real shockers, to the teacher and to the students. They ask what days I had science. I explain that there were some weeks when we didn’t have science, but when we did, it was usually twice a week. I explain that to my knowledge, we didn’t have a science textbook—we had videos and some simple experiments and a teacher doing his best.

“Social studies?” they ask. Two times a week, perhaps, I answer. “Music?” Once or twice a week. “PE?” Once or twice a week. “Arts and crafts?” Once a month. The teacher asks me to repeat and explain what that means. The phrase “once a month” isn’t taught in conjunction with their school subjects.

Suddenly they look at me differently, the ten-year olds I’m supposed to get accustomed to foreign faces and foreign voices. They look at me with same expression I see on the faces of people listening to accounts of growing up poor in the world’s backwaters or war zones. My students are looking at me like a survivor, like someone deprived of something basic.

I went to one of the best elementary, middle, and high schools in my state. I was a National Merit Commended Scholar without taking PSAT prep outside of my school. I went to a selective private college and graduated Magna Cum Laude. I am, by my country’s standards, well-goddamned-educated.

It’s too much. I tell them about school buses and summer vacation. They like that, and finally, they don’t appear to pity me any more. Smiling becomes difficult.

That internal voice that only appeared when I started living abroad—the little nationalist in my head that urges me to defend American policies I disagree with—starts its whine. We spend time on writing. We don’t have entrance exams.** We spend money on ships and military bases that keep you safe from North Korea.

All of those rationalizations are missing the point. The point is that American education has so much potential (our books are thicker, we have writing, and we have levels of math!) but fails to deliver. Education in the US is asked the impossible: give us world class scientists and inventors without a substantive science or engineering curriculum; give us fitter kids even though we’re cutting gym; nourish our kids with pizza pockets; attract top teaching talent with $24,000 salaries and careers at the mercy of cuts. If the level of science and hands-on activities at my well-funded and small suburban elementary school shocks Japanese fifth graders, what must it be like in big cities or in states like Texas that are considering cutting the senior year of high school?

In the race toward economic and intellectual primacy, the race in which Asia is our biggest competitor, our Achilles heel is the lip service and hypocrisy surrounding the importance of education. The results of ignoring science, of ignoring hands-on activities, and of refusing to even be a real competitor in the world field of education are so plain even a Japanese fifth-grader can see them…when presented to them in plain English.

* Want to know what’s in the moral education textbook? Among other stories of world leaders and community heroes, there is a long chapter on Martin Luther King Jr.

** America doesn’t have the infamous recall-based entrance exams of East Asia. However, writing and math emphasis in wealthy suburban elementary schools like mine is intentionally designed to accustom children to the way of thinking measured in America’s de-facto entrance exam, the SAT. Never mind that intelligence tests like the SAT are regarded by research psychologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists as utterly bogus; we get into our unique habit of disregarding science fairly early.

On Winter

I dislike generalizations, but I'm fairly comfortable with this one: most Japanese people pride themselves on being extremely aware of (mainland) Japan's four seasons. Coworkers remind me of the four seasons. Student compositions on what they want to tell foreigners about Japan often feature the four seasons somehow. I have students named, literally, "four seasons." Beer comes in autumn leaf bedecked cans in October and cherry blossom bedecked cans in March. You cannot find a fan in October, and come April, I probably won't see a kotatsu (heated table) cover for six months. There. Are. Four. Seasons. In. Japan.

Yet, in Ishikawa, it would be polite never to talk about winter.

January and February are when Siberia dumps whatever it has left over on the west coast of Japan. The form of precipitation can change depending on the minute--I have been snowed, rained, hailed, and sleeted on within the space of the fifteen minutes it takes me to walk to school. None of the houses or apartments I've been to have central heating. Most people keep warm via kerosene heaters or heat/ac units, piling on thermal underwear in their own homes to keep costs down. There is no sunlight.

Minnesota got me used to meter-tall piles of snow, dead vegetation, bitter winds, and ice biking. Despite this, NOTHING could have prepared me (or Japan Railways West) for the sheer amount of snow that hit us in early February.

I was coming home from visiting my partner in Gifu one Sunday night. It had been snowing in Gifu prefecture, and there they were big, pretty snowglobe flakes drifting down past the city lights. Sometime between there and Tsuruga--a charming port city in Fukui prefecture--it turned into a snow storm. In Tsuruga, our train stopped.

Our train stopped for almost 36 hours.

It turned out that almost a meter of snow had fallen in just over a day. That weekend dumped so much snow that the tracks were under too much for the train to move forward. We had to wait in the train until JR West's track plows could dig us out, or until another train could get through. For the first time in its history, JR West shut down all its Hokuriku (Northwest Japan) lines for a full day because of snow.

Needless to say, I missed work that Monday. I didn't get back to Komatsu until 5 am Tuesday morning, and went to work a few hours later hating trains and snow and my phone's battery life. I had kept in contact with my school, and they responded like I was sending them secret messages from inside a hostage cell: "are they feeding you??" "I am relieved to know they are treating you well!" "Please don't come to work if it has been too much for you," etc. My poor supervisor might never let me travel again.

My students got a snow day. They studied. Some came to school anyway.

Apart from the train adventure, most of my winter time has been spent finding ways never to leave my apartment, and preferrably, not to move away from the heater or blankets. The computer was farther away than my Kindle (thanks Mom and Dad!), so blogging was clearly far too much effort.

I did my first legitimate grocery shopping trip yesterday, because this weekend was sunny and warm. Until lately, grocery shopping has entailed ice biking and its impossible cousin, slush biking. Between ESS recitations and helping students with studying for their entrance exam English compositions, grocery shopping has been me grabbing what I can as quickly as I can before it gets too cold and dark outside to get home safely--before the ice refreezes. The roads to the stores have been icy and frought with peril, but the little sushi place is close and tasty.

Now that the stores are more accessible by bike--and now that I see the sun once or twice a day, hooray!--it's like a big dark sheet has been lifted from my culinary vision. I realized...I can cook food! It will taste delicious! So now I'm back on my bento kick and dinner planning kick.

My goal? Never get prepared food unless I am with friends.

Wish me luck. I might post a bento recipe or two.

New Year's Cleaning

I am currently making good on one New Year's Resolution....for the first time ever. Prior to yesterday, I really wasn't happy with the layout of my apartment. It is a cozy apartment--a hall/bathroom, a kitchen, and a bedroom, all in a long rectangle. The big room is 287 cm by 278 cm (random, eh?), which is plenty of room for one person and one person's stuff. The kitchen is about the same size, with no inborn shelving and sink/burner stand in the corner. I inherited a large cabinet, a fridge, a washer, and a vacuum, two shelves, a set of plastic drawers, and a bed, and the apartment came with a table and two chairs. Up until now, I supplemented the kitchen with a pantry on wheels, which was hugely helpful.

None of this was an issue. The issue was the bathroom.

In Japan, the Northeast corner of a building is tremendously unlucky. It's known as the Demon Gate, where evil spirits come in. Castles would have special watchtowers or even make a concave section there to avoid even having a Northeast corner. Obviously, you don't want a door there. It is apparently even more unlucky to have plumbing (a bathroom) there. Guess where my bathroom is. Yep. Dealing with it so far has been costly and endlessly frustrating. An awful smell came from the drain when it's hot and when it storms. I couldn't seem to clean the drain at all. Despite it being a hermetically sealed shower/bath/toilet unit, there was possibly mold. No hooks stayed on the wall, so I had to put shampoo anywhere I could. It. Was. Gross.


Note the past tense. Finally, in a home-improvement frenzy inspired by dreams of rearranging my bedroom to make it look like a 9x9 rather than a 6x3, I caved and bought a cute shower curtain. And drain tablets. And (expensive) textured surface suction cups. And shower racks. Then, while waiting for bookshelves and a laundry rack to be delivered, I hit the drain with every tablet and hair collector I had and cleaned the bathroom until I was the only life form left.

The change was magical. It sparkled! It was...visually appealing! It didn't smell like demons were indeed crawling up my northeast corner plumbing.

Inspired by this, and with the help of Erin, I have moved along to reorganizing the living room/ bedroom so that I could make the most of the natural light and maybe, possibly entertain friends for dinner or movies. We switched stuff around and I already feel more at home.

Pictures after shelves and such.

So, so much more like a home.

あけましておめでとう (Happy New Year)

New Year's is the biggest holiday in Japan. Erin and I decided to try our hand at some New Year's traditions. These included:

1. Not cooking on New Year's Eve. An awesome tradition, but one that makes the delica (deli) section of every grocery extremely crowded.

2. Eating Mochi and other Japanese sweets. Chewy!

3. Watching Kouhaku, the four hour long "song battle" between various Japanese bands after dinner on New Year's Eve. Full of enka and insane costumes.

4. Ringing a bell at a Buddhist Temple. As we were walking back from a friend's apartment where we watched Kouhaku, we heard bells all around us from the flock of temples on my street. The biggest one had red candles placed in the snow just inside its gates. One of the women working at the temple invited us in (in English!) and told us to try ringing the bell. Each temple will have its bells rung 108 times, once for each sin that Buddhists believe holds the spirit back from enlightenment. People in the neighborhood can ring the bell while the priests watch and count.

5. Visiting a Shinto Shrine at midnight. This is big thing. Many families will go to shrines at midnight to pray, use sacred smoke (usually by wafting it over a body part for healing or a possesion for safety), or buy charms. I saw several groups of young boys who were doing a shrine marathon through the snow--they were running all over Komatsu from shrine to shrine, getting the name of the shrine stamped on a white cloth. Erin and I were at Tenmangu, a shrine known for its charms that help students pass exams.

6. Giving thanks and buying good luck charms for the next year. On the recommendation of my vice principal, we visited another shrine later on New Year's Day. Oyama Jinja is in Kanazawa, and is one of most popular places to visit for New Year's the city. Even late in the day, it was full of people. Buying charms was a particular hassle, as there were no real lines; rather, old women just snuck in and elbowed everyone else aside.

7. New Year's Shopping. Most department stores have "Happy Bags," grab bags of goods at a really reduced price. This goes for small stores like Lush, and also for home goods stores--I saw one Happy Bag that contained a bicycle, a space heater, and an electric blanket. Stores are packed and the good bags go quickly.

More pictures here.