Monday, December 4, 2006

Look who we've got our...

Here is a little kid I teach. He's kind of a monster, though of the slightly lovable sort. Just wanted to point out what's written on his shirt. Isn't it a small world, after all? Huh? Isn't it?

Next: More than you ever asked to know about where I work and what I do.

しつれい します
Shitsurei Shimasu!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

名古屋!

Some might say: "Where in the hell is Nagoya?" and well, they'd be right. Nagoya is Japan's fourth largest city (right after Tokyo, Yokohama, and Osaka) with around 2.2 million people. Here is a crappy map, it's between Tokyo and Kyoto. A lot of these people, as I have since confirmed through observation, are Japanese. Actually, probably most of them are Japanese. Despite this unsurprising fact, there are a LOT of foreigners here. You can pretty much rest assured that if you're near a subway station, you can probably hit a gaijin with a rock if you have a decent arm. This is because none of them have cars, and they are always out drinking.

"Gaijin," or "外人," is a slightly pejorative term for foreigner. In common usage, it means "outsider," but a lot of us refer to ourselves this way. Though I'm not exactly awesome at reading kanji, the best I can tell for these is that it comes from the symbol for "exterior" (外) plus the symbol for "person" (人). Interestingly enough, the sound "gai" is also a word by itself meaning 'harm.' It might not be too much of a stretch to make a connection with that one, but the kanji is completely different for the stand alone word (害) so hey, I dunno. Fourth largest city in a modern developed country. Visions of Tokyo! Oh the expanse of tops of heads on subway trains! The bustling night life! Well... not exactly. Nagoya is known throughout Japan as the "rural city." Hell, most people don't even think of it as a city at all compared to the fungal expanse of the more than eight million people that constitute Tokyo. Let's get one thing straight though: Nagoya is a city. It has buildings, it has a subway, people walk to get where they're going... it's a city, people. Maybe being from a small town skews my perspective a bit on this, but spades are spades!

City it is indeed; nightlife it has. Six level dance club full of buxom Brazilians and the Caucasions who love them? Check. Skyscrapers? Yes, a couple, anyway. All in all, it's not too bad a place. Though I have to say (in slight incongruence with my earlier gripes) that it so far hasn't really sported that "big city" vibe that you get from walking around New York or London. To quote a recent biopic: "each neighborhood is another world- replete with its own intricacies--"... that not so much. I will be the first to admit, though, that this might have an awful lot to do with my inability to really talk to anybody or even begin to understand those intricacies. わたしわがいぶをみりますね。I see the exteriors, you know? Add to this the fact that somebody decimated the city with bombs around the middle of the 20th century. Nagoya does not have an old feel... even it's most famous landmark has escalators. Once again, I blame my lack of simple communication skills.. a difficulty I hope to remedy through the cunning use of... bilingual Japanese friends!

Well, I'm only half kidding. Truth be told, I've finally started to make an honest effort to learn the language. It's pretty difficult, but probably not so hard as people give it credit for. That said, even one of my (Japanese) students today said: "Oh.... Japanese is very hard. I am not very good at it." Great, so what chance do I have then, buddy?

Just for good measure:



Friday, November 24, 2006

Metablog would be a good transformer name.

There is something strange, something mildly irritating about the self publishing phenomenon. Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, weblogs- they all assume that someone out there cares what you think and who you are. I guess it is pretty negative of me, but I’ve always felt like it’s just a little narcissistic to make that assumption. Thus, no weblog till today. Thus, a myspace that lies mostly dormant, with the occasional ratty demo flotsam breaking the surface. Thus... well don’t even get me started on facebook. Hey, facebook! Listen to me! (I have a weblog now, so that anyone and everyone can listen to me.) You do not need to know where I am at the moment. Away messages were creepy enough on instant messenger, so we turned them into little proto-blogs and tried to be quippish. You’re overreaching your usefulness as an online directory! Hurry up and sell out like those grinning billionaire youtube guys!

Not to mention articles like this- numerous and rather chilling. As an ardent hater of many things authoritarian, my first reaction to these news articles (a significantly large one of which appeared in Newsweek, followed closely by a fairly illuminating op-ed) is to cry foul. ‘Hey!’ I say, ‘That kind of thing is personal! Private! It’s unfair to take a person’s personal life into consideration when offering them a job! Judge on the basis of their work history and qualifications, not what or whether or how much they like to drink.” And you know, I still feel that way, with one very important difference... Facebook is NOT private. Myspace, youtube, blogs- they are NOT private. They’re the new forum, the epitome of public space. Where we may have failed with tree lined parks and puppies and sunshine we have succeeding in the unfathomably democratizing force of practically unlimited virtual space. The nation’s dirtiest, poorest, most drug addled hobo can start his very own weblog at his public library, if he is so motivated and so inclined, and can spa’ change the whole world, virtually! (thanks for the new verb, shorts-over-pants.) This illusion of privacy, its just something we are going to have to get over. Everyone is on gmail now. I love gmail, it’s great. Every email, from the most personal to the most mundane penile enlargement spam, right there at your fingertips. You can even access it from anywhere in the world. It is so convenient! But it’s also a little strange- the emails themselves, the bits and bytes, we don’t possess them. They exist in a server somewhere in silicon valley. We don’t really know who has access to them, do we? It’s caveat emptor for the twenty first century. Google seems to be a long way from the start up that used 'Don't be evil' as theit corporate mantra. Oh God, don't click on that... it makes my eyes bleed just to look at it. Trust me it's there.

Alright, enough totalitarian insinuations from this still proudly party unaffiliated politico. The point I’m really trying to make is this: blogs have always given me the willies because they imply a personal area that simply isn’t there. Anyone can access most of them, and they are simply not in the physical possession of their creators- a hair splitting fact that usually gets lost in the shuffle of the great big e-universe. Which is why I promise this will not be a journal of my personal life, nor a way too much information look into my most heartfelt feelings. I just want to believe that the people I care about will want to hear what I’m doing, what I’m thinking. Ultimately, that is what fuels this fire- the fact that yes, no matter who you are, somebody does care what you’re doing, what you’re thinking. All that said, and privacy (perceived and real) issues aside... sociologically this stuff is simply fantastic!!! I just needed to get that off my chest before I started a blog myself.

To end on a good note- I’m going to be an uncle, again! This time to what I hope will be a marvelously adorable little boy- half Fowler and half lithuanian! My sterling brother is one signature away from being married, so kudos go to him and his now-fiancee Nijole.

Also, in the spirit of embarrassing personal confessions- yes... when I’m really bored I go on you tube and watch douchebags play heavy metal, shred style. I do not know why I do this. I am sorry in the name of all that is musically acceptable. But I would like to karmically rectify my transgressions by offering up this insanely stupid, and insanely hilarious, rebuttal cum parody. Please pay special attention to the way this guy pronounces ‘buddy’. Not bad.

So pictures, actual info about Japan (and what I’m doing here), and other good stuff to come. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

here is a blog.

Ok. So here is a blog. I've never had a blog before. I have mixed feelings; misgivings.

I'd like to think that this will be an excellent way to let people who want to keep in touch with me and/or hear about what I'm doing 'these days' do so easily. Maybe it will save me some typing of multiple emails. I've been pretty bad about keeping in touch with a lot of people, except for Yuri, cause he's always on AIM for some reason. I'd like to think that I am going to write some things that people might want to read, too. Being in another country, after all, is damned interesting to me, and I hope I can maybe convey a little of the experience. Maybe I'll publish a brilliant series of insightful articles that will be collected and printed hardback.

Maybe. Ha!

My prediction, though, is that I will put up a few things: some pictures, some postings, a couple of articles maybe... and then let it share the fate of the literally thousands of geocities pages still floating out in the ether somewhere. No interest to anyone unless they’re looking for an animated .gif of a cat. We'll see how it goes.