I’ve Moved!!

A new life requires a new blog — Heretofore I shall move my blogging activities to the following address:

http://reversedandremandyd.blogspot.com/

Have A Happy Holiday!

Where I went

I stopped blogging before leaving, and rightly so.  My last month of Japan felt more like a year, with seven goodbye parties crammed into two weeks, two earthquakes, irrepressible heat, fifteen goodbye speeches, a kid having a seizure in my last class, and another kid inviting me into the woods to commit double suicide (he was joking, mind you, but that’s not something you really should joke about).

One more trip to onsen please, one more slice of raw horse for the road…

And, well, there was plenty more.  Getting people to sign my goodbye book, getting things ready and situated for my replacement, finding time to see the people I wanted to see, watching the BOE tear my house apart, and neglecting packing.

But now I’m back, back for a week and, as you’d expect, things are different.  I no longer have to choose between good ramen or bad ramen when I want to go out to eat.  Instead, I simply can’t get ramen.  Not too mention that I’m now in law school, which differs from the ALT lifestyle in that there seem to be expectations and it seems to be considerably easier to fail.  But surrounded by all these intelligent people and lengthy reading assignments makes me glad for the journey of the last three years.  Happy memories serve as a buffer against the severe winds of change that pound us in life– indeed the last two months have been a veritable typhoon when it comes to change.  But were it not for where I’d been, I don’t think I’d be able to make it where I am.

Having the Last Word

Today was my final goodbye speech at my final junior high school.  Actually, it was my fourth goodbye speech for this school, which is quite a lot coming from a school that has less than 300 students.  This place has always been one of my hardest schools, because it was a place where I never really knew where I stood.  The teacher responsible for training me passed away three months into my job, which meant that the remaining English teachers had no time to explain what they wanted/expected/needed from me.

My first spring teacher change came, and I was left working with two incompetents and a school administration that was apathetic, if not at times downright hostile.  I recall one idealist young temporary teacher explaining the need to spend more time developing the students’ English skills being rebuked my crusty old men with, “Why bother when the kids can’t even speak Japanese?”  My most incompetent JTE stabbed one temporary teacher in the back, helping the young teacher prepare an demonstration class and then criticizing the class’ organization in the meeting with prefectural officials that followed.  She interrogated another young teacher whenever she came to talk to me.  She also made no apologies for asking people to prepare 50 minutes classes on five minutes notice.

Where does an ALT fit in all of this?  When you’re the lowest rung on a ladder that seems happy to tear itself apart, what do you do?  And what do you do when the kids you not only study with, but live alongside, are the ones who end up getting screwed over because of all this?  Ultimately, I thanked God I knew my Japanese and blazed my own trail for two years, working with the incompentents where I could, ignoring the crusty old men who spent all day in the staff room (easy enough to do), and following in the footsteps of Douglas MacArthur, I invaded.  I helped teach math, I helped teach art, I did calligraphy and contributed to social studies classes.  If there was an open-minded teacher and a willing group of students, that’s where I was.  I did my job and then some.  I didn’t ask for permission, I made no apologies for what I did– I kicked myself free from the system and did what I came here to do.  Finally, this April came and I breathed a sigh of relief as things changed for the better.  One incompetent and the old guard are largely gone– and their replacements are considerably more English-friendly.   Even the remaining incompetent has gone up a notch in this new friendly work environment.  I no longer have to be a renegade to do my job.

But a few members of the old guard remain– the V. Principal and the Office Guy.  And then the Principal’s changed.  The old principal, the one guy at the top who had my back and privately approved of my renegade behavior was gone, replaced by a guy who didn’t know me and who would likely be getting his image of me from the guy who hated me the most, the V.P.  I feel that if I ever get the V.P. to both make eye contact with me and smile, the universe itself might collapse.  The V.P. and his Office Guy stooge wasted no time, insulting me at the beginning of the year party and refusing to call me by my full name during the school opening ceremony, prompting nervous laughter by a number of students, teachers, and parents.

Which brings us to today.  What can I expect from a school whose authority I’ve actively ignored, whose English teachers have had a history of being unhelpful, and whose leadership had turned downright unfriendly?  A handshake and showing me the door may even have been asking me too much.

But I guess, somewhere in all of that, I did something right.  I got to give three very personal speeches to each grade two weeks ago, during morning meetings.  And finally, today’s closing ceremony came.  The new principal was giving a run-down of everything  that has happened this semester.  In his final comments, he included the fact that I’m leaving, something he could easily have overlooked or made light of, but didn’t.  I even got a bow and a “sewa ni narimashita” (お世話になりました), which I didn’t expect.  A student came up, made a speech in English and gave me a bunch of flowers.  And then I got to give my speech.

I could have used this time to ask why I had to have it so hard at this school, why the administration thought it so necessary to be so close-minded, why I had to make myself a virtual outsider just to get my job done, but I didn’t, because the incompetents and the crusty old men weren’t the only ones in this crowd.  The crowd was nearly three-hundred students who would scream my name from across the street if they saw me, and full of teachers from every subject who were willing to give me something to do and something to contribute when my English department wouldn’t– and it had two new English teachers who had been nothing but supportive since April.

So I told the truth– I was happy to be here, I was greatful for the memories.  I explained what these three years mean to me now, and what they’ll mean to me when I go home.  I explained to the students that school is the birthplace of dreams, and that I was glad to be a part of that with them.  I finished with a heart-felt thank you and came down from the stage to roaring applause.  The V.P. sat there with a face that looked like he was eating a whole tub of umeboshi, but it didn’t matter.  The ceremony was closed, and the first semester ended.

And I got the last word.

(Well, unless you count the ‘Safety Discussion’ with the students that followed closing ceremonies.. in which the students were told to avoid drowning in the river and, if possible, not to get bitten by monkeys (wtf?) over the summer vacation season.)

(Oh, and teachers approached and asked if they could use the ‘School is the birthplace of dreams’ slogan in the lectures.  I happily agreed.)

Taking Stock

“If you scream in your sleep
Or collapse in a heap
Or spontaneously weep
Then you know you’re in deep…”
— Barenaked Ladies, Go Home

So it’s time to wind down this whole experience.  In the interests of closure, I’ve started making a list of all the things I’ll miss (and all the things I won’t) about being here and doing what I’ve done for the past three years.  While I’m sure this list will grow with time, here’s where I’m at now:

I’ll miss beach sunsets, mountain sunrises.
I won’t miss sun-up at 4AM in the summer, sun-down at 4PM in the winter.

I’ll miss really great ramen shops everywhere you look.
I won’t miss only having ramen shops everywhere you look.

I’ll miss paying for a $1 Coke with the equivalent of a $100 bill.
I won’t miss everyone traying to pay their share of a $50 bar tab with $100 bills.

I’ll miss the rice fields, forests, waterfalls and fresh air everywhere.
I won’t miss the small clouds of bugs and industrious web-weaving spiders.

I’ll miss everyone knowing who I am.
I won’t miss everyone knowing who I am.

I’ll miss fun ALT friends happy and eager to sing karaoke.
I won’t miss Japanese folks all too eaager to sing Celine Dion, the Carpenters, or Amazing Grace.

I’ll miss the onsens and skiing and winter.
I won’t miss getting out of the shower in a freezing house in winter.

I’ll miss the Japanese friends open to talk about anything and make it interesting.
I won’t miss the Japanese folks capable of talking only about chopstick use, natto consumption, and whether or not it snows in my country.

I’ll miss that student who starts out hating English and then does a 180-degree flip and their confidence soars.
I won’t miss the smart kids who should know better but refuse to talk.  I now understand what Mrs. Biehl meant when she referred to intellectual selfishness.

I’ll miss having my own theme song.
I won’t miss everybody knowing my theme song.

I’ll miss the open-minded professional teachers who are in it for the kids.
I won’t miss the close-minded teachers who are in it because they can’t get fired.

I’ll miss all the oyaji-gags and strange body motions that define Japanese humor.
I won’t miss all the Ohio-gozaimasu jokes.

I’ll miss kids with names like Simon, Messiah, L, Shoot, Hit, and Taxi.
I won’t miss Mark, Demi, Judy, Ann Green, or even Bin.
I certainly won’t miss Freddy the Leaf or that tree in Hiroshima.

I’ll miss the summer festivals, the omikoshi, fireworks over the Yoneshiro River, the Namahage, the kiritampo, the Kimimachi marathon, the town Sports Day, the autumn leaves and the spring sakura.
There’s not a thing about that which I won’t miss.

I’ll miss Monday night taiko, Tuesday night table tennis, Wednesday night swimming, Thursday night table tennis, Friday night parties, and weekend adventures.
I won’t miss Mr. Bean’s karaoke skills, introverted table tennis folk, negating all that swimming with a Dixie burger, losing darts and money at Ad-Lib, or getting utterly lost on Iwate’s back roads.  I will miss the bear jokes, though.

… and the list goes on.

Behind the Times: On Drinking

This country is very good at its own PR– a lot of images foreigners have of the Japanese have to do with an entrenched respect for culture, an environmentally conscious society, with healthy food, long life spans, and technological savvy to boot.  While a case can be made for some of these things, the effectiveness of Japanese public relations can often lead to disappointment when someone, newly arrived, finds littered beaches, fried everything, and lots of people who can’t use e-mail.

There are, however, some places where Japan really is ahead of the game, and one of them is definitely drinking.  From the drinking establishments themselves, to safety, and even the day after– the Japanese have thought out going out for a glass of beer to near-perfection.  Akita, in this regard, is even more special, with the highest alcohol consumption rate in the country and home to some of the richest fire-water that Japan has to offer.

Drinking Out

Like any other country, Japan is one littered with drinking establishments.  There are probably more pubs and dives in this country than beauty parlors, and that’s saying something.  Bars open and close in such frequency that there’s always somewhere new to try, if you but look.  This sort of creative destruction has given birth to plenty of staples to the Japanese alcoholics’ diet, both good and bad.

An example of the good (albeit perilously so) would be the nomihodai, perhaps the best recreational option for impoverished young people surrounded by nothing but rice fields.  Pay a certain amount, and drink all you like for a limited time.  Want to drink yourself into a coma?  Doozo.  You’ll still have enough money left over to pay your hospital fees.  In a country where a regular beer can run near $5, a decent nomihodai can at least make the next day’s hangover a little less painful, as you won’t wake-up to an empty wallet.

An easy example of the bad would be 発泡酒, a beer that, though healthier, is a mixture of rice and wheat– has an aftertaste that ranges somewhere between dandruff and armpit. Even more villainous is the barmaster who claims to be selling real beer, while actually pushing this nasty near-beer on his customers.  Though it’s certainly a good deal if you’re the barmaster, as happoshu runs a lot cheaper than actual, flavorful beer.

Safety

With all this drinking going on in a country loaded with people, narrow roads, dangerous sober drivers, and even more dangerous elderly people crossing the streets– you’d think the Japanese would be constantly running each other over, crashing into buildings, and taking out large lines of preschoolers in adorned in yellow hats and carrying sexist backpacks.

That probably would very well be the case, if, at least, it weren’t for Japanese drinking and driving laws and the government endorsed 代行 system.

For public employees especially, Japanese drinking laws are mercilessly strict.  Drink even a sip of alcohol and drive and you can be charged inordinate amounts of money and will have your name dragged through the mud.  Of course, if you drink and actually cause an accident, things will be even worse.  Your choices are largely black and white.  Go out, stay sober and drive home– or go out, drink and find somewhere to stay.

Or, if you’re going home with enough people, there’s the 代行 (daiko).  Cheaper than a taxi thanks to government subsidy, two drivers come, pick up you and your car.  One driver takes you and your fellow drinkers home, one driver drives your car home.  No risk, nobody hurt, and all for a little extra expense.  Daiko is essentially your own designated driver for hire.

Never become two-days drunk

With all the nomihodai action out there and not having to worry about driving home intoxicated, you’d think there’d be a lot of people waking up on Saturday morning with a massive headache and the urgent desire to stay out of the sunlight or, as the J-folk call it, 二日酔い, or “Two-Days Drunk.”

Nobody enjoys feeling hungover, and if your night included any Japanese sake, your hangover may indeed be severe.

But yes, the Japanese have even found their way around this, relying on nothing more than a dose of Turmeric.  A glass before you go out on the town, and the next day you will feel fine and dandy.

Not About an Earthquake

There are moments when life throws you a bone, and gives you something you can write about easily without much thought or foreplanning.  But there is no better way to confirm your willpower, or your existence, than to throw that bone defiantly back in life’s face.  I will not be a lemming.  There is no way I will write about the earthquake that happened on Saturday morning.  I refuse to tell you that is was a 7-something earthquake down in Miyagi-ken and shook all the way up beyond my house.

I certainly won’t tell you that I had just gotten up, was lying on my couch and, for the first few seconds, thought it was just a large truck driving down the street.  You’ll never know how many seconds it took me to realize that there’s no way a truck could be that long and to head for the nearest support beams in my house to hide under.  You’ll totally be in the dark about how I had a revelation about how old that house is, panicked and headed for the huge driveway outside my house, where my car was dancing back and forth, entirely on its own.  Power lines, too.  There’s no way on earth you’ll hear about how the ground felt like it was going to open up and swallow me whole or perhaps a giant earth-burrowing worm monster was going to take me for breakfast.

No.  I’m not that cheap, and I certainly don’t need to look that hard for something to blog about.  Maybe someday, when I really reak of desperation– then I’ll tell you all you need to know about the Miyagi-Iwate earthquake of 2008.

一発芸人 – The Pinnacle of Japanese Comedic Achievement

Japanese are a funny people.  It’s funny when someone who smokes four packs a day valiantly defends natto by claiming it’s “healthy.”  It’s funny how the shyest most stoic person in the office can suddenly turn into a jovial English-spouting volcano after two tea cups worth of Asahi.  It’s even kind of funny getting the Clinton/Obama question ten times a day (or from now on it will be the Obama/McCain question) from folks who never discuss politics with each other, even when the street is clamoring with obnoxious vans spewing Japanese politician names from loudspeakers to the point where they drown out the cicadas.

But more funny than the Japanese is the stuff the Japanese find funny.  A foreign visitor couldn’t be blamed if, on their first visit to Japan they only saw Japanese comedy and, judging by that, claimed the Japanese were underevolved.  Japanese comedy is heavily balanced in favor of puns, strange body movements, and people slapping each other in the face.  Every comedian, it seems, is limited to one trick in their arsenal of laughs.  Hence the name 一発芸人, a one-shot talent.

Scarily enough, these one-trick ponies are also demons in disguise.  A select few of them even have enough evil power to possess the bodies of Japanese students.  It’s scary– and the Japanese comedians that tend to possess students tend to be the most evil.  Look at some of the big names over the last three years and it’s horrifying:

Razor Ramon Hard Gay (a.k.a. HG)

Came into fashion shortly after I arrived.  As the name suggests, HG was a guy who showed up on TV in tight black leather and acted gay.  Or at least gay in the Japanese comedic mindset, which requires shooting your arms into the air and yelling “Foooo” really loud.  If that doesn’t paint a clear picture, just picture a bunch of teenagers trying to replicate this ad nauseam.  At the height of popularity, HG appropriately had a cover of the single YMCA by the Village People.  Honestly.  HG’s star eventually fell, and gave way to Taka and Toshi.

Taka and Toshi

Their gag, as would be expected, was a string of word plays combined with the skinny one smacking the fat one on top of his head.  Their signature line, 欧米か。 (Are you a Westerner?) was a calling cry to all Japanese kids to hit any foreigner they meet on the head.  A marvelous way to communicate the subtlety of Japanese culture, don’t you think?

… and then came the Anti-Christ.

Kojima Yoshio

A near-naked man shouting crazy absurdities while punching the floor.  For some reason his crazy-man act took flame faster than a misbalanced kanto lantern.  Within a month, every sentient being aged 3-18 was mimicing this crazy lunatic and his disturbing body motions and facial expressions.  Thank heaven they had the self-decency to keep their pants on.

Fujisaki Market

No star rose faster, or fell faster than these two.  Their gag was simple enough– to dance around in exercise uniforms and engage in short sketches that ended with lots of shouting of “Rai-rai-rai-rai… etc.”  The end of each sketch called for more dancing.  Their short is testament to the fact that, even if you’re only funny for five seconds, you too can achieve your full fifteen minutes of fame on Japanese TV.

Edo Harumi

This is the only person I’ve ever seen who made English gerunds the focal point of her comedy.  A gerund, for the unaware, is the ‘-ing’ form of a verb.  Every punchline of hers centers around some katakana cognate of an English gerund, and ending the final syllable with “guuuuuuuuuuuuu!” (read: the Katakana mutiliation of the word “good.”)  At least, it can be argued, Edo Harumi contributed something to the English education of the Japanese people– even if only showing the evils that spawn from katakana can produce.

Oh, and she wasn’t hitting anyone on the head or pretending to be gay.  +10 points for that.

And, the current flavor of the month is….

Sekai no Nabeyatsu

Whose only negative point is that he’s not funny.  Not that that matters.  His gag is to count numbers, and act like an idiot whenever he hits a multiple of three.  And… um… okay, that’s it.  That’s all he does.  Sadly, he doesn’t even have a picture on google images yet.  But, give it a week.  Maybe by then he’ll have his own CD.

Perhaps The Count from Sesame Street can do backing.

The End Game

 

2 Months and 5 days….

and that will be the end of this chapter of my life.  The light at the end of this long tunnel is clearly visible now, and it’s only going to grow in brightness, a blinding distraction to the now and the present.  It’s hard to believe that, when I first came here I swore myself to two years, one year if the winter was horrible.  After surviving the worst winter to hit Tohoku in 80 years, I’m still here.  I can’t help but wonder why.  Why didn’t I pack up and leave after that horrible winter?  Why didn’t I pack up when my self-pronounced deadline came around?

The truth is I don’t have to think about it long, though.  Futatsui has a home quality to it.  Something comfortably familiar amongst the foreign, something irreplacably friendly.  Futatsui is a place I know I will miss, but I know it is a place I can’t stay.  I can’t stay because there’s really nothing left to take from this experience.  It’s waiting for another person.  But it is an experience I will always carry with me, that few people will understand.  And by few, I mean exactly six.  But even the six foreign people who have lived in this town will inevitably see it differently.  It’s very telling, though, that out of the six other ALTs of Futatsui, I have met four of them in person, and know plenty about the other two.  Futatsui brought these folks back– back to the middle of nowhere in redneck Japan, back just to say hello and see familiar folks.

I met Walker, of course, shortly after arriving in town.  As my predecessor he was on his way out.

I met Geoff and Matt in Masahiro’s bar– at different times, mind you.  Matt had a wife and kid with him.  Geoff was a law student, who had lived in Futatsui, and had roots in Ohio.

And finally I met Simon, not one hour after returning from Mongolia, when he rang my doorbell.  It was a shame I was so tired, as I would liked to have been more sociable.

That’s the charm of Futatsui and, while no one else may understand it, it’s that experience that I’m bringing home, and I already know it.  I’m standing at the finish line and just waiting for the race to be over.

So, now what?

What’s left when you’ve already experienced everything you can?  Sadly, there’s still plenty.

This Sunday I have a taiko performance– performing an 8-minute long forearm throbber of a piece with the Futatsui taiko folk.

Sometime in the next two months I have a final table tennis tournament.

And then there’s gaijin sumo– last year my beautiful figure adorned the Yomiuri Shinbun Newspaper.  This year I can shoot for no less than Yokozuna.

And then there’s a swarm of good-bye parties, good-bye ceremonies, and closure.

And the tunnel will disappear and I’ll be in the sky on my way home, ready to enter a three-year long tunnel marked ‘Law School.’

2 months and 5 days.

Yes, the end game has begun.

Making History

“History is written by the victors.”

It’s one of those pet complaints of education here, enough of a complaint that it makes international newspapers occasionally.  Japanese compulsory history education serves as a vehicle for instilling patriotism in the student body.  This patriotism not only stems from Japan boasting about its achievements, of which there are many, but also stems from omission or distortion of the facts.  The underlying morals are that Japan fights only when Japan is the victim, and that Japan can do no wrong.  The most notorious of these is the publishers of the “New History” textbook, which describe the Nanking Massacre as an incident (事件) and downplay the use of comfort women by Japanese soldiers in overseas theaters.

The Japanese government didn’t even admit to the use of comfort women until 1993.

Relatives Koreans who perished in the atomic bomb dropping at Hiroshima had to fight to have a memorial in the Hiroshima Peace Park and, when they were given that opportunity, their memorial had to be seperate from that honoring the Japanese victims.

The bitter taste of making history even creeps its way into the English classroom with the infamous “Mother’s Lullaby” story, a tree’s narrative about the Hiroshima bombing.  The passage is perhaps one of the most annoying for any American ALT, fearful they may suddenly be asked to explain the rationale for an attack that occurred forty years before they were born.

One ALT in Akita was actually led into a social studies class where the teacher had written August 6, 1945 on the board, and asked him what his country did on that day.  The ALT claimed he didn’t know.  The social studies teacher then wrote Hiroshima on the board (or, more specifically 広島, kanji which the ALT could not yet read).  The ALT finally got a clue when kids started making explosion gestures.  The teacher had apparently made her point, and the ALT was then escorted out of the classroom.

Why I’m Lucky

I feel very forutnate in that, in my job, I have encountered this very little.  I’ve been surrounded by fairly open-minded social studies and English teachers.  I attended one of semseter’s first social studies classes to see a teacher who opened with a discussoin about the Olympics in China, the possibility of the Japanese team being booed, and why.  “We did some really bad stuff when we went in there during the war,” he said.  While he didn’t go into details, he wasn’t preaching a Japan that can do no wrong, and he wasn’t telling these kids that Japan was just a victim.  He then went on and encouraged every kid in that classroom to go abroad someday, saying, “there is simply no other way to understand the good things about where you’re from, and the bad.  To see the world for yourself will teach you volumes more than this textbook and what I can tell you.”  The foreign world wasn’t portrayed as something scary or horrible, as the Japanese media tend to do.  There were no speeches on how Americans are loud, fat, gun-carrying maniacs or how Chinese are out to kill off Japan with shoddy merchandise and poisoned food.  The message was that foreign was okay, too– and to understand the foreign was to understand yourself.  Perhaps the message was too deep for the students, but I doubt it.  At any rate, at least the seedling was planted, and I doubt their sense of self-worth or patriotism was harmed in the least.

Also to my good fortune, the few crazy nationalistic types I’ve encountered have been in positions where they couldn’t really exploit their craziness.  They’re the few scant administration types that claim English education is unnecessary because “our students can’t even speak Japanese.”  I’d say it’s time to give up teaching Japanese  if you’re students are hearing it 24 hours a day in every subject (including English), on TV, from their parents, and receving three classes or more a week dedicated solely to helping them tackle their mother tongue.  If, after all that, it is your crazy delusion that the kids can’t speak their own language, complaining that their education is ruined because they spend a paltry 3 hours a week studying English seems silly.

Calling the Kettle Black

But as morally satisfying as it is to chastise a racially homogenous, small island-mentality-saddled country for its nutty nationalistic tendencies, it would be disengenuous to overstate the argument.  The reason I feel uncomfortable when asked questions about the Pacific War (the Asian theater of World War II), is because my World War II education was always centered on Europe.  Coming from a country that’s had plenty of wars and embarrassing moments of its own, it always bothered me as a student that I had to learn about another country’s transgression, namely the Holocaust, every year.   Junior high school was largely holocaust education.  Sixth grade?  Holocaust in social studies.  Seventh grade?  Holocaust in social studies and in English.  Eighth grade?  The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night in English class.  Ninth grade?  Had to read Night again.  Surely something else has happened in the past sixty years that we can talk about? 

The end result is I knew only two things about the war in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima.  I didn’t get a more extensive education on the matter until I hit freshman year in college, when I accidentally got placed in a Japanese History course.  I was always taught that the Vietnam War was a mistake– but I hadn’t heard of things like Agent Orange until I was a sophomore in college.  And, while my government was willing to pay compensation to American victims of Agent Oranges’ effects, the Vietnamese victims were turned away with nothing.

I specifically remember the end of world history in high school.  World history ended at the end of World War II, I was told, because, “After World War II, world history essentially becomes American history.”

There’s no telling what kind of historic permutations CIA secret prisons and accusations of torture will take in future history books, but it may end up as less of a footnote than Special Unit 731 of the Japanese military, which conducted ‘research’ on biological and chemical weapons during the war– on human subjects, dissecting them alive without anesthetic.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

How many Americans are willing to consider the torture of ‘enemy combatants’ with no rights as wrongful?  How many Japanese know and are willing to own up to the human rights violations of Special Unit 731?

The Good News

The good news is that something along the lines of 0.03% of Japanese public schools use the New History textbook.  That’s still 0.03% of a nation’s population being fed blatant disinformation and being brainwashed into narrow-mindedness.  And that figure doesn’t count the number of teachers who insidiously sneak the image of Japan Can Do No Wrong Unless the Victim mentality without using the textbook.  When I first arrived in Akita, my school was working on that Hiroshima-Tree story.  I was asked to make a bulletin about the American perspective on Hiroshima.  I could write anything I wanted, I was told, so long I remembered one thing: Japan was the victim.  Yes, as long as I ignored the rest of the war and kept the myth intact, I could write anything I wanted.

That teacher has since moved on, eternally so, and been replaced by more open-minded educators. 

Over spring break, a Japanese friend of mine put the Japanese whale-hunting controversy this way:
“What’s the point with our government putting up this front about hunting whale for research?  Everyone knows it’s bullshit.  We should just do like the whalers up in Scandinavia.  Say it straight.  We like whale.  Whale is delicious.  We’re going to hunt it, and that’s all there is to it.”

Surely it would be direct, undeniable, and very un-Japanese– but it would throw down the gauntlet and remove the charge of hypocrisy on the whaling debate.  The argument could shift to questions of ethics, animal rights, and practicality.

The day the Japanese can do the same about their history will be the day some of their wartime demons can be put to rest.

Extra reading for the interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Society_for_History_Textbook_Reform
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_textbook#Junior_high_school_history_textbook.2C_2005
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_orange

So I went to Mongolia

and… (whoops!)… I forgot to tell a lot of people.  So, if I didn’t tell you, my apologies but, yes, my Golden Week was spent in the land of Mongolia, revered for its rolling steppe and grassland covered in horse bones and animal excrement.

For the people I did manage to tell, the biggest question that came flying back in my face was… “Why?”  Why Mongolia?  What the hell is over there that’s so damn important?  There’s no Ankor Wat, there’s no sandy beaches, there’s no cheap masseuse offering a happy ending… why Mongolia?  There were lots of reasons, of course.  But for some people, Mongolia just calls your name.  It’s the closest thing in Asia to taking a time machine– once you leave Ulan Bataar you’re surrounded with nothing but hills and nomads for miles.

Mongolia is twice the size of Texas and has less people than Connecticut.  It is the country with the lowest population density on earth, with 1.4 people/ sq. km. (Those 0.4 people were really scary looking, by the way.)  It’s a country with a nomadic, relatively free spirit that spent over the last half century occupied by one of its neighbors, either the Chinese (who they hate) or the Soviets (who they hate slightly less, though they seem to mistake every white person for a Rushkie anyway.)  It’s like no other place on earth, with no large body of water to control the climate, and no large corporations breaking down the door to globalize a measely 3,000,000 people. 

And then there’s the stars.  One of those few things I’ve wanted to see before I die is a sky full of stars and devoid of light pollution.  I’ve gotten the closest to that in my life in Mongolia, and the base of a frozen lake under a clear sky (Mongolia has clear skies 256 days/year), with the lights out.  When the sky is that full of stars, they really do twinkle like they do in old Disney movies.

I rode a horse the size of a hobbit, traveled through sandstorms and across shoddy wooden bridges that were missing a few planks.  I climbed rocks and hung around in an ice cave.  I walked the sand dunes of the Mongol Els.  I ate enough mutton to put me off me for awhile.  I walked along a completely frozen lake in the early morning.  I’ve seen a Buddhist temple with some of the bloodiest and most violent religious artifacts imaginable, I’ve eaten lamb cooked from the inside with hot stones.

Most imporantly, I met some of the nicest folks I’ve known in awhile, and seen some of the best hospitality, from people who have very little to give.  I spent nine days in country and never once had to argue about the price of a bottle of water, never had to argue about how much a taxi ride would cost, and almost never had to deal with beggars asking for a hand-out.  For people who have so little and have been through so much, it was amazing how friendly they could be.

And that, if you must know, is why I went to Mongolia.