Oh no!

It has finally happened. My vacation has finally gotten in the way of my blogging. Well, I guess I will take a break this week and write two next week! I going to do some "Best of 2011" blogs so look forward to that!

An Appreciation

For the first time in a while, I have had several days around Christmas to spend with my friends and family. This has not always been the case. There is something odd about working on Christmas. Well, actually, for some people, working on holidays is just a regular part of their job, but I guess what made it weird for me is where I am working, no one actually really cares that they are working on Christmas. In Japan, Christmas is more about cake, party's, and maybe a date than anything involving three wise men, a drummer boy, or a really quiet baby. I don’t really mind working on Christmas as long as I am at least around people. The only bad Christmas for me would be a Christmas alone.

Which is why I want to send an appreciation to all those people working on these holidays. I know how it can feel like to have to work while everybody at home is celebrating. It is the type of loneliness that is easy to make a person bitter, but if it is any consolation, I think it is those people who can’t take a break this holiday which allow people who really need to touch base with their friends and families in order to touch base with themselves. When people and go out to buy their loved ones a present or go out with their friends to a restaurant during the holiday break, people have to work those hours instead of doing the same things for their  loved ones. It is that sacrifice that I want to thank people for.

Thank you to all the people setting up the lights at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and the people working at Lake Theatre, and the servers at Burger Boss, and the countless other people working this holiday season to bring sparks of happiness and provide services that serve as the conduit for memories for years to come.

And with that, happy holidays to all and to all a good night!

Portability

So in about 14 hours, I am going to go on a flight to the US. Because of that, I won't be doing a very thought out blog today, but I did want to do a little ode to portable devices. As someone who moves around a lot and is currently in a long-distant relationship, being able to play my favorite music, listen to the news, and maybe just play a game on the go is such a boon. It is those little things that make living in the middle of the inaka Japanese country, with only a fraction of the conveniences that I came to expect being a boy of the suburbs, so much easier. There are many critics and people who seem to dislike their whole collections of music, or libraries of books, and what-not available on small devices. I agree that it does contribute to a society that seems to value convenience over value, but in the end, with out these conveniences people like me just wouldn't experience or learn about many things outside of my bubble. Being able to download and read books has made reading so much better and i find myself challenging myself more and learning more as a result. Without devices such as the kindle, I don't think I would have ever read books like the ones done by Oliver Sacks, which I will stand by as necessary reading for anyone who likes to think themselves as "educated." Being able to listen to new music and play new games on the go brings my spirits up when I am away from my loved ones, and makes exercising everyday not only possible, but a joy. I will be always be very thankful of the free podcasts done by NPR, Marc Maron, Radiolab, and many others for making things to listen to that are both entertaining and mind expanding. It has made all the time where I am going somewhere or walking somewhere so much better.

Now with about 13 more hours to go, I find myself confident that I will be able to keep sane on that 15 hour flight to my friends and family back home. Heck, maybe I will even learn something on the way! I am hoping to finish my book (on the kindle of course) in order to write a review on my blog during my vacation. I will try my best to keep my blog going! If not though, I hope everyone has a great holiday and I'll blog at ya' in the new year!

Vacation!

In about a week and a day, I will be going back to the United States of America. I am really excited to see family, friends, and to eat some good old fashion American cuisine, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. It is something I often feel when I return to the states, but this time it feels a bit stronger. It is probably because I usually wait only a year to go back, and this time the wait was about 6 months longer. I also feel like since I have changed so much in the past year and a half, that perhaps those familiar people and places will have changed as well.

Who am I kidding though? Once I come back, I will probably go back to the person that everybody knows back home, and then the people will say that one phrase, “Wow, you haven’t really changed that much at all!” or some variation of that. For most people, how a person acts and defines themselves actually starts at a very young age. Any changes after that usually just fit the base that a person built in their childhood. This is not to say that how a person is raised determines their future (or should I say fate?), but it certainly can effect it. But does that mean I haven’t changed at all? I don’t think so. It is just that what has changed is just not all that apparent sometimes.

Maybe a part of that is also a part of confirmation bias. People are more willing to see things that confirm their hypotheses than to see anything that defies it. Or maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe，in my heart of hearts, I really want to be seen as the same person I was a year ago because I value the familiar and respect the years of memories I have had with all those people. Perhaps it is that familiarity that allows old friends and family the ability to talk to each other as if nothing had changed that allows them to be intimate enough to be able to see what indeed has changed.

It is that mix of old and new I am hoping when I come back. It will probably be harder this year to get with friends and family due to everybody living so far apart, but I’ll try my best to see people. Hopefully my peeps have not been turned into pod people or some other science fiction metaphor for communists, but even then I hope that I would gain some knowledge about how our friendship could have possibly affected this new direction in life. I just hope I can live up to people’s expectations while possibly jet-lagged, possibly sick, and possibly have the worst back pain (those airplane seats for 14 hours can be a killer), but hey, the best way to see who your true friends are is to see how they act when you aren’t 100%. Or is that just the best way to find out which one of your friends has the best medical and/or psychological training? I guess there is only one way to find out! See you on the other side of the Atlantic!

A Linguistic Fate

Every time someone asks the question, “does fate exist?” the follow up question I always want to ask is what really is the difference between “fate” and “cause and effect?” Fate would imply that there is this grand tapestry that if only we were to glimpse at it, the future of humankind would be clear. While I have no proof that this tapestry doesn’t exist, I implore people to actually observe the things around them before jumping to such conclusions. I sometimes wonder if people really look around them and think of all the different little things and forces around them that are effecting their everyday lives.  For example take, oh I dunno, Linguistic Relativity.

Linguistic Relativity is the theory that the language people speak can influence their thought. Then, following that thinking, all the different languages can potentially lead to many different influences on thinking. For example, take the word “amaeru” from the Japanese language. It means to passively love someone or something. Seeing that there is no real single word equivalent in the English language, it is hard not to think that people speaking Japanese perhaps find the idea of passive love more important than the typical English speaker.

Which is interesting because it is not to say that “amae” or “passive love” doesn’t exist in English speaking countries. Old American newspaper comics such as Family Circus, Dennis the Menace appeal come directly from people’s need to passively love something. These comics most of the time fore-go attempting to be funny like their other newspaper brethren and opt to be more “cute.” Not cute just in appearance, but the type of cute that comes with the inexperience and helplessness of children. By reading the foibles of the Keane family from family circus, the comic strip attempts to appeal to the audiences love of taking care of children and relate to the needs and worries that their own children have (for if people want to “passively love” it is not too much to say that there are also people who desire to fulfill that passive love actively).

So then, if there is a need for “passive love” in America, how come there is not a single word for it like in Japanese? There are many theories I could relay, but my personal opinion is that, starting from kindergarten, Japanese education emphasizes on more emotional realization than intellectual pursuits. From my own experience in Japanese kindergartens and from reading Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited (by Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa) it is not hard to see that the very base of Japanese schools is for the students to have a strong emotional base to work from and have empathy for all things, big and small. American kindergartens (again, from my own experience and the book) tend to shy away from anything too emotional. It is then a process of connecting the dots of having that strong emphasis on emotional health in Japanese education can easily lead to the recognition of “amae” while American schools surely deal with children’s emotion, but it is not nearly as explicit.

Then I suppose the question is: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is this emphasis on emotion influenced by the language, or is the language influenced by the culture? Well, a little of both I suppose. I am not personally sure which came first (and it would take an expert historical linguist to even have an idea), but what I think is that no matter what came first, the cultural emphasis and the language propel each other. They both seem to reinforce each other in order to attain their goal. It is this “reinforcing” that I believe people need to be more aware of. There are so many cultural things that people take for granted and assign to “fate” instead of analyzing themselves and realizing that their very language can trap people sometimes. Perhaps fate exists somehow in this universe, but until people recognize all the things affecting them, I think it is best to leave “fate” to the philosophers.

PETA Problems

Recently, PETA decided to target Mario from the Super Mario Bros. series for the tanuki (raccoon dog) suit that Mario wears as a form of power up. PETA is targeting Mario for this because it supposedly endorses the wearing of fur. The allegation completely misses the idea that the “tanuki” in the tanuki suit is more referring to the magical tanuki in Japanese legends than actual raccoon dogs, and because of that Mario is more becoming the tanuki (or perhaps he was one all along?) than wearing any fur so to say. In the end though, it is hard not to be cynical about this recent accusation by PETA. Since Super Mario Bros. recently had a new installment of their game on the 3DS, PETA is most probably targeting Mario because it is a ton of free press they can get from various websites complaining about how ridiculous they are being. PETA seems to employ the “all press is good press” philosophy for while their message is being sent throughout the internet, it has been peppered and salted by criticism and skepticism on almost all the sites that are broadcasting the news.

Which is actually too bad, because I feel like PETA has a good point sometimes. I feel that how people treat animals is something that everyone should be aware of. Especially now that we know two things: 1.) Some of the most potent epidemics are coming from animals 2.) How a person treats an animal can reflect on their potential empathy for all things (including other people).

So let’s start with the first thing: biological science is confirming more and more that some of the biggest diseases are coming from animals. This is the reason like “bird flu” and “swine flu” are named as such are because they actually came from birds and pigs. Something I was not made aware of until recently is that all flu viruses come from birds. Viruses and germs can travel from animal to animal and they eventually mutate and evolve to survive in the environment that they find themselves placed in. The problems humans run into is that with the rapid slaughter and consumption of birds, pigs, and many other animals, it is much easier for these microorganisms to travel around and become stronger to the point of worldwide problem. While it is easy to assume that people take the right precautions when killing an animal that none of the blood and whatnot gets into the person slaughtering it, the fact is that it only takes one person in the process of killing an animal, shipping it, and then eating it to do something wrong and get a disease that kills thousands if not millions of people. Take HIV for example. Scientists have traced that deadly epidemic that is ravaging people from just from one person killing a monkey that just happened to have the virus that could infect people. Imagine, if that person just had more thought and been more careful, perhaps HIV and AIDS could have been something only in horror stories. Maybe with this thinking, it is easier to see where PETA is coming from.

Even more than the unfortunate probabilities that face the consumption of animals, it is hard not to look at the way we treat animals sometimes and think of how it reflects on ourselves. It has been said that kids being cruel to animals can be an indication of a lack of empathy and an early warning sign for psychopathy. The idea is that people, especially children, tend to over-identify and empathise with things that can’t really return their feelings. It is then that empathy we exercise to relate and socialize with other people (and hopefully this leads to treating them kindly). I guess there is no real proof that treating animals badly as adults is bad for human empathy, but when I hear about things like how KFC treats the chickens it serves in buckets, I get a little sick in my stomach. I can not say with absolute authority if cage free eggs taste better or worse than the eggs coming from a caged chicken, but I would rather pay the premium if I know that those animals are being treated humanly. Maybe I am the one over-empathizing here, but I just feel there is something wrong about treating animals horribly in order to get a constant stream of their meat on store shelves. It reeks to me of greediness and a growing feeling that people are losing the ability to cope with inconvenience. Also, if businesses can only survive by treating animals poorly, than should those businesses exist? I really don’t think so. The problem for me I suppose is I am not sure if these sentiments are coming from a real rational place or if they are just my feelings of empathy that come with positive memories of the animals most people don’t really care to interact with.

Maybe that is the same problem that PETA as a group is going through. They are letting their strong feelings get ahead of actually trying to make a good argument against violence on animals. While I do not necessarily agree with everything they believe in, I do think can serve an important reminder that people need to be aware of the consequences of our actions against animals. Maybe if everyone were to take that awareness and let ourselves care about all living things big and small, then PETA would not have to get so crazy and criticise the actions of a fictional magical plumber. 

On Fluency

To be honest, being fluent is something I have always felt a bit insecure about. I have studied the Japanese language for about 7 years, and have lived in Japan for about 3 and a half years, but whenever I ask myself, “Am I fluent in Japanese?” I begin to doubt myself. It is not that I can’t speak or read the language, but it is the fact that I never feel like I am good enough. Whenever I speaking Japanese, most of the time I feel like I get my point across, but every so often I run into somebody that can’t understand me at all, and I begin to wonder if no one understands me, and they are being too polite to say anything. I understand that, English being my native language, that I can not help but have an accent. No matter what I do, that is something I can’t really change. Sure, I can go into a voice imitation of some Japanese people around me or a Japanese celebrity or something, but in the end, it doesn’t feel natural. Like many people in Japan learning English, I have to deal with my limitations of being a non-native speaker.

In a round a bout way though, I have found that this struggle has made me much more sympathetic to English speech in Japan. Since English is required learning in Japan, there are a whole lot of Japanese students who study English, but only a percentage of them become fully able to hold a conversation with other English speakers. I find that a lot of native English speakers in Japan tend to look down and make fun of a lot of the English speech in Japan but there is a part of me that just feels like that is just wrong headed. Though, in their defense, Japanese people tend to laugh at their own English all the time. Though when Japanese people do it, it is self-deprecating, but when native English speakers do it, the jokes sometimes come off as mean spirited. I realize now that a lot of that stems from my own struggles with Japanese. My Japanese is worlds better than before, but I remember after I graduated high school it wasn’t until my friend called a baby “kowaii” that we realised that kowaii means scary, while kawaii means cute. I studied for four years before I understood that. Perhaps that is why when a Japanese student says “rook” instead of “look,” I am more sympathetic than amused.

Though I suppose fluency is really about confidence. It is the ability to speak quickly and confidently to express yourself. I feel like I can do this, but sometimes if I want to ask about something I am not sure what the word is in Japanese, I just don’t talk about it. Does it count as fluent if I only talk about things I know all the words for? I actually took a point after thinking about that to talk about bigger issues with my Japanese colleagues and friends. It ended up okay, I got said what I wanted to say, but it wasn’t as intellectually fulfilling as I wanted it to be. Maybe if I really want to get to the level of fluency I desire, I need to really challenge myself and go the distance; argue about something I really feel passionate about and stand my ground.

It is that passion I think that grounds true fluency. Being able to talk about the weather is all fine and good as far as language goes, but until I find something I really want to discuss and need that high level language in order to make a conversation, I am not going to be satisfied. I would rather talk in broken Japanese about the effect of the warlord Oda Nobunaga has on the modern day salary men, than talk in perfect Japanese about how boring my day was. It will be that drive that will propel me to learn more Japanese and become a true master in the language. Or at least propel me to read a Japanese comic book now and then.

Sound Novels 101

Ever since I have heard the term “Sound Novel” (actually the term I heard was “Visual Novel” which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense since all novels are “visual) I kept on wondering what the heck they were. Whenever I would try to find pictures or a good explanation of what was really happening, I came up kind of short. Whenever I would then look for them in Japanese shops, I would run into the “erotic” game section instead, and I began to think that “sound novel” was just a way to disguise inappropriate material. The more I lived in Japan though, I began to realise that this wasn’t really the case. My first real foray into sound novels was reading the Japanese video game magazine Famitsu, and reading the review of a sound novel called 428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de (428: The Blockade at Shibuya) and seeing that they gave it a perfect 40/40 score. I began to wonder what was really up with this rising form of entertainment was really about.

Sound novels usually are PC games (that are then ported to various game devices) that essentially scroll the text of a book at you while music and pictures are shown and played in order to influence the readers reading of the text. Sometimes they have the text read to the reader, but often for both immersion and budget reasons, they rely mostly on music and cartoon pictures to establish mood and atmosphere. Due to the multimedia aspect, they usually play out like a TV serial (which is to say it has a heavy focus on dialog with often convoluted or “pulpy” plots, though this varies from novel to novel). The audience that is most targeted in Japan is  20-30 something males, with deviations and stand outs like 428 that brake the mold and appeal to a wider audience. As these are becoming more popular, people can see their influence on various manga, TV, video games, and other Japanese pop culture media.

As their influence spreads, I first began to wonder why they are so popular. Perhaps it is a sign of the Japanese language itself, with its many complicated characters of kanji and reading capacity supposedly going down every year (also known as the “Nihongo Midare” or “The Disturbance of the Japanese Language”). Also the natural high-context nature of the Japanese language (1/3 of the Japanese language is homonyms which makes context very important to understand what people are saying) makes Sound Novels much more appealing to the Japanese audience. While that is true, it is also very likely that the modern era is mostly about more fast paced TV, movies, and games, and books have unfortunately been left behind by a lot of people. Sound novels can be seen as a natural evolution of books, trying to stay relevant in an age where people seem to have less and less patience for anything not completely stimulating to multiple senses.

Another thing influencing their rising popularity is the fact that Sound Novels have a relatively small budget compared to most other popular pop culture media and therefore can thrive in a niche. Groups of five or six people can make a visual novel, and thanks to the democratization of media on the internet, they can be very profitable. This low budget nature of the sound novel also means that they tend to explore more taboo subjects such as violence and sex. Especially in Japan, censorship can be a huge blockade (even at Shibuya) for a lot of media, but strangely enough, Japan seems to turn a blind eye towards sound novels. Though Sound novels have a huge advantage of being able to write a description of a mature scene, instead of showing it, but that doesn’t really cover why other things aren’t censored. I personally believe Japan can be a little too harsh with its censorship sometimes, so it is all good to me.

What I have discovered about sound novels is that of all the anime, video games, and manga that proliferate Japan, these new multi-media novels are becoming honestly the most interesting emerging thing coming out of the Japanese pop culture scene. While many (if not most) are still limited by the male audience they are pandering to in order to get noticed, the potential for innovation in storytelling and telling stories that are usually shunned by the mainstream, makes it a vast form that has only scratched the surface of bringing back the literary experience back to cutting edge relevancy. Even when I read Higurashi: When They Cry, a pulpy Japanese horror story centered around making the readers like a group of Japanese school children, and then doing horrible things to them, the joy of reading while the author puts in their own touches to further immerse me into their narrative, I found fascinating (to the point that I could overlook the mediocre to poor translation). As Sound novels become something that Japan wants to experience (and as that popularity slowly reaches to other parts of the world) I can’t wait to see if the medium reaches the potential I think it has.

If you want to experience sound novels for yourself, I would probably recommend Phoenix Wright for the Nintendo DS and iOS. While it is not necessarily a strict sound novel, it liberally takes aspects of the medium and makes them its own. I would also recommend Higurashi: When They Cry for PC and iOS, but due to the strange mix of really violent mature things happening to immature people, I can only advise looking into it if you are an appropriate age and have the stomach for it. 9 Persons, 9 Doors, 9 Hours also gets my recommendation, but since it is essentially Saw but with anime characters, it is also hard to give a full recommendation. Well, anyway, happy reading!

A Humble Proposal

Due to vacation and lack of portable computer, this blog is a little last minute, but that is how it goes sometimes. So, in the Japanese tradition, I WILL DO MY BEST!

When I broke my foot around 6 months ago I found myself in the hospital. This was the first time I found myself hospitalized, either in Japan or in my home country of America. It was only for a month, but it was a lot harder than I expected it to be. For one, I didn't realize how much you need to bring in a Japanese hospital (they actually tell you the stuff you should bring, but I guess I was too out of it after the injury to really read it too carefully) and how little there is to do there. There was a TV room and people did visit me from time to time, but the TV room was always filled with older, sicker people, and there would be just stretches of 5 hours when I just wouldn't have anything to do. I was too sleepy to really concentrate on a book, but too awake to just go to sleep. It was these down times that really hit me the most.

It was in these times that I really appreciated having video games as a hobby. While I love reading, and my kindle was great for the hospital, video games helped me both keep my mind active and deal with not being able to move around and be active. Keeping that sort of movement and activity really helped me keep my spirits high and made daily life in the hospital easier to deal with. As an adult, I could have just did nothing for a month and been fine, but it was such a nice thing to be able to turn on Super Mario Brothers and feel happier about the day. While being an adult helped me realized that I was fine, I wonder how I would have dealt with the day to day monotony and inactivity if I was younger. How could a child deal with all that?

That is why I implore people to consider giving to Child's Play via the Humble Bundle (click here to check it out). It is a charity that gives money to hospitals to pay for video games for the children to play. While you yourself may not play video games, or find them enjoyable, kids of my generation on have enjoyed video games and it brings them a form of entertainment that makes staying in a hospital bearable. The bundle also helps the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which is a non-profit organization that defends peoples' rights of free expression on the internet) and helps independent game makers get their games out. While I support all these causes, people can just donate how much they want to whatever they want. I also enjoyed the games that comes with them if you give any amount, but in the end, that is just a little nice bonus to the charity that you can give peoples' rights, indie game makers, and sick children.

This charity drive does give several opportunities to share, I hope that everyone will at least consider giving, since it is almost that season! And by "season" I mean Thanksgiving, not Christmas, as all the coffee shops in Japan are trying to convince me is right around the corner.

The "horror" in Japanese Horror

I heard my first classic Japanese horror story probably sometime in my high school Japanese class. It was the story of Hoichi, the blind biwa player who was tricked into playing his version of the battle of the Heike for ghosts. The ending then has a Buddhist priest writing sutras all over Hoichi so the ghosts won’t haunt him any longer, but the Buddhist priest forgets to write sutras on Hoichi’s ears, so the ghost rips of the ears of Hoichi because without the protection, the ears was the only thing the ghost could see. The ghost takes the ears as proof that he tried to get Hoichi, and Hoichi lives the rest of his life blind and ear-less (though he can hear if I remember the story correctly).

I found this story to be rather perplexing. While it certainly has the trappings of a horror story with ghosts and the ripping off of ears, I never found this story scary. Mainly because if ghosts haunt blind people who are master biwa players, I am pretty much safe. The horror that I found with most scary stories I grew up with is the elements in those stories were based on the idea that I should be afraid because the “monster” in the story could get me, and do horrible things to me. The majority of Japanese horror stories seem to be so separated from the common person that I had a hard time believing that anyone would find this scary.

Coming upon Halloween, and living in Japan, I decided to check out more modern Japanese horror and see if I could maybe relate it back to classic Japanese horror and see if it could help me understand the “horror” of it. I came upon the story Enigma of Amigara Fault (click link to read yourself!) and it dawned on me where the true “horror” is in Japanese horror. In the Enigma of Amigara Fault, what is scary is the idea of someone you know and/or love giving in to something that could not only hurt them, but kill them. How scary that irresistible urge is to give in to something that they very well know could be the end of their lives (or something worse). The more I think about that, and the more I abstract it out of its original context, I realised that the whole “irresistible urge” could be so easily applied to a loved one with a drug problem, or something else that can be tantalizingly harmful. It is then it came to me, Japanese horror isn’t scary because it could happen to you, but Japanese horror is scary because it preys on the common foibles that all people have.

Take the story of Hoichi: while on the surface it is just a story about a blind biwa player being taken advantage of by ghosts, it can also be a tale about how being too trusting can lead to an unfortunate situations, even with help (or perhaps due to help). It is the observations on these common aspects of humanity that can give both classic and modern takes on Japanese horror their timelessness and scariness. The horror comes from realising that the tragic characters, despite their best efforts, couldn't escape their fate because of the common human traits we all can share. People would like to think that if they are put into a a scary situation they could escape, but Japanese horror seems to be all about showing that through just being human, they are fated to succumb in the end.

I think the reason I have enjoyed Japanese horror, and why I felt the need to explore what makes it appealing, is because the scariness, at the heart of it, is more existential and psychological than just scary due to the threat it could imply on the audience’s life. Maybe because of the existential nature of this terror that leads me to think maybe these classic tales of Japanese monsters, ghosts, and other creepy phenomenons are somehow connected to the terror that comes with the earthquakes, typhoons, and other natural disasters that hit Japan. Much like those classic scary tales, natural disasters can hit with no rhyme or reason (despite what some misguided people may think) and hurt people that may not even “deserve it.” Maybe those horror stories then offer a sort of escape from people’s troubles, but in a way that still relates to their real fears in life. And that, in my opinion, can be the best sort of stories.

"Dreams"

 When I found myself wanting to blog more, the first thing that I thought about was the comic strip “Dreams” from xkcd. Xkcd is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language” that I can’t really stand. I would not say that I necessarily hate Randell Munroe’s xkcd, because that would be like hating the local mom and pop record store; they are doing what they want to do with lives in businesses that are profitable against the scaling odds against them. The problem I have with xkcd is that it encourages a sort of child-like, nerdish optimism about life that I just find rubs me the wrong way. I try not to mind other people enjoying it but whenever someone posts it online or quotes from it, I find myself having to suppress an urge to go “WHYYYYYY!”

Perhaps it just says more about me than anything. I just feel that the brand of humor Mr. Monroe shows on xkcd isn’t really funny because it doesn’t really reflect how I see the world or reflect on any sort of truth. The world of xkcd seems to be a world were nerds and smart people can outsmart and be witty about everything around them, to the delight of everyone. In the end, it feels fake to me. Humor without truth to me isn’t really funny. Also, without truth, it fails to be really insightful, or really have any point to me all together. Sometimes it feels like it just wants to be “cool,” and as Patton Oswald said, “The enemy of comedy is cool.”

But, let me show the strip in question

In the strip “Dreams” (note: I have censored it for the sake of work safety, but you can view the original at http://xkcd.com/137/) it starts off with one bumpy headed guy warning the Smooth headed guy to be careful what he writes on the internet because a future employer might read it. The guy at the computer then asks “When did we forget our dreams?” which the bumpy haired one asks “What?” and then the sitting stick figure stands up and launches into a rant about he has been living in loops and doesn’t want to water down his ideas just to fit in. The rant ends with a “F#&K THAT S&%T” in order to contrast to the intellectual sounding speech before it.

It is hard for me to read this comic strip and not think, “Poor bumpy head guy.” As far as I can tell, here is this well meaning guy, concerned about his friend/coworker/whatever so much that he goes out of his way try and make him aware that he should be conscious of everything he writes on the internet because it can be found and can be taken out of context and may hurt future career options. It is one of those things that people are finding out more and more in this digital age. The internet is super convenient, but that convenience comes at a cost. It is almost too easy to write whatever you want, and there is no context, no policing, or whatever to help you figure out what is appropriate and what is not. It is so easy to sound like a complete jerk on the internet, and unlike real life, there can sometimes be a complete lack of signs to tell you that you are making a huge social mistake.

So instead of appreciating this advice and taking it in the vein it was given in, he launches into his whole rant as if the bumpy headed man himself is to blame for the smooth headed guy’s perceived wrong, as if the bumpy head one is the guy forcing him to “fit into the mold.” I assume that the “what?” the bumpy guy asks is supposed to be an inquiry of the meaning behind the Smooth head guy’s words, but I read it as more of a “What did I do to deserve this.” Smooth head guy even goes as far as to assume exactly what the bumpy head guy is thinking (“And no, I don’t know all the answers”) and in the end feels comfortable enough with his position to use expletives. It is the kind of thing that makes me wonder what the next line in that dialog would have been...

Smooth Head Guy: F&%K THAT S&$T
Bumpy Head Guy: Uh...okay. Well, I am just saying that some people might find your thesis on the morals of having relations with dolphins may be misunderstood by most people, and I just thought I might want to give you a heads up. I will leave you alone now.

And in the end, that is really why I don’t like xkcd. Just because you are nerd and might be technically right (he is supported by freedom of speech after all) that doesn’t mean that you should. It is a big distinction that in the real social world has no real easy answers. It is that sort of ambiguity and the struggle to try and figure out what is the right thing to do, if there is a right thing to do, that I feel is a fertile ground for both comedy and insight. The way that xkcd tries to simplify and just not care about those ambiguities by dismissing any urge to censor himself is just sort of boring to me. Sure, limiting yourself for the sake of others is not the way to blossom creatively, but not even going through the process of thinking that what you send out into the world can define you feels very lazy to me.

In the end, every blogger (myself included) has to come to grips that they are writing for an audience and the various limits that someone who writes on the internet has to put themselves through can actually be very helpful. Someone who is creative has to find an audience to listen to them and finding that audience, and finding the balance between defining your audience through your work or your audience defining your work is a very tricky one to navigate sometimes. I find myself being thankful that my parents read my work because while it does not force my subject matter, it does force me to try to write articulately enough that at least the heart of the work can be shown through even if not all the context is understood. It is a big reason why, even though editors are hated by many a writer, it is those same editors that can make a good piece, into a great piece.

Xkcd may not invoke any truth in me, but I am sure that it invokes humor out of somebody out there. Just one thing: if you have to rant about how your work life is watering down your dreams, please leave us socially conscious bumpy headed guys out of it.

Consistancy

“Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.” Neil Gaiman (Stardust)

Consistancy is one of those things that people generally don’t praise. No one really rewards people for showing up for work everyday or smiling every morning. Maybe a big part of consistency is having it expected from people. Assuming that people are going to show up somewhere or do a specific action is something that falls into the category of social norms. People end up wanting to be consistent so they can “fit in.” Though in the end, consistency is only rarely appreciated when it happens over a long period of time, and even then, one can only wonder if all that time and work can really be rewarded.

For me, consistency is one of those things I always find myself appreciating more than most people. I don’t buy music singles anymore and always try to buy full albums, I like longer books and more involved movies, and generally like longer entertainment in general. I like something I can sit down every night for an hour and reap enjoyment from. I also find myself much more sympathetic for people who have worked everyday of their lives and trying to get by, than people who tried to hit the jackpot once and failed. Maybe it is that Illinois suburb Midwestern boy in me, but I rather learn how to fish than only being able to eat the best fish in the world only once.

The more I think about it, the more I realise how much this love of consistency has sort of permeated my tastes. Things like reality television and pop music, which rely often on moving from fad to fad and emphasizing being new over quality, don’t usually appeal to me. Though I do admit, this is making me sound like some old fogey that loves Family Circus just because it’s in the newspaper everyday (fyi: Family Circus the longest running, most not funny comic strip as far as I can tell, seriously, I don’t think that comic strip has even made me smile once). I love weird things that challenge my tastes, but it is the act of going into those challenging things and trying to really appreciate what they are trying to express that I derive enjoyment from. I am not really a guy that is about consuming something just to be weirded out and then never try it again.

So I would implore everyone out there to look at the consistent good things in your life, like a good radio show, book series, video game, or whatever and appreciate what they bring into your life. Is it a source of comfort to you? Is it something that brings something new and interesting to your door step every so often? Or perhaps an American Life podcast where I lifted that quote at the beginning? Well, then maybe you should show your appreciation somehow. Even if it is just reading a blog from a guy you know that he posts on every week.

Better Door Than Window

One problem I have been having lately is that I really want to write more, but I find myself too busy to really have any time to really form anything substantial. My free time has been rather sparse lately and free time that I do have I feel more like relaxing than working on something creative. It is unfortunate, but a big part of the problem is more of my high standards of what I send out there on the internet.

If i have noticed any trends on the internet, it is that people are more apt to watch, listen, or read something that is short than dedicate themselves to something longer. It doesn’t seem to really matter of the media in question is any good or not. In the end, people would rather see several dumb youtube videos than watch a good movie on the same service. So many times I have shown someone something that they like the first five minutes of and then they stop watching, not because it stopped being good, but mostly because they don’t want to spend the time to experience it. Then they proceed to watch 20 or so short youtube videos instead. Granted, maybe it is just people being nice and just not liking the longer things I show them, but I feel like it is more of a question of how people have been conditioned to consume things on the internet.

I feel like I am tooting an old horn here, but it is frustrating sometimes to spend your own time trying to create things for people to enjoy but having them ignored, not because they are bad, but because their attention spans aren’t up to the task. There are many times I feel I would almost enjoy sometime tearing down something I created if only because it was proof that they actually put in the effort and not only consumed it, but analyzed it to the point that they can criticize it.

Alas, in the end, writers write for an audience, not for themselves. So I am going to try and write something every week, but maybe make it less ambitious for both the benefit of my free time and the audience who doesn’t want to read my long rants on often silly things. Though, I only have myself as an editor, so I can’t guarantee any miracles. SO LET’S GET THIS ROLLING!

So the name name for the blog is “Better Door Than Window,” which is a saying commonly said to me when I would be standing in front of something people were looking at. I am not sure if that is just a common saying, or if people thought that I imagined myself with window qualities (or perhaps people saw door-ish qualities in me), but it is something that I always remember. It has gotten to the point that I have somehow made it into something much higher, something with much more meaning than it probably should have.

You see, being a window just means it frames something; something to look at or admire. With this blog, I want to not just bring things to attention, but have it make people think. That is the goal of this blog, to bring up stuff I think about a lot (perhaps too much) and hopefully that will make you, the reader, think about it too. My plan is to post every Friday, so let’s open the door together, shall we?

Musings on After the Quake

In one of my favorite books, Shogun by James Clavell, there is a passage where one of the characters goes on a soliloquy about how Japan is an “island of death.” Granted, this is coming from a character that in the story wants to commit suicide pretty much the entire story, but there is a little bit of truth in her speech. Japan’s history is filled with war, massacres, and suicide. Read a little more into her speech though, and you’ll find that she isn’t really talking about wars and killing, but the battles that the people have to face, the biggest and most imposing being the natural disasters that can face Japan on a daily basis.

Though, Shogun being a historical novel, the biggest thing about natural disasters back in the 17^th and 18^th century is that when an earthquake and or tsunami hit, it could swallow entire towns. It is not just that it could erase entire homes and families, but also any trace that the people there even existed. It is the sort of existential terror that has been in Japanese culture for ages. Throughout history, Japan has had many different ways in dealing with this both practically and culturally. There is a reason why classical Japanese furnishings usually imply movable, put away-able furniture with paper doors and walls; it’s because those things are easily replaceable. With all the typhoons, winds, and disaster waiting at every turn, the traditional Japanese life is full of evidence of trying to deal with the elements. Japanese concepts like Wabi Sabi (the art of making new objects look old) and Mono no Aware (the transience of things) are rooted in the idea that in Japan, you can’t really rely that something one day will be there the next.

While I was reading Lafcadio Hearn’s Kororo: Japanese Inner Life Hints, which is primarily about 19^th century Japan, it surprised me to hear him describe Japan much like more modern scholars described Japan in the 1980’s. Japan being an “economic miracle” is not nearly the modern idea as many people thought it was. Hearn ascribed the Japanese market doing very well to how mobile the average Japanese person was. If resources and/or money dried up in one place, a Japanese worker could pack up and move to another place without a second thought. It was the flexibility of the average Japanese worker that Hearn attributed the Japanese economic success both at home and internationally. He also remarks that the Japanese worker’s ability to easily react and move at a moments notice is also why Japanese people have been able to adapt and take on foreign cultures as their own. One could then argue that it is state of always being prepared for the worst as far as natural calamities and disasters go could have been what has made the Japanese who they are to themselves, and to the outside world.

While Japanese history and culture is filled with natural disaster, that doesn’t make the latest quake and tsunami that hit the north of Japan any less terrifying. In the past, these natural occurrences could be accepted as a part of life in Japan, but now that people have settled and built more and more modern structures on land, the damage and loss of life is much more pronounced than it was. It is honestly hard for me to watch whole structures get washed away, and impossible to watch if I think that there may be people involved. That being said, I find it a little surprising that various journalists and other professionals find the Japanese reaction to this to be as calm and collected as it is. I have read many people attributing this to almost formless ideals of the “Japanese spirit” but I am not so sure that the idea that Japanese people did not loot and cause violence in the wake of the disaster to be such a mysterious ideal that outside people can’t relate too.

The fact is, even Japanese pop culture is filled with disaster and people surviving the aftermath. Even one of the latest, and most popular children’s film from Hayao Miyazaki, Gake no Ue no Ponyo, dealt directly with people surviving a tsunami (though because it is a children’s movie, it did not really deal with the more violent aspects). One of the most popular shows in the last 20 years Evangelion is about a Japan surviving one disaster and preparing for another one (though both are rather extra-ordinary in nature). Even on a surface level, there are many examples of Japanese culture trying to deal with the specter that is dealing with the idea that everything could change in an instant.

Even myself, though I am miles and miles away from being physically affected and no one I knew personally was physically hurt, I found myself having to deal with the emotional repercussions of what hit Japan. It wasn’t until I read Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake that I began to understand why I felt this way.

I actually ran into After the Quake while I was writing my thesis for my college degree. I only skimmed the first story and used it as an example, and did not really give it much thought after that. After the quake and tsunami hit, I decided that I should read this book to see if I could relate to it in some way. After the Quake is a collection of short stories Murakami wrote after he heard about the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and moved back to Japan. It is mainly about people outside the physical range of the quake (in some cases, even in different countries like Murakami was) and how they deal with the quake.

In that way, After the Quake became an absolute revelation to me, and I would recommend it to anyone trying to emotionally sort out their own feelings or trying to understand the feelings of others. It is about people trying to piece their lives back together when they begin to realize that perhaps the ground underneath their feet is not nearly as stable as they are lead to believe. It is about waking up to something that is utterly terrifying and realizing how much people kind of “fall asleep” to most of the real troubles of the world. To be completely honest, it would be rather challenging to try and give a real critical review of these pieces for me because it is a book that takes a nebulous feeling I had and gives it shape. Even at its weirdest, After the Quake manages to provide insight into dealing with people’s emotions during this recovery period.

In one story, a giant frog quotes Joseph Conrad by saying that true terror is the kind that men feel toward their imagination. It is a great quote because while it mainly is about how people manage to whip themselves into frenzy because of their own worries and thoughts, but it has a subtext that the giant frog is sort of talking about himself. The idea that a 6 foot frog exists and can talk is real is a sort of terror that speaks to how people define reality can be based on something that is completely false. I think for a lot of people, having what they thought as unfounded terrors and fears come to life is too much to handle. While it is very troublesome that after effects such as the current crisis with the nuclear plant in Fukushima were partially due to the nuclear workers relying on their own predictions rather than internationally accepted way of predicting disasters, it speaks to the very human folly of not excepting that the very depths and fears of your imagination have a root in a very real place. It is something that makes the foreigners returning back to their native lands make a lot of sense. Much like Murakami returning to his home after the Kobe quake, realizing a person’s fear makes them want to hold on to those things most precious to them, which for many people is friends and family at home.

For me, I am not sure if it is due to my education or my naivety that I stay in Japan. Though I also recognize for me it is the path of least resistance. No one in Southern Kyushu as far as I can tell is panicking about the north, and the only real physical effect is that at every store now you can donate to the relief effort. I remember even before coming to Japan joking about my friends about a documentary called “Japan Sinks!’ (translated title) about how, with the rising sea level, that Japan may not even exist in the future. The joke being that I am pretty much devoting a lot of time and energy into a country that may not even exist one day. That joke was my way of dealing with the fear that my dream is to live and work in a country that is not the most stable in the world, and in turn, was my way of dealing with that uncertainty. I am not sure how many other people working here from other countries were aware of Japan’s balancing act of dealing with the natural occurrences that are always on the doorstep, but it is something I do not blame people about leaving when they realize it. I am not sure if I lost my home or someone I was close to the tsunami how I would even react, but that is why Japan is filled with literature and media to deal with those emotions. There is a reason that Japanese culture mainstays such as Mono no Aware, the idea that things are truly beautiful because they are transient and cannot last forever, remain the important concepts that they are today.

I think my realization of why I want to stay in Japan came to a head when I was talking a walk and decided to stop at a local convenience shop. As the lady was ringing up my items she remarked how happy everyone is because they are at peace. She used the word “heiwa”(平和), which made me realize she was talking more about a more serious type of peace, and not just frivolous happiness. It then made me think that instead of being afraid of what could happen, I should be happy for what I do have. It is a tough pill to swallow sometimes, mostly because I don’t want to seem insensitive to those who are suffering, but the only thing I can do is try the best I can to help those in need and keep on living. Maybe in the end, that is the only thing any of us can do.

Musings on Final Fantasy 7 and Crisis Core

It is funny to look back at Final Fantasy 7, and wonder how this game managed to gain so much popularity. It seemed to be such a cultural event. I still remember going over to a classmate`s house just to see how far into the “Shinra Mansion” he got and how to unlock one of the secret characters. For the most part, I imagine the big reason it gained so much traction is mostly do to its, at the time, amazing graphics, and the many television advertisements. But at the same time, I wonder if a lot of the lasting appeal of Final Fantasy VII is just the hugeness of it. It spanned 3 discs with over 60 hours of potential game play. The amount of things to do, people to see, and secrets to uncover was perfect for those school ground discussions. Where to find things, who to use, what tools to equip, it was a phenomenon that took my middle school by storm.

Which is also the first time I realised some of the biggest problems about discussing games with people. For one, trying to have a discussion without spoiling the story for the other person, and then trying to relate and compare your experience with someone who might of played it completely different than you. FFVII seemed to be built on the idea that a person who starts the game should have a complete different idea of the story and characters by the end of the game. While that is normal for any sort of story with character arcs, FFVII seemed to relish in completely turning the table on the player. The magical cat who can tell fortunes? Its actually a robot controlled by a triple turncoat. Main character who is supposed to be a cool, bad-ass mercenary? Nope, not really. My favorite character switch up is how they flipped the “nice, naive girl who is a white mage and lives in a church” and the “tough tomboy childhood friend who you never got with because she was ‘one of the guys’” cliche by making the white mage very forward and a bit of a brown noser and then making the tomboy childhood friend who fights with her fists much more quiet and demure (which doesn`t make a ton of sense seeing that if a person can go toe to toe with huge behemoths, they probably have enough self-confidence to speak up that maybe her love interest might be an insane puppet that is doing the main bad guy`s bidding against his will, but I digress). So anyone beginning the game will either try and avoid talking to people who beat the game or just deal with the fact that they are just going to spoil the story for themselves.

Well, it has been over 10 years, so anyone spoiled by the game by now, at least you have the comfort knowing that FFVII allows a whole lot of choice for such a linear adventure. Depending on what characters you bring with you on your quest to save the world, the context for the events are almost completely different and can give such a different interpretation of the story. For example, when I played the game, I wanted to get the two secret characters in the game and have them on my team (it helped that the secret ninja girl was the only girl around my age I could have on my team and I totally thought she was the bee`s knees, and the other was a secret vampire, and I could not say no to a secret vampire). As it turns out, the makers of the game did not really plan for many people to actually pick those people on their team, so most of the big events in the story don`t really involve them too much. In fact, the ending doesn`t even include them. It honestly gave me a weird context of aloofness to the game. Whenever something tragic or important happened to one of the characters, because I never spent any time with those characters, I just didn`t care as much. Later when I played the game a second time with characters more central to the story, I just felt more involved. Maybe it was just because in the end, people feel something for characters they have invested time into, whether or not the characters are actually really sympathetic in themselves.

But that is one of those things that make video games the medium they are. Unless you invest yourself in the story in the characters, you may not even be able to progress, not to mention actually caring sincerely about them. FFVII is also a world that does a good job of providing a plethora of activities that rewards players investments, and that I think is a good reason why such characters as Cloud and the gang have managed to still be iconic ten plus years later. People have invested so much of themselves into the game that they want those characters and that world again. Fans all over the world have asked for more FFVII but for a while there was nothing.

Though, it is actually not hard to see why. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the producer of the game, has been quoted as saying that when he made the game, he was in a dark place due to his mother dying. A lot of the game`s themes, about dealing with death, dealing with yourself, and the nature of the planet probably influenced by his own struggle with the grief of dealing with his mom`s death, so not wanting to necessarily leap to the opportunity to reiterate on the game is understandable. It probably wasn`t until he made the Spirits Within movie, almost bankrupted Squaresoft, and was bought out by a rival company Enix and Mr. Sakaguchi was, for all intents and purposes, ousted from the company before FFVII was revisited again.

The “Compilation of Final Fantasy VII” (also known as the marketing blitz that Square-Enix attempted to exploit the popularity of the FFVII) includes 4 products, Advent Children (a feature length movie), Before Crisis (a cell phone game), Crisis Core (the PSP that I`ll talk about eventually), and Dirge of Cerebrus (a 3rd person shooter). The problem with most of the “compilation” is that it completely missed out on the point of FFVII. The compilation wasn`t about dealing with death, or the conservation of the planet, or how memory can define you (aka what the subtext of FFVII was), the compilation became mostly about focusing on the characters that people fell in love with. While character studies are not necessarily a bad thing, this wasn’t so much “character studies” as much as they were character exploitation. The problem I felt that plagued most of the compilation is that Square-Enix felt like they were focusing on much more trying to fulfill what the fans wanted the games to be instead of being something worthwhile on their own merits. Having at least checked out the entire compilation there is one of the titles that actually manages to break out of its chains of marketing and becomes something I think is actually worth playing on its own. Crisis Core takes one of the most interesting aspects of FFVII, the role of how memory can define you, and gives it a new spin.

But first, an explanation of the role of memory in FFVII. In FFVII, the player is lead to believe that Cloud, the main character, was an part of an elite private military force SOLDIER owned by the Shinra Coporation. When the game starts, he claims that he has quit and now is a mercenary for hire. As it turns out, not only was never part of SOLDIER, but he could not even qualify and therefore became just a lowly infantry man. Then, partly due to experiments preformed on him when he was captured, and partly due to his own trauma, he took on the life of his elite Soldier friend Zack. This is not revealed until late in the game, so while it is not really covered about what type of person Zack was, one could extrapolate Zack`s personality through Cloud`s fake memories. Cloud`s story and character development takes on the theme of how memory and the narrative people create can make a person, even if that narrative is actually completely false.

And what better way to continue making a commentary on memory than to make a prequel? Crisis Core (for the PSP) is the prequel to FFVII that allows the player to take control of Zack. So instead of relying on Cloud`s memory and self deception to try and figure out who exactly this Zack character was, the player is shown exactly what the deal with Zack was. The game takes this as an opportunity to “flip the script” in a way, and instead of the main character being a brooding young man, unsure of who he really is (ie Cloud), Zack is rather cheerful and social. While the flip on character types may seem like maybe a bit of a obvious choice, it allows Zack to interact with series mainstays such as Sephiroth (the main villian, also I am rather surprised I managed to write so much about FFVII without mentioning him) and the Turks and get different sides of their personalities. While that is not really a great driving force for people not familiar with FFVII it does add to what made FFVII fun in the first place: it was an adventure. Crisis Core was really the first (and only really) game in this continuum that was about trying to show different sides of things instead of just showing the one side that fans fell in love with.

If Square Enix has any real leftovers from all their years of publishing, it is the fact that they love polish, and Crisis Core is dripping in it. The only real problem is despite the rather good voice acting and localization, boy is it melodramatic. There is humor here and there (Zack sure is a wacky guy) but for the most part the story beats involve fake Shakespeare-esque quotes taken from a fake play, asking out loud what it means to be a hero, and enough angel feathers to stuff a whole warehouse full of stuffed pillows. For me, that is also part of the nostalgia. I am not sure why, but I enjoy melodrama. Maybe its because my right brained, left-handed self is just wired that way, but it adds a certain amount of transparency and vulnerability that just doesn’t happen in real life. It also serves as a helpful tool to giving voice to characters that were previously voiceless, both literally and figuratively. It made the motivations of all the characters, old and new, have a weight that just wasn’t there in the original game. Sephiroth’s change from a heroic soldier, to a cold blooded killer makes much more sense in the context that Crisis Core provides. It takes advantage the memories the player has about FFVII, and instead of having Cloud having to change his assumptions about the past, the player is forced to change their perception of the world that they have invested themselves in. That, in the end, makes it a valuable experience playing after and before FFVII (though I would not recommend playing either of these without the other, they either way they lead rather well into each other, though playing from Crisis core to FFVII may be a little hard do to the graphic and localization downgrade). Crisis Core does what FFVII fans wanted for years, which is just another game that compliments their experiences and expands on them.

Say what you will about Final Fantasy 7, it has been praised to high heaven and sent to low hell by various critics and people around the world, but it still does hold up in a weird way. Maybe it is because a whole lot of the game is about memory (who could forget a game about memory?) or because maybe for kids like me it was the first time something that really spoke to them about saving the earth and dealing with death in a way we could understand. Either way, it is hard to just scoff at all the time and work it took to create the world of FFVII. It probably has had more missteps than hits at this point, but in the end, it provided me hours of entertainment and something I could invest myself into, and that is all I really ask from my entertainment. Good job Final Fantasy VII, even if they never do that remake that fans have been clamoring for, it was a fun ride on that Golden Saucer coaster.

My Little House on the Prairie

“Don't it always seem to go. That you don't know what you've got. Till it's gone?”

That lyric has become such a cliche in my life. As I go through the changes life brings me, that chorus sort of just hangs around me, getting louder and louder whenever I lose something. It gets sort of depressing, but like all cliches, its bite has been defanged for the most part. Nowadays, I only really think about not appreciating things while I have them when I get some new sort of physical ailment. Especially canker-sores. I fall into this haze of accepting this new condition, and almost forgetting how life was before. It is like a new roommate, or a new co-worker, whether I like it or not, I’m stuck now. Then when it goes away, I get this initial rush of joy, but then I just go back to normal, like nothing ever happened. One day I am coughing up phealm and have headaches, the next day I am perfectly fine, and I just keep going. Sometimes I think that my body just has a normal mode, and an ad-normal mode, and when anything goes wrong, I switch just to cope with the situation. The modes never meet, they just sort of compartmentalize the troubles and give this sense of normalcy no matter the situation. The “modes” give a sense of continuation, a sense that I am just going forward and any abnormalities are just part of the journey. The problem then becomes I don’t learn anything from it. Sometimes though, there are situations so dire that you can’t help but learn a little bit about the world.

In the month of January, I was dealing with having no running water in my apartment. To be honest, it is a little hard for me to give an exact timeline, or an exact length of time. When I lost my water, it wasn`t about planning out my week and looking forward to things, it was about living from day to day, trying to figure out what I need to do to make my life a little more livable.

I live in the middle of the country Japan. Japan, the land of vending machines, cell phones, and cramped spaces, but I just happen to live in just the right mix of long dark roads with nothing on them, dodgy cell phone reception at best, and vistas of unoccupied wilderness as far as the eye can see. A perfect vacation spot for those tired of the busy-body city life, but not exactly what a native English suburb boy is prepared for. When I first came here, all I could really think of is how many mountains there are and if I have ever seen so money mountains in the some place area before.

So, with mountains, usually comes cold. Lots and lots of cold. Cold and snow. Which, to be honest, I usually don’t have a problem with. I came from a suburb of Chicago, the land of two seasons: winter and road construction. The only reason road construction stops during winter is because there is way too much snow to be productive. The country of Japan actually gets less snow than the White City (especially this year) but the difference lies in insulation. Japan is also a land of paper doors, which is to say, with all the earthquakes, typhoons, and other weather phenomena, it is just not in the Japanese building practices to build buildings with a lot of insulation. Japanese people have gotten used to this with reliance on stoves and air conditioners that also spew heat, but as a foreigner, these conditions were not exactly welcoming. There are times at work where I am stuck in one room because the rest of the building is much too cold to go without a coat on. In my 3rd year, I have gotten a much thicker skin about the luck of central heat, but it is in my apartment that I begin to break down.

My first year here, I relied mostly on too many blankets and laying in my bed for warmth. As I have gotten my bearings, I now have an electric blanket, a mini heater, and of course the aforementioned dual purpose air conditioner (which not only cools and heats air, but can dry clothes it you put them near enough, but suppose the same goes with a stove, one would be advised to be careful with that sort of thing). But even with all that warmth technology, I was on the edge. If one piece of the puzzle falls apart, it becomes less of a home and more of a cold trap. So when my running water stopped, it almost felt like a nightmare.

It is a weird feeling when you turn on a faucet and nothing comes out. I almost felt like maybe I somehow turned the facet on wrong and there is a weird trick I need to “unlock” the flowing water. I tried jingle and jangling it, but nothing. I tried the bathroom, nothing. Then the bathroom; surely the toilet is fine right? I flushed the toilet and found to my horror that it wasn’t filling back up. My apartment began to feel like a shack; just a place I put stuff in, not really one that I live in anymore. The only water I had left is the water left in my Brita filter. It became like the oasis in the cold desert of my home.

At first I wasn’t sure what to do. I kept hoping that it was a one day thing and once the weather got above freezing that it would just come back. I figured the water was just frozen or something and that all I had to do was wait. I waited two days and nothing happened. I began having to go to public baths and buy more prepared foods. I began to get depressed, how could I possibly live my 1st world lifestyle with no running water?

Then I remembered something. I began to remember books like Hatchet and Robinson Caruso. As fascinating as those books are on their own, what always hooked me into those books was trying to imagine how I would react to being transplanted in an environment where I would have to work hard just to survive. Granted my situation was really nothing like those (it is even hard to draw comparisons since I still had electricity) but then it dawned on me: this is My Little House on the Prairie! The much loved book turned TV series has been a mainstay in my life since I read the book in elementary school and still had a place in my heart. My sad situation became an opportunity for adventure.

First, the key was to figure out how the heck to a get water. While my running water wasn’t working, I lived right near a river. I daydreamed of getting buckets and a pole and carrying the buckets like they people used to (still do?), but this became rather impractical as it was extremely cold outside and I had no real buckets. I searched my apartment and all I found was a huge empty gas canister (also a full one which I am still not quite sure what I am supposed to do with it, get a gas oven?). My first plan was to just go down to the river and get water. The gas canister proved to be too unwieldy for walking back and forth, so decided to just drive myself over there. Not exactly reflective of my “dire straits fantasy” I was conjuring in my head, but that is the difference between fantasy and actually getting something done; you have to use all the tools available to you.

The problem was that it was hard to get my car super close to the river, and problem two is that I sort of became embarrassed. Having to maybe face my neighbors as I was stumbling and out of breath just seemed embarrassing. The romantic idea of carrying water from river to home started to dissolve as I was getting closer and closer to execution. I walked the river side to see if I could find a good access point. I was driving down and when I pass my work place, I saw that by the side of the building there was a hose. “Jackpot!” I thought to myself (well it was a bit more profane than that, but joyous nevertheless). I ran to my supervisor to ask if I could use it. Granted, I don’t think getting water from a hose was necessarily something the Ingalls could have relied on, but there was a sense of discovery that I just don’t experience very often in everyday life.

So I brought my gas canister and empty water bottles I bought the days before and already used from the convenience store, and filled them all. I packed them into my car trunk and got this feeling of really accomplishing something. I saw the problem, and now I was fixing it. I got my gallons and gallons of hose water and brought them to my apartment to use. I had three missions: 1.) clean the dishes for they were all dirty 2.) refill the toilet and 3.) use the water to make dinner. As I started to wash the dishes, I began to realize just how much water I use on a everyday basis. I had to use a quarter of a big bottle of water just to clean a small dish! What really floored me was when I began to refill the toilet (which became a much higher priority when I realised what could happen when you use a toilet without being able to flush) and flush it in for the first time in a while. I had to use half the huge gas canister for one good flush! I could not believe how much water the toilet alone takes up. It almost boggled my mind. As I was doing my chores and saw all the water I had to carry up to my third floor apartment whittle away, I began to realize just how much water I use on a daily basis. It is something that I probably could have reasoned out and thought little of before this incident, but having all my hard earned water go down the drain (sometimes quite literally) made an impression on me.

More than just water use, I began to get an insight into what people did before books, movies, and video games. They were not just sitting around being bored, they had to earn every single resource they relied on, and that takes time. Going time and time again to the hose, filling up the bottles, and doing things I needed to get prepped for sleep and work the next day, sucked up all my free time. It was go to work, work to get my water in order, do chores, and the only rest I got was when I finally got to bed late that evening. In a way it was very satisfying, but I was losing a sense of comfort and joy that I enjoy in my admittedly cushy lifestyle. When I finally talked to my supervisor and got my co-workers to come over and help fix the water, I was rather relieved that they could fix everything (they even magically fixed my TV somehow, even though they never touched it, I just turned it on after they fixed my water and it suddenly worked again) but I felt like a part of my life was moving away from me. I wasn’t the woodsman anymore, I was just the normal guy with nothing to do anymore. I felt a odd sense of loss, but with it, came a lesson of understanding. Though it may be only a little bit, I feel like I understand how to live life a little better now.

And isn’t that what living is all about?