I have become a meme.

At least, I hope I have become a meme.

We can start there. Last week, Ozu High School won the prefectural soccer championship. Pretty easily. The game was four to zero. We all sat in the auditorium and watched it together, during the school day, as it was live streamed on YouTube. I told you that Ozu is good at soccer, and that their soccer team is like a small army. I now know that, if the students are to be trusted, which they are not, although when it comes to soccer they’re probably a reliable source of information, that the Ozu soccer team has over 170 members. 170. There are something like eight hundred kids at the school. So about one in five students at Ozu are on the soccer team. And that sounds about right. Some of these kids wake up at 4 am to make the trip to Ozu and be there on time for morning practice, which starts at 5:30, and don’t get home until 8 or 9. I have to respect their dedication, even if I think it is totally insane. I couldn’t do it. These kids work at least 10x harder than me. It is really like being in the army. I’ve never been in the army, I have no idea what’s it really like. I imagine it is to some degree what an Ozu soccer player experiences. But anyways, last week, I was in the school gym, as I often am, working out with the boys, which is a lot of fun, because they think that I am the strongest human that they’ve ever seen. At least they treat me like that. I am stronger than almost all of them, but it’s just because they’re tiny twinks. Compared to them, I am truly a muscle-bound freak. I was in the gym, and I asked them about the soccer tournament, because I knew that that last weekend all school sports had had their tournaments. This is a difference between Japan and the US, where almost all of the sports have their tournaments at the same time. Baseball, I think, may be an exception. So I knew that the soccer guys had played last weekend, and I asked, and they told me that they had a game tomorrow, during the day, and I could watch it on YouTube Live, on a channel called Green Card. I’ll put the link here so you guys can check it out. The next night, after work at Shoyo, I went home, gorged on my nightly soba, and then grabbed my laptop, sat on those steps in front of Nagata sensei’s apartment, hooked up to that sweet, sweet WiFi, and searched up Ozu’s semi-final game. That game was the semi-final, I forgot to say. This was the second time I had ever watched Ozu soccer. They’re a good team. They won that game, 4 to 1, one of the goals being an outside of the box upper-90 shot. Sexy stuff. I was impressed, and I thought, hey, I’ll leave a little comment. I don’t often comment on YouTube videos. I’ve actually maybe never commented on a YouTube video. By the time I get to any YouTube video, there are already about a thousand witty comments or memes, and there’s no need for me to add my far less witty comment to the noise. But on this video, the comment section was just a barren patch of white, and so I thought they deserved something. I just really had an urge to comment, then. So after thinking for about one and a half seconds, keeping it short and sweet, I wrote, 大津強いね！Ozu tsuyoi ne! Ozu is strong! I then closed the laptop, thought nothing of it, and returned to my apartment.

The next day, I wasn’t going to have class, but Atsuko sensei asked me if I would join her. When we walked into class together, I was deep in thought, I’m sure over something incredibly trivial, and paying little attention to anything. By the time I had reached the podium, to set some textbooks down, I realized that I had heard something, something that was meant for me to hear, when I walked in, and that was, 大津強いね！Several students had said this, when I walked in, at a volume slightly above conversational level – not shouting it at me, but loud enough for me to hear. And it took my brain a few seconds to realize, that’s what I had commented last night. Waking up from my trance, and saw seven or eight boys in their seats, looking directly at me, and I said, “大津強いね！” My comment made an impression on them. My YouTube profile is linked to my gmail, and so my YouTube username is my actual name, paired with a clear and unmistakeable picture of me, so it’s obvious that I was the commenter.

I thought that was a funny reaction, but it still didn’t sink in, the scope and reach of my comment, until later the next day. That day, Ozu was playing in the prefectural championship, and we all gathered in the gym to watch it on an enormous screen. In a normal year, we would have all gone to watch the game live, at the stadium, but this was not a normal year. Some of the teachers, the young bucks, had been designated cheerleaders, and were decked out in some electric blue Ozu swag, and I went over to them and said, “Hey, nice shirts.” They said, “Want one?” And so I walked with Dragonball Z sensei (he’s got spiky porcupine hair) to go get one, and as we were walking, he stopped and turned to me, and said, “YouTube.. Nice comment.” And now I thought – ok, spiky sensei knows about it, 1-5 knows about it.. how many people have seen this comment? So after the game, I sat down at my desk, pulled up the video, and saw that that video had 15,000 views (which blew my mind, I had no idea so many people were interested in high school soccer), and my comment had 7 likes, which is by far the most likes I’ve ever had on a YouTube comment, and my comment was still the only comment on this video. So any student, parent, teacher, whoever these 15,000 people are, whoever watched that video, would have seen their school ALT commenting, 大津強いね！And at 15,000, that could be the whole school. At least all of the soccer players would know about it. And the soccer players, especially, but the high school boys in general, really enjoy a good catchphrase. A good meme. They had already memed me with it that day when I walked into class. For my part, I’ve tried to help cement it as one. After the championship game, I pulled up the recording on YouTube, and again commented, 大津強いね! I think it stands a good chance of being adopted.

I say that the students really enjoy a good catchphrase, for this reason. The way that they first sounded off the 大津強いね！ in class, in unison and at a level just loud enough to catch my ear, took me back to a time early in my ALT career, a time where my days were filled with the words, “Hey guys.” Or, if the students were really in the mood for it, “Hey guys, we have a gift for you.”

Any foreign man, woman, or child working in the Japanese English education system will be familiar with this phrase. I now know that it is nationwide. In the beginning, this “hey guys” meant nothing to me. In my first classes, I noticed that at the start of class, and sometimes throughout class, when there was individual work or group time, I would hear this, and I could tell the students wanted me to hear this, this “Hey guys.” And at first I thought, maybe they were imitating me, because I did typically refer to the class as a whole as “guys” and when I want to get the attention of the whole class, I would sometimes say, “hey guys”, although I have since switched to “hey kiddos” being more gender neutral, more fun, and less likely to induce a “hey guys” in response. At first I thought it was because of this, but I don’t say hey guys all that often, and the students were saying it in every class, and in the hallways, whenever they ran into me, and it was just too frequent for them to be imitating me, I knew it had to come from something. I just didn’t know what. They would say it, and I knew they were looking from some reaction from me, but I don’t really internet, and so their meme fell short, and eventually, when they saw that Steven sensei doesn’t get the joke, they stopped using it. But sometime soon after I met Parker, which was now many months into being in Japan, he brought this up. He said to me, one day, “Do your students ever say, ‘Hey guys?'” And I said, “All the time.” And he said, “Do you know where that’s from?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “It’s from PornHub.” (Disclaimer: Parker is not a PornHub user.) And that was the day I found out that I was teaching a small army of PornHub fans. Apparently, at the beginning of videos, there is an ad, and the ad starts off with a woman, saying, “Hey guys, we have a gift for you.” That phrase has now since become a litmus test for seeing whether your ALT watches PornHub or not, although now that the meme has spread across the country, many ALTs know about it without having seen the ad. It’s a quick and effective way to try and elicit some kind of reaction from an ALT, and a cheap and easy way to get your lads to giggle. I’m sure it’s thrilling for them, to be sitting them, ALT walking into class, and thinking, “Ok, time to hit him with the ‘hey guys’, let’s see what he does!” I should not have been surprised that all this time my high school guys had been reciting the lines of a PornHub advertisement to me, but given how widespread it was, I didn’t think it’d be something that sinister. It really felt like every damn guy in the school had said it to me at one point or another. I thought it was just a line from a popular video game, like Fortnite or something. But, I still wasn’t too surprised. When it came to crass, I learned quickly with them. I could give a few examples of what I mean by that, involving trees, and hand gestures, and words that I would be ashamed to write here, but to keep this family friendly, I’ll hold off.

You may be thinking, Steven, are you trying to keep your blog family friendly? We’re already talking about PornHub. And I’m not really trying to keep it family friendly, but PornHub is something that will probably come up in your family. Everyone in your family, if they have any access to the internet, and any slight curiosity, must know about it. It’s 2021. PornHub is here and with us. And here’s the thing about PornHub, which is really what I think about when I think about all of my high schoolers being PornHub fiends, is that PornHub ranks quite highly on the list of companies that propagate pain and suffering. PornHub actually profits off of it. Pain and suffering is worked into the PornHub business model, along with straight up illegal activity. PornHub ruins lives. People have committed suicide because of PornHub. PornHub is a horrible company. PornHub is everything that is wrong with capitalism. If you’re interested, read Nickolas Kristoff’s New York Times PornHub pieces. While you could debate about whether free and easy access to porn is a good thing or not, there is no debate to be had over PornHub being one of the worst companies on this planet. So, of course, I’m not happy that all of my students are quoting PornHub advertisements, but I do get it. PornHub being the destroyer of lives that it is, the “Hey guys” thing, it’s funny. They are funny guys. And, they are high school guys. With phones. They’re still maturing young bucks, and they can’t be expected to know (although I would expect them to care) about the evils of PornHub. I did dabble with the idea of letting them know, choosing PornHub as the focus for my next edition of the school newspaper, The Ozu Times, and I even had a great title worked out for it. “Hey Guys, We Have A Problem.” In the small font below the main title: It’s PornHub. I thought that was clever. But I don’t think it was the move. That may have been quite an awkward paper for the homeroom teachers to hand out. It wouldn’t have survived the chain of approval anyway. All of my papers have to go through a rigorous approval process, passing up that long chain of command, from my supervisor, to the head of the English department, and the several head honchos of the school, all the way up to the principal. That would have been a fun conversation to have. Still, someone’s got to educate these kids, and if we ever talk about it again, I’ll let them know what I think. “PornHub, bad company. Very bad company. Black company.” Even those dinguses can understand that.

So that’s why I’d love it if 大津強いね！ could become a new catchphrase. It would be a much more wholesome one. It doesn’t have the edge, of the “hey guys”, or the nationwide recognition, or the appeal of being in English, so I don’t imagine it would last, but it’d be nice if it did, if I had inspired a quip to replace the dreaded “hey guys” with.

I now have a little collection of one offs I’d like to share with you. In lieu of any greater story.

I have taken to walking a certain route through my neighborhood. There is a park not too far from my apartment complex, called Shouwaen. It’s named after the Shouwa era (昭和), which was, I believe, three eras ago. This era is the Reiwa (令和) era, the last was Heisei (平成), and then before that, Shouwa. Do you know about this? In Japan, depending on the establishment you’re working with, you may write the date as being, for example, the day I write this particular section of this particular blog post, 10日6月2021年, or, 10日6月令和3年. When I submit paperwork, the year is typically written as the year in the era, and not the, what is it called, the A.D. year. The first year in any era is the 元年 (gannen), basically meaning ‘beginning year’, which I am proud to say I was here for Reiwa’s. That was a fun year, because I got to write 元年 on everything. If I leave on the last year of Reiwa, then it would be a convenient way to convey to both the Japanese and anyone who is familiar with the Japanese eras, how long I had lived in Japan for, if they ever ask me, as I could just respond, “令和”. The park is called 昭和園, Shouwaen, and it’s a nice park. It sits up on a hill, and from the top of the hill, when there are breaks in the trees, you can look out over your dominion, that is Ozu valley, and see all the way to the farthest ranges to the south, which I was admiring the other day, and wondering just how many tens or hundreds of kilometers away they were. They’re so far off that if they didn’t have just a jagged ridgeline, you might think they were clouds. Just a soft blue hardly distinguishable from the sky itself. There’s just something special about mountains. I remember talking to a guy, in Tokyo, and we had a special affinity, both being readers, and wearing the exact same pair of glasses, his name was Patrick, and we were talking about what drew us to Japan, and I mentioned the mountains, and he said that he thought he couldn’t or wouldn’t want to live somewhere where there weren’t any mountains. I’m inclined to agree. And when it comes to mountains, Ozu has a particular appeal. There is just something awe inspiring about living in the shadow of the largest active volcano in Japan. And that reminds me of another conversation that I had recently. On my last day, if I had one final day left to live, I think I’d invite everyone I knew, or didn’t know, anybody at all who wanted to come to someone’s final day party, to an incredible display of debauchery on top of Mt. Aso. Inside of the cauldera, it’s quite flat, and spacious, grassy fields ringed with rock. And inside the cauldera, over in the back, on the north side, is the opening. There must be a scientific word for that. The mouth of the volcano. I would host an enormous party, with a stage, live bands, horse riding, fireworks, copious amounts of alcohol, amateur sumo wrestling, whatever, and then, at the end of the day, I’d give a speech, throw on some leather, hop on a motorcycle, and with music blaring, and fireworks blasting, and to the cheering of all, drive off a ramp into firey doom of Mt. Aso. It is the most thrilling way to die I can think of within 50 kilometers of me. But, in sharing this idea, this is how I learned that in the mouths of all volcanoes are not open pools of bubbling lava. I guess I thought that they were. Apparently a crust forms over the top. You may think that I’m stupid for not knowing that, but I didn’t. I imagined that they were all boiling, frothing basins of red hot lava, and I’m more than a little disappointed that they’re not. I think the distance from the edge of the mouth the crust is so far, though, that I’d still die from the impact, when I jumped off into it. So, it doesn’t totally ruin my plan, but I did imagine more of a burning, melting sensation, in my final moments, then just a sudden splat. For me, it’s more appealing to disintegrate, and leave no trace behind, then to be splattered everywhere. しょうがないね. But it would be thrilling nonetheless.

Going off of the volcanoes not all being pits of flame thing, I had another similar revelation this past week, and one that might be easily used to accuse me of being an idiot. Do you know where your stomach is? I’ve asked several people this question, recently, as I’ve been wondering if this is more or less common knowledge, and I’m the only one who didn’t know, or if there are people like me, who just thought they knew where it was, and were living a lie. Everyone that I’ve asked has known. That doesn’t necessarily mean that most people know. I could just be surrounded by some very smart people. I think what’s more likely is that somehow I’ve made it this far in life without managing to see any of the infinity of diagrams displaying the arrangement of the internal organs in the body, or if I had, I’m sure I had, I had entirely forgotten them, and come up with my own diagram, existing only in my head, and not in reality. The other day I saw one of these diagrams, and had to look at several, because I did not trust that single diagram, as it was so entirely different from my mental one, but they all seemed to show the same thing, that your stomach is about in the middle of your torso. That single fact has blown my mind every day for the past week. It still does. Your stomach is approximately between your belly button and nipples, and situated somewhat to the left. If you had asked me where the stomach was, before my awakening, I would have pointed to my belly button. I thought it was right about there. Because that’s where the sounds come from. The tummy-grumblings. Also, I thought that the lungs were maybe 3x larger than they actually are. I thought that I had just an incredible set of lungs. What really blew my mind, looking at one of those diagrams, was how massive your intenstines are. I really had no idea. I don’t even like thinking about how massive the intenstines are. And the fact that my stomach is nearly in my chest. Don’t even get me started on the kidneys. I should not bring up the fact that I was a biology major, now. But, in my defense, I never took anatomy, and have never been all that interested in anatomy. I did take a zoology course, and cut open a number of poor, formaldehyde-soaked dead things, for science, and I didn’t really enjoy any of that.

So that’s a one-off. You could maybe say that was a two-off. Let’s keep going.

Here, these are all related. I can give you several recent of examples of amusing miscommunications. We can go in order of recency, reverse chronological order, if you like. The most recent of these happened just last week. I spent most of the Ozu High School’s championship soccer game in conversation with Uramoto sensei, who I have brought up before. He is one of the two vice-principals at Ozu. This is a confusing thing. There are two 教頭先生 (kyoutou sensei) at Ozu. I have had many a conversation about what the roles of the three individuals that sit in a row in front of the main cluster of teachers desks, where the normies sit, are, and here they are. There is a 教頭先生 (kyoutou sensei)、a 副校長先生 (fukukouchou sensei), and then another guy (or girl). Isn’t this sad, that I still don’t know, all three roles, and I’m sure I’ve been told many times now. That third role is the head of the teaching staff, but I don’t have the official name of the title. Anyway, the difficulty is in how to say kyoutou sensei in English. Fukukouchou sensei is obviously vice principal. That was obvious, wasn’t it? Well, now, wait a minute. I was going to say that we also call the kyoutou sensei vice principal, and that’s the confusing thing, but now I’m looking at those kanji, in 教頭, 教 being teach, and 頭 being head, and, well.. That certainly seems to be head teacher, doesn’t it.

I don’t want to write about that anymore. Let’s move on.

This is my blog. I don’t have to do that to myself.

I was having a nice conversation with Uramoto sensei. He is an incredibly nice man. I wrote before, I’m sure, that he was one of my favorites at Ozu. This man works about eighty hours a week. Seventy to eighty hours a week. They cut down on cleaning time at Ozu, and now only clean twice a week. But, there’s still trash to be collected in the teacher’s room. So who collects the trash? Yes yes, our man Uramoto. He shows up at around 7, and leaves at nine or ten, each night, and he commutes at least an hour every day. That’s not the only reason he’s working so late. That’s just an example, one of the many. I actually have no idea what he does, but he is always doing something. The BBC recently posted an article about overwork, overwork being the working of 55 hours or more a week, being a greater cause of death than malaria. More people die from overwork than malaria. I didn’t mention this report to Uramoto sensei, when he’s telling me all of this, because I don’t want to stress him out anymore, because I’m sure that would be stressful, to be stressed from working too much, and to then be stressed about your stress, because it’s killing you. But, I’m worried about that man. If anyone dies from overwork, and I don’t want anyone to, of course, but if anyone does, I’d really rather it not be Uramoto sensei. I would like him to enjoy a nice, relaxing, fulfilling retirement, with fingerpainting, long walks on the beach, and bottomless mimosas. I spent most of that game, not watching the game, but rather talking to Uramoto sensei, who was entertaining me with stories of his family trip to see the giant hanging fish (we had both been there on the same day, it turns out) and of eighty-hour work weeks. It came around that I started asking him about 熊本弁 (Kumamoto ben), which I like to ask the older teachers about, because they know some good ben. Ben being dialect. In Japan, there are strong regional dialects, and although they are weakening with the younger generations, I think you can still tell where someone is from based on how they speak, in the vocabulary and grammar that they use, and perhaps in the intonation as well. There is a great video on this, that I watched the other day, of a guy speaking in all 47 prefectures’ dialects, with the standard Japanese (which is, Tokyo Japanese?) captioned below, and I couldn’t understand any of it, including the Kumamoto ben. So, that partially inspired me to ask Uramoto sensei. This is one reason why it is nearly impossible to understand older people here. Another reason, applying specifically to the men, is that they move their mouths so little, and have such deep voices, and speak so quickly, that to the inexperienced ear, their language is not Japanese, but some kind of ancient, tonal grunting. I don’t want to call them cavemen. It’s not that bad. But it might help you understand what I mean. Over time, their speech has just gradually devolved into being the most effecient, with the least amount of effort, required. The higher your rank, in the Japanese world, the shorter your sentences can be, and once you’ve reached the top, you hardly have to speak at all. At least, you’ll never have to form a complete sentence again. I’m getting at the Kumamoto ben, because I asked Uramoto sensei, if he could teach me any, and he did. That day, as it has been recently, was a scorcher, and Uramoto sensei taught me the proper Kumamotoan way to say, “It’s hot.” And there are two ways. One, is a general change that you can make to any adjective, by just dropping the i at the end, and adding a ka, and drawing it out. So, if I say, atsui, which is, it’s hot, I would say, atsuka—–. Or, for samui, it’s cold, samuka—-. Then, there is the real Kumamoto version, which may be an entirely new word, and not an alteration of existing ones, which is, nu-ka—. Only real Kumamotoans know this. He told me. The real ben speakers. After the game was over, (Ozu won 4-0, I think I missed every goal), equipped with my new ben, I mosied back to the classroom, and came over to my desk, and saw Kusuyama sensei in her seat next to mine. As I pulled back my seat, to sit in it, I said to Kusuyama sensei, who is from Kumamoto, I should add, “Phew! Yu-ka—ne—-!” She turns to me, “Yu-ka—?” She was suprised to hear my Kumamoto ben, I was sure. I repeated, “Kyou wa (today), yu-ka—-ne!” She’s not surprised. She’s confused. She’s repeating to herself, “Yuka? Yuka?” And now I’m confused, and give an uncertain, “Yu-ka?” I’m now wondering if either Uramoto sensei taught me something so esoteric that even the average real Kumamotoan doesn’t know it, or I’ve got something wrong, when Kusuyama sensei’s eyes light up, and she says, “Oh, Nu-ka-ne!” And I reply, “Yes, yes! Nu-ka!” And she starts laughing. She says, “Ah, nu-kane. Kumamoto ben, hai, hai. I thought you were trying to say your butt hurt from sitting in the gym. Yuka means floor, ne.” And then I realized that I had just come over to her, and been saying, “Floor! Today, floor!”

Another recent and entertaining miscommunication. I was walking my walk through the neighborhood, returning, when, as I turned the corner at an intersection, I ran into two of my students (or, they seemed to act like my students. At least they seemed to know me, although I couldn’t tell that I’d ever seen their faces.) They said hi, and told me they we’re going to the grocery store. And I said, you know, that’s great, and have fun. And I specifically said the words, “Have fun!” And our conversation was going along smoothly, until I uttered these words. At that, the lead boy, on his bike, stumbled. He looked at me uncertainly. “iPhone?” He replied. I tried again. “Have fun!” He said. “iPhone.” I repeated once again. “Have fun!” He said to me, reaching for his pocket, “持っています.” Motteimasu. (I’ve got one.) He then turns to his friend behind him for help. His friend is just as confused. “Headphones?” He ventures. They look to me again. And I can’t just keep repeating “Have fun!” at them, as much as I’d like to, as I’ve already carried it on long enough, and if they haven’t gotten it now, the chances are extremely low that they will get it, and so I said, “楽しんでください!” Tanoshinde kudasai. Have a nice time. And they said, “Ah! Thank you!” As I was walking back to my apartment, I practiced saying “have fun” and “iPhone” with Japanese pronunciation, and they are similar. I get why they thought that. But, wouldn’t it be hilarious if I was really just standing there, at the end of our conversation, and repeating, “iPhone! iPhone!” That’s as ridiculous as me sitting down next to Kusuyama sensei and going, “Floor! Floor!” iPhone is just a standard American goodbye. We are that proud of them. It’s a way to remind each other of our innovative and enterprising spirit.

Here’s another recent one. These happen often, weekly at least. This was a few weeks ago. I was in the office kitchen. Just two days ago I asked 森田先生 (Morita sensei, Forest Field) what you call this room, because I’d been wondering about it. She didn’t know either. I keep thinking there is a specific name for this kind of room. Is it a staff room? Is it a break room? Is it just a kitchen? Kitchen doesn’t quite feel right. It’s weird to me to say that you have a kitchen in the middle of your office. And no one really cooks there anyways. The most cooking that happens is heating up water for instant ramen. That’s all. So calling it a kitchen is really a stretch, although you could cook there if you wanted to. They have the equipment for it. I should really cook a nice meal in there on one of my lunch breaks. I do get fifty minutes. That’s more than enough time to cook something nice up. I think I would just be in everyone’s way if I did that. I would get an incredible amount of attention, as every teacher who popped in there to get their lunch, or drink, or make coffee, or microwave something, would see me sauteeing some onions in a pan, and ask me, as they shove me aside to open up the fridge door, or squeeze behind me to get at the microwave, what, are you actually cooking something? I could bring an apron and a chef’s hat. They would all get a big kick out of that. This is starting to sound like a really great idea. A few weeks ago, I guess we’re going with kitchen, in this office kitchen, I was in it, and I ran into Yokogawa sensei (Sideways River, 横川) (it’s a small kitchen, it’s unavoidable that we run into each other) (anyone who enters the kitchen with you must be at the minimum greeted, no matter how unwilling the two parties. It’s just the standard etiquette of such a small room. On few occasions I have said nothing and it’s quite awkward. When two and only two humans find themselves together in such close proximity, you really have to make the choice to speak or not, because there’s no way that either of you could pretend at that point that you didn’t notice each other, or were thinking about something else. It’s not a great room for misanthropes, or the socially inept.) I struck up a conversation with Yokogawa sensei, and at one point, unprompted, she said to me, “Today, chili.” Now, this is harder to convey, because I have to type that word, with one kind of spelling, and then you’ll know what she was saying, based on the spelling, but there are two words that she could have been saying, right. Chili, and chilly. Seeing as we were in the kitchen, and I had just finished asking another sensei what they had brought for lunch, and she was herself standing in front of me with lunch in hand, I thought she must be talking about her lunch, and I was shook, because I’ve never heard any Japanese person mention chili up to this point, and I had really almost entirely forgotten about chili, and so the fact that Yokogawa sensei was having chili for lunch, not only that she had made chili, but brought it in for lunch, which was so outside of the standard range of answers when you ask a Japanese high school teacher what they brought for lunch was, that it I shook me, and I said, “What, really? Chili? You made chili? I didn’t know that anyone in Japan ate chili!” And she says, “No, no. Today, it’s cold. The weather is chilly.”

I have more. Here’s the last one, of the recents. I was talking with Ryoka, my Japanese friend in Malaysia, known as “Malaysia girl” to many, about whatever we talk about, and for some reason I mentioned Jeff Bezos. I think I was quizzing her on famous Americans. She may have said that she didn’t know that many. I threw Jeff Bezos out there, and she said, “べーぞ？(Behzo?) Yeah, I know べーぞ。べーぞ pizza, ne!” She thought I was saying basil. And then I thought about two things, which is, one, a Jeff Bezos pizza, and two, a Jeff Bezos, except his name is instead Jeff Basil. What would be on a Jeff Bezos pizza? What set of ingredients suggest world domination? Or maybe each pizza just has a nice full headshot of Jeff Basil posted on the underside of the box lid. It could just be Jeff’s favorite kind of pizza. These are all good suggestions. I should ask her about Elon Musk.

In this same conversation, Ryoka told me a story. This is the story of the baby’s ぐー。(Gu.) I told her that that’s the sound that babies make, in English. The sound of an English speaking baby. Goo goo gaa gaa. The sound of a Japanese speaking baby: ngyaa ngyaa. んぎゃーんぎゃー. I would now like to hear baby sounds in all languages. The story of the baby’s ぐー is this. And you have to write it with that little ー. If you don’t, it’s quite confusing for the Japanese. They won’t know what you’re talking about.ぐー means rock, and it also means fist, and is used in rock paper scissors (グーとパ、別れましょう！) I think that’s what they say, although I’m now wondering why they say that, because they’re saying, rock and paper, let’s pick one, and why would you ever pick rock in such a situation, unless you are a true rock man, or you would like to lose. I’ll have to ask about this. (Here’s the answer: This is used for dividing teams. And that makes sense, because 別れる means divide up, and there are only two options. 説明 (setsume, explanation) courtesy of Mr. Parker Junior.) But, anyways, グー is fist. Babies are born with closed hands, I guess, with closed fists, and in each fist, they are holding something. In one hand, they hold the name of the person who will be the most important to them in their lives. The name of the person who will have the greatest influence on their life. The person you marry, for example. Or Shia LeBouf, if you’ve been particularly struck by his “Just Do It!” video. In the other hand, they hold the name of the Pokémon that will lead them to become the next greatest Pokémon master. Ash, or, Satoshi (Japanese name) for example, was obviously holding the name Pikachu. I’m just kidding about this. In the other hand, they hold their dream. Their future dream. Their greatest achievement. So it could actually be the name of the Pokémon that will guide them to absolute victory. I think that’s right, that they hold their dream. I was tickled by the idea of all Japanese people being born with the name of a spirit Pokémon in their hands that I may have forgotten how the legend really goes. This is a Japanese legend (is this kind of thing a legend?), and I thought it was interesting. People spend their lives then trying to catch what they let go of when they were first born. Just a few days ago, while I was on the phone, I caught a mosquito one-handed, and I was so startled that I may have just caught a mosquito one-handed, pretty nonchalantly, like you might reach out to pick your watch up off your desk, that the first thing I did, before even giving my hand a squeeze or anything, was just open my hand back up, to confirm that I really had caught it, and as I watched it fly up and out of my hand, upon opening, I knew that not only had I just caught a mosquito one-handed, but I had also just let it go. And this was in my apartment, where I am now sleeping in a tent, on some nights, to protect myself, although it has recently gotten so hot, that inside of that tent I am being cooked alive, and now have to make the difficult choice, every night, of either falling asleep in an uncomfortable pool of sweat, or while slapping myself in the face and head every five, ten, fifteen minutes, until finally becoming so fatigued that mosquitoes are allowed to drink even the blood of my face freely. I think they are learning, though, that if they just fly down to my feet, my legs, even my arms, they can have a free meal, and avoid all potential danger. This is a long story, the story between the mosquitoes and I. But why I say this is because, if I do end up catching my dream, however I end up catching it, I hope I don’t do what I did with the mosquito, and find myself so startled that I caught it, that I open up hand to see if I did, and end up letting it go. Maybe it’s better that I didn’t kill that mosquito.

The above is a recording of Malaysia Girl imitating a Japanese baby. I thought you’d like to have the audio. Actually, you kind of need it. I really have no idea how you read ngyaa ngyaa to yourself. I read it the way I hear the baby voice, but I already know what the sound is, and now you do too. You can compare this to the sound you thought the baby was making, when you read that ngyaa ngyaa. Were you close? This is the sound of a Japanese baby. I’m really proud of including this audio file, by the way. This is a major milestone in this blog’s history. A groundbreaking post.

You know what, here is the American version. This is me. It’s not fair that my American readers get the Japanese baby, and my Japanese don’t get the American. This is the sound of the American baby. The first audio files uploaded to this blog are twenty year olds making baby sounds. That’s the kind of blog we’re running here, I guess.

We’re doing good, here. I think I’ve told you a lot of good things. We’ve made some baby sounds. There are only two more things I think I’d like to tell you before we wrap this post up.

I am changing the name of my blog. $30 is the price that I have to pay for being an uncreative and unoriginal monkey. I came up with the name for this blog, ManInJapan, using about the same amount of time and energy it takes to sneeze, and am being punished for it. I can’t stand searching ManInJapan and seeing tens, hundreds, of other ManInJapan accounts, and being reminded that I am one of them, one of this horde of incredibly uncreative and unoriginal men, who realized that yes they are a man, and that the words man and Japan sound nice together, and they are in fact a man in Japan, and so man in Japan is obviously a great name, except for the fact that basically any man in Japan can put this together, and then only the ones who are not totally uncreative or unoriginal realize that everyone else will use this too, and then opt for something better, that takes a little more than a single second to come up with. ManInJapan was the first name I really thought of, and while it does have a great ring to it, I see my options as being only this: either I continue to exist among this horde of ManInJapan accounts, and achieve ultimate dominance, establishing myself as THE true ManInJapan, or I simply change my name, to something that is just slightly more specific to me, and distinguishes me in some way from the ManInJapan army. The second option is just easier, and I also can’t really stand being ManInJapan anymore, and so I’m going to change the name to hakuchoumusuko. 白鳥息子. This is, 白鳥, being swan, hakuchou, white bird, and musuko, 息子, being son. This is my last name. We can argue about how much more creative this is or isn’t. I think it’s still more creative than ManInJapan. It’s also personal. And, this is one of the most reliable jokes in my self-introduction lesson, which has now become a half standup comedy routine, as something about it just really gets the Japanese, me converting my name to Japanese, the way that I convert theirs to English. I’m lucky enough to be one of the very few who can do this with their last names. Yet more evidence that my relationship with Japan is a fated one. I say it like this, in class. “And my last name is Swanson.” And some of them will say, Swanson. And I’ll say, “Do you know what a swan is?” At higher levels, hakuchou is said immediately. At lower levels, it might take a few tries. At the lowest levels, only silence, and then if someone gets it, they are immediately recognized by the class as being the new representative English guru. Then I say, “How about son?” And at the higher levels, musuko is usually said. At the lower levels, taiyou is said first, which is sun, and then my Japanese sensei sidekick will say, no, not that one. At the lowest levels, again, silence, and if anyone does know it, English guru. Then, once they know what we’re talking about, the punchline. “So, my name is Steven Hakuchoumusuko.” And cue big laughs. The first time I ever told this joke, it was entirely spontaneous, as these all are, it popped out after probably the twenty or thirtieth self-intro lesson, and it got big laughs, and even a compliment by one of the senseis after the lesson. “I liked your hakuchou musuko joke.” And I thought, “Was that a joke?” So I knew that was a keeper. I think the evolution of my self-intro lesson parallels the evolution of an organism, or really, the evolution of anything at all. Evolution doesn’t change. The process of evolution. Evolution itself is obviously quite dynamic. I try it over and over, making small alterations, spontaneous mutations, and if they are effective (get laughs) they stay, and if they aren’t, they don’t, and over time, my lesson is improved. Actually, my first self-intro lesson was just a pathetic mess, compared to what we have today, but it took, what, some 70+ runs to get the point where it will reliably entertain the average high school aged Kumamotoan. I’ve heard that some standup comedians have a no phone policy when they perform at weekly clubs, when they’re trying out new material, because they’re taking risks, and they don’t know if something will bomb or not, and they don’t want it getting out and bombing on the world stage, the internet. What we see in their final performances, their tours, their TV specials, are the products of a long period of tempering. My self-intro lesson has gone through the same process. I’m glad there are no recordings of my first run throughs.

Now that we’re on jokes, we can tie this last thing in perfectly. Parker recently told a good joke, when we were out planting rice a few weekends ago, as we do. Well, as he does. Once in awhile. You don’t have to plant rice all that frequently. Just a few times a year. We were planting some rice, and having some nice conversations, with our new friends, Tomomi san, and Tsuki san, and Osajima san, and Parker, at one point, asked Tomomi san, “What’s your favorite soda?” Tomomi san is quite a bubbly person. Really, she’s just a like a soda. It seems that her natural response to any interaction is laughter. When we first rendezvoused, in a Family Mart parking lot, made our introductions and had a short conversation, and were heading off to go to the scene of the action, I remember that Tomomi san was laughing, still laughing, as she opened her car door and sat down in the driver’s seat. She was still so tickled. It also struck me that she seemed to think her thoughts out loud, and I say all this just to give you a sense of why and how she responded to Parker’s question, “What’s your favorite soda?” with a lengthy, vocal, internal debate over whether she liked soda at all, and what constitutes as soda, and out of those, what she did like, which all culminated with her saying, “In America, I had a strawberry drink. I think it was strawberry.” And Parker says, “Fanta?” And she says no. “Strawberry..” They’re standing, and here, I’m kneeling, taking a rest, staring down into the deep chocolate mud of the rice paddy, listening, and I also thought it must be Fanta, and so if it’s not Fanta, well, it could be Cherry Coke, which has a similar fruity taste, right, and it’s a good one, at one point was one of my favorite sodas, and so I say, “Cherry Coke?” And she says, “So so so!” (Yes yes, that one!) This all took at least thirty seconds, and some several back and forth exchange, and you can tell throughout all of it, that Parker really just wanted Tomomi san to say a soda, any soda. He says to her, again, now that we’ve found our answer, “So what’s your favorite soda?” And Tomomi san says, “Cherry Coke.” And Parker says, “Souda.” そうだ。Do you get it? Is any joke funny if you have to explain it? Not really. That might be why this joke is failing so hard on the student circuit. But I’ll explain it. It is more apparent to Japanese speakers, or it should be. そうだ (souda) can mean, “Is that so?” Or “That’s so.” depending on your intonation. So, you know, you ask what their favorite soda is, or favorite anything is, just ask any question, and souda is a common and acceptable response. Except in this situation, you know, it’s also soda, and that’s what we’re talking about, so you’re responding with the same word.. yeah, you get it now, you must. Is that funny? I think that it’s funny. I like it a lot. I’ve liked it so much, that I taken it into the classroom. Every class I have, we start off by just saying hi. I try to warm them up a bit, give them a little pre-lesson entertainment, if I can, just check the pulse of the class, give them a little energy if they need it. It’s a good time to try and make them laugh. If you can secure a laugh right at the beginning, that’s big. I had found major success with a joke, recently, this joke, “What is Michael Jackson’s favorite color?” Everybody knows Michael Jackson. I give them a few seconds, to float their random guesses, and potential explanations, before hitting them with the punchline, “Ao!” Said like Michael Jackson in a Michael Jackson song. You can imagine it, right. This is funny because that sound, ao, あお、is blue, in Japanese. It’s a good joke. It kills. And this has been hard for me to nail, this Michael Jackson Ao! sound. Sometimes the sound that comes out of me is just so strange. And sometimes my voice cracks. It’s also hard for me to get the volume right. I don’t want to scream it at the kids, but you need a certain amount of vocal energy to make a sound like that. Following up that joke, this past week, I’ve been trying the soda joke. Already, this joke has a problem, in that most students don’t know what soda is. So, they look at each other, saying, “Soda? Soda?” Someone might know. They will come to a general understanding, and my sensei sidekick or I will explain, and already the joke is losing steam, and answers will start to trickle out, but it’s all uncoordinated, and the students may not be listening at all, now, when I start trying to reply, “Souda.” to them. It’s impossible for me to tell whether they understand the joke or not, as well, when I reply, “Souda.” because they almost never laugh. When it has all gone off perfectly, and I’ve asked the question, and a student has understood, and has given me an appropriate answer, and at an appropriate volume, that the class is aware of what’s happening, and I can then reply, “souda.” even when all conditions are met, this joke has failed. It brings at most, feeble chuckles, or some grins. Nothing at all like the success I was having with the Michael Jackson joke. It’s not the reception I was expecting. On the second day of my telling of this joke, of me running it through the circuit, I was at Ozu, and it was my third class of the day. I said, to the class, again, “Can I ask you guys a question?” They say, yes. Some students don’t know what that question in itself means. Usually they do. I only need one student’s permission to go ahead with it. I say, “What’s your favorite soda?” This class, again, needs to know what soda is. Some students start talking to each other about it. Some students are looking at me in complete silence. Some students are thinking. Very few students mumble answers. No one speaks confidently enough for me to reply to so that the class will catch the joke. I ask one student in the back, then, after this initial confusion phase has passed, and we are all on the same page, that I’m asking them about soda, and what their favorite soda is, and they’ve had time to think of an answer, I ask one guy in the back, my man Nakamura kun, who I know can give me a straight answer, I ask him, “What’s your favorite soda?” He says, “No soda.” He’s a soccer player. I think, dammit Nakamura kun. I’ve wasted enough time at this point, it’s probably already been five minutes, and I’m supposed to be doing some kind of lesson, with a plan and purpose and everything. I turn to the front, looking down at the girls right in front of me. I recognize a girl (don’t flame me, I don’t know her name, I’m sorry, but we’re good friends, I swear) who I’m good friends with, have had many a conversation with, told many a joke to, pulled many a weed with, during cleaning time, and who is not a shy girl, thinking she is another surefire, and I ask her, “What’s your favorite soda?” And suddenly, this girl freezes up. You would think she just stepped out on the stage of Japan’s Got Talent and was asked to perform something. She’s looking straight down, embarrassed. She will not be giving me the name of any soda. I cross the room. I’m desperate now. Soccer player in the front, he’s an outspoken guy, he will give me an answer. I ask, for the sixth or seventh time now, “What’s your favorite soda?” He thinks for a second. “Mmm, water.” God dammit. I almost threw my hands up in the air. I think I did, actually. I look at a guy in the center of the room now. Someone has to answer this question. We’ve come too far to let it go. He is another soccer player. We’ve worked out together in the gym. We’re bros. He has to answer this question. I look at him, with a look that says, “Just say a soda, kid. Please. Just say the name of any soda.” And he says, “Ramune.” And that is the name of a soda. And finally, I get to do it. We can do the joke. And I say, just to confirm it with everyone, that his answer was an acceptable one, that it was a soda, “Your favorite soda is ramune?” And he says, “Yes.” And I say, “Souda.” This is the big moment. How hard did the joke fail? I look around. There are a few snickers. Some realization of the joke. One or two smiles. Most students seemed to have resigned themselves to the antics and are waiting to be told when it’s time for the real lesson. Ramune boy lets out a small laugh. Compared with previous classes, this class loved it. I let out a massive sigh. I’m just glad to have gotten it out, at this point, and we could move on. But, I had to let them know, I thought they deserved a little more of an explanation, about what I had just put them through. I said, you know guys, I’ve told this joke three times today. And in the first two classes, not a single person laughed. And of course, that made them laugh. A surefire way to get a class to laugh at your joke is to tell them about how other classes didn’t laugh at the joke. I will do this often when I have a joke that fails. In this way, even if your joke is an utter dud, you are still guaranteed to get a laugh. In failure, it succeeds. They could tell I was frustrated with the failings of this joke, and one student offered his reasoning for it, saying, sympathetically, “難しい.” Muzukashii. It’s a difficult joke.

I told this joke again, completing the circuit, this Friday, at Shoyo, with Kaneto sensei’s first year class. Kaneto sensei is a new teacher I work with. He’s a fun guy. Likes soccer, and drinking beer. He’s a graduate student at Kumamoto University. We get along well. I told the joke to the first years, was met with again, what could be described as a lukewarm reception at best, and Kaneto sensei, in wrapping this up, says to the class, “American joke.” And this is a funny thing. When I tell a joke, and the joke fails, my Japanese friends will often respond with, “Ah, American joke, ne.” What I think this is, even if the joke isn’t American, as in this joke, the favorite soda joke, because you know, this is not an American joke at all, this is totally a Japanese joke, because no American who doesn’t speak Japanese would get the joke, I think it is their way of trying to make the joke teller feel better. If I can conjecture to capture what they mean to express by saying this, “American joke,” they’re trying to say, “This joke is not funny to me, or us, Japanese. But we’re not saying it’s not funny. It probably does great with the American crowd. Just not with us.” I appreciate that, even though none of the jokes I tell them are really American jokes, and in truth they’re just bad jokes. But they’re giving me an out. Yet another example of how the Japanese are a very courteous people.

Blog post end. That’s it for this collection of one offs. It’s 27 degrees Celcius here, 蒸し暑い (mushiatsui) as hell, (humid), and I can’t sit here and sweat any longer. When I sit, my legs get so incredibly sweaty. This is the season where I spend every day at work wishing I could wear shorts at work. I tried to tell them once, that I’d like to wear shorts, (the head honchos) but I accidentally used the word for pants (I was a different Japanese speaker then) and they must have come away from that thinking, well, Steven really enjoys wearing pants, and it’s interesting that he’s asking us about wearing pants, because he is wearing pants at this very moment. He is just an interesting guy.

Final quote. I don’t know where it came from. I think it was from Emerson’s Essays. I also don’t know who Zoraster is, but he’s got a cool name. But I like it. And in these times, we could all use an extra dose of perseverance, I think.

“‘To the persevering mortal,’ said Zoraster, ‘the blessed Immortals are swift.'”

Jya mata ne! じゃまたね！

Update from the future: Just to give you a preview of what is in this very long post: I am basically writing about my decision to stop using my car that I eventually did sell, and how I came to the decision. That’s basically it. If you’re looking for funny stories about farting and misspoken Japanese they’re not in this one. If you’re looking for quotes from transcendentalists and a dissertation on the advantages of bikes over cars, look no further.

Alright gang. We’re back.

I know, I know. It’s only been a week! Steven, you just wrote such a doozy, and now you’re coming right back around and giving us another other one, not a week later?

And to that I say, you bet your sweet bungus I am!

I’ve got things to tell you! And like I said, “A squid won’t cook itself,” well neither will a blog post write itself, and these things must be written, lest the moment pass, and they are forever gone. I believe, this is true with ideas, that with all ideas there is a certain window of action, that you have where you can seize an idea, and do something with it, make something out of it, or let it pass, and its moment will be gone. And perhaps you will have another chance at it, or perhaps not. This idea, the one I want to share with you now, is a fruit that has been maturing for some time, and I think it is now as ripe as it will ever be, and the time is as good as any to pluck it. So sit back, get comfortable, maybe grab a snack, some nice squid hearts, maybe a squid soufflé (I actually don’t know what a soufflé even is) and let me tell you about my little experiment in following my genius, and deciding to live life without a car.

The first thing I need to get at is the following your genius thing. I am not a genius, but I can follow it, and that is why I decided to stop driving my car for the month of March. Motorless March, I called it. I actually almost sold it, and even went to the length of calling up my dealer, taking it in to him, having him look it over, and then coming to his question, “Do you really want to sell this? Do you really really want to sell this?” and promising him that I’d really think it over, and after two of my close friends recommended that I try out a carless month first, and see how it goes, as a trial experiment, before fully plunging myself into the world of the no-car, only to find that it does not suit me all that much, and I am pained to go through the process of getting a new one, or to suffer with the ramifications of my poor and impulsive decision. But, while I did at their suggestion hold onto my car, prior to starting this experiment, I strongly suspected that I already knew what the outcome would be, and here we are, at the end of the month, and I can say that I was entirely correct in my suspicion. After an entire month without my car, I can say that not once, not a single time, did I think, “Man, I wish I could drive!” But what I did find myself thinking, time and time again, was the exact opposite, that I was glad that I didn’t have one. And so I will give you some examples, but you have already seen some, if you read my last post. On embarking on this experiment, somehow I had not even considered all of the merits of my decision to ditch the car and walk to school, but that came to me as I was writing that last post, and is even further support for the case of going without the car. So, I will give you some concrete examples, and what I’ve learned from this experiment, and the goals of this post then are two-fold – if this can be a lesson for you on following your genius, or a piece that challenges you to see your car in a new light, then I think I can say that this was a successful one!

First, on following your genius. I have mentioned genius a few times now, and what am I talking about? I am using genius in the way that our man Henry David Thoreau uses genius. I usually end my posts with quotes, but for this one, I need to give you a quote now, because this quote, primarily, along with some of Thoreau’s other compelling words on genius, was the catalyst, that brought me to cross that critical threshold between thought and action. So here is the quote:

“If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No one ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for there were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, – that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”

It’s long, I know. Thoreau writes like this. Emerson does as well. Perhaps that’s why I am so enamored with them both. Thoreau is a man who catches star-dust, who does greet the day and night with joy, who felt bad for his jailers, when he was put into jail, for not paying taxes to the state of Massachusetts for something like seven years, because he did not support slavery, and Massachusetts was profiting off of and enabling the slave trade, at that time, and he felt that his jailers, after imprisoning him, thought that they had him confined – but he could not be confined, because in his heart he was free, much more than they, because while physically confined, spiritually he was as free as a bird. Actually, he thought they, and the state itself, were entirely pathetic, after that incident, as Thoreau was, taxes excepted, as good of or better than any citizen you could ask for, and was not in any way a threat to the state, and yet they imprisoned him. Thoreau lives by his genius, truly; that is one example, and another I could give is the whole fact that he moved out into the woods and lived there alone for two years, because he felt like he should, and he ended up writing the masterpiece, that this quote is from, that is Walden. I included the full length of this quote because I thought that, given that he includes them in the same passage, there must be a link between following genius, and catching star-dust, and when I think about this experiment, and even the outcomes of my walking to school, that there is a connection there.

So like I said, this quote is ultimately what got me to embark on this little carless experiment of mine. It is the reason why I pulled the trigger. About two or three months ago, I did something I had been meaning to do for a long time, and had never got around to, which was actually figured out exactly what my income and expenses were. Prior to this, I just knew that I was making more money than I was losing, and that was good enough for me. But I could only stand saying not being able to answer questions about my life financials so many times before I felt like it was necessary that I got the answers, and so I did, and I found that I was spending about 2万円 a month on car expenses, (about $200). I thought at that time, entirely jokingly, “Hey if I didn’t have a car, I’d save 2万円 a month!” And then this thought was followed by another, “But, of course, I need my car.” I can say now that not only did I not need my car, but in the same way that I was better off walking to school than driving, I am better off living without a car in all other aspects of my life, than having one.

In the days after I did that little, getting my affairs in order business, that thought of getting rid of the car kept coming back to me. I thought about all of the reasons why I needed my car – there weren’t many. I thought about all of the reasons I should give it up – there were many more. Why did I think I needed my car? Convenience, was one. Convenience on its own is hardly a good reason to do anything. Another, was freedom. Paradoxically enough, I found that I had more freedom without the car. That’s really it, in a nutshell. Why did I think I should give it up? This list is much longer. Obviously, for the environment. Also, for the savings. Those are good enough reasons, but there are other, more powerful, and less apparent reasons. I thought that, like walking to school, going without the car would put me outside of my comfort zone. After being here for as long as I have, as anyone inevitably finds themselves becoming after doing the same things for an extended period of time, I have gotten quite comfortable in many aspects of my life. I’m happy I can say that’s so, but if we take Emerson’s words, “People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them,” to heart, then it’s wise not to get too comfortable, and so I felt that this would be a good way to shake things up, raise the difficulty level on my life a bit, you could say. I will get into this when I talk about public transportation, of which, as a result of ditching the car, I now have many stories. The other of the more subtle reasons, I would say, was that I thought that getting rid of the car would force me to better prioritize my time. Having a car is a luxury, for me, and not a necessity. With it, I could visit my friends in the neighboring towns and cities on a whim, I could make trips to the grocery store, to the mall, to the 100円 store, when I felt like it, and I had many times come away from such trips thinking that they had not been all that necessary. Without a car, acting on impulse suddenly becomes much more difficult, in that sense. And so, the bar, or the activation threshold, for me embarking on any mission, quest, escapade, what have you, was now much higher, and I thought that, and I found that this was true, that it would force me to make better use of my time. And reflecting on it, I find that the same thing is true with my internet usage. I have no internet in my apartment. When I’m lucky, I can connect to my neighbor’s WiFi, but that WiFi is fickle, and will more often than not allow me to connect once a night, only to give me the results of my first search, and then dry up and return no more. When on that tenuous signal, I am aware that at any moment it could vanish forever, and that alone keeps me from attempting most internet activities, but often when I do try them, the internet will teasingly flicker on and off, and I will quickly lose patience with it, slam my laptop shut, and quit whatever I was doing. And this happens, the quitting, because whatever I was doing in the first place, was not all that important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have tried to do it from my apartment in the first place, where the internet is so unreliable (I say the internet, it’s not even mine. I should say her internet, Nagata sensei’s.) When I really want to use the internet, I will either go visit Nagata sensei, or I will sit outside her apartment on the steps, where I can enjoy free-flowing, uninterrupted internet, and do my business. And I keep my business quick, because I’m most likely sweating, or shivering, with a sore rumpus, from sitting on a step of solid steel and concrete, and craning my neck down to look at the small, dimly lit screen on my lap, and so I am, because of all of these hindrances, efficient with my internet time. Unfortunately, as much as I would wish otherwise, I do have relatively low self-control, and if I had ample internet access I may not even be writing this right now, but would instead be watching English Premier League highlights on YouTube, or searching about how Rogain serves to promote hair growth (for a friend, of course), or something like that; something that I could be doing, but probably don’t need to be. By significantly raising the threshold for the ease of doing something, anything, you have to put in more effort to do it, and the decision to put effort into anything becomes more meaningful the more effort that is required. Thought, as well. Because now with my excursions, like with using the internet, the effort to action threshold has been raised, and I now have to spend a little more thought, and potentially a lot more energy, on whether I want to do something or not, and I think that this has been an incredibly effective way at delineating what in my life is worth my time, and what is not. I have turned down invites that I would have accepted if I had a car, because I didn’t. How interested was I, really, in going then? I have gone through the trouble of taking the time to learn how the busses work, and riding them, to get to the city to play soccer with some friends. That then, was clearly important to me. But not only has it forced me to weigh more considerately what is important to me, and what is not, but it has also forced me to plan out and be more efficient with my time. Before, I would go to the mega-superstore Trial. Trial is up on a hill and is out of the way for me. Because of the fact that it’s up on the hill, and I can’t even bike up that hill, in this entire month I’ve only gone to Trial once. Instead, I stop by Direx, as I pass there on the way back from Ozu High. I’d rather go to Trial, yes, and especially because Trial has my soba, and Direx doesn’t, and I’m actually pissed at Direx, because the last three times I’ve been there they haven’t had my soba, and I’m worried that they don’t even carry it anymore, and I’ve wanted to grab one of the store workers and say, “Hey, don’t you guys know that people like soba! You’re going to lose people’s business! Order more soba!” But even in my soba-rage, I can’t dump Direx, because it now just makes good sense for me to stop there. It is the most economical and efficient thing for me to do. Another point – I wanted to go to Kaldi, at the mall Hikari no mori. This is about a fifteen to twenty minute drive to the west. With a car, I would have gone. I wanted to get my natural peanut butter, which is way better than unnatural peanut butter (isn’t it weird to say that? But if what I get is natural, what else is the other kind but unnatural?) and my muesli (how do you pronounce this word?). Now it is an ordeal, and I had been mulling over when I would make the bike trip out there, when I was struck with the brilliant idea to ask Goto sensei, who I know lives in the Hikari no mori area, and frequents the mall, if she wouldn’t mind picking those things up for me the next time she goes, and I’d pay her back. And so, last weekend, after waiting a week, I got that sweet sweet Line message, “I’m at Kaldi!” And then I had my natural peanut butter and muesli, and I didn’t even have to go to the store. And when I say that paradoxically, I had more freedom as a result of my decision to ditch the car, this is partly why. While could be seen as now an increased reliance on others, I see it as a forced, economical restructuring of how I go about my business, and that restructuring has resulted in me coming away with more time, and less distraction. I can and will rope decision making fatigue into this, because why not – I’m even saving myself from having to make such decisions, about whether I should go to this or that store, to this or that event, to do this or that thing, as anything that I could, or would only do with a car, is immediately ruled out, and I consider it no more. You would think that because I don’t have a car, it takes me longer to get places, and so I would spend more time in transit, and would come out of this all with less time, but I have actually come out ahead, through virtue of the increased effort to action threshold (I keep calling it this and other things, I am not sure exactly what I should say here is, I keep thinking back to the concept of activation energy, in chemistry, which is the amount of energy that has to be supplied in order to make a reaction occur, and in this analogy, my action is the reaction, and the energy required to take the action consists of whatever might factor into the taking of the action, for example cost, time, benefits, etc.), and the fact that when I travel now, it is an experience, and so is never time wasted. That is another major point to be made about this, but I feel like I’ve mostly already made it in my last post, when talking about all of the beautiful things I get to do and see on my walk to Shoyo, that I don’t get from the drive. Whenever I go anywhere now, I go by either train, bus, bike, foot, or another’s car, and in any of those save the bike, I am not required to do anything but confirm every now and again that I’m still headed the right way, and then I can go back to fully engaging my senses in whatever capacity I like. In driving, you are a pilot, and while you can daydream, and sightsee, and enjoy the radio, or have a conversation, you can’t commit yourself to any of these things fully. On a bike, you do have to pilot, but that’s different than riding a car – that’s more sport than work. Riding a bike is exhilarating, especially in Ozu, where there is almost no level ground, where the roads are so narrow that you are almost crushed to the wall by passing cards, where the maze of cracked sidewalks and side-streets and street signs keeps you weaving, dodging, ducking, panting, coasting, endlessly engaged. And another perk about the bike is that you’re almost always in motion, and when you’re not, it’s simply a nice reprieve. Highways? You pass under them. Crosswalks? People stop for you. Traffic lights? Button you push, and turn green they will. (That’s a Yoda quote. It could be at least. I wonder if I thought to write that sentence that way because Yoda is green. The human brain is a mysterious thing..) When you finally do just have to sit it out at a light, you’re about ready for a break anyways. And the bike is the other reason why giving up the car brings more freedom. On the bike, you are truly free. You do still have to find a place to put your bike, that’s true – but bikes are much smaller than cars. I biked right into the heart of the city just yesterday, right into the heart of what they call the machi, the network of narrow streets, tiny stores, a densely crowded spot – I biked right up to the street that had the two stores I wanted to visit, and I leaned my bike up against a wall, and I stepped out onto the street, no worry about finding a place to park my cumbersome car, and at no expense. And on the way there, I passed car after car after car, stuck in waiting, mired in limbo, and I would fly right on by, with the sun in my face, with the wind rustling my shirt, with my heart pumping, and a medium grade sweat on my shins, because I wore thick sweatpants, and it was way hotter than I thought it’d be. As I passed them, I couldn’t help but think with smug satisfaction, “Suckers!!”

One thing about the car – the car keeps things out, but it also keeps you in. It insulates you, and that’s alright, when you need to be – but how often do we need to be? I’d rather be thrown out into the chaos of the world than snugly shielded from it. (Typed while sitting in a comfortable chair, at a comfortable desk, in a comfortable apartment, at a comfortable temperature, in some comfortable sweatpants..) But you get what I mean. I don’t want to be snug all the time; there’s not a lot to be learned in being snug – I want some action. When I made the decision to start biking, I knew I would have to be biking in the rain. This was something that would often come up when someone tried to suggest to me the folly of selling my car. “What about the rain?” They would say. Well, what about the rain? That would be a problem, if we weren’t living in the 21st century, and didn’t have such beautiful products as entirely waterproof synthetic body suits, but we do. This is what you see the students, the bikers, the motorbikers, wearing, in inclement weather, fully shielded from the elements of Earth like astronauts from the elements of space. I took a trip to Handsman, and got myself a similar suit, after trying on several, and deciding which country, of the pack of body-suit-producing, atrocity-committing countries all vying for my yen, I would give it to – and out of China, Myanmar, and Vietnam, I settled on Vietnam, as while they’re communist, I hadn’t yet heard about any recent atrocity committed by the Vietnamese. In this suit then, I am entirely impervious to whatever the wicked winds of Kumamoto want to blow my way, although large balls of hail would still take me out. When we talk about freedom, again, here is another example. As no one, under normal circumstances, naturally wants to be soaked by the rain, we tend to avoid it, and an umbrella helps with that, but you still have to deal with strong winds, if it is windy, and stepping in puddles, and finding a place for your umbrella, and making sure you don’t forget it, and if you do, making difficult decisions about how to get a new one, or waiting for a break in the rain, or biting the bullet and getting drenched in it. When you have a full body waterproof suit, none of this matters. You don your armor, and out you go, and there your worries end. In fact, what would before have been an annoyance, is now a joy, as it is incredibly joyful to walk about in the pouring rain, without a care in the world, to be completely impervious to it, to be able to laugh at it and revel freely in it. That is freedom, and it strikes me in similarity to that feeling I had on top of the mountain, standing there and looking the blizzard in the face, or in the onsen, finding warmth and moisture in the dry cold of winter – it’s a feeling of turning the tables on the elements, taking them head on, embracing them with open arms, defying them; and you can’t help but come away from such encounters with a little more life in you.

I talked about following genius. I had the thought then, coming back to me, that I should stop using my car. I did some pre-experimentation. I knew that the only real thing that could be a pain for me, without the car, was going to my special needs school, which is about a twenty minute drive from my apartment. Before going fully into the no car life, when I was yet still mulling it over, I had a free Sunday, and so I decided to make the trip then, and see how bearable it was, if it was something I could do twice a month, how long it would take, how sweaty I would get. On that trip, something happened, something that I took as a sign, that really affirmed that this was genius that should be followed to its ultimate ends. On the way to this school, I take a road west, for about fifteen minutes, then I turn south, pass through a neighborhood, go a bit down another street, and I reach the school. At that turn, from going west to south, at around that point, there is an enormous hill. This hill is striking in the same way that Mt. Fuji is striking – this hill is a mini-Fuji, because the land all around it is so flat, and clear. I have always wanted to climb this hill, and I look at it longingly whenever I make the trip. That day, as I came back from biking to the school, I thought, why don’t I climb it now? And climbed it was. I met an old man, who showed me the path to the top, I found a secret lake, I walked along ridges and up and down winding trials, leading me who knew where, but I had no place I particularly needed to be, and could lose myself entirely in the exploration. And when I got back, I thought about this. I had passed by that hill so many times in my car, and had always wanted to climb it, and never did; and I pass by it once on my bike, and it gets climbed. What more needs to be said? I think, for me at least, yet another fault of the car is it restricts spontaneity, rather than increases it. Having a car, you have to find a place to park it. You have to put gas in it and think about the gas in it. You have to get into it and step out of it. You have to turn it off and turn it on. You have to open and close the door. And while they sound like little things, I think all such little things, and especially cumulatively, form a barrier to spontaneity. On the bike, rather, you are encouraged to be spontaneous. You’re in motion, you can park almost anywhere, you can hop and off at a moments notice, nothing has to be turned on or off, you are the gas, you are not bound by streets, or even logic. That logic that keeps you bound to the fastest routes, to the most efficient paths planned out by Google Maps, does not apply on a bike, when you can turn down any road you like, on a whim, because it looks promising, where you can slide through back alleys with ease, change course without hesitation, stop at any moment to get your bearings, and readjust your course, or to go ahead and allow yourself to be lost. So, with Thoreau’s words, to follow my genius, and the climbing of the hill, to encourage me to keep following it, I decided that I would take that step, and go from thinking about giving up the car, to doing so.

I have yet to write about any of those moments where I was glad that I hadn’t biked, except with the climbing of the hill. I haven’t given you any specific examples. I haven’t told you about the impact that I’ve had on others, and I think this is always an interesting thing, when you try things like this, when you make these changes, that you will affect not only your own life, but consequently the lives of the people around you, without you intending to do so at all. I find this happening often as a result of being a pescatarian, and it was happening here, is happening here, too. Lewis, who replied, “Indoor human.” when asked if he was an indoor or outdoor human by my friend Kento sensei, told me two days ago that he biked to get groceries; Emily now wants to buy one, and was asking me this week where I bought my bike and how much it cost. But I want to touch once more on the genius bit, because I think you can see clearly that in this instance, for me it was entirely the right decision to follow it; but how did I know it was genius? I think the true skill does not lie so much in carrying out the genius, because once you begin to carry it out, the events and consequences of it will unfold naturally, as a matter of course. The hard part is discerning what is genius, in the first place, and then choosing to act. I can’t say that I have a real answer for knowing what is genius or what is not, what is a good idea, what is a proper intuition, an inspiration, that should be heeded; but somehow, I knew that this was so. That may just be the magic of genius, that it just comes to us, and if we give it the time, and the consideration, and the conviction, to carry it out, seeing not where it would lead us, and crushing it not in its infancy, giving it fuel, allowing it to light, instead of smothering it out of fear, uncertainty, comfort, laziness, or one of the many other such extinguishers, then it can have the power to take us to new heights, to expand and enrich our lives. All it may take is the simple asking of the question – what is your genius saying to you now? And that may be what gets you on, and if you don’t have an answer, then what will get you on the hunt.

I could say more about my dabbles in public transportation, about the fear in the eyes of the girl sitting behind me on the bus, when I turned around in my seat and started speaking to her, to try and ask her if I had missed my stop or not, and how I had in fact missed my stop, as I discovered as I got off of the bus at the end of the route, at the main transport hub in the city, about how I tried to get on a fancy express train and was politely told to get off, as I didn’t have a ticket, and hadn’t reserved a seat.. but I think I’ve more or less made my point, with one final addition. I mentioned that there were many situations in where I found myself glad that I hadn’t used a car, and none where I wish I had, and here’s one of them. I had been regularly playing soccer with some college students at a college in the city, (Kumamoto city, I realize I keep saying “the city”, and you might be thinking, what city, Steven? What city?) and the school year has ended, and they’ve all graduated. We had our last session, of soccer, sushi, then Fifa (they all wanted to play me, I think I played seven games of Fifa then, nonstop, more tiring than the actual soccer) and then a final going out to dinner. And if I had driven a car, we would have said our final goodbye there. But I hadn’t driven a car – that day, like the last time, I had come into the city by bus (unlike last time, successfully), and for this reason, they gave me a ride home that night. I ended up giving them a tour of my apartment, re-gifting almost all of the alcohol that I had stockpiled through various adventures onto them, talking about our futures, and otherwise having a real, proper, final goodbye. Not that it wouldn’t have been if we had ended things there, in that restaurant parking lot, after the dinner – but it would have been different. It just would have been a different ending, the car ending, and I thought about this too, in the passing days, about how that was yet another situation, that turned out for the better, through not having the car. This, then, would be an example of something that I could not see, when deliberating over whether I should or should not pursue this genius, and I think this is prime example of how, when following your genius, things will happen that you could not have predicted.

Well, I think we’re at the end here. This engine is out of steam! I hope that I’ve convinced you to follow your genius – I will keep following mine. You might be wondering, what will be the end of this car saga? I do still have the car. I think it would be at the dealer’s now if I hadn’t been told that I may be going to Aso to teach again, and if that happens, I then will be forced to own, and use it, out of necessity. But the lessons have been learned, and cannot be unlearned, and even if I go back to a life with a car, it will never be the same.

Update: I’m coming back to this after two days. I wanted the instant gratification, but I thought it’d be better for both of us if I gave it some time to sit and see if any more thoughts popped into my mind afterwards, to be added in. About the car, there isn’t much. I think another interesting point about it is that there was some resistance to this idea, some questioning of it, some “Why would make life harder for yourself?” “What if you regret it?” “Please don’t do it!” and I am glad I ran this idea by my friends because they 1. gave me the idea to do a trial run of the no car life, instead of outright selling it, and 2. they showed me that my idea was solid enough, as I was forced considered the merit of their concerns or arguments related to it, on top of my own, and after that, I still ended up following through. So, even if your genius is met with resistance, and perhaps it always will be, don’t let that stop it!

I want to add one more thing to this post, because in this post I’m trying to share a little insight I feel I’ve had recently, about the following your intuition to good ends, and here I have another small insight, or lesson, that I’ve learned, and don’t know where else I’ll put it, and so here it is. Do you know about the dongle? That little white piece of metal and plastic, that can connect two differing types of ports? My dongle was an AUX to whatever that small charging hole in the iPhone 6 or 7 is called. It’s about an inch long. Well, everyone knows that dongle is a piece of garbage. Such a thing really has no right to exist, but exist it does. It is an incredibly inferior product, by design, being so bendable, and thus vulnerable – but I think it is also probably just made with the lowest possible quality ingredients imaginable, so that it will break as soon as possible, and you will be forced to either waste your money on a new one, or finally out of frustration upgrade your headphones to ones that are not AUX, and match the new port. Until they switch the port on you again, and then you have to get yet another pair of headphones. Soon the port may be a thing of the past, with wireless charging and headphones, so that might not be a concern.. but that doesn’t matter to me at the moment, because I have a pair of headphones, I’ve had a pair of headphones for about 6 years now, and they are an incredible pair of headphones, and I don’t want to stop using them, and so I buy dongles, to connect them to my phone, and after buying the third dongle, I will never buy another dongle again. But the lesson is that, I should never have bought the second dongle, let alone the third, because I knew that they would break, and the problem would never really be solved this way. I complained about the weakness of dongles, as I searched for my third, a few weeks ago, about how stupid it all was, but yet I wanted it now, because I wanted to have my music, and I didn’t want to do the work to find any other way to solve this problem. After my second or third run with my new dongle, after making it about a hundred steps from my apartment, my headphones were filled with a hellish, grating, metallic screaming, the sounds a robot might make in its death throes, and I knew that it was done, and the fact that I was an idiot, confirmed. Putting band-aids over a deep wound will not help it close – at some point, you need stitches. Every time I bought a new dongle, I was just buying a band-aid, and not stitches. This was a poor temporary solution to a problem – it was never a permanent fix. And why bother with temporary solutions, if they will only cost you more time and energy in the long run? If you have a problem, and you have to choose between temporary and permanent solution, unless for the time being you have to choose the temporary, to get to the permanent, then never choose the temporary. That is the lesson I learned from this dongle business, and I’m thinking I might just tape it to my wall, next to my notice that I had gotten a package, that was being held for me by a local shipping company, that I procrastinated on, until one day I finally made the call, and was told, “Huh? That was a month ago. We sent that back.” I will always wonder what was in that package. That slip is a reminder to me, not to procrastinate, and especially not on the receiving of packages, and my dongle will be another reminder.

And now, we are officially finished! Will you ditch your car? Will you follow your genius? I don’t think I mentioned it, but the train line, that goes all the way from the west to the east end of Kyushu, is about a ten minute walk from my apartment, and the bus stop that goes into the city is about a two minute walk. That, with the bike, and having friends, made it significantly less daunting to go completely no car. But, even if you couldn’t go all in, any time you could trade your car in for the bike, or the walk, give it a try, and you might find that you benefit as much as I did.

So.. As they say in the Looney Toons, “That’s all folks!”

じゃあーまた！

Major Update: This post was written in the winter of 2020. I have just passed through the winter of 2021/2022 almost entirely unscathed. Kept my stride the whole time. I wrote in this post that I would have to live with SAD my whole life. But I have this time around made an incredible discovery, and that is light therapy. By blasting 10000 lux of light into my eyes every morning this winter I was able to get the light that my body needs so desperately in the winter, artificially, and it made a huge difference. I used a product called Luminettes, and would highly recommend them to anyone struggling with SAD, or who just feels that they could use a boost to their energy levels, or struggles with waking up. They have been truly life-changing for me. If you are SAD, do not hesitate to bring light therapy into your life in some form!

For the one seeking redemption for their cursed soul, there is the church. For the one seeking water to cure their parched lips in the waterless desert, there is oasis. And for the one searching for life in the middle of a bleak and desolate winter, there is onsen.

I’ve been in a strange, tense state.
I blame it on the winter.

I’ve been unable to relax, unable to unwind, spending every minute striving, enduring, or otherwise holding myself hostage to a certain strictness, and for what purpose, simply because I can’t find it in myself to have any “wasted time”, since I’m not doing what I want to do, even though I haven’t the slightest idea what I want to do really is. I only have a vague, ceaseless, unyielding dissatisfaction, and my answer to it seems to be spending every ounce of my dissatisfied energy on anything that I could consider to be concretely productive, that I can feel justified about doing, and I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I’m getting some kind of masochistic satisfaction out of denying myself any pleasure, or perhaps I’m just angry that nothing seems to be bringing me pleasure, or satisfaction, or if it would, it’s for the wrong reasons. At any rate, although I haven’t had much fun this winter, I can say that my Japanese, as a consequence of this self-imposed period of monasticism, has improved tremendously.

Yesterday, I bought a book, titled “Wolves and Wild Dogs”, replete with full-page graphics of lean, menacing, sharp-toothed hunters, pulling down boars and bulls alike, and I think that what may have drawn me to this book was that there was something in those images, of the shocking, wet white fur of the Arctic wolf, artfully bounding an ice floe, of the matted white and grey, brown-tinged Eurasian wolves, with their piercing gazes, posing boldly out in the frigid tundras and snowscapes, something in them stirred up something in me, and maybe I felt that I too, was like these wolves; gaunt, hungry, hunting.

The alternative to this mindset, for me, may be depression, and that I won’t do.

Again, I blame this on the winter. I have no doubt that I am a fortunate benefactor of that aptly named illness, SAD, seasonal affective disorder. It’s something I’ll never escape, only something that I will learn to live with, considering most places bar the equator have seasons, and one of those seasons will be Winter, that cruel, grey mistress.

If it were possible to do so, I would wholeheartedly like to step into the ring with Winter, and take it down, dominate it, physically express my pent-up disgust and dislike of it, as relief for me, and punishment for it. But Winter I cannot dominate. And Winter I cannot escape. And so, I can only defy.

While Winter is crushing in its oppression, there is yet a place where she holds no power, and that place is the onsen. What everything Winter is, the onsen is her antithesis. It is the only place where one can go to escape the iron chains of chill, the smothering blanket of unyielding and endless grey, the savage spell of flesh-cracking aridity. It is sacred ground, the onsen, and from the minute you step into its domain, you are freed like a citizen of East Germany taking their first step across that dividing line. Winter, be damned! you’re free to declare, as you brazenly strip off your armor, and stride forth, naked, utterly exposed, something that is completely unthinkable, could not be tolerated by the cruel Mistress, but again, this is not her domain, and it must spite her to no end, knowing that all her hard work is being in an instant undone; for the moment one steps into that steaming, sacred bathhouse, one is restored, and the icy grip of Winter’s clawed hand, shattered and melted, dissolved and replaced with a vigorous, shrouded aura of vitality, of life.

It was not in the summer that I understood onsen’s power. For in the summer, one has an altogether different, much inferior enemy, the eternal and omnipotent humidity, and a steaming hot bathhouse doesn’t do much in that battle. But against Winter, onsen is an impregnable fortress, one that the enemy, try with all her might, cannot take, one that undoubtedly frustrates and infuriates her, as her foes, her oppressed subjects, return to it again and again, to be protected and restored, re-equipped and reinvigorated, given new life to continue the fight.

If only I had an onsen closer to me, that I could seek its splendid shelter every night! Were I a wolf, then the feeling that takes hold of me when I walk into that onsen must be akin the feeling a wolf has of securing a hard-won kill. For they are both a matter of freedom from oppressors. Freedom from that sharp, aching, gnawing oppressor, hunger, for the wolf, and freedom from that silent, looming desolation, Winter, for me.

There was one other place, one other time, when I have felt in full defiance, stood in absolute insolence of Winter. On top of a mountain, fully equipped for battle, with a slicing whirlwind whipping about me, blasting my eyes and howling my ears, with the monochrome palette of white earth, black rock, and grey void before me, I could then shout, Winter, you are nothing to me. And in that moment, it was absolute truth. I could look her right in the face and lay down a direct challenge, and take a resolute stand; I could fight, on my own terms, a direct fight. I could step into the ring with her, for once, or so I felt. But this was me, trying to dictate the terms of our engagement, and Winter smartly declined them. No, we fight on her terms, and it is not a fight that she will have decided by a single, all-forces-mustered mountaintop brawl; it is a fight to be won through endurance, through enduring a series of grinding skirmishes, attempts at gradually whittling, crushing down the main forces into nothingness, occurring over a period of hours, days, weeks, months. Or, like the garrison of a castle town, too strong or too costly to be overpowered, who has found themselves surrounded and under siege, by a vastly superior force, and who has no choice but to endure, to hold out, to send out the messengers and pray that reinforcements come. But unlike many of the answers to the prayers of the inhabitants in a besieged city, reinforcement from Winter is certain. There is no doubt that it will come; the unfailing Spring. Like a thousand glittering steel-clad knights, astride their gallant white horses, coming up over the hill and into full view of all, radiant in the shining sun, Spring will come to strike fear into the heart of the fiend Winter, and recognizing that her attempted conquest is at its end, she will draw off, and the siege will be broken, and the people, liberated.

The white knights are close. I can feel the warmth of their horses’ exhalations in these new, daring, spells of sunlight and warmth. I know their arrival must be soon, I can count it in the passing of the days. The people are ready for liberation! They hold the image, the soon-to-come sight of hooves trampling over the hill, high in their consciousness, lighting a fire in their souls, raising their clenched fists to the sky, crying out, Come, O’ Glorious Knights, Come!

(I am now reading Moby Dick. Clearly Herman is rubbing off on me. It’s a good book. At this moment I would rather be cooped up in the quarters of a whaling ship in the middle of the ocean than in an apartment in Ozu Town. Although as I type that now, I imagine that it’s at least warm and sunny out on the sea – but when Ishmael and his crew embark on their whaling adventure, it’s the middle of winter. Which is quite fitting, isn’t it.)

(This is entirely unrelated, but if you are as blind as I am, do not buy clear glasses. Can’t find them when you set them down.)

(Happy New Year to everyone, we will have a great 2021!)

From The Future, A Preview: This story is about my buying a bowl from a local noodle shop. I use this bowl every day that I am home. I eat everything out of this bowl. It is a big bowl in my life. This is the story of how I came to acquire this magnificent bowl.

Alright. We’re back.

Yes, it’s finally here. What you’ve all been waiting for. Maybe you thought it would never come. But it’s here. The bowl story.

Let’s go.

Right off the bat, I have to tell you. For this post, I’m trying something new, which is why it feels weird to be calling this a post. I’m writing this post out entirely by hand, instead of typing it out first, as I usually do. I’m doing this because of something that our good man Barack Obama said, when he was talking about how he writes everything out on legal pads (his medium of choice – for me, it’s scrap paper that I’ve accumulated at the school and taken home, failed or overprinted copies of worksheets and whatnot). He writes first, he says, because it helps him to avoid “half-baked thoughts.” That stuck with me, and as I don’t want to be writing half-baked thoughts, and posting half-baked posts, I thought I’d try doing it Obama style, this time. Although, if blog posts are anything like cookies, half-baked may just be best.

Without further ado, then, let’s get into the bowl story.

This story is really about a bowl. I eat out of this bowl every day, usually several times a day. I have four bowls. One I made, two I inherited, and one I bought, and it’s the bought bowl that this story is about.

The story takes places many months ago. It was the day that James, the Ubuyama JET, was leaving Kumamoto. He has since been succeeded by another James, from Australia, who I had met for the first time on Christmas Eve, at our small Christmas party. He’s from the Gold Coast, is allergic to nuts, and raw strawberries, and tomatoes, had never seen snow before coming to Kumamoto, has a different pronunciation for merry, Mary, and marry. He comes from an area of about 800,000, to a town of, what, several thousand at most. His new house is surrounded by trees, with only two neighboring houses, where the school administrators stay when they don’t want to go back to their real homes. His closest grocery store is about 20 minutes away. His car has immediately failed him. The engine light came on, and when he got it checked out by a mechanic, the mechanic plugged his computer into the car and said, “Well I’ve never seen this before!” Which is always what you want to hear your mechanic say. He will probably have to buy a new car. So Australian James is having a nice welcome to Kumamoto experience. We did try to give him a proper welcoming, and show him a good time, American Christmas style, and he tried snickerdoodles and cinnamon rolls for the first time. I asked my friend Ryoka chan if she had had cinnamon rolls before and she said, “Yes, of course. Why?” And I told her that my new friend James hadn’t, and she was shocked. Her words: “What? How does this happen?” Which is a great question that I will ask James about the next time I see him – how and why are Australians not eating cinnamon rolls.

At the party, we played a round of rock-paper-scissors. That is, we played the American version. Now, you may be surprised to hear this, but there are other versions of rock-paper-scissors. Other variants. The Japanese have two. They have the Japanese version, which is jyan-ken-pon, and then they have their English version, which is rock-scissors-paper. For me, who’s spent my whole life playing it rock-paper-scissors, who has known nothing else, this just feels wrong. Australian James (I think we’ve found our nickname here. Australian James has a nice ring to it. Like Indiana Jones. Who is known in Japan as Indy Jones. I discovered this when I was telling my classes that I was from Indiana, which unsurprisingly almost no one knows about, because it’s not Texas, New York, Florida, Hawaii, or one of those big cities in California, and when I would say, do you guys know Indiana Jones, they would stare at me blankly, and then I would sing the theme song, and then they would say, “Indy Jones!!”) Australian James taught us yet another way, the Australian way, which is paper-scissors-rock. Somehow this one is more palatable to me. I think I don’t like ending on paper. I’m writing about this because when we told James about the other American version, rock-paper-scissors-shoot! He said, “Yep, that’s just like Americans.”

Annie, Emily, and I were taking American James out to lunch, before his flight to Tokyo. He had taken a new job in Saitama, teaching kindergarteners. This was last April, I believe. Annie gave James a ride to the Kumamoto airport, which is a ten or fifteen minute drive from my place in Ozu, and so we had lunch in Ozu, at a place that Emily’s predecessor (the ALT before Emily, in the JET world we call them predecessors; some people call them ‘preds’, but the first time I heard that I immediately thought, ‘predator’, so it hasn’t really caught on with me) had taken her to before he left. This place is よも麵 (yomomen), a small, unassuming local noodle shop posted up next to the Ozu public library.

Our squad shows up at about 2 pm on a Sunday. We walk in, are greeted, and directed towards to ticket vending machine on our left. This machine is frequently found in noodle shops. They will take your order and your money, and issue a ticket in return, that details your order, that you then give to the staff. I really enjoy these ticket machines. So we turned to this particular ticket machine (I’m now wondering what this thing is actually called in Japanese – I know vending machine is 自動販売機, jidouhanbaiki, or 自販機, jihanki, for short) and started to peruse the menu. At this time, I took it upon myself to read what was written on each of the buttons, and explain the meaning, to my friends, who are all at least as Japanese savvy as I am, James much more so, and so they could quickly point out all my errors. “See here, these are the hot noodles. This means hot. And these are the cold noodles. That means cold. And these are the happiness noodles. This means happine-” “Those are spicy noodles.” And here, in my defense, was a mistake that anyone could have made. The kanji for happiness and spicy are dangerously similar, as is the case with many kanji. Here’s happiness – 幸い、and here’s spicy – 辛い. Tricky, right. And here’s two more tricky ones – 士 (samurai)土 (ground). And then there’s 末 (end) and 未 (not yet). I guess this is what happens when you have tens of thousands of these things. There’s just gonna have to be some trickery.

I do like the idea of happiness noodles and I think someone should be selling them.

So anyways, after reading almost every label on the machine, mainly to myself, as the friends stopped listening awhile ago, it was my turn to order. I had decided that for me, I didn’t need to know what I was ordering – I just needed to know the price. I was incredibly hungry, and so I just wanted max food, and at a noodle place, this means whatever is the most expensive. So I found the most expensive option, all the way down at the bottom right, put in my money, pushed the button, and got my ticket. I handed it to the nice looking store owner, a younger-middle-aged woman, and sat down at the end of the row. And so this was the beginning of what would become an unusually eventful restaurant experience.

It turned out that out of all of the tickets, I should have read mine, because right after sitting down, the woman came up to me and said, hesitatingly, and in good English, “Um.. Excuse me, but, this is takeout. Do you want takeout?” My friends are amused. I look at the ticket, and it says, お持ち帰り, omochikaeri (literally meaning, “take home”. It’s definitely takeout. I tell her that I want to eat in the restaurant, and that I chose this because I was really hungry, and it was the most expensive thing on the menu. She understands, and asks me if I want hot or cold noodles. I think about it for a moment, and tell her, cold. She gives me some money back. She turns and starts to walk away, when I suddenly remember to slip in a, “肉なし、できますか？” Nikunashi, dekimasuka? Can you make it without meat? And she turns to me, in confusion. After a moment, she replies. “But, this is a basashi restaurant..”

I’ve mentioned this before, about how every prefecture, even every town, has a specialty, or multiple specialties. Oita has the toriten that I told you about (the rare chicken), and it has yuzu, a green citrus fruit, and Kumamoto has ikinari dango, and basashi. Among other things. Basashi is horse meat. They eat it raw and they eat it cooked. I’ve had it both ways and cooked is definitely better. Being a specialty, you don’t eat basashi often, and you can’t just get it anywhere. Most people usually only eat it for New Years. It’s a delicacy, you could say. So you can imagine what this woman is thinking, when this guy walks in here, to her specialty basashi restaurant, and tells her, leave out the basashi, and this after ordering the most expensive thing on the menu without reading it, because he’s hungry. Whatever she was thinking in that moment, she had no problem accommodating me, and after confirming that I was fully aware of what I was asking of her, she set off to make it. So, our relationship was already off to a fun start, her and I’s.

Now my friends and I are sitting, talking, waiting for the food, and after a few minutes, Annie’s bowl comes. I could say that Annie’s noodles came, but in that moment, the noodles were the farthest thing from my mind. What was on my mind, then, was not the noodles, but the bowl, because the second that I had laid eyes on that bowl, I was struck with a thought, and the thought was this – That is a really nice bowl. On reflection, I realized that I have never been struck by a bowl in this way. I wonder if I ever will again. But this bowl, as soon as I saw it, I was aware of it, it’s quality, it’s shape. To me, it looked just like the shell of a conch snail, like the queen conch I had spent some time working with on my study abroad in Belize. It was large and layered and spiraling. It was a nice bowl. And I comment on this to my friends. “That’s a nice bowl!” I say. They look at it, and give some slight nods of agreement, a pretty muted response. As Annie goes in for the first slurp, and I’m still watching it. I say to them, “It looks just like a snail’s shell!” Annie looks at it one more time. “Yeah..!” She says, noncommittally. It’s clear that I’m the only one so moved by this bowl, but it does not frustrate me. I think more about the bowl. How I’ve never felt this way about a bowl. It is a fine piece of craftsmanship. Where did it come from? Custom made? Did they make it themselves? My bowl comes. I then note the size – it’s a sizeable bowl, larger than any of mine. A great size. As I’m eating, I make yet another comment to my friends. “This is such a nice bowl!” And then I added, half-jokingly, “I wonder if they’ll sell it to me!” And Annie replies, “You should try!” And at first, it wasn’t a serious thought, not entirely. But after her response, I realized – I should try. This bowl could be mine, and all I have to do is ask. The shopkeeper must already think I’m somewhat ridiculous. I would only be living up to the first impression I’d created for myself, by straight-up asking her if I could buy this bowl. I have nothing to lose, and a bowl to gain. And so, the next time she walked by, I caught her attention. “Excuse me..” “Yes?” “This is a really nice bowl. I was wondering, uh.. can I buy it?” My friends are now laughing, but I’m not – I’m completely serious. The shopkeeper is unsure what to say. She thinks about it for a moment. “Well, I’ve never sold a bowl before.. and they’re all used. Is that ok?” I reply, “No problem.” She thinks for another second. “Ok,” she says. “Just a moment.” She goes into the back of the store.

I am surprised. It’s farther than I thought I’d get. I turn to my friends. She’s going to sell me the bowl! And now the question is forming in my mind. What will I pay for this bowl? What is my maximum? What can she get me for? I try to come up with a good number, if she asks me for a price. I want the bowl. Clearly, I am moved by it. I am impressed with the quality, the design. I am also not a man who knows anything about pottery or bowl-making, and so I have no idea what the real worth of this bowl is. 1000円？4000円? I can’t tell, but I settle on 2000 being my maximum (that’s about $20), although I probably would go for 2500, if it came to it. If she asks me to give a price, I don’t want to offend her, either. If I go too low, maybe she’ll think I’m not even worthy of having the bowl after all. I’m not trying to rip her off – I want to give her a good price for the bowl. I’m thinking about these things when she comes out from the back and walks over to me. “Ok,” She says. “I have a bowl. It’s used. You’re ok with that?” I say again yes, and then I ask the question. “How much?” Hoping she doesn’t have me name a price. Wondering if I’d really hold to my maximum. She thinks for a moment, then says, tentatively, “Mmm, 500円?” And I couldn’t believe it. “Really?” I said. For that price, I’d buy five, ten of these babies. I almost told her then that I’d pay more for it, and part of me felt like I really should give her more for such a magnificent bowl.. but I said nothing more than an emphatic, “Yes!”

For having never sold a bowl before, she knew how to wrap it. I walked out of there with my new bowl, bubble-wrapped and encased in cardboard, feeling like a brand new man. As we left, I said my many arigatougozaimasu, and promised that I’d be back. Bowl aside, the noodles were incredible. And I’ve since been back, and I made sure to thank her again for the bowl, and to tell her that I use it every day. I think like me she must have a fond memory of that day, because it can’t be often that one of her customers orders takeout without wanting takeout, requests basashi-less noodles, and asks to buy a bowl, all in the same visit. I told Mr. Parker Junior about the bowl, and the story, and when he finally got to see it, I said “What do you think?” And I don’t think he was too impressed with it. But whether it impresses anyone else or not, that doesn’t matter. It will always be a special bowl for me, not just because it is functionally and aesthetically flawless, but because it also has something else, something better: a story.

So, that’s the end of the bowl story. It came out to be about eight pages of fully baked thoughts. I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. This is a significant moment, an achievement, a milestone in this blog’s history. The day the bowl story was finally told!

I’ve already written so much. I wanted to talk a bit about the clothes. I don’t want to write much now. My hand is cramping. For now, I’ll just say this. I am investigating. This is a complex issue. I’ve since bought a sweater and a pair of pants. Expensive, somewhat. Made in Japan. The pants were 100% cotton. Where does the cotton come from? The sweater was 66% synthetic fiber. On synthetic fibers – 35% of the microplastics in the ocean come from synthetic textiles (according to a report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature). We absorb toxins from these textiles through our skin. Not good stuff. There is a lot to consider. I also bought some secondhand clothes. Did you know that only 10% of the clothing in secondhand stores is sold (as of 2015)? I’m starting to acquire a lot of little facts like this.

Anyways, that’s it for this post. It’s the holidays! Ho ho ho! I should be writing about Japanese Christmas. I can sum this up in a single paragraph. They like Kentucky Christmas (ordering KFC takeout on Christmas). Last Christmas and All I Want For Christmas Is You are the two most popular Christmas songs here. Japanese snowmen have two balls in their body. None of my students know the name of the reindeer with the shiny red nose. They also don’t know that Santa lives in the North Pole, or that he’s married. Most of them don’t know that bad children get coal for Christmas. Some of them know that people give Santa milk and cookies. Some of them know that the toys are made by elves. (When I pose this question to my students, “Who makes the toys for Santa?” I often get the answer, “Small human.”) Only kids get presents, in Japan, and the parents usually put the presents on their pillows, even when they have a Christmas tree. Some people put up lights and decorations on their houses, but not most. They do not know about gingerbread houses or gingerbread cookies. They do know about stockings, and snowball fights. I have told my students that they should get presents for their parents for Christmas, and I don’t think anyone is going to take me up on that suggestion. Home Alone is popular. I guess that’s a Christmas movie? I didn’t know that. I’m not a movie guy. I have surprised more than a few Japanese people by telling them that I haven’t seen Back To The Future.

Ok, this is the end for real. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and are gearing up for a fantastic New Year. Happy Holidays, and unless the hot fire of inspiration strikes me before then, see you in 2021!

Howdy ho buckaroos.

I think about you guys. That’s really why I’m writing this post right now. As opposed to say, in a week, or a month from now, when I might finally get around to writing because I feel worked up about something and want to spin another story. But this time, I’m writing because I feel a bit guilty, I suppose, and because with time passing, there will be no difference in the outcome of the post regarding “The Fall,” and so I need to just get on with it. I also think I should stop making you guys so many promises about future stories, but maybe just for my sake it’s a good way to keep me accountable, and not let too much time pass between posts.

So, I promised you a part 2, and here we go! (Don’t ask me about the bowl story, one thing at a time now.)

The Fall. I tried to write about this twice, actually, and each time I sat down and wrote a few hundred words or so, attempting to craft an epic, full of irony and intrigue and life lessons and cultural education and yada yada, and both times it just wasn’t working. And I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not going to work, that way, and all that really needs to be said is this: I threw out my back while playing in the sensei handball tournament. And there you go. Throwing out your back sucks. I couldn’t move for two days without going, “Ohhh!!” or “Ah!!!” And the people around me would turn to me in surprise and concern. Almost every sensei I knew was in the building that day, because out of the four schools that I teach at, three were there, and so they all bore witness to my thrown back. The senseis who weren’t there, of course, still found out about it, because someone felt the need to announce it at the all-hands meeting (at least at Shoyo), or they had a spouse who was playing (at Kuroishibaru) and so all day I had teachers who weren’t even at the handball coming up to me and saying, “Your back.. ok?” And finally I asked Nakamura sensei, who is a charming home economics teacher, how did she know about it, and she told me it was announced at their morning meeting, I guess as a heads up, so that no one expected any piggyback rides to class, or wanted to have a quick passing period wrestling match. I was treated very well by all teachers, and I do feel extremely lucky to have such a supportive group of people around me. Everyone was bringing me treats, asking me how I was, telling me their personal remedies for thrown back (in Japanese, ぎっくり腰 (gikkurigoshi, another word I will never forget, like shorui, the special papers), and sympathizing with me. Last year, the handball tournament was a moment of peaking for me, scoring many goals, and having a good time bonding with the teachers, and demonstrating my worth, physically, winning the ganbaru trophy in the end (remember this word?). This year, I spent almost all of it on the floor, shivering, surrounded by small children, who became my good friends, by the end of the day, and I thought, that’s really just fitting given how totally wacky this year has been, compared to my last year. It’s hard to imagine that I’m still in the same place, at the same job, as I was just a year ago, because it feels so different, but I know everyone is going through this, the corona days, and we just deal with it how we do. And going on about the shivering on the floor, the floor was ice cold, I may as well have been laying on a sheet of ice, and I was the only person who was stupid enough to wear shorts that day, which I noticed when we took to the floor to warmup, and I have to admit I felt a little superior, like a, well I’m just strong! type feeling, although it was really just because I only have a single pair of sweatpants and I had run in them several times already, and they were not clean in any way, and so I just thought I’d bear it out in shorts, but that turned out to be the wrong move, as I spent the rest of this day on an ice cold floor. And with each shiver, I would groan with pain. And for the next several days, the moment before every sneeze was a moment of terror, and the sneeze itself, pain. But, what I wanted to get back to again was this, that the senseis are incredibly considerate, and they took pity on the poor American that they had inherited, and saw how he shivered, in his pair of shorts, and found all the spare warm things that they had, and by the end of the day he was clothed in Fukukoucho sensei’s jacket, Kawaguchi sensei’s pants, and Nishida sensei’s jacket and blanket.

I had made friends with several small children that day, who were one of the sensei’s kids, and who continually brought me treats. The first time they brought me treats, they approached me very cautiously, like one might approach a starving, wounded bear, and placed the treats at a distance where I could reach them if I just stretched out for them, coming no closer. I asked the youngest girl, who had just turned five, what her name was, and her mom told her to say her name, and she says, “Yuna.” And then I said, “Thank you Miss Yuna.” And her mom whispered to her, “Say you’re welcome!” And the girl just shook her head. But the third time that they came to me, she looked at me, summoning a bit more courage, and smiled playfully, and said to me, “Do you want to play tag?” And this just blew my mind. I could only laugh. It was so innocent. I was laying on my stomach, because it was only slightly more comfortable than being on my back, and I was craning to look up at her, and I felt like some sort of enormous turtle, washed up on land, hardly able to move, and as I am craning up laying belly down on this freezing floor, she asked me if I wanted to play tag. What she really asked me was, “Onigokoshitai?” Which is, “Do you want to play Oni Gokko?” Which is the Japanese version of tag, where someone is the oni (demon) and the other kids run from the oni. And after a second of just wondering how to respond to her, I said, “Yes, but I am not a very strong oni.”

After the tournament Nishida sensei did take me to a massage. It was the first massage I’ve ever had. Professionally. It was 1500円 for 30 minutes, which is crazy, right? So cheap. I’ve been meaning to go back, but I can’t seem to justify it.

That’s about everything I wanted to say with the destruction of the back, “The Fall.” I have to say that I do feel like it was a positive thing in that it brought a lot of other people enjoyment. And I can now sympathize with everyone who’s ever had a thrown back. I told all of my classes that I had gikkurigoshi, and that I don’t recommend it, and I asked them all if they’ve ever had it, and they were like.. no. Which I’ve also done recently with my frostbite, because yes, I’ve gotten frostbite.

Winter is here in Kumamoto. The season has been here for a while now, since early, mid-November you could say that the season had really begun to shift. It’s very interesting how our bodies respond to the shift. For me, personally, I’ve noticed that I hardly play piano anymore, I read much more, and I eat less. The eating thing is also partially because I made a conscious decision to lose some of this chub I’ve acquired, and because I’ve found that fasting gives me a little bit of a cognitive boost, and I’m exploring what that’s all about. Winter in Kumamoto is interesting. Kumamoto is at about the same latitude as Los Angeles or San Francisco (just glancing at my trusty Google Maps). It has a warm and temperate climate. Actually a website has told me that it is most similar to North Carolina. Right now, there are still many flowers in bloom, although it has gotten significantly colder in the past week or so. The sun sets earlier and earlier, and is now setting at around 5 o’clock, which is damn early. I don’t like this season, but there is one thing about it that almost makes it all worth it, and that is the sunsets. The dusk sky here is absolutely incredible. Almost every night I’m thinking to myself, my god this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It really is that beautiful. The palette of colors is just unbelievable, every shade of pink and red and orange and yellow and purple and blue and light blue that you could imagine. My pictures never do it justice. It does make me think that we are really missing out on something by not being able to see the full, raw majesty of the night sky, every night. I have seen the night sky in its full beauty once, and I still think about it. I wonder how that would change us as people, if we could look on that every night, once again. I am really serious about that. When I look at that setting sun, and the way it paints the entire sky in this incredible array of colors, I feel comforted, and small, in a good way, like there are things in this universe that are just bigger and more beautiful than me.

Then, later in the night, I check my phone, thinking it must be about nine o’clock, and it’s only six thirty, and I think, wow, this is just terrible.

Another thing I wanted to get at about differences in winter in Kumamoto and Indiana, is the way that the people deal with it. Winter in Kumamoto is not that bad. It only snowed a few times last year, and it never stuck. There are no icy roads, there’s no snow days, or closures due to dangerously low temperatures. Now, combine that with the Japanese spirit of gaman (endurance), or ganbaru (perseverance, fighting, I mentioned before) and you will not be surprised by what I am about to say, which is that when it comes to the winter there is a great deal of just, endurance. The insulation in my apartment is horrible. The schools are not heated, usually. The girls are still wearing skirts. They actually are required to wear skirts until December. Meanwhile, I’m wearing my Uniqlo heat-tech thermal underwear, and my sweater, and sometimes my coat. Everywhere is colder than it usually is, because the windows are all wide open, to bring in the fresh air, a preventative measure against corona. I sit right by a window, at Shoyo, and all day yesterday, as I sat at my desk, I was having a nice, comforting, frigid winter breeze blow over me. And also, from yesterday, I can give you a great example of this spirit of endurance, which is, from this example, perhaps indoctrinated into the students while they’re in school. Yesterday was the Shoyo high school’s culture festival, and for that, we gathered all the students, and sat them down on the gym floor, in front of a screen, to watch recorded performances, for almost two hours. All of the doors and windows are open. The gym floor is ice cold. It is a cold day. And all of the students are sitting there, on that ice cold floor, in their thin ankle socks, and the girls in their skirts. And here I am in all my cold-gear, and I’m still cold. And everyone is saying, samui! samui! (It’s cold!) We’re all in agreement about this fact. And I’m watching them, sitting there, shivering, reminding me of my recent experience with a cold gym floor, and I’m thinking.. why are we doing this? What is the point of this? There is a better way.

So I tell you this, so that you can see that while winter in Kumamoto is not as cold, and does not have the same problems, it is still winter, with it’s early darkness, and bearing the cold, and waiting it out. And, with the way things are here, you may find it easier to understand how I’ve been able to get frostbite, here, and have never had it once in Indiana, where the winters are much harsher.

The frostbite story is basically this – at the beginning of this week, my left foot started getting itchy. On Tuesday, it was bad enough that I noticed it, and thought about it, several times in the day, and would wiggle my toes around, but not to the point where I had to scratch it, or thought much about it, as in that there could be something actually wrong. On Wednesday, however, it reached the point where my entire concentration would be disrupted, by the severe itchiness, and at one point I thought, actually, what the hell is going on down there, and so sitting at my desk, I took off my shoe, and sock, and took a good look at my foot. I noticed that my toes were red, shiny, and just the slightest bit inflamed. With the amazing power of the internet, I had a potential answer in less than two minutes – I just searched, “itchy toes in winter” and I found what appeared to be my problem. At least, the toes in the pictures I was looking at were perfectly identical to the toes that were attached to my feet, and so I thought, this seems to be it. However, genius google said that my problem was chilblains, which I’m not sure if is exactly frostbite, or a symptom of it, but either way, it sounded like something that happened to people hundreds of years ago, living in wooden homes, or adventurers out in the arctic, or mountain climbers, and not to an English teacher in Kumamoto, who has lived in a much colder place, and has never had it before. So, one of the perks of working at a school, I walked right downstairs, and asked the nurse about it. She took a look at it, and she said, do you know about shimoyake? And I said, no. And she went over to the computer and typed it in, and she said, “Furosutobaito.” (Frostbite.) And that was it. She gave me some magic cream, which really helped, and she told me to go buy a pair of slippers, because my apartment was too cold, and my feet were too cold. And I was quite surprised, because I didn’t think it was that cold in my apartment, to the point where I’d be getting frostbite, because you know, I still associate that with snow, and ice, and mountains, and such things, but that night when I got back to the apartment, I realized just how damn cold my floor really was, and that my poor feet really must have been frozen, and have been freezing. And I promptly bought a pair of slippers, and when I take them off I’m struck again by how cold the floor is.

I again told all of my classes about this. It went the same way as my gikkurigoshi story. Recently I’ve gotten shimoyake. Or, in English, frostbite. Have you ever gotten frostbite? And they all just look at me like, no, Steven sensei, and what are you doing in your life, that you’re having all these problems?

To me, chilblains just sounds like a word out of a totally different era. I’ve never heard that word before. I’ve never heard of anyone having it. It comes from a time when people put coal in their furnace, or had milk delivered to their door in bottles, or rode a carriage to town. I do feel kind of special for having had it, now.

I know I’m writing a lot here, and I’m not sure if this is all that interesting to you. This will be the last thing I write, for this post, and maybe it will be interesting, but please don’t judge me too much, for this, because I’m going to tell you this in confidence.

On Friday, I was at Shoyo, and I was talking to my friend, Hiroyuki sensei, who is a geography teacher, a young buck, who will be going to teach in Tokyo after this year. He is slender, likes English, has large glasses, and is always teaching me interesting things, and we both like history, so we have good conversations. He is very cat-like, to me, and it’s hard for me to offer a lot of concrete examples of what I mean, here, but you know what cats are like, so just imagine that Hiroyuki sensei is kind of like that. He approaches my desk in the way that a cat might approach you when you’re out and about, one that wants pets, but is alright if it doesn’t get them, or one that is just curious in you, and is coming up to get a better look, and may want to be petted, if it likes what it sees, or if you’re interested, in giving it a pet. Not that Hiroyuki sensei is wanting to be petted, but, you know what I mean. He is cat-like, alright? Anyways, I was talking to him about some Japanese authors, and why Japanese commit seppuku (an honor suicide through stabbing oneself through the stomach with a short sword and then being decapitated), and then Japanese suicides in general, and he was telling me about Kawabata Yasunari, a Noble Prize winning Japanese author, who tried to commit suicide three times, succeeding on the third time, and how in one of his interviews, he made the interviewer cry just by staring at her. Which is when I learned the word, 目力 (mejikara), literally meaning “eye power.” The next day I asked Goto sensei about this story, and she told me that, apparently he stared at her for about thirty minutes, without talking, and then she finally broke down crying. So, it goes without saying, I’d like to read some of his work.

But, in a lull in our conversation, and Hiroyuki sensei is wondering if he should get on with his business, or let me get on with mine, it strikes me to tell him something. I say to him, Hiroyuki sensei, I have a secret. And he goes, oh. I know I can trust him with this secret, and so I tell him, that I’ve been wearing the exact same clothes every day this week (it was Friday). He laughs, and offers some surprise, but mostly interest. I tell him a lot of strange things, so I think he isn’t all that surprised by what comes out of my mouth anymore. I told him about how I don’t really have a lot of clothes, especially warm clothes, and that now that it’s winter, my clothes don’t dry in a day, so I can’t just wash them at night and wear them the next day, and how my suit has gotten a little too small, and how I can pull this off because there are no days where I go to the same school two days in a row, and so I have now found myself wearing the same pair of clothes every day. And he offered that, because it’s winter, we’re also not really sweating, so you don’t smell bad, and I agreed. And then he asked me, what are you going to wear tomorrow? Which is exactly what I had been thinking about earlier that day, because that did present a little bit of a problem, as I would be coming to Shoyo two days in a row, and then it’d be a little risky to wear the exact same pair of clothes to the same school, and so I did have to make a change, somehow. And I ended up wearing jeans, which was the first time I’ve worn jeans to the school, but it was a special day, and they were nice jeans, and so it went well. But that got me thinking, as well as a recent conversation with my mom, who was horrified by this story, that I should probably buy a few more clothes. And that is my goal for today. But, as a final bit, I’d like to explain why it is that I don’t have many clothes, because you might think, like my mom, that I don’t care about my appearance, but that’s not true, because I do. I’m actually very conflicted about clothes, and the wearing of clothes, and so this has become somewhat of a confusing issue for me, and has lead to some paralysis, I would say, on the issue. I seem to be able to come up with points arguing for and against the necessity of clothes, and I go down a path that ends up leaving me with no answers. For example – frugality is a virtue. It is good not to be wasteful. And it is good not to have more than you need. Right? To only buy what you need, or what will really benefit you. I think about that, and I try to live that out, although I think I could be doing a much better job of it. So, I have to ask myself the question, do I need new clothes? And that’s actually a tricky question to answer. You can see that I can wear the same clothes every day, and get away with it, although I might totally be an idiot here, and everyone has noticed that I am in fact wearing the same clothes each day. But then, is there anything wrong with that? Inherently? No, right? I don’t smell. They’re clean. I look presentable. They’re nice clothes. So, why should I change them every day? Now, here we get into the realm of, it’s for the people, to keep up a good impression. I don’t want anyone to think I’m sloppy, or that I don’t care about my appearance, or whatever judgement they may draw from this. So, clothing is certainly important, in striking a good impression others. But, at the same time, how good is it to judge another based on their clothes? How good is it to judge others based on their physical appearances at all, for that matter? I think it is true that you can make inferences about someone based on their physical characteristics, but those inferences may turn out to be totally false, and so in that case, is this a good habit? Now, reasonably, most people probably do not go so far to assess whether their impressions of another based on their physical characteristics are accurate ones or not, and that would really be impossible to do with everyone anyway. You meet so many people, and some meetings are so brief, and it is important to be able to make judgements, to navigate through the incredible amount of information that we’re trying to process at any given moment, and you have to have something to go off of, and many of your judgements are subconscious anyway, and can’t even be really scrutinized, not readily. So then, it is good to dress in a way that you you maximize that chance that someone will have a good impression of you, because, it’s just smart. But, at the same time, if we only judge based on what we see on the surface, we may judge incorrectly. I suppose that I don’t want to fall into any habit of thinking that someone is in any way superior to another just by the way of their appearance. So this is one thing that I think about, when I think about clothing, along with whether or not I even really need the clothing.

I would also touch on that everyone, or almost everyone, must feel good when they wear new clothes, that make them feel sexy, and confident. And of course, those are good things. And humans have been dressing themselves for a long time, and appearances are important in signaling your status, and health, your good genes, really. But, is confidence inspired through clothing, true confidence? Is it well-placed confidence? What has really changed about you, except that you now are going to be perceived as being more attractive, or say, more successful, or however you will be perceived, or however you think you will be, because I suppose what matters more is how you think you’ll be perceived, rather than how you are, in terms of self-confidence. You see what I mean, right? Is confidence based in clothing any kind of true confidence? What would happen to you if your head was shaved and you were dressed in rags? Would you be able to carry yourself with the same dignity? But inside, you are the same person, are you not? So I don’t how I should feel about buying new clothes just to look good. Now, that is the more detached way of looking at it, or, non-emotional, and it doesn’t do anything to change the fact that I feel fresh when I get a good haircut, when I swap out my shoes for ones that I think are cooler. And, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that anyone should feel guilty, or shouldn’t feel confident in their new clothes either. And I do think that dressing is a form of expression, and that is a way to show some personal style, artistry. I guess, looking at it from that standpoint, of self-expression, then it becomes something more.

So, I think about these things, and don’t come to any definite conclusions, and this is before I’ve even set out to buy new clothes. Now let’s say that I’ve decided to get some new clothes, because I want to change the way other people think about me, strike them in a different way, perhaps change the way I feel about myself, shake up my image. I know you can say that it’s just fun to buy clothes, too, but that can be a double edged sword, right. Now actually, before we buy the clothes, there is something else to consider about needing new clothes and about deciding if you really need new clothes. When you get clothes, they have to come from somewhere. The material has to be grown, or made. That takes a field, or a factory. Someone has to put your clothes together. Who is that someone? What kind of wages are they getting? What kind of rights do they have, as a worker? What are their working conditions? Are the clothes you’re buying perpetuating a cycle of suffering, or are they elevating someone out of poverty, giving them economic opportunity? This is thinking about the person – then, think about the planet. How much of an environmental cost went into making this product? What kind of land was cleared for the field for the material? Or for the factory? What volume of greenhouse gases were emitted in the act of bringing this product, and all the different pieces of it, all of the steps that were required to assemble it, to you? Is it worth it, then, for you to buy it? Are you doing net good, or net bad, with this purchase?

Should you buy secondhand? You can circumvent all of these considerations when you buy secondhand. But, what if I don’t want the secondhand? Or, it takes too much time? It’s hit or miss, right? Or what I want is something I just can’t find at a secondhand store? Well, you can still buy something new, but it has to be done with care, doesn’t it?

So, it’s much easier to avoid doing any harm, or headache, for me, by not buying. If we had organizations, government bodies, responsible companies, that we could trust were being fair to the worker, were supporting environmentally responsible practices, materials, etc., then it’d be much easier to buy new things. (I know they’re out there, those companies, and I mean to do some research, but for these companies you probably have to buy online to get their products, and then you can’t try the clothes on, or if they don’t fit you have to send them back, a whole other can of worms.) If the transport chain wasn’t helping to destroy the earth. If my buying these things is also my buying into a culture that tells me that I need more to keep up cultural or societal norms, a culture that is complicated and that I am still not sure about, but am learning more towards, it’s not a good one. In one of my school’s English textbooks, I was reading about the lives of Japanese people living during the Edo period. I believe it was the Edo period. 1603-1868. Edo is the old name for Tokyo, also, fun fact. It was a period of time where people made use of every little thing that they had. People repaired broken things. People reused, recycled, their food waste, their old tatami mats, even their poop. Actually, their poop was regarded as highly valuable, because it was some of the best fertilizer. I think about that, and then I think about how, when I was a substitute teacher, I would watch a third of the kids in a class throw away their breakfast without touching it. A sugary, crap breakfast, made with plastic. I think about how, when I used to work at Menards, I watched them throw away bags of dog food, door locks, mattresses that might have been used once, just because the packaging was damaged, or it wasn’t new, and the employees couldn’t take it (policy), and the store could write any such good off with the distributor, without considering it a loss. I think about how our wanton use of fertilizers has led to massive algal blooms, that consume all oxygen in the shore waters, and lead to massive die-offs of ocean life, and we are not immune either, as the poisons infiltrate the food chain, our water supply, and end up tucked away, nice and safe in the recesses of our bodies, where they can wreck our sperm counts, cause cancer, and deform newborns. I am all for progress, but I want responsible progress. I don’t want to contribute to, to be a part of a culture that so shamelessly and recklessly wastes, poisons, and destroys.

I think about all of this, and then it becomes very hard for me to want to buy anything, beyond what I really need. I wish it was easier to do this, but this culture is kind of a core feature of the systems that are essential to our lives. When I buy my groceries at the store, I take my avocados as they are, I don’t put them in a plastic bag. If I go through the cashier-assisted checkout, they’ll put my avocados in a small plastic bag, if I don’t stop them. Why do they do that? There’s no point to it.

I guess we’ve just totally perverted things. Our way of living is totally out of balance with the natural world. I know that you could consider humans a product of the natural world, and so by extension, it’s impossible for us to do anything that isn’t natural. It’s all natural. So maybe, a better word to use isn’t natural, but healthy. And thinking not just in terms of human health, but in terms of planetary healthy, ecological health. And to think that our health is not tied to the health of the natural systems that we live in, is hubris, right? I’m thinking back to how we can’t see the stars at night. What are we sacrificing in the sake of progress? In the sake of convenience?

I will be thinking about all of this when I go out to buy clothes today. I now have talked myself out of what little desire to do this I had – but the thought of another week of wearing the same outfit is driving me onwards. If you have any thoughts about these issues, because I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking like this, please comment or say something to me. Anything that strikes you or you’d like to bring up.

Anyways, that’s my little Sunday post. I really have to get going on. It is a really beautiful day today. I was just talking about my frostbite, but’s warm enough today that you could almost get away with being out in a t-shirt. At least, I’m sitting outside in a flannel and jeans and feeling a bit warm. There probably won’t be many more days like this until the spring, soon.

I will leave you with this promise – the next post, I am going to tell you the bowl story. Yes, I really will. Whether you’re tired of me talking about it or not, I have to make this promise, for both of us. So I will. Until then!

UPDATE: I went shopping. I bought two pairs of socks. Made in Japan. I found a shirt that I really liked. 100% wool. Made in China. I didn’t buy it. I met one of my English club girls, Green peas, as I was leaving. She’s cute, always laughing. She tried to get me to speak Japanese with her, I wouldn’t do it. They don’t have many opportunities to speak English with a native English speaker, and I’m going to make sure they do it. Also, it’s fun for me to play dumb.