I will have to post this with half a dozen other entries when I get some internet access. I’m going to be staying a few days with my friend Hiroshi in Kameyama, Mie prefecture, somewhere between Nagoya and Kyoto. I took the long and cheap way here (7,250 yen) using only local trains from Kichijoji, where I had lunch with my former landlady Nami-san. This basically means I get to spend 8 hours seeing more of the country side, do more reading, and take longer naps than if had gone by bullet train (three hours or so total, for about 12,000 yen). It was a beautiful day, filled with some beautiful views.
Continue reading The Long Road to Kameyama
Category: Personal
Urban Hiking: Kichijoji to Tsukiji Fish Market
Lars and I decided to make a spontaneous hike from Lucky House (which Lars moved into in March) in 吉祥寺 to the fish market in 築地. Basically this means we walked across a vast stretch of the Western suburbs of Tokyo, and through the city to its eastern side, not far from Ginza. It was a great adventure. We left at 23:30 and arrived at the fish market at 5, when it was in full swing (it might have been a little better to arrive a tad earlier). About 10 minutes after our departure, a light drizzle turned into a massive downpour and about half an hour later we found ourself hiking through a massive night time storm. It was fantastic! Ok, we got a little soaked. Below are some pictures of us taken with my cellphone at 2:42 in the morning, somewhere between Nakano and Shinjuku stations:
Continue reading Urban Hiking: Kichijoji to Tsukiji Fish Market
The Memento Syndrome
Most people who know me know that I have a serious memory and concentration problem. It is one of many reasons that my favorite movie of all time is Memento. I know I share this problem with millions all over the world, and if they have a club, I should join it. I can’t maintain concentration on a simple thought, especially those having to do with the mundane concerns of our daily lives, for more than a few minutes, tops. This is something I have to face every single day, to the annoyance of my parents, Sayaka, and many of my friends. This morning I left for school and in addition to the simple task of getting myself to school with at least some my possessions (left strategically in my backpack as much as possible) with me, I had to accomplish one other very formidable task: I had to mail a letter at the post office.
I had somehow managed to fill out a form related to my friend Glenn’s wedding, get it into an envelope and seal it. Then, in the space of less than 20 minutes, I had forgotten to take the envelope no less than three times. At first I left it on the desk. Then I left it on a desk a little closer to the apartment exit. Then I left it on my bed. I then went back again to get it and placed it directly next to the exit door where I put on my shoes. I am now writing this entry sitting on the 西武 line train heading for 高田馬場 station just after realizing that my envelope is not in my backpack and is still waiting for me right by the exit.
This is almost a daily occurrence. To give another very representative example, back in November I had to mail some PhD applications off (or parts of them which couldn’t be submitted online). Forms had to be filled out, then they had to be put in envelopes and then mailed. One day, I got all the materials I wanted to send and put them by the door. All I had to do was to bring them with me, buy a few envelopes, and take the materials to the post office to mail them. That was the only task I had planned to accomplish for the whole day. Not only did I not bring the materials with me but I got all the way to the building with the 無印 stationary store and then stopping outside the entrance to ponder in Memento fashion, “Why am I here?” Since I had no tattoos to refer to, I concluded that, If I was me, I probably come here to do grocery shopping. I proceeded to the grocery store in the basement, bought lots of groceries and began my trip home. I then passed the post office. Something began scratching at the back of my mind. There was something important about that post office. Something, perhaps, I was supposed to send. I couldn’t quite get it until I returned to my apartment, groceries in hand, opened the door, and found laying right there in the middle of my genkan hallway, a pile of Phd application forms.
This is why, whenever I have some simple task like this to accomplish, I feel just like the main character of Memento after he got into an argument with the character Natalie and she tells him that she will leave the house, come back in just a few minutes when he has completely forgotten what they had, indeed, that they had, been in a heated argument. I hear myself echoing his words as I run around the room, “Ok, must concentrate, must keep it in my mind. Must…not…forget. Quick, a pencil, a pen, anything, must….write…this…down…”
Tokyo Metropolitan Library
I enjoyed meeting my friend Tony Laszlo for lunch in Hiroo last week when I made a run down there for a month’s supply of Norwegian goat cheese. A grocery store there that tends to the families of the many embassies in the area (including the Norwegian one) sells the big full size blocks of the toxic brown substance I love to cover my sandwiches with. Although our lunch of tea-flavored gruel was no match for a post-lunch snack combination of his rye bread and my cheese, we enjoyed a good talk in the park at Hiroo. We also stopped by the Tokyo Metropolitan Library which has its central branch in the park. I love this library and used to hang out there when I was studying Japanese in Yokohama years ago. Apparently they have wireless access in the library now, but I think you need an account with some commercial service. Also, I’m told they have a lot of materials in their closed stacks which you would normally only find at the Diet Library. So if there is anyone who is tired of the lines and hassle there, you might want to try the library in Hiroo, with its view over the park, as an alternative. Tony and I happened to get there while the cherry trees were blossoming outside. Today the blossoms have mostly fallen, covering much of Tokyo’s concrete in a thin blanket of pink petals.
When Does Morning Come?
I’m spending the weekend in the countryside with some friends. As I was working on a programming project at about 2:30 in the morning, I heard the roosters starting to sound the coming of morning outside. For a second I though my computer’s clock was set wrong.
In a book on the birth of modern time consciousness in Japan called “The Birth of Tardiness” (I’ll hopefully get around to blogging about 遅刻の誕生 later) it notes that before the coming of modern time to Japan, most farmers and country folk would judge the coming of morning by the rooster’s call. I’m sure this was also the case for many other places around the world. But if the roosters start calling at 2:30 in the morning, long before sunrise, then what is the point? Either the roosters around here are just back from a trip and are a little jet lagged or I must be not understanding the way this is supposed to work…
I just got back from the countryside today and will again have sporadic internet access…
Komaba International Students House, the Baojia system, and Collective Punishment
Japan once implemented the old Chinese mutual-responsibility system called Baojia (保甲) in colonial Taiwan. In this traditional system, when one person commits an offense, the group of persons to which the criminal belongs are all held responsible. Of course Japan itself, and indeed most pre-modern societies have had similar practices throughout history. Unfortunately, collective punishment for an individual’s misdeeds remains a practice in many places today. These include some military basic training camps, a few despotic boarding schools for children, and the Komaba International Student House near Tokyo University.
A community of Ministry of Education research students/scholars (adults in their mid-20s to early 30s) live together in this very reasonably priced dormitory run by the AIEJ (Association of International Education, Japan) while they receive a generous scholarship to support their studies from the Japanese government. I lived here too, but moved out after only a few months because I got sick of being treated like a child. I still visit friends from time to time and today I see that things haven’t changed much. The current director is a little bit of an arrogant megalomaniac who believes he is a lord in a kingdom of foreign monkeys.
The most recent incident involves a fire in the kitchen of the first floor of one of the buildings. Many of the students cook in the kitchen and they leave their rice cookers and pots and pans in the kitchen. One person apparently did something that created a fire, filling the kitchen with smoke. The guilty party did not report their crime and no one knows who is responsible. The great lord director, in his infinite wisdom, decided to deal with this by holding the entire floor responsible for the crime. The kitchen, and everyone’s rice cookers, pots, pans – basically what all the students who actually cook their meals every day need to get by, was locked up and a sign today hangs there which reads that the kitchen will be closed, “until the person who caused this comes to the Director.”
Basically the first floor “bao” is being held collectively responsible for one individual’s crime. Perhaps they will talk amongst themselves and a snitch will turn the culprit in, a result that the original baojia system was designed to encourage. The Director explains that he is waiting for another result. Last time he did this, the students all got together and petitioned him to relieve them of their punishment. In his benevolence, he heard their pleas and forgave them, but, he says, by forcing them to band together and beg forgiveness as a group, he got them to admit they were, “a single community” who all had to take responsibility for each other’s mistakes. So this time, he says, he is also waiting for all of the students to together beg their overlord’s mercy.
Continue reading Komaba International Students House, the Baojia system, and Collective Punishment
Travel Plans
I leave for a few days visiting Sayaka in Taipei tomorrow but I’ll be back in Tokyo on the first of March. I’ll be in Taiwan again for research from the 18th until the 28th of March. I’m moving out of my “lucky house” tomorrow and will be staying with friends for most of the time until August. My life will be a two-backpack vagabond existence for half a year but I look forward to it. It has a cleansing effect on me, scraping off just a few of the materialistic shards you collect with an apartment full of junk. Lars is moving into lucky house and I only hope he will get as much good fortune as I have had in the past year. I should be back in Stavanger, Norway for a month from mid-May until mid-June (my best friend Glenn is getting married!). During this time I’ll make a short trip to New York for a few days at the end of May for a conference on Chinese language education where I’m giving a workshop on OWLS. I might also be in Beijing helping present on the same software in July but I don’t know the details yet. I am rewriting OWLS from scratch so that will be my major tech-related project for the Spring.
Back to the US at the end of Summer
I’m still waiting to hear back from some grad schools on my application for a history Phd. However, after some unofficial rejections and acceptances via email, two official letters in the mail, and lots of help and advice from friends I think I’m finally over the anxious period of waiting. I cannot emphasize enough how important my friends and some of my professors have been in helping me throughout this process – it makes a huge difference. Yesterday, I got the official letter telling me that I was accepted to study at Harvard’s history department for the coming fall and for a number of reasons I have decided to take that offer. I’m obviously blown away by this and it hasn’t really sunk in, but at least now I can now concentrate on making the best of my remaining time in Japan. Except for a few short trips, I’ll stay here until mid-August.
Grad School
I’ve started getting unofficial results on some of my graduate school applications and I am happy to say that it looks like I will indeed begin a PhD in history somewhere in the US this coming fall. I will reveal what part of the country I end up in here at Muninn.net once all the official letters of rejection or acceptance have come in and I can be certain that there is indeed a dotted line somewhere waiting for me to sign away the next five years or more of my life. This will probably be sometime in early or mid-March.
The National Museum of Japanese History
I got off my nocturnal schedule and left early to visit the national museum of Japanese history outside of Chiba. I added an entry about the museum on my reference wiki. The grounds for the museum are on the old site of Sakura castle and it is surrounded by a very charming park. I ended up spending much less time than I expected I would and was able to go through its five large fixed galleries depicting various periods and themes in Japanese history in only a few hours. On the one hand I was impressed at how well done and clean the presentation of many things were. However, in the end, I was really disappointed to see how little attention modern Japan was given.
To be sure, the museum focuses a lot on folk culture, art, and many of the areas of Japanese history that students might not get to read about in detail in their textbooks. I actually thought it was refreshing that, while the museum was ordered roughly in chronological order, there was no silly march through Japan’s convoluted political history from one end of the museum to the other. There were interesting sections talking about the history of printing, on mountain farming techniques, images of monsters and spirits, and lots of huge models of villages, boats, and the houses of each period. Still, however, I was perplexed that the entire Showa period (1929-1989) was absent from the museum. This can’t be entirely explained by a desire to avoid portraying Japan’s most troublesome historical period. For example, the museum had an excellent audio/visual presentation on the Great Kantô Earthquake which clearly emphasized the horrible slaughter of thousands of Koreans in its aftermath. Yet, when we get to the end of the Taishô period, where the gallery focused on the rise of women’s magazines and movie theaters, I suddenly found myself at the exit of the gallery. There, a single section of a wall with a rather boring set of a dozen pictures of average Japanese comprised all that there was for the Showa period. It was labelled, “Snapshots of Japan during and just after the Pacific War”. I tried to picture what message the board was sending to the visitor. The only impression I was left with looking at these pictures was that everyone seemed very busy.
One possible explanation for the glaring absence of this period is that the Showa Memorial museum can be found in downtown Tokyo and the museum thus felt that there was no need for a whole exhibit focusing on the period. However, as I already mentioned, that exhibit focuses almost entirely on the daily life and experience of Japanese during this period, and essentially leaves untouched any portrayal of the tumultuous events and other changes which were going on in these decades of national mobilization and war. That only leaves only the Yushukan museum and its frighteningly revisionist narrative to tell the story of Japan’s difficult 20th century on a macroscopic level. There must be another museum that I have neglected. If I find it, I’ll post about it here.