The returnee's experience

Rummaging the reasons to stay, the reasons to leave would be the wrong approach. Motives prior to the decision matter less than the decision to leave, the implementation of the decision and the emotional consequences after being back there. I had a too short one hour conversation with D. in France with whom it transpired I share similar experience in terms of stay duration in Japan, generation and professional history. D. lived here for 20 years, then went back. I consciously refrain here to write "went back home", because "home" is a notion I am lost with. D. right away sees his coming back as a positive experience, while longing for a few practical as well as fleeting things from Japan. I just wrote a few keywords from his conversation, hoping to have the opportunity to further the discussion at a later time. Of the clear motives to go back is a feeling toward the coming loss of elder family members, and the self-questioning lace with projecting remorse of being far away when one's parents pass away.
D., who is fluent in Japanese and was attracted to Japan for cultural reasons, cites a growing feeling while being there of intellectual regression, Japan being a king of Dysneyland the size of a country, or at least the size of it's urban extension. D. repeatedly used in succession of things are "petit, petit" here, from the perspective of feeling oneself as being a "citoyen du monde", a citizen of the world. He mentioned how tough it was to reconnect with the debating, clash of opinions about anything under the sunlight that is definitely foreign here in Japan.He left before the Internet wave, before that ease of remote access to the realities of other places, instantly, as distilled by the media. Walking the streets of Tokyo with earplugged geared to a slice of France Culture on podcast is a quantum leap in expanding the distance between the intellectual mind and space. I have read nothing about the subject of the psychological consequences for expats to have instant access to this new streams of outwardness and the mental jumps back and forth they allow. How podcast from one's country of origin allows for creative a soothing, comforting virtual world to compensate for one's physical and cultural daily environment. D. is longing for a few things about that Japan like the "practicality of things", also referred to by J. in the UK, but we did not ponder on that issue this time. (to be continued ...).

Revenir

The question of leaving Japan has never been a tangible issue with me. Going back where afterall? To that place once called home? 20+ years have made the word home obsolite. The pangs of nostalgia, remote or in-situ when going back to Paris are symptoms of a longing for something I can't clearly figure out, which rooted not in the reality of the place, but tainted by iddle thought and much readings. I have never read so much about Paris since I left. The reasons to be here, to stay there, to move elsewhere or back over there may be categorized if the purpose would be to investigate in a social science kind of approach the subject of expatriation. I would love to do this. In the meantime, a reader of my French blog came to me the other day, referrin to his moving back to France after 20 years spent in Japan. I am to interview him on Monday and hardly can't wait for that lucky opportunity to hear about first hands experience of "le retour".

Ghosts

Here is a ghost town. Once you've left the Shibuya, Shinjuku and other locations that are supposedly representative of Tokyo, you navigate in residential districts, very often aligning detached houses packed in irregular rows. Be it in wealthy or shabby districts, they all share the same factors: deep silence, and very few if no people walking around. The silence is sometimes eerie, so much that you can hear you own heart beat. I had this strange experience myself a few weeks ago walking along some back streets close from Kichijoji. There are plenty of ghosts in this city, and as a matter of fact, all over Japan. I have never met one, but the atmosphere in back alleys, with anonymous shrines and a cemetery attached - a common sight in all Tokyo - is perfect to have a taste of the fantastic lingering around.

Garden house of Fumiko Hayashi

How fresh and powerful is the face of author Fumiko Hayashi I picked on a poster at the entrance of her beautiful garden house built in 1941, now a public space. How fresh is this face captured some 70 years ago. The garden is pure beauty. I skipped the room where artifacts of the author are gathered and stayed instead in the garden for a good 30 minutes, totally alone. Once you cross the the large avenues at Ochiai station, there starts the typical provincial face of Tokyo, with Shinjuku towers at close distance. Pictures of the promenade are to be found here.

Streets of Tokyo

I was recently suggested to blog again in English. Blogs are islands that appeal to different creeds of seafarers. They open up different tracks of opportunity. This puts Conversation in Tokyo back into the treadmill, back into the streets.

Streets

What has changed so far? Walking around the streets has been an ever consuming activity, what with a new interest for urban architecture. The conscious activity of walking, seeing around perspectives, looking for the declivities in the back alleys that save the unpleasant avenues from boredom has unexpected reaches. I have been thinking lately about the reasons why Japan, and Tokyo, which are not the same entities, generate such longing, especially for those people now away that share the experience of having lived here, even for a short, touristic stay. Longing is not unique to any specific place. Yet, I have a feeling, without supporting the entrenched discourse of Japan being special, that there is something, for the urban Westerner first, that stirs in a very specific way this longing. Longing for Tokyo is not longing for Japan. This, I am sure of while not being able currently to elaborate on the reasons why. Being a part of it, Tokyo, and Japan sometimes when we get out of the city, does not help to ponder on those issues.

There is the human made landscape and the human landscape. I am not knowledgeable nor fond of the second. Once you leave the big centers through back streets - granted back streets were left - you enter a dimension of Tokyo that applies to a vast extend of the city. There is lots of silence, and so very few people to meet. The other day, in the plushy small alleys of Takanawa and Shirogane-dai, I met again with the same quality of silence one can find in the West part of the city where Tokyo looks more than ever like the countryside, west of Tachikawa. Where are the people? Very often at home, at least the wives. What are they doing? Not playing the piano or the violin at least. Not so much tending for the small garden. The silence is a mystery, a heavy mystery.

Not blogging for sometime?

E. tells me I have not been blogging for some time. The reality is that I have been blogging fiercely in French here, not English, except a little on a blog about Awamori. What seemed impossible at a time, writing in ones own language, has a turned a de facto, and a mere copy translating pasting is not enticing enough to feed the English beast. This one entry is from the original French though, adapted that is. This picture may look old but was taken just last month. I see the sepia trick as an elegant formula to counter the almost disagreeable never altering quality of digital picture. The picture was taken in the sushi-bar Tochigiya on top of the Ochanomizu hill. The sushi-bar itself is 40 years old according to the chef who enjoyed modeling on the picture. Sepia smoothen the harshness of digital picture.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

War zone in a Tokyo futon

A strange and haunting experience it was listening last night in the comfort and peace of the futon in Tokyo a long audio reportage about American private citizens working in Irak. Despite the ridiculous censorship that hides behind a buzz filfthy words like fuck, son of a bitch or bullshit, this was first class journalism. Ha, the evocative power of audio. The link to the show was referred to in Herro Flom Japan Podcast blog.

Akikawa

(Click here to see the panoramic picture)

Tokyo green. Take the Chuo-sen, the central JR line, and go West. One hour and a few more minutes away, it is still Tokyo, that is administratively, but Tokyo in the countryside. The Akikawa river is dotted by a few vegetables fields and rice paddies. Not far from there, growing vegetables is an intensive activity. For family reasons, we often get there and spend week-ends to resource in greensight. Just about a month ago, the landscape was a desultory yellowish thing with dried out bushes and shabby trees. This is all over. Thanks to Spring and welcome to Summer.


K.'s junior school is still located here in the middle of the fields, just like 30 years ago. On Sundays, boys, as in many Japanese schools, gather to play baseball. Baseball seems to be more of a voice than a muscle activity. The kids encourage each other in not much enthusiastic ritualistic way. It is the coach's voice scolding and shaming that is stands a head and shoulder above the chorus. My sports coach disgust knows no limit. (Click here to walk around in the picture.)



At this time of the year, irrigation channels are gushing with water swarming the paddies. It adorns our usual walk path with refreshing googling notes. Rice shots are brought from elsewhere and plucked in the mud one by one, by hand. Akikawa rice has no brand image and the paddies are small. The growers may be eating it all.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Green Moss

No time to wander places these last days. Just grabbed the picture of this green moss on a tree at Yasukuni shrine while crossing the place at high speed for an errand this afternoon. Green moss fits the mood for the following story heard yesterday.

It is the story of a physician at a daycare center of a famous Tokyo university hospital. 90% of the mothers who have their children looked after there are employees of the hospital. As this daycare center is privately run, it is custom to ask the mother to financially contribute for the purchase of equipment. Part of the money received is also used to buy gifts to the physician. No monetary gifts but goods gifts. This too is custom, despite the fact that in hospitals, posters remind the patrons that gifts are not authorized. Not authorized or not, social custom bribery is deeply entrenched in Japan. The ethics of gifts and favors barter goes against custom. Still. mothers of that daycare center loathe at the custom but none would dare and call it quit. Recently, the physician whose unique competence is to be attached to that daycare center is said to have requested that the next gift be in the form of goods vouchers. Those vouchers - an industry in Japan - are easy to sell for hard cash.

There are two times of the year where traditional gifts giving take place. This formalized bribery happen on view of all. I know that some who consider harsh to call this bribery. Indeed, not all gifts are the result of compliance to tradition and a strategy to gain the good grace of people hierarchically superior. But yet, this exchange of gift is the tip of an iceberg of favors and forced upon customary exchange of goods for good grace. That physician is the superior of many mothers who cannot even think about going against that matter of fact bribery.

While writing or you reading these lines, one has to be aware that bribery is by no means specific to Japan. And by no means perceived as bribery for many locals I bet.

This story I did not read in the papers but heard indirectly from a mother involved in that nasty ring of human relations. But this one I read in the papers. That infant mortality rate in japan is 30% higher than in other advanced, rich countries. The most shocking comment was to read that the reasons for this discrepancy are unknown. Appalling to dare claim that this is unknown. Why can't it be investigated?

Green moss is especially striking these days, thanks to the damp and the milky quality of the light that is not fit during the rainy season for photography. Moss is both beautiful and repulsive at the same time. The fluffy gentle to the touch vegetal knitwear is somewhat like rot without the smell. Rot in social customs. Without the smell.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Things to come in translation

Google Translator: The Universal Language:
The Google Babelfish


This would be the most advanced implementation of the Google Translator. It would be a smart device you plug-in to your ear, and it would have speech recognition and Auto-translation built in. You can now visit a foreign country and understand people who talk to you in languages you never learned.


Few years ago, I would have considered the prospect described in that interesting brainstorming article plain bullshit. No longer. In the span of a few days, I was contacted by some unknown US entrepreneur asking if I was available to help with a short translation. I forgot I had once advertised free test translation on my business web site. But reminded of that fact, I offered to do it just like that, for free. The content was a mail exchange between the client and a Japanese partner. As the US side of the conversation was missing, reading the Japanese part only was a small challenge, not for the vocabulary, but for trying and understand the context. But it did not take much time to come up with something possibly meaningful. I am not expecting that entrepreneur to come back with further work, paid this time. It was free lunch that I offered and he ate for free, which is fine. However, in his thank you message, he told me with apparent relieve that he had been so far relying on Internet machine translation to conduct business with Japan, and the conversation this time sounded a totally different and new story.

You can bet it. But in a of a few years, I believe machine translation will make that kind of mail based exchange feasible with enough accuracy to not rely anymore on human translation. I am not suggesting that it will be perfect and applicable in any case. But it will be rather correct and fairly usable in many case.

In the same trend, I just received a contact from a Japanese company offering phone and video conference based interpretation services. They are looking for people available to work from home at any time time. It seems they are offering among other services the renting of cellphone with interpretation to allow travelers abroad to get in touch with an interpret whenever needed. I would indeed be curious to see how it works in the real world. And with still some idle time spent in front of the computer, why not just let's do it? At least before the Google Babelfish gets into the picture for real.

Madly blogging in French

The steam for this blog has somewhat shifted to new horizons. That is, blogging in French over there.
Blogging madly in ones mother language, until it cools down.

Festive promiscuity

It was fiesta day in and around the Kanda Myôjin temple in Tokyo. The omikoshi, movable shrines, were touring the adjacent streets bringing good luck all around. The crowd was thick, a sea of heads as seen from the camera lens. Omikoshi are mostly paraded by males with a few girls toughing around. A parade of sweat and crude bragging that comes as a stark contrast with everyday life. There are tiny omikoshi for children, but I saw this one exclusive women only omikoshi.

Male groping of female passengers in packed subways being now heralded as a social major concern, subways and trains operators are cloning each others in offering women only carriages at traffic dense time or late at night. This packed women only omikoshi is certainly unrelated with this issue.

Technorati Tags: Tokyo

Tokyo Panoramic

Yesterday's brief but strong storm in Tokyo has cleaned up the sky this morning. The air texture is Autumn. An anomaly in May that will be quickly rectified. Panoramic pictures these days are so easy to create, thanks to software, that it is hard to resist.

Click to open in another window, click to enlarge and scroll horizontally to look for the numbers.

1. The Kudanshita crossing. When the black trucks of the extreme right thugs gather here at a short distance of the controversial Yasukuni shrine, the free Japanese media don't even mention the fact. Part of the folklore.

2. This is the new Aozora bank head-office now building. Tokyo is mushrooming. Most of the skyscrapers in the distance facing the sea waterfront were not here 9 years ago when we got to start living in the center part of Tokyo. An non-economist question to ask is how those blood-in-the-red banks can still pour money into building yet new head-offices.

3. Hotel Grand Palace, the starting point of my currently suggested walks in Tokyo, on an iPod near you, or more in details scattered all over the place here.

4. The tiny Tokyo Tower, to be dwarfed by a bigger one in a few years.

5. This bit of copper layered roof is the Budô-kan, a circular hall for music and sports events.

6. The Kitanomaru park, which is part of all the green seen on this side of the picture, which is the huge imperial palace district.

7. The colossal but here tiny top of the Yasukuni shrine portal.

8. This building delivered about 2 years ago near the Indian embassy is one of the most expensive condominium in Japan. It sold out immediately. We walked along it one day and were definitely not impressed.

9. The French lycée.

10. A tower at the Hosei university of Law.

11. Mount Fuji with snow that is clearly melting. Seeing Fuji-san in May from this distance with the sky usually milky whitish and filled with smog is a rare opportunity. It actually looks much bigger with human eyes.

12. The Tokyo government towers in Shinjuku district.

13. The building on top of Iidabashi station. Historically, Iidabashi was the starting point of a major railway track that ran away as far as Kôfu city in Yamanashi prefecture, famous for grapes and fruits. When we moved in, the extreme right of the picture was the second generation remnants of the tracks.

14. Tokyo may be located on the sea front, but mountains are very close by and hard to get unnoticed.

15. This one tower, courtesy of tax payers, is brand new and even still not open. It will be a Tokyo wards council something where civil servants will gather for unending discussions and no actions plans I assume.

N. Korea Nuke Mega-threat

The usual question of an outsider to an insider like me is to ask "how's life in Japan?". The standard answer of the long time resident feeling that his duty is to deliver a list of pro and con often starts with the pro factor that is safety in everyday life, despite all recent tragic events one can scoop up from the news. But now, that micro safety is threatened by a potential event that is bigger than the micro area where daily life takes place, daily life never happening within large spaces. The threat is that of North Korea launching a missile rocket loaded with a nuclear bomb. In other words, and putting aside the technical capacity and tangibility of it all, the idea, crazy or not, that Tokyo could be the target of the mad and not so far neighbor nation is part of the plausible discourse one can deliver about Japan these days. Yes, daily safety is a fact, despite train accidents. But from now on, the threat of a major earthquake is no longer alone in the list of possible mega-threats, and despite the differences in causes, odds occurrence and consequences. What if North Korea nukes Tokyo?

The zzzzzzzz-list and other tricks

I don't know why, but the case of the Notable (see previous post) strikes a chord of irritation that is similar with A-bloggers (or was it A-Lister the correct name?), whereas this category seems at first sight totally unrelated with a smart speech impaired notable. A-bloggers have a knack at sharp, in your face, sententious affirmations, a strong capacity at embroidering around meaninglessness with apparently consistent speech that hardly resists simple analysis, as long as the listener stops being mesmerized. That is the most difficult part though: escaping mesmerization triggered by A-Listers blowing hot air. Some adopt the zzzzzzzz-list trick. An ultimate trick I tried to escape was to read the list of notables roles in a soon to come fast to forget conference, skipping people names. I picked these I especially found delicious: digital thinker, Japanese über-blogger (über alles?), expert on happiness, leading thinker on cognition, top European design thinker, sustainability architect, air and space visionary. Phew! Kampai! And put a sock in it too.

Notable says kampai

It is invariably a notable person who is the last to be called in front on the microphone and make a final speech before asking the attendance of that get-together in Tokyo to raise their glasses and say kampai! The notable, of a notable age, is allowed to blunder and does it with a faked ingenuity. This one is a big brass of a big local IT company. He hardly can't hide his lack of understanding of the venue he has been invited to sponsor. He blunders so much that the elderly man standing besides me dares and utter something like "will he put a sock in it?" with a grin on my direction as if we had known each other. I love these fleeting moments of connivence. You can feel people starting itching with these never ending sentences oozing of meaninglessness. The interpreter is a pro. She knows how to interpret meaninglessness. When the notable is over and does not hides he has lost the direction of his speech or mind, and that it is time to raise glasses, a mute sense of general relief can be felt. Like yawning, it spreads and ricochets from one attendee to another at light speed. The notable is an invariable ingredient to such Japanese hoopla. And the speech incompetence is endemic. But respect is due where matchmaking power is, and the organizers at the end of the hoopla deeply bow to the honorable notable who bows and smile like a child while leaving the place, that big white and red ribbon flower still sticked on the lapel. I am sure he is getting money he is absolutely in no need just to play his notable role.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

China in Tokyo

I am not actively looking for the weird association of the ancient and the (no so much) modern, but the combination keeps coming in full view these days. Today in Tokyo, in the area of Shiba-Koen, that is, Shiba park, I took a few minutes before a work errand walking inside the Zojoji temple where I had not set foot for years despite brief glimpses from a taxi window many times.

A good in my eyes temple is Buddhist, red and a little bit decrepit. This one, or at least part of it, fairly fits the bill.

A good in my eyes temple is a reminder these days of a film I remember having seen a few times as a child on French TV. A film, possibly American, for kids. where the only thing I can remember is two children, a brother and a sister in pajamas on bed, and the bed for some reasons I forgot ends up in the middle of the open space in front of a Chinese temple, with the kids startled at what is happening. I also remember a monkey like character with a particular habit of spitting balls out of its mouth or ears like a magician.

Among the conventional and usual conversation starters one goes through here is the question about what triggered ones coming in Japan and learning the language. Among the set of possible answers I keep in my mental wallet is a cover page of Air France in-flight magazine about Japan with a doll like Japanese girl picture. Japan is a female that lured me in.

But before Japan clarified in the mind, it was part of an imaginary mic-mac called Asia, where bits of China, Vietnam, and Japan where messily but happily living together. Karate practiced a few years on the trail of the Bruce Lee craze was an early sign of longing to elsewhere. Elsewhere can happen when crossing the street. My elsewhere was Asia with a heavy slant at China.

But when thinking more deeply about all this, it appears that Japan started with China which was all the same, bundled in the same bag of fantastic and mystery. And this film seen on TV is probably the most early visual representation of elsewhere, a film I would love to find a reference about today. China was elsewhere. It turned to be Japan when subjectivity meddled in the picture. For China, that is, the China of red temples with a court where a bed carrying two startled kids clad in pajamas sort of landed is the true real and inaccessible dreamland.


"One never thinks of China, but it is there all the time on the tips of your fingers and it makes your nose itchy; and long afterwards, when you have forgotten almost what a firecracker smells like, you wake up one day with gold leaf choking you and the broken pieces punk waft back their pungent odor and the bright red wrappers give you the nostalgia for a people and a soil you have never known, but which is in your blood, mysteriously there in your blood, like the sense of time and space, a fugitive, constant value to which you turn more and more as you get old, which you try to seize with your mind, but ineffectually, because in everything Chinese there is wisdom and mystery and you can never grasp it with two hands or with your mind but you must let it rub off, let it stick to your fingers, let it slowly infiltrate your veins"." "Tropic of Cancer" (Henry Miller)

Google is a black hole.

Macworld: News: Google ponders Blogger, Gmail integration:
Google is also considering the creation of an enterprise Blogger version, as well as letting users limit access to their blogs by creating private groups... .

Blogging - including from mobile phone - to an enterprise blog with email integrated. Add a few basic functions like a shared calendar, and you get a groupware. A few companies here in Tokyo I know of (arrogant in your face pithy style) are potentially already future dead cows because of this perspective. Google is a black hole.

Sorry for the trouble

Japan Today - News - Iraqi militants say they have Japanese man - Japan's Leading International News Network:
"I'm extremely sorry my older brother's actions have caused trouble to the government and people of Japan.

These are the words of the brother of a Japanese national currently believed to be held by some Iraqis group. These words are not unusual. On the contrary. The parents of a Japanese captive who was beheaded in Iraq apologized for the fuss while virtuous citizens expressed opinions that the poor foolish lad traveling in Japan almost got what he deserved. The interesting thing is that this apologetic brother is referred to as being 34 years old. I have no clue on where is this man socially positioned. In the land of conformity and formalism, it may be that those words are uttered as a ritual where looking for a meaning, a trace that this brother really believes that the people of Japan, as a massive single headed monster, exists. I would rather bet that a belief there is indeed that some 100 millions Japanese are discomforted, that is, disturbed in their communal routines by the deed of a single individual far away from the island-village.

In some related manner I cannot pinpoint clearly despite living here for 20 years, the relationship there is between this above, and that here: the media are reporting that there are a growing number of cases of train conductors harassment, including physical brutality instances, following the appalling train accident of two weeks ago. The train conductors, as a creed, a caste, are the pariahs at whom some daring individuals - some seemingly encouraged by a shot of booze - express indignation and furor. There is something profoundly disturbing in this show of crass stupidity, of social hooliganism based on perceived right and virtue to slap the culprits.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Beautiful houses of Hiroo

A short stroll at noon in the beautiful, rich and spacious Hiroo district. Western estate mansions and beautiful traditional architecture mixed. The picture doesn't tell that this one is Sienna yellow. 10 meters away, another traditional dwelling was being repaired. It must cost more to mend a beautiful Japanese house than build a new one in Western style. But who cares in Hiroo?

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

More Japanese Food, Look and Texture

I forgot in that previous post about food to refer to Japanese pastries at large, besides the Summer refreshing red beans jelly called Mizu-yôkan.

On this picture are examples of pastries and a rice cracker Sembeï just bought from a shop close by. The Japanese pastries I know are all a variation around sweeten beans purées and cooked beaten glutinous rice. Of course, for a European palate, the lack of cream, butter, crust or spongy cake, the lack of fruits, vanilla, citrus extracts, decorative jelly, the lack of chocolate, coffee, hazelnuts, and liquors make Japanese pastries a different world. A world where variety of looks is more important than that of taste. Texture too matters although on a subtle level of variation. This is a soft world compared to the rice cracker on the left that is dry, hard, crispy and salty. Good pastries are not too sweet. Good Sembeï are not too salty. The Sembeï reads Ganko-yaki. Ganko stands for stubborn. I love the taste of it and the name as well.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Food

Early Blogger: Remembrances of Blog Past

I have started filling the gap and add blog posts starting from the day I was born. That blog and computer were not available is irrelevant.

Busy farming

Back to Akita in retrospective. The Yokoso Japan campaign to promote international tourism in Japan is a dead civil servant cow. What was clear during those three days spent in the huge farming lands of Akita and the further Northern prefecture of Aomori was that lots of people were indeed busy farming. We did not witness the fishers in action but with all the boats around, it was clear also that fishers were as busy fishing as farmers farming. Regional Japan is catering to the megalopolis centers of Tokyo and Osaka. They feed the rest of Japan where Japanese concentrate. Tourism is a foreign attraction because the locals have certainly no time to spend on that. No time that would clearly transform into additional revenues. With all the rice lands and mountains around, ecotourism comes as a trivia, but who would pay to have a guided visit among rice paddies and learn something about the daily staple grain? Probably nobody. On top of that, the locals would not see the point. Yokoso Japan is a dead cow.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Let's deblog from the Digeratis' blogs

This is written without acrimony.

Very recently, I totally quit, reading, hot air blowers blogs sending to each other via blog posts cross-congratulations and flatteries that generate and maintain an eco-system of digeratis who decide what is worth thinking, having, buying, blogging and everything in ing you can think about.

This is written without acrimony.
The previous before last to go down the gutter from Bloglines was gapingvoid who was just starting to me at least to feel human (genuine) when dealing with shmates. Scoble who monitors himself - self-big-brother - went down before being referred to in the Economist, before turning into a TV personality. Seth Godin's blog - a free, convenient way to read summaries of his next books without buying them - is the last casualty. This post was the drop that .... blah, blah, blah.

This is written without acrimony.
Except for this final one knows-all-expert-of-what-is-in-if-you-don't-buy-it-you-are-out, all the digeratis tend to share the same long, real long, oh! so long list of cloned blogroll links to each other - virtuous circle, cloned blogroll as one central device of the digerati ecosystem windblower mechanics. All tend to tour and meet at the same digeratis world tour talk show conventions on Blog-this-blog-that version +2. The world tour being yet another piece of the hot air blowing mechanism for digerati eco-system to self-sustain.

This is written without acrimony.
Reading a digerati parody is not enough a cure, although worth it as pre-treatment. The real hard way to try and get rid of all that noise is to deblog from the digeratis and consciously listen to oneself reacting to the sudden void, absence, silence of some sort. If you can live without that noise, why don't you leave it. Unless your strategy is to be part of the ecosystem of hot air blowers circus.

This is written without acrimony.

Blogging back to Blogger was also in my case a salutary action. I forgot about that wonderful button at the top right corner of most Bloggers' blogs reading Next Blog, and randomly linking to one of the millions blogs around. Clicking on Next Blog is a cure of modesty.

This is written without acrimony.

Another cure of modesty is literature. Digeratis advertise books that are typically in the vein of arrogance, in your face, assertive style were doubt, skepticism are off limit. They read book written by people that claim to know. This too doesn't much stand against reading, and especially the reading of fiction.

This is written without acrimony.

In the April issue of the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, an article covers the new essay of the novelist Milan Kundera about the art of writing novels. The intro reads like this: "(the author suggests that) the world is veiled is veiled to us by a "curtain" of ready-made interpretations, fallacious images, edifying and untrue representations. And the function of the novel, since the beginning of time, is to tear it, to reveal these few glares of truth which only the authentic novelists can make us reach. The digeratis - with or without a glaring agenda - are weaving a veil of hot air engrossed with ready-made interpretations.

This is written without acrimony.

Although an interpretation by itself, this attitude of mine at trying successfully so far to quit reading the hot air digeratis bloggers' blogs comes as a relief.

This was written without acrimony. For all that it matter. Now, click on that Next Blog button on the top right corner right away.

Ryujiro Takami's Shame

Asia Times Online :: Japan News and Japanese Business and Economy:
Human-rights activists produced tape recordings of one train driver, Masaki Hattori, 44, that revealed he was sobbing while repeatedly saying "I am wrong and I am a fool" during three days of harsh questioning by JR West managers in his "re-education" program, for falling behind his schedule. The proud driver, with 20 years' experience and no accidents in his record, felt humiliated and later committed suicide.

Ryujiro Takami - the 23 years old driver of the train that crashed and killed more than 100 passengers two week ago - wanted to avoid shame. The risk of loosing money as a reprimand to being behind schedule is a detail in a scenario where shame is at the core of something that deep down must be very Japanese, although not unique in Japan for sure. Feudalistic human relationships are at work in train accidents as well here.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Blogging about Google Black-Out

And adding to this previous post:


The dependance on Google is addictive, so much that when Google cannot be accessed, as it is the case now, one starts looking for news, clues, and signs outside the window, in the street, for hints of terrorist attacks. Tokyo is still sleepy and does not rely on Google.


And relying on Google News to get the news is not reliable as well. Interestingly, blogging about Google back-out is permitted.

Gmail too is out of reach. Now, this may be the last successful post on Blogger before the gates close. Google is down, I repeat, Google is down. And Google stock as well.

Google addiction - addendum

The dependance on Google is addictive, so much that when Google cannot be accessed, as it is the case now, one starts looking for news, clues, and signs outside the window, in the street, for hints of terrorist attacks. Tokyo is still sleepy and does not rely on Google.

And relying on Google News to get the news is not reliable as well. Interestingly, blogging about Google back-out is permitted.

New Walk in Tokyo

I added a fifth walk PodText guide to the collection of minimalist directions to enjoy walking around in Tokyo. The new one is a night walk that starts again from the Hotel Grand Palace and leads up to Ochanomizu then back. It's a one hour legs stretcher and mind relaxation stint going through a variety of micro areas that are very quiet at night but very busy during week days.

You can see an html version of the document here, or download a PodText version here for your iPod with Notes function integrated.

Technorati Tags: Japan, Tokyo

Notes from a trip in Akita

- The flight from Tokyo to Akita is 50 minutes. By train, the journey takes 6 hours, or so were we told - by superfast train running super slow and winding around and under mountains after mountains. 50 minutes versus 6 hours.

- At Akita airport, the 250 passengers freshly arrived from Tokyo generate a traffic jam at the airport exit. Beyond that, the regional autobahn spink and spank will be mostly empty.

- I now understand why driving is an objective in itself for three days of vacation along the coast of Akita prefecture. We came back with hours of video taken from inside the car. The major activity was sitting in the car. The second was eating - including looking out for places where to eat (read more about it down there). The third marginal activity was walking. My favorite activity for the third one.

- What are the conditions for turning a country or a region into a touristic destination? Akita has lots of various landscapes that rank from the ugly to the glorious, as everywhere else. The ugly is human made, messy without any plan, or tidied up and sterilized under concrete thanks to general construction corporations that get tax money from the locals who vote for the politicians that deliver the convenience of life: mostly empty clean as a ball room autobahn, huge supermarkets on national roads, and parcel delivery trucks that climb mountains. It also means shaved mountains plastered with cement, faked unrelated mini to micro theme parks in the middle of cut off forests (we bumped into a Santa Claus theme park among other nauseating places).

- A theme park is something plopped in the middle of nowhere, the middle of nowhere being a place where there is nothing. Therefore, a theme park project is to put something where there is nothing and have the passersby running in cars stop and spend money.

- There is a marvelously scenic single track railway running along the coast from Akita to the northern Aomori prefecture. The Gono Line is the name. The scenery is fabulous, with rice paddies at a pebble throw distance of the sea. Farmers here would grow rice on the beach if they could. Rice is money, rice is life. We saw the train leisurely winding around. It was largely empty.

- The stations of that scenic railway are an example of micro theme parks. The scenery is not enough. The scenery is seen as a piece of nothingness. Therefore, the bright nothingness buster developers decide to turn the stations along the track into attractive places. The typical attractive piece of equipment is a steel and plastic elevated walking passage that crosses above the track. It is usually an eyesore, purple or pink piece of useless costly equipment that belongs to the world of Teletubbies. The number of Teletubbies like public equipment is huge here as in anywhere else in Japan. Public equipment bad taste is appalling.

- Akita is rice and vegetables inside, and fish offshore. But the funny thing is that fishes are virtually nowhere to see. We were told that all the catches go to feed the big Tokyo area. The local don't get the best fishes. It looks like they care more about meat. At a local festival, the only fishes on the food stands were trouts grilled on spike. At JPY 500 a tiny trout, it's a killer fish. But the taste is so good.

- Yes, what are the conditions for a region to turn into a touristic spot? At around noon, we got hungry. But where to eat? During about 30 kilometers along that nice and scenic drive along the sea, we spotted not a single place where to eat, except one inside yet an ugly unrelated mini them park. The restaurant was crowded. We drove away.

- The tourist with his mind full of Mediterranean images of lazy villages basking under the sun with locals sipping drinks and munching food in homey tiny restaurants simply does not fit the place. We left the scenic road to get as close as possible to the many agglomerations of dwellings that are not even villages, not even towns but just houses that happen to be close by enough to create, indeed, an agglomeration. Despite the blue sky and blue sea, we could see not a single restaurant in 30 km. After all, the residents eat at home. Why would they need restaurants? Why would they need market places? Why would they need open spaces to mingle and interact? We hardly could see humans by the way. And no vending machines. Not a single one. When you see no vending machine in Japan, you know you have reached the threshold of nowhereness.

- After 30 km back to the main scenic road, we bumped into it. A place where to eat with tempting promise of fish pots and other local delicacies. Or so we thought. In a huge kitchen, a single lady was cooking. When we told her that the lunch ticket vending machine was not accepting the new 1,000 yen notes, she mumbled that she was doing the service alone - in a kitchen large enough for a staff of ten - and she could not tell when we could eat. In hours maybe. Never maybe. We left the place and the few patrons visibly waiting already for a long time.

- At long last we found it, THE place. With fish menu, and a huge choice at that. And the staff was not a single lady. I order kaisen-don, a mix of fresh fish morsels on top of rice. What came looked nice but tasted of nothing. Except for the squid pobably fished locally, everything else was still half frozen, half frozen fishes with a lovely panoramic landscape open to the sea. I left half of that sherbet like lunch, still wondering what are the conditions for a region to turn into a touristic destination.

- I think one single simple way to make money in Akita is to open a food stand anywhere along a scenic road. Cars are not legions, but food is so scarce that you will invariably sell out the stock of hot dogs in hours.

- The Akita dialect is beautiful and delicious to the ears. After a short uneasiness, the nice people where we stayed seeing that my standard - that is - Tokyo Japanese was OK, they started to talk all the way through in Akita dialect, with which I had a lot of pleasure to try and make sense of. Strangely enough, Akita dialect intonation sounds somewhat like Korean language.

- On the opposite side of the sea is North Korea. The soiled beach where we looked the sun settling down in the Sea of Japan was full of refused brought from many places, including Korea. here are rumors that people disappeared from this sea side, just like around Niigata in the South.

- Kosa is yellow sand brought from China. Sand from the mainland deserts. It sticks everywhere.

- Despite the homogeneity stance, regionalism is strong, with dialects and food that differ from Akita to the neighboring Aomori. At 50 minutes away from Tokyo, we were definitely far away.

Technorati Tags: Japan

Twenty tastes and flavors I love in Japan

Love generates more feedback than hate or daily sarcasm. I have been reminded of that obvious fact since posting Twenty Things I love about Japan last year. This single post alone has generated more feedbacks and links than anyone crap entry in this blog. It must have stirred something deep in the people that commented or got inspired out of my empty musing. I swore not to engage into the food listing, but a trip to Akita - so much flat land despite the mountains, so much rice all over the place! - made change my mind. After all, feeling satisfied with the food - and drinks - is one way to affirm love -despite everything else - in a way that still puzzle many locals: how can you appreciate this, you being not Japanese? Well you know, taste has no frontier. Good and bad tastes. So here is about the good ones, en vrac, with no order, just out of the mind : Twenty Tastes and Flavors I love in Japan.

1- Unagi is eel, and kabayaki eel is the fish cooked at long length while drenched with thick soy sauce based sauce. But better than that is the less common shirayaki eel, the same fish grilled without the sauce. Shira comes from shiroi and means white, while yaki comes from the verb yaku and means grill. John Lenon is said to have had unagi in the small Tatsumi-ya eel restaurant in Kagurazaka - Tokyo. There, as in any good unagi restaurant, the dish is brought to the table at least 45 minutes after ordering.

2- A taste associated with the Summer to come is that of young ginger sprouts dipped in miso paste. It's a hot crunchy snack delicious with whatever drink available.

3- Tonkatsu, that is, pork plastered in a mix of bread crumbs and eggs fried in deep oil. But let's go beyond the generic and try oroshi tonkatsu. Oroshi refers to the big white radish daikon grated into a foamy whitish refreshing light dip with a dash of that thick tonkatsu sauce. The less of that sauce, the better. The contrast between the freshly grated cold daikon and the hot cooked meat is a treat.

4- Kimpira-gobo are strips of gobo or burdock root and carrots lightly fried in oil and seasoned with the classic mix of mirin - cooking sake - soya sauce and sugar, with a pinch of sesame seeds. A dash of sesame oil at the end makes all the difference. It's all in the cook dexterity and a