your shadows weigh a ton · Wednesday, November 16, 2005
i am putting this picture first because i need happy thoughts. this is a dessert from my favorite restaurant, Ootoya. it is a soymilk donut with vanilla ice cream drizzled over with black honey and it is to die for. i even had a few sips of my ocha between bites. I normally hate tea, however, the cold weather prompted it.
yesterday morning, i was jolted awake by an earthquake. man. to me, that is a message to me to get the hell out of here. i sat right up and thought, “Riiight, the first thing i need to do is put on some pants, find my glasses, find my shoes, and grab a bottle of water.” Next thing i knew, i was back asleep – well, being gently rocked back to sleep…i’ve survived so many now that the thought of moving to seattle (which is also awaiting “the big one”) is frightening – i hate living with that thought over my head.
so today was one of those “lose your faith in all of humanity” days. wellll, ok. not humanity but rather everyone and everything that has to do with my job. i haven’t had one of these down-on-the-job feelings in quite a while – or at least not this bad and not since i decided to leave. i just feel so disappointed in the greediness of the company and the ineptitude of the teaching system. ah well. as they say, “shoganai” – it can’t be helped.
this silent acceptance of things that “can’t be helped” is something that i’ve noticed and have become frustrated with, but have also sort of accepted. i see the company fuck over its foreign workers, and then i see the company TOTALLY fuck over its japanese staff. it’s pretty disgusting – there is no communication. i see the japanese staff just sort of shrug and say, “well, yeah.” I think the problem i have with this is both sympathetic and american (shit i’m not sure if i’ve written about this before). as an american, i was brought up with egalitarian beliefs under a meritocracy, but here, companies and people highly believe in a corporate and social hierarchies. they seem to adhere to these hierarchies (especially in business) so stiffly that even the simplest tasks (like adding more onions to a meatless cheeseburger) require trudging through bureaucracy, ridiculous and unrewarded working hours, and the continued use of public humiliation as an accepted form of reprimand.
where americans are brought up with tales and news articles about a single person making a difference in the face of adversity, changes here can’t be made unless there is monumental backing and sometimes not even then. it might just be my upbringing, but i’ve grown up with the understanding that all rules can be broken if a situation requires it; and if something isn’t right, one person can change everything. as americans, we seem to be overly proactive (which is one reason why japanese assailants stray away from attacking foreigners) – maybe part of this is our current role in the world and our incessant need to meddle in affairs that may and may not have anything to do with us, but that we feel are not morally right. maybe it’s our culture-centric minds that see things as wrong that other people have accepted as their way of life for years and years. and maybe i’m just completely wrong, however, even without the famous “tranquility mantra” i have come to accept that i can’t change policies here by speaking up, that it will only cause myself and everyone else trouble – so another mouth has been silenced.
anyways, i’m sort of losing my focus because my heater has started to kick in and i’m no longer feeling bitter – i can now feel my fingers! i also have phoenix blasting and you can’t much feel sad when they are crooning away. oh yeah, and my sister just dropped off two chocolate mochis. mmm. just gobbled one down.
i have this private student who has fucked me over on more than one occassion. at this point, he owes me about $50 for editing work that remains unpaid. i’ve been meaning to drop him, but everytime i see him, i can’t bring myself to do it. it’s funny but in every japanese man, i see bits of my father. and my father isn’t really your japanese everyman either. i don’t know if it’s because i only know parts and pieces about my father or because there has always been a distance between us due to language and cultural barriers. that was just a short, sort of pointless paragraph but i felt like saying it.
i can’t even remember what else i was going to talk about. oh yeah. i met with my friends yo and joji. we went to Tower Cafe in Ebisu and I met up with a guy there who is a buyer or manager or something. anyways, he is interested in putting art up on his walls and also in getting indie mags and zines into the store. I felt my bones stir at the possibility of doing an art show or even “tastemaking” (god i hate that word) for them, but i might be counting my chickens before i hatch. i put a long list together of stuff, but i’m not sure when our next meeting will be. i hope soon. tower records is pretty switched on, so i’m not too worried about the whole “large corporation thing” but we’ll see. i’ve given up much of my hope on doing something art-related here but there is still a little light on somewhere.
i think that’s all i wanted to say. i’ll be going to vegas in a few weeks and i’m excited but worried. i have pounds and pounds and pounds of shit to bring home and i have no idea how i’m going to get it all back in january. eek.
a happy picture of when jeff visited recently. i think the place we were at is called Joy House? i can’t remember but it’s in ebisu and they have vegetarian curry – which is important to note in such a meat-loving country.
the poketo wallet project is coming along . . . still waiting on some artists though. ugh why can’t people make deadlines?
alright going to do sit-ups, put on my fleece and go to bed.
g’nite,
c
p.s. the other day, my older japanese co-worker asked if hippies and homeless people were the same. ha ha ha i thought that was funny. and oh yeah – fuck all this neo-bohemian shit! just thought i’d add that for good measure.
* * *