It's the beginning of another week. This last one was pretty crazy; between frenzied talks of canceling the summer international exchange program, apologetic and heated e-mails being exchanged between the sister cities, last-minute recruiting for my end-of-spring event, the first intermediate eikaiwa of the season, and a new preschool to visit, I was almost wiped out before Friday. On Friday, I had to get everything together for the May Basket Matsuri. I was exhausted, but really excited, because suddenly another three families had decided to come, raising the participant numbers to 30!
Since by necessity the event fell at the end of May, we decided to make it an end-of-spring party incorporating a few notable traditions. We decorated Easter eggs, made May Day baskets, skipped around a May Pole, and went on a plastic egg hunt. With some time to spare, the event wrapped up with duck-duck-goose outside in the sunshine.
I'm listening to Keane. Keane always reminds me of two things; first, an old friend from college-in-Japan days who introduced me to the band; second, my last (summer) semester of college, when I was slogging through statistics, political science, biosphere geography, and career planning, dreaming about a job in Japan and leaving university and the Minneapolis public transit system behind me forever.
I did find a job in Japan, at the fabulous small company I'd interned at a year earlier. I excitedly looked for apartments and made plans for about a month, before the dark, dark day when they told me they couldn't follow through on their offer after all. Everything came crashing down then and I thought my only chance to get back to Japan was through AEON or GEOS eikaiwa schools. In the end, though, with the help and advice of some friends, I decided to wait, look for a short-term job in the metro area, study Japanese, and apply for the JET program the next year.
Over months and months of working and waiting, studying, failing JLPT 1 by a small percentage, sitting for the JET interview and thinking I'd failed, I moved to California to forget about Japan and to start building a new life. Ironically, the very day I moved in, I got an e-mail from JET notifying me of my acceptance.
The job market in California was tough, to say the least, so the couple of months I was there were spent in nearly fruitless job hunting and frustration. Public transit there is no more pleasant than in Minneapolis, I found. All my hopes and dreams were pinned on my placement in Japan. I found out my placement and tracked down a Catholic church, taking its presence as a sign that this was my path.
After such a buildup, disappointment was perhaps inevitable, but it came from quarters I'd never suspected when, for example, the two friends I'd been keeping closest contact with over the two years decided one after the other to stomp on those friendships and leave me jetting off to the countryside with no one left to call on. The countryside, in turn, which everyone praised to the skies for its friendliness, didn't turn out that way. Left to my own resources week after week, I began to wonder just how many of my life decisions were mistakes, and whether I would ever again find a real friend or a job I liked.
...
Isolation is the cross of this rural existence, and although I have found a couple of good friends in outlying areas, loneliness rears its head often, and one is constantly reminded she is only a visitor here.
Still, I do believe that I become a stronger person with each passing month. I hope that I will be in a better position to find a good job after this one is over, and that I need not always push forward by myself.
And I still believe, though that belief is often mixed with apprehension and not a little impatience, that I am here for a reason, and that all things will be well in the Lord.
Go-gatsu-byou is the Japanese term for getting completely sick and tired, mentally (and sometimes physically), in May. New hires and transfers came in April, and by now everyone's adjusted just enough that they're tired of the whole situation. Also, Golden Week is over and there's no hope of another renkyuu (3-day weekend) until July 20th. Spring is swiftly passing into the rainy season.
I'd scoffed when I first came across this in a newsletter article my predecessor wrote. I'll never get that, I thought. Maybe I haven't, and maybe I won't. But there's no denying that my fragile equilibrium has broken down in the depths of melancholy and depression for some weeks. At first I thought it was just an annoying someone I have to deal with every day. Then I noticed myself getting more despondent and next, irrational and irritable. Everything was getting on my nerves. I disliked the whole country and this town most of all, but the US didn't seem much better. I felt like I'd wasted years of study just to come to some poky little town and go crazy.
But thankfully, it's impossible to keep one emotion going constantly forever, and little by little I'm starting to get back up and see the silver linings again.
I had to defend the perimeters the other day when I came home in the afternoon to find this beast getting ready to invade my lovely domicile. There is a wet spot around it because I doused it with "kinchouru" mukade-insecticide. It was still sort of twitching, so I took up a trowel and made sure to finish the job. Bleargh!
I took the precaution of spraying also around my door and mail slot. Sometimes when people leave newsletters and things in the slot, they roll them up and leave them sticking out. It's like an invitation for some horrible crawly thing to slide right on in.
Yum. A lovely, soft, freeform rosemary focaccia bread fresh from the oven. It's half whole wheat bread flour, which is a lot more than I've ever found in storebought breads here. (Thanks for the inspiration, Sue!)
As long as I had the oven going, I thought I'd whip up some brownies.... mmmm.
Fr. Philip recently reports that the administration states its goal is not to "reduce the number" of abortions, but to "reduce the need." Oh ho. It's not surprising to anyone who knows the president's record, but just see how, between the words "numbers" and "need," there is a clear shift from statistically measurable data into vague and unmeasurable ideas. Hence, no one can ever definitively accuse the administration of not accomplishing this goal. Non-goal.
There are a lot of people upset about abortion, but there are not yet enough people upset enough. Word-smithy like "reduce the need" only furthers torpor and complacence.
Prolifers know exactly how abolitionists felt.
Pray for an end to abortion and for the conversion of people's hearts and minds to life and love. Be prudent, but please don't mistake prudence for clamming up whenever your friends or colleagues raise the issue. I've got to work on this just as much as the next guy, unfortunately.
There are several videos up on YouTube by now that document the bizarre happenings at Notre Dame these past few days. This is only one of them. An elderly priest with some 20 years of service in the armed forces and many arrests for protesting at abortuaries was arrested again at Notre Dame for carrying out a peaceful protest. This is hard to watch.
Why ND didn't want protesters on its private grounds, I get. You have a highly controversial event, lots of protesters, and inevitably some wacko is going to sneak in and take a pot shot at the President.
But for goodness sake, being arrested for living your pro-life conviction on a Catholic campus is worse than nightmarish. A Catholic university bestowing honors on a politician who unequivocally supports abortion, denial of medical care to babies who survive abortion, the creation of human embryos for scientific "experimentation," etc., and then pretending it's all just an opportunity to "dialogue" is horrendous.
And these praying men and women arrested for trespassing, and those people ejected from the auditorium for shouting out about abortion during Obama's speech.... smacks of repression. Think Nero.
What about the students who chose not to attend their commencement, and instead gather for Mass and prayer at the Grotto? I would surely love to see some of their videos up on YouTube. You can bet the media won't give them even a sidelong glance; this story is all about how a rabble-rousing rag-tag team of adult activists with graphic representations of the slaughter that is abortion ruined the lovely, happy, triumphant commencement for ND grads and their families while they were feeling so warm and tolerant of everybody, too.
Please.
Now, I might be more pragmatic than most, even to a fault; I skipped both high school prom and college graduation ceremonies for the same reason-- I didn't see the point of going. I plowed through college because graduating was what I needed to get out of it and find a place in the real world; I graduated in the summer, and I considered it very much a business deal. I paid tens of thousands in tuition; academia granted me a bronze ticket to help me find a job. Academia got the better end of the bargain, too, money instead of months and months wasted in useless (but Required!) classes that dumbed down the brain instead of honing it. Maybe it would have been better if I'd been after a B.S. degree despite my math/science handicaps.
Anyway, all of that might have something to do with why I don't really understand ND students who were upset about the protests occurring and "ruining" their big day. Grow up. Everything is not about you, and you should have learned that in college. The sanctioned massacre of countless innocent pre-born human beings ought to be foremost in everyone's minds. It ought to be spoken of and explained to everybody, even if they're just kids and supposedly unconcerned with the 'issue.' Every single one of us is concerned when it comes to this issue.
"Be fair. Be open-minded. Compromise. Meet us halfway." Hmmm, lemme think if there is any dichotomy sharper than this, the act of killing a child en route to birth, or the act of birthing a child. There is no compromise here. If it is wrong to kill a boy or girl at 5, or 6, or 50, it is equally wrong to kill them at 5 months, or 5 weeks, or 5 hours from conception.
This is not difficult to figure out.
Indeed, increasingly news writers and bloggers and 15-minute-celebrities begin to make statements like this: "Sure I know abortion is taking the life of a child. It's a difficult decision and no one's happy about it. But I also know that it was the right choice for me and I stand by that." How much more sick and twisted can you possibly get?
I'm telling you, though, that that's going to be the refrain heard from every corner of America in coming years. And then who's going to stop the ones in power from advancing further on the rights of the powerless? Sick, handicapped, elderly and special needs people are already on precarious ground. Infanticide carried out on babies outside the womb will follow. There's already a proposed bill about it in Texas. The people in power will do everything they can to permanently silence the voices of the Church and other people of good will who oppose the killing; they'll call it anti-hate-speech legislation or tolerance legislation or something.
... for Gollum. Some talented fans have put together a project based on the story of Aragorn's hunt for Gollum between Bilbo's farewell feast and Frodo's 50th birthday.
It's about half an hour, so set some time aside and give it a viewing, won't you?
There was a (relatively) short, thought-provoking discussion over at Fr. Z's blogconcerning the books and the movies; a lot of people seem to love the books but to have disliked the movies for character assassination and too much attention to special effects. I've only ever run into people who either liked both the books and the movies, or neither.
I have to admit, though, that there is a noticeable 'reluctant king' figure set up in Peter Jackson's trilogy that was not in Tolkien's writing. To me, it was just a bit jarring, but I could live with Aragorn's reluctance in Fellowship after seeing his leadership in Return. It's probably also a credit to Viggo Mortensen. When the same mopey figure reappeared, however, in Disney's Narnia series and the portrayal of Peter (the High King), it just seemed graceless and ill-considered.
Not that I wouldn't appreciate Golden Week actually lasting through the week... but I digress. :)
I didn't actually end up doing much walking at all, since I rediscovered the pool! Hitherto, although I have lifeguard experience, I'd never much enjoyed swimming as an activity, and when I came to Japan this time around I didn't bring a swimming suit. One became necessary for some function or other. So I went to the sports store and bought the most reasonable one that fit me, which as it turns out is this awesome pro-athlete-like Mizuno creation that's like half of a body suit, or a regular one-piece with biker shorts attached. Anyway, swimming in that is ALWAYS fun.
It still tickles me somewhere inside, though, that most people here won't do a sport without looking like they're totally serious about it: there seems to be a big focus on having the goods and looking put together. On the flip side, in the States I think a much smaller percentage of people, mostly women, really care what they look like while exercising. The gym, track, and pool become a sort of sanctuary where you don't have to care. Not so much, here.
First that was amusing, then annoying; then I got my pro-swimmer wet-suit of fabulousness and I started to understand, just a wee bit.
Well, every time I've procured a long-term pass for the sports center, my attendance drops off after a couple of weeks, so during the past few days I only got hour-long tickets for the pool. If I can manage to keep up a routine for more than a couple of weeks, I'll get one of those passes again.
For all going back to work tomorrow, 頑張りましょう (ganbarimashou), or, let's get our noses back to the grindstone!
Yum. A lovely, soft, freeform rosemary focaccia bread fresh from the oven. It's half whole wheat bread flour, which is a lot more than I've ever found in storebought breads here. (Thanks for the inspiration, 
