around and around

Pretty soon it's going to be this time of year again, at least in inaka-cho. That's right, we celebrate Halloween and we do our celebrating nice and early before the clingy, warm humidity is all gone. Actually, the reason is that last year, the international association had a windfall of large, orange pumpkins in early September and had to use them before they rotted into putrid orange puddles. (A couple of them did anyway.)

Using the same reasoning, I planned the party date this year nice and early, but, due to the flat tire we got on our way to picking up the pumpkins, we were only able to claim four. Therefore, the bulk of our pumpkins this year are going to be native Japanese kabocha, which you can buy any old time all autumn. Ah well. Live and learn.

Speaking of which, in my recent offline endeavors, I've started Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, since it seems to be one of those books you just HAVE to read before you choke. It influenced a lot of educated men in Europe and North America when Smith published it in 1776 (followed by four new versions in rapid succession). It's most often linked with the "invisible hand" theory of economics; that is, markets produce the most wealth for a nation when they are least regulated, because a benevolent "invisible hand" can then guide the process. Smith only wrote the phrase in his ponderous tome once, actually.

It's slow going. I've learned about the division of labor and the efficiency and progress it brings to society; about prices being based on rent, wages, and profits; about the development of metal money and how sovereigns manipulate it; that the true price of a commodity is based on the amount of labor used to produce it; about how corn is a better indicator of a society's affluence than silver; and a lot of things that Smith just seems to speculate on in a rambling, ambling, don't-care-if-I-get-anywhere fashion. So I started to supplement my book-reading with Wikipedia and an online collection of notes.

I laughed out loud when the author of those notes wrote something to this effect: "I'm not really sure what Smith is trying to say here, but I hope my notes are at least less incomprehensible than his."

All this, and Amazon touts the book as being "highly readable."

(By the way, I once tried to read Tristram Shandy, for much the same reasons as this book, but gave up because of its labyrinthine sentences. I'm determined to plough through Smith, though.)

In other news,

Why is it that it's just when you get a mad itch to leave everything behind and start exploring, perhaps holding your magnifying glass to a fascinating object on the ground near a burbling stream in a sunny meadow on a gorgeous day, that something, let's say a pterodactyl, comes rushing at you and lifts you high up into the atmosphere before letting you hurtle back down to earth with stars in your eyes while it goes on its merry way? You can't get it out of your head, and you can't go back to your single-minded exploration, even though you know pterodactyls don't exist and the chances that the one that grabbed you will come back are nonexistent. In other words, well, no, I can't explain it. You either know what I'm talking about or you don't.

a mess of thoughts

Summer fireworks are wonderful.

A Restful Country Life

Not so much, today. I drove a little over two hours to the nearest "big city" to meet a potential Japanese teacher and go to Mass for the Feast of the Assumption, which meant I got up at 6am. Ugh. I have not been a morning person for several weeks now, although I had a brief and fun run of it in the spring and early summer, when the sun was rising early but the air was still tolerably cool and dry.

Japanese Language Proficiency

The meeting with U-sensei was pleasant, but something that's been nagging me became clearer: what will I do with Japanese after this? It may be a result of where I live and its distance from most everything, or the fact that they usually teach true beginners or intermediate level, but U-sensei and the other teachers were all saying, 'Ah, your Japanese is great already; what else do you need to study?' At work I often get the opposite vibe: 'This is unintelligible and you'll never acquire natural Japanese.' Anyway, though, I showed U-sensei some of the documents I work with and chatted about work and wanting to use Japanese in a non-English-teaching job in the future.

Then the nagging thought came back-- even if I had perfect Japanese, what kind of work can I expect to find in Japan without a degree in business or computer science or finance or engineering? Furthermore, as in the US, the papers say Japanese college grads are having a terrible time finding work.

I want to learn more languages, and see some more countries, but not at the expense of forgetting Japanese. I've already forgotten most of two years of college Mandarin. Yet if I'm ultimately unable to use Japanese in a profitable career, perhaps it's best to move ahead quickly with other things.

The Global Economy

Quite a number of college grads are in a similar, floundering situation, I believe. Part of the reason is the economy, sure. Another part is academic inflation. A college degree means (or meant) a higher salary, so more people go to college, more colleges spring up, academic fields diversify, school administration staff burgeons, and pretty soon you have an expensive degree factory instead of an institution of higher learning. Kids are encouraged to study whatever they like, because it doesn't matter what kind of degree they get in the long run. In the meantime, degree-holders have become a dime a dozen.

Especially now that the job market has become so competitive, many idealistic B.A.s find themselves at a loss to explain their skills to potential employers.

Why wasn't marketing on that list of general education requirements?

The Future

The next generation of students will eventually be forewarned to go after practical, marketable skills, and the variety of dreamy-creamy majors will decrease while fields like medicine, engineering, law, and business see growth and higher competition for admittance. These students will also have to learn to compete for jobs with overseas peers.

I'm hopeful that this will have a jolting effect on K-12 education, and that US kids will be challenged to go far beyond the current expectations of standardized tests.

As for my generation, though, I think a lot of us will have to either get smart or get lost. We aren't on the same cut-and-dried job-hunting field as our predecessors, and we need to learn how to deal with that.

things I've been up to

Helped out with an event all day today. It went down excellently, and I'm really happy about that. The theme was Hawaii, and yesterday I had a flash of inspiration for some decorations. The tables we'd set up were looking awfully spartan or industrial, so during my lunch break I zoomed off in my car to pick up some artificial stalks of hibiscus and leis at the nearest DAISO. Add some colorful plastic table"cloths", some jars for vases (I've been saving them for the next time I need to mix up egg dye), paper placemats and some confetti, and boom~! Instant mini-makeover. I felt like I wouldn't mind decorating for events as a living, while I was prettying the place up.

Alas, I was too busy and took no photos. Perhaps I'll get some from someone else later.

We made locomoco (rice + hamburger + fried egg and gravy), ahipoke (raw tuna and onion salad with sesame seeds and garlic soy sauce), and mac salad (macaroni, peas, carrots, cucumbers, mayo, salt, and pepper); and we watched the lovely intern's demonstration of how to make haupia (coconut pudding). She also brought some delectable fudge. Everybody was ravenously hungry by the time we sat down to eat (about 1:30), but likewise everyone's stomachs were then filled enough to satisfy, I dare say, even a hobbit.

I'm re-reading the Lord of the Rings these days, and am about 3/4 of the way through The Two Towers. What a fantastic writer Tolkien was!

It's hard to be patient. I think I used to be a fairly patient child, but since graduating high school I seem to be in a greater and greater hurry to do everything. Do you know any good tips, exercises, or prayers for patience?

Thank you, Father

This week I would like to wish a very happy Father's Day to my dad, good old Pop. He's almost always juggling ten thousand errands and several of my brothers and sisters' urgent requests at once, helping with homework, giving advice, laying down the law ("turn off that TV!"), cleaning/fixing things like nobody's business, and he usually has something to say or sing to lighten the mood, too ("the REAL song, the REAL song"). When I was growing up, even while teasing me about shipping me off to be a nun someday, he always made it clear with and without words that the Faith is the most important thing we have, and I paraphrase: "You can grow up to be a garbageman if you want to, as long as you keep your Faith."

It was encouraging to know that whatever monotonous part-time job I had (or didn't have), through all the what-should-I-major-in stress, Dad was behind me all the time, and still is. I wish he could somehow get the time to come visit me in Japan!

So thank you to Dad, and all thanks be to God our Father in a special way.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

天におられる私たちの父よ。御名が聖とされますように。御国がきますように。御心が天に行われる通り、地にも行われますように。私たちの日ごとの糧を、今日もお与えください。私たちの罪をお許しください。私たちも人を許します。私たちを誘惑に陥らせず、悪からお救いください。アーメン。

. . .

Getting into my "handyman" stride yesterday, I pried up the tatami mats in my room and vacuumed the depths below. Actually, there was a lot of dust and tatami fall-off, pebbles, and some dead bugs. Luckily, they were dead. I saw only one little silverfish-looking thing that I disposed of immediately. (]:^D

After thoroughly vacuuming the edges and undersides of the mats, the styrofoam beneath them, and the concrete beneath that (and it smelled like a basement, eww), I went to put the mats back down. I thought I would switch up their placements to get more even wear and tear on them, and then I discovered that not all tatami mats are the same size. But I switched where I could, and the room was put back in order. Yay! I set a bug bomb off in there before leaving for church this morning, for good measure.

Next week... the other tatami room. dun dun DUN!

Reorganizing

I know Easter eggs have nothing to do with June, but this couple was just too cute to pass up. 

I've been thinking a lot, and exercising a lot, and somehow between the two began to realize that, even if the US or possibly the world is going to be hit by a real financial crisis that sends us all back to the 3rd world, even if I never feel like I'm able to do any important or appreciated work while I'm here, and even if these two years have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of my life, well, it'll still be ok. 

I once, once and irrevocably, turned down the chance to finish training and get an education at the Air Force Academy, because I didn't want to have to play the "game" the cadre upperclassmen make of the new recruits. I didn't agree with the idea of some people stripping down all my self respect to have me earn it back from them. It was excruciating training physically, and mentally I couldn't stand all the yelling and bullying. When I left it behind, I thought, I'm free now! I'll never see those cadre again!  It was a wonderful feeling.

But in the years that followed, I find myself having to face the same or more intense difficulties than the ones I balked at then. Slowly it has become clear that, one way or another, God is shaping me like a potter shapes clay. Maybe the process would have been quicker if I'd just buckled down and finished at the AFA, or maybe it would have broken me after all, and I was only brought there to see a sort of foreshadowing of later struggles.  

The point is, again and again you come up against things you can't overcome-- either you really can't, or you only think you can't, both make the thing impossible for the time being. You can choose to step away, run, or hide from it, or you can choose to face just one more hour, one more day. In the end, you will have to deal with it. It's your cross. 

So maybe I can't take on 14 more months of leper-like existence in a town without a particle of food for the soul. 

That's one way of looking at it. 

G.K. Chesterton once wrote that you should try standing on your head and looking at the world upside-down, for it all becomes much clearer then. Standing on my head, I begin to see that none of this is about me at all. It's about the town, where a lot of good, simple people live good, simple lives. It's about the children and the words or smiles that will shape their thinking. Most of all, it's about the gift of being here, now. In this history, I will be only a transparent shadow, forgotten. 

But so have been many millions of men and women who have lived and worked on this earth. The important thing is not making sure that everyone is attending to you; it's that you attend to your work and do your darndest to love the people you encounter, unlovable as some may seem. Someday, if you're blessed, you'll find someone you can work together with for the rest of your life. And then it will end, and God is the judge. 

14 months? No, not 14 seconds by myself. But with Him, one more day, one more week... little by little, until it is finished. Glory to God. 

...

The sister city program should be able to proceed as planned. There was just a moment of emotion over a perceived pandemic on one side, and a perceived irrational fear on the other. Different cultures meet, and these things will happen. 

Sunday night

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. 

5月病 May Sickness

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.    

Time to keep going, again.

A bowl on my head,

Some kind of cardboard armour--

Almost a year now.

Write your own original haiku in the combox. 

What are you waiting for? (];^)

refreshed!

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!

It's Golden Week for me now, too!

Well, I had half a day of compensatory holiday to use up within two months, so I'm taking it at the last possible moment. Luckily, I managed to get it right on top of Golden Week, so I have five and a half days off in a row now, hurrah!  

A lot of people seem to be traveling within Japan, to Osaka and Tokyo, etc., to spend time with friends. A lot of other people seem to be headed to South Korea, the "new Thailand" for those who don't like being caught up in civil unrest in a foreign country. 

If I had magical golden tickets to go anywhere this week, I'd want to go home for a quick visit, and then maybe fly off to Australia or New Zealand, where I would just miraculously bump into a former professor of mine and hear about a fabulous scholarship at a grad school down there. 

However, I'm saving up for a car-- albeit a used one, since there's no knowing how long I'll be here and I don't want to sink too much money into it-- and so I've decided to stay home this Golden Week. 

Still there's plenty to read, and if the fair weather continues, ample opportunity for long walks. 

mental yo-yo

1. How awesome it is to live independently in such a beautiful, clean area with plenty of space and fairly friendly folks about the streets!

2. Man, I need to get some people in my life so I can listen to something besides the wind and rain and the clock ticking. 

Tick. Tock.

These are the states of mind I swing between. All part of life in the inaka. 

going soft

Have you seen that new Disney movie, WALL-E? 

I saw it with a friend when I was in Tokyo this past New Year's. 

In a futuristic world, people have left Earth and are floating about on a gigantic spaceship. Hundreds of years have gone by since the evacuation, and the future generation all look roly-poly and full of jell-o. Their sustenance comes through shakes in containers resembling those horrible Big Gulps. I think the aim of the movie was to warn the little kiddies and their obliging parents that continued waste and consumerism will ruin the physical state of the Earth and of our bodies. 

However, I don't think we need to go hundreds of years into the future for this kind of thing. Sure, we don't have trash skyscrapers or jell-o bodies yet, but think of how wobbly our intellects have become-- in general. Using American standardized tests or average high school students' writing as indicators. Writing is simply not enforced like it used to be.  Neither is math. And instead of colleges, we have 'factories of American higher education,' where kids are encouraged to waste time and money on increasingly frivolous material. 

The best grades still tend to go to the kids who put in an honest and intelligent effort, but the kids who do any work at all still get enough points to pass. And why? Is it because there are too many low achievers? Or is it because they're all paying tuition, and are entitled to "get" what they pay for? 

The result, I think, is a sort of degree inflation. There once was a time when high school graduation was a big deal, and only a few, clever people went on to college. They became doctors and teachers and scientists. Now, even basically illiterate people can graduate from high school, and college is less a question of "if" as a question of "when" and "where." Bachelor's degrees are flooding out as student money and loans are flooding in. These days, graduate and other specialized schools (law, medical) are where you need to go to get a competitive edge, and who knows how long that will last? Production was outsourced, and administration can be as well.

I don't have any answers tonight, but I think the value of a solid education can't be overemphasized. 

Also, stay away from those Big Gulps. **shiver**

back down to earth

It was sunny for a brief while this weekend. Now we're back to cold, clouds, and rain. 

Still, every morning, a bird with the most beautiful voice holds court outside my window. Can't see him, but he sounds like a bit of golden sunshine melted into liquid sound.

And somehow that reminds me of the tune that went with this phrase... "Yellow bird, up high in banana tree..."  It's not actually a very happy song, but I was happy listening to it as a child. 

"Before the parade passes by,

I've got to get some life back into my life!"

I felt like singing all day! It's very pleasant to be bubbling over with music inside, but a bit awkward when you have to keep very quiet and serious for the benefit of the office or citizens on the street. Not everyone can appreciate a broadly belted-out Broadway number, after all! 

If only I knew how to tap dance, I'd have to worry about restraining my feet as well as my voice. But I have to admit, what with the persistently nasty weather, the idea of dancing down the street with an umbrella singing "Singin' in the Rain" is awfully, awfully tempting anyway.