registered alien - Japan Blog

Japanese Recruiting

8/31/2019

Saturday, August 31, 2019.

Japanese recruiting

This is a Japanese military recruiting poster. Although, many Japanese deny that they even have a “military.” Instead, it’s a “self-defense force” they say, not recognizing / acknowledging the correlation. But with a quarter million men and women in uniform I feel safe saying that Japan has one of the largest militaries in the world: the Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF); the Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF); and, the Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). Does that sound peaceful and benign? Currently, the JSDF shares many military facilities - harbors, air stations and firing ranges, with U.S. forces based in Japan.

By law, the defense budget is limited to 1% of the Gross Domestic Product, but since the Japanese economy is so large, in effect it has a robust military budget.

Japanese self-defense forces have some extremely high-tech gadgets. Their grandest armaments today are two Izumo class multi-purpose operational destroyers - helicopter carriers which are the largest warships Japan has built since the Second World War. Each one is a de facto aircraft carrier.

Incidentally, the famous red-and-white rising sun flag that many foreigners know from WWII war movies was never the national flag - it was the naval ensign. And, it is still the naval ensign today.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

8/27/2019

Wednesday, August 28, 2019.

Familiarity breeds contempt

One of my Facebook friends posted this. I commented on it, then deleted my comment. Then I re-wrote and edited my original comment and posted it again. After that, I deleted it once more and abandoned my comment plan. This particular FB friend is vocal about and fiercely dedicated to LGBTQ civil rights, and I didn’t want to risk offending a FB friend. I’ve lost FB friends before for no good reason. Juvenile pique, I think.

There is a fundamental disconnect here that I just can't get my head around. If I was bisexual, why would I want anyone to know it? And, if I was gay, why would I want anyone to know that as well? Or, even if I was heterosexual, why the hell would I want anyone to know that? The point is, why the hell would I want anyone to know - even to know about - my private business? I just can't get my head around that. I can't process that. It's not that it's secret - not at all. It's that it's private. Get it? I get off on privacy more than publicity.

Even if I was heterosexual, why the hell would I want anyone to know about my private business? I just can't get my head around it. I can't process that.

Is it that I harbor a retarded and pathological repression of natural sexuality, or is it that many people today cultivate a retarded and selfish, ridiculous and just plain wrong exaggeration of it?

Gay pride actually retards my regard for sexual minorities. I mean, it diminishes my regard more than enhances it because of the selfishness and violence it represents. Selfishness in the sense of being inordinately concerned with oneself. Violence in the sense that it is a violation - a violation against me. What violation? A violation of privacy. My right not only not to know their private information, plus my right not to be attacked with it - information which, properly speaking, is none of my damned business. Most of all is my right not to have their genitals rubbed in my face.

LGBTQ advocates might say that sexuality - including minority sexual orientations which fall within the spectrum of natural human sexuality and are therefore equally “normal” as traditional heterosexuality - is natural and healthy, and that frank discussion of it and even the public celebration of it is also normal, healthy and appropriate for a human being. Disagreement is a pathology. But I think that is a particularly modern perspective, a post-sexual revolution, post gay-rights perspective, as well. I accept the argument of a natural spectrum of human sexuality, and I do not oppose gays or their rights. In fact, I encourage homosexuals to go ahead and be as gay as they want. Go for it! But without privacy, our humanity is diminished. Our credibility as human beings is compromised, and we are over-estimating something which, while important, is not that important.

I’ve been crying “Privacy!” to the wind for decades, and no one seems to be having it. It breaks my heart that my position isn’t even recognized because people are so dedicated to self-promotion, self-actualization, self-expression, self-fulfillment, self-celebration. My suggestion is simply invalidated from the get-go. Maybe that’s why I like living in Japan, where the Self is inferior to the Group. I’ve written before that my ideas about privacy might stem from growing up in a large family where domestic peace relied on a strict regard for boundaries.

This privacy debate contributed to my separation from the church in which I grew up when my former minister tried to tell me that Christians aren’t entitled to privacy, and that to be a Christian required us to be practicing bisexuals. I suggested that if we all minded our own business then there’d be no problem and we’d all get along, but he wasn’t having it. To be a Christian (in today’s world) means minding your fellows’ business. That’s enough of that, I thought.

But I could be wrong.

Ginger Ale

8/22/2019

Friday, August 23, 2019.

Ginger Ale

When I was a young child, if I had a tummy ache, my parents encouraged me to drink Ginger Ale. The idea was that ginger is soothing to an upset stomach, although I don't think there's actually any ginger in ginger ale - more like “real ginger flavor,” probably. It really was soothing, though. I’ve heard similar and dissimilar tales from other people. Some people report the ginger ale story, but say it was flat soda, not bubbly. Others say their parents gave them other kinds of soda drink for the same reason - drinks like cola. Some claim a nursing mother who recommended the same remedy for indigestion. Some recall parents serving on (notoriously unsatable) WWII corvettes in the North Atlantic being given Pepsi for the same reason. Some say that ginger ale was the only soda allowed in the house when they were young because of its medicinal reputation.

My parents had a single champagne glass in the house. In high school I sometimes used that champagne glass to drink my Canada Dry Ginger Ale because the TV commercial called it "the champagne of ginger ales." However, the champagne glass only held a single mouthful and it was too tedious to drink a satisfying amount. So, I gave it up. I thought, “Is this what champagne is like? I hope it tastes better than this.” It might make sense to drink champagne that way, but it's a silly way to drink your ginger ale.

Natsume Park

8/21/2019

Wednesday, August 21, 2019.

Natsume Park

This is Natsume Park, a small park a few minutes’ walk north of my apartment. I feel sorry for Nastume Park because it is largely abandoned and forgotten, tucked away among close-packed houses. A generation shift plus a chronic low birth rate mean there are very few children in the immediate vicinity to play there. The children are gone. Their laughter is only a faint echo, or maybe just a memory. The equipment is unused and forgotten. The ground is overgrown. The drinking fountain no longer gurgles. The air buzzes only with the chirruping of summer insects. I like to visit it sometimes, like a Secret Garden, to remind it that it is not forgotten. But I still feel sad. I imagine young lovers using it as a convenient meeting place.

Cicada

8/21/2019

Wednesday, August 21, 2019.

Cicada

I found this cicada (“semi” in Japanese) outside my door this morning, on its back, dying. It's wings were damaged, it was missing a leg, and some kind of discolouration had already set in. So, I picked it up and put it right-side up. It might not be more comfortable for it, but it's more comfortable for me, who has to see it while it expires. A cicada's natural position is either vertical on the trunk of a tree, or upside down in its branches. Outdoors Japan in the summer time is a wall of cicada chirruping. A common summer decoration is a glass wind chime (a “furin”). Japanese feel that the sounds of insects, and the sounds of wind chimes in the breeze create a feeling of coolness in the otherwise humid weather.

Old Jeremiah

8/9/2019

Friday, August 9, 2019.

Old Jeremiah

This is "Old Jeremiah," a former British naval cannon that sits outside the University of Guelph's University Centre in my hometown. Students have been painting and re-painting it for decades. I've been told (I forget by whom) that the weight of the accumulated paint is heavier than the weight of the cannon beneath it. I have no way of knowing if that's true. But even though it seems unlikely, I'd believe it if someone trustworthy corroborated it. I suppose the paint is periodically stripped off. Who makes that decision?

Natsume Park

8/7/2019

Wednesday, August 7, 2019.

Natsume Park

This is Natsume Park, a small park a few minutes’ walk north of my apartment. I feel sorry for Nastume Park because it is largely abandoned and forgotten, tucked away among close-packed houses. A generation shift coupled with a low birth rate mean there are very few children in the immediate vicinity to play there. The children are gone. Their laughter is less than a faint echo. The equipment is unused and forgotten. The ground is overgrown. The drinking fountain no longer gurgles. The air is silent. I like to visit it sometimes, like a Secret Garden, to remind it that it is not forgotten. But I still feel sad. I imagine young lovers using it as a convenient meeting place.

Chindonya 2

8/3/2019

Sunday, August 4, 2019.

Chindonya

From today's Japan Times print newspaper.

These are "chindonya," a traditional type of street advertising in Japan. We can still sometimes see them today. They make a lot of noise with drums, flutes, whistles and other instruments, holding advertising signs or singing out their script. They are weird and fun to see, but they are a dying profession in the digital age.

My Childhood Neighbourhood

7/30/2019

Wednesday, July 31, 2019.

My childhood neighbourhood

This is where I grew up in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. From this elevation is looks small, but it's not so small when you're on the ground walking, or riding a bicycle. I like(d) my neighbourhood. It was a good place to grow up. I cannot see my house in this picture because of the trees, but I can see where it is.

The main feature here is the Royal City Park and Speed River. After the park, Wellington Street, which parallels the river for a couple kilometers here, is another dominant feature. I can see the old OPP Station, Edinburgh Road, the Wellington Street Dam, Gow's Mill Pond and Gow's Bridge and the weir across the river between the dam and Edinburgh, and Gordon Street Bridge. I can see the Rockwell plant on Wellington. Barry Cullen Used Cars might be there on the north side of Wellington, too, but I can't distinguish it. (In this photograph, north is left and south is right.) Trees - planted en masse in the 1980s - haven't been planted yet on the banks of the river and the banks are still fields of mown grass. My school, John McCrae Public School (since this picture was taken it was demolished, then re-built and re-opened as a French immersion public school), is visible there on Water Street, on the south side of the river. The principal there at the time of this picture was Vern Shaw. Mr. Shaw was also a director of plays at the Guelph Little Theatre.

Between the river and the school playground is a dirt road were Guelph Police Constable Peacock (later Sergeant Peacock) used to demonstrate bicycle traffic safety by having a test car smash into a bicycle while the entire student body sat on the grass watching. Constable Peacock scared me because he always seemed to be yelling at us. I suppose he was a nice enough man, with a wife and a daughter, but not to an elementary school kid.

I can see a patch of ground near the school we used to call "the snake pit" because of all the garter snakes infesting it. It was off limits to students, but the teachers couldn't stop us. Walk two meters into the snake pit and the ground would be slithering.

My parents told me that when they arrived in Guelph in the early 1960s the dump was on Wellington near Waterloo Avenue near the Hanlon Expressway today - a piece of land currently occupied by two brownish apartment buildings. That location is just a little out of the frame. The banks of the Speed River in this photo were a dumping ground in the 19th century - also the city's water supply, explaining the typhoid outbreak in the 1890s. That typhoid outbreak motivated the city to move its water source to the Arkell Spring, and to introduce water pipes - lacquered wood at the time, samples of which are still on display at the Civic Museum. If construction crews go digging in the Royal City Park, or almost anywhere in that stretch of park land from Gordon to Edinburgh, they can expect to strike 19th century garbage. Many contemporary nature enthusiasts and environmentalists eulogize the beautiful nature of the Royal City Park. They're idiots. The Royal City Park today with fantastic mature elm trees is completely landscaped and fabricated. It used to be the dump.

For many children, the pond behind the dam and the dam itself was a place for recreational swimming. I never swam there, heeding my mother's advice that the water was too dirty. But on very hot, humid summer days many young people didn't care and they took the plunge. My family enjoyed canoeing on the river upstream from the dam.

The Wellington Street dam today has outlived its original life-expectancy. In addition, flood control in the Grand River watershed is handled by another, larger dam, the Shand Dam operated by the Grand River Conservation Authority many kilometers north of Guelph. So, the Wellington Street dam in Guelph is not only obsolete, but superfluous. But people like it. It's scenic in the summer time. But the beloved dam's disposition and fate are perpetually in the hands of a City of Guelph budget committee.

The past was a dirty, stinking place with horse and human manure and trash, no air conditioning and no antibiotics or painkillers.

But I could be wrong.

Conversation in Social Media

7/28/2019

Monday, July 29, 2019.

Conversation in social media

I pay attention to things I encounter that I disagree with - in textbooks and novels, in movies and in songs, in conversation, and now on the internet and social media, too. Habitually I have tended to try to engage issues rather than ignore them because that’s the kind of guy I am - a thinking guy. But I feel I am relenting in this in recent times. I suppose that for much of my adult life I have appeared to others opinionated and argumentative. But I think that what many think is argumentativeness is really my attempt at camaraderie communication.

Many people don't know this, but disagreement does not mean argumentativeness or belligerence. Disagreeing with someone does not mean you are arguing with them. It means you are having a conversation with them, a dialogue. It might sound counter intuitive, but you cannot have conversation with people that you already agree with. That is more like linguistic mutual masturbation than communication. People take it the wrong way if you don't agree with them, especially on social media because social media is not really used for communication so much as affirmation, and affirmation is what most people are seeking. Tempers flare if you are not agreeable. I guess my desire to use language, media and technology to communicate is naïve, fool that I am. Towards that end, I am prone not to let occasions go without saying something, especially if I disagree.

I am prone to adopt contrary positions just to test the soundness of others’ ideas. It's a linguistic device to take the verbal formula of a statement, observation or proposition and test it. That's not unfriendly, belligerent and argumentative so much as amicably conversational. If an idea is sound, then I don't have to support it by agreeing with it. It is already supported by its own soundness. People are also prone to think wrongly that what I say or write reflects what I really think or believe. Not so. What I really think or believe about things is a profoundly personal and private matter, whereas what I speak or write is more (not always) publicly conversational in the sense of testing propositions in an open forum through a Hegelian linguistic formula that pits a synthesis against an antithesis leading to a new synthesis. I am debating issues so that 1) I can learn better to appreciate other minds; and, 2) I can figure shit out. And that is called communication. But I could be wrong.