Lost In Translation

Noodles

Edward and Jeleesan brought me some of these noodles, I don't know what they're called since the label's in Korean, but they're great. The noodles are thicker than the usual ramen noodles and it makes a spicy broth, which is probably why they chose these noodles for me.

Cross Cultural "Freedom"

This week’s “U.S. Culture-lessons from the classroom” focuses on different perspectives on freedom. Kimiko Manes states that her students think that there is little freedom in Japan and she counters:

Ironically, as a Japanese living in the United States, I sometimes feel that there is not a lot of freedom here. For example, if I don't mow the lawn around the house, I will get a complaint. Even if I own my own home, I am not allowed to paint it a color that does not "blend in" with the neighborhood. If I remodel my house, not only will I get taxed depending on the number of bedrooms, I must first seek permission from the local authorities for even minor changes. Because of zoning laws, which strictly designate areas as residential, commercial and industrial, even if I wanted to open an innocuous hobby shop at my house, I cannot since I live in a residential area.

I think these are very superficial claims, and you encounter similar lack of freedoms in Japan. Most people have apartments and cannot make changes. Neighbors complain if you put out mixed garbage or park bicycles in the wrong area. Japan has a myriad of laws that prevent you from doing most things in a straightforward manner. No street shoes (shoes worn outdoors) are allowed in the gym. There are dress codes requiring students to wear them at schools and at some offices you have to wear uniforms as well. Students have to choose one activity for three years (in America you can change by season or year). You aren’t supposed to use garbage cans in meeting rooms (then why are they in there?). Many workers are expected to work unpaid overtime. Sometimes they are expected to go drinking with colleagues or clients even if they don’t want to. Lunches must be taken from 12 to 1. There are no sick days-you have to use holiday in most cases. The list goes on and on.

However, I have to concur with Manes when she says:

In an individualistic society, in order to prevent individual desires from infringing on the "common good," each area has strict regulations enforced by the local authorities. Japan is more of a group society, with a strong emphasis on trust, so rules have been followed with a high degree of compliance, and that has given Japan one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

In an individualistic society, in order to prevent individual desires from infringing on the "common good," each area has strict regulations enforced by the local authorities. Japan is more of a group society, with a strong emphasis on trust, so rules have been followed with a high degree of compliance, and that has given Japan one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

She goes on to talk about a former student who decided he liked a lot of things about Japanese society, but I don’t see these as examples of “freedoms”:

He also observed that the Japanese dress up when they leave their homes. Steve, who always wore sweatshirts when he was not working, started to think more about his clothing after six months in Japan.

I’ve had Japanese people tell me the exact opposite; that they felt freer to dress casual abroad than in Japan, where they were expected to keep up with their friends. Then she goes on to say:

In Japan, since public transit is efficient, one need not have a car. Most times, the employer will subsidize the commuting fares as well. Many companies have dormitories, and employees can live there relatively inexpensively. Also, there are extra funds that are given to employees who have dependent children. Frequently, the company owns a recreational facility in a resort area, and employees can take vacations there with their families. If there is an individual problem, frequently the employer or coworkers will help out. He felt that none of these things were true in the United States, and realized that he had come to prefer living in a society where there is more interaction, connection and shared communal responsibility than is true of the typical U.S. experience, centered as it is on the nuclear family as an extension of the individual. Recently, Steve put in a transfer request to move to his company's Tokyo subsidiary.

While, these things are true-are they freedoms? I think the point in which she states “more interaction, connection and shared communal responsibility” is oppressive paternalism. And as a foreigner I can live outside the system and there is less pressure to conform to community/social standards. If I were a Japanese national I imagine I would try to move away. When I visited NY, I talked to a Japanese national who had lived in NY for seven years he said the main reason he lived in the US was “freedom.”

Click here to read the whole article.

Bridge Over Kawai

Yesterday was a national holiday and I went with some friends to Kawai, a town that is part of West Tokyo on the Ome line-about two hours away from Tokyo municipal proper. We hung out aroudn the rivere and swam some. This is a picture of the Taisho bridge, an example of the pork barrel contrstruction projects that get green lighted every year in Japan. I think it's more impressive than it needs to be.

Oprah and Faulkner?

It seems like an odd pairing, but when I saw "As Lay Dying", "The Sound and the Fury", and "Lights in August" marketed together for this summer's Oprah reading group I was pleasently surprised. Mass appeal of one of my favorite American authors, albeit one of the most difficult, is a good thing. Here's an exerpt from an article in Slate about it:

It looked like one of the oddest pairings around, and yet Oprah-meets-Faulkner turned out, in a curious way, to be an inspired match. It's easy to forget just how radical a writer Faulkner still is, because he's been so thoroughly absorbed into the canon: a process by which, as one critic once put it, "the idiosyncratic is distorted into the normative." Faulkner is anything but normative. Figuring out what is going on in a book like The Sound and the Fury is so hard—and demands such a leap of faith—that every reader struggles in similar ways. Its demanding textual challenges have a strangely democratizing effect. No matter how many lit-crit terms you can throw around, Faulkner's jagged, wildly original style is hard—and can jar confident readers as well as less confident ones.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Favorite Places: Kushi Waka Maru

My friend Edward loves yakitori, as I do, so we went to Kushi Waka Maru in Nakameguro at the suggestion of another friend for his last meal in Japan Sunday night. The place is very down to earth and friendly, and the prices were quite reasonable and the servings were of excellent quality, as well as generous in their portions. I'll definatley be back. Yakitori has many varities and there are many that I don't like, it was food that Japanese people ate after the war when food was scarce, so all parts (liver, heart, skin, gizzard, gibblets, cartilidge, neck, tail, etc...) of the chicken were cooked over charcoal and eaten as snacks. In the top part of the photo is a plate of tuskune (minced chicken ina savory sauce). The other plate has negima (bits of chicken thigh and leeks) and sasami (pieces of thigh seared-a bit raw inside-with wasabi and ume "Japanese plum" as flavoring). I was asked how I wanted cooked and I said as usual, but I've never had it undercooked like that, so next time I'll order it differently. Edward refused to touch it fearing samonella, I haven't contracted it yet...we also ordered "tanuki"(racoon-named after the shape of the food not racoon meat), which is minced chicken inside shiitake mushrooms, asparbakon (asparagus wrapped in bacon), chizupi (green peppers cooked with cheese inside), ginko nuts, and some others that I am forgetting.

Interview With Errol Morris

There's an interesting interview in the latest edition of The Onion AV Club:

Interview: Errol Morris Print Interviewed by Noel Murray September 14th, 2005

Though Oscar-winning The Fog Of War director Errol Morris is arguably the premier documentary filmmaker of this age, he originally turned to the form out of intellectual curiosity. Morris was a philosophy student and an artistic dilettante in the mid-'70s when he met German director Werner Herzog, who encouraged Morris to pursue his interest in human oddity by making movies. Morris had planned to start either with a film about serial killer Ed Gein or a film about people who butchered themselves for insurance money, but he got sidetracked by a news item about a mass exhumation at a California pet cemetery. He talked to the owners of the cemetery shipping out the dead pets and the owners of the cemetery receiving them, and he cut the footage together into a laconic, ironic study of the ladder of success. The resulting film, 1980's Gates Of Heaven, was little-seen on its original release, but early champion Roger Ebert named it one of his 10 favorite movies of all time, and gradually the documentary's reputation grew, along with Morris'.

Gates Of Heaven has been newly released on DVD, along with Morris' second feature, Vernon, Florida (which is what became of his planned film about insurance fraud), his third feature, The Thin Blue Line (an expressionistic murder mystery, and one of the films that helped begin popularizing documentaries in the late '80s), and the complete run of his TV series First Person (which presents brief, illustrated interviews with unusual people). Morris recently spoke with The A.V. Club about the differences between his early career and now, and about his bill-paying forays into the world of advertising—including his set of 2004 pitches for Senator John Kerry.

Stretching $500 Worth of Yen

There was an intersting travel article in the NY Times recently on spending only $500 in two days in Tokyo:

By TOM DOWNEY Published: September 11, 2005

MENTION to any traveler that you're headed to Tokyo and be prepared to hear a litany of warnings: hotel rooms in Shinjuku equal to the cost of a month's rent in New York, breakfasts that can cost more than dinners at Per Se. Even the most in-the-know travelers persist in believing that Tokyo is a destination fit only for the superrich.

But given today's strong euro, Tokyo can actually be less expensive than some major European cities (and even cheaper than New York) - if you know where to go and what to avoid.

One weekend in June, I had a chance to test this theory. My goal was to enjoy two days in Tokyo on a total budget of just $500.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

New Photo Album

Check the sidebar for a new photo album from my trips to Kamakura and Nikko earlier this week.

Nikko

On Tuesday we visited Nikko National Park in Toichigi. It takes more than two hours to get there from Tokyo, and I haven't been there for years either. But it reconfirmed my intial impressions, it is a beautiful place with ornate temples, pagodas, and other structures up in the mountains among beautiful giant trees. Unfortuantley there were a few elementary school bus tours there at the same time. The highlight was Taiyuin-byo, because it was set apart from the other structures and it's slight isolation heightens a sense of tranquility. See the sidebar for more photos.

Kaiten Sushi

After getting back to Shibuya, we ate at a kaiten sushi shop (revolving sushi). At these types of restaurants, the chefs make sushi and put them on plates which go around the table. However, if you don't see anything you like you can order it or extras like miso soup. This place was particularly inexpensive, 105 yen (less than a dollar) for two pieces of sushi (generally it ranges between 120 and 140 per plate-sometimes the plates are color coded-more expensive types, like toro usually cost more).