Summertime

Welcome back to Japan. The time is 1:40am, when words come alive. Two months (and some change) have passed since I last wrote, but I'm not dead quite yet. Maybe soon, but not yet.

I could tell you about crashing my bike at 30mph helmetless in the middle of a busy five-way intersection downtown or the threatening late night visit from an adult english student's enraged husband who accused me of having an affair with his wife (then apologized later that night for the misunderstanding by bringing me a six pack of Suntory Rich Malt and some kit kats- Rich Malt has been my beer of choice since), but I don't want to worry the motherly readership of this blog any more than necessary. For the rest of you, when I'm home remind me to tell you some of the stories that don't make it on here.

I can tell you right now that this entry, an attempt to convey where I'm at right now (literally and figuratively), will flip around like an epileptic acrobat at a rave nursing a sprained ankle. Here we go.

I'll start in the immediate future, to help paint a picture of where I am at the moment (in my boxers, on my couch with a fan pointed at me, alone and typing on Alex's computer at just shy of 2am). Come Sunday I'll fight in a local karate tournament against black belts aged 21 and over. Sweet Holy Jesus. I'll be both the only white guy and white belt in the place. It's not full contact (I'm not that tough) so I shouldn't walk away with anything worse than a few bruises and a tweaked neck after repeated roundhouse kicks to the head. The important thing here (for my self esteem) is that Kimura Sensei, to my complete surprise, asked me to join the dojo tournament team a month ago. This ostensibly means I'm making some progress after about a year of training. Just look at this intimidatingly shaved dome from a festival at Japan's primary Honda factory this summer:

Sitting near my sliding door here in the living room with the screen affording a view of the porch outside (along with letting in that pleasant textured melody of crickets that lets you know you live in/near the countryside) I can't help but wonder how many cats pass silently by every night as I sleep. At least four is my guess.

Anyway, I got served another generous portion of humble pie yesterday afternoon when I failed my Japanese Driver's License test for the second time. The test is extremely detail-oriented, and at least from an outsider's perspective, can seem fundamentally disconnected from the practical real-world skills it's meant to gauge. Not unlike the English tests I grade. A Chinese woman, who I had also taken it with last week, passed today after her 12th go at it. The other two American guys and I were shown the big X for batsu (fail) for our collective second tries, all of us given vague instructions to check our mirrors more often (than I thought possible). Meaning the road ahead should be seen only out of your peripheral vision as you swivel like a bobble-head in anticipation of maniac tricycle gangs hopped up on milk tea and Crunky bars who could launch themselves suicidally between you and the curb at any moment.

Here's a picture from a fun hike up Mt. Aso last month:

I own a beautiful white Toyota Starlet which has waited silently and patiently in my parking lot for close to two months now as this licensing process runs its meandering course. Ah, to be a machine. But hey, you either accept these red-tape mountain ranges while living in Japan, go crazy, or go home. I've learned to take constant failures a little more philosophically. And by philosophically, I mean with two tall cans of Asahi and a quarter flask of Jack and Coke on the porch with Lloyd yesterday followed immediately by a nice 5:30pm nap. Which led to waking up at 1am, which led, happily enough, to writing this.

On October 9th I'll take the GRE in Osaka. So I've been studying for that. Not sure yet what I want to commit to doing for the rest of my life, but I'll try and narrow that down in the next three weeks so I know where to send the scores. The Bushey School of Animal Painting is all I have so far for sure, though I hear it hasn't quite been the same since the passing of dear old Ms. Kemp-Welch. Failing that, New York or somewhere else on the east coast could be a vibrant change of pace from the alternative Northwest lifestyle, and of course an entirely different world from Japan. Mmm, pizza bagels.

Next Sunday I leave for Beijing with Alex, then we'll head to Shanghai and return a week later. China! Beyond a Great Wall tour reservation we'll figure things out as we go along, part of the greatness of traveling with a flexible friend.

This is from a visit to my friend Erin in Seoul:

I've been subsisting somehow without a computer since the beginning of July (it fatally overheated almost exactly a year after its first meltdown- pending a second resurrection it's essentially a phoenix) so I've been corresponding sporadically by email via cellphone and have spent only a handful of hours on the internet at work in the last two months. It's been liberating. The endless current of youtube videos, wikipedia articles, NY Times editorials, games, Facebook profiles, stock research, streaming t.v. shows and flash movies can suck up hours in an instant, and when you get cut off from all that you realize how long an evening at home actually is. After a while I picked up Ender's Game and started reading for pleasure again, then went back to the local bar I hadn't set foot in for eight months, and tried out my Japanese with the Ueki townsfolk. I've also come to enjoy spending a bit of time before bed each night out on my porch, no music, no distractions, just sitting there and looking out past the fence. Does wonders for a good night's sleep.

My good friend Greg Hansen came to visit for a spell, and just took off last week. We traveled around Kyoto for a few days then took the overnight bus back to Kumamoto, not an easy twelve hour ride for a man who stands two meters tall, or for the yenny-pinching friend squeezed against the window beside him. Despite his prolonged bout with what may have been the swine flu, we had a grand time stomping around this fair country, culminating in a massive JET beach party down south in Ashikita for the final weekend. Here he is tenderly eating the salt off my head.

This legendary man's visit came when I was missing Seattle and the USA pretty strongly and beginning to turn an unfairly harsh eye on my surroundings (having just rounded the one year mark, yearning to drive to an onsen with the AC on). So it was a big breath of fresh air and a good chance to see things reframed through the wry but appreciative eye of a friend with honest insights and similar tastes. Who I could probably wrestle down in a heartbeat (in case you're reading this Hansen). Here's us rolling down a hill in a giant sphere, courtesy of Holly:

If the fates are kind my friend Caity will be flying over in the spring for sakura (cherry blossom) season, which would be Amazing. Especially if we make it up to see Kyoto's fabled hanami vistas.

Here's a shot from a dinner with Terry, who taught down south in Yatsushiro and is now working with the Japanese Consulate in Tennessee, before she headed home this August:

My Japanese is coming along, so very slowly, but the process has significant and usually immediate rewards. I finally reached a milestone earlier this summer- completing the Heisig course of 2,040 common-use kanji, whose forms I can now (often) recognize and match with a simplified English definition, thanks to creating thousands of short stories connecting the disparate elements within the characters. Sound time consuming? Yeah, a bit. The next step is to fit them into actual Japanese readings, and gradually learn to read. The cryptic puzzles of this world will slowly unravel into coherent soft drink advertisements, utility bills, and safety warnings, which for me is more exciting than it sounds.

Here's a picture of a baseball game reunion up north in Fukuoka with most of the India group:

Almost done here. It's about 4:20am, a time which has distinctly different meanings for a Whitman college senior and an assistant English teacher with a special pre-tournament training session in six hours. Despite the consistent routine of 8:30-5:15 workweeks (with half-day Fridays), my experience thus far has felt more like an extended study abroad program mixed with summer camp than the career of a true Japanese schoolteacher (try 8am-9:30pm and near-parental responsibility for a classroom of kids). As I've heard from my predecessors, the government's dual purpose for funding JET is to stir up the admittedly homogeneous Japanese culture with some different languages, natural hair/eye colors, and personalities, while leaving a favorable impression on the promising young college graduates who participate and will go spread the good word about Japan back home, then potentially get involved with some line of foreign service work between the countries. Which, incidentally, is what I hope to do (coordinating joint American/Japanese investments in developing-world microfinance projects is the dream). Unfortunately for a lot of recent college grads JET is being scaled back in response to the pressing economic crunch. 27 new ALTs came to Kumamoto this year, compared to 69 last year. Looks like I made it in just in time.

This is from my friend Taylor's photo show earlier this summer. By accident I occasionally get to be in pictures with beautiful women.

I'm flying home to Seattle for Christmas (December 17-January 4), so hopefully I can see a lot of you then. Here are the things I miss most from home:

Family and friends

New movies in theaters

Being able to read/understand things/ convey urgent messages

Microbrews

Taco Bell and Wendy's

Leavenworth

Diner breakfasts

Watching basketball and primetime TV

Watching awful reality shows on late-night TV

Bagels

Kenmore's Cozy Inn

Ruffy

My old piano

Loud and unpredictable people

Listening to 93.3, 95.7, 97.3, and 103.7FM in the car

the list goes on, but I'll stop before profuse tears of nostalgia fall and short-circuit Alex's computer.

Thanks for reading, and if you ever want to say "hey man, this one Rogaine commercial made me think of you" or "when are you going to pay me back for that couch" or "stay in Japan, slagbiscuit" you can send an email to my phone at anderskg@docomo.ne.jp. anderskg@gmail.com always works too. Hearing from you, however briefly, would make me pretty happy. Atode mata.

my life is average.

it's always funnier when you can you can relate to something.

http://mylifeisaverage.com/

Magic Happens

It’s been a special day, and not just because I rode to work in bike shorts and forgot to bring underwear. Today a small miracle happened during third period English.

Our speech repetitions were suddenly interrupted by a crash on the hall window followed by a little brown wren slamming into a boy's shoulder in the back corner before ricocheting off onto the ground and feebly fluttering in circles on the floor. Immediately my heart sank- the bird was a goner. I'd seen this before. I exchanged sympathetic looks with the handful of students comfortable with openly expressing emotions as my teacher, Kawaguchi Sensei, tenderly gathered the injured bird into her hands. She then cupped it firmly between her palms and slowly paced back to the front of the room, resuming the lecture as she walked. The students seemed to accept that class would go on as normal as their teacher held a perishing kamikaze bird in her hands.

Kawaguchi Sensei then asked me to lead a few pages of reading while she carried the bird out to the sink in the hallway. Was she going to put it out of its misery by drowning it? Let it struggle harmlessly around the sink basin until class ended? Turns out she was just giving it a little drink and smoothing its feathers.

Reading aloud from the textbook, "Andy, this is my friend Takeshi", I couldn't help glancing over to watch her curious efforts with the doomed bird. Teenage voices repeated "Andy, this is my friend Takeshi" back in the usual narrow spectrum of monotones, though the attention of several students was openly fixated on the sink outside.

"Hi, Takeshi. I'm Andy". Kawaguchi Sensei now had the wren on its side, balanced between her two open palms, and was shifting its weight back and forth. "Hi Takeshi. I'm Andy."

"Hi, Andy." The bird was upright, standing on her finger. "Hi, Andy."

"Are you a soccer fan?" She held the poor flightless bird out the window, looking like she was about to fling it into space and let it arc down like a feathery stone into the ground two stories below. "Are you a soccer fan?" I didn't have a great alternative in mind for disposing of live birds that crash into the classroom, so I looked on with trepidation out of the corner of my eye and continued reading.

"Yes, I-." One final launching swing of her hand and the bird suddenly and miraculously took off through the air, flying up freely into the blue sky! I literally stopped talking in mid-sentence. The class laughed as I tried again, "Yes, I am", and Kawaguchi Sensei reentered the room.

"What- how did... Sensei, did you just heal that bird?"
She smiled cheerily. "Re-ha-bilitation, ne?"
"Rehabilitation? That... was magic!"
"Hahaha, yes! I am magic."

I went from wondering if my teacher was picking the broken wren up to snap its neck, to watching it effortlessly take off with a rapid fluttering of functional wings in five minutes. It made me uniquely happy to witness that. Even some of the students appeared to look at their teacher and calm, confident healer of our wayward animal friends with a new sense of respect. At least the class behaved itself for the last ten minutes, a small miracle in itself at this school. So you never really know when magic will happen.

the world as seen through the eyes of an amateur investor

Looks like the global economic crisis is wrapping up. East Asia is doing a lot of the work in making that happen. And now is still probably a good time to buy strong next generation tech stocks- Apple alone has gone up over 30% in the last few months, and Google's looking real good too. Now's the time people! Invest!

Day Six in Andhra Pradesh

I woke up to a phone ringing at 6am this morning, as I have most mornings this week. Sometimes the call is earlier, later, doesn’t come at all, or in the case of this morning, the sleepy young man inexplicably rings one minute after the 6:00 call to say “Hello.” “Hello again”, I respond. “It’s 6:01 sir.” “Thank you?” “You're welcome sir.”

A few leftover scraps of butter nan and empty bottles of Thums Up cola litter the hotel room Taylor and I share. Last night we played cards and ordered room service, the night before we watched a lightning storm knock out the city’s power from the hotel rooftop.

We gather in the hotel lobby at 6:30am and board a rented tour bus to the village, where a cheering throng of village children greet us every morning. Their stream of delighted energy hits us as strong as a pot of black coffee to the face and continues unabated throughout the day, making it impossible not to return some of the love. We spin them and toss them in the air, play cricket and volleyball and a complex variety of hand games, practice English, recite 1-10 in Telegu or simply provide a climbing structure as we lose the strength to lift them by the end of the day.

The work itself is exhausting, passing cement trays and bricks to form foundations, corner pillars, walls and slabbed roofs. By noon we are soaked in sweat, our clothes filthy with dirt, dried cement and brick dust. A vegetarian lunch and one-hour siesta follow before getting back to work for the cooler afternoon work session. At dusk we eat dinner, play with the kids and unwind, pleasantly exhausted, having shared and accomplished a very tangible goal for the day. The bus ride back provides an opportunity to mitigate the profound ninety-minute transition from mudflat village to bustling industrial city by playing word games, sharing travel stories or quietly listening to music and processing the last thirteen hours.

Allow me to shed some light on this experience by sharing some fast facts about the Dalit.

1. The Hindu potential of rebirth within a higher caste functions as justification for keeping the Atai Shudra (Untouchables; slaves) subjugated throughout their lifetime.
2. In addition to being physically separated from the rest of society, in the economic sphere Dalits are explicitly restricted to a few undesirable trades. In the traditional regions of India, only Dalits (still) do leather tanning and shoe-making.
3. Dalit means “broken people” in Sanskrit. They prefer to go by “Shudra”, meaning “lowest caste”.
4. Brahma (God) is synonymous with justice, and Dalits are born believing that their position is sanctioned by transcendent authorities. Not surprisingly, the village we work in and many others are increasingly turning to Christianity instead...

Despite the heavy burdens placed upon Gummallapadu Village, hope exists not only by means of external volunteer efforts, but from the internal resiliency of its citizens and healthy ambitions of its younger members (one of whom will leave in a few weeks to study as a mechanical engineer in Shanghai). Along with the open communication, honesty, and a strong sense of community pervading the village where we did our work, this is proof that beautiful things often grow in harsh environments.

home/sickness

I'm now on my 6th day home sick from work after returning from India. Nothing serious, and I'll be back at work tomorrow, but I've had an expansive amount of down time to listen to music, read, watch movies and tv shows, eat cereal and make cocoa, do those kinds of things. In spite of the heroic bacterial war being fought in my intestines it's been pretty nice to sit around and unwind.

Unfortunately this all means I've been fully immersing myself in American creature comforts for the past week. A few minutes ago "Hate It or Love It" by 50 Cent came on the tail of a long progression of other random songs chosen by shuffle on iTunes which formed the secret combination of emoti-musical stimuli that would trigger a chain reaction of fond Seattle summer memories, evoking a cresting wave of homesickness from deep within me that rose high over my head, paused a moment for me to consider my reflection standing under it here in Japan, and then sort of knocked me flat.

As a man I'm not expected to focus on or talk about my emotions too much (I've been thinking more about such things since reading Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex", highly recommended), but when I closed my eyes to envision driving south on I-5 into the city with the windows down and 95.7 up on one of those rare blue-skied Seattle days where the Columbia Center gleams on the horizon next to the looming majesty of Rainier and the trees lining the highway seem too vividly green to be real and you come around that last bend in the road and see Elliot Bay and the Puget Sound sweeping out in front of you... as I did again now when writing it, I opened my eyes to find a tear or two in them and felt a little empty space inside carved out by memories of home. For real.

Thank you, 50 Cent, for helping me to explore my emotions as a man.

things not to forget about Mumbai

here I sit in an internet cafe, sweating profusely, fresh out of a tour of asia's largest slum.

slum tour- we went on a tour of Mumbai's (and Asia's) largest slum, Dharavi, and got exposed to what it's like to have more than a million people packed into a square mile. The residents make do though, and keep busy with countless mini industries, including processing recycled goods from both the city and abroad, then selling the raw materials back to manufacturers.

gandhi museum- Gandhi's old house in Mumbai was turned into a museum about his life and work.

raj from rajhastan- Raj was a friendly young man who introduced himself on the street, then took us out for chai tea, then drinks, and offered to help us find pants or anything we needed in the city the next day. then we deduced that he was just interested in our girls.

jain temple- as part of a city tour we embarked upon the second day, we were lucky enough to see an annual festival held at the Jain temple. it gave us a chance to see Hinduism in action.

mumbai trains- the ones we rode had no doors, letting you lean out the side into the night air as you rode.

mumbai markets- spent a whole lot of time bargaining in these. all the fine silks you've ever dreamed of, and the price is right.

calaba's back streets after midnight- dangerous.