It’s been a hell of a long time since I did a plant post, so here is one. I’ve bought roughly a jillion plants since back whenever I did the last one, so yeah. READ MORE »
Monthly archives for May, 2010
“The End”, a poem by a younger me.
T H E E N D
The car grips the road a little tighter.
It’s probably just my hands on the steering wheel,
Squeezing harder as my mind races.
You’re here.
Your arm not seven inches from mine
But between us, a gulf of uncertainty:
a gulf so wide and so deep, to tread into it
would mean disaster.We’re alike, you and I.
Brothers? No, more than that, if you can imagine.
You speak, distracting me from my thoughts
but it’s a pleasant distraction. Your voice
washing over me like brown silk in the wind,
moving to my ears and enveloping my mind.
I hang on your words, basking in your essence. Afraid to let go
and lose this moment forever.It’s a cool, clear August evening.
The stars look down on us as we speed
through the countryside.
I have so much to tell you,
but I can never seem to do it.
Your eyes, your smile.
If I told you… would you ever
smile at me again?The car rolls to a stop, and I turn to face you.
It’s time I told you.
You have to know.
Stuttering, I search for the words. I pause.
Your hair is wild, untamed: free
like the wild bronco running on the plain.
Your eyes hold mine: big, brown, like the moist earth
that gives you life.You place a hand on mine.
That doesn’t help…
I look down, and suddenly the words arrive,
pouring from my mouth like so many atom bombs.
Looking up, I meet your gaze. Fear. Sadness. I know you see these things in my eyes.
Why won’t you respond? Smile. Say you understand, that it’s alright.
You turn away. I crumble.-August 9, 2000
Umbrella Culture
UNITE!
When I first arrived in Japan, way back in the day, I bought an umbrella, because the rain was, you know, pretty strong at times. One evening, I went out to the bar, and took my umbrella as it was raining. When I went to leave, my umbrella was nowhere to be found. Someone else had taken mine. At the time, it bothered me a little bit, and I stewed about it as I walked home in the rain.
I bought another umbrella. This time, instead of a 1500yen umbrella, this was just a 1000yen affair, simpler, less flashy. Not one of those horrible compact umbrellas, mind you; this was a full-length, non-collapsible deal. I used it to get to work for a while, went out to pubs a couple times, etc. One rainy day, I had to attend a meeting at an office a half hour’s drive away. I had been there before, and knew that parking was often quite dodgy, and I usually ended up parked far away from the office itself. So I brought my umbrella, and was glad of it when the rain got stronger and I parked even further than expected from the office. I put my umbrella in the rack near the door, and attended my meeting. When it had finished, and I was on my way out the door, I was dismayed to find that, again, my umbrella had been taken by another. “You can’t just take other people’s things, it’s not right!” I moaned as I trudged through the downpour, soaked to the bone.
I bought a third umbrella. This time, a 300yen clear umbrella of the type convenience stores keep in their back rooms until an unexpected rainshower sends pedestrians scrambling for some sort of cover. This, too, was eventually nicked.
And that’s when I decided that I shall never buy another umbrella so long as I live in Japan.
It would seem to me that people are pretty fast and loose with umbrellas; that umbrellas are viewed as a sort of public property. It’s like the penny jar at your corner store: have a brolly, leave a brolly; need a brolly, take a brolly. It’s worked well for me these last few years. One particularly rainy day, I took the cheapest, oldest looking umbrella from the “umbrellas of unknown provenance” bucket at my work, and used it. A few weeks later, left it at the door of a shop while I perused their wares, came back to find it missing, took the cheapest, oldest looking one in the bucket and continued on my way.
I never take patterned ones, or ones that appear to be of particularly high quality workmanship; some people seem to think of umbrellas as fashion accessories, and may also have more dollars than sense (as it were), and spend big on a bumbershoot. I don’t want to deprive them of their designer item (though I do often wish there were a way to make it so they’d never have purchased it in the first place), and so I always look for the cheapest one.
I really do think that some things ought to be public property, at least to a degree. Umbrellas ought to be free for the taking, so long as you share alike; there ought to be public bicycles (though this would require a system different from the umbrella method I’ve described, what with bicycles actually being rather pricy); there ought to be community vegetable gardens where, provided you work a portion and share your produce, you can have some of other peoples’ harvest.
I’m sure this all makes me some sort of thieving commie pinko, but you know what? I don’t much care. Why is everyone so hung up on themselves and their own stuff? Why can’t you share? Why don’t you open your curtains and let the sun in and see what your neighbours are up to? Why don’t you (gasp) say hello to your neighbours and help them out if you can?
My, my, I wish I knew.
Slowing Down
A traffic ticket (not mine).
People are always in a hurry. I don’t know why. Nothing is THAT important that you need to be in that big of a hurry. Slow down, relax, park a little further from your destination, actually stop at stop signs. SLOW DOWN.
… This is a common thing to hear from me. It’s pretty much my most basic philosophy. Slow down, there’s no need to be in a hurry, there’s no need to get worked up. Relax.
But, for all the talk of slowing down that escapes my gaping maw, I now see that I sure have been in a hurry.
A couple weeks ago, events conspired in such a way as to point this out to me. I teach elementary school during the day, and two evenings a week, I teach a business class one hour north of here. I’ve only got about a 20 minute window between finishing at elementary school and having to leave for my business class. This particular day, on my drive to my apartment after elementary school (to change, freshen up, etc.,) things started off fine. Normal.
Then, suddenly, some woman was blocking the intersection completely while waiting for a train to pass instead of waiting it out at her stop sign. This irritated me, and I honked at her. GOTTA GO GOTTA GO, FRIG GET OUT OF MY WAY.
I got past her and turned the corner, only to find that my lane is blocked off by people digging a hole near the bank, and the oncoming lane is completely full of cars, backlogged due to the aforementioned train. THERE’S NO TIME, FRIG, HURRY UP!
I finally get home, a whole 5 minutes later than I ought to have (!), and proceeded to do what I went there to do. When I was finished, back out to the car to start my drive. If I went my normal way, past the bank, past the school, down the hill to Route 4, I’d have to sit through the wait caused by those people digging. Again. THERE’S NO TIME, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. So, I decided to take the back way, suggested by my satnav. About 5 km north, my back way meets up with Route 4, and it’s about the same distance. Good times.
So here I am, on this back road, a side road that is probably popular with ppl wanting to avoid traffic and go their own speed. I look down and I realize I’m doing 80km/h, which is clearly speeding, so I slow down, and continue driving this bendy road. I look at the estimated arrival time on my satnav, and realize I have lots of time, so I slow down a bit more.
I round a corner, and I see a cop car hiding in a bush. I slam on the brakes (as is my habit when I see cop cars), but it was too late. The lights go on, and a man with a flag directs me to the parking area. I’d been caught in a speed trap.
“So uh… we pulled you over for speeding, yes?”
“I know.”
“How fast were you going?”
“Around 60, I think.”
“This is a 40km/h zone, you know.”
“Really? I thought it was a 50. My bad.”
“We’ll have to wait for the printout from the radar to be sure of your speed. Can I see your license?”
“Sure.”
He proceeds to copy down a bunch of information, and confirm the reading of my name (as my name is in English on my Japanese driver’s license). The printout comes. “Ah, you were doing 63 in a 40.”
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
“It’s gonna be a ￥15000 fine and 2 demerit points. It’s kind of expensive, I guess…”
“Well, it’s my own fault,” I said. “I was speeding. Your equipment is right. It’s my own fault.”
He asked me a few more questions, had me fingerprint the ticket to show that I agreed with it (because I didn’t have my registered namestamp with me — it wasn’t some sort of sinister fingerprinting scheme). Explained how to pay and when the deadline was, and sent me on my way. It all took about 15 minutes. Despite that delay, and despite strictly observing the speed limit for the rest of my trip (instead of my usual 5-10km/h above), I still made it to my class with plenty of time, which somehow makes the ticket even sillier.
As an aside, I didn’t even think to pull the typical foreigner gambit of “I don’t understand Japanese”-ing until they let you go. Nah, I was calm, I was resigned, and so I went at it in full Japanese mode. And awesomely enough, I understood everything he was saying. At no time did I have to ask him to rephrase more simply. At no time did I have to resort to dodgy English-in-a-Japanese-accent. I had a fully natural communicative experience with this cop. And that’s pretty cool.
Now, I suppose it would probably be very easy for some people (definitely me) to dwell on this ticket for one reason for another. “Oh frig, I fucked up, oh jeez, now I have points on my license, oh crap, 15000yen is something i can’t really afford, I’m trying to pay off credit cards and save money for car inspection in October and I have to pay my car tax this month and, and, and…”
But what’s done is done. There’s nothing that can change it. So why not just relax and go with the flow? I don’t think I’ve been as calm as I was in the moments after being pulled over in years. I realized in that split second before the flashing lights came on that, for someone who berates people, telling them to relax and slow down, I’ve been in one hell of a hurry lately.
So I’ve slowed down. I’ve relaxed. And all it cost was ￥15000, two demerit points, and 15 minutes of my time. Life is okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.
