Let's Eat this McDonald's in the Park & Then Leave it There

Hi everyone, just wanted to leave a note that I have an article up on IndyMedia Japan (http://japan.indymedia.org/newswire/index.php), and I guess I'll be writing for them for a while. It's a generally very pro Buy Nothing Day article, and if I had more time I would have liked to balance it out more, and have more facts & figures. Personally I think Buy Nothing Day's effectiveness is mainly for people who hear about it for the first time. Now that I've had the chance to know about Buy Nothing Day from the Laurier campus and reflect on what it's telling me, I dont really feel I need to participate in buying nothing on November 24th (November 23rd back home), but would rather participate in helping the causes with their more concrete efforts.

So, Tokyo is really clean. Rarely any litter, and what makes this very impressive is that there are rarely any rubbish & recycling bins kicking around anywhere. Eating in public is anathema, and the times I have done so when in a rush I found myself carrying banana peels around for half an hour. If they took out the garbage cans back home wouldn't there be more garbage? My house mate Klara told me that they tried to do this in Auckland, New Zealand's public parks, and as she said, "You'd just find a lot of trash in the bushes. If it's a choice between pride & convenience...".

Of course litter has upsides, like for a 6 or 7 year old going to his first Maple Leaf's game with my dad, and finding X-Men #1 all ripped up & dirty on the floor of Union Station. A big X-Men fan, I was really excited and sat down & started reading it and got myself filthy, and was furious when dad pulled me away. He just didnt understand X-Men at all.

Also, if anyone wants to know the names of the songs I linked, just send me a note...I'm a bit paranoid.

Buy Nothing Day

I am trying to keep my 10 000¥ bills in my bank account, and so, without much to do, the posts continue. I just wanted to add onto to something I wrote a few days ago about Hirofumi accepting the darkness in his lunchroom. I forgot to make a point that I first heard in a speech by Paul Watson (of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society), which is that humans learn to adapt to diminishing returns & conditions, and this ability also means that we come to accept unjust or destructive conditions. He made a good point with a trite example like bottled water, which 50 years would have seemed outrageous to almost anyone, and is an industry that is supported by the perception that our reserves of tap water are polluted and unhealthy, which is something that a few hundred years ago would have been even more outrageous.

G_D

About 4 years ago I read The Brothers Karamazov mostly while sitting in a front cab between my dad & my boss to and from the rich man's property we worked on, struggling to grasp the themes hidden beneath the trying epic speeches of all the characters in the heat of the summer, the smudged dirt on the pages, and my dad and my boss talking over me about quality chainsaws at discount prices. But I finished the book and always really liked but was never clear about the ending where, after really explicitly and logically dismantling established morality, he ends his book with this hazy ambigious morality (and maybe that;s because The Brothers Karmazov was only part 1 of a larger work called The Life of the Great Sinner that would have made War & Peace look like the Baghavad Gita, had Dostoevsky's not died before writing it) where Alyosha tells these children to love each other. And its simple and not clear at all what it means, but at times like today when I went jogging, and these 6 year olds in their sailor school uniforms start racing me while they're laughing like crazy, I know exactly what he was talking about.

Also, because of all these Brits I know, I've found out about a lot of good British entertainment, like Louis Thereux. He's doing exactly what I would love to do: travelling the world, immersing himself into some very strange subcultures, and wearing nice shirts. I think his show is excellent.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=iucZQj5C1z4

And finally, a little song to go running to

http://www.zshare.net/download/500463875efcce/

Rock & Roll

Every class I teach ends with a free conversation and a list of conversation starters. Today's question about, "Who would you want to interview?", led to talk about Al Gore and climate change. When I asked Hirofumi what his company has done to reduce C02, he told me they turn out the lights during lunch break, so he eats in the dark for an hour during his usual 13 hour office shift. "It was dark but now I am used to it".

I also went see rock & roll! Tonight! There was a 7 piece band that blew a tough sax, and encouraged us all to "Dance, to the dance, dance, dance dance". Also garage rockers with girls that loved their every move, a dual gender bathroom with "Make Love" on the wall, and feedback motherfuckers that sang opera.

It was fun!

Warm Sake for Someone With Nothing to Think About

I went downstairs to brush my teeth, and there was an impromptu James Brown dance party shakin' in the lounge. I finally realized that I've been stealing all of Bill Cosby's moves for years.

My Sunday's on your Monday (Tuesday)

So today I went to Ueno Park, which I couldnt help compare to Central Park, a giant swath of trees and baseball diamond and lake and museums right in the mix of the city. I was agitated the whole subway ride there because I had gotten up so late and so was not making the most of my day off. But once I arrived, I quickly joined into the care free wandering air of the place, and wandered as I do, finding shrines and ducks and museums with Egyptian statues 3500 years old & Japanese swords from the 6th century CE. The mood of the park was striking, as more often than not, Tokyo can be stressful just looking at it and all the people working. The speed that this guy stacked the coke machine in my building was outrageous, as was the mailman who knocked on my door at 8am last Friday, and when I answered, literally pushed the letter into my instinctively shielding arms and ran away (and literally shit his pants). So the park (koen) was really awesome, and enhanced by the very simple & important fact that I was paid yesterday, which means that I can relax a bit about money, loosen the belt, and join spontaneous karoke nights instead of sitting at home with tea. I even bought slippers today. So that was today, but how is everything lately, you mean to ask? Next time I will have a funny story or something HONEST. I worked this week and, while stressing out quite often, achieved a trance-like state during my last shift, and all the (realized) unneeded stress completely melted away. Yesterday some New Zealanders & I played 'Guess the plot of this Korean Soap Opera', and Sunday I went to a quiz night for Oxfam in Brooklyn (Shimakitazawa) with some people from work which was great. And I learned that in Canada anal sex between consenting adults is legal only with 2 people present, and in Japan, anal sex is not considered adultery. But I forgot everything I learned in the museum today.

Love,
Daniel

A Man named Su

Have you guys heard of an artist named Umi? Well some of you have been asking about Big World 21, my current address, and so I thought I would share with you some of Umi's finest work, which adorns nearly every available cm of my building. On the first two floors Umi sticks to social themes like "War" or simple interactions like a man with his meal or a woman and a deer. But if you creep up to the 3rd floor, Umi's more radical and spiritual themes are allowed to emerge, culminating in a vision of primitive & compassionate freedom and fully formed fertility. Also on the 3rd floor is Su, a student from S. Korea who has a guitar (oh it is so sweet to play again) and next year will be lockstep in South Korea's 2 year mandatory military service for males. "Terrible!" he tells me. He's enjoying Japan while he can, studying Japanese this year, and after military service he will try to get into a music program here. He also told me that N. Korea has mandatory 8 years military service. These Koreans need Umi more than we comfortable ones can imagine.

15 is the new 12

12 & a half million. Sorry, i got all downtown swagger there.

Heritage Minute

Today was a day off so I traveled to Shimokitazawa which is a like Brooklyn, and then to Shibuya which was like Times Square, except they were in a city of 15 and a half million people. And I know this has been said, maybe more than once, but advanced industrial cities really are very similar and comfortable, making it hard to find difference, like where they film Cat Fight.

Here's another song

Put your tongue between yer teeth to a make a th sound

Apartments like White Elephants

Hey everyone I dont have much to post today because the last bit of my teacher's training has been really busy (tiring and all consuming and boring), so here is a photo where I'm living, and here are some links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPZAasCYmWY

this is the beginning of the movie Gummo that I just finished an hour ago. Its "good"?

Here is a link to an article about race & class in music that i thought "interesting":

http://slate.com/id/2176187/

And finally, a clip of Bjork & PJ Harvey doing "Satisfaction":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV4t1rZEYnA

I know I know I know, all this means tht I have traveled 100000000 kilometres to spend a lot of time not going out, BUT, with training finished yesterday, every new teacher and our suddenly inappropriate trainers went out in hyper glowing Shinjuku (about 3 people pointed out to me where they filmed the karaoke scene from Lost in Translation as we walked past) for a wild time. Brent didnt hook up with Emily, one of the trainers shoved a teacher around, I sang 'Space Oddity' and ate octopus, and laughter spilled from us all.

Have a joyful Culture Day everyone.