randomwisdom.com

Well, I had my royal tour of Nakaniida Jr. High today, courtesy of the vice-principal, a very friendly individual who happens to live downstairs from me. I have to say I'm quite impressed with the facilities; the place has a basketball court, and a baseball field, and a track, and a FRIGGIN POOL. Since when do junior high schools have a swimming pool? Damn!

However, amazingly enough, there is no air conditioning. Which means it's sweltering in the office. Humid.

During the tour I met a couple of the kids who were in for club activities, and several of their leaders: the brass band, the basketball team, and some members of the swim team. Most of the kids were pretty nervous around me, but they smiled, and a few said a couple words. I think everyone was impressed that I spoke any Japanese at all, considering that the previous ALT spoke none at all, even after a year.

And there goes the soccer team, after coming in for a victory speech by the vice-principal. Another self-introduction. Whew.

Yesterday I was greeted at the Sendai city hall by Mr. Kawakuma, who works in the Kami board of education, and a young woman who is starting her fourth year here (apparently you can stay an extra two years if you teach elementary school). They drove another new JET and me to the BOE office, where we met the superintendent before going out to dinner with some folks from the BOE office. I kinda felt bad for the other guy, as he was fresh from the U.S. without any knowledge of Japanese at all. I helped him out a bit, as it seemed that my conversation ability was a bit better than the woman who had been there for three years already.

As for the town, it's very much a farm town, but it's really quite beautiful. Kami is actually a collection of 3 smaller townships separated by about a 10 minute drive. The one I live in, Nakaniida, is the largest, with about 14,000 people. There's a lot of rice paddies and a lot of vegetable fields-- and as a result, the food I've had here so far has been spectacular. In addition, everyone I've met has been quite friendly, considering I'm a new face here. On my morning exploration walk to the nearby convenience store, which is about 5 minutes away, I came across a group of kids across the street. I waved at them, and they all waved back. Much better than running in terror, right?

Gotta make this a quick post, as Internet is a bit flaky here. I'm writing from my laptop outside the "hospitality centre" in the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku. Ironically, a few of us from some odd prefectures got stuck in the Hilton International about 3 minutes walk down the street... it's just as comfortable, but there's not Internet built in. But I digress.

I'm here for a meeting which will continue through tomorrow. After that, it's looking like a 5 or 6 hour bus ride into Sendai city, from which we get thrown to the four winds (to our respective townships). Most of the folks here seem pretty decent; I'm rooming with a fellow American from L.A. who's going to Miyagi, and a Scot who says he's headed to Fukushima.

The plane was delayed 2 hours at LAX but we made it.

If this posts, I will be happy.

Well I've spent my "free" time the past few days setting up a FreeBSD server in a sexy black case. It has no monitor, no mouse, and no keyboard. Why, pray tell, would I set up a computer and leave it behind?

The main reason is so that my parents and I can back up our stuff. Mom can back up her documents from her 8(?) year old computer before the hard drive decides to finally bite it. Dad can back up his tax documents. And I can back up all the stuff that would be on my hard drive, just in case my laptop explodes or something.

The other big reason is because I need to bounce emails off a server in order to make posts from my phone.

Of course there are a couple nice perks, like the ability to send files to my parents with ease, or manage things from Japan, or even print out stuff on their printer or burn music CDs for them!

My friend Zen discussed some aspects of personal blogging (the kind I'm more comfortable with than "publishing") on his LiveJournal today. The post is a bit personal so I won't link to hit here, but those of you that know him read his posts anyway. He makes some interesting points, all of which apply not only to LJ but to personal blogging in general:

It is my belief that an online journal/diary is inherently meant to be public, or at least read by someone else apart from the author. Unless you really hate using your hands to write of course. So a paradox immediately arises: a journal/diary is usually a record of its author's most personal affairs/feelings/thoughts, and now it is in plain sight of the world. In my mind, the sacrifice of either end of the paradox used to be unacceptable: a journal has to be private in nature but if it cannot be read by others then the very existence of online journals lacks justification.

Then it suddenly dawned on me last night: Momo talks about her studies and family, Nick presents everything that is interesting/weird and has happened to him in as a witty way as possible, Lane literally takes his heart out and dissects it for you, Norm muses (sometimes angrily) over political and philosophical issues, Ronald either philosophises about things or copies out extracts from his textbooks, James tells his going out adventures every night, sometimes in jest, sometimes earnest... What is personal about something like LJ is not in the things we talk about themselves, but what these things say or reveal about us. Intentionally or unconsciously, we are always constructing an image of ourselves for other people who read our entries. These images may not be the replica of our true self, nevertheless the two are intimately related because they're how we want to be seen. And that's what makes LJ personal.

He's really hit the nail on the head here, in a way that I haven't been directly aware of until now. While on occasion I've felt the need to blast open the floodgates of my mind, to me the real advantage of blogging seems to be the expression of perspective. In my photos of Japan I've deliberately never included myself in the images. At first I thought this was out of some sort of expression of anonymity or attempt at humility. In truth, I'm not really anonymous-- anyone who knows how can look up the owner of this domain name. Neither is my photography an exercise in humility; I'm publishing the photos because I want others to see them! In reality it's a much simpler reason. When I look out at the world, I don't see myself. I look for things that are amazing or beautiful, and I take photos of them. And that perspective probably says more about me than my full name or where I live.

This is really, really strange, and probably won't run well unless you have a newer computer. If your subject gets stuck, just grab with the mouse and drag.

http://www.izpitera.ru/lj/tetka.swf

It's really funny that I still call this place "my room" even though I haven't truly lived here in... 5 years? Sure, every summer in college I came back to live here for a few months, but over time all the detrius of college piled up over the existing rubble. Each summer my mother would insist that I clean up a room I wouldn't ever see the benefits of cleaning, and so I would go through the motions of cleaning. The first year I removed everything from the floors, but in later years I simply cleared out a path from the door to the bed so I could sleep. As a result, the white desk was a disaster area, as everything from my childhood had accumulated inside, so that the stuff I'd normally stick inside the desk went on top.

So I began the impossibly laborious task of cleaning out my old room at my parent's house, a task guaranteed to put me in a foul mood. I began with the bookshelf, clearing out old tomes in hopes I'd be able to clear out enough space for my more modern collections. Then I started on the left side of the desk.

While at first the surface seemed like a gargantuan pile of papers, it wasn't too hard to clean up-- mostly papers I had received about scholarships being put on hold for the trip to Japan or camera boxes. An old congratulatory letter from a congressman and my photo album from my very first trip to Asia with Chao were a few of the more interesting finds, along with a book entitled The Weider System Of Bodybuilding. Now how did that get buried in there?

After most of the desk was clear I decided it was time to dive into the depths of the drawers. As soon as I started pawing through the contents, I realized that I hadn't really put anything in there since the beginning of high school-- in fact, I would guess that most of the things inside hadn't been touched in at least ten years. Top drawer: old small flashlights with dead batteries, an electronic noisemaker, a glass baby food bottle with large red dice and a twisty nail puzzle. A ribbon and punched-hole feeder for an old dot-matrix printer. Floppy disk labels. A box with a keychain, "Class of '96." A mirror, two pairs each of sunglasses and swimming goggles, two old-fashioned squirt guns, and a bulky AM/FM headset. The plastic box that once contained my very first wristwatch. I don't remember ever having most of this stuff. I feel relieved.

I breathed out a sigh as I pulled open the second drawer, filled to the brim with a mixture of trash and treasures. Let's see... ahh, my old Boy Scout camping knife. Still sharp, though it needs a bit of oil. And the magnesium fire starting tool I kept with it-- shave off some of the solid block of magnesium with your knife, then light it with the flint on the other side. A bag of pennies? Oh, I see, they're all old wheat-back pennies, that's why I kept them. A box with a fancy gold-leaf label: "Things Remembered." Inside is a fancy keychain with my first name engraved. I have no idea who it's from or what it was supposed to commemorate. Another box with a small pocketknife engraved with a date back in 1995. Judging from the etchings, it was a gift at my sister's wedding. I must have felt an obligation to keep them both back when I got them, a feeling that still persists. I dig further. More things. Half of them I kept because they were obligatory gifts of some kind, and half I kept because I thought they were neat or unique in some way.

At the bottom I find a small sealed tupperware container the size and shape of a shot glass. My fingers are too big now to reach in and grab the contents, so I upend the container, spilling out its contents: a few flattened pennies, one that must have been squashed under the rails of a train and several by the tourist machines that imprint labels as they flatten the coin. A tiny luggage padlock with matching key. A small metal nut. Several coins from France of various denominations (obviously before the Euro became standard). And finally, two halves of an old brittle tooth. Mine.

My trash can is full. I carefully bury the relics back in their drawer and close it. No more cleaning for today.