In Case You Decided to Watch Football Instead

Two minutes ago I was staring at the all-important Lions-Saints matchup down on the Bayou, an evening of passive adrenalin infusion ahead of me when I remembered the other game being televised tonight. Thanks to someone in my neighborhood providing unsecured Wi-Fi I am now at the dining room table, ready to hunker down with the last six of our highly-funded and eminently-talented GOP nomination pool. It is 8:58pm; I’ve got an oversized cup o’ joe in my belly and my blood is suddenly supercharged thanks to the sparks flying at me from the socket where I was hastily plugging in the old Hewlett-Packard. Add to this my uncanny political judgment, unclouded by any trace of actual knowledge, and I am ready for two uninterrupted hours of Yahoo-powered policy and bickering.

All right so I just missed the opening question because I had to go let out my coffee. Mitt Romney is talking about…ah yes, it’s nice that our economy has been creating lots of new jobs but of course Obama is not to be credited. He hasn’t yada yada, his policies yada yada… Great start Mitt, you’re debating someone who is not even in the room.

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Air Travel I - Wonder & Woe

Three weeks ago I flew from Newark, New Jersey to Tokyo’s Narita Airport. (If this were a facebook status update I’d simply say ‘EWR-NRT’, assuming such snark has not yet become passé.) It had been a while since I’d flown –six weeks almost – so it took no time for the incongruous wonders of air travel, like the burn of a jalapeno, to rip into my senses once again.

Of course, the physics alone are mind-boggling. I’m sure Orville and Wilbur never imagined an eight-million-pound plane, loaded with another eight million pounds of people, luggage and processed dinner omelets, could make it over a sand dune let alone the Pacific Ocean. Legalized extortion (commonly known as the fuel surcharge) notwithstanding, that we can in twenty-four hours get from any semi-major city in the world to any other semi-major city not currently steeped in rioting and/or armed conflict is nothing less than an everyday miracle (until we figure out those wormhole things). Yet people will still complain about the dinner omelets.

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Go Find Your Own Top Ten

Every time I turn to my twitter feed there's somebody, or several somebodies, or one hyperactive somebody, tweeting relentlessly trying to outdo all the other somebodies, linking to an article or a blog post centered around a numbered list: Top Ten Mistakes New Tweeters Make. Seven Kinds of Shoes You Should Never Wear to a Job Interview. Thirteen (13? Really?) Words You Need Right Now To Get You More Traffic!

I hate these lists, partly because I read them knowing full well they are written because research shows most people gravitate toward numbered lists when they want information, advice or more traffic. And I hate being most people. Sounds snobbish I know, but Yogi Berra wasn't like most people and look, people still remember and repeat his advice. I doubt anyone is going to remember WebBizMan for all those great numbered lists he tweeted to his 152,804 followers (149,934 of whom he himself follows, very closely no doubt). Given the choice, I'd much rather be Yogi Berra than WebBizMan.

Despite my curmudgeonly wishes, these Nine/Top/Best/Most Dangerous/Sexiest Whatevers to Get You That Job/More Hits/Fired lists seem indeed to draw the attention of the masses. (Christ, even pieces about lists have lists.) And it isn't just your blogosphere pseudo-savants. Time magazine flushed their dignity down the drain about five years ago, putting out a piece of rubbish - thrown together I'm willing to bet by someone's idiot nephew who should never have been offered an internship in the first place let alone been handed a pen - on the 100 All-Time Albums (their apparent disclaimer to intellectual liability or possession being they didn't include an adjective). The trolling hoi polloi were in an uproar. 'Backstreet Boys? Are you kidding me?' 'Where the @#%& is Janis Joplin?' 'Burn in hell, Kansas haters!'

A much more appropriate response might have been something like '100 All-Time Most Moronic Time Articles: #1 - 100 All-Time Albums'. Or, alternatively, 'You forgot Levelling the Land by the Levellers.'

The catalyst for this, my latest in a long and distinguished (and un-numbered) list of diatribes, was, as you might imagine, a top ten list. I found it thanks to the folks at Yahoo, who are above writing articles of lists but are fine with linking to them ad nauseum. The article, found here, gives a run-down of the (ostensibly) ten best restaurants to watch a sunset - according to someone who, it can be reasonably assumed by the photo credits (Xoopla, Flicker, TripAdvisor) and the descriptions that scream Lonely Planet, has never been to any of them.

To be fair the article starts with a rather promising entry: The Oasis restaurant in Austin, Texas, an apparently semi-swanky joint that sits above a 450-foot cliff overlooking Lake Travis (yeah that sounds like Texas all right). Personally I didn't think there was anything that high in Texas since Yao Ming left town (unless you count Ron Washington but that was only temporary). Sadly, perhaps predictably, the list swiftly turns antiseptic. San Fran, Maui, San Diego? Seriously, you could find a McDonald's in these places with fantastic sunset views.

I refuse to be fed such uninspired drivel spewed out by self-appraised champions of the best anything whose experience begins and ends with search engines. And I know you feel the same way. That is why I've decided to offer my own lineup of superlative somethings - compiled from actual experience, in the order they pop into my head, limited not to a number but to my bedtime, and unfettered by whether you agree with my reasoning, because I don't much care.

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Bathrobes & Beer: A Night at a Japanese Ryokan

Japan boasts a considerable array of accommodation options – to put it in cheesy tourist pamphlet terms. Capsule hotels, business hotels, love hotels; the Hilton and the Hyatt and the Japanese versions of such; you have your youth hostels (thirty dollars with membership) and your campgrounds (thirty dollars without); and on the traditional side, you’ve got your minshuku, with tatami floors, futons and green tea to make yourself comfy as you watch your coin-operated 13-inch television, and then you have your more upscale ryokan, with tatami floors, futons and green tea to make yourself extra comfy as you relax and watch your wide screen high-definition plasma television.

In the course of my travels around Japan, when not camping (illegally) or sleeping on a beach or a gazebo in a park (maybe legally), I’ve rucked up to many a minshuku. They give you those robes to hang out in, and dinner and breakfast are included so why not? I’m not much of a TV guy however so I never sprang for the more expensive ryokan. And if my wife hadn’t finagled a sweet deal at Azuma-So up the road in Iizaka last weekend I might very well have ended up leaving Japan – or dying – without ever experiencing a wide plasma screen while hanging out on the floor drinking tea in someone else’s bath robe.

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Nuts, Sardines & Long Sticks (Warding off Demons in Japan)

I am in big trouble.

Something bad is staring me right in the face, and this time it has nothing to do with my son, my short attention span or personal injury (or, most recently, all three). It has nothing to do with anything I’ve done. In fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that has even happened yet. But I am on a collision course with destiny, and there is no getting around it. That is why tomorrow I am going to jump on the horn and set a date with my local exorcist.

To most outsiders Japan is a safe, peaceful place, decorated with cherry blossoms and veiled in a kimono of serenity. Not true, my friends. This country is a dangerous, devilish place.

Take my friend Eriko. She’s a pleasant mix of gregarious, intelligent and modest. She works at a bank, travels abroad on her own and goes to the gym regularly. She’s confident and self-effacing, and has probably never crossed the street against the light. Yet recently she did something to warrant a trip up the road to Fudohsan Shrine for the ominous yakubarai ritual.

Recently, Eriko turned the dreaded thirty-three.

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'Hey I'm on a schedule here!' - East/West Employment Protocol

Last month I stumbled across a job opportunity in Florida that seemed right up my alley. This was pretty exciting for me as jobs and my alley don’t normally hang out in the same neighborhood. The position, involving fingerprint analysis and expensive-looking machines, would jibe perfectly with my advanced education (advanced in age mainly). What tipped my stubborn work/life scales though was the prospect of living year-round within a short bike ride of the sand and surf. This was a place I could almost imagine being gainfully employed. So immediately (meaning within a week) I got to work on the application process. 

As with any application to a law enforcement agency, the paperwork involved a lot of swearing: I swear I don’t have any objectionable tattoos (or a forked tongue, a condition actually spelled out in the ‘no bodily mutilation’ section); I swear I don’t smoke (drinking, by its non-mention, is fine); I swear I have no history of repeated marijuana use beyond ‘experimental’ (Bill Clinton clause); I swear I have no recent DUI convictions. No problem, I’ll swear to all this and lots more, just hook me up to that polygraph. Oh and by the way I’ve got that ‘high school diploma or GED’ thing covered.

Imagine my concern then when I remembered that not two weeks before all this came my way I had agreed to teach a year-long English course at one of Fukushima’s zillion product manufacturing companies. I didn’t agree, exactly; Mr. Sato, an extremely nice guy who has a habit of dumping jobs on me, took my not outwardly disagreeing to take the job as a yes, and had already had three meetings and eight phone calls with the people at ‘Kaisha A’ about this upcoming contract which, it had by now been exhaustively determined, would last for one year. Obviously I needed to be more aggressive in my passively not agreeing to take on this new job, because unless there was an overload of applicants in Florida with high school diplomas or GEDs and no forked tongues I was going to have to take my practiced soft shoe to a higher level. ‘Well you see, Sato-san, right about when class is going into its third month here I’m going to be falling asleep to the soothing sound of the Gulf of Mexico…’

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The Book Store

The last time I went back to the States for Christmas, I paid a visit to my local Barnes and Noble megastore chain.  There was a massive “Young Adult” section, comprising almost a quarter of the store's shelf space, subdivided into smaller sections, like "Young Adult Adventure", "Young Adult Mystery", etc.  My favorite subsection was called “Paranormal Teenage Romance”, and it was full of factory series trying to capitalize on the Twilight fad.  This section probably contained a hundred or so books.  

Across the store, past Biblical and New Age sections (I'll refrain from making an irreverent joke here.) was a section called “Philosophy”, containing a hundred or so books.  “Philosophy” was sandwiched between a section containing a hundred or so books on the impending 2012 volcano-people disaster/redemption and a shady bathroom area with a sign reminding customers not to take merchandise into the toilets.

Upon closer examination, “Philosophy” was full of colorful books like “The Philosophy of Batman Begins”, “Dr. House for Dummies”, and "Dexter and Free Will".  I ultimately purchased Dan Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea for about twenty-five dollars, Jurgen Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere for a rip-off price of forty dollars, and a Barnes and Noble publications's full-color photo, oversized volume on anatomy and physiology on sale for only eight dollars.  These books are currently decorating my bookshelf until I overcome my crippling blog addiction.

Time Management 2011 ('Hey where are my keys?')

Barely three weeks into 2011 and I can already hear the shatter and crash of people everywhere tossing their new year’s resolutions out the nearest window. Normally I wouldn’t notice it over the sound of the toilet as I flush my own promises away, right along with the back end of the year’s first Tuesday afternoon beer. But this January there’s a new kind of noise around the Kato household. Yes, that sound you are hearing is the smooth, even drone of methodical, almost superhuman planning.

I’ve thrown a few resolutions on the table this year. Not casually tossed under the kotatsu, or mindlessly slipped onto my desk, under a pile of what may be last year’s city tax forms and trail of related notices and summonses. No sir, I’ve been cultivating my powers of concentration in preparation for what is shaping up to be a landmark year for me. This year, no more minutes and hours will be wasted, lost forever in the vortex of inefficiency. This year, things are going to get done, frequently and fast, with none of my valuable ‘Run & Gun Time’ wasted on YouTube or dental floss or barely-bleeding kids.

It’s 8am as I sit down to pound this out. The kerosene heater is empty again and there’s frost on the insides of the windows, but I’m not going to squander a single moment on wimpy creature comforts. I just cranked out forty quick push-ups (all right, the last few weren’t too quick), and the kids can do the same when they wake up. Go push your trains around, or crawl back and forth across the living room a hundred times if you’re that cold, I’ve got work to do here. Talk about efficient; not only am I getting down to business several minutes sooner thanks to my brand-new razor-sharp personal management strategy, but I’m simultaneously teaching my nine-month-old kid the value of both time and exercise.

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It's, Like, From the Earth, Man

"Graduation" by Peter BlinmanThere is a pervasive yet erroneous idea circulating these days that things are "good" because they are "natural".  Advertisers for foods or beauty products often engage in label-slapping to that effect; moneyed hippies and bobos buy up "natural" products like nature is going out of style; obesity and cancer are explained away as cosmic justice for our civilization of plastic's forsaking of the earth goddess.

Nowhere can this idea be heard more stupidly (or more harmlessly) than in a circle of close friends and random acquaintances passin da righteous civil disobedience on the left-hand side whilst listening to music about that with which goats love to play and/or watching marijuana-related comedy:

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn't the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit . . . unnatural?”

Which one might naturally (no pun intended) counter with this pithy dialogue: 

Nick: Come on, what's the big deal? It's from the earth, it's natural. Why would it be there if we weren't supposed to smoke it?

Lindsey: Dog crap is here and we don't smoke that.

The clear and obvious truth is that marijuana is harmless enough without having to appeal to its being natural.  People high on marijuana don't commit crimes.  They don't die.  They mostly just sit around watching stuff on TV and figuring out how to order pizza.

But this post is not about marijuana.  It's about "natural" not entailing "good".  After all, arsenic is natural.  The black plague is natural.  Even rape is natural.  In fact, the entirety of human society - from our legal code to our hallowed institutions of medicine - exists as a Hobbesian bulwark against the evils of the natural world.

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Flights of Fancy

Suvarnabhumi International, BangkokMy wife’s wallet is fat with stamp cards. Card for the gas station, card for the camera store, card for a curry shop I don’t think she’s ever even been to. She doesn’t even like curry. I myself don’t have the organizational skills to keep track of a stack of store cards, even if I did possess the inclination to hold onto them or the capacity to remember to use them. My wife hands me a supermarket card as I am heading out the door of the apartment, and by the time I’m walking through the automatic doors two minutes later (assuming I hit or ignored all the traffic lights on the way) I’ve completely forgotten about it.

Really, it’s hard to exist in Japan without amassing at least a modest collection of these insidious little gimmicks. I have a mess of them in a drawer from the haircut place up the street; I never bother or remember to bring the last one I got but I feel culturally insensitive if I don’t let them make me a new one. And every time I promise to bring my others to combine them and see what sort of discount I can get on my next cut. I may have enough to take over the place. Then once I do I am going to get rid of the stamp card system.

Before Japan outlawed free plastic bags at the supermarkets they gave out little green stamp cards to encourage people to reuse their old bags. I’m a pretty green guy, I reuse anyway, but I kept my ‘green card’ (get that double entendre?) (no wait, triple!) and after twenty eco-friendly trips to the market I got a buck off my eighty-dollar bag of rice. Once I did forget my card and they politely insisted they make me another one, the extra paper cancelling out the good of reusing my old bags but hey, this is the system.

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Fitting In

Cu Chi, Vietnam'Writers are introverts by nature.’ So went the opening statement of the article I read recently. (Yes, the article; I’ve definitely got to ramp up my efforts in the self-education department.) Immediately upon reading this I felt a deep, suppressed urge to start screaming at my laptop. ‘Faceless coward! Who do you think you are? What do you know about me and my vert? I’ve taken the Myers-Briggs twice and both times came out an Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving EX-trovert!’ Boy was I about to explode.

But I am a grown man, so instead I snuck past the wife, preoccupied with keeping my sons from stabbing each other with Buzz Lightyear pencils, and into the kitchen to grab a piece of anger management chocolate.

I’ve been an extrovert all my life. This includes my childhood, most of which I, as a skinny soccer player, spent in constant fear of ridicule by a neighborhood full of football players. On the outside I might have seemed like a loner of sorts, but this was not at all the case. I had plenty of friends: Pac-Man, Tony the Tiger, the entire Yankees lineup and Christie Brinkley, to name just a few.

In the past couple of years, though, I have been subjecting myself to just the kind of writer’s introversion I suspect that person was going to tell me about had I kept reading. For a while there (a while meaning the twenty-year stretch from freshman year in college to the birth of my first son) the weekend was for me a chance to turn off my brain and let a few otherwise suppressed biological processes take over for a while. Now, starting Friday afternoon (or Thursday evening, or sometime Wednesday, depending on how effectively I’ve been able to avoid picking up more teaching jobs) I am thinking only about spending those once-hallowed days of debauchery punching out that long overdue blog post or cranking out the next chapter in the upcoming novel or continuing my wayward search for the holy grail of literary notoriety.

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Luxury: The New Spirituality

stone staircase at Angkor, CambodiaA number of years ago – 7 2/3 to be exact – I visited Cambodia’s venerated Angkor Wat. This was to be my first trip to a country without any semblance of a sanitation department so naturally I was pretty excited. I met up with a couple of friends in Phnom Penh and we headed for Angkor on the tandem bicycles they were riding. We rode 100 kilometers or so that first day, along undulating dirt roads cutting across tree-studded plains, only an occasional village to keep us on the more pleasurable side of dehydration. ‘What’s that?’ I asked Jamie as he poured a small packet of something into his bottle of purified water. ‘Electrolytes,’ he said, and nothing more. These guys, Jamie and Garryck, were biking around the world and, I figured, needed lots of electrolytes. I was okay with just water. Lying in a hammock at our guest house for five hours that evening, unable to keep down so much as a leaf of Cambodian lettuce, I learned firsthand the wonders of cellular osmosis – and, for future reference, how to ask for electrolytes in common Cambodia-speak.

Next morning we elbowed our way around a crowded and litter-strewn riverbank looking for someone we could trust to tell us where to go to catch the boat up the Tonle Sap to Siem Reap, the de facto base town for Angkor day-trippers. The boat ride was magnificent; the inside of our barge-esque vessel was stuffed with food and other such necessities for the locals all over the countryside which meant we tourists were offered by default an unobstructed rooftop view of the surrounding fields of wild grass and water buffalo for the four-hour trip that is equally fascinating whether you put on sunscreen or not. (The consequences don’t surface until later.) Once in Siem Reap Garryck followed his nose to a guesthouse where we could drop our stuff and take a meandering look around the town, which I found surprisingly and pleasantly serene. Where were all the day-trippers and other assorted backpackers? Left to explore the dirt roads and side streets in solitude I was not going to complain. Until my sunburn began screaming.

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