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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Goodbye, For Now - tohoku earthquake part eight

On Tuesday morning all I cared about was getting my family out of Fukushima, far away from the radioactive mess that was percolating down along the coast. We didn’t know where we might end up when we jumped into Jun’s car. Maybe we’d go to Akita, I thought, or Yamagata – put some more miles and mountains between us and the reactors. If we really thought it necessary we could probably get to Osaka, or even Kyushu, where people had gas in their cars and the supermarket shelves were stocked and kids could play in the park without their parents worrying about what might be falling out of the sky. No place could be too far, really. We just needed to find a corner of Japan, a place we could go to be safe, where we could breathe the air and let our kids run around outside, and wait until things settled down. Then we could return home and get on with living our lives.

The long ride to Morioka – the stretches of quiet thinking time along a road through a country that seemed much more dead than alive – those four hours in Jun’s car changed all that.

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Hope & Reliance - tohoku earthquake part seven

The ramen shop was flooded with light and familiar smells. My wife and I, our boys between us, sat across the low table from Jun, his brother Yu and his friend (girlfriend?) Miki. We ate as we would on any night, though the cooks couldn’t make a couple of dishes for lack of certain ingredients. We talked as we would over any meal – hometowns and high school memories, jobs and friends and the soft-boiled eggs Yu had this thing about. Yamato slurped his noodles, splattering his soup. Seiji fussed and laughed and ate and refused in turns. The radiation we had run from seemed far, far away.

Yet the reason we were there wouldn’t fade from my head. Not completely. Not for a moment.

Back at Yu’s apartment we would share snack food and drink a random assortment of beer in cans. Yamato was given his first taste of video games and Harry Potter. Seiji entertained before he started tiring; my wife would skip his bath tonight and try to get him down. We talked more, about all manner of things, though somehow – as it seems to happen in Japan – we never scratched too deep below the surface. This because maybe the Japanese are inclined on all levels to remain one of the group; tipping the conversational scales in any one person’s direction, particularly their own, is not the overriding inclination.

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Kamikaze of the Sea: Otsushima Kaiten Memorial Museum

<Alexis Bonari is currently a resident blogger at College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching both the Ford scholarship as well as football scholarships of all kinds. Whenever she gets some free time, she enjoys watching a funny movie or curling up with a good book.>

The first time anyone in the United States asked me where I was originally from, I was buying a pair of socks in rural North Carolina and surrounded by at least three other customers.  When I responded, “Hiroshima,” everyone grew hushed, and the inquirer preferred the awkward silence to following through the conversation.

The first time anyone outside of family asked me what kind of novel I was writing (or trying to), I was at a friend’s dinner party.  When I replied, “About World War II kamikaze pilots,” everyone fell so quiet that I heard someone’s belly complaining over the shrimp appetizers.

Admittedly, both topics can make some Americans a little uncomfortable.  They might have made me feel uncomfortable, too, at least until halfway through my college career when my father—an American former Marine working in Japan—offered to introduce me to one of his friends, a former kamikaze pilot. 

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North - tohoku earthquake part six

I recognized the woman at the door immediately, despite the mask that covered her nose and mouth. I knew her daughter too, as one of my son’s many pre-school friends. ‘Konnichi-wa,’ I said, trying in vain to recall either of their names. The woman offered a slight bow, awkward enough with her daughter on her hip, forget about the underlying circumstances. ‘Kevin-san, domo.’ She handed me a small, heavy plastic bag.

My wife had said she’d be dropping by, with milk formula for our little boy. In the intervening moments I’d forgotten her name, but I remembered very clearly one thing my wife said: she was going to be driving to Sendai.

‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she said in response to my casual query. I glanced over at her boxy car, already half-stuffed with blankets and bags. ‘Are there any buses running out of Sendai, do you know?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘Maybe, but I don’t know.’ With this we both understood: I was looking for a way out of town, and while she really would like to help…

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Things, We Didn't Know - tohoku earthquake part five

The subject of the text message was simple: 'Run!'

With this one word all the thoughts I'd fallen asleep to came crashing back into my head. My friend had spent the night thirty miles up the road in Yonezawa. 'We'll go further today, if we can,' he said.

If we can?...

In my head it sounded right out of a movie, too dramatic to be real. And he wasn't the only person I knew who was already heading west, away from the nuclear reactors leaking God-knows-what-if-anything into the air. A co-worker of mine, one of the sharpest and most level-headed guys I've ever met, had also hit the road. He too was with his family, making his way toward the Sea of Japan, unsure of their destination, living out of their car.

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Home, Neighbors, Cake & What's Coming - tohoku earthquake part four

After faking his own death Huckleberry Finn hides in a tree outside a church window, looking in on all the townfolk crying at his funeral. 'I never had any idea so many people cared about old Huck Finn,' he says as the tears well in his own eyes.

Of all the scenes of all the movies, all the passages in all the books I've ever read, this was the one that came to mind as I stared at the screen of my laptop soon after returning home on Sunday.

The population of the shelter was about half what it had been the first night. In the morning air I felt a mix of restlessness and lethargy; the aftershocks had all but ceased, and though they'd probably keep the gym open for anyone wanting to stay, I knew it was time for us to go home - utilities or no.

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The Morning After - tohoku earthquake part three

Morning arrived in the form of the generator's low hum; a murmur of voices; the footsteps, discernible somehow, of people at task. I crawled out of my futon (everyone I'd offered it to - elderly women, infant-coddling mothers, even the girl who literally fell asleep on her knees on the bare hardwood - had declined in favor of their own measly blankets) and looked around at a gymnasium filled with sunlight. People were up and about, moving not so much with purpose as with a desire for purpose. A few still reclined where they had slept, or not slept. Many stood in a line that stretched halfway around the room and ran right past the edges of my comforter. In shorts and a t-shirt I folded everything into a less obtrusive pile. The people at whose feet I'd just been sleeping pretended not to notice or care.

At the long tables against the far wall men and women handed out rice balls and tea. My wife was already on line, both our boys hanging onto her. I caught her eye and she motioned for me to join her; food was being carefully rationed out and they might not have given her any extra rice for a husband she'd claim was still asleep in that oversized lump of bedding over there. Although with our own leftover rice from home, along with some crackers and bread and peanut butter and juice, we weren't living on the edge of survival. Not yet.

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Calm Amid Calamity - tohoku earthquake part two

I walked into the dark front hall of the Shimizu Learning Center. A man in a blue windbreaker approached, moving with an efficiency that told me he was at work though in what capacity I had no idea. What was the situation here, or anywhere else? What had really happened, and what needed to be done? I hadn't seen any damage. A distant siren bled through the hum of a single generator; outside the glass doors a circle of men dressed in shadows watched over a huge pot of water, slowly warming over a propane flame.

I suppose I expected to be received in some way, for someone in a dark blue windbreaker to ask me my name, if I was all right and did I come with any family. I waited for direction but the man kept walking, by my shoulder and out into the wind and the returning snow. More figures appeared, out of the black corridors ahead and the blustery darkness behind. A couple of them held flashlights. They traded scant words as they passed each other. No one spoke to me. No lines, no people with clipboards. Barely a sound besides that generator. The siren in the distance faded and died. Something was going on here - but what? I wondered if we had come to the wrong place.

Yet the parking lot outside was full; my wife was waiting out there with our two boys, along with enough food and blankets, we hoped, to get us through the night. There had to be others. I walked down the left corridor, drawn to a softly-illuminated doorway and a murmur of voices. At the bottom of a single step a dozen pairs of shoes lie in semi-disarray. I kicked off my battered sneakers and stepped inside.

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Where Fear Lies - tohoku earthquake part one

With a cheap driver I worked the tiny screw on the back of my son's toy microwave oven. He likes to play restaurant every now and then, making me fish pizza and croissant soup or whatever strikes his blossoming imagination. Then he tells me to 'sit here and eat'. I couldn't remember those words coming from him lately though so maybe the batteries in there still had some juice.

The sky outside was growing dim.

I am so not prepared for this.

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Quarter to three in the afternoon; my son is sitting at a kid-sized table with his friends at the Shinryo pre-school, chomping on cookies and drinking cold tea. The other kids are there with their moms. Both teachers in the room are women. I'm the only adult male, and though they all say it's great that my son could be there today with his 'O-to-san' I'm feeling a bit out of place. I stir my paper cup of coffee and watch my son interact with the other kids in effortless Japanese.

All along the coast, from Fukushima up through Miyagi and into Iwate, fishermen in slickers and rubber boots and weathered skin tie off their nets and head to bed. Their wives sit on the floor on straw mats pouring tea, alone or with friends, glancing outside at the slowly warming March weather. Young children play and shriek and eat cookies at schools just like Shinryo. All along the coast.

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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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Going By The (Immensely Popular and Profoundly Flawed) Book

We were making unbelievable time; seriously, I thought we had entered some kind of worm hole. The trip from our hostel (way overpriced – and no breakfast) back to Bratislava Station went much faster than the initial walk across town to the Linoleum Sheraton now that we knew which way was hore. We hopped a train to Trenčin, a small city with a quaint old town and phenomenal ice cream, then traveled on to Ružomberok via a silky smooth connection in Žilina. (Switzerland, I thought at this point, had nothing on Slovakia’s rail system – except maybe in the sanitation department…and in overall comfort…and on a baseline decibel level.) 

Right outside Ružomberok Station we jumped on a bus (after a stuttering, embarrassing back-and-forth with the driver). The seats and aisle crammed full of students (wonderfully forgiving of our bulky bags), we stood for the ten kilometers down the road to Vlkolinec, an idyllic one-dirt-road village whose residents’ lives have been turned upside down since its appointment to Unesco’s World Cultural Heritage list. After a prying look around we would take another creaky bus back to Ružomberok for our last train ride of the day; if things continued to proceed as they had since our fortuitous encounter with that blessed street vendor in Bratislava we would make it to Liptovsky-Mikulaš in plenty of time to find a place, fire up some dinner and relax as the sky turned dark over Jasná and the peaks of Chopok Sever. We started walking, me pushing a suitcase, a loaded pack on my back, my wife pushing our son in his stroller right behind. According to the map in our guidebook, Vlkolinec was right there along the main road…

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Twelve Facts about Mt. Shinobu

Fukushima City from Mt. Shinobu

1.  Mt. Shinobu is a large hill (about 275 meters tall) in the north-central area of Fukushima City.  It is surrounded by homes and office buildings.

2.  It is slightly smaller than Uluru/Ayers Rock in Australia and no less interesting.

3.  Mt. Shinobu has four peaks, stretching from west-southwest to east-northeast: on the first peak is a round, concrete platform usually covered with cigarette butts and high school kids/DQNs necking; on the second peak is a Buddhist temple with a bell dedicated to world peace which anyone is free to ring, so long as they wait until the reverberations can no longer be heard before leaving; on the third peak is a Shinto shrine featuring a giant sandal made for the giant feet of the Gods which is paraded through the center of the city on people's shoulders every year at Fukushima's biggest summer festival, Waraji; on the fourth and highest peak is an ordinary tree.

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The Way of the Gods - Part III

tsubaki flowersThis is part three of a three-part series.  Part one can be found here.  Part two can be found here.

A shrine official told us five friends of the bride that we had to wait in the chrysanthemum lobby again, as the shrine would be sponsoring family pictures.  My wife and I thought it was an appropriate time to put the required monetary gift in the pink, frilly envelope that I had bought at a twenty-four hour convenience store for 310 yen at 5:45 that morning after I had finished my hellish night-bus ride to Yokohama.  Before making the trip down to Kanto, we had scoured the Internet for guidelines on how much to give as this was the first time we had been to a wedding as a couple.  

Just as I was about to stick the correct amount of money in the envelope, the rest of the procession returned to the room with the pink carpet where we were waiting, which made us look like assholes; I panicked, and the envelope and cash fell to the floor and flew around comically in the wind created by the door opening.  I had to scramble around on all fours to grab all the cash and put it in the envelope - and I had to do this without creasing the bills (Money with wrinkles is considered in poor taste for a wedding gift, and appropriate for a funerary offering.) - before any more people came into the room.  

Maybe five or six relatives of the groom witnessed me rolling around on the floor grasping for loose cash before I managed to conceal my activity under one of the many brown, industrial folding tables and surreptitiously hand the envelope and cash to my wife so she could go to the bathroom and prepare everything in polite privacy.  

While she was in the bathroom, the shrine baba came and told everybody to head outside and start boarding the microbus.  I obviously couldn't go yet, since I was waiting for my wife.  There was an awkward moment where the shrine baba visibly wondered whether or not to approach me and ask why I wasn't boarding the microbus, but then she decided that the risk was too great for her - me being a foreigner and common knowledge being that Japanese is too difficult for foreigners to understand; she instead just pretended I didn't exist.  After about ten minutes, my wife came out of the bathroom and whispered, "you would not believe how small that envelope is!"  The shrine baba informed her - of course - about the microbus waiting for us outside.  We put on the airs of embarrassment that etiquette demands for taking so long, and pretended to kind-of-run all the way to the microbus parked twenty feet away.

The reception was at another facility, Meiji Kinenkan, which was where the Imperial Constitution of Japan had been hammered out some one hundred and forty years before in the presence of the Meiji Emperor himself.  After a ten-minute, meandering microbus ride through the crowded streets around Harajuku Station, we entered the drive of a very ostentatious building which managed to retain the general architectural theme of Meiji Jingu while simultaneously looking thoroughly Modernist.

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The Way of the Gods - Part II

This is part two of a three-part series.  Part one can be found here.

After fighting through crowds of tourists laughing childishly at the "Takeshita Street" sign, Nigerians hawking hip-hop wear and shouting "Yo! Genki!?" at passersby, and the strangely-coiffed, various in-groups of pre-teens clustered around Harajuku Station, my be-dressed wife and a be-suited I made our way past scattered, camera-wielding foreigners and Japanese alike down the long, wide paths beginning at the quiet and stately entrance to Meiji Jingu.  Fifteen minutes later we arrived at a boring administrative building near the honden (main hall) of Japan's largest shrine.  

We entered a lobby of sorts that would have been indistinguishable from a hotel reception area but for the giant chrysanthemum seals ostentatiously displayed everywhere.  After simmering for fifteen minutes or so, we were escorted by a high shrine baba to a modern-looking, pink-carpeted room with ordinary chairs placed flush against all four walls.  Shallow, white china teacups were arranged on brown industrial folding tables set in front of these chairs; a gold-leaf folded screen lay auspiciously at the far end of the room.  At a table in front of the gilded screen sat the couple to be married, with the groom's guests trailing off to the left and the bride's guests stretching to the right.  My wife and I sat at the terminus next to the door in the exact middle of the far wall directly facing the couple.

There were about forty people in the room altogether, almost all of whom were family members, including the younger sister of the bride, who was also our friend and had recently given birth to an apparently quiet, well-behaved baby.  Of the forty allowed to attend the ceremony, there were five non-Shinto priest non-family members: my wife, me, and three other friends of the bride.  The groom, who grew up at Yasukuni Shrine, had no friends who were not also Shinto priests. 

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