A language textbook is at best an approximation; at worst a distraction. 

In The Black Swan,  Nicholas Nassim Taleb describes two types of knowledge (admitedly an overgeneralization): nerd knowledge, and non-nerd knowledge.   The former is the kind of knowledge that comes from mastering the rules comprising systems.  Some examples of nerd knowledge would be Keynesian economics, computer programming, chess, and most of what we learn in high school.  Non-nerd knowledge on the other hand is the kind of knowledge that comes from intuitive grasping of part of reality.  The corresponding examples are Austrian economics, biology, business, and most of what we learn in college.  The key difference is that it's possible to master nerd fields, while non-nerd fields remain elusive.  For this reason, the non-nerd is often unsure of himself, depressed without rewards, and in need of a nerd hobby, like car-maintenance or Halo 3. 

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On Saturday, I went to the beach in Soma and brought back some fresh squid and shellfish, which I had planned on turning into a recipe for everyone.  Food is a passion of mine, and I love making creative dishes.  I started making the squid at 10:00.  I stuffed one with kimchee and pork-flavored fried rice and the other with curry and rice and then left them to sit while I prepared some small, mussel-like shellfish called shijimi for sautee with olive oil, basil, onions, and massive amounts of garlic to be added to pasta. 

While I was doing this, Chiyabappa perched like a vulture on the edge of the kitchen and - when her chance came - took it over to make large amounts of cheeseburgers, fried chicken, and salad for everybody except Kanako and I.  After she had finished her alternative lunch, she allowed me to use the kitchen again.  At 12:30, I was finally allowed to finish my version of lunch - which I had started cooking at 10:00 - and brought it over to the table embarassed at around 1:00 o'clock, just after everybody had finished Chiyabappa's cheeseburgers and fried chicken.  Kanako and I ate food prepared for eight by ourselves after everyone else like servants.  There were plenty of leftovers, so we could eat squid and pasta again that night and this morning.

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At one, the three foreigners assembled, and I discovered that the Japanese girl who had helped me before would actually be taking the foreigner's test since she had obtained her license in the U.S. while studying music therapy at SUNY, and she was therefore as good as a foreigner.  She was on her third test, and she was the only one of us who had been allowed to actually see "how it was done": on her first day, the police officer had shown her the correct way to drive the course, and she had tried twice to no avail to duplicate his exact motions: no braking allowed on corner 12!  Drive between 31 and 33 km./hr. on the straightaway between "The Crank" and corner 15!  Of course, only she actually knew the arbitrary mechanism holding all of us prisoner (and failed anyways).  The rest of us, like Josef K., were ignorant of our charges.

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I sat down to look at the form a bit more and decide how to proceed.  I considered my options: (1) I could go home and drag my 8-months pregnant wife and young child out in the 100-degree heat of the Fukushima summer to serve as totally unnecessary translators and my symbolic Japanese masters.  And, for foreigners living in Japan, if you have a Japanese master, it's almost always best to bring him or her to any sort of application process, because the rights of foreigners are (politely) shat all over by immigration and city hall officials here when no Japanese people are watching.

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I had a dispassionate conversation today with my wife after visiting the Fukushima License Center about how she thinks all the problems I seem to come across here in Japan are directly caused by my confrontational, stubborn, and uncompromising personality.  I can't deny that she's right.  I have an abject and probably unfounded hatred for nearly all public employees, and take great offense when I am forced to do something which I find illogical and pointless.  I am absurdly cheap and miserly, and hate being forced to spend money on meaningless fees.  I don't object to the concept of paying taxes, because the government needs money to function, and we the people need some form of government, but the underhanded way in which all governments structure their revenue sources to fool consumers into thinking they pay less than they actually do is odious and criminal, especially coming from the people whose job it is to serve us.

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My computer exploded the other day, from two weeks of 100-degree heat in Fukushima, Japan. The motor on my five-year-old Dell simply combusted in a cloud of smoke while I was watching Sesame Street Jason Mraz videos with my daughter, the room reeked of plastic, and I quiety panicked at the prospect of losing a years-worth of baby videos.  But, from my small amount of computer hardware knowledge, I don't think there should be any damage to the hard drive, and I plan on bringing my desktop tower to some nerds for fixing as soon as I can pass my Japanese license test (future post).

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the top of Mt. AzumaI came across this tourist video on YouTube for my Japanese prefecture of residence, Fukushima, while searching for video of a crazy moth/ant attack from ten or twenty years ago near one of the schools at which I work.  I couldn't find what I was looking for, but the tourist video, discovered accidentally, is sufficiently corny, campy, trite, whathaveyou, and with kool muzak, so please enjoy.  

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tsukemonoWe've all heard of sushi, sashimi, tenpura, ramen, the fairly rare teriyaki. and "sake" even if we can't technically identify those foods or tell them apart, but sushi and sashimi are not so popular in the thousands of Japanese towns and cities cut off from the sea and fresh ingredients by mountain ranges (and their American versions seriously suck), tenpura is based on food imported from the Dutch during the Edo Period, ramen is Chinese, and sort of like Japanese fast food.  The word "sake" in Japanese just means "alcohol", so when foreigners talk about "sake", many Japanese think they're talking about beer or wine or moonshine.  I'd like to discuss five of my favorite unsung Japanese foods, which maybe haven't caught on in the West because they're difficult to pronounce.

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The internets are divided on whether Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin said, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Either way, Huffington Post reports on a batshit insane way Japanese researchers are trying to smite the infamously low birthrate of of that nation's citizens:

Can a robotic baby encourage couples to reproduce--and help Japan boost its low birth rate?

Researchers, who have created a cooing, crying, sneezing baby simulator named "Yotaro," hope so.

They hope that the infant-like machine will "trigger human emotions" that make couples "want to have their own baby," CNN reports.

In an effort to increase the birth rate, Japan's government is offering to pay families a monthly stipend per child, but the leaders of the Yotaro project believe the "robotic encouragement" may be more effective.

What's keeping Japan's birthrate so low is (1) the cancerous nature of its work culture, (2) the disdain with which employers treat employees who want to take time off to care for children, and (3) youth resentment fed by the government throwing money at any warm body that has a baby.  

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This traditional Japanese children's song reminds me of Ezra Pound and the Imagists.  I usually render Japanese text in Roman letters on this blog, but, seeing as Pound's Ideogrammic Method was built on a foundation of Chinese characters, here it is.  Click on the links for images, or perhaps you already know what some of it means...

大きな栗の木の下で

貴方と私

仲良く遊びましょう

大きな栗の木の下で

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