Book By Its Cover

March 31, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 11 Comments 

Just fin­ished watch­ing the first three episodes of the Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion pro­gram Black. White.. It is very likely the most dif­fi­cult tele­vi­sion pro­gram I have ever watched. Five min­utes didn’t go by in which I wasn’t clenched up and tight-​​jawed, and so wound up that I kept fid­get­ing in my chair and get­ting up to visit the kitchen or the bath­room or just to look out of the window.

The pro­gram is about two fam­i­lies, one black, one white, who, through make up and coach­ing, switch places as blacks and whites and ex­pe­ri­ence what it is like to live life in the op­po­site shoe. Watch­ing the dif­fer­ent fam­ily mem­bers go through their in­di­vid­ual awak­en­ings and grad­ual com­pre­hen­sion of what it is like to be black or white re­ally has you sit­ting at the edge of your seat, es­pe­cially be­cause some of the trans­for­ma­tions get quite in­tensely emo­tional. I found my­self agree­ing with and curs­ing at both sides, com­ing as I do from a fam­ily of both blacks and whites and Asians, and hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced all sides of what these peo­ple are go­ing through.

More than that, though, the pro­gram had me look­ing in­tently at my­self and my own daily ex­pe­ri­ences and prej­u­dices that I carry around. The other day one of my read­ers wrote that they didn’t see any dif­fer­ence be­tween the ex­pe­ri­ence of whites and non-​​whites, that much of the hos­til­ity that goes on is just in people’s heads. I did not want to re­ply be­cause it is such a com­mon be­lief among whites that try­ing to ar­gue about it usu­ally re­sults in de­nials and re­sent­ment, even heated fights. But if you hap­pen to be non-​​white, the way that other peo­ple, even other non-​​whites, see you and re­act to you comes out in a mil­lion nu­ances that will just not ap­pear when you are white. There are big dif­fer­ences in how whites and non-​​whites ex­pe­ri­ence these lit­tle and big things in every day life. As the mem­bers of the white fam­ily in the TV pro­gram soon re­al­ize, when you live in the white world in gen­eral you don’t have to be on guard; you can blithely speak your mind or in­ter­act with peo­ple around you with­out wor­ry­ing that oth­ers will not ac­cept you on looks alone. Things like where you walk on the side­walk or which words you use or how you might in­ad­ver­tently touch a stranger can make or break your chances to get into restau­rants or be served at a store.

But what I re­ally ad­mired about the peo­ple in the pro­gram and the pro­gram it­self is how they try to be hon­est about how blacks them­selves hold pre­con­cep­tions about whites and how those pre­con­cep­tions can af­fect every­thing about how they un­der­stand whites. There is one scene where the white woman, Colleen, vis­its a black neigh­bor­hood as a white with her hus­band dressed up as a black and the hos­til­ity that they en­counter and the re­al­iza­tion that the sim­ple fact of her skin color be­ing dif­fer­ent to­tally closes their world to her and con­jures up ha­tred among those blacks with stronger feel­ings and closed minds. It is quite sober­ing to watch her strug­gle with the an­guish of dawn­ing com­pre­hen­sion as her face lit­er­ally al­ters from one of some­one sim­ply hav­ing fun to one of grave recog­ni­tion of re­al­ity. Her hus­band Bruno re­fuses to budge, still cling­ing to his safe, un­chal­lenged, mid­dle class white views of a world ex­ist­ing in rel­a­tive utopia. Their 17 year old daugh­ter, how­ever, em­braces the chances she has and makes coura­geous ef­forts to both im­merse her­self in black cul­ture and be com­pletely hon­est with them. Of all the peo­ple, she seems the most able to gain some­thing from the change. In some ways the white fam­ily re­sem­bles my mother’s Ger­man side of the fam­ily, but Ger­mans tend to carry a qui­eter, more self-​​effacing out­look on life than the al­most obliv­i­ous, unas­sail­able self-​​assurance that the white Amer­i­can fam­ily seemed to take for granted, so there were differences.

At the same time you watch the black fam­ily and I guess whether you are white or black or some­thing else you will run through a gamut of agree­ments and ob­jec­tions to their ob­ser­va­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences. They re­sem­ble my father’s side of the fam­ily (Filipino/​ South Car­olina blacks who have lived mostly in New York’s Brook­lyn, the Bronx, and across the river in New Jer­sey), with the same openly ex­pressed strong opin­ions and col­or­ful lan­guage and aware­ness of less priv­i­leges in life. I found my­self al­most ready to shout at the the mem­bers of the fam­ily when they walked into a white place and with­out any­thing hap­pen­ing im­me­di­ately rais­ing their hack­les. You could al­most feel them fish­ing for hos­til­ity. Since the show has only just be­gun there hasn’t been much de­vel­op­ment in how the black fam­ily learns to see the white world, but it would be very in­ter­est­ing to see whether they can learn to ap­pre­ci­ate the re­al­ity of be­ing white. Things are not al­ways what they seem.

Prob­a­bly the most pow­er­ful mes­sage I might get out of watch­ing the show is in chang­ing the way I an­gle my view of sit­u­a­tions. So much of po­lit­i­cally cor­rect con­ver­sa­tion these days acts upon es­tab­lished stereo­types of what en­tails such no-no’s as racism and sex­ism. If you go to a movie or watch a tele­vi­sion show or read a pop­u­lar book, you can al­most pre­dict to a let­ter what the women and men and blacks and whites are go­ing to do or say be­fore any­thing hap­pens. Whites al­ways “don’t get it” and al­ways sub­ject blacks to in­dig­ni­ties and losses of chances. Men al­ways miss what women are ask­ing for and tram­ple women’s “em­pow­er­ment”. The women in the movies have to be strong and morally in­cor­rupt­ible. The blacks in the movies al­ways have to be in­dig­nant and full of rage against in­jus­tice. There is rarely room for real hu­man be­ings who make mis­takes, learn, hurt oth­ers, fail, or ques­tion their own iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with their pre­de­ter­mined roles.

Re­cently, Chris Clark of Creek Run­ning North, wrote a piece about fem­i­nism. He ran through a list of rea­sons why a man can­not count him­self a mem­ber of the coali­tion for women’s is­sues, sim­ply be­cause he is a man. I un­re­servedly agree with Chris’ as­ser­tion that men sim­ply can­not know the de­tails of liv­ing as a woman, in the same way that a non-​​white can­not pos­si­bly know what it is to live as a non-​​white. How­ever, what ran­kled me about the post, and the con­se­quent com­ments, was not its de­fence of women and the need to work to im­prove women’s sit­u­a­tions in the world, but with its as­sump­tion that all men are some­how in­nately misog­y­nis­tic and that women are some­how morally and so­cially su­pe­rior to men, ba­si­cally lump­ing all men to­gether in the same way that men are ac­cused of hav­ing done to women. That kind of think­ing has be­come al­most uni­ver­sal in the States now, so much so that it is ex­tremely dif­fi­cult for any man to pub­licly voice his opin­ion with­out au­to­mat­i­cally be­ing voted down as ig­no­rant and op­por­tunis­tic. In the com­ments, as in so many such posts on fem­i­nism, no one dared con­tra­dict Chris, es­pe­cially not men. The present cli­mate in these de­bates is that rape and mis­treat­ment of women is a trait all men carry and that men should take it on faith that what­ever comes out of their mouths has no worth in the con­ver­sa­tion. Ei­ther the men ac­qui­esce to the pro­nounce­ments made by women, or they should shut up. For­get the fact that there are plenty of men like me, and for that mat­ter, Chris Clark, who have al­ways re­spected women, of­ten the “nice” men whom many of the women ridiculed in high school and at so­cial gath­er­ings, for not be­ing “cool” or “sexy” or “bad” or “con­fi­dent” enough. Chris’ post stereo­types all men as the ma­cho jocks that I so hated in high school. In­deed, much of the whole de­bate takes on the high school flavour of cliques and hi­er­ar­chies. There doesn’t seem to be any room for di­ver­sity among men as there is al­ways as­sumed among women.

One thing that I find so im­por­tant about the “Black. White.” show is its at­tempt to get blacks and whites to ex­pe­ri­ence what it means to live in another’s shoes and then to get the par­tic­i­pants to talk about it and to not set the in­di­vid­u­als into molds as to how they should re­act as things un­fold. This, more than any­thing, I think is the cru­cial point to learn­ing how to live with and deal with so­cial is­sues such as racism and sex­ism; all the peo­ple in­volved need to some­how get a view of what it means to live as the other does be­fore they open their mouths and paint imag­ined pic­tures of the truth of oth­ers. You can­not solve such prob­lems by sit­ting with your own kind and beat­ing the bush; even­tu­ally you have to come out and face those things which you fear to face, namely your own ig­no­rance and un­will­ing­ness to give an­other the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

My one ques­tion though, in terms of au­then­tic­ity… how ex­actly do the par­tic­i­pants get gen­uine re­ac­tions with the cam­era crew hang­ing around in the back­ground all the time? How much of what is go­ing on is pure en­ter­tain­ment, and how much unadul­ter­ated truth?

Time to Get A Move On It?

March 24, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 8 Comments 

I’ve been try­ing to deny it, but I’ve been feel­ing ex­cep­tion­ally cruddy these last few days. My boss in­formed me that one day of my classes will most likely be shut down, and that more days might fol­low, even­tu­ally maybe even this en­tire branch of the school it­self. Af­ter eight years of very ded­i­cated work here it feels like quite a let­down, es­pe­cially be­cause the boss has been get­ting on all the teacher’s cases about “do­ing their best” for the school and the stu­dents. That’s ex­actly what I did… but when push came to shove, I’m given one week’s notice.

I sim­ply can’t make ends meet like this. With all the other wor­ries I have I also can’t af­ford yet more sticks piled onto the camel’s back. I’m feel­ing shaky enough as it is.

Big in­take of breath, big, big ex­hale. Everything’s go­ing to be all right. Everything’s go­ing to be all right.

Yeah, that’s what I said when I found out I had di­a­betes. I’ve since learned that every­thing is not al­ways go­ing to be all right.

And maybe that’s part of the crux of the prob­lem. I’ve lost the in­no­cence and con­fi­dence in my own abil­ity to keep my­self safe in the world. When my heart skips a beat at night I wake up ter­ri­fied that my body has aban­doned me. When there’s an earth­quake now I shake in my bones, fear­ful that this is the one. The thun­der storms I used to love so much when I was younger now flash mo­ments of ter­ror in the back of my watch­ing mind. At times, when my blood sugar is high, I start up some train sta­tion steps only to feel my mind loos­ened and reel­ing, and I won­der if I will be able to make it up the stairs. And when­ever I sit wait­ing in the hos­pi­tal lounge in my monthly vis­its to the di­a­betes cen­ter and watch one of the blind or am­putees or pa­tients headed for the dial­y­sis ma­chine my eyes are wide with sym­pa­thy and hor­ror; that could very well be me there.

When did my faith in my own ex­is­tence erode so badly? And how does one gain back the con­fi­dence and surety of wak­ing up in the morn­ing? I pick up a book on di­a­betes and the sta­tis­tics un­nerve me:

“1) Peo­ple with di­a­betes are 2 times more likely to suf­fer heart at­tack than those with­out.
2) Peo­ple with di­a­betes are 2 times more likely to suf­fer a stroke as those with­out.
3) Peo­ple with di­a­betes are 20 times more likely to go blind than those with­out.
4) Peo­ple with di­a­betes are 40 times more likely to suf­fer kid­ney fail­ure than those with­out.” *
5) Peo­ple with di­a­betes are highly likely to suf­fer de­bil­i­tat­ing nerve dam­age, that can cause all of the prob­lems above.

*Quoted from “The Mind-​​Body Di­a­betes Rev­o­lu­tion” by Richard S. Surwit

Fun read­ing! It’s like a be­nign old li­brar­ian smil­ing and quot­ing sim­ple fig­ures for your trivia en­joy­ment… all the while a mon­ster stand­ing in dis­guise be­neath her petticoats.

There’s noth­ing re­ally spe­cial about this news; af­ter all we are all sched­uled for time in the Cold Room, but there is such a dif­fer­ence in know­ing that the cogs and pipes and gov­er­nors have loos­ened and jumped track, right here in your own backyard.

When I first saw the movie “Philadel­phia” when it first came out over ten years ago, be­fore di­a­betes sought me out, it moved me and stuck with me, but last night when I again watched Tom Hanks emerge from Den­zel Washington’s of­fice af­ter be­ing re­jected and the look on Hanks’ face of know­ing that his body had given him a legacy of hope­less­ness, I knew to my bones what he was feeling.

Two months ago my aunt died from di­a­betes com­pli­ca­tions. I wasn’t able to get time off to make it to the States to hold her hand be­fore she died and give her what­ever courage one di­a­betic could give to an­other. Af­ter­wards an ocean of con­fu­sion over­took me, partly laden with waves of sor­row at the death of some­one I loved dearly, partly awash with im­mense para­noia that I, too, wasn’t go­ing to make it for much longer. The fol­low­ing week, when my doc­tor, who has an in­fu­ri­at­ing habit of talk­ing on her cell phone dur­ing our con­sul­ta­tions, again an­swered some call, I blew up and ac­cused her of be­ing un­pro­fes­sional and not know­ing what she was do­ing and of let­ting me slowly drift out to sea. Seven years of si­lence erupted. I am so scared and feel so help­less. And yet I can’t talk about it with any­one I know; the bur­den would be in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to them. Too of­ten they brush off the mut­ters of low-​​blood sugar fears and days of bad co­or­di­na­tion due to neu­ropa­thy or the un­pro­voked, high-​​blood sugar episodes when even the way a slip of pa­per might os­cil­late in a breeze sets me off rant­ing and shout­ing for no ap­par­ent rea­son. My fa­ther took me to task for “the chip on my shoulder”.

But they’re not to blame. They just don’t know. They don’t have this aw­ful face star­ing at them day in and day out. Di­a­betes seems so be­nign and in­no­cent… af­ter all most di­a­betes are walk­ing around as if noth­ing is wrong. They look fine and seem to do just about the same things as any­one else. It is just not ap­par­ent that the vi­sion is blurred or that the ring­ing is con­stant and loud in the ear or that the feet hurt badly or a morn­ing cramp so clenched the calf mus­cle that walk­ing is dif­fi­cult or that the drowsi­ness just won’t go away, no mat­ter how much cof­fee you drink or ex­er­cise you do. It is silent, like a scalpel.

But my words are de­featist. It’s no joke that every­one is go­ing to die. We all carry that. So I guess the only thing for it is to make best use of what I have and try to live as best I can.

Maybe los­ing the job is a good thing. Af­ter all I’ve long been talk­ing about my need to make a big change in my life. I’ve al­ways be­lieved that you don’t get what you want out of life, but you al­ways do get what you need. In the end what is re­ally im­por­tant is with just how much grace you can fit in­side this tum­bling world and how much mean­ing you can stoke out of the em­bers into the flick­er­ing flame of your life.

Wild Walking in a Wild, Wild Wind

March 16, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 8 Comments 

The wind is blow­ing again to­day and I sus­pect that the moun­tain I me­an­dered over last week­end is sit­ting hun­kered down again, its back braced against the fury of Mt. Fuji loom­ing just a hop over to the west. Mount Mikuni, more of an un­du­lat­ing hump than a real crag, sits right on the east­ern knee of Japan’s most mas­sive moun­tain. Some time ago in the mists of pre­his­tory Mt. Fuji had one of her 150 year tantrums and vom­ited a slurry of vol­canic ash and tuff, cre­at­ing a huge black and crim­son skirt in which she sat primly guard­ing the ris­ing of the sun. Mt. Mikuni was cre­ated out of her ag­i­ta­tion and fid­get­ing, part of a se­ries of wrin­kles in the drape of her skirts. When you walk Mikuni it is like crunch­ing through burnt gra­nola, the soles of your shoes grind­ing the gran­ules as if wait­ing to be scooped up with a spoon. And when I walked last week­end the lee­ward sides of hum­mocks and trees clung to the re­main­ing snow drifts that churned un­der­foot like cold milk. All the while the crew cut beech and myr­tle for­est bowed un­der the on­slaught of a wind that roared and shud­dered over­head, at times boom­ing so loud I couldn’t hear my voice as I shouted cau­tions to my part­ner. It was a frigid wind, hurl­ing straight from the ivory lips of Fuji, in­dif­fer­ent to the tiny lives mov­ing among the rocks.

And a mov­ing, al­most achingly beau­ti­ful, in a grey sort of way, en­counter with a lone for­est. I loved how small and in­signif­i­cant I felt. At the end of the day it was as if my soul had been swept clean.

Some­what omi­nous ceme­tery at the start of the trail…

… but with a ten­der bent.

Base of a Sika deer’s antler.

Halfway along the trail.

Up­turned beech. The layer soil is so thin that tree roots barely find purchase.

Not sure what this seed pod is. Any­one know? Every­thing in the area was cov­ered in moss.

Fun­gus on a log.

The for­est opened up to this vista. The last part of the walk wan­dered down a vast grassy slope look­ing upon Mt. Fuji and a wind-​​harried, slate-​​colored Ya­manaka Lake.

View of Mt. Fuji and Ya­manaka Lake.

Dark, brood­ing Mt. Fuji.

Food for Diagnosis

March 8, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 7 Comments 

It’s been a strange day today.

First, in the midst of read­ing what for me as a di­a­betic is an im­por­tant book (im­por­tant be­cause so few books that I’ve read on di­a­betes have spo­ken soberly and with­out the sick­en­ing “Oh, poor wid­dle babykins, let Daddy kiss the boo­boo and make it all bed­der” at­ti­tude that I can’t stand, and ac­tu­ally goes into depth about the ori­gins and work­ings of di­a­betes, with ex­am­ples and ex­pla­na­tions that closely fol­low my own ex­pe­ri­ence with the dis­ease), “The Mind-​​Body Di­a­betes Rev­o­lu­tion”, by Richard S. Sur­wit, and tak­ing the clin­i­cal tests within to de­ter­mine my lev­els of risk in stress, de­pres­sion, and hos­til­ity, I dis­cov­ered that in both stress and de­pres­sion I carry the high­est pos­si­ble risk fac­tors (what a re­lief to know that hostility-​​wise I am a lamb!), and that tech­ni­cally I have se­vere clin­i­cal de­pres­sion, and need pro­fes­sional help.

I guess I’ve more or less known this all along, but it seems so ar­ti­fi­cial. It’s hard to de­scribe. I grew up and live in a cul­ture, Japan’s, where I don’t know a sin­gle per­son who goes to any type of ther­apy (as op­posed to Amer­ica and Eu­rope where it seems half my friends see a shrink), and have very rarely met any­one who even re­motely seems to need it. Yes, I meet peo­ple who are down oc­ca­sion­ally and who have anger is­sues and such, but it never seems to get that much in the way of their lives. In the 14 years that I’ve been teach­ing Eng­lish I’ve asked count­less stu­dents about their mem­o­ries and ex­pe­ri­ences of high school, if they har­bored any re­sent­ment or ex­cep­tion­ally bad mem­o­ries. Al­most with­out ex­cep­tion each stu­dent, men and women, have told me they en­joyed high school and would be very happy to do it all again. Only about three or four ad­mit­ted to any kind of bul­ly­ing. When I ask these stu­dents about their present lives, a few will tell me of dis­sat­is­fac­tion, or dis­ap­point­ment, but in gen­eral, very few peo­ple tell me out and out that they are re­ally un­happy. You walk the streets and, com­pared to what I have seen in the States and Eu­rope, only rarely do you come across in­di­vid­u­als who seem out of whack with re­al­ity and their surroundings.

Now I know that some of this comes as a re­sult of the Japan­ese ten­dency to keep em­bar­rass­ing fam­ily se­crets out of the pub­lic eye, but it is more than that, too. There is a whole al­ter­na­tive ex­pec­ta­tion out of life here that, I think, puts less pres­sure on in­di­vid­u­als and in many, many ways is much more re­al­is­tic about life. There is none of the tunnel-​​vision of or­ga­nized re­li­gion per­vad­ing the so­ci­ety in any way (and West­ern­ers who come here seek­ing such a so­cial con­struct of­ten tend to give more weight to such things as the Bud­dhist tem­ples and the shrines than ac­tu­ally ex­ists… Japan­ese are sim­ply not a re­li­gious peo­ple, though they do carry their own form of spir­i­tu­al­ity). Mar­riage is of­ten seen much more as a pact be­tween two peo­ple for rais­ing a fam­ily, than as a field for solely nur­tur­ing the couple’s ro­man­tic feel­ings (though that is a big ben­e­fit when it hap­pens). I have talked to many mar­ried peo­ple, men and women, equally, who, with­out the slight­est sense of guilt or moral wrong­do­ing (though not all, course), feel that there is noth­ing wrong with their spouses hav­ing extra-​​marital af­fairs, as long as they don’t find out about it (in their translit­er­ated words: “As long as the af­fair doesn’t in­trude in the fam­ily cir­cle”). Peo­ple here ex­pect life to be hard and full of sad­ness. The whole con­cept of “mono-​​no-​​aware”, a per­cep­tion of pathos, in which the whole world is seen through the glass of im­per­ma­nence and pass­ing, and every­thing is filled with the sad­ness and beauty of things that only last a mo­ment, is some­thing that every Japan­ese in­tu­itively un­der­stands. Say the words “moon”, “rain”, “frog”, “blos­som”, “peb­ble”… and each one will con­jure up a flurry of col­ors, move­ment, sounds, and feel­ing that per­tains to things not last­ing. Peo­ple see them­selves and their pos­ses­sions as just as fleet­ing… one rea­son why so few ar­ti­facts from the past, es­pe­cially build­ings, remain.

I could go on, but the point is that I’m not sure how to in­ter­pret the cri­te­ria that the di­a­betes books lays out for de­ter­min­ing the ill health of my mind and spirit. I grew up non-​​Japanese and spent a lit­tle less than half my life in the States, so there is the in­flu­ence of west­ern cul­ture­draw­ing me one way, but there is also this Japan­ese sense of how things are and should be. I don’t see my state-​​of-​​mind as be­ing all that un­usual or off-​​kilter. The ques­tions in the book felt so Amer­i­can, in that they as­sume a MacDonald’s smile for a state-​​of-​​mind that they con­sider healthy:

1. Do you feel sad most of the time?
2. Do you of­ten feel as if there’s lit­tle to look for­ward to?
3. Do you see your life as be­ing one fail­ure af­ter an­other?
4. Do you feel as if you no longer en­joy any ac­tiv­i­ties these days?…

to name just a few.

Part of me nods in sage un­der­stand­ing, know­ing that it must be nec­es­sary to keep up that sense of glit­ter­ing cheer­ful­ness that per­vades Amer­i­can cul­ture, where if you aren’t smil­ing some­thing must be se­ri­ously wrong with you. Smile at the camera!

But the other part of me sees no rea­son to smile at the cam­era when I just don’t feel the least bit perky. It doesn’t mean I am not full of mirth or quiet con­tent­ment; it just means that the cam­era is no rea­son to put on a show.

Why weren’t the ques­tions framed thus:

1. Do you love what is around you and grieve the let­ting go?
2. Do you of­ten feel a re­spon­si­bil­ity to­ward peo­ple around you and just don’t have the time or means to do what you would re­ally like?
3. Do you see your life as be­ing a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and that there are bound to be more fail­ures than suc­cesses?
4. Do you feel that you are chang­ing as you get older and your tastes have moved on?

So now I must de­ter­mine my state of af­fairs and go ei­ther East or West. De­cide to prance about or skulk in the cor­ner… Take your pick.

Af­ter putting aside the book I met a blog­ging friend, whom I hadn’t seen in over six months, for lunch. He brought his young son along this time and we three men sat in Star­bucks, ba­si­cally be­ing or­dered around by my friend’s son, he telling us to help him com­plete his sketch­book doo­dles. The boy was a great lit­tle kid, full of fresh vi­vac­ity and laugh­ter, and I found my­self, as I watched him, sud­denly filled with a great sad­ness that most likely my wife and I will never have a child to­gether. I have no idea where this sud­denly came from. Chil­dren are not some­thing I have much thought about or strongly de­sired, and yet there I was, jeal­ous of my friend and won­der­ing how I could have missed some­thing so fun­da­men­tal. When the two of them said good-​​bye, I headed to­ward my evening job with a kind of slack-​​jawed sur­prise. Me, a fa­ther?!? I promptly dashed off a mes­sage on my cell phone to my wife: “I re­ally miss you today.”

And fi­nally, on my way home, I de­cided to take the ex­tra long walk from one sta­tion be­fore my own, a quiet saunter through an upper-​​income neigh­bor­hood where quite a few gar­dens and trees re­minded me that soil still ex­isted in this world. I love go­ing home this way and have taken to do­ing it al­most every evening these days, as part of my steps to­ward chang­ing my life to­ward those things that mean most to me. As I de­scended a par­tic­u­larly charm­ing set of steep stairs lined with zelkova trees and ivy-​​covered walls, I spied a break be­tween some of the houses and saw straight into someone’s bed­room, where the lights were full glare. Star­ing right back at me from the wall of the bed­room was a huge Nazi flag, the red and black bla­zoned in the dark­ness. “Damn!”, I thought. “What’s that per­son up to?” What ex­actly did they like about that flag? But this was Japan, of course, and, like al­most every­thing, it was mostly likely some­thing just for aes­thetic af­fec­ta­tion. But you never know. There be blond, Aryan-​​Asian drag­ons even here.

Next Page →