Floods

August 29, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 7 Comments 

It’s been rain­ing hard for four weeks now and made it im­pos­si­ble to en­joy camp­ing, but for the last two days things have got­ten to­tally nuts. Record rains with con­stant thun­der and light­ning. Most ar­eas have been get­ting about 100 mil­lime­ters in one hour, one area got 200 mil­lime­ters this morn­ing. Ear­lier to­day many ar­eas in Japan were in­un­dated in ma­jor floods. Houses have been washed away and thou­sands of peo­ple have been evac­u­ated. The area that I live in, Sammu city, Chiba pre­fec­ture, is set to have rivers over­flow their banks tonight and all the trains have stopped. I wouldn’t even think of go­ing up to the moun­tains again this week. Mud­slides and land­slides are bring­ing moun­tain­sides down everywhere.

I’ve never seen any­thing like this in Japan. Just see­ing how eas­ily all the trap­pings of so­ci­ety get com­pletely turned up­side down makes me won­der what will hap­pen when the sea lev­els re­ally be­gin to rise. We are so fragile.

Thunder and Lightning

August 20, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 10 Comments 

i am on the train writ­ing from my cell phone. an hour ago i took off in the night from my apart­ment in the coun­try to the train sta­tion, to head into tokyo be­fore head­ing out for a five-​​day walk in the moun­tains west of tokyo early to­mor­row morning.

for three weeks now thun­der­storms with in­cred­i­ble light­ning dis­plays ac­com­pa­nied by the heav­i­est tor­ren­tial rains on record and, when not rain­ing, the high­est tem­per­a­tures on record, have been ham­mer­ing the is­lands. even as i write the train rides through a lash­ing rain that ob­scures the lights of the city out­side, but lights up every now and then with flashes of day­light. thun­der pounds against the roof of the train.

it’s al­most a dream, sail­ing blithely through the night land while the gods stamp about among the rooftops, hurl­ing spears and roar­ing in anger. around me in the train car pas­sen­gers doze and glance up sleep­ily when a light­ning bolt stabs the roof of an apart­ment hi-​​rise. the world could be sink­ing into the sea for all they see. in the seats across from me a baby snoozes in the arms of her mother while the mother watches tv (the olympics most likely) on her cell phone. noth­ing is re­ally there.

the rains and light­ning may hold me back from climb­ing this week; i’ll have to keep an eye on the sky. but at least i’ve bro­ken out of this two-​​week shell and will feel what­ever may come against my skin. there is noth­ing like the rake of the im­me­di­ate world.

Facebook Connection

August 16, 2008 | Laughing Knees | Leave a Comment 

For those of you on Face­book I’ve just had a feed opened up there to con­nect to this blog. It’ll keep the two more in­ter­con­nected, since I have a lot of my on­line con­ver­sa­tions on Face­book. Drop by and say hello and also help to con­firm my blog there by sign­ing on.

I never thought I’d be ready to sign on with a so­cial net­work­ing site, but Face­book has been amaz­ing in help­ing me get back in touch with friends I had long ago lost touch with, in­clud­ing sev­eral very old friends from 35 years ago when I was a boy in Tokyo. And the list keeps grow­ing. If any­thing Face­book is where I can stay in touch with peo­ple I have few op­por­tu­ni­ties of see­ing. And makes the world feel a smidgeon smaller. Or big­ger, de­pend­ing on how you see it.

The Doldrums

August 10, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 18 Comments 

Last march, dur­ing the long break be­tween se­mes­ters at my uni­ver­sity dur­ing which my em­ploy­ers pro­hibit all teach­ers from tak­ing off any­where dur­ing the two month time off from teach­ing, I ended up spend­ing many days holed up in my apart­ment with no where to go and no one to do any­thing with. I vowed af­ter that never to al­low my­self to spend that much time alone again and in such a man­ner that my men­tal sta­bil­ity seemed at risk.

So I planned a whole month’s worth of hik­ing and vis­it­ing friends dur­ing this month-​​long sum­mer va­ca­tion. Orig­i­nally I had planned to visit Van­cou­ver in Canada, but the plans to meet my brother fell through. THen his plans to visit Japan fell through. Then, on the day be­fore the va­ca­tion of­fi­cially be­gan I cut I had got­ten on my right shin a week be­fore sud­denly bloomed into a bad in­fec­tion and for a week I’ve had to lie in bed try­ing to re­cu­per­ate, with oc­ca­sional limps to the nearby Seven Eleven for ba­sics in food. This place be­ing what it is it’s been a week now since I’ve talked to a liv­ing soul (ex­cept once to my brother on the tele­phone and a few emails to my wife in Tokyo). I think I am go­ing to lose my mind if this keeps up much longer.

I don’t like to post about this here, but I also just need to con­nect to peo­ple, any­one, so as to feel like I’m not liv­ing in some tomb. It’s like my mind is falling down the stairs and I need to catch my­self be­fore I hit the bottom.

If any­thing, the sit­u­a­tion here has made it clear once again that I’ve got to make the move away from here now be­fore more dam­age is done. That was my main rea­son to go visit Canada this sum­mer, so as to be­gin to make the changes, so not hav­ing gone has been a real blow to my con­fi­dence. Worse, this con­stant dis­ap­point­ment and lack of move­ment is nur­tur­ing an in­cred­i­ble anger in­side me that I don’t know how to dis­si­pate. I feel des­per­ate all the time now, es­pe­cially in con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple, as if I’m los­ing a ten­u­ous hold on san­ity. And of course that only tends to drive peo­ple away and make me feel more isolated.

The weekly ex­er­cise get-​​together that I had faith­fully gone to all spring and in which I thought I had be­gun to fi­nally make some much-​​needed friends mu­tated into more and more in­ten­sive con­cen­tra­tion on the ex­er­cises alone and less and less on the ca­ma­raderie of peo­ple get­ting to­gether to have a good time. When one of the orig­i­nal mem­bers started los­ing their tem­per at those of us laugh­ing and en­joy­ing each oth­ers’ com­pany I knew that the whole en­deavor had turned a point where those for whom get­ting in shape was the sole pur­pose of the gath­er­ing be­gan to dom­i­nate the whole thing. It ceased to be fun. The ex­er­cise started get­ting so in­tense that some peo­ple were be­gin­ning to get in­juries and sev­eral times came close to pass­ing out. The whole thing turned into a big com­pe­ti­tion to see who could suf­fer the most and to push the lim­its every time. I tried to voice my con­cern, but my words went un­heeded, even met with con­ster­na­tion on oc­ca­sion. So I be­gan to drift away and stopped go­ing to the workouts.

Need­less to say, the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of everyone’s com­pany re­ally left me bit­ter. And I’ve let my body slowly lose all the gains I made for six months. Not a good di­rec­tion for diabetes.

I’m re­ally okay. I just need peo­ple to talk to. To not be alone all the time. It’s play­ing havoc with my sense of hu­mor. I opened up to the doc­tor who treated my in­fected leg, an old Japan­ese guy whose hands shook from his al­co­holism, telling him , when he in­sisted that I come in again in two days time, that I was los­ing it just sit­ting around the apart­ment, need­ing to get out to the moun­tains where I was sure to meet peo­ple and get away from this aw­ful small town. You know what he replied? “Don’t you have any hob­bies?” For an al­co­holic he cer­tainly had some nerve!

So for­give me for open­ing up yet more de­press­ing sto­ries about me. I’m not seek­ing ad­vice or for my hand to be held. I just need to talk.

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