Itchy Fingers

   Some people just can't help themselves.

   Shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing which has claimed three lives and injured more than a hundred, conservative commentator Erik Rush was quick to blame the attack on "evil" Muslims. 

   NPR's political editor Ken Rudin, on the other hand, urged caution in his tweet: "Remember when everyone pointed fingers immediately after Oklahoma City and were proven wrong? Some caution here, please."

   My thoughts exactly. Before rushing to hold Muslims responsible for the horrific attack, consider what The New York Times had to say: "some law enforcement officials noted that the blasts came at the start of a week that has sometimes been seen as significant for radical American anti-government groups: it was the April 15 deadline for filing taxes, and Patriots’ Day, a week that has seen attacks in the past. April 19 is the anniversary of the deadly 1993 fire near Waco, Tex., that ended a 51-day standoff and left 80 members of a religious group called the Branch Davidians dead. April 19 is also the anniversary of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which prosecutors said was conceived in part a response to the Waco raid."

   I wonder, if a radical American anti-government group is found to be responsible for the bombing, will Erik Rush then insist that all conservatives be killed? I suspect the answer would be "No."

Murders in Taiwan linked to Sino-Japan Territorial Dispute

According to an article in the April 1^st edition of the Sankei Shimbun [1]that I hope wasn’t meant as an April Fool’s prank, the body of an elderly man was found on the bank of the Dànshǔi River outside of Taipei. The man was identified as 78-year-old Chén Jìnfú (陳進福). The cause of death was stabbing. The man’s wife was also found murdered nearby.

A few weeks later in early March, four people were arrested and charged with the crime, which at first appeared to be motivated by Chén’s great wealth. It has recently come to light, however, that the murders may be related to the Japan’s territorial dispute with China. (AC—The plot thickens!)

An unnamed official in Japan’s intelligence agency confided, “There’s talk that Chén Jìnfú, who owned property in Okinawa, was in trouble with Mainland China.” (AC—Bit flimsy evidence-wise, but wait! There’s more.)

According to sources close to the victim, Chén Jìnfú first came to Japan as an exchange student. (AC—No information on when he did this.) He taught part-time at a Japanese university, then returned to Taiwan where he started his own business. (AC—Again, no details were given in the article regarding the type of business or where the business was established. Japanese newspaper articles can be awfully ambiguous.) Later Chén bought the islands of Sotobanari (外離島) and Uchibanari (内離島) just off the coast of Iriomote island in the Yaeyama archipelago, southwest of Okinawa.

(AC—One of these islands is famous for being inhabited by a “homeless” naked Japanese man. Seriously. Google Sotobanari-jima (外離島) to see pictures of the man who has become something of a celebrity. I believe his name is Ikeda.)

A businessman from Hong Kong reportedly approached Chén Jìnfú with the intention of buying the islands in order to develop them for tourism. According to an article on Taiwan’s HJK (東森) television published on the station’s website on March 11^th, the businessman is quoted as saying, “I was instructed by someone from mainland China’s military to try to buy the islands.”

When Chén refused to sell the islands, he was murdered.

Last October seven ships from the Chinese navy sailed between the islands of Yonaguni and Iriomote, which lie just south of the disputed Senkaku island group.

According to the Hong Kong businessman, this is not the only instance where China has tried to purchase land in Okinawa.

(AC—The implication, of course, is that China is trying to buy land with malicious intent. There has been much hand-wringing of late when it came to light that a Chinese firm had bought land in Hokkaidô to extract fresh water for export back to China.)

(AC—Meanwhile . . .) In November of 2011, an investment seminar was held in Shanghai by the prefecture, which discussed developing resorts and building rental accommodation for U.S. soldiers stationed in Okinawa.

Japan’s southernmost prefecture is counting on money from China to help revitalize the local economy. Behind the scenes, local business leaders are trying to set up a Japan-China Friendship Fund of about fifty billion yen consisting mainly of Chinese capital. The plan envisions building a casino resort in Naha City, with a Chinatown and Chinese broadcasting studio.

(AC—Okinawa is consistently ranked as Japan’s poorest prefecture, with the nation’s highest unemployment rate. I suppose you can’t blame local authorities for trying to find some way to boost investment in the prefecture. Problem is that many businessmen are more concerned with their own bottom lines than they are with the welfare of the people affected by their decisions.)

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[1] The Sankei Shimbun (産経新聞) is Japan’s sixth largest newspaper by circulation.

$18 Baby Aspirin

   The other day, I went to the orthopedic surgeon for a follow-up examination of a torn calf muscle. I can only guess how much this would have cost in the States, but here in Japan where everyone--citizens and foreigners alike--must participate in either the government-run health insurance scheme or have their health insurance provided by their employer, it only cost me ¥380 (c.$3.50). The first visit, including painkillers, bandages, and medicated compresses cost about twenty bucks out of pocket. Because everyone under the age of 65 must pay 30% of the bill at the point where the care is given, the treatment of my calf has only cost forty dollars. (Contrast that with the U.S. where you might have to cough up as much as eighteen bucks for baby aspirin. Talk about headaches!) 

   Incidentally, I also took my son to the pediatrician's twice last week for treatment of a nasty stomach virus. It cost me nothing as health care and medicine for children under the age of 15 is free in our prefecture.

   Americans really have no idea what they are missing out on. They are told repeatedly by politicians that the U.S. has "the greatest health care system in the world!" but in reality they are being screwed.

   I suspect the misinformation has been intentional. A lot of professionals, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies would surely lose money if Americans ever woke up and demanded a fairer, more affordable, less profit-driven system, like the one we have here.

   More on the so-called "horrors" of socialized medicine:

   PBS's Frontline had a good documentary called "Sick Around the World" that looks into the different health care systems in six  different countries, including Japan. It's worth watching.

Rokuban, a Novel

   You’re fucked if you get arrested in Japan.

   Japanese judges convict with such vengeance that defendants hauled before a court of law have less than a one in one thousandth of a chance of being let off.

   Listen: once arrested in Japan, the odds are stacked heavily against the suspect. In a typical year such as 2006, when 153,000 unlucky bastards—including the protagonist of this novel—were taken into police custody, only 3% were released within the first seventy-two hours of their arrest. The remaining were detained, often held incommunicado, for the next ten days where most were brow-beaten or even tortured into signing written confessions. In 54% of those cases, prosecutors requested an extension of detention in order to continue with their investigation, while another 28% who had already cracked were prosecuted outright, their confessions becoming the most damning piece of evidence used against them.

   Judges in Japan, far from being impartial adjudicators, rubber-stamp the paperwork of prosecutors, rejecting in 2006 a mere 70 out of their 74,000-plus requests for extensions of detention (less than one-tenth of one percent). The vast majority of those kept behind bars while they have confessions coerced out of them—excuse me, have their cases are “investigated”—end up being charged with crimes. Again, over 99% of these are then found guilty and sentenced.

   Surely, some of them are innocent.

   While the Gospel according to John may say that the truth will set you free, in the courts of Japan, truth can be the very slipknot they hang you with. So, what can you do if you are brought before the juggernaut that is Japan’s Ministry of Justice?

   Lie, lie, lie.

   Rokuban (No.6), a fast-paced novel about how an American expat beats these formidable odds, offers not only a satirical look into Japan’s Kafkaesque system of justice and the bizarre, sometimes humorous life behind bars, but also gives a fresh perspective on drug-use in Japan today.

   In the parlance of Hollywood, it is Midnight Express meets The Usual Suspects meets Lost in Translations.

Curious Crowe

   I recently purchased a copy of the children’s book Curious George Rides a Bike for my son and by coincidence this morning’s episode of PBS’s Curious George, which is broadcasted here on NHK in both Japanese and English, happened to feature an abridged version of the story.

   As you might imagine, the TV series, which started airing in 2006, differs in a number of ways from the books, which were published as early as 1941. Curious George Rides a Bike came out in 1952.

   Take a look at the cover. Notice anything unusual? (Aside from a monkey riding a bicycle.) George and the newspaper delivery boy were both wearing helmets in the TV series. This made “Curious Crowe” wonder when Americans started protecting their kiddies’ noggins. The answer is apparently 1987. While there is no federal law requiring bicycle helmets to be worn by children, some 23 states and more than 200 localities do. Oregon, for instance, requires all children under the age of 16 to protect their heads when riding bicycles.

   Incidentally, thirty-four percent of children in the United States (representing more than 22 million children in 11 million homes) live in homes with at least one firearm. In 69% of homes with firearms and children, more than one firearm is present. In best-selling Freakonomics, University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner calculated that having a swimming pool in your backyard was 100 times more dangerous than having a gun in the house. Oh well, still gotta protect those kids’ heads.

   Another thing that caused me to pause to think as I read the story was an illustration of “The Man in the Yellow Hat” removing George’s new bicycle from its box. Where one might use a box cutter to slice through the masking tape on a cardboard box today, The Man in the Yellow Hat had to use a hammer and crowbar to pry open the top of a wooden crate.[1]

   So when did we start using cardboard to ship everything?

   According to Mr. Wiki: “Corrugated paper was patented in England in 1856, and used as a liner for tall hats, but corrugated boxboard was not patented and used as a shipping material until December 20, 1871. The patent was issued to Albert Jones of New York City for single-sided corrugated board. Jones used the corrugated board for wrapping bottles and glass lantern chimneys. The first machine for producing large quantities of corrugated board was built in 1874 by G. Smyth, and in the same year Oliver Long improved upon Jones's design by inventing corrugated board with liner sheets on both sides. This was corrugated cardboard as we know it today. The first corrugated cardboard box manufactured in the USA was in 1895. By the early 1900s, wooden crates and boxes were being replaced by corrugated paper shipping cartons.”

   Mr. Wiki also notes that, “The advent of flaked cereals increased the use of cardboard boxes. The first to use cardboard boxes as cereal cartons was the Kellogg Company.”

   But that was quite a long time ago. When I think back about my own childhood, one of the earliest memories I have of using cardboard for shipping is when my family moved in 1975 to Portland, Oregon. (It just occurred to me that when I was very young we used to buy navel oranges that were packed in wooden crates. Later on, the oranges came in cardboard boxes that had holes in the side.[2]) Another memory—not a very pleasant one, I’m afraid—of cardboard boxes was of an Easter present I received in the early Seventies. I don’t remember who gave it to me, but I do remember opening the cardboard box and finding a small rabbit inside. Let me tell you, I couldn’t have been happier. The rabbit, unfortunately, died that night, (probably from trying to escape from the box), and a little boy couldn’t have been more devastated.

   Speaking of packaging, I was watching an odd Boards of Canada video a few months ago. The film looks like it was made in the early to mid Sixties, judging by the cars and fashion, and was probably meant to instruct children on the dangers of goofing off when riding a bicycle. Anyways, what impressed me most about the video was not the monkeys getting picked off one by one by cars, but the first minute that features a boy sitting at a park bench eating a sack lunch. There is no plastic in the scene. The bottle is glass, the bags and cups are made of paper. The park table is wooden. It made me wonder how we allowed plastic to triumph over our daily lives.

   Another thing worth noting about the Boards of Canada video: none of the kids are wearing bicycle helmets.

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[1] I was reminded of the scene from “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie’s old man pulls out the fishnet stocking leg lamp from a crate filled with hay. If you don’t know what I am talking about, you owe it to yourself to rent the DVD. “Not a finger!”

[2] I lived in California’s Orange County when the county still had lots of orange groves everywhere. One of my fonder memories was visiting the orange packing plant with my mother when I was in kindergarten. 

Long Lasting

   What is the deal with the poorest of poor in developing countries selling Chiclets of all things?

   Back when I was a college student in San Diego, my friends and I would often cross the border to drink in Tia Juana. Street children never failed to surround the gringos and try to unload whole boxes of the chewing gum on us. In Thailand, it was little different: one afternoon as I was sleeping on the beach, someone nudged me awake. Looking up to see who it was, I found a toothless old woman holding a box of mint Chiclets in front of my nose.

   “Uh, no tha . . . Oh, what the hell, give me two packs. No, no, only two. I don’t need so many. I, uh . . . Okay, okay. Give me the whole box. No! I don’t want two boxes . . .”

   This has happened to me so many times and in so many countries that I’m beginning to think that it might be the deliberate marketing strategy of Cadbury Adams.

   At the Roman ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, I was approached by a number of street vendors selling everything from camel rides to panama hats. There was even a dejected old man in filthy clothes trying half-heartedly to peddle, yes, you guessed it, Chiclets.

   It made me wonder if there was some kind of hierarchy among these miserable salesmen. At, or very near to, the bottom of it surely had to be the poor sap with the Chiclets.

 

   “Good morning everyone! We’ve got a busy day ahead of us. There’s a busload of Koreans coming in at ten, another busload of Japanese at eleven. Some Germans at a little after one in the afternoon. Ibrahim, you’re selling Chiclets today. Sammi, you’re in charge of the Panama hats. Hey, Yusuf! Get that camel away from the water coolers . . . Look, I don't give a flying fuck if it is thirsty, just keep the stupid beast away, hear? Any of the tourists catch sight of a camel drinking water from the cooler, and you can kiss your commission good-bye. Hasan, you’ll be selling . . . What's that, Ibrahim? Don't want to sell Chiclets again? I'm sorry to hear that, really sorry. But hey, if you’re not up to it, I suppose you can always sit on the sidewalk and panhandle with the rest of those sorry losers over there. Oh? What’s that, Ibrahim? You’re not crazy about that idea, either? Selling Chiclets will be fine by you, you say? Great! Now, stop wasting my fucking time and start selling some of that goddamn gum . . . Oh, for crying out loud, Yusuf. Yusuf! YUSUF! For Chrissake, what did I say about the camel and the water cooler? You what? That does it! Yusuf, you’ve got Chiclets duty today! Ibrahim, get back here! You've been promoted to camel. Yeah, yeah, don't mention it. Just keep it away from the cooler there."

Thanks, China!

   It seems like the more China develops and "modernizes", the more it impacts us here in Japan, and not always in the most positive of ways.

   At first, our biggest concern here in the western part of Japan was the Asian dust, known as kôsa or yellow sand in Japanese, which would blow in from the deserts of eastern and western China every spring; now, we must contend with China's smog, too.

   Last Saturday (Feb. 23), air pollution levels exceeded Japan's recommended limit with PM2.5 particulates reaching a density of 50.5ugm/m3. As densities above 35ugm/m3 pose a health hazard, the prefectural government issued a warning, advising residents to wear face masks and to forego hanging laundry out to dry.

   Every time it gets as bad as this, I can't help wonder what it must be like in China. It's an awfully steep price to pay for (cough-cough) economic growth. 

Park Life

   Azami and I are sitting on the edge of a concrete planter in an uninspiring little park, eating the sandwiches we bought at a bakery nearby for breakfast. We think the park is deserted until a homeless man crawls out from the impossibly small place below a park bench.

   Nodding towards the man, I ask my girlfriend: “Think he's got a busy day ahead of him?”

   “Maybe,” she replies. “A conference in Tokyo. Or perhaps a business meeting in Osaka.”

   “And a mixer party with easy chicks afterwards.”

   Azami laughs.

   “You laugh, but why is it so funny?” I say. “Homeless guys get lonely, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the eligible homeless bachelors and bachelorettes got together once a month at, say, Central Park for a big party . . .”

   “Hmm. Sounds nice.”

   “And they get up on a park table and introduce themselves . . .”

   “’My name's Yuko’,” Azami says. “’I'm forty-seven years old. I'm currently residing under the bridge on the east-side of Hakata Station . . .’”

   “’I like drinking One Cup Ozeki on quiet nights under the moonlight, won't you have a drink with me?’”

   Azami lets out peals of laughter.

   “‘Uh, what? Am I next? Um, I, ah, I am Jun. I live in a small park in Yakuin . . . Um, I enjoy ballroom dance and collecting empty cans. I'm saving up to buy a tarp, and, um, I should have one before the winter sets in. How ‘bout we keep each other warm?’”

   Azami asks me if I think homeless people have sex.

   “Sure, why not?” I reply.

   “But they don't bathe. They've got to be pretty smelly.”

   “Well, beggars can't be choosers, can they?”

   “Just thinking about it makes me nauseous.”

   “I once read about a homeless woman who did tricks for homeless men.”

   “No! You're kidding, right?”

   “Well, I did read about it in Friday[1], so you can imagine how reliable it is, but the article said she would blow a guy for a hundred yen.”

   “Only?”

   “Yeah, well, she apparently wasn't really doing it for the money . . .”

   “What then?” Azami asks. “Love?”

   “You never know what makes these people tick. Maybe she has a fetish for filthy old men?”

   I tear off a bit of bread from my sandwich and toss it out onto the ground where a few dozen pigeons descend upon it.

   “Oh, please don't do that,” Azami says, grimacing. “See? Now they're all coming over here. Pigeons disgust me.”

   “Oh, they're harmless, Azami. Besides they're fun to watch?”

   “What's fun about a bunch of dirty old pigeons?”

   “Well, look at them. That one over there.”

   “The one that's all puffed up?”

   “Yeah. He's walking around saying, ‘Hey, look at me! I'm huge! I'm a buff dude, yeah! Check me out, girls! Oh yeah!’ But the funny thing is none of the other birds are paying the least bit of attention to him. It's not much different with real guys—you know, we humans—when you think about it. I mean that bird probably took his time preening himself. ‘Gotta look good for the chicks!’ And what happens? He's completely ignored. Everyone else is more interested in the manna that has just fallen from Heaven. The idiot is not only not going to get laid, but he'll end up be hungry, too.”

   “It's to be expected,” Azami observes.

   “Why's that?”

   “The girl pigeons aren't all that interested in his size anyways. They know he's just compensating for . . .” 

   “A small dick?”

   “I wonder, do birds have penises?”†

   “I haven't the foggiest idea.”

   “Whatever it is,” Azami says, “they know he doesn't have one, and they wouldn't really want even if he did.”

   “Yeah? But look at him! ‘I'm huge!’ he’s saying. ‘Just huge! Hey, babe, this ain't the only thing that's huge! Oh yeah!’”

   “The girl pigeons don't want that. They just want to find a boy pigeon that's kind and loving.”

   “Like that one?” I say, pointing to a pigeon which is missing all the feathers from his nape and is hobbling on a stump where there should be a foot. It's the saddest excuse for a pigeon I have ever seen. “I bet he's kind and loving.”

   “A bird in that condition,” Azami replies, “has no choice but to be kind and loving.”

   “True.”

   I throw another bit of bread crust into the air and watch it fall amongst the birds. There is a flurry of feathers and dust.

   “‘Hey, idiot, that was mine!’ ‘No, it wasn't.’ ‘Yes, it was!’ ‘Oh, lady! That's not bread that's my leg! Ow! Would you quit it?’”

   “The funny thing about these pigeons,” I continue, “is that when you throw a piece of bread into the middle of the flock, you would suspect that the fastest or the strongest or the most clever ones would get the bread most of the time and the others would just have to satisfy themselves by pecking at the ground on the off chance that the faster, stronger, smarter birds dropped some. But watch closely.”

   I toss a larger piece of bread just beyond the birds. There is another fury of dust and feathers as they chase after the bread. In a second, the bread disappears under a pile of pigeons, all pecking frantically at the bread and trying to tug it away from each other’s beaks. The bread is knocked out of one bird's beak and bounces like a pebble skipped against water, off the head of one, two, three, four hapless pigeons before landing on the ground. The birds hurry towards it, and just as one of the larger birds is about to pick it up, a sparrow glides in and nabs it away only for another pigeon to peck at it and send it flying again several meters where it lands at the one good foot of the gammy legged, scruffy pigeon. Before the other pigoens figure out what is happening, that scraggly, sickly pigeon flies off with the bread in beak.

   Azami is in hysterics, laughing so hard she’s crying. When she gains her composure she says, “I can't believe it.”

   “It's all luck,” I say. “You have it or you don't. You can be the smartest, most talented, but if you don't have luck . . .”

   “Yeah! I get it. I do. That’s how it really is.”

   “And Romeo over there is still trying to get laid.”

---

[1] Friday is a tabloid weekly.

† They do.

Many Thanks, Amy!

   I have no idea who Amy is, but I do appreciate her taking the time to write the following review of my novel, Rokuban:

  "This was a good read. You won't have to force yourself to get through any of the chapters, the bits of humor throughout the book are always keeping you interested and turning to the next page. Mr. Crowe did a nice job with this one. The characters were realistic enough in terms of personality and the background just right. Most of the surrounding characters were completely likable even if there was not much background on them. I did not find myself actually liking main character, he was typical guy and his opinion on a few subjects didn't exactly make him endearing. Despite that I found myself interested in whether he and his friends would make it through his predicament intact. I'll mention again this story is both funny and serious at the same time. You won't want to stop reading until you've gotten to the end."

   Thanks again!

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Rokuban - No. 6 and other works by Aonghas Crowe are available at Amazon.

Sleep Talking

   We had a long night last night, the boys taking turns crying and demanding our attention. While my wife is generally responsible for the baby—thank God these nipples of mine are purely ornamental—taking care of Yu-kun has become my job. This hasn’t caused too much of a disruption in my life because, one, I’m at the end of the school year and will pretty much have the next three months free, and, two, Yu-kun has always been “Daddy’s Boy”.

   His first word as a child was “Daddy” and when he had learned how to crawl, he would make his way every morning to the room where I was sleeping and snuggle up to me for the next hour or so until it was time to get up.

   Yu-kun was an early talker, something that I did not expect. Children raised in bi-lingual homes tend to acquire language later than those from single language homes. The power of low expectations.

   Today, he is about 40-60 bilingual, something that I’m fairly satisfied with as what he is hearing is 90 to 95% Japanese.

   One of the things that I’ve tried to do consistently—and, I do believe that consistency is one of the keys—is to speak only English to him. (I even use English when speaking to my wife in front of him to give him more exposure.) When he replies to one of my questions in Japanese, a common occurrence that can’t really be helped, I make him repeat the answer in English. If he doesn’t know the English, I will teach him. Also, if he calls out to me in Japanese, I try not to respond. I won’t look his direction if he says, “Daddy, mité!” I won’t pick him up when he says, “Daddy, dakkô!” And so on.

   These are minor things, but these short words build upon each other eventually becoming full sentences.

   Another thing I try to do is to give him the easiest way to say something, and when he has mastered that, give him a more difficult way. For example, I taught him “No . . .” at first, rather than “Don’t . . .” Or “. . . nothing” instead of “I don’t have . . .” And so on. When he wanted to be held, I taught him to first say “Up”, then “Hold me!” and most recently, “Pick me up!”

   You figure out rather quickly what a child can understands and use and then run with that, expanding and applying the bits he knows to a variety of situations. This is important when learning to speak a foreign language. People usually want to say in a foreign language exactly what they would say in their own language, but that is a recipe for failure. It’s much better, and more interesting to communicate your ideas in a creative, roundabout way.

   Anyways, Yu-kun’s speaking has really taken off these past two months, again, much, much faster than I expected. His vocabulary in Japanese is growing particularly quick so I feel sometimes like I’m falling behind in the language race. This will change, of course, once he has more exposure to the U.S. and other English speakers. I’m even considering starting an English class for children his age. When I’ll find the time to do so, I do not know, but there will be no shortage of kids wanting to take part.

   I meant to write about Yu-kun’s sleep talking, but got side-tracked.

   Yu-kun has always been something of a chatterbox. This doesn’t stop when he’s asleep. (Me, too.) His lips keep moving and throughout the night he’ll crack up, explain something like “How surprising!” Or, as he did one night a few weeks ago, he’ll yell something off the wall, like “More! I want more! I want more . . . baseball! More baseball!”

   One of my favorites is when he started laughing in the middle of the night and said, “Daddy tooted . . . again . . . a lot.”

   I’ll leave it up to your imagination what “toot” means.

   A few nights ago he let out a blood-curdling scream: “No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Bear-san, no!”

   “Bear-san” (Mr. Bear) is a polar bear puppet that the wife of our OB/GYN gave Yu-kun when he was still a baby. There was a time when Yu-kun wouldn’t go anywhere with out Bear-san. We’ve even taken him to the U.S. with us. Airport security was a bit of a challenge: the boy cried when he was forced to part with Bear-san for fifteen seconds as the toy was scanned by the x-ray machine with all of our other carry-ons.

   I once left Bear-san on the subway, but was fortunately able to recover the lost bear a few hours later. That little adventure motivated me to order a spare-bear from New York in case Bear-san was irretrievably lost in the future.

   Recently, poor Bear-san has dropped in the rankings of favorite toys. Yu-kun prefers to play with his cars and trains now, so much so he usually takes a parking lot full of vehicles to bed with him every night. Let me tell you, I sure miss that bear whenever I roll over onto a cement mixer in the middle of the night.

Rush and Hillary

   When she was the First Lady, he was an overweight blowhard. When she was elected Senator, he was still an overweight blowhard, but now on his third wife and addicted to prescription drugs.

   When she narrowly lost the Democratic Party's presidential primaries to Barack Obama, he was still an overweight blowhard. He was deaf, though, but that didn't stop him as he never listened to others anyways.

   When she became Secretary of State, he was, as ever, an overweight blowhard. And, if she is elected America's first female president of the United States, he will still be an overweight blowhard, on his fifth or sixth wife. That is, if his heart holds out.

   Hillary has achieved so much over the past two decades, and yet Rush, despite all his bravado is nothing more than the same old overweight blowhard, sitting on a poo cushion and spouting off into a golden mike. 

Canker Sores and Wedding Bells

   “How's your mouth,” my girlfriend asks.

   “It still hurts.”

   “Sure takes a long time to heal, doesn't it?”

   “Yeah, this time especially.” I’ve had a canker sore for two weeks and it’s now the size of a one-yen coin.†

   “I'm always worried about your health and you diet,” she says.

   “Thank you.”

   “You know, if we lived together,

   “Ah-hah!”

   “If, if we lived together, I'd wake up early and cook you a nice Japanese breakfast. Then I'd wake you up . . .”

   “No you wouldn't. You'd oversleep like you usually do and have no time to make breakfast.”

   “B-but . . .”

   “And because you hog the futon and grind your teeth all night long, I wouldn't be able to get more than a few short naps in during the night. My back would be so stiff and sore by the time morning came around, that only after you got out of the bed, I'd finally be able to sleep. You'd rush off to work, forgetting about me, I'd oversleep and wouldn't have time to fix myself even the simplest of breakfasts. No, if we lived together, I'd be tired and hungry. Who knows what kind of chronic illnesses I'd end up with?”

†About the size of a one-pfennig coin.

Write in the T'ick of T'ings

   Around the end of November I traveled to Kyôto to take part in the Japan Writer’s Conference, a yearly gathering of writers living and working in Japan which was held this year at Dôshisha Women’s College. Presentations were made by a number of writers on topics ranging from how to use social networking sites to sell your stuff to how to incorporate Japanese poetry into your prose or something like that.

   I attended three presentations on a dreary Sunday morning, one of which was one on using social networking, mainly Twitter. The other two presentations were by a middle-aged American woman who writes about raising special needs bi-cultural children—talk about niches—and a representative from Tôkyô Notice Board who was seeking submissions for the free paper.

   While I am glad I took part in the conference and will most likely attend the conference again next year, I only brought home two omiyage (souvenirs), if you will from the events I attended: one, writers are a terribly shabby crowd of people—with fashion sense and hygiene issues worse than university professors, which is saying a lot—and, two, the people making the presentations appeared to be as unskilled at navigating the waters of the publishing industry as me, or worse.

   Take the first presentation given by the American woman. Although I learned about quite a few Internet sites that I had never heard of but which will surely come in handy, I came to the disappointing deduction that she wasn’t selling many books. She rattled of two or three examples where action had she had taken had led to a book sale, such as how commenting on another person’s blog. This kind of baby-step retailing just won’t get me to where I want to go, which is to be able to support my family comfortably on the merit of my writing alone. No mean feat.

   The second presentation was more entertaining because the Englishman giving it, an author of many ebooks written in the manner of Arthur Conan Doyle, was such a conceited buffoon. I didn’t learn much from him, either. But, I did confirm that in my own gropingly blind way, I was still leagues ahead of him. The writer did give a good presentation, I must admit, far more entertaining than I ever could. I got the impression, though, that the guy went around giving the same speech as a way to promote his work. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But, as the American above noted correctly, writers aren’t very interested in buying other people’s books. I, too, gave a presentation to the local JALT chapter last spring, something that caused me a lot of stress and resulted in very few books being sold. I was paid ¥10,000 for the presentation, though, which is more than any of the speakers at the conference could say.

   After three presentations, my brain was full, so I went out into the wet and blustery afternoon to try and get some sightseeing in before I had to catch my train home.

   Across from Dôshisha’s campus, is Kyôto Gyoen, a large park in the center of Kyôto where Kyôto Gosho, the former Imperial Palace, is located. While walking around the park, I happened to bump into a Canadian who I had chatted with at the conference. He had read an excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 at a party the night before, and I told him that I was a big fan of the author. After talking about Vonnegut, we started walking away from the park towards the south. I was making my way to the station—a walk that would take about four hours—and he was trying to get to the Kyôto National Museum before it closed.

   One thing I do not like about Kyôto is how early everything closes. The museum, for one, does not allow visitors in after five-thirty, and the famous Sanjûsan Gendô temple across the street is closed to visitors in the winter months from three-thirty in the afternoon. Restaurants, too, tend to stop serving around nine in the evening. For someone used to having dinner at ten—my neighborhood of Daimyô can be very accommodating in this regard—I couldn’t believe it the first time I visited the ancient capital. You’d think that a city which is Japan’s number one or two tourist destination for foreigners and Japanese alike would be more . . . welcoming. But, no.

   As the Canadian and I walked south along the Kamo River, I talked about my dreams, no my goals, with regard to writing. (I hope to, no I will be able to retire from teaching altogether within five years time and focus solely on writing, earning double what I currently make. Again, no mean feat.) The Canadian told me that he had spoken the other day to the writer of the Sherlock Holme’s fan fiction and asked him how many books he had sold.

   This character, you must understand, is terribly aggressive in “marketing” (if you can call it that) his work. He posts almost daily about his books at various Facebook pages—something I’m sure that I am not alone I, finding annoying—as well as on Twitter. Because he, too, writes in such a targeted niche, his books tend to rank up rather high among Sherlock Holme’s style ebooks. (Big deal!)[1]

   The English writer told the Canadian he had sold more than four thousand books. That may sound like a lot, but it doesn’t really amount to all that much in royalties. Amazon pays 35% or 70% in royalties for works published on the Kindle, much higher than traditional book publishers, which only pay 10-15%. Most of his ebooks sell for about $3.40, meaning he has earned at most $9,000 for his dozen works. Moral of this story: keep your day job.

   I told the Canadian that I, too, had “sold” several thousand books over the past twelve months.[2] (A gasp of “wow” again.) But added that I was nowhere near where I wanted to be sales-wise. I wouldn’t be even begin to pay off my bar tabs with my current royalty income. (First t’ings first!)

   There was another thing that the Englishman said that caused me to laugh under my breath. He boasted, yes boasted, that after signing up with a Twitter managing service, he had boosted his followers to four thousand. He paused after saying this to let his audience soak in their bedazzlement. My Gabo tweets already have over ninety thousand followers. This is nothing for me to boast about, though: the content is all Gabriel García Márquez’s.

   What else did I learn from that conference? That magazines are ravenous, yet terribly picky, eaters. A problem, however, arises when you serve them a good meal. They may be more than happy to consume it, but not as eager to pay for it. I should mention that the guy who was seeking submissions for Tokyo Notice Board, a small magazine that is probably going to close up shop this year, was impressed that I had written for the “illustrious” Metropolis.

   Anyways, now that my spring break has begun in earnest, I’m spending about an hour a day researching publishers and agents in the hope that I’ll find one that will help me publish and promote my novels. This is, after all, the time-honored way to make a proper living writing fiction. Everything else is fantasy.

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[1] That reminds me: the woman who writes on the topic of raising a multi-cultural special needs child mentioned that her book had ranked among the top one hundred books on Japan. Some of the people in the audience gasped, “Wow!” Not to blow my own horn, but books by yours truly have been ranked so many times in the top ten such books I’ve lost count. I even had three books in the top five once, which made me awfully happy for a day or two.

[2] If you sign up for Amazon’s library which allows members to “borrow” ebooks, you get a share of the funds set aside for the library. Signing up for the library also allows you to promote your books for free, if you like. I tend to do these kinds of promos with my B-Sides essay collections as those were published more or less to attract attention to my two novels Rokuban—No. 6 and A Woman’s Nails. One of the things you’ll hear and read about the marketing side of publishing is that there is no better way to promote your work than by publishing something else. It’s true.

Black Ships

   Kenta, a former student and now close friend of mine, was in town for a few days, having taken a week off from an otherwise hectic schedule to spend with family during the New Year’s holiday. I was fortunate enough to have coffee with Kenta while he was here.

   Every time Kenta and I visit, the conversations we have cover a range of topics from family, dating, school life at Yale, and the various projects he is engaged in.

   I write. Kenta does magic. I think I’d much rather be a magician, but at forty-six, I think I’ll stick with the writing—old dogs not learning new tricks and all that. Far more impressive than anything Kenta can do with a deck of cards, however, is the fact that at only 21 years of age, the Yale junior has already had a hand at starting a number of businesses, including GAKKO, a summer program that brings students, artists, and entrepreneurs from all over the world to Japan to share ideas and inspiration.

   Talking to Kenta, it’s easy to understand how some people are able to do great things with their lives. While the only proof of this for most those men is the amassing of fabulous amounts of money, with Kenta, you can easily picture him one day not only making the wheelbarrows full of cash, but also impacting the lives of people who will never have the pleasure of knowing him personally.

   As we were walking back to my apartment after coffee—and this is something interesting about Kenta: he always stays with me as long as he can, follows me on foot, going far out of his way, all the way back to where I have to go, if only to get a few more minutes of conversation in, because with Kenta you never really know when we’ll be able to meet again.[1] Anyways, as we were walking back to my apartment, the megalopolis Tôkyô came up.[2] Kenta said he worried about the next big earthquake hitting the city.

   That earthquake is the elephant in the room that everyone is trying to pretend isn’t there. It seems that the whole population of Tôkyô is crossing its fingers, praying it doesn’t happen, at least not in their lifetime. This seems to be pretty much the strategy for so many problems in this country that have been left to fester for decades: let’s just hope worst doesn’t actually come to worst.

   Kenta’s worry was that Japan, with all her other woes, wouldn’t be able to cope with a major seismic jolt to the capital. I agreed, likening it to the final blow before the country was KO’d and fell face first onto the mat.

   I added that when the Tôhoku earthquake happened, I thought that it was exactly what the country needed to finally shake it out of its economic and political stupor; to get it up and fighting again. But, almost two years later, the country is still limping along pathetically.

   “Yamato (the delivery service),” Kenta said, “was able to get to the affected area faster than the Self-defense Force.”

   “I’m not surprised,” I replied. “There was a study a few years back on competiveness and efficiency. It found that Japanese companies were generally pretty competitive, even when compared to foreign companies. The Japanese government, however, was near the bottom of the list.[3] Maybe we can get Yamato defend Japan in the event of a Chinese attack.”

   Kenta laughed, but it’s no laughing matter when you really think about it.

   “Two years ago,” I continued, “I was at the pharmacy waiting to get a prescription filled. It was the day just after Coming-of-Age Day and there was a photo of twenty-year-old women dressed up like dolls in their fancy kimonos. And the headline said, ‘Two Lost Decades’. Two decades and this country is still in the doldrums. I find it hard to believe that there hasn’t been a revolution. I mean, there should have been one after the first lost decade.”

   But what did Japan get? Koizumi. A charismatic leader, yes, but one who didn’t really do all that much during his long tenure[4] as Prime Minister. While the banks were stabilized, the economy grew, and Japan Post was privatized (somewhat), many of Japan’s long-term problems were not addressed. Public debt, for instance, continued to rise and now stands at about 225% of GDP, the highest of any country, save Lebanon. (I sure can pick winners.)

   Kenta agreed that a revolution was needed—not too many Japanese disagree with me when I bring up so radical a solution for the country’s troubles—and added that in historical terms, Japan was ripe for change.

   Seventy years after the Meiji Restoration, which had brought Japan out of its seclusion and set it on a path of lightning-quick modernization, Japan would lose the Pacific War. The defeat would herald in a new era of democracy, which then led to the country becoming the second largest economy in the world. That, too, was seventy years ago.

   People often get their hopes up when they see numbers like that. Surely something is bound to happen, they think, so they sit back and do nothing; and, not surprisingly, nothing happens.

   Many commentators have noted that Japan tends to change as a result of outside pressure, what is known here as gaiatsu (外圧). This was true at the end of the Edo Period when Commodore Perry’s “black ships” sailed into Uraga Harbor demanding that the country open up its ports to foreign ships and trade.[5] It was true again when Japan was defeated and then occupied by American forces in 1945.

   But where, I wonder, will the outside pressure come from today?

   America is on the decline, whether you want to admit it or not, and Europe is becoming increasingly introverted, mired in problems of its own. The only country that I can envision putting pressure on Japan to change is China. Yes, China.

   What worries me is that while the pressure placed on Japan by the United States was for the most part positive and resulted in an improvement in the lives of ordinary Japanese, the same cannot be said of China. Granted, America did not act with pure altruism when dealing with Japan in the 1854 and 1945, but, as I have mentioned above, the result—with the exception of perhaps Okinawa—had for many decades been a change for the better for the Japanese citizenry.

   Will outside pressure from China also be a positive influence on Japan, or will it be a caustic one? I worry that it will be the latter.

   Many Japanese believe that America will come save the day if China ever gets too aggressive in East Asia. I’m afraid I am not as confident as them.

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[1] Although Kenta and I promised to meet again that afternoon, it just didn’t work out. We may meet again on Sunday, and I do hope we can, even if it is for a few minutes, but I doubt it will happen. No worries, though. We will surely meet again the next time he is in Japan, just as we always do.

[2] I really enjoyed my three visits to the capital last year and am looking forward to even more visits in the coming twelve months. I have three trips planned for this year already: late March, May, and July.

[3] The World Economic Forum publishes a Global Competitiveness survey every year. While Japan was ranked number one out of 144 nations on business sophistication and fifth in innovation. The most problematic factors for doing business in Japan are tax rates, policy instability, inefficient government bureaucracy, and government instability.

[4] Koizumi was the third-longest serving Prime Minister after Eisaku Satô (1964-1972) and Shigeru Yoshida (1948-1954). He was in office for 1979 days from 26 April 2001 to 26 September 2006. One benefit a country with the same leader for several consecutive years enjoys is diplomacy. When the PM changes every year, it’s difficult for other countries to take Japan’s leader seriously. Why negotiate when only ten months later there will be another man living in the Kantei?

[5] There’s an interesting angle on this history that has implications not so much for Japan as it does for the U.S. today. One of the main reasons U.S. ships needed to Japan to open her ports was so that the whaling ships could get supplies. U.S. whalers had killed so many whales by the mid 1800s that they were sailing around the tip of South America and into the Pacific to hunt. The hunting took them further and further away, all the way to the coast of Japan. Think about that. In many ways, our oil industry is repeating this today. First oil was drilled in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then when those wellls dried up, Oklahoma and Texas. When those dried up, the rigs moved off shore, further and further out. The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

B-Sides (2012)

   The latest volume of B-Sides is now available for download. Check it out! The Chinese character at the bottom right corner on the cover, incidentally, can be read "usagi" or "to" and refers to 2012, the Year of the Rabbit (兎年).