Getting settled. Again.

Its funny.  You would think that being unemployed would give me a lot of free time.  Unfortunately it has not.

The day after returning to the U.S. I had to server jury duty.  I had been postponing it for about two years with six month extensions.  Apparently the good people at the jury services office just could not understand the concept of living outside the country.  So I got to spend my first full day in the states not enjoying the company of my family, but sleeping in a room full of strangers.  (Going west across the dateline I handle well, but for some reason going east across the Pacific always throws me for a loop and my sleep schedule still isn’t stabilized.  Just last night I couldn’t keep my eyes open past 10:30 and I woke up completely refreshed at the sensible hour of 4:45 in the a.m.)  Obviously no jurors were actually called on that day- they were half ready to riot at having to serve jury duty the day before Thanksgiving.  They would have condemned Mother Theresa to the gas chamber out of spite. 

Being completely jet  lagged while serving jury duty made for an interesting experience.  While sleeping soundly in my chair, some elderly gentleman thought it would be a good idea to wake me up by touching my hand.  I, of course, made the sensible response of leaping out of my chair, and throwing punches in the air.  I might have yelled something too, I am not sure.  I did have the good fortune of being in the courthouse cafeteria and there were few people about.

Also as readers of my blog may have gathered, I am a slightly sarcastic person.  In Japan I usually would make snide remarks about people in English.  While my wife and I were in Europe, I would keep my witty comments confined to the Japanese language.

So while serving jury duty I was watching a young woman play Hearts on a laptop.  I also may have, possibly, commented on her lack of ability at playing the game.  When I allegedly made those comments, I was also possibly located about three feet from her.  Due to my jet-lag, I may have made those comments in English, and in a loud voice.  At which point she may have paused the game, turned around and looked at me.  To which I may or may not have replied “Well, its a good day to practice, right?” and given her a little wave.

Since serving Jury Duty, I had to spend the day at the Social Security office trying to get my wife assigned a SSN.  (A story for another day.)  Coming down with a nasty cold, and my mom undergoing a three hour surgery.  I plan to update more regularly from here on out. 

Flying the Unfriendly skies.

We made the mistake of flying an American airline company to travel to the U.S.

Before, when traveling between the U.S. and Japan, C and I would always buy an American Airlines ticket.  Not that we ever wanted to fly on American Airlines- but, every time we flew AA before, we actually rode on a Japan Airlines jet.  So we got JAL service, a far superior product, for the slightly cheaper AA price, plus we could rack up JAL frequent flier miles.

This sweet arrangement has ended apparently.  This time when we flew back to the States, we rode on a combination JAL/AA flight.  However, we had the misfortune of riding on an AA jet.  (I feel really bad for the poor saps who bought a more expensive JAL ticket but were suckered into an AA flight.)

In addition to the lack of free alcohol (and I generally try to recoup the cost of my ticket on international flights by consuming an equal value in liquor) The AA flight we took was like spending a day in a rest home.  Well that is not a fair comparison, and I apologize to rest homes everywhere. 

The average age of the flight attendants was maybe 65 years old, and most of these golden girls didn’t look a day under 60.  At least one of them was old enough that she probably got her start as a flight attendant for the Wright brothers.

Now, I do not have anything against senior citizens in the work force, as long as they can do the job.  However these flight attendants, in addition to being incredibly surly, asked their customers on more then a few occasions to assist in their duties.  I do have to admit that the plane seemed very new.  It was so new in fact, that the food they served on the plane probably outdated it by at least six months.

My biggest complaint however, was about my carry on.  I play a Japanese musical instrument slightly smaller then the average guitar.  On the AA website they claim that guitars would be allowed as a carry on bag.  I contacted the airlines and described the instrument, its dimensions, and the flight I was taking to make sure I could bring the instrument as my carry on bag.  They replied saying that it would be no problem.  Of course, when I got to the gate, I was forced to check my instrument.  In addition to being lied to when I contacted AA, the staff member at the gate insulted me and laughed at me for being indignant about insisting on bringing on my carry on.

So my question is, why does the U.S. government insist on bailing out the airline companies?  It is not just American Airlines that has poor service, in the last two years I have had the misfortune of flying United and Southwest as well.  I have flown on several different companies from several different countries.  Airline companies based in the States have an almost uniformly poor service.  In fact, everyone I know that flies more then once a decade does everything they can to avoid flying on a U.S. carrier.  The airlines do not need more bail-outs.  They need to offer a service worth buying.

Next time I have to cross the Pacific if faced with the choice of taking a U.S. airline or swimming, I think I would try the latter.

All I need now is my “00″

In about fifteen hours I will no longer be a resident of Japan.

I found out that the only way to not to pay the expensive residence tax is to give up my visa.  At least getting a residence visa in Japan is no where near as difficult as getting a residence visa in the States.

On the way back from getting a few odds and ends tied up, we were delayed by a good ninety minutes.  This was due to a traffic jam caused by a tiny fender-bender of an accident.  When I am delayed that long by traffic, I want to see blood on the asphalt.  Ok, I do not wantto see blood, but I didn`t want to be held up in traffic either.  I just want to be able to say “Ok, I was held up by thirty minutes, but that guy lost part of his hand.  Thus the cosmic balance is restored.”  I mean, if I am inconvenienced in the slightest, I at least want a decent reason for it.  Rough guidelines for maintaining karmic balance between other`s tragedy and my inconvienince are as follows-

30 min delay- massive vehicle damage.

1 Hour delay- Maiming.

2 hour delay- three words “Orphanage bus fire.”

My wallet currently holds $50 U.S.,  200 Euros, 5,000 yen and a random assortment of British Pounds, Thai Baht, Korean Won, and Chinese Yuan.  It also contains various IDs in Japanese and in English.  I feel mildly like a secret agent, though, obviously not a very well-funded one. 

Neither C nor I are looking forward to another trans-Pacific flight.  At least we can say our biggest concerns at this point is weather or not they will let me take my shamisen as my carry-on and weather or not the in-flight movies are any good.  Obviously, things are not going too poorly.  Next time I update will be from the states.

Living in Japan: One thing that I won’t miss.

It seems to be the God given right of young men everywhere to be as ridiculous and annoying as possible.  Or at least they act like it is. 

As C and I get down to the last few days of living in Japan, we are waxing a bit nostalgic about what we will miss after we leave.

One thing that we absolutely will not miss at all are mini-bikes.  They are not something I ever really recall seeing in the states, and the riders of these circus-reject contraptions manage to be about as annoying as humanly possible without inciting mass murder. (I did, however spend more then a few minutes fantasizing about it.)

A mini-bike is well, a miniature motorcycle, and they are almost exclusively ridden by men under the age of twenty-five.  Now what makes these damnable contraptions so infuriating is pretty simple.   Mini-bike riders, in their quest to be as annoying as possible, remove the machine’s muffler, or use one that seems to be basically useless in actually muffling the engine noise. (Apparently there are no nuisance laws here.)  Mini-bike riders then choose to express their individuality by riding in large packs of five to fifteen bikes, all of whom comply with safety regulations by wearing their helmets hanging off the back of their heads, strap around their throat.  (Another well-written ordinance here in Japan.)

Finally, in what seems to be a bid to make sixty second trimester abortions legal, the bike riders spend most of their time coasting in neutral, while constantly revving their engine.

So you have a pack of five mini-bikes, no mufflers, coasting slowly down the street, all of whom are constantly racing their engine.  Thus ensuring that wherever they go, good times are had by none.

Outside of cruising down residential streets, they also like to go to the beach on nice, peaceful days and ride around in circles in the parking lot.  This way they can share the sound of their bikes engine with hundreds of people at a time.  They also like to put in an appearance at the spring time cherry-blossom viewing.

I think that the only way that I could ever live in Japan long-term again is if there was an open hunting season on these fine young gentlemen at least three months out of the year.  My only consolation thus far has been imagining a massive mini-bike pile-up, with their mis-worn helmets popping off heads like champagne corks. 

But I am not passive aggressive at all.

Ron Paul Fundraiser- This December 16th

It is shaping up that the Ron Paul campaign will break its own record.

The first major grassroots organized fundraiser- thisnovember5th.com set a new record with $4 million raised online in a single 24 hour period. Roughly 18,000 people pledged to donate $100 at thisnovember5th.com . On the actual day, there were over 38,000 donations, the vast majority of which were from first time donors. It proved that Ron Paul`s support is both widespread and growing.

The next major fundraiser- this november 11th.com did a very impressive $200,000. It did not have the massive support that thisnovember5th.com did, but I believe that due to their proximity the two fundraisers stepped on each others toes, so to speak. Also it did not have the time to build support that the previous fundraiser did. It was still a very significant amount raised on a single day less then one week after a massive, record breaking day.

Another major grass-roots organized fund raiser is shaping up to take place on December 16th. You history buffs out there will remember that December 16th is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party- keeping in line with the Ron Paul`s rEVOLutionary campaign theme.Launched on November 8th there are, at the time of this writing there are 11,779 pledges to donate $100 on December 16th. That is about 2,000 people signing up every day. If Ron Paul`s supporters come through like they did on Nov 5th, there is no doubt in my mind that this will be another record breaking day for the Ron Paul campaign.

There is still more then a month to build support – if it is anything like the first fundraiser it will blow the roof off of the Ron Paul campaigns previous record.

If you want to sign up to donate you can do so at www.teaparty07.com

You can track Ron Paul`s fundraising progress at www.ronpaulgraphs.com

Or you can go ahead and donate at the official campaign website- www.ronpaul2008.com

One of the best movies you will probably never see.

The Japanese movie Bushi no Ichibun was released in the U.S. on November 2nd as Love and Honor.

So yes, I am a bit behind the times. But if you get a chance to see this movie do yourself a favor and check it out.

Personally I my preference in movies leans towards those that involve guns. Or dinosaurs. Or dinosaurs with guns. But until some Hollywood bigwig buys my script for Ninja Dinosaurs Vs. Vixen Amazon Samurai With Guns IV (Hey, Starwars started with #4 too! It is a recipe for success!) I will have to make do with lesser films. One of the best of these lesser films (it lacks both guns AND dinosaurs AND car chases.) is Love and Honor. (Bushi no Ichibun)

In spite of it being a “samurai” movie it almost has a complete lack of bloodshed. Instead it focuses on things like “story” and “plot” and “character development” stuff that, in general I try to avoid. Kimura Takuya, singer from the “Boy-Band” SMAP (I use that term loosely as they haven’t been boys since the Reagan administration.) spends a busy two hours in Love and Honor proving that he does in fact posses some talent, though admittedly not in the singing or dancing department.

In all seriousness though, In a nutshell, Kimura is a low level samurai who works as a professional food taster who is blinded by poisonous fish. He and his wife must then deal with depression, financial crises, love and betrayal as the vultures come circling in. It is one of the best movies I have seen in the last year, and one of the few Japanese movies I have seen where I thought “Wow, someone really should subtitle that movie and release it in the states.” Then I remember that most people have no taste. (For proof submit every Eddie Murphy movie since Beverly Hills Cop 2)

The movie itself forms the final instalment of a loose trilogy that focuses on hard-luck samurai. The previous two movies (Twilight Samurai and Hidden Blade) are already available on English-subtitled DVD. Both are excellent films but from what I have seen most people agree with me that they are not of the same caliber as Love and Honor.

The following clip actually has nothing to do with the movie Love and Honor, other then it also involves samurai and is also full to the brim with awesome.

Teaching in Japan: The Silver Lining of Nova`s collapse

Hubris.

I have been avoiding writing about the Nova scandal but it is no longer impossible to ignore the elephant in the room. For those of you who do not know, Nova is the largest English conversation school (eikaiwa) in Japan. With roughly seven thousand foreign language teachers and staff in its employ and nearly 420,000 students. Wait a minute…sorry, all of that should have been in the past tense.

Nova, the eikaiwa giant, is no more, and no amount of cuteness in its pink bunny logo can save it now.

Over the last few months the company has been disintegrating and now it seems there is no hope of a recovery. Its staff is basically unemployed, many of whom are still owed their salary from August. Nova, a company that advertised on television, in the airport, and was a nearly ubiquitous feature in Japanese train stations, had reached nearly iconic status. Shortly its rotting corpse will be thrown on the trash heap of history and I say good riddance.

I do salute the loyalty of the staff members who have worked diligently for months without pay, but I have to point out that it was pretty dumb to do so, considering how terribly Nova treated their employees. I have a lot more sympathy for the students who, for the most part, pay upfront for expensive year long contracts, and now, for the most part are basically screwed out of their money.

Nova`s main problem was hubris. It controlled nearly 50% of the Eikaiwa market with a widely recognised brand. Apparently it thought it could get away with a number of shenanigans indefinitely. After talking to several (ex) Nova employees it seems that the primary criteria for being hired at Nova was having a pulse. Until recently its core curriculum was apparently centered around a series of texts written in the 1970`s to teach English to Mexican immigrants living in America. Obviously this was a good choice because Spanish is so very similar to Japanese. In addition, students were not tied to any one teacher, making it impossible to tailor a class to the needs of any individual student. To overcome this problem, Nova created a rigid, factory like curriculum that while forcing untalented, uninterested teachers (of whom there were many) to teach at a minimum level, it also forced talented, dedicated, hardworking teachers (of whom there were many) to teach at a minimum level.

It was a great way to build customer loyalty, locking customers into a long, expensive contract (but a relatively cheap cost per lesson) for a barely acceptable product. If they wanted out they were refunded a fraction of their money.

There are also several rumors that long term, experienced and higher paid teachers would not get their contracts renewed in order to be replaced with newer, inexperienced, and lower paid instructors. The fact of the matter is that average full-time salaries have been falling for several years. With the government mandated minimum of 250,000 yen a month that can only mean that experienced teachers are being replaced with new blood. In addition to that, Nova in recent years has been increasingly avoiding the regulated minimum wage by hiring “part-time teachers” who were worked just shy of full time and paid a subsistence level wage. In addition to that Nova teachers were apparently defrauded as standard practice. Moving into a new apartment is quite expensive in Japan, with landlords frequently requiring up to six months rent as a deposit. So Nova rented out apartments and sublet them to their employees. The catch being that they would cram three strangers in a two or one bedroom apartment and charge them (for example) 35,000 yen/month each when the total rent on the apartment could be as low as 70,000 yen/month.

What a great way to build employee loyalty. Seriously. The fact that their staff did not abandon the company like rats from a sinking ship when their first paycheck was held says a lot about more about the character of their staff then it does about the management of the company. Or gullibility. Or both.

So what is the silver lining? Well, not a whole lot to be honest.

There is a chance, however slim, that this could be a good thing for language students in Japan. Nova was the 800 lb gorilla in the Eikaiwa biz. Without Nova, perhaps the industry can evolve from an expensive hobby staffed by tourist-teachers into one that provides meaningful instruction in foreign languages.

The main question is will the now-wizened Japanese consumer seek out and demand qualified and talented instructors, and be willing to pay for a quality product, or will they be duped again by a cute mascot and deceptively low prices?

Living in Japan: Turning on the Cold

Japanese people insist that Japan has four seasons. If you hear them tell it, Japan just might be the only place in the world that has four seasons. Where I live in Japan, however, this is patently false.

One question I am frequently asked here is “Do you have four seasons in your home country?” To which I reply “No, I am from southern California. We only have two seasons, pretty warm and kind of warm.” However, what they do not want to hear, is that southern Japan, at least, really only has two seasons as well- uncomfortably hot and humid and uncomfortably cold and dry. There is, at most, a two week transitional period between the hot and cold seasons. These two week periods are labeled “Spring” and “Fall” respectively. (Or Autumn, if their first English instructor was from the U.K.)

No, compared to some places the summers here are not that hot, nor are the winters that cold. However, most buildings in Japan are not properly insulated. In addition to that, traditional Japanese architecture was designed when there was no air conditioning and is meant to be as cool as possible in the summer, and most dwellings still follow this general plan. What this means today is that during the summer, you are almost always hot and winter means you are almost always cold.

Many people, especially Canadians, do not really grasp this concept, and they say “Ha-HA! I am from Canada where in the winter it gets down to minus one billion degrees! You Americans just do not know what cold is!”

Well the fact is that they do not know what cold is, either. Most places where it gets cold, really cold, in the winter, people move from their heated homes to their heated garages, get in in their heated cars and drive to their heated offices or stores.

There is a reason that electronic, heated toilet seats sell so well in Japan. A general lack of insulation along with a reliance on kerosene heaters mean that if it is zero degrees outside, then when you wake up to use the toilet early in the a.m…. that toilet seat is most likely a roasty toasty zero degrees as well. In the words of one foreigner living in Japan- “Wow… where I am from we just heat the whole house.” I have, on occasion, found the inside of my freezer to be slightly warmer then the rest of my apartment. The refrigerator was down right toasty.

Of course, in the office the thermostat is run by the boss. All bosses only have two settings on their thermostat- way too hot and way too cold. Which they use depends both on the season and if the boss is actually present in the office. If the boss is present in the office, then the thermostat is always set so that in winter people are passing out from the heat where in summer, the occasional case of frostbite is not unknown. If the boss is not present, then the settings are reversed- During winter at most, a single candle may be used for heat, but only after the temperature has dropped below freezing. During the summer the aircon may be employed, but the thermostat must be set at thirty degrees Celsius. This is because companies in Japan view their workers like family, and as everyone knows, most people hate their family.
Since I have returned from Europe, the weather started as rather warm, but day by day the temperature is dropping and I am looking forward to a nice, warm California winter.

Japanese Music that doesnt Suck: The Blue Hearts

Japanese music has largely not penetrated the consciousness of the west. And for good reason- the vast majority of it is pretty darn terrible. A nearly endless parade of unremarkable female singers singing forgettable songs about interchangeable boyfriends. Now, don`t get me wrong, most music that is made anywhere is bad, but most Japanese pop music has melodies so trite, lyrics so saccharine sweet, that even June Cleaver would call it lame.

Ok, its hard to get away from the lyrics that, when translated into English, would make the teeniest of teeny-boppers cringe… But there are a few bands worth listening to. One of these is a punk band from the late 80`s and early`90s called The Blue Hearts.

While they still occasionally suffer from the sappy-lyric syndrome, they did manage to get themselves banned from television for a year due to their habit of cursing between songs and spitting on a camera. In addition to their relatively harsh sound, a lot of their popularity was due to the energy and charisma of their lead singer, Komoto Hiroto. (His charisma stemming largely from the fact that he acted like a total crack head on stage, yet very humble when he gave interviews.)

Unfortunately for them, their sound was ten years out of date by the time they started playing and the era of punk music that they would have been perfect for had already passed them by. But in a country that is notorious for carefully scripting and crafting every aspect of a public figure`s life and performance, they are one of the few examples of a musician able to do largely what they wanted.

The band broke up in 1995. The lead singer reformed a band called The High Lows, then a succession of increasingly obscure bands. His insistence on only playing music that he wanted to meant that his sound was increasingly irrelevant to the people that actually bought albums and concert tickets.

Here you can find their two biggest hits- Train Train and Linda Linda.

Being to belt out either one of these at a karaoke bar in Japan will make you be crowned karaoke hero for the night. 100% guaranteed.

My personal favorite is Jyounetsu no Bara (Rose of Passion)

Another Ron Paul Fundraiser

There is another 24 hour Ron Paul fundraiser being organized. This time it is on Nov 11th. (Veterans Day) If you did not have a chance to donate on the fifth, or if you want to donate more you should check it out. You can find the site here. Thus far, it does not have anywhere near the support that the last one had, but any day is a good day to donate to Dr. Paul`s campaign.