Well, okay!

Well, okay!


Mhm.

So, I have a lot to talk about from music to history to thoughts to bots to chicken pots.
That is one example of how my train of thought works.

First, since I happen to be listening to them, Abe Vigoda. One, I miss their shows a little bit, for they are quite fun and inspire a dancing spirit in your center. (This might end up being a weird post...). I was just watching these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS6KDcD32SI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9Mcj4UXIyY&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dU0e4Rfflo&feature=related
Yes, the last one is full of ridiculously ridiculous hipsters, but it really brings back feelings from seeing them live so I like it.
And yes, the lead singer now seems to care a lot about the way he looks (and actually it's kind of weird that he's the "lead singer," I remember both guitarists singing a lot before), but really, really, really really...they have gotten a lot better I think. Their newest songs seem to be way more developed, full, and on the edge than their stuff from before. They seem to be moving toward a trance-ish, ambient kind of noise-rock, which is really interesting and different from the thrashier stuff from before, which could be taken as become fuller or just being drawn into the inclination of a lot of experimental rock artists toward more enveloping, droney music...which would mean they might not actually be moving into new ground? (Damn, this sounds pretentious. Try to imagine me actually saying it in a nice, humble voice, as I might say it if I was talking to you. :)) But anyways, their newer stuff seems really cool to me. I always thought it was a joke before when their myspace description included "tropical," but now they really do sound like that, haha. Maybe they were going for that this whole time and finally achieved it? Or maybe I just noticed it late, haha. In any case, thinking of their live shows is nostalgic, and it's pretty cool to see their style change and develop (I'm thinkin' of the super fast delayed guitar and simply rhythmic drums especially
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs1vTrt8AX0&NR=1
.). It's crazy how suddenly they got to where they're at. Haha, they were the final act at the very first Smell show I went to.

Hm...Japan, that's where I'm at, that's right. Well, now I'm all in my music mood so let's see what I can get out about other topics. Uh...what did I want to write about?

Oh yeah, one thing that's been on my mind a lot this week is race, racism, nationalism and conceptions of all of those. Hm...I suppose this post is looking to be one of those really in-depth ones. So, like I said before, I was re-reading Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic by Ernesto Sagas, and finished it again this week. Man, I got so many more ideas out of it this time. I really wished I had read it again before writing my thesis, but I'm glad I've read it again now and my urge to sharpen and improve my thesis has resurfaced more strongly. So I've had that in my mind, plus I had an interesting experience with racial mis-identification yesterday, which added to my preoccupation with the topic. Conceptions of race that I run into with Japanese people and government continue to awe, irritate, and just confound me, and this latest encounter pretty much followed that pattern.

I've been mistaken for Japanese, in Japan, by Japanese people, probably about four or five times, and everytime it's pretty surprising and interesting. My first response was, whoa I've lived here for about 5 months, but have I really gotten that used to the mannerisms and social behavior to be mistaken for Japanese? Then, I began thinking about the fact that not all societies in the world go by the rigid racial system of the U.S. and that it's definately possible that Japanese, who generally don't see much of Latinos compared to other racial or ethnic groups, could just kind of fit one into another category. I mean, I've been mistaken for Italian, Iranian, Greek, Indian, Filipino, and part Chinese I don't even know how many times before in the U.S. and abroad. I mean, we know race is a social construction, and every society crafts their definition of race differently. It gets trickier when we think about how societies confuse race and nationality (This is also where that extra bit I got out of that book comes into play.).

So yesterday I was talking to someone from the center that prepares the lunches for all the area's schools and she asked me where I was from. I said the United States of America, and her response was, "America?? Really?" I was used to this because I get it pretty often, lots of times followed by, "I couldn't see you as anything but Japanese" or "Are you half-Japanese?" This time the woman said, "You don't look like an American," then the usual, "You look Japanese." Thinking back, I think I've actually been told I don't look American before, hm...but for some reason I hit me a lot harder this time. I thought back to those other times and realized (I think) that all those times a Japanese person told me I looked Japanese instead of American they weren't actually telling me I looked Japanese; they were telling me I don't look white, which to them was the equivalent of American.

It's almost as if people fit into a few categories here: Japanese, foreigners (white or black), or one of those other Asians. Japanese are one race, one nationality, and all that fabricated nationalistic identity. Foreigners are the obviously different and directly connected to nations by their racial appearance. In other words, Americans, Europeans, and Australians are white; all blacks are African or from the United States (and automatically connected to hip-hop, possibly the main medium through which people in Japan encounter images of black people ). When people speak about Chinese and Koreans in Japan, they almost never refer to them as foreigners, but they definitely do not consider them Japanese, even if they were born in Japan. From what I gather from conversations, whites and blacks are definately not mistakable for Japanese, whereas people of Asian descent have a "Japanese face." I've even talked to Japanese people who've been mistaken by other Japanese for Filipinos just because they were dark or suntanned, which is pretty out there because a LOT of Japanese are pretty damn dark, despite the media images of content, light-skinned Japanese.

To me, this seems like a complete confusion of race and nation, possibly stemming from government or who knows where else...it's pretty confusing. But that is where things get to a new level. Because then we start to hear talk about how the nation of Japan is naturally superior to other nations because it is one race, one family, one soul, and culturally ascendent (nihonjin ron). And then we can see how this isn't just Japan. The Dominican Republic, despite how much the primarily mulatto and black population there believes it, does not have a cultural or racial heritage that is Hispanic with some Indigenous blood mixed in, nor does it have natural superiority over a supposedly threatening, hateful, voodoo-worshipping, African Haiti next door. And Mexicans can't rightly claim they are one nation made up of one Mestizo race while purely Indigenous and African-descended populations are part of the country. In the cases of those two countries, the myth of national/racial unity serves to confuse and divide lower and working classes while elites, usually white (not as in W.A.S.P.), continue to exploit the country, among other things. So what does this mean for Japan?

Despite rhetoric in and outside of Japan, the country is not a paradise of egalitarian society, where there is no racism, there are no homeless, and everybody is in the same middle class. Compared to the U.S., yes, people don't usually kill each other here in cold blood for being a different race (as far as I know), the condition and number of homeless people does not seem to be as bad, and class disparities are not as extreme. But Japan's history is full of subjugation justified by racist theories - the colonization of the Ryukyu island (Okinawa) which continues to this day, the subjugation of the Ainu people in what is now northern Japan, and imperialism in East Asia driven by the idea that Japanese were to be the leaders of a submissive Asia under their control that was to resist Western empire. This history, in addition to the post-war course of development (oriented toward providing the United States with a window into prohibiting Communism in Asia, expanding its own military reach, etc.), has to have resulted in an unfair society in which "other Asians," Okinawans, and Ainu fill the lower end of the economic and social statification, the latter two of which have had to undergoe extremely intense, government-driven attempts at cultural assimiliation (including attempts at the extermination of their languages). So is it possible that the dominant, unrealistic conception of race and nation here serves to keep this system in place?

This is all going over my head, but I feel like I'm onto something. I'd like to pick this up again later. But I'm glad I got this out; these thoughts have been whirling inside my head for a long time now. The other day I thought, you know what, I could actually see myself going to grad school to study this kind of stuff. I would love to live some years of my life studying this kind of stuff in depth, living my life as an adventure centered around grappling with these issues based in real life situations. Actually, another thought I had recently, which came about because certain things which I thought I had gotten over already kept coming back and bugging me, was that it would be interesting to study the history, role, and effect of the "envidioso" in Latina/o/Chicana/o organizations (actually it would be interesting to see if other ethnically and racially centered organizations undergo the same sort of problem), try to better understand it, and help find a way to deal with its negativity. So, I've found topics - or I guess it would be more accurate to say that the topics came to me, and then really frustrated me haha - that could really make a positive difference if investigated. Hmm, I believe it is time for me to do some research.

I have a bunch of pictures of delicious food I've been eating for the past few days and I'm SUPER excited because I'm actually developing a dish I 1) really like, 2) can repeatedly call upon (like a Pokemon in the heat of battle!), 3) and can take special satisfaction in because I've been altering it little by little to have its own unique flavor and ingredients! I'm really excited about it and really want to talk to you about it and show you pictures of it but I'm really tired now after writing that huge thing and besides its late plus I worked a lot today on lesson plans and with kindergartners (which was awesome! if taxing). So, I will tell you about those things at another time.

Tomorrow's a moon watching party, which I can't wait for! There might by koto music, which would be awesome. Even if there's not though, it's a big festival in my own tiny, middle-of-nowhere town and I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

I want to get an electric guitar and scream and kick and hop around in a poisonous cloud of feedback with drums that keep pushing everyone toward the wall that we have no hope of clearing or breaking through but then we have to because there is no other way.

(Bipolar-Blonde Redhead)