Moment(s)

I think I'm going to start changing the way I use this blog. Not because I'm going to make the decision to, but because it's just the way things are going. I feel that creation is something uniquely, and maybe most, beautiful in its moment, in spontaneous expression of thought and emotion. I've found myself making music by this idea more and more, and when I write in my journal, I often do it that way. So here's something that's been tugging at my mind all week, but really struck me just now:

This school's "International Food Week" is stupid. Monday - Brazilian, Tuesday - Vietnamese, Wednesday - Italian, Thursday - Japanese, Friday - Russian. School lunch is Japanese food every day of the year, and even in these five, infinitesimal days they cannot resist putting in Japan. Plus the fact that all the meals so far have just been small variations on the same Japanese food we get all the time anyways - rice, a soup, a little salad-type thing, maybe some small fish, and a fruit. As I look at the school flyer describing the food, I see: the days of the week with their corresponding country written next to them, the katakana (Japanese alphabet for "foreign" words) reading of the foods and the Japanese description of what's inside, a photo of the food, and a little picture of the country's flag sometimes accompanied by a cute little ethnically essentialized cartoon of a happy person from that country. Thursday, however, has none of this; only a little chart that reads, "Japanese Food's Good Points." All you have to do is read this to know you're in for another lesson in the way people can continue to create cultural characteristics out of nothing.

"It has a sense of the four seasons. There are lots of different ingredients and it has good nutritional balance." These are things I've heard over and over again since I've been here. People always ask me, "Do you have four seasons in America? Japan does." And then, "Oh yeah, in foreign countries, people have really bad nutritional balance. In America, don't you just eat bread all the time? Japanese food has very good nutritional balance and is good for you." I don't even want to get into taking apart all the different parts of this sentiment, but I'll mention that when people here do talk to me about the massive amount of unhealthy food in Japan (ie. fried shrimp, fried chicken, fried pork, pretty much fried anything) and the diseases caused by this, they say it's because of foreign influence and that "traditional" Japanese food is not like that.

But what even is "traditional" Japanese food, or even just "Japanese" food? If you look around any town, the three most prominent foods are curry, grilled meat, and ramen, hailing from India, Korea, and China respectively. After that, okonomiyaki and yakisoba are pretty popular and make appearances at pretty much any festival. But where do those two foods even come from? They are part of the Japanese food canon, but how long have they even been around? From what I've picked up, the origins of okonomiyaki and yakisoba, which are much stronger in taste than most foods that are traditionally Japanese (something that is admittedly also pretty unclear), probably lie sometime in the Meiji era, when richer sauces from Western countries began being imported. And I mean, okonomiyaki is made out of flour dough, not an ingredient usually considered "traditionally" Japanese. After these, udon, soba, and tempura are pretty main staples of cheap food here, but I don't know their histories so I can't make any guesses about them.

But if all these different foods which are so quintessentially "Japanese," and consumed in such huge volumes by Japanese people, do not even come originally from Japan, what makes them Japanese? Are they made Japanese by the unique way people here modify them to fit their own tastes? If so, is the essence of "Japanese food" found in the commonalities between those changes?

"It includes lots of fish, soy beans, vegetables, and ingredients from the sea. It makes it so harmful substances do not build up in your system." Japanese food does have a lot of those ingredients, and I'm not going to try to question that last part since I don't know anything about its scientific properties.

This is the most ridiculous one, though: "There are different ways of cooking it." I don't know since when having a variety of cooking styles has been a uniquely Japanese characteristic...

I've heard the things about different ways of cooking and good nutritional balance so many times and I really wonder from where they come. The four seaons thing, too.

So, there you go. I have effectively written on an idea that struck a chord in me until I lost my train of thought and don't really feel that provoked by it anymore.

I'm hungry.

Thoughts, thoughts

Such as...

Would I be happiest with the future job and goal of college teaching and researching?

If it was, I would have to find something I really want to study to get a PhD.

And maybe that's what MAs are for.

Maybe I don't have to know so definitely what I would want to study yet to plan on an MA after all. It's all a process after all, isn't it?

I have lots of ideas...some of them are disparate...unconnected...but only seemingly.

I made a list of professors to ask about grad school and research on identity, it's contsruction, and it's expression (through art) while going through Media Studies, History, Asian-American Studies, Chicana/o Studies, Black Studies, Art and Art History, Sociology, Gender and Women's Studies, English, Psychology, and...maybe that's it department pages. Under what field name would my project be? Is there such a thing as "Identity Studies?" Not really, according to my Google search. ...don't really want the national boundaries...themed-based study of historical memory and how it affects and is affected by identity and it's expression...?

Now I'm just using this blog as a writing pad.

Assortments

Assorted Jelly Beans:

My Wikipedia flow from yesterday at work: vex punk rock -> los illegals -> the plugz -> los cruzados -> tito and tarantula -> once upon a time in mexico -> robert rodriguez. I learned a lot. For example, did you know Willy Herrón was not only artist/muralist of Asco fame, but also the lead singer of Los Illegals? I most certainly do now.

I ate a kiwi with the skin on today.

I realized the other day: I am moving further away from law school, and more and more toward grad school. Then more and more towards art.

Another realization: studying identity and it's construction is actually not very far removed from living performance art, and actually people represent themselves and their conceptions of themselves through art, and is that why people study art and art history and it's not just a bunch of stuffy old white-centric volumes about the genious of the arch and the Italian Renaissance, and what does the experimental (Chicana/0) art of the 60s-80s mean about identity formation at that time, and how do Chicana/os today represent themselves through experimental art forms such as noise music and live performance, and how do people in Japan construct, and apparently essentialize, their own culture and identity based on a seemingly unmoving idea of what is Japanese and what is not and what is traditional and what is not, and how do governments seize upon this to bolster their own agendas, and is this odd nationalism actually a cultural trait or something that was instituted by politicians in the past, and couldn't it, shouldn't it be a combination of both and more, and in what is it rooted, and I keep having the thought that damn, this culture is a huge conglomeration of an infinite number of influences from other cultures, but isn't that what any culture is, but no, this seems different, more so, but then I loose my train of thought because I'm typing this all out as I go now and my thoughts have gone in new directions.
But isn't that interesting?

Tonight is so beautiful.

I drove up and parked in the garage of the friend who's house I'm staying at for now, got out of the car, turned around, and saw a huge field across the road covered in a light frost of snow. A jeep, parked slanted downwards, poised as if about to enter the spread of white-frosted little hills, also was covered in a coat of thick white dust. Further behind, a brown-white wooden house stood tall and widely, a single light on the second floor shining a yellow beam in all directions out of a wide window. I wondered how it could all be light up so brightly and clear to see, and upon wondering if it was a full moon looked up to see the majestic whole shape floating through curls and a mist of cloudy air. I gazed.

I took a walk down to a little structure, low to the ground and covered some kind of sheet, with a blue light shining out of or down onto it. As I approached I saw the yellow underneath and a nice light brown ground. There were sticks sticking out of it, reaching a short distance up in the air. Maybe they're for gridding or giving a foundation for some kind of construction. I didn't see any vegetables, so maybe it wasn't a little garden. The yellow light from below made a somehow amazing and beautiful blue beam spread out of the top, though.

I thought how cool it would be to live in one of these huge houses off a side road from the highway, removed from neighbors and others and pretty much everything, with just an amazing view and the ability to see and be right in beautiful nature ('s landscapes) at just a feeling. I thought, man, I could live here for a while, in one of these houses. Then I thought, wait, they are reasons why living here makes you miss the city, don't get too carried away. But still. It's nice to think about. Maybe if I had my band with me together in the house? The fantasy kind of went away, and I let it go. It was better to enjoy the feeling of being there then, in the midst of all this, and just...be.

Things I Learn

Wow, I am learning, a lot. Well, I came to Japan to learn about myself, and now that's what I'm doing.

One thing I learned: despite my conception of myself as an even-keeled person, I can be incredibly stubborn.

Another thing I learned tonight: the advice phone lines in place for JETs are actually amazing. Initially, I didn't feel any sort of connection to them and put them out of my head. "If I need help, I'll ask my family, not one of these random white guys who probably can't even relate to me." But, upon the suggestion of a friend and mentor, and in light of my living situation, I tried calling two of the lines tonight and found myself immediately lifted to a new level of lightness. No, my situation is not uncommon; living accomodations are actually one of the most widely called in problems. The guy who answered the first line said he even had a friend who had to move five times in two years. Just bad luck. Well. Wow.

I feel more like I can go through with this now, and hold onto my guns. As the girl who answered the second line said, you need that space to return back to, in which to feel comfortable and safe, no matter how the day was. Especially when you're trying to survive in (rural) Japan. And yeah, maybe that is enough of a reason to move out of your house. In addition to the build-up of black mold in your kitchen walls and water-marked ceiling, leaks in your roof, ocassional sewage backup in the toilet, and finding your hung-up laundry, papers left on desks, and blankets all quite a bit wetter than when you left them.

I wonder how I didn't do anything about this earlier. The mind is a crazy and very interesting thing. Very. Very interesting. Well, here's to a new start! This next seven months are going to be amazing.