Interesting

It's interesting, I've been thinking lately that I want to travel. Then, I realize that I don't feel like I'm traveling anymore, and I haven't felt that way for a long time.

Me

I'm getting better at listening to what other people have to tell me while still holding onto my opinion. This is a good skill and will develop into one even greater in time, I think.

El Chicano

I remember my Dad requesting Sabor A Mi from a trio in a restaurant when my family and I were in Mexico sometime recently. It was good. Really good.

(El Chicano - Sabor A Mi)

What happened

What happened today? I woke up this fine Sunday morning at 8:30 all excited to start the day early; I ate breakfast, read some of the Japanese book I'm on now, then took a nap and woke up at 1!! Damn, well there goes that plan.

Anyways, had a big thinking breakthrough last night. I'm in a good place, I feel.

I'm going to start limiting my language studies to just 15 minutes in hopes of being able to do them every day. Here we gooo!

(Angel Baby - Rosie & the Originals - is this band Chicana/o or not? I can't figure it out.)

I feel

I feel like these kinds of decisions I'm having to make are way beyond the tiny little mind, spirit, and bank of experiences I've got at this point. But since I've put myself here, I'll just have to push that spirit as far as it needs to go to make up for the lack of mind and experience, which I can't expand so instantly and at will right now, and make a decision. I could keep waiting for greater feelings of conclusion, which I don't think would be a bad thing, but it also feels like the time to decide is coming up pretty soon.

(European Jazz Trio - Best of Standards)

Wow-I mean-

Wow, this song my friend and I just made is awesome. I hate to be full of myself (ourselves?), if that's what I just did. But I'm so into it!!

Does

Does a near-obsession with the problems of (people in) the U.S. and a desire to contribute something to fixing them suddenly rising up in me indicate that I should be coming back to home/it all? I mean, this is possibly getting up to like high school levels of caring and wanting to do things for others and a better change. My state of mind is like I'm in the U.S. I just looked out my window and suddenly thought about what I was going to do the rest of the day and got a bit of a shock at remembering I'm in Japan.

Whoa

'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87

Whoa.

I think his is an inspiring story. I read it right when I'm trying to figure out if I really want to go to graduate school.

Whoa

Whoa, I have definitely lost weight over the past few months. Time to eat more, I s'pose.

Thoughts on a New Change

Something changed culturally in the '60s and '70s.

Something needs to change now. There needs to be a cultural change.

We can't bring the change in the same way people did in the '60s and '70s.

We have to make a new way to change.

Our change can't be based on the desire-driven movement of people without a strong cultural foundation. It has to be new, but it has to be based on tradition. It has to resurrect and reinforce, and it has to create, tradition.

Hm

The Town I Live in ~ Thee Midniters

Oh my gosh, why does it have to be so hard to decide whether to stay in or move away from a place? Right when I think I've figured it out completely, something comes along to make my decision seem even more correct, then it pulls out, and now I don't know anymore, and whenever I go out with people who've become good friends with me I want to stay here for as long as I can, and whenever I'm not hanging out with those people I'm bored and thinking, and thinking, and thinking, about all the possibilities awaiting at home and all the amazing experiences I could be making here at my new home from here on out, and not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing.

There seems to be no thought process.

I had a couple of beers.

Listening to Brenton Wood, on GoogleChat

me: you got too much soul
Dan: i'm a soulhog
i'm the white ppl of souls
souls being
whatever white ppl have a lot of
me: nothing
HAH!
like how i turned that one around??
huh, do ya??!
yeyeaahh, decolonization here we come.
Dan: OHHHHH
SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
P

Smile

Oh my gosh, Smile is a crazy, crazy show. Just when you think things couldn't get any more depressing, they do, to a level that is just barely within reason. Yeah, it's got it's problems for a Japanese t.v. show about a Filipino-Japanese main character, but what media commentary on race is perfect? I've seen a lot of things in the show so far that actually stand out to me as pretty cool. And it says a lot about contemporary Japanese society, I think. I've been pretty much just analyzing it the whole time, in between bouts of yelling, "What the f*ck!?" and feeling like crying. (That Media Studies type in me coming out again...and then the part of me that made me quit Media Studies back in college - the thought, 'wait, if i want to study this, that means i have to watch allll the t.v. shows going on right now...' Although this show actually made me feel like I could get past that.). All in all, though, I think it's a good show. I mean, I just watched 6 hour-long episodes in a row. During my "refreshing session," the shower I was going to use to get ready for bed and rally myself to finish the last five episodes, I decided to save the rest for tomorrow or another day, partially because it would almost be disappointing to finish it now, haha. Ah. I haven't done this in a while. And to think, when I started off, all I wanted was some aural Japanese practice.

EE

Just finished listening to Delinquent Habits' first album and am now onto Deftones' White Pony. Uh oh, it looks like a "hardcore Chicano" day, haha.

Ah!

I just got back from walking around Osaka University from 10am this morning until 5pm in the evening, the day before which I went to Kobe University, did the same thing, stood for four and a half hours at a show that night, and stayed over in Kobe so I could leave for Osaka this morning. My feet are TIRED! I AM TIRED! And I realized what an unfamiliar and welcome feeling it is. I feel so good! Going through those colleges reminded me of a LOT of different things and reinspired a lot of different emotions and feelings in me that I haven't felt in a very long time, or never before at all. Every day really is a blessing and a miracle!

Guitar

Sometimes, my guitar sounds like an apple. Like (you're biting into) a crispy apple.

Wow, Music

Sometimes I'm amazed at the directions my music takes me. How did I get from the Orlons to Junior Walker and the All Stars to Rick James to Janet Jackson?
(I mean, at least the middle two have songs that are reminiscent of my childhood, but...)

kasuppa

They're three students at Kobe University who met two and a half years earlier through a school club.

I saw them play last night, bought their CD, and talked to the drummer.

. . . Oh . . . ?

Oh yeah, we are divided in ourselves already. If we do it in another way...?

And...what if I focused on local decolonization? Now that I think about it...that's where this whole train of thought started in me in the first place...

We

They are separate. We can divide ourselves.

I think I've hit on something!

!

The history of the "inside-outside" mentality in Japanese culture and society and how it has acted as an agent of cultural preservation against cultural imperialism, how it has allowed for a somewhat balanced relationship between taking in new ideas and protecting indigenous culture.
how it is reflected in art and music and pop culture and consumerism
"making oneself 'cool'"

(what my spur-of-the-moment research notes look like)

(these videos are what inspired me:





display a uniquely Japanese aesthetic while embracing Western rock and taking part in new explorations of music, art, and technical engineering?)

Fourth Newspaper Salesman in Two Months

*Doorbell chime* *Knock knock knock!* *Doorbell chime* "Hello!?" *Knock knock knock!*
(I open door)

"Oh! You're a foreigner!"
Short, bald, snapping turtle-looking man in a khaki overcoat.
"...Oh, yeah..."
"Oh, well then you can't read Japanese can you."
"Uh...no, I can't."
"You don't get the newspaper, right?"
"Oh, no...the newspaper people already came before..."
"Oh. Where are you from? Brazil?"
"Uh, America."
"Oh, America?! Wow, but you can't read Japanese, can you?"
"Uh, well...I can read Japanese, but..."(stupid pride, I knew I shouldn't have said that)
He leaned his face closer and his body more into the doorway.
"Oh, so then, one of your parents must be Japanese, right? Your mother or father?"
"Oh, I'm Mexican-American."
"Oh, really? Well, okay. You still don't want a newspaper? They're cheap!"
"Oh no, that's okay, thank you, I'm probably fine."
"Okay then, 'I'm sorry' (in English), thank you, goodbye."
He leaned over behind the other side of my door to get his bag and I closed the door.

Idea!

I'm going to make a documentary!

The Jaynettes - Sally, Go 'Round the Roses

This song is creepy. Especially since the file I have for it skips a little after the middle.

Geez

By the end of World War II, "an estimated 1 million Filipinos had been killed, a large proportion during the final months of the war, and Manila was extensively damaged." This seems like a story that needs to be told.

History

I've been thinking about my ancestral history more and more these past few months. I've always wanted to learn about traditional Mexican medicine, but now that urge has gotten stronger, along with an interest in older, Indigenous medicine. Learning Nahuatl's become a reoccurring thought. Why has it been on my mind so much lately whether I look more Spanish or Indigenous? I've been thinking thoughts like, if the Aztec civilization had continued on its own path, as those of China and Japan have been able to do, what would it be like today? Today, I really felt, for the first time in a while, that almost helpless "It's not fair." Thinking in the context of all the world's history, the mass murder and death the Europeans inflicted, and continue to inflict, on the people of the "Americas" must be one of the most terrible things to ever occur.

And I am the embodiment of it.

Where is the happiness? Or rather, where does it come from? Because it is definitely still there, within me. My soul is here, as boundless as it was hundreds of years ago, as it is with all of us, even if my customs are tainted with colonizing impositions, inflicted over half of a century. Victor Villaseñor writes about the "power of any people who are put down: Yellow, Red, Black, White or Brown. They will rise up a thousand times more powerful, just like weeds breaking through the asphault. Nothing can stop the human spirit, especially when it's aware of its own power." Surely, this is true. People have overcome and provided for themselves in amazing ways. Sometimes, though, I can't see how it's enough. We have so much to do. Where is the strength to do that going to come from?

Baby I'm Yours

Can we please do a souped-up, crazy-overdriven-bass-and-off-kilter-but-oh-so-right-on beat, super long version of Barbara Lewis's "Baby I'm Yours" with a noise solo?

Damn

Damn, Chubby Checker's "The Twist" is crazy. Listen to those trashy-smashy drums! And those vocals, background and lead. And the stops. And starts!

It seems like a mighty long time...

Whenever I hear those repeated words in Barbara Lewis's "Hello Stranger" I think about how long it's been since I've been home. Since I've really lived at home.

Research

I am uncomfortable with the number of professors of Japanese and Latin American history at UCLA that are white males.

That being said, I'd love to raid this guy's music and film collection:
William’s research interests in cultural and intellectual history and critical theory developed into a dissertation project on the cultural politics of avant-garde art and performance in 1960s Japan. Based at the University of Tokyo during 1996 and 1997, with grants from the Japan Foundation and the Japan Cultural Arts Foundation, he researched these evolving, interrelated forms of art, music, Butoh dance, photography, drama, and performance, and their relation to political contestation since the end of WWII in Japan.

Oh yeah

This is what I was thinking of first.
I remember when I was first learning about the "Age of Imperialism" (like it ever stopped) in school and thinking that it must have been scary at that time because everyone was trying to grab land and take over different countries and even if you didn't want to you almost had to to keep up with everyone else and not get taken over yourself. Now, I am capable of understanding there is the possibility of protecting yourself without being forced to attack others. Maybe Japan's leaders from the late 1800s on did not.
Was World War II the horrible stage in which Westerners made it clear that only they had the "right" to colonize other people, which they continued to (try to) do from then on?
Did Japan not develop its appreciation (?) for its own culture and history until recently, after being defeated in war they had preceded with massive disposal of old culture for a flashy new Western life? Or had it been there since before?

And is there something that Western nations, such as the U.S., fear still in this retention of non-Westernized identity?

(Not) Random Thoughts

Random dates I remember are 1868 - The Meiji Restoration begins in Japan, 1914 - The Mexican Revolution begins (incorrect- it was actually 1910), September 11, 1973 - The U.S.-backed military coup takes power from democratically elected Chilean president Salvador Allende beginning a period of terror and repression that lasted at least until 1990. There was another one, and I think it had to do with Mexico, but I forgot it.

Art Farmer's "Soul Eyes" is good.

It's time to start deciding things and taking action again.

I am now reading three books simultaneously. Their titles translated into English are Impossible, Let's Learn More about Korea, and On Monday I Steal the Earth.

I'm a tiger, and you might be, too!

Uh.

I put the wrong birthday on my facebook account a long time ago because I didn't like the idea of having my real one on the internet, and now I regularly get birthday wishes on a wrong birthday. I'm not purposely trying to trick people, but I never see this day coming (why would i? it's not my birthday or anything) and it would be awkward to put on my facebook that that's not my real birthday now. Oh my, what a predicament.