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.

O

Oh, hello there. It's been a while since I've seen you in these parts. Oh, I suppose it's been a while since I've been here, too, but hey now, you know, we're both here, in this same spot, the same place, let's see what we've got in our face.

I wake up in the morning and there is dew on my blankets. The papers on my desk are damp and the wooden window frame sweats cold, fat beads.

Originally, I thought I would put some cardboard between my window panes and the double layer of bubble wrap I had attached (bubble to bubble!) to it. Then, I thought that that home improvement store might have insulation for sale too, and wouldn't that be cool if I could look up what "insulation" is in Japanese on my cell phone dictionary, and I did and then typed what I thought the kanji reading was into the phone's Japanese-English translator and it came out as "insulation." Yes, I thought, how cool! My Japanese is highly functional at an everyday level.

I went in and asked where the "dannetsuzai," kanji meaning "interrupt" "heat" "materials" (smile), were and I bought a cardboard box plus. Later that evening...
















there was some cutting and taping and rearranging of fiberglass packaging and, oh, I suppose that yes, I should have put on my gloves before pushing that fiberglass around, but oh I had thought, "Oh, I'll just get it done, rwfle rfle rfle, I've worked with this stuff before and it didn't hurt that much, OW!"

But, after some gloved hands movement...
















Cut the box in half, cut the box in half.
Sandwich!
















Slit. Slip.
















Voila, a warmth panel.
















Journal Entry #454: Completed another insulation panel last night. Loath to go outside in the cold, I sprayed the completed piece with water resister in the indoor doorway (known here as a genkan). This was revealed to be a poor choice, as I consequently incurred a headache and had to go outside to get fresh air and leave one of the house's windows open all night anyways to air out the domicile. Upon returning to residence after my occupational duties were finished today, I installed the secondary panel (see Depiction 3). As is visible, this panel is much larger and will fit its window home - frame, that is, more snugly, than, the previous, version.















Depiction 3 (By the way, yes I now live my life in first-person shooter point of view.)

In my excitement upon installing, I have activated the previous resident's electric heater. I eagerly await seeing how much heat will be kept inside my quarters tonight. Perhaps, some guitar playing will be in order tonight to celebrate.

LIARS' DRUM'S NOT DEAD OH MY GOSH YOU ARE SO GOOD DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN.

I found a delicious mushroom called maitake that I put in my soup all the time now. I've been making lots of oden, working on my recipe and getting that just right taste. I realized that even though I love that maitake, when I put it in it changes the taste completely so I can't really call the finished meal oden, but it sure is delicious. I'm thinking of going down to basics again and using a thin, more subtle base next and relying more on the flavors of the ingredients mixing in the soup. In perfect timing, one of the English teachers recommended out of the blue I put shimeji, maitake, and shiitake (all mushrooms) into a soup and only use a little soy sauce and hon dashi (Japanese soup stock?) and maybe some salt because it would be delicious. The most important thing, though, he said, was just putting a whole bunch of mushrooms in there. Haha. I'd actually been thinking of making a maitake soup since it's smell and taste are strong enough to make a soup on its own. So, I think that'll be the next cooking project. Mmm.

Also, I have come more to terms with the fact that my job affords me a whole lot of free time and not a whole lot of satisfaction, and have begun using my time at work productively and enjoyably. This means: printing out Spanish articles, going through them, highlighting phrases and words I don't know or that look useful, looking up everything I don't know, and reading it again so that I understand it, at least mostly. I also realized it had been a long time since my Dad told me how a toilet works, so I looked up that and how to fix some common toilet problems. I also now know how a car engine works and oh man, now I can see how some people can get so into cars. The engine is such a cool thing! You really have to appreciate the awesomeness of the car engine to get into cars I guess. Then you understand all the different ways you can tweak and modify it to change the way the car performs and all that kind of stuff. So now I know what it really means to "turbocharge" a car!

Also, I bought myself a new toy after taking the Japanese test. A digital voice recorder and a stereo microphone attachment. I bought the cheapest one that could be attached to a computer, and although I indulged a little with the separate microphone to get better sound quality, the recorder's really just meant for meetings and classes and the like. I've used it a few times though, and it records beautifully. Just the sound I was going for. I've been playing really regularly and can feel myself getting more in touch with my self, my sense, and my guitar. All of that's me in some sense, I feel. My jams last about an hour to an hour and a half now and are full of more and more awesome parts in which I can just really feel my emotions and something deep inside me. Or not even that. Just...feel it.

I'm getting a little tired and I think I'm going to go to bed early tonight. I went to bed a little late last night and the night before. Today was awesome. I taught kindergarteners. Right now, my favorite grades to teach/play with are kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd. Oh yeah, I was going to try to make some cookies tonight. I'll have to wake up a little bit. Time to get moving.

Time to get grooving.

I just dented my spoon up pretty bad hitting eighth notes out of it on a tea kettle lid for a really long time. I better wipe that off and make sure I don't get any metal shavings in my next batch of tea.
But I just made the most INSANE, crazy song I've ever made possibly. Since I got here in Japan, I've just been getting more and more expressive with my vocal cords and any other ways of expressing my psyche. I suspect influence from the amazing things I've seen in Osaka when people get in touch with themselves and just go absolutely crazy. This is insane.
Literally, I just recorded myself over a guitar track, then a rhythm track that raised the energy and craziness a little by giving the thing some beat. Then I basically recorded myself going crazy to the rhythm. Over. And over and over again. And then I was crying out and flipping out to the amazing beauty and sheer myselfness of the song. And then that became part of the song and I just kept recording myself reacting to my music/myself and the emotions grew stronger and more intense and just kept piling onto each other until it was a big ball of concentrated emotions and state of mind that I was in waving my arms around, over my head, in front of my face, a beanie pulled down to cover my eyes, my feet stomping to the rhythm, and
it was.
It was amazing. I'm looking forward to the future. I can only imagine how awesome it would be to match this newly blooming me with people who's being jives with me. This is not music.

Creepy

There is some seriously creepy wind blowing around outside, shaking my walls like there's someone/thing throwing itself or water at them, raining little bits of something on my roof that send a pretty clear sound into my room, making me think about how thin my walls and roof are, and making percussive sounds outside somewhere in the near proximity of my house that draw my imagination toward what could be getting hit down and what could be hitting it.

I'm tired and am going to go to sleep.

I'm going to wake up and teach children about Christmas and "What is this?"

I had a great day today. My new favorite place to which I have to go back is Tottori, especially its sand dunes. Yes.

It's been a long, time...

Hey, last post was post 47, how about that!?

Now, I have had a lot of experiences since we last spoke. The koto performance was good. It was not at all what I was expecting, particularly in terms of the human emotions involved. I was surprised from the very start when the lead player and teacher messed up on her solo that introduces the entire song; throughout the entire performance nobody seemed entirely on top of their game, although we definitely did not sound bad. It was strange to find myself nearly tearing up almost as soon as I began playing, and I'm not sure quite why. I was a little nervous and at the same time very excited to put all the work I'd been doing into a performance for people to hear. As I played and thought upon this, the main thing I just kept coming back to was that I was just so full of emotion, of energy, and it was coming out through all different parts of me - my fingers, my wrists, my movements, and my eyes.

Afterwards, we put our kotos away and had lunch. In the traditional Japanese style room, which almost all community centers and schools have for things like tea ceremony and other more traditional Japanese cultural practices, we talked about the performance. The teacher spoke of how well we played, but how it was hard to hear ourselves from the stage (which was true), and the general feeling was...it just was. We enjoyed our bento lunch from Lawson convenience store and laughed and joked and spoke about ourselves and each other.

Some time after that, I ran into some of the members again and they invited me to have tea with them. We went to the section where they were holding tea ceremony in the lobby and took our seats. There we were served by some of the elementary school girls that I teach. It was cool to see them in a setting of cultural seriousness; they had practiced this ceremony I don't even know how many days after school, probably at their parents forceful urging, and now they were serving other members of their community, their elders and teachers, through a tradition that has been passed across ages and has remained, or become, a regular part of festivals and events across Japan. Also, it was a cool experience for me because it was the first time I've participated in tea ceremony as just a customer, someone going in to enjoy some tea and dessert with acquaitances, rather than a student abroad or a foreigner being invited into and led through a cultural experience. I think it was my third time doing it and I had a rough idea of how it all went down. (Tea ceremony is anything but just going in and drinking some tea. It's basically a whole routine you going through, or act out, as you enjoy the food and tea, which involves considering the people with whom you're drinking and complementing the maker/server by taking in and commenting on the tea cup's design, the dry tea container, and lots of other things.) So, I felt pretty at ease the entire time and could just enjoy taking in the whole scene and the company of the people all around me.

And that wasn't even what I signed on to tell you about. Haha, oh man, there is just so much going on.

The day after I mused upon the possibility of snow, the temperature dropped another 6 degrees to 42F and I was surprised the feel of snow bouncing off my shoulder onto my cheek. That day, we had light snow a couple of times, but it was incredible to me, and I responded in a way some might expect of someone who had never before seen falling snow. I smiled widely, looked up, and said, "Amazing!"

The next day, the temperature dropped another 6 degrees to 38 and I got a feeling of how this town was going to head into winter: nose-diving down a craggy creak. I'm actually really excited about it though and would never think of complaining. (Don't hold me to that). But, really, I just find myself thinking sometimes how cool it is that I get to learn how to live in a whole new environment, without any real risk to my person. I don't really have to worry about getting seriously sick or dying, and through this experience, I will gain the ability to thrive in a new kind of setting, against a whole new set of challenges. I find myself thinking more of, and praying for, people who deal with this type of situation every year, without the shelter of a home, blankets, or concrete plans for the future.

I've been enjoying devising new and resourceful ways to keep my room warm, my favorite so far being hanging a big, thick blanket over the two sliding doors behind my bed's headpost in hopes of keeping the warmth my body generates in my tiny space, rather than seeping through the thin slats of wood and paper behind me. Plus, it looks really cool and kind of trippy.















My first real change in the look of my house to fit my tastes.

So with two new scarves, two new beanies, five blanket on top of me, one blanket underneat me, one blanket behind (?) me, and plastic bubble wrap sealing my bedroom and kitchen windows tight (although the tape is regularly assaulted by the cold moisture that seeps through the wooden window frame and, uh, the wall itself...), I head into the oblivion.

I have been making some sweet soups lately, the latest (repetitive?) of which had an awesome combination of chili peppers and yuzu (something like a little Japanese lemon that has an awesome scent way cooler and stronger than the generic lemon). Basically, I've been experimenting with different ways to stew potatoes (oh my gosh I love them so much), bell peppers (the latest batch I bought was all different splotches of ripeness in red, green, and yellow), daikon, cabbage, konyaku (delicious Japanese...-ness, I really don't know what it's made out of...some kind of vegetable extract?), carrots, and now mochi (it makes the whole concoction a lot thicker). I've used both konbu and "Japanese" soup stock now to great results and am casually thinking of what kind of delicious combination into which to delve next.

I also made oden, one of my favorite Japanese foods, a while ago. It was really good, but I think it would be better without so much broth, and maybe if I cut down on the amount, variation, or size of the things I put it in. Still, it was nice.

In other news, I've been on the move musically. Not necessarilly through different kinds; mostly just through the same albums over and over again, Microcastle and Weird Era Cont. Deerhunter is definitely the main band defining my life, or experiences (if those two are different...?), at the moment, and I've been getting a lot of good, undercover ideas, or influence, from them. I wish I could see them the 25th in L.A. I'm pretty sure it would be one of the best shows of my life, hah.

I've also been getting back into some good Chicano oldies, like WAR and Thee Midniters. I love the feeling of getting into my Chicano oldies. It just feels...good, haha. It's cultural pride, love for my gente, passion for la raza, childhood memories, good beats, and awesome energy through the music into my ears and pumped through my heart. It flows in my veins and stimulates my mind. It feels like a family gathering, a birthday, grandmas, aunties, children slipping down blow-up water slides, green grass and brown benches, brown skin, and light skin, and opening a little bit of your presents when it turns 12 o'clock on Christmas morning. I suppose it's my family that I love most of all - the people who live with me in the same house, the ones who live in the cities 20 minutes down the 210 and 60, and the ones I meet for the first time hanging out with my cousin, going to see a show with my sister, or marching in a demonstration. Damn, it's good to be Chicano.

I've got a lot more to say about that, so you can just look forward to that in the near future. Circulating through my brain's space are ideas about being Chicano in Japan, looking more into my own history, and some new ideas about what I want to do. Hint: they now include studying keyboard instruments in France, finding out just how I want to make myself helpful to people in the world, and the idea that if I really do have a natural tendency toward creative expression I should pursue it and delve into what I may be good at. So it seems thinking of my future draws some things into clarity and expands others into pure whim. Cool. I like that.