Guess what I figured out?

I'm back in America, it is great to drink American beer again and to hang out with my English speaking friends. I certainly miss a lot of things about Japan already, my Japanese friends, ramen, drinks that are not saturated with sugar/sweetener, and the wabi-sabi scenery. But there are definitely good and bad parts to living in both countries.

Sorry I don't have much else to update about right now. But I'll post more when I find a job. If anyone has any leads, please let me know. :) I'm pretty fluent in Japanese now, and I can still write code like a keyboard cowboy. Though maybe I should be a keyboard samurai now...

I had a really wonderful weekend. Mr. Inoue invited me to stay a night at his house in Katsuura near the ocean. He has such a nice house and nice family, and they took me around to see lots of great things. I had such a great time, I am so grateful. While we were out today I thought of a few things that I thought were somewhat insightful, so I wanted to write them down...

The sakura trees have bloomed in some places, it is really beautiful. The sakura trees only bloom during about a week or so during this time of year, and depending on the weather their pink/white petals will fall quite quickly, so although it is really a beautiful sight, it is also a very brief one. I was thinking about this transience and how it probably relates to the beauty of the blossoms. Although, in themselves they are pretty, because they are visible for only a brief time and everyone knows they will soon be gone, it makes us enjoy them more. The fact that they are limited and rare makes them more beautiful and meaningful. When I thought about it, this applies to most things in life. We appreciate stuff more when we can see its impermanence. Just like these last days in Japan, I realize it will all be gone so I value it more.

The opposite of this of course, is that humans tend to take things for granted that are readily available. For example, people in Japan (and America as well) have not traveled around to many of the wonderful places in their own country, but they often like to go to foreign countries. People near the ocean don't like to eat fish caught from their own bays, they want to get ones from Tokyo's fish market. But the people in Tokyo import fish from the countryside, even though the fish closer to them are more fresh. If the sakura trees bloomed all year 'round, maybe we wouldn't think they are so special. The same things can be applied to anything of value, gold is worth a lot because it is rare and special, but pirate (fool's gold) is worth almost nothing despite having the same lustrous gold beauty. People complain that model's on TV are unrealistic and set a bad image for what young girls think they need to look like, but looking unrealistic like that is rare and difficult to achieve, that is why society values them. It is easy to get fat and old, but to stay skinny and young looking is rare and difficult, so we as society desire that.

The bigger importance I think that can be seen in this idea of value from limitation, is the value of life. Life itself is limited, and though we often take that for granted, as human beings we are aware of this fact. The impermanence of life gives it value and meaning, because it is a rare, limited thing. But our own awareness of that is what allows us to appreciate it. If there is a higher being that created this world with intention, and that intentionally created human self-awareness, I imagine that he gave us mortality to make life a beautiful thing.

The idea of an immortal life sounds pretty good at first, but in reality, a world without transience might not be interesting or beautiful at all. If our memories were perfect, for example, so we could remember all things, and our bodies were perfect, so we could live forever. We would eventually see and know all things and everything would become unoriginal and uninteresting. Maybe that creator would have another idea for ways to make such an existence feel meaningful, but at least as we see beauty and value in the world today I don't think it could exist in eternity.

I suppose I have strayed off track to some really hypothetical theological conversation.. but I guess I wanted to say that humans beautiful and life is important because we are like the sakura blossoms. Every one is unique and limited. We bloom into this beautiful spring and then get blown away in the wind to disappear forever. But during that brief time we are beautiful and rare things. So let's all have a hanami, and enjoy this brief spring we call life!

Yesterday was the Japanese Setsubun holiday. This day marks the last day of winter. I spent the evening with Kacho to experience the Japanese culture. Well, actually I just wanted to have hang out with him since we hadn't hung out in awhile, but it turned out to be a good day to do it.

To celebrate Setsubun Japanese people throw dried soy beans out the entrance(s) of their home and shout "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" Which means "Out with the devils! In with the good luck!" Sometimes someone dresses up as a devil so the kids can throw beans at him and drive him away. After the devils have been driven from the house to allow good luck for the coming year, in order to further your good luck, you are supposed to eat as many soy beans as you are years old. 28 isn't a particularly unbearable number if you have a cold beer handy to wash it down, but in the case of Kacho he wasn't really in the mood to stuff 50+ beans down his throat. :)

Kacho and I went to sushi and talked about a lot of stuff, afterwards we went back to his place and his wife cooked a mean Curry for me. It was quite delicious. He said that he wished he had put me in charge of both elementary schools, and told me I should stay another year. He also told me he wished he could meet my parents, but since his English is no good at all it probably wouldn't be much of a conversation even if he did. He also told me how Japan worked so hard when he was young because they wanted to live the dream that they saw on Bewitched. Living in a big house, with a fridge, and a TV, and vacuum. Now of course many Japanese people have that, except maybe the big house part, but in the countryside that isn't all that rare either. But I guess that is interesting, 'cause they admired us and wanted to be like us... but now I wonder what will happen in the coming generations.. Do people still admire us like they used to? Does anyone want to be like us, or do they see it as if they have reached/surpassed that point they wanted. Does that mean their work ethic will drop?

Anyway, I came home and passed out quickly last night from the sake that Kacho eventually coaxed me to drink. When I woke up and looked out the window I was blown away to see everything covered in white! It was snow! Maybe it was a very thin layer of snow... but it was still the first snow I have ever seen stick to the ground in Mutsuzawa. I got really excited, and when I got to school I was saying to all the kids, "Look! It's snow outside!!" None of them seemed really interested... which seemed odd to me, but I guess maybe they don't have snow days like we do in Oregon. Anyway, for some reason, just looking at the snow made me so happy. Maybe I was happy to have had that experience here, maybe it was just because it was so unexpected... I dunno, but that put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

In the morning I taught Raiya, who is a student in the special education class, and we reenacted driving devils away by throwing beans at each other. He is one of my favorite students too... I mean I have like 895437 favorite students, of course, but he is really interesting. His favorite thing to do is yard work. Today when the teacher said "next we are going to do art class" he complained "nooooo! I want to do yard work!" Isn't that the craziest thing you have ever heard from a middle schooler? :) But anyway... After lunch I played Daifu and Baba-nuki with the first graders. These are Japanese card games and they are a lot of fun. Daifu is like 13, but with a few different rules. I'll teach it to you guys when I come back some day.

Yeah, and about coming back some day... everyone wants to know when I am coming back... It is true I want to come back, and every time I read facebook or the channel it makes me think of all the things I want to do with you guys there... Status updates like "eating pizza"... PIZZA? Like REAL pizza?! Man I would kill for a real delivery style pizza. :) "watching a movie at the bagdad" ... really? a movie in English? with Portland beer? man that sounds good... But of course there are things that I love about living here too, and as the days remaining here grow fewer, I feel more and more attached and scared to give up all these wonderful things I have here... but that is kind of how I felt last year as well... Then during the remainder of the year I missed America again... I guess the more I think about it, I can certainly be happy on either side of the ocean. Being happy is more about the way you look at the world than anything else. When I look at this world here as something I only have two months left to experience, suddenly everything seems so much more beautiful than it was before. When I think about all the things in America that I can't have now, it makes me want them back so badly, yet when I had them I didn't appreciate them as much as I should have...

In a sort of morbid way, it seems like maybe life can be more enjoyed when you are aware of the transience of it all... Maybe that is why we aren't immortal. Maybe immortality would make things less significant than they are in this insignificant world. It is impermanence that makes today important, and the understanding of that which gives birth to appreciation.

There, I hope that sounded super deep. I'll try to put new pictures up soon, sorry I haven't updated the gallery in awhile. Love you all, and I will let you know when I know for sure when (if) I am coming home.

When watching Japanese variety TV shows I often hear many very familiar songs. I'm not sure how they get decided, but as background music they will play short clips of everything from an old anime (Card Captor Sakura) to popular music to famous (The Beatles) movie themes (Back to the Future). Today I heard the theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation. It makes me wonder how many Japanese people know the origin of things like this? If American's heard that theme on an episode of Survivor I think most of them with think it is pretty strange. "Why the heck are they playing the Star Trek theme?" So I guess my question is, does the average Japanese person just not have that association so it doesn't matter what the song is? Or do they have the association but they are used to random unrelated music being played on TV shows?

Also, looking back at my comments about Bounenkai parties and after my experience at several more last year, I wanted to make a correction to my statement about them being crazy... It seems that while some of them are crazy parties with costumes and games, it really depends. I guess it as a lot to do with who plans the party and the atmosphere of your company (principal). :) But still, when they DO party hard, Japanese are quite the force to reckon with.