chestnutvinegar

I like conversation, but I can be particular about them. There are a million ways to categorize conversation, but for me recently there are two types of conversation.

The first is two people who are bursting at the seams with things they want to talk about, and the entire conversation has literally no pauses and people almost talk over each other with how much they want to talk with the other person. I don’t mean to suggest that this type of conversation is only people wanting to hear themselves speak and waiting for their turn, completing ignoring the other person. It can be, but I don’t think it’s innate. I think many beautiful conversations happen this way. (This last sentence was edited in on second read, but that should not influence you the reader on me the writer.)

The second, and the one I am biased towards, so I’ll probably paint it in a better light than it deserves, is the conversation with many pauses and many questions. The question/pause conversation. You ask someone how they’re doing, and you let them speak, if they pause, you wait and see if there’s anything else they want to say, you ask a follow up question, and eventually you bring your relatable experience to the conversation and the conversation naturally moves in other directions. The key is the pauses.

So I am a man who likes a pause, who needs a pause, and I find myself in conversation with people who are bubbling at the seams.

I think the bubblers are more fun and natural people. I will not deny that. They’re not playing 4D chess in a conversation, they’re talking with their Goddamn friends (or family). Why should anyone feel the need to have any such structured etiquette when talking to their people, the people who they should be able to truly be themselves around, without any need for guard or pretense. I get it. I do. In some ways I am the phony.

But then again, I don’t. And I’m not.

I will use the example of my new job. When someone asks me how my new job is going, I don’t have a set five minutes of information I want to say about my new job that I bring out when I get the question, I really honestly have “good, but stressful”, and then I need to think about how at that specific moment I am feeling about the new job, and then with the mix of the person listening, and what specific thoughts/feelings they have about it, my feelings are influenced and changed and the conversation goes in that direction. But let me reiterate, there are pauses galore.

I think my pauses can make bubblers uncomfortable, as for a bubbler conversation doesn’t need or shouldn’t have empty spaces in it. For the bubbler, the pause may be seen as rude, as I am forcing them to fill in the conversation, and forcing them to do the majority of the talking and lead the entire conversation! Why so quiet Chrissy??

I like a conversation where one person says “shit’s fucked up eh?” and then there’s a 30 second pause for beer to be drunk, words to be digested, and only then to be followed with an almost absent minded “fucking hell, eh?” I’m trying to say we pausers are not persecuted misunderstood intellectuals. God no. There’s just a need for a slower speed.

So sometimes when I am tired and not on my social game of being the most perfect Chris that I have ever been, I notice I am with a bubbler, and honestly, I can just switch my brain off a little and let them talk. However, then the bubbler asks me questions as they notice they’re talking the most, but then it can be hard to produce a bubbler response.

Please do note however, that I have had great conversations with bubblers, and I have even been a bubbler myself. I have been that excited, and that ambitious to want to ensure I get to put in my bits in the conversation too. I have got them in there, sometimes with force.

To slightly cut away, there’s something more I want to express though, and it probably doesn’t relate specifically to these two types of conversation. I’m not even sure if I believe what I will say, or if this idea is just currently inside me batting around on the walls, waiting to be polished into the diamond or the turd it is.

Conversations are not important. I am not spewing things that will save the world, or that need to be said or else a second Spanish Civil War is gonna happen. Conversations are conversely pleasant things, like tea parties and scones with raspberry jam on them, and a conversation’s pleasantness being preserved is a nice thing. I’m not saying debate is bad, debate is great, but if we are debating American politics, for example auto insurance schemes, how much power the coast guard should really have, or whatever else Americans can’t stop talking about these days, then our conversation is not going to change the discourse of the world. If it’s pleasant, it will allow both parties to fully flesh out how they feel through rigorous discourse, and allow them to better understand how the other feels and why. It’s hard to get into this sort of conversation with pre-packaged statements. If we’re lucky, someone may even change their opinion, feel more empathy, or something else lovely.

And really, I have had conversations, especially in my youth, where I felt like it was the end of the world if I didn’t get whatever point I had inside me across, usually about the Means of Production. So maybe I’m just being old. I’m not sure.

Do you know what I bet would fully flesh out whatever I want to say? A conversation. Over either scones with raspberry jam, or beer, but not both.

Anyways, shit’s fucked eh?

“Why did you come to Japan” is a question. If you are not Japanese, and you came to Japan to live, it may be a question that you are accustomed to hearing.

I have my answers to this question. My favorite answer is the one that gets us off the question as soon as possible. It’s usually a light question to what is really a heavy answer, and I don’t want to get into how my friends took a gap year to go to Thailand and New Zealand while I struggled on with university, or how while I wasn’t really into video games anymore (believe it or not), that my affinity for them as a kid made me want to go to Japan, or that perhaps darker area of the soul where I was scared of going to a “third-world country” because I’m was sheltered suburban boy. I’m not sure how true any of all that is, but it all makes sense. However, I usually just stick with “I wanted to travel a year before entering the workforce in Canada, and I loved it here”. No follow up questions needed. Why wouldn’t you love it here after coming for a year? It’s obvious.

One of my many weird meaningless beliefs is these pretty tied together answers that we can arrive to in hindsight, or even foresight are not the only things in action creating motivations to do things. I’m not talking about a deep conspiracy, or different colored pills for people who need metaphors from overrated 90’s movies, but for me in this example, I’m talking about the final episode of Blossom.

In solidarity with students of the essay, I will make clear my thesis statement at this point: The final episode of Blossom was a strong motivator for me to go to Japan.

I don’t even know if people know the show Blossom anymore. I think it was a show in the late eighties and early 90s. Joey Lawrence was a male heartthrob. Shows in those days were filmed before a live studio audience, and whenever Joey came on the screen, the women in the audience I am assuming could just not control themselves, and needed to hoot and holler. Either that or there was a sign to hoot and holler. It could have all been a sham.

Anyways, Joey Lawrence wasn’t the reason I moved to Japan. It was his TV brother. I’m not ready to go there yet though.

Blossom was played what who I think is a famous actress. She was in the Big Bang Theory, which I think is generally hated, but it has the Barenaked Ladies doing the theme song, so you know, it’s always nice when BNL get a little more exposure below the 49th if you know what I mean. She also was a Jeopardy host after Trebek died. Her and Ken did it. I am not writing her name because I’m not 100% sure of it. Mayam? I don’t know Ken’s last name, Jennings? Trebek is not Alex, but Alec? I’m not sure. Anyways, it doesn’t matter.

I think the actress is not liked by people for some reasons. I will take this point to make a tangent and say that I do not dislike her in the least. However, I also don’t like her in the least. Another one of my weird meaningless opinions is that having an opinion on celebrities is foul. I mean, I have as much of an opinion on her ideas, as I do on the ideas that your best friend (I’m talking about you the reader) at age 10 has now. Maybe they have really really shitty ideas. I honestly don’t care. I’m not going to retweet about your best friend when you were 10 and call them out.

To further diverge, if you were to ask me why I got into punk, one of the reasons that I would have said was that I hated the idea of celebrity. Punk musicians at the time weren’t put on weird pedestals I thought and were just people like you and me. They broke down the idea of false idol worship, or having opinions on celebrities as a sort of trading card that you can show your friends at the playground. Or something like that. Of course punk rock bands I liked in the 90’s are living in mansions, have been on reality shows, and are milking it because punk rock doesn’t give you a retirement fund, and all that.

You don’t hate them for that, that’s life. There’s a need to exist, and really going into these pre-determined paths is how to do it easily. This isn’t true if you’re Ian MacKaye, but like, we’re not sadly. As another tangent, while I am all against celebrity, and idolizing people and all that, I am really glad that Ian never turned out to be a shithead.

Anyways, Blossom, and Mayam. (I couldn’t take it anymore, and I looked up her name, and it is Mayim. I apologize.)

Blossom was about a family, and there was no mom I think. The dad was doing it all. There was Blossom, and her two older brothers, Joey, the heartthrob, and the other guy, who was normal. There was also Six, who was Blossom’s friend. As a young boy, I thought she was quite hot in the later seasons. Probably why I watched the show honestly. Little boys do things like that. I think near the end of the show, the dad was remarrying, and maybe to a British woman with a little boy. The last episode was when the house was being sold maybe, and everyone was going on their way. Maybe the house wasn’t being sold, but it was definitely a goodbye of sorts.

And finally, I will get to the Goddamn point of the story.

The older brother was getting married. The wife may have been pregnant. They may have already been married. Maybe the kid was already born. It honestly doesn’t matter in relation to what I am saying. Anyways, they were moving away. They were moving to Rhode Island to set up a new life.

The dad here says something like they don’t need to move away, and the dad can help them out, and would be more than happy to introduce connections, etc., and then there was a very TV dramatic moment.

The son didn’t want to just be known as his father’s son. He wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew him, and make a name for himself.

And that’s it.

This wasn’t something that I consciously looked back on from time to time, it is something that swam in my head in the background without me really focusing on it. Make a name for myself. Make a name for myself. Make a name for myself. Not just my father’s son.

And so when my friends went to Thailand to find themselves, and I was still working hard at university studying classical Marxism and phenomenology, I didn’t consciously think I had to leave home or leave Vancouver, or even think that I would be moving to Japan permanently, but that seed was one of a hundred (a random number) little things swimming around in the shadows.

So the concluding statement would be that while the main reason I came to Japan was not because of the final episode of Blossom, it was one thing that planted the idea of making it on my own away from home was something of merit, and therefore when I came to forks in the road in life, when making decisions, that value stuck with me, and perhaps influenced the million (another random number) “micro-decisions” I made to let me get to where I am today.

This is all a bit long to answer someone’s question as to why I came to Japan though. And really, because Japan is nice is the only answer you need, especially if it is like one of the opening moves in chess or go where you just wanna get a few things out there, and not focus on it until you’ve gotten a little bit more into the nitty gritty.

The consideration for further research bit would be that people may often think about their influence on others, and try to be conscious to be a good influence, and while all that is very important, I find it interesting that there may be these seemingly insignificant events that fuse things together in the mind. People may assume that “nurture” means something that we can ultimately control, but I don’t think it has that meaning at all. What events plant seeds in minds, and how those seeds blossom is at least still beyond our understanding now, and in my opinion can be considered nurture. (I use weak wording here because there are people who can see it all as nature, posit there is no free will, and everything can be pre-determined if we knew all the variables. All I will say is that I do not recommend sitting beside these people at dinner parties. While to them it is likely out of their hands, they will likely steer the conversation the entire night, and think they are doing everyone a favor.)

It’s obviously a silly concept. It’s obviously not good to hate-read English media professing to be experts in Japanese culture treating the entire country and every person in it like a two-dimensional foil. Japan is the quirky backdrop to have frankly colonial (not neo-colonial) opinions about to pass the time.

Anyways, I should get off that train of thought.

I’m the HR guy at my new job. I was part of an HR team in my old job. It was a bigger company. I had specific roles and my colleagues were Japanese. Now I am the one HR person. And to be honest, yes, I will start a sentence with and. And to be honest, it feels like the nuance between 人事 (translator’s note: 人事 means HR) and HR are quite different. It may depend on the company.

This is all irrelevant to what I wanted to write about.

When I am being introduced to contacts: the water guy, the cleaning people, the building maintenance folks, the social/labor consultant, etc., it’s always the same.

This is 〇〇, he is taking over.

And in just replies, where more than half the content is pre-decided, it is amazing how much personality seeps through.

The social/labor buddy goes straight to osewaninatteorimasu, or his variation of it. Everyone has their variation. I for example dropped the itsumo in the beginning. Seemed disingenuous to me, but what do I know? Some people don’t do an orimasu, but just an imasu, which seems a little off to me, but what do I know. Anyways, there’s no addressing me, there’s no saying his name, just BOOM, we are sewa-ing.

When I called to get a quote for a different life insurance policy for employees, I loved how the person in charge forgot to give a password with the file. I’m not sure if it is dickish, but I did the “the password hasn’t come, so can you send it again?” thing. You know. Saving face. People have faces in Japan. It’s so uniform like that.

Anyways, I really wanted to mention this visa training. The new company does visa renewal online for employees. You can do that? Cool? Oh, our account expired! Oh, the previous HR person inquired and we got the new documents. No problem. Oh, she only emailed a general helpline. I guess I’ll call the actual office to confirm. Oh, we can’t just do a renewal it because it expired months ago? Training is required? These 13 companies on this PDF offer the training? The next one is in Aichi? Oh it’s online! Okay okay okay. Let us do this. Then we can saunter to the online visa office and hope it takes less than a month.

Now I’ll talk about what i actually wanted to talk about. You can ignore the above.

Zoom manners are always funny, I guess that’s worldwide. We all enter the zoom room. Most have our mics and cameras off, some don’t, those who don’t don’t realize they don’t, or they don’t care. My dark side wanted to take notice to what people’s reactions would be when they realized their entire conversation was being presented to the entire Zoom room, but they didn’t give a shit. Fair enough. No need to die of embarrassment like I would.

There were more than a few women taking the course who based on their background (what was behind them, not a made up backstory I invented), worked in a small company, had some dude in the back as the company president, and them who did all the day to day shit, like ensuring they can apply for the visas. This one young woman during the lecture found it obviously boring, and with her mic on mute felt free to have a great old conversation with old shacho behind her. I realize I am being a little sexist, but I swear old dudes who are confident enough to do that little with their legs spread that far apart must be running things.

There was this old guy who I swear was having problems with the sound the entire time because he looked befuddled the entire time and gazing almost blankly into the screen. Someone came over to help him with the settings. I wondered if he was the company president, but I felt like his legs weren’t that far apart when he was sitting. He also seemed gentle. Like me. We are gentle. I think he was in a tatami room, or at least it had that aura about it. He could have been taking the lecture from Showa 54. it wouldn’t have shocked me.

Anyways, to spoil the end of his story, he was the only one who actually got perfect on the test at the end. Motherfucker was sharp as a pin.

There were two other foreigners. One was Vietnamese, and the other I think was Indonesian. They were women. The Vietnamese woman also also rocked the test at the end. She was on the ball. I think I was slightly more on the ball, but she was not far off. We could have shared the ball.

The guy in the car was awesome. I think it was the backseat. He wasn’t the one driving, but it was not a stationary car, he was being driven around and he was taking the training whilst being driven. He had the hair of someone who owned a soapland. He wore glasses that I assume were expensive. Thick rimmed, but not normal thick rimmed. You know? I can’t explain it. Why write then I guess, but hey. I kept on wondering about his stable internet connection. The video didn’t falter at all.

There was one person who had a Japanese name, but didn’t look Japanese, but that may have been fashion biases on my part. Or maybe they naturalized. They often had their camera very close to them, or in other directions. I don’t think they cared about their camera and what it was showing.

The company running the event had their young MC who was reading a script at the correct times. I have done that job. I know how awkward it can be. And now as a person taking the training, I know how little expectation we have in this person. They’re doing a job. Sometimes they fumble the script. It’s all good. I know it’s 2024, but she was cute.

The teacher was the best, and by the best i mean the worst, and I by the worst I mean… I don’t know. He was a former cop. He worked for the ministry of foreign affairs too, I’m not sure if that was also as a cop or how that works. He was in America and in Oman. I think he was doing his current job after retirement. I respect that. I also want to open my own little thing as I approach 60 so I can still get that money in. We all have mortgages until we’re bloody 79 eh? Gotta do something.

He was the master of just talking. He had 4 hours to fill and he filled it. Some information was important, some was not whatsoever, and some of it was about his knowhow, which was equal to my knowhow, like “they don’t ask for this document, but I submit it just in case”, and “I know it’s an internet application, but I send a hardcopy afterwards to be safe, you never know”. Well, he never knew, and he did what worked. I did the same thing, but I never gave a seminar that was approved by the online visa department.

He had that old important person haircut. The hair doesn’t have a wet/slicked back look, but it’s flluffly and all going back. He had glasses that would be good in Showa 54. He had on a grey suit and I forget the tie color, but come on, it had to have been red. His dress shirt had to have been white. I mean, it may have had a light blue pattern on white, but it was close enough.

They gave us an 80 page text and the test before the training started, and as I am in a new job, and worried about fucking things up and failing the training, I read the entire thing and did the test beforehand. I wasn’t confident, so I printed out three blank tests just in case so if there was a chance to write the answers down later, I would do that. I was ready to lie, cheat and steal.

However, I forgot that we paid our money for the training, so we were all going to pass. After his four hour lecture, we had 20 minutes to take the test. Then, we went over the answers together as a class. We used the circle and X reactions on Zoom to signify what we got, and then we all had a laugh and were told the right answer. At first, I held back and saw what others were answering and answered the same. After a while, I realized how many hours I wasted, and how much stress was for nothing, and answered right away. I got 18/20, but no one knows that besides me.

There was one Japanese woman taking the training, and she was the one I felt sorry for. I think she was working from home, and she was doing her best to follow along, get all the answers and pass this thing. However, the instructor’s way of speaking about this, that and everything in a random order really confused her, and she just wanted to understand how to properly do visas for foreign employees, and she was not getting anything of real merit. It felt like the rest of us just wanted that piece of paper that we need for our application, and she wanted to learn. She did horribly on the test, but she dutifully presented her answers to everyone. She still got her paper. I wish her all the best.

The entire point of me saying all this, besides the fact that I need to get it out of me, and find the written word easier than forming it into a story I tell my wife that has a beginning, middle and an end, is that people are so varied. People are so different. People are all in their own situation with their desires, flaws and whatever else. They have their ways of talking and their reasons for being and it’s a fucking beautiful spectrum of souls. Yes, I made it spiritual.

And then you read how the Japanese don’t do X because they lack individuality or something about a fucking nail that fucking sticks out, and then you hit the whiskey.

My grandmother passed away last week. She was 94. I’m away from home 18 years, and so I have the urge perhaps people reading this are thinking in wanting to say “I’m sorry to hear that”, etc. Everyone was happy that her journey had ended. Not because they hated her, but because they loved her. She was a fiercely independent person who did not like to just sit around. She did not enjoy old age after perhaps 85 or so when not only her body, but also her mind allowed her to not be independent.

My parents live started to revolve around her, and ensuring that she is as happy as can be. None of their three sons gave them grandkids, and it sometimes felt that this was another caring role for them. It was tough for them, and the amazing effort they went to for her comfort I think is very noble (it may be the norm, but that doesn’t change the fact).

In Canada, there is euthanasia now, and there are horror stories on the new about it. When the law is working correctly, there is a mental window when the person in question can elect that they wish to peacefully die under certain conditions. Unfortunately, my grandmother missed that window. She never did not have composure. She wanted to die and get on with it, but she didn’t complain about it (at least that is what I heard). My family knew she wanted to die, but she couldn’t, and so they made her life as comfortable as possible.

On my trip back to Canada in November I saw her twice. The first time she was sleeping or pretending to sleep, similar to as a child would. She didn’t want to deal with the situation. I saw one eye open once, looking around, but that was it. The next time she was feeling much better, remembered that I am the grandson who went to Japan, and attempted pleasant small talk. That attempt at pleasant small talk touched me.

I don’t know her full life story, but the older I get, the more I see everyone older as me as someone like me, just at a different stage of the journey. When I was younger I saw older people as old people, period. Different. Unrelatable (not a word).

I think she was born in 1929 in Nuremberg. Her family was wealthy. When the war ended, she was in the American occupation zone, and the Americans used her home as a base for their operations. They were cordial. I think her and both her sisters all moved to Canada: to Victoria and Vancouver. The immigration of Germans to British Columbia after the war is another story. There is always the story of how she had to go to boarding school, and she hated it. Then her younger sister refused to go to boarding school, and her parents said “okay”. My grandmother didn’t know that was an option.

She is not my biological grandmother. My biological grandmother died when my father was young. Before marrying my grandfather, she travelled around the world. This was after emigrating to Canada. She had apparently received an inheritance. She was in Japan for a few weeks in 1961, and she always told me about the monkeys in a park in Kyoto as a way to connect, but when she did over the years all I heard was an out of touch old woman telling the same story. My mother sent photos of her journal while she was in Japan, and the detail is amazing about everything and is so much more than monkeys in Kyoto. I wish I could have talked to her about her experiences more.

Then she became my dad’s mom, and then she became my grandma. The old woman whom I knew. Although Nuremberg is in Bavaria, the household always seemed what I would call more Prussian. I remember wanting to stay there for a weekend when I was 5, and was thinking of all the fun things we would do, but come Saturday morning, they were in the living room, both reading books. We could go to the beach later, but they would expect me to play by myself or with kids I find (as kids do). (Apologies to all Germans reading this for my silly Canadian analysis.)

Anyways, there are feelings for me to process, but not feelings of grief. I am happy that my grandmother was able to finish her journey, and the pain and boredom of old age has ended for her. My main feelings to process revolve around being away from “home” for 18 years. My mom dutifully asked to talk with me on the phone so she could report what had happened not in text. They try to include me in things, but that is all it is. A pleasant thought on their part to include me, as opposed to being a part of something. My decision to leave Canada for Japan, similar to my grandparents and my mom’s decision to leave Germany for Canada, has effects that weren’t thought about at 21.

And so I work hard to continue a connection with my family.

Something I often think about is that my grandfather and his first wife moved to Canada in 1955 from Germany. I moved to Japan in 2005. If I were to have kids, and they were to look at their family history, they would say that the Canada part was 50 years. 10 years longer than I am old.

Anyways, sometimes good to write things out.

Identity is a word that is used in many ways. For me personally, it’s probably used in a selfish way. For me personally, when no one is looking, I use it to describe that feeling when listening to songs, or reading books that make something inside you go “wait!! this is me!! this is me!! I am finally recognized!!”

This probably isn’t identity, and the daily life I do, the people I talk to, and the actions I make are a more objective appraisal of who I am, but all that for better or worse is almost done on auto-pilot, and while I hope that buddy is a good honest person, there can almost be a feeling of disconnect from them. It almost sounds like a sickness to say it, but sometimes it feels like when you’re getting lost and tripped up in your own head is when you have found yourself.

And so now I am listening to Fallow by the Weakerthans. I think it was released in 1997, but that doesn’t matter to this story, what matters is when I first heard it, which was probably 2003. I was in community college, and I had good friends with whom I felt close to, but not too close. I had good friends who I was very close to, but at that age of 19 (yes, let’s blame it on age), it’s easy to mistake viewing your mind as your genius, and not seeing others as their normalcy. Silly youth.

Anyways, I loved my friends, and I was as comfortable as I have ever be-… as I type this I realize that this is not true. Anyways, they were good friends. We were young. I hadn’t fully understood myself and who I was. Up until that point, they were the best friends that I had ever had, and it was the most comfortable that I had ever felt with people.

But still, my real self was hiding in songs and books and the feelings I felt when I heard them.

“somewhere love and justice shine, cynicism falls asleep, tyranny talks to itself, sappy slogans all come true, and we forget to feed our fear” – Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist

It is always so easy to hide feelings in songs and books, because they are in plain sight, and in a way you are showing yourself to the world, but you are also confident that the world won’t get it, or care enough to look, so you can be left alone at the same time.

“if you ask how I got so bitter, I’ll ask how you got so vain.” – None of the Above

The above lyric I wanted to relate to in perhaps a sick way. I was bitter I think. And I think I even had vain (female) friends. But we were never sitting in a coffee shop (I usually say cafe, but this works better) looking across from one another, having nothing to say, but her being tired of my bitterness, me being tired of her vanity, and neither of us wanting to address our own vices… or something like that. Putting that in words makes it not sounds right. It’s not about that. Forget I wrote that.

“and say that we’ll stay one more year…” – Fallow

This song isn’t about being an English teacher in Japan, contemplating renewing your contract for another year, but when I got to Japan in 2005, and first contemplated not going home in 2006, to cycle across Canada, save the world with this woman (girl in my head, but I said woman) who I met in Medical Anthropology and all that, I decided to stay for one more year. Well, actually six more months. I was dating my ex-wife at the time. After those six months I got a new job. In Japan.

“maybe we’ll never go insane? you always said we would, sometimes I wished we could” – The Last Last One

This is another example that was only be described as me imagining dating myself, or some imaginary person who thinks like me. No one has ever said to me we would go insane. It’s something I would say in a short story I would write where I am the main character. I still think about this line a lot. There’s a Cat and Girl comic that related to this. The link is below. I think about it a lot too.

https://catandgirl.com/cat-and-girl-feign-interest/

Anyways.

“half-listening, interpreting the air” – Greatest Hits Collection

Is it deep? Is it nothing. Did I want it to be deep? I thought it was deep. I think there’s a word for female characters in movies in the 00’s that are basically foils to quirky introverted men, and to me I liked this line because it fell into that category.

A woman once dated me because I reminded her of the movie Garden State. I haven’t seen Garden State. She made it as a compliment, but I have it on high authority that it actually is not.

“we emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest, shedding skin faster than skin can grow” -Sounds Familar

I thought I related to it, but did I?

I thought I was talking about identity, but I forgot about that.

Oh well.

“I’ll drown the urge for permanence and certainty, crouch down and write my name with yours in wet cement.”

“So why were you so anchorless?“

I did a podcast last year called Saitama Freeway.

There were 30 episodes. 25 were about specific videogames, and the other 5 were about other things. For the videogame specific episodes, I spoke about a videogame for roughly 15 to 30 minutes in Japanese. The majority of the games were old games, but some were new. Likewise, the majority of the games were RPGs, but some were not. It was a very fun and interesting experience, and I would like to write about it below.

First, as anyone who listens to the podcast can tell, my Japanese isn’t perfect by any stretch. When I relistened to episodes, there are times I couldn’t hear what I was mumbling, and other times I spoke way too fast. Furthermore, sometimes the grammar I am using was incorrect, and other times I couldn’t think of the proper word to say, and used a weird roundabout way of speaking. Still, despite all this, I am proud and happy with the fact that I could speak about a topic with only a few notes for 15 to 30 minutes in Japanese. I feel I would’ve done better with more preparation. Preparation here meaning first listening and watching to other podcasts in Japanese, and seeing how people speak. Second, I should generally just improve my Japanese. Lastly, I should have researched the words I was using and ensuring that I was using them correctly.

I posted the podcast on Twitter, and in my head Twitter is a place where non-Japanese people go to be experts on Japan and Japanese, and so I was apprehensive that I would get called out for something. There are times where in hindsight I thought things I said something that someone somewhere may find problematic (I think I said I like nice cute things in the Mother 3 episode, which maybe sounds fascist or something). However, the non-Japanese people who are experts on Japan and Japanese luckily never noticed my tweets and I had no problems here.

I got quite a few DMs from non-Japanese people I know who listened to it and liked it. They praised me, and that’s nice. I may have the cool exterior of a pickle, but I still enjoy praise for something that I have worked on. I am happy they liked it enough to listen every week.

The comments I got from most Japanese people were more diplomatic. They were impressed with the feat of trying to do a podcast in Japanese, but there was less praise. I’m not complaining about this, and don’t want fake praise. It was bad in certain ways, and that’s fine. I think I speak Japanese like an English speaker, and therefore the podcast was probably easier to understand for a native English speaker, and a little painful for a Japanese person. Fair enough. Something to work on. I still received some positive comments and really appreciated them.

I averaged about 10-15 listens per episode, and one episode had 51 listens. That is amazing to me. That one episode wasn’t specifically amazing I don’t think. I am guessing some algorithm made it happen. Thank you algorithm. They’re not just for sexy people anymore.

Why did I do the podcast is a question. I wanted to do something creative, and I didn’t want to stop because it is shit. I always stop doing things because I think they’re shit, and therefore I was determined to not stop just because of a silly voice in my head. I am happy I didn’t stop. I am happy there are 30 episodes out there that anyone can listen to at any time.

I still want to podcast more, but if I do continue podcasting in Japanese, I want to put some fucking oomf into it. Have a goal more than just getting it done. I successfully didn’t give up, so now I want to successfully try hard. I’m not interested in the outcome as much (again), and I’m more interested in being able to say that I have tried my absolute best.

Also, I want to podcast in English with a buddy if he’s down. We would talk about video games. In English. Need to think of another freeway.

I turned 40 a few weeks ago. A few days before that I started a new job. I worked the same job in the same department for roughly nine and a half years. I’m not sure how people usually think about their jobs, but it is where I was, and what I was connected to for more than 40 hours a week, and I didn’t hate it. It was a large part of my identity and shaping who I have become as a person, and I ripped myself away from there because of a better opportunity.

I was stagnant at that job. It was a great job, but my experience at it slowly allowed me to fit into a role where only I could really do specific tasks, and it was not transparent what I was doing. Good that no one else has to deal with a lot of shit, but hard to manage for those above me besides “it’s working, let’s not change anything.”

The changeover to new staff to do my tasks showed how much I did from memory, and how much I had not ever made a set of rules for how to do them. My colleagues who would be taking over desperately wanted manuals for everything, and I had never really made manuals, and wanted to discuss everything in meetings. I get that I was wrong here, and that how I let myself slide into the role I had was wrong. I made manuals as much as I could, tried to formalize rules, etc. and make everything work. It was not perfect by far, but the process was very tough but good psychologically for me.

At my new job, there are a million unknowns. Some things aren’t defined and I can decide, other things there’s a common sense that I am not aware of yet, and it is hard to navigate between the two. Because I am on the outside, everything seems in a fragile balance between personalities and unwritten rules, and it can be quite stressful.

On the other hand having personalities so strong in the workplace has allowed me to realize that I was so used to not having to show any personality or individuality at work. I could if I wanted, but it was not required, and the job was easier without doing so. In my current role, forming a connection seems required. That’s probably obvious from a western perspective. I think I have stunted my growth, at least in some perspectives. I’m trying to have a personality and opinions again, which sounds strange, but it is what it is. I’m grateful for the experience to allow this stunted part of me to grow again.

This end to 2023 where there is new growth, stress from being outside my comfort zone, and a new decade of life for me, I think I feel stronger than ever the need for positive change in my life. My goals are always the same, I want to cook more, eat better and exercise more. I don’t though. This is the year that will be different is something I have said for many years, but it rings more true this year, with the other massive changes. I want to feel more in control, and less a slave to impulse. I want to embrace things I enjoy, and not just put up with things that are hard. I want to not feel like a blob when I am relaxing.

I am not saying anything new, and more this is an annual call for change and fulfillment.

I’m good at the talk part though. Less good at the action part.

Well, I will try at the action part again.

Before starting any musing, it has to be said that I did not understand 100% everything in the film. I think I understood almost all of it, but there were one or two (or three) parts where something was said, and I thought to myself “I didn’t understand that Japanese”. Therefore despite being an amazing authority on all things, I am a somewhat flawed authority because maybe those one or two (or three) lines I couldn’t understand were bloody amazing.

What I like about films like this, it’s not really about if it is good or bad. Miyazaki made the film he wanted to make, how he wanted to make it, and presented it the way he wanted to present it. This is not a spectacle for the masses to marvel at and escape into. This is not something where critics should be able to say that it needed more action or sex appeal or something. This is someone presenting something on the human condition, and I am allowed to view it, and think about if I understand what the themes are, agree with how they are presented, and what their ultimate meaning is.

For me the lack of any real advertisement was very good for the story, because I was subconsciously always trying to figure out which Ghibli box the movie was going to fit into, and it kept jumping out of one box and into another. I think some would see this as directionless, but I saw it as both lovingly subverting expectations, and also as being free of any obligations to be anything else besides that which it wanted to be.

Perhaps the one or two (or three) lines I didn’t understand explained everything in detail, but I believe that a lot of what was going on was not explained. I really truly love it when not everything is explained, and we are expected to be like children and just be forced to accept that something is. There are many characters and whatnot and you cannot help but wonder their allegorical meaning. When I watch it again, I’ll probably mainly be thinking about that.

To contradict myself from earlier, despite being impossibly free from the constraints of expectations, it also seemed constrained to express itself in an overtly Ghibli way. Many scenes reminded me of other Ghibli movies, and Ghibli movies that are very different from one another. I guess this goes back to the directionlessness, but I don’t see this as a forced greatest hits/reunion tour feeling, but more of tried and tested methods of expression to rely on. Wheelbarrow ruts on the path or something like that.

To me the story is ultimately about a very simple very specific aspect of the human condition, told beautifully in a Japanese setting. I am curious about how many scenes will be translated, because I would not know how to adequately translate what is not being said with many simple polite phrases. You could just convert it to something British I suppose. It’s cliched to talk about tatemae and honne, but I think they are good concepts to think about when watching the film.

I’m going to say the words someone said in the middle of the film that I thought was the best part of the film. Perhaps this would be seen as a spoiler, so if you do not want to know the words someone said in the middle of the film. Please don’t look below.

The words I liked in the middle were:

大嫌い(I hate you)

I play video games in Japanese. Well, I play Japanese video games in Japanese. The only exceptions really are the Metal Gear Solid series, and the PSX – PS2 Final Fantasy games. That’s besides the point though.

I’m currently playing Octopath Traveller 2, which to a person who hasn’t heard of it, it probably sounds incredibly weird. Octopath. That’s silly.

It is silly, but putting aside the gameplay and game-centric aspects, the soundtrack has some very lovely piano doing some amazing melodies and it’s too an amazing pixelated wonderland which scratches itches you forgot existed.

Anyways, one of the stories in the game mentioned 紙芝居, which to me is something that’s not in the west where stories are read from the backs of pieces of paper, that have a picture on the front to show to the children. I also use it to mean a farce, but a quick google search isn’t backing me up there. (I don’t think the story is always on the back of the piece of paper, but it was in kindergartens in the Chiban countryside in 2007.)

When I see words like 紙芝居, I think “I wonder how this has been localized.” Can you imagine people demanding it be “paper play”? Picture story maybe would work nicely? Maybe there is something similar in the West and I’m just not cultured enough? 教養がないmaybe. A puppet show would make more sense maybe.

At times like this, I praise the translator, and am happy that I can just enjoy it as 紙芝居.

Now I’m at a place where people end things like だべ, which is how old friends in the depths of Chiba spoke. Almost felt like a cooler だっぺ to me for some reason. All out of my ass though. Anyways, what well known accent/mannerism does the localizer pick for だべ? Hopefully not Scottish. Scottish is overused I think. Like cockney for 関西弁.

I’m glad I’m not in the business of selling Japan to the English speaking world.

Anyways.