I didn't listen to much rap growing up -- go figure, for a white guy from St.Catharines, Ontario, right? -- but for some reason or another I always loved the song 'Ghetto Bastard' by Naughty By Nature. (It's labelled 'Everything's Going To Be Alright' on Youtube, but I'm pretty sure the original name is 'Ghetto Bastard'.)
I have no idea how I first heard it, but I used to play it in the car when it was my turn to drive me and my friends to the movies every Friday or Saturday night. (And it was every Friday or Saturday night -- usually two on Friday night alone. Whatever opened, we watched.)
I liked the rhythm of the song, and I'd shift the sound from the front speakers to the back seat to the front again. I liked the refrain of 'everything's going to be alright'. It had a hopeful vibe.
It's only now, listening to the song again after about fifteen years, that I realize what a horribly pessimistic anthem it is; the melodic 'everything's going to be alright' is used ironically.
Listening to it, you can sense a young man's desperate lament for the horrific place and times in which he grew up: "Never gamble in a game that you can't play...Say something positive? Well positive ain't where I live...Mama said I'm priceless, so why am I worthless?...How will I do it, how will I make it -- I won't, that's how..."
Everything is not going to be alright. The ghetto is one fucked-up place. "If you ain't never been to the ghetto, don't ever come to the ghetto, cuz you wouldn't understand the ghetto."
Growing up, I'd never seen poverty. Knowing the lyrics to this song was a goof to me. Movies like Boyz N The Hood hinted at another world to me, but that was all it was: a suggestion, a tease.
Fast-forward fifteen years, and after a couple of years in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a few years in the Philippines, I've now seen a fair bit of poverty. I can almost understand what the song is trying to say. About how hopeless it is for so many people. About how stacked the deck is against most of the human race before they even begin life.
Why was I born in such a good and decent place? Why do others in the world have such a tremendously different experience of life?
Rap's gotten a bad, well, rap, lately, and I'll admit that I haven't heard barely any rap or hip-hop in the past decade. I can't judge if the tune is a classic or not.
But this song still packs a wallop for me.
I remember the teenage kid I used to be, bopping my head in beat to the music, a harmless ditty, and now, years later, the song now seems to me like a dark, angry, ultimately futile outburst against all that is unfair in the world.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQaocgjLqo
Sunday, June 15, 2008
BOWING BEFORE CLOSED DOORS
Whenever anybody rings the doorbell to my apartment, a little video-monitor inside shows me who's that knocking at my door, and last week I noticed a couple of elementary-school girls in grainy black-and-white waiting for me to answer their call.
I didn't. I was kicked back on my futon, and I knew the kids were selling something, cookies or tickets or coupons, and I didn't want to buy anything, and rather than see their surprised expressions when a big scary foreigner answered the door, I decided to wait it out, knowing they'd soon leave.
Which they did. They silently, motionlessly loitered for a few moments, waiting for someone to answer the door, and nobody did, so they left. I watched it all, hiding inside. But before they left, they bowed, and said: "Onegaishimasu", which is roughly equivalent to: "Thank-you for doing this thing that I've asked you to do." (Even though I didn't do anything for them, and they said these words immediately after having had their request ignored. )
And let me repeat once again what they did, in case you missed it:
They bowed before a closed door.
Having lived in Japan about half as long as these girls themselves, I'm well aware that the Japanese bow to many different people in many different situations, including when talking on the phone.
This, though, was a first. Bowing to nobody? To a door?
Why did they do that? They weren't being respectful towards me in particular, because, for all they knew, nobody was home.
No, I think they were actually bowing before my neighbours. (Who were also behind closed doors.)
In Japan, the group comes before the individual, and the social takes precendence over the private. Since they were going door-to-door, it stands to reason that people in the neighbourhood could be watching their every move, and their every knock.
Being as polite as possible is not even being polite in Japan; it's being normal. Were you not to be polite, it would be a horrendous breach of etiquette. So not bowing before my door would alert everyone around my LeoPalace apartment that these two little girls were, in fact, not quite as innocent and cherubic as they appeared to be at first glance. By forgoing the bow, they would be revealed as churlish, rebellious brats.
That's what I'm guessing, anyways.
It got me thinking: The things we do so others will like us. Respect us. Or, at the very least, not think us impolite, odd, abnormal.
I love how old people so often say and do whatever the hell they want. It's as if they've transcended these artifical barriers of protocol we erect around us as we age and endure. Life is short, and we're all in this together, so why the hell not just get on with it and stop being obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses, both physically and conversationally? That's the vibe I get from these elderly cranks who can't be bothered with the bullshit of living any longer. (And it's an affectionate feeling I feel for these obstinate codgers, lest I'm being considered rather cruel.)
That's a Western ideal, I think, this notion of the individual doing whatever the hell they want, others opinions be damned.
Here in the orient (if it's still called that), others do, indeed, must, indeed, come first. It does matter what they think, because by doing things that interrupt the general harmony of life, you create distress for others. By throwing the stone in the pond, you create ripples that could lead to waves. Best to bow before closed doors, because then one can see that a certain civility endures, and without civility, everything else starts to deteriorate.
Which is not to say that there are not individuals and rebels in Japan. There are. But I'm guessing that they, too, would bow before closed doors, should the occasion arise.
I didn't. I was kicked back on my futon, and I knew the kids were selling something, cookies or tickets or coupons, and I didn't want to buy anything, and rather than see their surprised expressions when a big scary foreigner answered the door, I decided to wait it out, knowing they'd soon leave.
Which they did. They silently, motionlessly loitered for a few moments, waiting for someone to answer the door, and nobody did, so they left. I watched it all, hiding inside. But before they left, they bowed, and said: "Onegaishimasu", which is roughly equivalent to: "Thank-you for doing this thing that I've asked you to do." (Even though I didn't do anything for them, and they said these words immediately after having had their request ignored. )
And let me repeat once again what they did, in case you missed it:
They bowed before a closed door.
Having lived in Japan about half as long as these girls themselves, I'm well aware that the Japanese bow to many different people in many different situations, including when talking on the phone.
This, though, was a first. Bowing to nobody? To a door?
Why did they do that? They weren't being respectful towards me in particular, because, for all they knew, nobody was home.
No, I think they were actually bowing before my neighbours. (Who were also behind closed doors.)
In Japan, the group comes before the individual, and the social takes precendence over the private. Since they were going door-to-door, it stands to reason that people in the neighbourhood could be watching their every move, and their every knock.
Being as polite as possible is not even being polite in Japan; it's being normal. Were you not to be polite, it would be a horrendous breach of etiquette. So not bowing before my door would alert everyone around my LeoPalace apartment that these two little girls were, in fact, not quite as innocent and cherubic as they appeared to be at first glance. By forgoing the bow, they would be revealed as churlish, rebellious brats.
That's what I'm guessing, anyways.
It got me thinking: The things we do so others will like us. Respect us. Or, at the very least, not think us impolite, odd, abnormal.
I love how old people so often say and do whatever the hell they want. It's as if they've transcended these artifical barriers of protocol we erect around us as we age and endure. Life is short, and we're all in this together, so why the hell not just get on with it and stop being obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses, both physically and conversationally? That's the vibe I get from these elderly cranks who can't be bothered with the bullshit of living any longer. (And it's an affectionate feeling I feel for these obstinate codgers, lest I'm being considered rather cruel.)
That's a Western ideal, I think, this notion of the individual doing whatever the hell they want, others opinions be damned.
Here in the orient (if it's still called that), others do, indeed, must, indeed, come first. It does matter what they think, because by doing things that interrupt the general harmony of life, you create distress for others. By throwing the stone in the pond, you create ripples that could lead to waves. Best to bow before closed doors, because then one can see that a certain civility endures, and without civility, everything else starts to deteriorate.
Which is not to say that there are not individuals and rebels in Japan. There are. But I'm guessing that they, too, would bow before closed doors, should the occasion arise.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Congratulations to Ted, Elaine, Annabelle and the happy grandparents on the birth of a bouncing baby boy!
I'm an uncle all over again, and couldn't be happier.
I'm an uncle all over again, and couldn't be happier.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
Check out www.unusualape.com for illuminating, entertaining, thought-provoking discussions on culture, society, race, class, hopes, dreams, and the various points where civilizations and people themselves intersect in all of the aforementioned areas.
CHE IN YOKOHAMA
There are only two things tacked to the office wall of the English Department at my university: a 2006 calendar, and a poster of Che Guevara.
Kind of a strange coincidence, because I'd recently finished reading a paperback copy of Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara by Jorge C.Casteneda. I picked it up in Tokyo because I knew that Steven Soderbergh's new film of Guevara's life starring Benicio Del Toro was about to play at the Cannes Film Festival, and I wanted to refresh my memory of exactly who Guevera was, what he stood for and what he died for. (I read another biography of Che, by Jon Lee Anderson, but that was years and years ago.)
So how does somebody whose life was terminated in Bolivia, years after successfully helping Fidel Castro overthrow the corrupt Bastita government in Cuba, before unsuccessfully trying to instigate a similar revolt in the Congo, end up on a poster in the least revolutionary place imaginable -- a university office in Japan?
Che Guevara's likeness has become the wish, the hope, the focal point for anybody who wants to create a change in themselves, or the world, even if they don't know what that change might be, or even who Che truly was.
Somebody posted this poster of Che on a wall because it stands for something vaguely heroic, and daring, and revolutionary. Something that one can't find on a campus snug as a bug in a rug in Yokohama.
So who was Che?
Good question, and one that Castenda's book does an admirable job of answering -- as much as one possibly can give an answer to what is, essentially, an unanswerable enigma.
Guevera, an Argentine medical student from relatively middle-class origins who wandered around South and Central America for a period of years, observing the poverty, gradually becoming politicized by the class inequities, until fate or destiny or just plain luck had him ultimately meeting Fidel Castro in Mexico, where he joined Castro's crazy plan to overthrow the Cuban government.
A plan so crazy that it actually worked, and that resulted in an Argentine doctor becoming one of Cuba's most favorite sons.
Why has Guevera endured?
I think it's because he failed. He attempted to liberate the Congo, only to end up defeated, in despair, starving, underestimating and completely uncomprehending the entire political and social situation of that distant, difficult land. Castro sent him into Bolivia only because he feared Che would be killed if he ended up back in Argentina, Guevera's preferred locale for the next insurrection. In Bolivia, too, Che was undermanned and out of his league, attempting to start a revolution that the people did not want and that was nowhere near feasible, let alone possible. If he had not gone to the Congo, and had not gone to Bolivia, he might have lived on in perpetuity in Cuba like Castro has done for the past forty years since Che's death, a leader revered (or feared) by all.
But that wasn't Guevera.
Guevera was a revolutionary who needed a revolution, and if there wasn't one available, he would make one, and if he couldn't make one, he would die trying. The fact that the Cuban revolution succeeded was, in and of itself, almost miraculous, making all involved somehow more than human; the fact that Che's other attempts failed only elevated him Guevera higher, as only death can do.
So a poster on a wall, a face on a t-shirt, his mug on a mug: Che, the commercial entity. Che, becoming what he always loathed, a symbol of capitalistic excess run amok. Che, who died for his beliefs, however misguided, now the backdrop for an album cover.
People can look at his face and imagine that there is something more for them than this little life we try to make our own. Somewhere, in some place, there is a jungle, and in that jungle there are men, and those men, however few, are attempting something glorious. Che's beard and beret seek out that within us which yearns for a similar destiny, but settles for paychecks and decaf.
For me, though, the most fascinating parts of Casteneda's book were not the chronicles of his revolutionary years, when he became a legend, but the earlier ones, before Che became 'Che', because that was when we can see a boy become a man.
A typical tale, of course -- childhood to adolescence, and youth to maturity.
What makes Che's life so remarkable is its unlikely path. What looked like wandering eventually evolved into purpose. What resembled aimlessness was, instead, the slow and steady accumulation of, if not wisdom, at least intent. He wandered and looked and listened and judged. (Always judging, Che was.)
As someone who has also somewhat meandered for the past few years, I felt myself wondering as I read about the whims of fate, and chance, and destiny, and despair. Had Che stayed in Argentina, he most likely would have become part of the ordinary world that he later despised with a ferocity unmatched by any other. (And yet, had he stayed, he of course would not have become Che.)
His death at the age of forty is actually misleading, because his years were full and rich, varied and intense. Chronological time almost cannot be applied to his ferocious psyche, so rich is its reach. He wanted a mythic life and a noble end. All his spontaneous yet careful searching brought him towards a violent conclusion that somehow satisfied an inner longing he barely registered, even to himself.
Yet, it is in Che's early years that I sense the acute power of myth we all long for.
On the wall in my office, on the mug at your desk, on the t-shirt of your nephew strides his later self, defiant and intense. When I look at his face as a child, surrounded by school chums, I sense a different soul. One who wants more than what he has, but is acutely unsure if the world will accomodate his outrageous demands, or provide the formula he needs to cure the ailments of an unfortunate planet.
Looking back from the vantage of history, you can stare into that boy's face and sense that this is a child who will leave everything behind for the promise of nothing. The indomitable human will, which Che believed could solve any and every dilemma. You can also discern the blank slate upon which we all begin. We begin, we move, we end. All the details in between are either destiny or chance.
In Che I sense what we, the human species, could all become, were we to branch out far enough. It leads to despair, and disillusionment, and death. In its randomness it also leads to a path waiting to be found, should we only stay true. The one tread by no other but ourselves. (Can random journeys, in fact, edge us closer to our destinies? Is all of life a circle that leads us back to ourselves, no matter how circuitous the route? These are the questions Che's story asks, should you read between the lines and take off his t-shirt.)
And still, there is that picture, of him as a boy.
He is but a child and yet everything is there, the future almost tangible in its absence, ahead of him. Just up ahead. A revolution in a far away country he does not even know exists awaits his older, unlikely, presence, barely twenty years down the line. Another life, at home, a safer life, tugs his heart in another direction. He ultimately chooses the other way, the longer way, and becomes a deity in death.
And an oversized poster on an office wall in Yokohama.
For a mere boy from Argentina, an unlikely destiny, perhaps, but no more so than mine, or yours. We are not so different.
He looked for what he needed to find, as do I. As do you.
The future, tangible in its absence.
Kind of a strange coincidence, because I'd recently finished reading a paperback copy of Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara by Jorge C.Casteneda. I picked it up in Tokyo because I knew that Steven Soderbergh's new film of Guevara's life starring Benicio Del Toro was about to play at the Cannes Film Festival, and I wanted to refresh my memory of exactly who Guevera was, what he stood for and what he died for. (I read another biography of Che, by Jon Lee Anderson, but that was years and years ago.)
So how does somebody whose life was terminated in Bolivia, years after successfully helping Fidel Castro overthrow the corrupt Bastita government in Cuba, before unsuccessfully trying to instigate a similar revolt in the Congo, end up on a poster in the least revolutionary place imaginable -- a university office in Japan?
Che Guevara's likeness has become the wish, the hope, the focal point for anybody who wants to create a change in themselves, or the world, even if they don't know what that change might be, or even who Che truly was.
Somebody posted this poster of Che on a wall because it stands for something vaguely heroic, and daring, and revolutionary. Something that one can't find on a campus snug as a bug in a rug in Yokohama.
So who was Che?
Good question, and one that Castenda's book does an admirable job of answering -- as much as one possibly can give an answer to what is, essentially, an unanswerable enigma.
Guevera, an Argentine medical student from relatively middle-class origins who wandered around South and Central America for a period of years, observing the poverty, gradually becoming politicized by the class inequities, until fate or destiny or just plain luck had him ultimately meeting Fidel Castro in Mexico, where he joined Castro's crazy plan to overthrow the Cuban government.
A plan so crazy that it actually worked, and that resulted in an Argentine doctor becoming one of Cuba's most favorite sons.
Why has Guevera endured?
I think it's because he failed. He attempted to liberate the Congo, only to end up defeated, in despair, starving, underestimating and completely uncomprehending the entire political and social situation of that distant, difficult land. Castro sent him into Bolivia only because he feared Che would be killed if he ended up back in Argentina, Guevera's preferred locale for the next insurrection. In Bolivia, too, Che was undermanned and out of his league, attempting to start a revolution that the people did not want and that was nowhere near feasible, let alone possible. If he had not gone to the Congo, and had not gone to Bolivia, he might have lived on in perpetuity in Cuba like Castro has done for the past forty years since Che's death, a leader revered (or feared) by all.
But that wasn't Guevera.
Guevera was a revolutionary who needed a revolution, and if there wasn't one available, he would make one, and if he couldn't make one, he would die trying. The fact that the Cuban revolution succeeded was, in and of itself, almost miraculous, making all involved somehow more than human; the fact that Che's other attempts failed only elevated him Guevera higher, as only death can do.
So a poster on a wall, a face on a t-shirt, his mug on a mug: Che, the commercial entity. Che, becoming what he always loathed, a symbol of capitalistic excess run amok. Che, who died for his beliefs, however misguided, now the backdrop for an album cover.
People can look at his face and imagine that there is something more for them than this little life we try to make our own. Somewhere, in some place, there is a jungle, and in that jungle there are men, and those men, however few, are attempting something glorious. Che's beard and beret seek out that within us which yearns for a similar destiny, but settles for paychecks and decaf.
For me, though, the most fascinating parts of Casteneda's book were not the chronicles of his revolutionary years, when he became a legend, but the earlier ones, before Che became 'Che', because that was when we can see a boy become a man.
A typical tale, of course -- childhood to adolescence, and youth to maturity.
What makes Che's life so remarkable is its unlikely path. What looked like wandering eventually evolved into purpose. What resembled aimlessness was, instead, the slow and steady accumulation of, if not wisdom, at least intent. He wandered and looked and listened and judged. (Always judging, Che was.)
As someone who has also somewhat meandered for the past few years, I felt myself wondering as I read about the whims of fate, and chance, and destiny, and despair. Had Che stayed in Argentina, he most likely would have become part of the ordinary world that he later despised with a ferocity unmatched by any other. (And yet, had he stayed, he of course would not have become Che.)
His death at the age of forty is actually misleading, because his years were full and rich, varied and intense. Chronological time almost cannot be applied to his ferocious psyche, so rich is its reach. He wanted a mythic life and a noble end. All his spontaneous yet careful searching brought him towards a violent conclusion that somehow satisfied an inner longing he barely registered, even to himself.
Yet, it is in Che's early years that I sense the acute power of myth we all long for.
On the wall in my office, on the mug at your desk, on the t-shirt of your nephew strides his later self, defiant and intense. When I look at his face as a child, surrounded by school chums, I sense a different soul. One who wants more than what he has, but is acutely unsure if the world will accomodate his outrageous demands, or provide the formula he needs to cure the ailments of an unfortunate planet.
Looking back from the vantage of history, you can stare into that boy's face and sense that this is a child who will leave everything behind for the promise of nothing. The indomitable human will, which Che believed could solve any and every dilemma. You can also discern the blank slate upon which we all begin. We begin, we move, we end. All the details in between are either destiny or chance.
In Che I sense what we, the human species, could all become, were we to branch out far enough. It leads to despair, and disillusionment, and death. In its randomness it also leads to a path waiting to be found, should we only stay true. The one tread by no other but ourselves. (Can random journeys, in fact, edge us closer to our destinies? Is all of life a circle that leads us back to ourselves, no matter how circuitous the route? These are the questions Che's story asks, should you read between the lines and take off his t-shirt.)
And still, there is that picture, of him as a boy.
He is but a child and yet everything is there, the future almost tangible in its absence, ahead of him. Just up ahead. A revolution in a far away country he does not even know exists awaits his older, unlikely, presence, barely twenty years down the line. Another life, at home, a safer life, tugs his heart in another direction. He ultimately chooses the other way, the longer way, and becomes a deity in death.
And an oversized poster on an office wall in Yokohama.
For a mere boy from Argentina, an unlikely destiny, perhaps, but no more so than mine, or yours. We are not so different.
He looked for what he needed to find, as do I. As do you.
The future, tangible in its absence.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
ATARI, WHERE ART THOU: IN WHICH MY ADVANCING AGE IS MADE READILY APPARENT
Laughter is a funny thing. There's no better sound than that strange, spontaneous, emotional outburst, especially to the ears of an ESL teacher, if only because it means that you've been understood -- never a given when teaching learners of a foreign language, believe me -- but it also can erupt at unexpected moments, when you weren't even trying to be funny.
Yesterday in class for one reason or another we were talking about video games, and how I played them as a kid, loved them as a kid, even wrote speeches for school about them as a kid, though I haven't played any at home or in an arcade since well before Clinton's second term in office. Thinking of something they could relate to, I happened to compare Nintendo and Sega.
Hilarious juxtaposition, apparently.
Nintendo, still a powerhouse. Sega, I'm guessing not so much.
Upon uttering 'Sega', generous laughter spittled forth from the class. United in their mirth, they were, while your humble scribe stood rather dazedly, in front of them --black-suited, blue-tied, and not sure exactly what was funny. (I learned Sega is not selling like hot-cakes in Japan these days.)
Nevertheless, I plowed ahead. (When in doubt as an ESL teacher, plow ahead.) I mentioned that even before the Nintendo and Sega wars of my childhood, Atari was the video-game console of choice for the discerning game player.
I was expecting much laughter at this 'Atari' reference.
Nothing.
Not a cackle nor a chuckle. Neither a grin nor a smirk.
"Atari?" I said.
Blank stares.
I thought they might have at least heard of Atari.
Then I remembered: These students were born in 1989. 1990. Atari was already dead and buried by the time they were sampling their mothers' teats on a daily basis.
For a little history, I added: "Back then, Atari was so popular that the movie Blade Runner, set in the early 21st century, had the company's logo as a neon sign on a building in the middle of Los Angeles. You guys know Blade Runner, right?"
What do you think the answer to that question was?
There are many, many times when I feel impossibly young -- but that wasn't one of them.
Yesterday in class for one reason or another we were talking about video games, and how I played them as a kid, loved them as a kid, even wrote speeches for school about them as a kid, though I haven't played any at home or in an arcade since well before Clinton's second term in office. Thinking of something they could relate to, I happened to compare Nintendo and Sega.
Hilarious juxtaposition, apparently.
Nintendo, still a powerhouse. Sega, I'm guessing not so much.
Upon uttering 'Sega', generous laughter spittled forth from the class. United in their mirth, they were, while your humble scribe stood rather dazedly, in front of them --black-suited, blue-tied, and not sure exactly what was funny. (I learned Sega is not selling like hot-cakes in Japan these days.)
Nevertheless, I plowed ahead. (When in doubt as an ESL teacher, plow ahead.) I mentioned that even before the Nintendo and Sega wars of my childhood, Atari was the video-game console of choice for the discerning game player.
I was expecting much laughter at this 'Atari' reference.
Nothing.
Not a cackle nor a chuckle. Neither a grin nor a smirk.
"Atari?" I said.
Blank stares.
I thought they might have at least heard of Atari.
Then I remembered: These students were born in 1989. 1990. Atari was already dead and buried by the time they were sampling their mothers' teats on a daily basis.
For a little history, I added: "Back then, Atari was so popular that the movie Blade Runner, set in the early 21st century, had the company's logo as a neon sign on a building in the middle of Los Angeles. You guys know Blade Runner, right?"
What do you think the answer to that question was?
There are many, many times when I feel impossibly young -- but that wasn't one of them.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
C.O.P.S -- JAPAN STYLE
Aside from the occasional junior high school boy randomly stabbing innocent bystanders (are there ever any other kind of 'bystanders'?) at his local train station, or the crazy homeless dude who whacked me in the gut a few years back, Japan, with a population of 130, 000 people, is justifiably known as a remarkably safe country.
For the citizens? Spectacular. For news shows? Eh, not so much.
Case in point:
A month or so ago the lead story on the 6:00 NHK Nightly News -- a national broadcast -- concerned a convenience store clerk who was stabbed to death while working the late-shift in Osaka.
A tragedy, to be sure, but can you imagine an American version of the same incident?
"Good evening. I'm Katie Couric, and this is the CBS Evening News. Our top story: A convenience store clerk was stabbed to death early this morning at a 7-11 in Phoenix, Arizona."
Inconceivable.
Or how about this:
The other night there was a kind of C.O.P.S style show following a day-in-the-life of a Kanagawa Prefectural Police team. (Kanagawa being the prefecture -- similar to a province or state -- where I live.) The music was pumping and the editing was frenetic, with frequent phrases splattered across the screen to heighten the emotional effect.
And what were the incidents that demanded such a frenzied presentation?
"What in the world could this be?" the title on the screen asked. Because, get this -- there was a a man on a bicycle riding down the highway! You simply can't do that here! And when the police stopped the man and asked for his passort, they discovered that he was Chinese! And he only spoke English! When they tried to ascertain where he was headed, he kept saying, then writing, 'Osawara'! There's no city by that name! Aha! He meant 'Odawara!" That was miles away! What an odd situation!"
So the Chinese man hopped in the police car as they proceeded to exit the highway for a local road where bike-riding was allowed. And a policeman diligently rode the bicycle on the highway and met up with them all later. The Chinese man was sent on his way with a wave and a smile and a friendly musical jingle. Order was restored, and the Force was once again brought back into balance.
I jest at the types of news stories often on display, but I wonder: There actually could be some hard-hitting investigative reporting featured, but I doubt the Japanese media is allowed such access. The Japanese 'yakuza', or 'mafia', have their grimy little fingers in numerous nooks and crannies of political, economic and social life in Japan, but I don't think exposing their daily atrocities would be of benefit to news organizations. (The yakuza don't like kindly on negative exposure. Go figure.)
And just the other day a story on TV reported that a male 'host club' was busted in Kawasaki City; the clientele were all Koreans, and the staff -- young male 'hosts' whose job it is to pour drinks and provide company for lonely housewives -- were shipped back to Korea, given that they didn't have passports. A potentially intriguing story on the nature of illegal immigration could conceivably be undertaken here, given these same elements, but it seemed like a shallow, sensationalistic report. (Not that American TV is that much better, admittedly.)
Ah, well.
In the meantime, I'll relax, bask in Japan's safety, and eagerly scan the TV dial to see if any more bicyclists are found riding up and down roads where they don't belong.
For the citizens? Spectacular. For news shows? Eh, not so much.
Case in point:
A month or so ago the lead story on the 6:00 NHK Nightly News -- a national broadcast -- concerned a convenience store clerk who was stabbed to death while working the late-shift in Osaka.
A tragedy, to be sure, but can you imagine an American version of the same incident?
"Good evening. I'm Katie Couric, and this is the CBS Evening News. Our top story: A convenience store clerk was stabbed to death early this morning at a 7-11 in Phoenix, Arizona."
Inconceivable.
Or how about this:
The other night there was a kind of C.O.P.S style show following a day-in-the-life of a Kanagawa Prefectural Police team. (Kanagawa being the prefecture -- similar to a province or state -- where I live.) The music was pumping and the editing was frenetic, with frequent phrases splattered across the screen to heighten the emotional effect.
And what were the incidents that demanded such a frenzied presentation?
"What in the world could this be?" the title on the screen asked. Because, get this -- there was a a man on a bicycle riding down the highway! You simply can't do that here! And when the police stopped the man and asked for his passort, they discovered that he was Chinese! And he only spoke English! When they tried to ascertain where he was headed, he kept saying, then writing, 'Osawara'! There's no city by that name! Aha! He meant 'Odawara!" That was miles away! What an odd situation!"
So the Chinese man hopped in the police car as they proceeded to exit the highway for a local road where bike-riding was allowed. And a policeman diligently rode the bicycle on the highway and met up with them all later. The Chinese man was sent on his way with a wave and a smile and a friendly musical jingle. Order was restored, and the Force was once again brought back into balance.
I jest at the types of news stories often on display, but I wonder: There actually could be some hard-hitting investigative reporting featured, but I doubt the Japanese media is allowed such access. The Japanese 'yakuza', or 'mafia', have their grimy little fingers in numerous nooks and crannies of political, economic and social life in Japan, but I don't think exposing their daily atrocities would be of benefit to news organizations. (The yakuza don't like kindly on negative exposure. Go figure.)
And just the other day a story on TV reported that a male 'host club' was busted in Kawasaki City; the clientele were all Koreans, and the staff -- young male 'hosts' whose job it is to pour drinks and provide company for lonely housewives -- were shipped back to Korea, given that they didn't have passports. A potentially intriguing story on the nature of illegal immigration could conceivably be undertaken here, given these same elements, but it seemed like a shallow, sensationalistic report. (Not that American TV is that much better, admittedly.)
Ah, well.
In the meantime, I'll relax, bask in Japan's safety, and eagerly scan the TV dial to see if any more bicyclists are found riding up and down roads where they don't belong.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)