So what’s in store for fall? More books, more Japanese study, more talk time over the phone, more travel, and (God willing) a chance to continue building up my amateur photography.

Speaking of photos… I’m putting together an album of “Black and White Views of Mutsu.” So far my album (which I’m editing) has nearly 56 photos of Mutsu city and is slowly growing. There’s a few places I need to shoot more of, and some places I need to shoot at certain times of the day & night. I can’t promise it’ll be finished soon or posted soon… But I hope to get a small Gallery up where I can post “draft pictures.”

As of the moment… My latest activity has been experimenting in the field of late night, macro, flash photography. I’ve order a flash for my Sony DSLR and lately I’ve been testing diffused & bouncing light shots with the pop-up flash… using only a folded piece of paper and a folded tissue. The results have been just above average I suppose, but I’m looking forward to getting better with each shot I take.

~J out for now..

4:30pm- you would never know which part of the day it was at this time… whether it was morning or afternoon. Windows here are scarce and where I sit it might as well be 2am all the same. People here busily work on their assignments, but some glance slightly at the clock being mindful that whatever it is they’re working on needs to be at a point of finish soon.

The sound of city hall buzzes, phones ring, and people scurry about (even run) like ant’s building a fortress. The atmosphere is one of classic machinery. The gears of the Japanese government working tirelessly to accomplish some task or goal efficiently.

5:00pm- People are beginning to move. Sounds of machines shutting down, cellphones chirping with texts and calls from family, and papers being neatly tucked away. The secretaries rush around checking the work area for trash and carefully maneuver the burnable trash bin and un-burnable trash bin around so that each piece goes where it should.

There are few who are putting on their coats, snapping their brief cases, getting ready to roll. Some even sit at their desk waiting for the 5:15 chime to sound the end of the day. The atmosphere is of movement, the exodus that’s about to happen.

5:15pm- A loud chime sounds as if London’s Big Ben were stationed on top of this building. People switch from working mode to leave mode in an instant.

The air conditioner above my turns off and people flow out the door taking all the cold air that was building up it with them. The air is moving, but slowly turns stuffy and thick. The Japanese humidity and thick dense hot air moves into the building, but no one cares because in the period of just 5-10 minutes nearly 90% of the building has evacuated into the parking lot– clogging up the exit, and jamming the street. It was as if someone had gone into the back and pulled down the big metal lever with the shiny red ball titled “Work” from “on” to “off.”

5:45pm- The building quiets quickly. I can hear the sound of heals from across the building. A trash can gets knocked and the sound roars across the vacant workspace. A few remain, but slowly they sift out one by one and the lights flicker off just you’d see in a slow running end of a movie….

The atmosphere is as if credits to the movie Wednesday July 21st, 2010 are about to roll.

6:30pm- It’s eerily quiet now. The copy machine has even winded down and the sound of it’s roaring fan now ceased.  In the distance I can hear a drop fall into a bucket, and a conversation from way across the building. Even the sound of the automatic doors are audible. It’s peaceful, but maybe too peaceful. Lights are going off now all over and I can see the janitor locking the doors.

6:50- I get the feeling of “good enough” why push it? The building that was icy cold just an hour or so ago is hot and muggy. A single bead of sweat just rolled down my forehead and I can’t take another.  Lights from all over have gone off and now I too am packing up. The sound of my bag’s rustling is loud and the long sound of my zipper has caught the notice of one straggler from two desks ahead of me. I bow slightly and silently apologize.

I got to get outta here..

6:55… I’m sitting at my desk now… watching the clock tick to 7pm. I should leave but someone might notice, they might call the boss, ugh…it’s hot.

I think I’m turning Japanese? who knows… ok maybe I’ll sneak out that door…

o saki ni shitsure shimasu… Good night.

So lately I’ve been studying the kanji for Japan’s 5th level (1 being the highest) Kanji Proficiency test. I’m doing this because my biggest weakness to the JLPT is the reading and recognition of Kanji. I’m hoping that through working through the Kanji step books my reading skills will go up and I can go back to studying the JLPT without the “what’s that kanji again” hang up…

To do this.. what I’m doing is going through each kanji and copying down everything then translating/looking up what I don’t know, then finally taking the example words using each kanji and building an Anki deck with that…

Then everyday I’ll just run down that Anki deck of words over and over until I solidly know the various readings of that kanji.

And… that’s going to be my summer project..

~J out

Like a giant hoax that one day I might wake up from. However it’s nothing that I could resist. We know what events merged together to put us here. We choose safe over adventure and that’s why we’re here.

Sometimes I feel that there are two of each of us in this world. Person A is the person that wakes up at 6:00am, takes a shower, brushes their teeth while the coffee maker gurgles and steams in the background. Person A is undoubtedly responsible and gets those little things done. Then there’s Person B. Person B is sitting in the cockpit of Person A watching all this go on wondering what’s the point?

Person B would skip work, drink all the cheap whiskey in the cabinet, smoke the rest of the pack, then take off unannounced to somewhere, anywhere, without a care for money, food, life, or anything… yet, Person A keeps B grounded like the blind scales of justice. Person A doesn’t condemn, just keeps the balance– keeps us maintained on a road we’ve chosen for the moment. Without Person A we’d die of disease, malnutrition, or something; without Person B we’d die of a mundane and loveless life.

We’re probably created as such beings for a purpose. Our duality is what makes life challenging and fair. Perhaps it’s necessary, perhaps it could be broken, perhaps it is a dream-state… and if it all was… I’d be happy enough with it.

~J out

Years sometimes come and go so fast that days become too small of a measure of time… almost as if they’re one with minutes and seconds. Such as it is, it’s likely that if we thought hard about it, the days we swear have past and are forgotten could be recalled just by the habits and repetitive schedules we agree too…

Time’s marker on our lives aren’t big events or moments, but people. People’s faces serve as markers though they change as often as the days. One face might comfort us, bring us peace, but it’s not out of the realm of reality that this face could change completely into one of fear and horror.

This is especially true of ours…

Why do we allow the flow of life to carry us as such? Are we actors in the real time, live audience, drama of life? There are moments when I feel that even my very own intimate choices and desires aren’t even my own… I feel as as though they were chosen and dictated to me not by some cosmic force or supernatural entity, but by circumstance and context.

Where we are must determine who we are…

If one lives in a safe normal society don’t their lives reflect one of a safe, secure, predictable livelihood? It’s not a hard & fast rule by any means, but rather an observation I’ve had for quite some time…

By far, this doesn’t mean that the life of everyone is laid out and that all we need to do is walk our own path blindly… Rather, it just means we need to consider where we choose to live. We can run, change our lives or we can stay content…. One must just consider this:

Where ever one goes they’ll have days of bliss and days of melancholy.

This could almost be depicted on a scale, a chart of happiness & brooding. A chart that shows waves of highs and lows over time that might even be predictable. What would we do with such a scale? How could we plan out life and keep it interesting as well? Perhaps the answer lies in small overlooked things…

Take food for example… food can play a serious role in the change of our attitude and lifestyle. Warriors given the right meal can be given confidence of a coming victory; soup by loving hands to a sick child can ease the burden of their illness; food presented one way can awe us, another way can equally scare us. Food is indeed medicine and can change our perception of place and past… however, like everything it seems in this world, food taken in excess harms us and can even takes years off our lives.

Such is the way of these things…

“Live in moderation” we tell ourselves, but secretly we love to indulge when other people’s eyes are turned. Such fickle creatures of the world we are, or pretend to be. We bow to whatever mantra of the day we’ve come to love, adopt, and call our belief.    Belief– a powerful word used recklessly.

…And with “this belief” comes our certainty, our confidence, about the things around us and ability to not just communicate this to others, but to convince them as well. Be it “a spectacular truth” or something as mundane as a leak (no one else can see) forming on the ceiling. We act as vessels heading to these destinations with passion behind the stern and logic as our first officer.

Though is not my opinion that belief, certainty, confidence, passion, nor logic is necessarily bad. It is who we are and what we’re made of. It’s the fabric of our relationships, our work, and a beauty to all mankind. It’s the lack of awareness or our mindfulness of these qualities that gets us in trouble.

When we are unaware of our belief we become misguided; when we lose certainty we become confused; when our confidence weakens we become defeated; when our passion diminishes our goals suffer; when we act illogical we make mistakes that sometimes can’t be taken back.

Our world spins with or without us here. It spins fast and is an entity that isn’t responsible for being self aware… Let us then be aware of ourselves and be true to one another before this fast spinning ball of dirt throws us off for good….

~J out

My work teaching kids typically leaves me feeling exhausted. I don’t why, but teaching elementary school aged kids successfully requires lots of energy and motivation. When I was here years ago studying abroad at Hokusei, my job then was to be a student… Study hard, write, and broaden my views of the world.

At that time, I wrote a lot because, as a student, you live to share the knowledge you’ve gained. I feel now as a teacher of knowledge one’s will or motivation to pass knowledge is different… Instead of writing words each night for a broad audience of whom you may not even know… you live for those small moments when kids connect with you and knowledge is passed intravenously into their veins of wonderment.  Something where knowledge doesn’t get passed by ways of expert pedology, but rather through real human connections… a bond as it may… we sometimes have with each other.

In any case, I do love and appreciate the work I do and, overall, enjoy living here… for the most part. I hope to write more during the summer break when school is out and I can exhaust myself on other things…

~J out

I’ve ordered my books and now am cracking into the vocab/kanji at the moment.

~J out

Youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO5pGjtECYo

Lyrics:

出た出た　月が (deta deta tsuki ga)

It’s out, It’s out, The Moon is out
まるいまるい　まんまるい (ma-ru-i ma-ru-i man-marui

It’s round, It’s round, Perfectly round

盆のような　月が (bon no yoo na tsuki ga)

The moon seems like a lantern (O-bon- lantern festival)

隠れた　雲に (kakureta kumo ni)

hidden by the clouds

黒い黒い　真っ黒い (kuroi kuroi ma-kuroi)

Black, Black, Pitch Black

墨（すみ）のような　雲に (sumi no yoo na kumo ni)

Clouds black as ink

また出た　月が (mata deta tsuki ga)

The moon is still out

まるいまるい　まんまるい (marui marui man-marui)

Round, Round, Perfectly round

盆のような　月が (ban no yoo na tsuki ga)

The moon seems like a lantern

A simple song that I hope you like as much as I do…

~J

A list of things I’ll try to post this week are:

The Japanese Driving Exam & drive test (運転免許試験受験票　unten menkyo shiken juu ken hyou)

The change of teachers on April 1st.

A review of 10 awesome Japanese movies I’ve watched that you should watch sometime too:

Here’s the list:

“Dolls”

“Mada Dayo”

“Ososhiki”

“Ran”

“Rashomon”

“Shichimin no Samurai”

“Tampopo”

“Marusa no onna”

“Daibyounin”

“Okuribito”

And finally my new diet idea… “Beans, Rice, and Beef for 2 weeks”

That’s a lot and I’ll try my best to sit down and write it all out this week.

~J out

(click for bigger)

Details:

Taken and edited 3/6/2010 by me with a Sony DSLR-A200

f-stop: F/13; Exposure: 1/2000 ISO:800 @ 28mm

edited in Photoshop..

~J out