5 reasons why Japan is cooler than North America

LOUD PARK

2 days of metal...
2 days of glory...
2 days of honour...

Loud Park, when the walls fell

Metal Warriors of the East

Mastodon rockin' the place

Angra reprezenting

Angra!

Arch Enemy

coolest woman of all time

Key-tar solo!

DragonForce rocking

miscellaneous-ness

In the same way that Terry Gilliam shouts “Bring out your dead” in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, a grizzled old man driving a beaten-up ramshackle truck drives through the streets every once in a while with megaphone attached to the top of the vehicle that does the shouting for him. Only in this case, “your dead” happen to be old appliances and mangled bicycles.

Also, it’s rather pleasant living among the rice fields in the country…smoke from burning fields wafts through the school almost constantly…if feels more like camp than school…the gym smells like old wood and there are windows around the entire circumference of the school, bordering each and every hallway…the students run and jump and tear about the place, yelling and singing unabashedly while the staff talks and laughs among one another…it’s a really quite a relaxed atmosphere…still, it would be nice to understand more of what my fellow coworkers are saying…I can pick up bits and pieces and answer questions when they are asked directly to me, but my conversation skills are still quite jumbly and incoherent …I am the infidel in the holy land, the linguistic thorn in everyone’s side, the king of the carnival creation. An alien, doing alien things in alien ways, trying not to alienate everyone around me, yet succeeding, here and there, at integrating myself into the greater matrix of Japanese society. Should I continue with my language studies I may be able support myself with a real job in the Big T (T for Tokyo) next year without the assistance of the J.E.T. Program. But that is still a ways away…

To bow respectably requires a deep, low bow and complete almost 90 degree arch in the back. In order to bow with such respect to the English teacher about to instruct him in the ways of English Number Bingo, one of my little 3-graders smoked his head of the desk in front of him. He was really trying hard, but he bowed too low too fast and WHAM! bashed his face on the desk. I tried not to laugh, but it was completely impossible

mad teachery

another excerpt:

le teach: "What’s your favourite weather?"

le goof: “Suupa laitoningu tolneidoooooo!” (Super lightning tornadoooooo)

le teach: What’s YOUR favourite weather?

goof le deuxieme: “Burakku houru!” (Black hole)

hahahaha, what a bunch of pimps!

Surreality.

Imagine a place where violence is virtually unknown.

A place where everyone passes each other in the street with flurries of courteous “Excuse me”s, where you are thanked eleven times as you leave for patroning a given establishment, where the streets and trains are clean enough to walk barefoot (without blackening your feet), where people like you so much they are willing to pay upwards of $30/hr. just to have a conversation with you, where snowboarding and breakdancing is a sport not just for the young but for the pre-pubescent and wrinkly old codger as well, where vomiting and sleeping on the concrete outside the train station is neither ridiculed nor frowned upon but rather safe and acceptable (and often written off as a business expense), where everything can be deemed “fun” and virtually anything is allowed.

Imagine such a place existed.

Now imagine you lived there.

Welcome to my Surreality.

Where any day is as unbelievable as the next. Where work is camp, and camp is a concept unknown. Where sarcasm is as foreign as 3-car garages. Where coolness is almost entirely gauged by “cuteness” (read: “gayness”). Where anything is okay so long as I can justify it to myself.

…within the bounds of reason and common sense, of course. Should I think it prudent to furiously masturbate in a crowded urban area or in front of school children with a knife in my teeth and a T-shirt saying “I hate Japs”, dire consequences surely would result.

Suffice to say however, my wholesome upbringing has prevented me from engaging in such a heinous (albeit interesting…from a legal perspective anyway) spectacle.

Such a magical place of course is not without its drawbacks. Monthly expenditures can easily (and heftily) exceed $1500 (these do not include actual necessary expenditures such as rent, utilities or the like). Domestic transportation is the priciest in the known world. Many various types of slime are considered “food”, or even worse, delicacies, and it is virtually impossible to get a straight answer from anyone about anything at any time (aside from directions and prices).

Taken all together though, Japan is without a doubt a glorious place to live, especially for anyone with even a modicum of artistic talent. For those with actual skills, the opportunities are somewhat boundless.

ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS, COME YE HITHER…

One needs a functional visa of course, but that amount to perhaps the only obstacle in one’s way. Linguistic capabilities and grammatical prowess only serve to extend the possibilities even further. Let us not forget, or rather, according to my observations, Greater Tokyo is a cesspool of mediocrity (in terms of things Western). Generally in the arts community, nothing is really terrible, but nothing is really great either…and the demand for such things by so many millions of people crowded into such a small area is almost unlimited.

…it’s like being a kid in a candy store…only the candy is free, no, the candy pays YOU...mmmmmmm, candy...

Economical thinking?

Classical economics (as now generally practiced by the functional elites of industrial
societies) seems to be a curious form of mystical utilitarianism. Somehow, short-term
gain for the greatest number of people will result in the greatest happiness for
everyone. Obsessed with materialism and techno-worship (masquerading as "progress"),
it is the lowest, most superstitious form of romanticism. Belief (or more commonly
desperate pretense of belief) in the results of linear, fact-based progress seems
purely a managerial tactic of an elite that sees the public as something to be managed.
The citizenry must be constantly reassured that everything is under control, and
therefore safe and therefore something to be praised (with votes, public funding, and
what have you). However, certainty and inevitability are two of the things which are
never certain or inevitable.

Thus materialism is a constant barrier to scientific progress (to say nothing of human
progress).

some words on discipline

Alrighty, time now for a little lesson on Japanese elementary school teaching.

Classes range from angelic classes full of cute, wide-eyed kids with big smiles and crooked teeth listen attentively on the edge of their seats to the “alien” giving the lesson at the front of the room, to monster madness insano classes that the actual Japanese teachers have long since given up trying to control.

Let’s recount this week’s experiences, shall we?

Teacher: “Do you like ice hockey?”

Student: “Ice bokki!” (note: “bokki” means erection in Japanese)

Teacher: “Do you like tennis?”

Student: “Penis!”

Teacher: “Repeat after me: Two chips, please”

Student: “Potato chips, please”

(hardy har har)

Teacher: “What’s your favourite hobby?”

Student: “Toilet”

Teacher: “Do you have any questions?”

Student: “chinko shitakoto ga arimasuka? chinko ha okiino?”

(Translation: “Have you ever penised? Is your penis big?)

Teacher: “Okay, let’s play a game”

Student (jumping): “Penis, penis, penis!”

Yeah! And that’s how we teach.

Plesiosaurs are cool.

Plesiosaurs feed (I say “feed” and not “fed” for reasons which will become obvious in a few minutes) on both fish and squid…what can one find in the oceans? Fish and squids.

Plesiosaurs have 4 flippers, much like a dolphin’s, for extreme maneuverability. Plesiosaurs went extinct in the late Cretaceous period…or did they?

Let’s investigate.

The Coelacanth, perhaps the most famous of prehistoric fish (because the species continues to exist even today!), is direct evidence that prehistoric species can survive the test of evolutionary time. Once thought to be extinct, the coelacanth has been found in marine waters of many African states (Kenya, Madagascar, South African coast) and even Indonesia. A deep-dwelling reef fish, the coelacanth is a relic from the past. These screwy fish often swim upside-down, vertically or backwards in search for prey using a specialized electro-receptive organ on the top of their heads (frickin’ laser beams on their heads). The more interesting thing about these fish however is that if one species can survive relatively unchanged through millions of years (through the Great Extinctions of prehistoric land species), then surely others can as well. Considering the oceans dwarf all land species in terms of size, quantity, variety, and any other measurable characteristic, it is not much of a stretch of the imagination that there are many species left over from the ancient past. This has captured peoples’ imaginations for at least a century, and gives at least some credence to the thought that species such plesiosaurs may still be in existence today.

It has been said that humans know much more about interstellar phenomena (remote, almost un-sensible objects, millions of light-years away that we will never be able to reach or study directly) than they do about our own oceans, which are practically most peoples’ backyards, and which also cover most of the planet and contain most of the life on the planet.

The Mariana Trench off the coast of Guam extends almost 11,000 metres below sea level. At this depth, we can only pretty much guess at what might be down there, or possibly send little probes to have a quick look before their batteries run out or their hulls are crushed by the undersea pressure (more than 15,000 lbs. per square inch). This is a bit like sending an ant to survey the C.N. Tower.

Be that as it may, every deep-sea dive has recorded dozens of new, never-before-seen species, all kinds of strange creepy-crawlies and bioluminescent abominations. As it stands, we (humans, collectively) have identified far less than 1% of the ocean’s inhabitants, yet we have already found examples of species that have survived for millions of years and continue to do so even now. Also, one of the most intriguing, mysterious and reluctant to be filmed species is the immense Architeuthis, or giant squid. A live squid has never been seen (well, recently a Japanese man got video footage of a giant ensnared on one of his deep-sea traps and recorded, in extremely poor quality film, its thrashings until it ripped its own arms off and escaped), yet is has been postulated, based on available, reliable, quantifiable, scientific evidence, that there is far more Architeuthis biomass on the planet than human biomass. And Architeuthis is but one of a menagerie of myriad species that inhabit the depths, far from the prying eyes of humans and their science!

What does this tell us? It tells us that the possibility for finding living plesiosaurs (long neck, small head), pliosaurs (short neck, big head), elasmosaurs (extra long neck) and other monsters of the past (not to mention new species and life forms hereto unheard of!) is far more probable than most people believe. I mean, even such trivial yet well-known “legends” as the Loch Ness Monster have often been explained as plesiosaurs, but who cares when there is an entire ocean that is probably filled with these and other such monsters!

Combine absolute darkness with extreme pressure and life gets strange. Fish get all scary and transform into mostly teeth, sharks grow as large as a school bus, and everywhere little lights blink on and off, various billions of small creatures luring prey, confusing enemies and making sneaky getaways. Massive squids fly about in the darkness, feasting on prey, occasionally being devoured by foraging sperm whales (who often dive more than 2000 metres in search of the tasty squids). Cutting edge modern science cannot even explain (yet?) how the sperm whale (a well-known, well-researched and well-hunted species) manages to dive so deeply without mangling itself with decompression sickness and succumbing to air bubbles in the brain. If such a specific, well-known phenomenon of one specific, well-known species is so difficult to explain, imagine what discoveries await with the thousands of unknown species with their virtually millions of unknown biological mechanisms and behaviours! A living plesiosaur seems certainly not out of the question.

rraaaaarrrrrr!

swim swim swim.