comfy, cozy

Having been riding almost daily the single most expensive domestic transit system in the world for almost a year and a half, it has occurred to me that there might be reasons for why it is so often acrid, unbearably hot and humid.
First, the Japanese enjoy living in perhaps the safest Westernized country in the world. As I have documented in a previous blog, crime is almost non-existent here (or at least completely invisible) in this country where a child under 10 can safely and confidently roam around the busiest train station on Earth at night without worrying about anything except getting home before dinner is over. The Japanese (culturally) revile conflict and tension. They prefer safety and harmony, so much so in fact that false pretense can be more important than one's opinion or even facts!
So then, what is the safest, happiest, warmest, most comfortable place in the world? What is this most harmonious of places where everyone can feel relaxed and at rest?
The womb.
It seems the Japanese, and vicariously me without the voice of my consent, seek to return to the harmonious conditions of the earthly birthplace through the use of daily domestic transport.
The almost impossibly complicated Japanese rail and subway system (an absolute masterpiece of logistics) approximates the conditions of the womb. Inside each train car it is hot, there is no oxygen, it is impossible to move, etc. (the only thing missing is amniotic goo). This causes supreme confusion in the brain, and one's entire physical being reverts to a more or less pre-natal state. Thus it's no surprise that these sorts of environmental conditions are taken as cues that it is no longer necessary to think or do anything at all, and, assuming a preconscious mode of operation, sentience recedes into nothingness.
It could be of course that riding the Japanese transit system, like when drinking copiously, the lack of oxygen in the train compartment, like alcoholized blood and its thusly-impaired hemoglobin, deprives the brain of the oxygen necessary to carry out basic motor tasks and it is this that causes the experiencer to black out. Either way is plausible.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I hate the incredibly efficient, ubiquitous and convenient mass transportation system of Japan that gets me everywhere I want to go on time.
...cuz it's hot...and humid...and makes me fall asleep
...and sucks.

Japanese police don't mess around

"Let that be a lesson, you heathen mainlander scum!"

First there was nothing, then there was beer.

It has recently come to my attention that beer is in fact one of the most prominent hallmarks of civilization. The cultivation of grains from the times of the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia and Egyptians to the wild Germanic tribes of north-eastern Europe all the way to the present-day so-called civilizations has always been an imperative piece of the human puzzle. But not just for making bread. Wheat, barley, and various other not-as-common crops were and still are planted for beer-making purposes. A staple of most of the old societies of Europe, beer was often the most common beverage among the citizenry. In Egypt, queens, nobles and even slaves were alotted certain quantities of beer per day (these alottments were guaranteed, regardless of occupational status). In fact, the Egyptians devoted at least half of the grain harvest to making beer! Indeed, for "It was common etiquette for a worshipper to drink until intoxicated. A wealthy Egyptian rarely would leave home without being accompanied by two slaves and a hammock. So if he got too inebriated to walk home after a night in a tavern or at a beer banquet, he could sleep off his delirium in a prone position while being carried home."
Sounds pretty civilized to me.

Quoting again from Horst Dornbusch (who has written many fascinating articles chronicling the rise and fall of beer-brewing throughout human history that can be found at http://beeradvocate.com): "Paleo-anthropologists tell us that Homo sapiens, that is, humans like you and me, have been on this earth for at least 200,000—maybe even 400,000—years, at least biologically, somewhere in Africa. But as cultural beings we have not been around for more than perhaps the last 10,000 years...and, incredibly, beer-making has been around just as long, but apparently not longer!"

What does this tell us? That beer is intimately connected with the onset of civilization. To drink beer is to be human. It is utterly cultural.

Amen to that.