A few weeks ago I split Japan Window into separate blogs for photos and text. Creating interesting posts combining photos and text had become too time consuming, and that change seemed to be a solution.

Since then, I've had a great time posting daily photos on the new Pixelpost powered photo blog. Pixelpost is so easy to use. I can post a new image in seconds, and it's fun. But I haven't had much motivation to keep writing in depth text entries over here.

I realize that the main issue all along has been with the writing. I love to write. Someday I'd like to write books. But at this point in my life I can't afford the time it takes to write in depth entries.

Back to the new blog format. Pixelpost is a great way to post photos, and it also works for text. As long as I'm posting photos, there is no reason not to add a few words. So I hope to keep writing text -- but short, spontaneous entries when I have time.

Enough said. Come have a look and tell me what you think. :) If you are new visitor here, click on the archives (to the right) if you want to check out how this blog started and catch up.

W - "Who should I vote for? Should I vote for the Communist?"

Me - No (extra-perplexed expression) you can't vote for the Communist.

W - He's the only one who has concrete suggestions. He wants to limit class size in schools to 30... He's the Vice President of the (local) "Bring Back the Fireflies Association."

Me - (Laughing) I need to take notes on this.

W - (As I type blog entry) "...He also wants to keep the (nearby) childrens' hospital open -- everyone else is talking about tearing it down."

Me - (After some time) The parties that know they're going to lose can say anything...

Wife - "Another thing, the Communists are the only ones speaking out against Yasukuni Shrine..."

Now I remember. This morning she told me that the Communists have officially said that Yasukuni Shrine glorifies war. That simple truth is something that none of the other political parties have the willingness to declare -- I watched a string of representatives from the main parties on TV the other day saying that they need more time to study the issue and weigh public sentiment. Yasukuni Shrine may seem like a black and white issue to most of the world, but here in Japan it may be political suicide to come down solidly on one side of the issue or the other.

Again, I'm supposing that parties that are only trying for a niche vote, like the Communists, can afford to take a stand and go after the virulently anti-war types.

The idea of voting for a Communist strikes me as funny, but the communist party in Japan has a long history in the political process here. They may have even had a shot at real power after World War II, but some say that the USA actively thwarted that possibility -- and accepted (or perpetrated) the neutering of democracy in Japan with the effect of keeping the LDP in power for decades. You can read more on that in this book here (a very good read IMHO).

All that said, here in the "now" being a Communist seems like such an anachronism. Maybe it's time for a name change, or an extreme makeover. Then again, maybe it's better not to use the word "extreme" and "Communist" together at all.

The other day I was watching a news blurb about a political debate in Japan's Diet. Koizumi and another man were extolling the virtues of privatizing the postal system, and then a Communist member of the Diet offered a rebuttal. He said, in my paraphrase, that a newly privatized postal entity wouldn't be able to handle the complexities of running such a large operation, and that they would surely fail without government intervention. The man standing beside Koizumi came to the microphone and gave a quick response. He countered that companies, even complex ones, can indeed be entrusted to run themselves competently. Whereas governments that try to manage large scale business enterprises have failed, as we saw with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. I remember being impressed that he came up with such a well timed and effective cheap shot -- but the Communists really handed it to him by virtue of being themselves. It's easy NOT to take a political party seriously when they tout a name that has already failed the test of history.

Anyway, I hope you're not pigeon-holing me with a political label. I'm just suggesting that Japanese Communists might do better with an image makeover, including a new name, something like: "Social Democrats" or "Progressive Liberals." You know, there are many possibilities. "Mickey Mouse Brigades" might even be an improvement. Seriously, if you get Japanese Junior High School girls in your corner, then pretty soon you've got the whole country.

(By the way, my wife wasn't literally asking me who to vote for. It was just a request for input. She decides such things quite capably on her own.)

It's easy to spot disconnection in Japan. People living behind walls, or masks. Nurturing private worlds and secrets not shared, like the secret of who they really are inside. People literally retreat into their houses and stop coming out. They are "hikikomori" -- and society takes notice because they are many and the numbers are growing. But others take shelter in working endless hours (men) or talking for hours about nothing. There are so many ways to describe the walls here.

I've thought about all this quite a bit. My first year I was so isolated by language, so feeling isolated by people keeping a distance made the exerience that much more difficult. I would start thinking of brief times I spent in Africa and Mexico, where I made friends and got to know people very deeply in such a short time.

But now after three years, there's no use getting down on the cultural walls I feel. I've got to come to grips with (and acceptance of) my own identity here. Regardless of how hard Japanese culture may be for an American like me, I can't blame these kinds of struggles on the culture outside. As I read recently, "You cannot have intimacy [that is, connection] out of a false self" (Eldredge, The Sacred Romance). This is not just an issue for people who live in another culture. In fact, being in Japan may simply expose areas of growth for me that were there long before, and I'll take that as a good thing. The author (that I mentioned just above) later quotes G.K. Chesterton who wrote (in Orthodoxy): "We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is...We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten who we really are."

Shortly after discovering that site, I read the story about Gary Stochl. Reading that further deepened my thinking about vision (and discipline, learning from masters, focus, etc).

I've been shooting photos with a shotgun approach: photos that may look cool, photos that my blog visitors might want to see, photos to make a point or illustrate a story, etc. Of course, some have been photos I really wanted to shoot, but I've lost track of which ones those are.

I don't think I'm ready to describe my vision, but two words that come to mind are: romantic realism. I'm a romantic. I believe love (and the absence of it) explains most of what we experience and see as the human condition. I belive that people are extraordinary in their capacity for good and evil. I'm nostalgic, but I don't believe any of the problems in the world will be solved by singing "Let it be" (or any other song); that the ultimate expression of love in our world is not a warm feeling but suffering with. When I see people, I see hope and tragedy, the image of God, joy, sorrow, endless potential, total helplessness, freedom and fear. People occupy my attention (when I'm not sitting at the computer...). These are the directions my thoughts wander in when I think about my "vision for taking pictures."

On another note, I'm still happy with the decision to split my blog in two. When I take picture now I'm not thinking about how to match them with words. I'm also paying more attention to what I really want to photograph rather than what you all may want to see.

Today someone asked on my photoblog about the pictures that I take of people on the street. My view of that is changing, too. I used to feel like I was sneaking around taking candid shots of people. When I wanted to get "close," I would pull out my most powerful lens, which never felt powerful enough, and get shots of people's expression even from across the street. But something Dan Heller wrote on his site caused me to reconsider. He wrote that he goes up and talks to people, usually with his camera swinging behind his back. Then after making a connection he takes their pictures. (If you followed the link from my last post, that photographer spent three months building relationships with homeless people before they let her freely take their pictures.) There's no substitute for genuinely being involved. Getting closer. Talking to people. But talk to people on the streets of Tokyo!? I have always felt like people in this city are surrounded by invisible walls. I am afraid, literally, of breaking the culture's rules -- of seeing myself as the strange foreigner in another's eyes.

Despite that, I decided that rather than sneaking shots from a distance, I would begin approaching and asking people for permission to take their pictures. I told myself it had to be done for the good of my photography and put my reservations aside. And it has been great. People have been willing (at least half the time). I've talked and joked with them. And instead of walking around feeling like the gaijin photographer, I feel more connected. It's a start, so we'll see where it goes from here.

Please see www.icpress.com/Gallery/Kama/

I'm in awe.

Japan has a huge problem with it's declining birth rate, but like most people with self destructive tendencies they don't or can't touch the root of the problem. This summer the government is making a well publicized and ultimately doomed effort to get businessmen to stop wearing suits and ties at work. But what about the unofficial 11 hour work day? It's no wonder that more and more women are taking the initiative and refusing to get married. They don't want an absentee husband or the burden of raising kids all by themselves.

Actually, it works out well for him in a way. He's developed a "good" relationship with the man, who likes my friend and takes him to lunch and dinner at nice places. He gets to hear yakuza stories along with his sushi and unagi or whatever. I don't know if I should share the one story he shared, because I can imagine it coming full circle back to haunt me -- the yakuza was left in an embarassing situation at the end.

Getting back to my friend's job, I asked if he's able to save money, since he's working six or seven days a week, putting in 12 hours or more a day, and seems to have an important position. But he said, "no." Why, I asked. It turns out that my friend's job involves finding new contracts for his company in the industry that he's in. The problem is that in order to get these contracts, he has to make under the table payments, or kickbacks, to the people that he meets with. Although this is considered normal in his situation, there can't be any money trail of pay offs leading back to the company. The company simply 'doesn't pay kickbacks.' So it's up to my friend to come up with the payments himself, out of pocket. So far, his record payment has been about $10,000 (US equivalent).

All this is to say that there is much about Japanese society, the way business is carried out here, about economics and politics that is generally known but unseen. My friend's life is one example. You might wonder why he keeps the job. Why spend most of his waking hours working at a job that succeeds because he gives his own money away for the sake of the company? I don't know. He's loyal. He's needed. He's a worker there (it's in his identity). He's just a good guy (doing some bad things).

One way that I make peace with living in Japan is to stop trying to figure everything out, though I believe most things would make sense with more information. Most mysteries have answers, but not all people are in position to see them. As for my friend, he doesn't "like" his job and has decided to quit--in two years. He figures he owes the company that much... I'll be rooting for him to find something better when the time comes. He really is a great guy and could do better, I think.

I imagine that there are a number of boardrooms with people inside patting themselves on the back.

If you normally read this page via RSS, it's probably best to change your RSS feed to the new location (see below), because what you are seeing now may stop working at some point. Please go to the following link(s) and then bookmark the page(s) or subscribe to RSS feed(s) from there.

Text blog -
www.japanwindow.com/blog

PHOTO blog -
www.japanwindow.com

I hope you like the new blog. I sacrificed a lot of sleep in the past 48 hours to get it running, but it should make my blogging easier and more fun again. Peace!

Japan Window PHOTO blog -
http://www.japanwindow.com

Japan Window TEXT blog -
http://www.japanwindow.com/blog

The second link is active now and fully functional, so you can change your bookmark or RSS feed any time and add the other bookmark when the photo blog is ready.

Why the change? I love taking photos and writing, but combining both in one blog has been self-defeating. Loading pictures in a text-oriented blog is really a pain. This makes me reluctant to take pictures sometimes, because I don't have time to deal with the ones I have. It also pushes me toward writing only when I have time to put together a complete post (with photos and text), which often keeps me from writing short posts when I have something to say.

I want to take better photos, and this photo blog will mark a step in that direction. If you come here for the photos, you should be pleased.

I also want to write well. If you come here for the writing, you should also be pleased (just note the new link above). And if you come here for both the photos and text, just be sure to check both blogs from now on.

By the way, I haven't even talked about the food, like the Indian curry I kept going back for. I haven't mentioned the ten hours I must have spent speaking in Japanese (a whole semester's worth of conversation time at a typical language school). Nor have I described all the clothing, jewelry and other handmade stuff on display. Or the bands playing outside. Or the cheap prices (mental note: art and design school students sell their work at cost). But I've used up my quota of words for the week. So if YOU went to Design Festa please leave a comment and a link if you blogged about it. And, as always, all comments are read and appreciated!

Karuizawa felt almost like a small town in Colorado. The woods were thick, main street was just a few blocks long and hills thick with trees rose up as the buildings ended. There was a great shortage of leaves on those trees, though, which gave me a renewed appreciation for evergreens -- especially the Ponderosa Pines of my favorite mountains. But the bare branches all woven together with air in between (and no buildings or wires) had a character I could appreciate, and the place will be entirely green by mid-summer (when we return for another quick stay).

Karuizawa is known for many things. Every locality in Japan must be known for some kind of food or craft. If not, they make something up. A quick walk up the Ginza revealed an abundance of shops selling Sagawa jam and assorted pickled finger foods (well, chopstick foods that you eat with rice). Those were the gift stores. When Japanese people travel they often buy a some local food/snack items to bring back to their friends and neighbors. For those in the mood to consume on the spot, Karuizawa is "known for" its mocha soft serve ice cream, soba noodles and oyaki. Now I'm not convinced that mocha ice cream originated in this mountain town, or that their mocha ice cream is necessarily better than anyone else's (though it was good...). The soba is another story, which I'll get to later. Oyaki are steamed "dumplings" (kind of heavy, chewy rolls) stuffed with a veggie filling, and I like 'em.

Besides food, Karuizawa is known as the place where the current emperor of Japan met his wife (at a local tennis club). Members of the royal family apparently still go to Karuizawa for getaways, although we didn't run into any of them. Too bad.

Finally, Karuizawa is well known for its wedding chapels, or wedding INDUSTRY. Everywhere you look there are bridal shops with white dresses in the windows and cute little church-shaped buildings next door. My wife and I went to Hoshino Wedding Chapel. We actually went there because the building has a memorial inside for Kanzo Uchimura, and I wanted to take a look at that. Uchimura was a man of sincere faith and integrity who, many decades ago, gathered Japanese people to read the Bible and follow Jesus together completely outside of organized churches. They called it the "non-church" movement. Anyway, they picked a strange way to memorialize this man and his life. The chapel building is surely an architectural wonder. It's like a giant armadillo sprawled amoung the trees. An ode to concrete (intended as an ode to nature, or unity with nature -- go figure). In the lower level there is a small room with several glass cases featuring information and artifacts of Uchimura's life (like postcards and an underlined Bible).

By the way, I read online that Hoshino Chapel is the busiest wedding chapel in the world. A wedding party emerged from the building just as we arrived. After our brief look inside the chapel, we walked across the hotel grounds and I took more pictures as people emerged from another "famous" wedding chapel over there. We returned to our car in time to see wedding party number three. It was an eventful 40 minutes.

Aside from wedding chapels and the outlet center, we drove up the road and hiked (200 meters) to a beautiful waterfall one day. Another day we drove and hiked (100 meters) to a hilltop with a view. You choose short hikes when you have two year olds. I loved those places, and I'm looking forward to seeing them again when the place is green. We shopped a bit in the tourist shops, which we found surprisingly cheap. We found an extraordinary sculpture gallery (Monozukin). It deserves a blog entry in itself. Most of the welded, metal sculptures incorporate movement and, therefore, sound. It was all dark clattering teeth and motion. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough light to take pictures of my favorite pieces.

I said I'd mention more about soba later. We took my parents to have soba noodles one evening. I like soba, but I admit it's somewhat wrenching to pay $6 for a small pile of cold noodles and some sauce to dip them in. But often Japanese people don't go to restaurants hoping for a quantity of food; they go for a taste experience. Good soba takes time to make, and it has a complicated texture and taste. Well, the restaurant that was recommended to us (where we entered and sat down without checking the menu first) charged $10 for simple zarusoba (cold soba and dipping sauce), and $18 to throw in a few pieces of tempura. We were all feeling pretty hungry, and filling up there was clearly going to be a budget breaker. Plus, my parents had already experienced enough "price shock" for the day, and they aren't impressed by cold noodles no matter how you chop, dip or slice them. In the end, we ordered the minimum we could get away with to avoid slinking out of there without ordering (our group couldn't slink very well anyway). The soba was very good, by the way--in my opinion. After making an exit we walked down the street and had our second course at KFC.

Fish roasting at a road side stand just below the waterfall hike.

But Japan's neighbors have a long memory. Some say a victim complex. After all, Japanese leaders have apologized many times for Japanese aggressions and excesses throughout Asia. The Japanese Emperor himself delivered an apology in Beijing some years ago. Most of the Japanese who invaded China and Korea are long since dead, and the new generation(s) are anti-war. Right?

The problem is that apologies have a hollow ring when actions contradict the words. For example, there is a great outcry in Asia every time a Japanese Prime Minister visits Yasukuni Shrine (which memorializes Japan's fallen soldiers, including a number of war criminals). This has been argued back and forth, and frankly I don't understand. I don't come from a culture that venerates the dead, at least not in the same way, and I haven't looked closely at the relationship between Shinto religion and Japanese nationalism either. To me, the issue of textbooks is more concrete. Recently, Japan has approved a list of history textbooks for classroom instruction that generally gloss over or simply don't mention the terrible things Japanese troops did in Korea and China. This has been going on for many years, actually, and today a great many Japanese don't understand that the Koreans and Chinese are so upset about. They don't know the full story nor have they had to wrestle with the 'dark side' of what their grandparents' generation did. They have never struggled with moral dilemmas. They are ill-informed and ill-equipped, some would say, to prevent history from taking a similar course in the future.

My wife completed her education in Japan and graduated from a good university here, but she never knew what really happened in Korea and China until she went to the USA for graduate school. In the USA she learned about the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers and saw (through Korean and Chinese friends) how real and raw the wounds are even today.

So what is the present crisis about?

I have read that it's about politics. That China is controlling the situation to serve their own ends. They have power to deny Japan a seat on the UN security council. They want to be the leader in Asia. And they would rather have Chinese people mad at Japan than pointing fingers at Chinese leaders for their own internal problems. I also hear it's all about business. On the news here, almost every time a Japanese person is quoted, he (not she) is saying a variation of, "This is bad for business." Outside commentators also say that both China and Japan have to be careful, because both neither of the two countries can afford to stop buying and selling with each other.

Finally, I hear it's about justice. I'm sure this is a popular sentiment on the streets of China and Korea, and it's actually fundamental to China's big picture position: that Japan shouldn't be a member of the security council because the country is essentially immoral (unable to take responsibility for evils of its past or be trusted with leadership in the future).

Strange to hear "immorality" cited in an international debate. Strange also for China to make the accusation. I admit I wasn't exactly seeing straight on this until I read this article in BBC news. But I still think it's an important point, and the fact that China is saying it gives the world some permission to bring the argument back to them.

All the participants on the stage seem a bit screwed up. This is a social, political, moral, political, economic and emotional mess. But there are things that can be done to begin straightening up the mess.

Why can't Japan change it's textbooks? It seems so easy to me. There's no need to bathe in shame here -- I'm just thinking of giving balanced information and facts using the best available historical information. What a grand and practical gesture that -- if knowledge is a good thing -- would benefit, not harm Japan!

My Japanese teacher doesn't think it will be so easy. I need to listen to my tape of our lesson today, though, to figure out exactly what she said. But one thing I caught -- which we both agreed on -- is that there must be powerful people behind Koizumi who are pulling his strings. There is always a sense about the government here that most things are behind the scenes and out of the hand of ordinary people.

Technically, ordinary people form a powerful group. Voters. They could take Koizumi and the LDP out of power. How idealistic of me to say that! I know... I could get all cynical, which is why I don't say much about Japanese politics much in this blog. But today I want to think Japan could change on a point like this. I really think it would be in the country's own self-interest, and it would be the right thing to do. Why is it so hard?

We said goodbye to my parents yesterday and explained to the kids that they would be getting on a plane and going home. There was something so unnatural about that. How do you explain to a 4 year old and 2 year old twins that their grandparents are leaving? Our four year old is just starting to understand differences of location and time. We returned from a trip to Nagano last weekend and she said, "We're back in Japan now!" The twins are entirely in the moment. As we all hugged and said the words, I had a pain in the pit of my stomach that intensified each time one of the kids' faces lit up again with a smile at my father or mother.

I think I began to face my own mortality for the first time in the weeks leading up to my marriage. I didn't want the fickleness of life to cut short the journey we had begun. I realized in the face of great happiness that I was helpless to guarantee it would continue. The second time I experienced mortality so intensely was prior to the birth of the twins. Hitomi was in the hospital on bed rest; Reia and I were staying with my in-laws in their house. At that time, on the news they were saying an earthquake could be imminent on the major fault that passed nearby. Furthermore, I knew that an engineer had declared that the house would completely collapse if that happened. I had a hard time sleeping at nights. I didn't want to miss seeing my daughters and watching them grow up. No wonder sometimes we're afraid of even good things, because they make us so vulnerable.

These past three weeks it's been wonderful watching my parents interact with the girls. My kids are so happy with them. Yet I wonder how many more times we'll all have such times together. My parents are amazing. My father quit his medical practice when he was nearing sixty and they moved to a village in Africa for four years to work in a hospital there. They have lived with remarkable energy. The fact that they seem to have less energy now is disturbing. But it points to the heart of my faith, which says I must lose my life to find it (in Christ). My hope doesn't come from what I can hold onto (my own life, my parents, my culture or control). This may seem intense; I'm just trying to be real though.

I'm sure many of you reading this realize that the falling cherry blossoms represent death. Cherry blossoms appear briefly, for about a week, and then disappear just as fast. Their brief, bright life speaks to the heart's of many Japanese people who think about such things. Put simply, they are a reminder to live life fully and in the now.

By the way, another reason for this intensity is that I've been reading an autobiography by Ayako Miura. This remarkable woman suffered from tuberculosis for many years following World War II. I never imagined how terrible it was to have TB. But the book isn't about her disease. It's an amazing story of her life and an incredible love story. I admit to having a sentimental streak, but her story explodes mere sentiment. She went on to become an important novelist here. As I read this story of her life, I encounter such passion and realize I've hardly tasted suffering (passion and suffering are closely related words). Her story reveals heights of love (and despair) that I also have yet to experience. The title is "The Wind is Howling" (the title of the English version). Reading her story makes me want to be a better writer, and, more importantly, to live and love more fully -- and put that on paper and on the computer screen.