Tokyo Kills Me

We Am Moved... Again!

2005-10-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

Once again, this restless blog is on the move. Check out the new location, and new monthly format, for Tokyo Kills Me at http://www.exitbooted.com/tokyokillsme/current.htm

Available Light: Korea

2005-06-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

I have made yet another photo page from my "archives:" Available Light: Korea is now online (check out the totem poles).

Available Light: Kyoto

2005-06-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

I continue to dig through digitized archives of my photos from Japan, using Picasa2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 to improve the image quality.

I'm still very new to digital image editing, but I've noticed that pictures scanned from slides, negatives, and prints all appear underexposed on my monitor. Picasa2 tends to under-adjust these pictures, while Adobe PSE3 tends to over-adjust.

In any case, I've posted the best images from two trips to Kyoto at my newest photo blog, Available Light: Kyoto.

An unseasonably cool spring

2005-06-04T02:32:00.000-07:00

... and now the rainy season has arrived on wasabi-green clouds. Tonight, as Rumi and I walked the hundred meters or so to Royal Host for dinner, rain slashed under wind-pulled umbrellas and crept into my Gore-Tex ankle boots.

Available Light: Hiroshima

2005-05-30T05:46:00.000-07:00

I've re-posted some pictures of Hiroshima from my short stint in the city circa 2000. Between them, Picasa 2 and Photoshop Elements 3 have helped me salvage a couple of poorly scanned slides, but over all I'm not too happy about the saturation of Velvia film to a monitor. See for yourself at Available Light: Hiroshima (the A-Bomb Dome pictures were originally shot using Velvia in a point and shoot camera).

Life Aquatic

2005-05-30T03:47:00.000-07:00

The Big One has, knock bamboo, spared us another two days. Good thing I prepped my lessons for today....

To celebrate that the "strange clouds over Tokyo" (see last post) did not herald a major earthquake, Rumi and I went into the city yesterday to see Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic, starring Bill Murray, and Willem Defoe as a German in a Speedo. Bill Murray is in this movie - in all his movies - a little boy in an adult boy, which is a condition easy to relate to.

Late May, and the heat and humidity ("mushiatsui") still hasn't settled on Tokyo. The rainy season started today, however, and soon - I hope - the gekkos will be back at their perch outside my front door.

Waiting For the Big One

2005-05-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

Rumi can home last night with the news that a particular kind of cloud was spotted over Tokyo yesterday, and that , according to some forecasters, this heralded The Big One (earthquake) that's supposed to hit Tokyo any time between right this moment and one hundred years from now.

"If they ARE right," she pointed out, "at least we'll be together."

Hmn. Romantic notions of using my body as a human shield to protect the woman I love aside, I'm not sure I wanna be around when The Big One hits. Government forecasts are that 10,000 will die in Tokyo when the quake does inevitably hit. Statistically, those numbers don't much scare me: 10,000 out of a population of 25 million seems like a long shot. I probably have more to fear from the flight I'm getting on next month. Or the pack of smokes next to my computer mouse. Then again, the tremors that do occasionally toss our little apartment like a ship at sea are very unnerving.

The idea that clouds could somehow anticipate earthquakes appeals to my overactive but jaded imagination. In a world where such a thing could be true, then surely other things that seem irrational in this materialist, consumer culture we inhabit could also be true. Like kappa and tengu, and other creatures from children's stories.

It would make the world a more interesting place to live in.

Maybe I'm too much of a skeptic, but I think I'll finish writing lesson plans for Monday's class just in case the cloud watchers are wrong.

But tonight I'll dream of bird-men riding dragon clouds over a sleeping Tokyo.

2005-05-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been playing around with a trialware version of Photoshop Elements 3. So far I haven't got much past the crop function and the sliding bars on the Quick Fix menu, but i did manage to salvage a few under-exposed, poorly framed pictures from my days on Hokkaido: http://availablelighthokkaido.blogspot.com/ I've also added some new pictures to my current photo blog, Available Light: Tokyo, at http://availablelighttokyo.blogspot.com/ . Check out the through-the-screen shot of powerlines I took last weekend with the new Photography Club digicam (a DImage A1 I picked up secondhand in Shinjuku).

Act First, Think Later

2005-05-24T03:21:00.000-07:00

Hint: I'm typing with fingers numbed by grasping for - well-nigh two hours - artifical climbing holds bolted to a wall in Kokubunji...

I have a pet theory about my personal learning style, and it goes something like this: throw yourself into something new. don't read the manual. don't watch the instruction video. "just do it,"as Phil Knight would have us believe.

But then, step back a moment. take a break. let all that work your forebrain has been doing, all that exertion your body has been making, let it all naturalize in your system as you go about other business, like ruining peoples' lives with report cards. Your subconscious will do the work for you.

And when you come back to whatver it is that you're trying to do, you will have figured out what works and what doesn't "naturally" - though a part of you has, in fact, been working around the clock to help you make it - whatever "it" is, whether it's speaking a new language or cimb a new route or break the ice with the cute girl who always sits two tables over at Starbucks - look easy.

Case in point: every Monday and Friday for about six months now I've gone climbing at the B-Pump climbing gym in Kokubunji. In that time I have (thankfully) moved from the "pink" routes to the orange, and have been struggling with the light greens for about a month. Each new colour feels like the end of a career, a plateau of endless vistas with no way off but down. In a month I nailed only two light green routes. Until tonight.

Last Friday, when I should have been climbing or writing or taking pictures of otherwise engaged in wholesome activity, I attended a teacher drinking party "up the road" at the local izakaya. The break in routine was such a shock to the system that I had insomnia all sunday night: not a wink. Being exhaused left me susceptible to the seasonal affected disorder that strikes many this time of year, as the rainy season comes on and the nights are as sticky as the inside of a rice cooker. Being SAD left me too weak to get my marks in on time, which meant I was under pressure all dya today to finish the report cards on which my studewnts' promising futures so much depend.

So, exhausted, sick, stressed, and out of practice I hit the wall tonight - and nailed three new green routes and made progress on my nemesis, a little striped number on a far wall which requires the body control of a jedi.

Oh yeah, and Jake finally broke thr ice with the hottest female climber in the place.

Lesson learned: act first, think later.

Why study history?

2005-05-23T02:17:00.000-07:00

a) Because it's there.
b) Chicks dig it.
c) It's on the exam.
d) "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." (George Santayana)

Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times draws a parallel between the ancient city of Kaifeng, one-time "capital of the world," with modern New York City. Also click on the multimedia presentation "Kaifeng-on-the-Hudson."

Where is the love?

2005-05-21T05:06:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about the small international high school where I teach - in a suburb of Tokyo, for those of you keeping track - is the degree to which the students accept each other. In part this may be a product of circumstance, as many of our students come to us after failing to integrate into the tightly constrained mainstream of a Japanese public school. In our little corner of Saitama students have learned to accept each other with their differences intact, and this spirit of acceptance crosses ethnic divisions, even the traditional tension between Japanese and ethnic Koreans.

After three years of teaching in this climate of tolerance I had accepted it as the norm, as though our school were the mainstream, instead of a refuge from it.

So it was surprising and upsetting when one of the Korean boys in my Grade 11 ESL class missed class on Thursday because, as it turned out, he was assaulted on the morning train by a young, drunken salaryman (at 8:30) who took issue with his Korean-ness. The student did make it - eventually - shaken but unbloodied to school, but only after police intervention.

Maybe it's the recent fuss in China about Japan's revisionist middle school history textbooks. Or maybe this salaryman lost a girl to a Korean. Or maybe he was just born bad. Whatever the motive, this sudden, ugly intrusion of outside problems shook up our little enclave. I expect that our students will deal with this crisis the way the seem to resolve must such crises: with a kind of collective consciousness that, its maturity and consideration, puts the adult world to shame.

Rumi tells me that there's an urban legend afloat in Tokyo that Korean students in Japan will rise up and exact revenge on the Japanese for the abuses they've suffered here. Add that to "The Big One" we're waiting for. And the possibility that Mt. Fuji may come back to life one day....

If you're gonna dine with them cannibals...

2005-02-08T04:21:00.000-08:00

sooner or later you're gonna get eaten. (Nick Cave)

Straight to the B-Pump climbing gym after school: how long before those red routes disappear under my chalky hands?

At home, Nick Cave's newest on the CD player and a can of Sapporo on my desk, The Striking Girl: Sayuri playing on broadband via www.ifilm.com: Pokemon, this aint.

Tomorrow's another short day, and I'm taking the Photography Club students to the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu.

I can't believe these are the most interesting observations I can make in the week since I last posted. The life of a teacher is... focused.

The Devil On My Shoulder

2005-02-01T01:58:00.000-08:00

The tests are marked, the short answers evaluated, and the essays graded on a rubric. Learning skills have been tracked, and report card comments written. The good/bad news will be broken to students tomorrow, and the parents will be in next week for interviews.

Just another mid-term crunch.

And, in another six weeks, time for finals.

But tonight, tonight I am free of all teacherly responsibility: Sigur Ros on launchcast.com, a Sapporo tallboy open on the computer desk, a pot of bean and chicken curry in the fridge, and the devil on my left shoulder.

Think I'll really bust loose tonight, and finish my - very late, since I started the program last summer - grad school application essay.

Ahoy! It's the teacher's life for me.

Punctuated Equilibrium

2005-01-29T01:24:00.000-08:00

Punctuated Equilibrium
instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms. (Heylighen)
... or so Stephen Jay Gould observed 26 years ago. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler makes the analogy of a communist revolution as a series of locks: a slow, almost imperceptible rising of the water, until the gates open and the ship of state sails smoothly into the next lock.I'm no evolutionary biologist or Russian novelist, but I am a free climber, and last night at the rock gym I experienced a bit of puntuated equilibrium all my own: after months of hurling myself at the wall, making progress only at the rate my arms strengthened, I tuned in to what my body was doing as I contorted around those dusty bits of coloured plastic, and realized - I mean realized with my body and mind, not just as an abstract principle but as a physical reality - that the legs are what should move you up the wall, not workplace stress.The gates have opened to the next level of climbing.
posted by tokyoaaron at 4:57 PM 0 comments

Punctuated Equilibrium
instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms. (Heylighen)
... or so Stephen Jay Gould observed 26 years ago. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler makes the analogy of a communist revolution as a series of locks: a slow, almost imperceptible rising of the water, until the gates open and the ship of state sails smoothly into the next lock.I'm no evolutionary biologist or Russian novelist, but I am a free climber, and last night at the rock gym I experienced a bit of puntuated equilibrium all my own: after months of hurling myself at the wall, making progress only at the rate my arms strengthened, I tuned in to what my body was doing as I contorted around those dusty bits of coloured plastic, and realized - I mean realized with my body and mind, not just as an abstract principle but as a physical reality - that the legs are what should move you up the wall, not workplace stress.The gates have opened to the next level of climbing.
posted by tokyoaaron at 4:57 PM 0 comments

Punctuated Equilibrium
instead of a slow, continuous movement, evolution tends to be characterized by long periods of virtual standstill ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by episodes of very fast development of new forms. (Heylighen)
... or so Stephen Jay Gould observed 26 years ago. In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler makes the analogy of a communist revolution as a series of locks: a slow, almost imperceptible rising of the water, until the gates open and the ship of state sails smoothly into the next lock.I'm no evolutionary biologist or Russian novelist, but I am a free climber, and last night at the rock gym I experienced a bit of puntuated equilibrium all my own: after months of hurling myself at the wall, making progress only at the rate my arms strengthened, I tuned in to what my body was doing as I contorted around those dusty bits of coloured plastic, and realized - I mean realized with my body and mind, not just as an abstract principle but as a physical reality - that the legs are what should move you up the wall, not workplace stress.The gates have opened to the next level of climbing.

Now, can I get my students to reach the next level of appreciating William Golding's descriptive writing in Lord of the Flies? Back to marking mid-term assignments....

Hitting the Wall

2005-01-25T03:05:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night: out of school at the stroke of four and at the bouldering gym before the chalk dust has settled in my classroom. For an hour an d a half Jake and I lunge at brightly coloured bits of plastic bolted to the walls, following trails of chalky tape that always seem as if they're going to lead somewhere - some climber's paradise up above the chalk-covered crash pads - but so far have ended abruptly at a ceiling beam or light fixture.

It's cathrtic, after long hours of teaching to focus on something so intensely physical, to limit your persepective to the next fingerhold or toe crack. I sleep better at night. I receive compliments from co-workers on my anger management.

Now I'm back at home, tapping at this ageing keyboard and listening to the newest Nick Cave double CD, The lyre of orpheus/Abbatoir Blues, and wishing the 7-11 hadn't closed its doors last Friday - it's now a 20-minute roundtrip to the nearest beer.

Such is life in suburban Tokyo.

2005-01-24T04:51:00.000-08:00

Slowly, slowly, I am carving out some time to write in my hectic teaching schedule. It started with catching up on emails - sorry 'bout that all - and includes a somewhat half-hearted effort to finalize my admission to the Graduate Global program for international school teachers through The College of New Jersey (looks like I'm headed back to Mallorca for another summer of study and tapas after all).As inspiration to get back into more creative and ambitious projects I've been reading The Best American Travel Essay 2004, guest edited by Pico Iyer. I enjoyed my early attempts at essays about my overseas lifestyle (see "Home Alone" at worldhum.com for what I was doing when I had the time and energy).Here's series editor Jason Wilson quoting others on travel writing in his Foreword:

In their critical study of contemporary travel writing, Tourists with Typewriters, Patrick Holland and Graham Huggan cast a skeptical eye on travel writers. But when it comes to the nostalgic impulse; Holland and Huggan are slightly more generous. "Travel writing, like tourism, generrates nostalgia
for other times and places, even as it recognizes that they may have 'lost' their romantic aura. Contemporary travel writing tends to be self-conscious - self-ironic - about such losses; it is both nostalgic and, at its best, aware of the deceptiveness of nostalgia." (xii)

Pico Iyer, this year's guest editor, has famously described travel writing as akin to a love story. In his essay "Why We Travel," Iyer writes, "I remember, in fact, after my first trips to Southeast asia, more than a decade ago, how I would come back to my apartment, in New York City, and lie on my bed, kept up by
something more than jet-lag, playing back, in my memory, over and over, all that I had experienced, and paging wistfully through my photographs and reading and re-reading my diaries, as if to extract some mystery from them . Anyone witnessing this starnge scene would have drawn the right conclusion: I was in
love." (xiv)

Not sure how exactly, if at all, such sentiments will inspire my expat writings, but it's a start...