Life In Japan: My Wife the Drummer

My wife is amazing!

Anyone familiar with Masumi knows she’s a teacher, specifically a music teacher of elementary students at a school in Inagawa, a medium-size town less than an hour from Tambasasayama.

But like many — most? — Japanese people, she is always finding ways to improve herself. This includes periodically taking courses and training to increase her teaching, her ongoing study of English, her studies and activism in human rights and peace, and of course improving our seasonal efforts to grow a variety of vegetables. Just yesterday, we harvested our potato crop!

But despite more than thirty years teaching kids both how to play and how to appreciate music, she is also still improving her “chops” at learning and performing music. She is already a marvelous piano player and singer, and regularly takes ballet classes.

Now, much to my surprise and genuine delight, she is dedicating much time and energy to learning to play cello and — see above — DRUMS!

Masumi has a top-of-the-line Roland V-Drums electronic kit set up here at home, which allows her to practice daily without disturbing me or the neighbors. While on headphones, she gets the full effect of the drum fury she creates, we on the “outside” only hear the light pitter-patter of drumsticks on rubber pads.

The photo at the head of this article was taken at her first drum recital last year. For this live show, she played on a real drum kit, performing Stevie Wonder’s Knocks Me Off My Feet.

This year, at my suggestion I might add, she’s performing Vanessa Carlton’s Thousand Miles. I’m really looking forward to it! This is one of my all-time favorite songs. It’s so completely original, combining classical and pop, a phenomenal production and vocal performance. It has a nicely-grooving drum part, uniquely incorporating syncopated snare hits during the chorus, a highly unusual choice for a pop song.

Most of all . . . I get to see the fruits of Masumi’s many hours practicing drums! It should be great fun.

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Life In Japan: Peace Parade

You wouldn’t know it from the saber-rattling of recently assassinated former prime minister Shinjo Abe, or current prime minister Fumio Kishida, whose slavish obsequiousness to the forever war whims of the United States, is shameful and nauseating. But the vast majority of Japanese citizens, especially the older generations who remember the horrors of World War II, are for peace. They support Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which forbids anything other than a purely defensive military, just what is minimally necessary to defend Japan from aggression by other countries.

As a public school teacher, my wife Masumi belongs to a union and that union supports a truly left-wing agenda, one that serves the interests of working people and actively promotes peace.

Every year, they have a sizable demonstration, a march in Kobe for their admirable agenda.

This year emphasized their support for strict adherence to Article 9 and separating Japan from its destructive allegiance to America. The U.S still has at last count 56 military bases here, essentially an occupation force in place continuously almost 80 years after the Japanese surrendered and hostilities of the Second World War ended. That was September 2, 1945.

I guess to avoid its characterization as being “confrontational”, this years rally was called a parade, though it felt like a demonstration to me, minus the tear gas and pepper spray. Mind you, the last such event I attended was in 2003 in Portland, Oregon, when 58,000 people in a futile effort to prevent U.S. aggression, marched against invading Iraq. We were among the millions across the entire globe who raised our voices, who declared loud and clear, heartfelt opposition to the anticipated, unjustified, illegal war on Iraq — one based purely on lies propagated by the Bush administration. We know how that turned out.

Which is largely the reason for my current position on demonstrations. They feel good, they are important in terms of “educating” the public, they usually represent the best instincts and intentions of the saner elements in society — the pro-Palestinian demonstrations going on right now being a very noble example — BUT the people who need to hear the messaging of such efforts aren’t paying attention and certainly aren’t listening. So no matter how many people attend or how much they’re on the correct side of an issue, demonstrations are for the most part ineffective, and have been since the anti-Vietnam War rallies back in the 70s. That’s the reality of the situation as it currently stands. Sad but true.

In any case, Masumi and I marched for peace with about 5,000 other good, decent folks. As the only Westerner, I both stood out and felt very special.

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I made my own sign for the peace parade. On one side it said in English, “Respect other people, respect other countries, no more war.” On the other side, the same message was in Japanese, to which my wife added, “Respect others, respect yourself.” Nice touch! Which is why I married this wonderful person. She’s brilliant and her heart is in the right place.

Lucky me!

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Life In Japan: Yosakoi Festival

The fun and excitement never lets up here. This past weekend, there was another festival here in Tambasasayama, a somewhat unusual one. Mind you, the previous weekend we had our splendiforous, annual Cherry Blossom Festival, celebrating — you guessed it — the blooming of the cherry blossom trees, which populate the landscape here in the thousands. So, neither Masumi or I expected yet another festival so soon.

I should point out that Masumi warned me that this surprise festival, the Yosakoi Matsuri, is a noisy, obnoxious affair. Specifically, the music is loud, grating, and frankly impossible to categorize. It’s modern, has a big cosmic beat, uses modern instrumentation, and borrows from multiple genres — hip hop, electropop, jazz, rock — occasionally hints at “traditional” Japanese music without sounding in the least traditional. Its primary purpose is to support the dancing and flag waving on and near to the main stage. In terms of the dancing, there we see again, a blend of dance moves drawn from all over the map. There’s a short video at the end of this article, which offers the overall “look” but is not at all representative of most of the performances. It has a very traditional vibe. Most of the rest of the dancing looked like high school dance teams.

Anyway, it’s all good fun. People seem to enjoy the performance, though the music reminded me I need to carry my earplugs wherever I go. You just never know.

Here are some random shots of the festival . . .

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And here is a very short video of the type of action we saw on stage . . .

There you have it, folks. What can I say? Life in Japan, out here in the countryside, never loses its charm.

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Life In Japan: 2nd Day of Spring

Have I ever mentioned how crazy the weather is here?

Crazy? Crazier than what?

I guess I’m comparing it to the predictability I became accustomed to in Michigan, California, and Oregon.

In Michigan, we had starkly contrasting seasons. Despite the rigors of surviving the cold, the blizzards, the ice storms of Michigan winters, it all made sense and seemed to be on a fairly tight schedule. California was so predictable, fighting the meteorological boredom was the greatest challenge. Portland, Oregon was predictably wet. It rained 200-250 days a year.

I’m not sure what produces the huge swings in weather here in Tambasasayama, Japan. I just know that, when I head out on my bike, my backpack has to cover a very wide range of contingencies. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve left the house dressed sympatico with the brilliant, warm sunshine and soothing, calm air, to return less than an hour later fighting gale winds, drenched to the bone as a result of a major downpour. Two consolations are that I haven’t yet been sucked into the eye of a tornado or hit by lightning. Both were quite common in Michigan.

Case in point: The first day of spring was sunny and pleasant, hearkening the onset of fine days ahead, strolls through town, picnics in the park. The second day of spring is pictured above.

Of course, a lot has changed over the decades. I left Michigan in 1980. I left California in 1995. I left Oregon in 2006. Has Mother Nature put the pedal to the metal on climate change? Is that it? I’m not really sure. Recent photos on the internet don’t show palm trees in Michigan or glaciers in Los Angeles. They do have lots of fires in California. Maybe it’s people forgetting to put out their campfires. Or karma. You know, Sodom and Gomorrah. Portland, Oregon has been and still is — to my best understanding — just weird. Nothing new there. Maybe new weirdness?

I’ll have to rely on you readers to tell me. Are you seeing this? Is the weather topsy-turvy, nutso, bat-shit, whack, freaky-deaky where you live? Leave your comments below.

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Life In Japan: Otsuka Museum of Art

Japan continues to dazzle and amaze me. This past weekend, Masumi took me to the Otsuka Museum of Art, and it was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. It is located on Shikoku island and until recently was the largest art facility in Japan, 29,412 square meters (316,588 square feet).

This museum has extremely high-quality reproductions, a collection of all of the greatest paintings of the West. If they left one out, I don’t know what it is. It embraces a span of over two millennia, from Egyptian and Greek antiquities up through the modern art of the 20th Century. As the museum explains: “The museum houses over one thousand reproductions of treasured Western artworks specially selected by a six-member committee, from ancient frescoes to modern paintings in the collections of more than 190 galleries in 26 countries around the world.”

To capture the exact color of the originals, they use photographic imaging which is then transferred to ceramic panels. Any anomalies are expertly touched up by hand, the entire process guaranteeing faithfulness to the originals and permanence. These reproductions will stand up over time infinitely better than the original paintings themselves. They will retain their color and resolution for 2000 years.

The facility is so huge, to view all of the galleries, requires walking 4 kilometers (2 1/2 miles)! And get this. Every single painting is life-size. Yes . . . the exact size as the original.

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They even have a full-scale model of the Sistene Chapel. I’ve been in the Sistene Chapel in Vatican City and it was astonishing to see it replicated perfectly.

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By the way, the grounds — which includes the roof of the complex — are also quite stunning.

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In any case, here is just a tiny sampling of the 1000+ works of art on display.

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I was so overwhelmed by all of the Christian art, I dropped to my knees for the first time in over a half century.

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Life In Japan: Music Education

I continue to be amazed at the level of education here in Japan. While test scores are falling in the West, those here and in China continue to rise.

Most concern about academic performance focuses on math and reading ability, but since my wife, Masumi, is a music teacher, I get to take a close look at music education. Schools here consider music an important part of overall development, realization of full human potential. I’m always astonished at what Masumi gets her students to do, culminating in a concert each year, attended by proud parents. Though she teaches 2nd through 6th grade, the musical pieces the kids master are by any stretch not simple.

It starts as soon as the kids arrive at school. Kindergarten is two years here, for four and five year olds. The following videos are from a school in Tokyo. We’ll start with a performance by five-year-old Kindergarteners.

Pretty amazing, eh? If that didn’t blow your mind, here are FOUR-YEAR-OLD kindergarteners from the same school.

Finally, here are students at all levels, Kindergarten through 6th grade of the same elementary school, performing an excerpt from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

Kids love to be challenged. A big part of confidence and self-esteem comes from improvement and a real sense of accomplishment. I wonder if kids in the West are over-pampered and their egos shielded from the horrors of failure, at the expense of ever attempting and achieving excellence. Just a thought that occurs to me when I see what’s happening the public education in America.

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A Page From God’s Diary

As is common knowledge, hackers rule the digital realm. There’s no room to hide. These subversive geniuses can get into any system, any file, whether it’s protected by encryption, firewalls, or passwords which would stump most supercomputers.

I was doing an internet search and stumbled on an amazing hacker story.

It was a posting put up by a guy who claimed he hacked God’s personal diary. 

No, I’m not making this up!

It appeared on the Dark Web, something I have heard about but certainly never have had an interest in exploring. Actually I was doing a Duck-Go-Go search for ‘dank web memes’, spell correct kicked in — which I didn’t notice — and I was suddenly looking at the strangest collection of links I’ve ever seen. The one that caught my eye was a post by ‘bacon heezy’. He showed a recently-penned entry — it couldn’t have been more than a couple days ago, though they use very different calendars “up there” — from GOD’S DIARY, posting it for bragging rights and, of course, for our edification.

So here we go …

A PAGE FROM GOD’S DIARY – Posted on Dark Web chat group “cosmic dildo farm”

Don’t those idiots down there read the Bible. Granted there were a few Earth millennia when I threw major hissy fits left and right. Telling people to kill their families, inciting wars, sending bears to mutilate children, turning people into pillars of salt, promoting genocide, killing Egyptian babies, killing people for complaining about my killing them — not exactly my best moments. Thank goodness the Heavenly dispensary finally got some mood elevators in stock. 

Regardless. There’s a lot of good shit in the Bible, directly from Yours Truly, since I can claim credit. Love thy neighbor. Forgive your enemies. Turn the other cheek — actually I’m having serious doubts about that one these days. And then there was the greatest piece of street theater in the whole of human history, beginning with the bit about me getting Mary knocked up — without a peep of protest from good old stoic Joseph (I really like that dude). After the “virgin birth”, carpenter’s son grows up to be the best con artist ever, leads flocks of toadies and groupies from one end of the desert to another. And then the big finale: you gotta admit, the whole crucifixion thing was pure genius. I challenge the best playwrights and Hollywood script writers to top THAT SADISTIC MESS!

Okay, I’m rambling. But I’m God. So I’ll do whatever I want.

At the same time, there is a point to this, prompted by my sheer disgust with how this human genome experiment has turned out. It seemed like a pretty decent idea at the outset. But once Adam and Eve got wind of free will and ironically decided their private parts were something to be ashamed of, things started to go south. I mean it’s taken a while to get to the crisis stage I’m seeing now. Now apparently these dumb fucks down on Earth are bent on destroying themselves! What kind of exercise of free will is that? They’ve got the biggest, baddest brains on terra firma, in the clear blue sky, and in the oceans, and all they can do is poison the planet, junk up the landscape, bicker like school children, turn forests into deserts, melt the ice caps, kill practically everything that walks on four legs or has gills, rape, pillage, plunder, and invent more lethal weapons to kill one another. What percentage of their brain power drives this hopeless scenario? A cockroach could see this won’t end well — my money is on the cockroaches who will survive the gore fest, feisty little buggers that they are.

I may be God, and true, I could intervene and shut all the bad shit down with a blink of my Omniscient Eye. But what would be the point? Too many humans have become drama queens, sociopaths, crooks, liars, psychopaths, selfish dickheads, drunks, drug addicts, sex addicts, or almost as bad, terminally lazy go-along-to-get-along pussies. They shouldn’t be called homo sapiens. They should be called homo patheticus! 

Humble Guy that I am, I’ll admit I called this whole human thing wrong. And by the way, being God I can be wrong without being wrong. Because I’m right about being wrong.

Anyway, I thought that their amazing art, music, poetry, literature, their altruism, good faith, basic decency, and love of Me would triumph. But evil seems to have won the day. And I don’t mean your average garden variety evil. I mean EVIL EVIL! Apocalyptic, epic, hyper-extreme evil!

But listen haters, don’t go pointing fingers. I did my job. Then I just set it loose. It was supposed to improve, build on my Heavenly created-in-the-image-of-you-guessed-it . . . ME!  But somehow a screwdriver got inserted in the spokes. And now look at how it’s turning out. It’s a horror show!

Okay, I’m tuckered out. Time for some Godly shut eye. I’ll just say, I wish these dopes on Earth knew how pissed I am at what’s going on down there. REALLY PISSED! I’m so angry I almost feel like resorting to being the vengeful asshole I too often was in the Old Testament, and visiting the entire planet with the wrath only I’m capable of. A big wake-up call. The Seven Plagues would by comparison look like a Disney E-ride. Yeah, this calls for a good dose of humility. “Listen, you fuck ups! You are nothing compared to the Major Domo who created you. You are like lumps of string cheese melting in the sun. Don’t mess with Me. And Goddammit, change course — change everything you’re doing — start getting it right, or IT’S GAME OVER.” I’m not blowing smoke here! And the joke is on you, because you’ll destroy yourselves! How Shakespearian.

Alright, sometimes the Creator of Everything That Was, Is, and Will Be, needs to get a few things off His chest. But now it’s time to dream of angels, rainbows, lollipops, and My “son’s” night with Mary Magdalene. Now she’s a keeper!

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Chiang Mai, Thailand: Karen Tribe Farmstay

The Karen Tribe people are from the Kayin State, which is the southern/southeastern region of Myanmar. They are not one people. Per Wikipedia: “Karen refers to a heterogeneous lot of ethnic groups that do not share a common language, culture, religion, or material characteristics.”

While most Karen have remained in Myanmar and comprise 7% of the population there, like the Hmong, many have migrated and made Thailand their home, especially in the proximity of the Thai/Myanmar border. “There are another 400,000 Karen in Thailand, where they are by far the largest of the hill tribes.”

When we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand last summer, Masumi and I stayed on a Karen-owned and operated agritourism farm and what an amazing experience it was! Our room was a cabin built on stilts.

Here was the view we had.

Of course, it was a real farm and people were working.

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We had phenomenal time exploring the huge farm.

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The food was great!

Here we are with the incredibly charming owner of the farm. He inherited the property from his Karen Tribe family, then turned the farm into a tourist attraction.

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Chiang Mai, Thailand: Elephant Camp

Masumi and I are fascinated by elephants. Around Chiang Mai, there are a number of places to see them. We chose this particular one because they are very humane in their treatment of the elephants. They don’t have rides or other activities which are often considered abusive to these amazing creatures. If you choose, however, you can bathe with them in the river. Since we didn’t have our bathing suits with us, we had to pass.

Our first big surprise was how spacious and beautiful the camp grounds were!

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To put it mildly, the elephants seemed very glad to see us — it might have been the basket of food we had purchased — and generally quite content with their new home at the Elephant Camp.

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Unfortunately, I doubt if any of our new larger-than-life friends will be visiting us very soon in Japan. I think they’d have trouble getting through Immigration.

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Chiang Mai, Thailand: Illusion Art Museum

Maybe it’s cultural bias, but I usually don’t associate the countries of southeast Asia, all of which I’ve personally visited — Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar — with “cutting edge” or “high-tech” art.

Our recent visit to Chiang Mai, Thailand certainly proved me wrong. Masumi and I discovered one of the most spectacular art museums I’ve ever encountered … the Illusion Art Museum.

First, consider the animated Mona Lisa video encountered in the lobby of the museum.

That was nothing compared to the unique and mind-boggling interactive works inside. Feast your eyes on these!

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After that spectacular experience, exiting the main display galleries we ended up here. Looks like a pen and ink drawing of a café, eh?

Nope. It’s a real café!

There are many exceptional things to see and do in Chiang Mai. If you visit there, the Illusion Art Museum should be high on your list.

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