John Rachel

Life In Japan: An Interview

Posted on September 30, 2024 by johnrachel

About two months ago, I was interviewed locally about my book Live From Japan! Anecdotes on the People and Culture of Contemporary Japan from the Perspective of an American Expat.

The organization that interviewed me was the Sasayama International Center of Understanding, aka Kokusai Rikai 日本国際理解教育学会.

This is a non-profit and my connection with them goes all the way back to 2008. I taught English there three times a week for the entire year. The people there are wonderful and we’ve kept in touch.

They have a host of wonderful programs and activities, all dedicated to promoting knowledge and appreciation of other cultures. We have a variety of people from other countries here in Tambasasayama, including Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines, even African nations like Senegal, and of course, the United States (like me!). Japanese language courses are made available to the immigrants, and English is taught to local Japanese who wish to build on the basic skills they got in elementary and high school. That was where I came in.

By the way, here is the message featured at the top of the home page for the organization:

戦争は人の心の中で生れるものであるから, 人の心の中に平和のとりでを築かなければならない。Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. — Preamble of the UNESCO Constitution

In any case, one of my students from all the way back in 2008 who I’ve kept in touch with — she’s into organic farming, sustainable agriculture, and during her high school years was an exchange student somewhere in Florida — recently took a job at Kokusai Rikai. She alerted them to my Live From Japan! book. Next thing I know, I’m getting interviewed for a monthly publication they do (pictured on the left).

I thought the interview went well. It certainly was fun!

They asked me what page people should visit first. Without a doubt, The Naked American! Then they wanted to know my favorite story. That would be “There is beauty everywhere!” Finally, they wanted to know what my three favorite things were here in Tambasasayama.

My wife.
Riding my bike all around town.
The beauty of Tambasasayama — the mountains, shrines, temples, rice and bean fields.

Here is the interview. It helps if you can read Japanese . . .

Indeed . . . it’s like living in a fairy tale!

By the way, if you’re interested in the book, in addition to the stories about living here in Japan, there are over 450 photos . . .

An Apple iBOOK is available HERE.

A B&N Nook Book is available HERE.

Other popular ebook formats are available HERE.

A deluxe full-color paperback from the printer HERE.

A deluxe paperback is available from Amazon HERE.

A deluxe full-color paperback is available from B&N HERE.

Posted in Books, Japan, Journalism, Social Commentary, Travel | Tagged anecdotes, creative non-fiction, expat, interview, Japan, kokusai rikai, live from japan, naked American, Tambasasayama, UNESCO | Leave a comment

Life In Japan: Clouds

Posted on September 11, 2024 by johnrachel

I suspect most people share my fascination. I’ve always had a thing for the sky. When I was a boy, I had a refractor telescope and spent hours looking at stars, planets, the moon. During the day — this will bring back some childhood memories for many folks — my friends and I would lie on a blanket, looking for “special” shapes in the clouds: animals, faces, things of religious significance (I was a completely brainwashed Catholic back then).

Clouds! What a gift! What a wonder!

Not all of the time but often enough, we have some truly majestic skies here in my hometown. Yesterday was just such a day. My bike ride was especially splendid.

I’m sure it helps that Tambasasayama is far from any congested, urban area. Though I have to say, compared with, for example, Los Angeles — I lived there for 15 years — the skies over Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe are pristine.

Anyway, only two hours after these photos were taken, here’s what we got . . .

Did I ever mention how crazy the weather is here? Granted, we don’t get snow in the summer, but just about everything else rolls around, alternating from clear skies to lightning, thunder, light rain, heavy rain, wild windy storms, back to clear skies, beautiful clouds.

It rained for about 40 minutes. Then an hour after that, it looked like this . . .

Could it be much more unpredictable? Shifting? Whimsical?

Returning to clouds. They sure carry a variety of messages, encourage some wild imaginings, evoke a range of reactions and sentiments. I know someone who said it best! One of my all-time favorite artists/singer/songwriters!

Posted in Japan, Music, Nature, Spiritual | Tagged clouds, country life, Japan, Joni Mitchell, planets, sky, stars, Tambasasayama | Leave a comment

Life In Japan: The Triumph of the Lotus Plants

Posted on August 31, 2024 by johnrachel

Five years ago, I posted an article about our local castle and its surrounding grounds. The castle has a moat, of little use now that it’s been over 600 years since the Mongols invaded Japan. These days, it serves as a playground for ducks and turtles, and of course, a reminder of the military history of our town. Tiny as it was, the castle was used by various samurai as they defended their territorial claims to Sasayama.

I described in that previous article how an area elementary school was using the moat for a school project. In one end of a section protecting the castle on its south side, they planted lotus flowers, purely to add some color to the huge puddle. At the time I wrote about it, the quickly growing plants only took up a limited area, maybe 20% of the total surface area of the water.

Their work — or was it an experiment? — has reached a dramatic climax. The entire section, from one end to the other, is now crammed with lotus plants. Here’s what it looks like now.

In the morning, the view is especially spectacular! The flowers open wide to greet the day. They gently wave in the breeze. It’s a gratifying sight.

What is the lesson in this? Well, if your moat is looking drab and uninspiring, or it’s just time for a needed change, consider planting lotus flowers. The rewards are abundant. The flowers individually are extremely lovely. Collectively, they offer a carpet of smileys.

Plus you’ll be doing yourself and the world community a huge favor. You’ll set an admirable example for your neighbors, who will seethe with envy, as they look at their own drab, boring, lifeless moats, damning themselves for their negligence, and hopefully be inspired to get off their lazy asses and do their part in making the world a more beautiful place.

You’ll be improving your carbon footprint to carbon midwifing ratio. And as a related bonus, you’ll be pumping much-needed oxygen into the atmosphere. Look at the size of those leaves! Good grief, they’re like oxygen factories, and there’s nothing that can match a good oxygen high. Breathing is free and oxygen keeps the metabolic fires burning.

You’ll be driving away the turtles — arguably the strangest, if not the ugliest, creatures to inhabit the Earth — and the noisy, repetitious ducks with their incessant and non-sensical quack-quack-quacking. I do worry a bit about the ducks. Where will they go? Are we flirting with creating a homeless duck problem?

Yeah, you can scoff. But it doesn’t hurt to consider both sides of the equation when considering a tradeoff. It’s one thing to leave a human being stranded to fight the elements and eke out survival by dumpster diving and panhandling. But a duck is defenseless, incapable of getting a good-paying job, short on communication skills, small and vulnerable to trucks, attacks by large dogs and alligators, and predatory raids by hawks and vultures.

Friends, brothers and sisters, much as I love our lotus-filled moat, it would break my heart to start seeing these everywhere.

Okay . . . I got a little off track. Whatever. Life is complicated. The world is complex. Truth is, sometimes it’s a fool’s errand to try to sort it all out.

By the way, something just occurred to me, and I’ll close with this. The last time I had a major encounter with lotus plants was when I was rowing a boat on one of the lakes in Srinagar, India.

That was in 2009! Time flies, eh?

Posted in Environment, Japan, Nature, Social Commentary | Tagged Japan, Japanese education, lotus flowers, moats, Sasayama Castle, Srinagar, Tambasasayama | Leave a comment

Life In Japan: Swallows

Posted on August 29, 2024 by johnrachel

When I lived in America, I thought a swallow was what followed chewing food or sipping on a favorite beverage. I guess, maybe under hypnosis, I might be able to retrieve some reference to a bird, maybe in a poem or a folk song. But ‘swallow’ back then called up an empty image, maybe like ‘neutron star’ or ‘pineal gland’, neither of which do I have a clue what they might look like.

Among the many surprises which moving to Japan has blessed me with is my new found acquaintance with swallows — the bird, not the muscular movement of the esophagus.

They are everywhere here, at least out in the farm country where I live, particularly this time of year! Everyday, usually in the morning — I’m not making this up — I can go out on my porch and watch 20 or 30 or 40 of these lovely creatures gracefully swirling over the rice field in front of our house. Masumi, my wife of over 12 years, says they are feeding on the insects which likewise swirl — though not as gracefully — over the field, which just has matured and produced a generous bounty of rice, soon be harvested.

Swallows eat on the fly . . . literally! They feed exclusively on airborne insects, so they nourish themselves while in flight. They are feeding on the abundance of yummy insects, inhabiting the airspace above the fields of rice and soybeans, which are the dominant crops for our farming community.

Swallows are migratory. Which means, we start to see them in spring when they return from wherever, then they disappear again in the autumn. I mean, they are really migratory, since they can travel 200 miles (320 km) in a day, sometimes as far as 6000 miles (9656 km) in a single migratory cycle. Some simple calculation suggests that swallows I’m seeing now could end up in Australia or New Zealand in December and January. Pretty amazing!

Of course, the first priority for swallows when they return our way in spring is setting up a household and making baby swallows. With great industry and innate engineering skills, they construct out of mud and sticks a nest that looks like this.

It will be attached at the top of an eave or a porch, protected from inclement weather and high enough to foil any predators. This past spring, swallows considered our car port as they scouted for optimal places to build their nest, but apparently decided against it. I suspect our three cats were a major factor in discouraging setting up at our place.

Before I end this piece, I want to return to how beautiful our species of swallows are in flight. There are many different types of swallows but it’s our good fortune to have a variety that is so sleek and graceful, it takes your breath away. Ours have these long, elegant wings. They look more like a T-160 than an F-22 and fly very fast, though I doubt they can go supersonic. But despite their speed, or maybe because of it, their flight paths are very even, not jerky or flitty like most birds. Watching them never fails to put a big smile on my face.

Maybe I’m just easily entertained.

Posted in Environment, Japan, Nature, Spiritual | Tagged Japan, migration, rice fields, soybean fields, swallows | Leave a comment

Life In Japan: Dekansho 2024!

Posted on August 18, 2024 by johnrachel

This year, Masumi and I pulled out all of the stops for the annual Dekansho Festival. We wore traditional clothing, me a jinbei and her a yukata. Jinbei is summer wear for men, and a yukata is the summer version of a kimono, since a regular kimono would be way too hot this time of year.

The festival was especially groundbreaking for me, since I learned the Dekansho dance! Both evenings Masumi and I danced with the crowd, circling the stage countless times. The music, of course, is performed live. It’s a great feeling dancing with thousands of smiling people, folks of all ages, heights, weights, some shy, some outgoing. What a total hoot!

Which makes me realize why this festival is so special, why it’s becoming more and more popular each year — this year it was often shoulder-to-shoulder, particularly by the food and souvenir booths — with visitors coming from all around to experience this unique celebration.

Dekansho is not just a “spectator festival”. It’s a “participant festival”. It’s like a big party!

If you watched the video, you heard the music and got a quick glimpse of the dancing. Frankly, it’s impossible without using an airborne drone to capture how many people were doing the Dekansho dance. Half of the festival grounds was covered with dancers. Some alone, some in pairs, many in groups of ten to twenty.

You might have also noticed a celebrity appearance by the Japanese mascot/destroyer/mutant, Godzilla. And while we didn’t get a photo of him, Spiderman was there too! The kids loved it.

Yes, the kids. And the old folks (like me). And swarms of teens. And everyone in between.

This is how life should be. A whole community coming together, laughing, smiling, dancing, singing, eating, drinking. Joined by people from surrounding communities, who double or triple the joy of the occasion.

By the way, I thought Masumi looked great! It’s rare I get to see her dressed in traditional Japanese garb.

We were there both days. Despite there being how many attendees? — 10,000? 20,000? — we saw quite a number of folks we know. We ran into two of Masumi’s daughters, their closest friend and her new husband. We saw neighbors from our village. We saw Yuka and Dan. They’re married. Yuka is Japanese, Dan is British. I met Yuka as her English teacher back in 2008. We saw Bodi, a friend from Pokhara, Nepal, who manages a local Nepalese restaurant.

My only regret is that Dekansho only lasts two days. Like I said, isn’t this what life should be like all of the time? Then again, I suppose it wouldn’t be so special if we had it every week or every month.

I guess we just need to figure out how to make every day special, each in its own unique way.

I think I’ll start each day by dancing.

Or maybe I’ll sing as I ride my new bike through the rice and soybean fields . . .

. . . songs about peace . . . friendship . . . kindness . . . celebration . . . love.

Posted in Japan, Living On The Edge, Philosophy, Social Commentary, Spiritual | Tagged bicycles, celebration, Dekansho Festival, friendship, Japan, kindness, love, peace, Tambasasayama | Leave a comment

My Two Recent Anti-War Books

Posted on July 18, 2024 by johnrachel

Writing about and promoting peace to an American audience might be a thankless enterprise. But to be thankless, it would first have to be noticed.

Violence in the U.S. is so endemic, so commonplace, so intrinsic to the American Way, it would be less extreme to suggest to people that they stop breathing or eating than to propose that fewer guns might reduce the ongoing slaughter. Mass shootings, unless they are a full-frontal horror show involving copious bleeding and splattered entrails, innocent children, terrorists or grandmothers in wheelchairs, though a daily occurrence now, are so much a part of the fabric of life, they now rarely even make the news. Same ol’ same ol’. Better ratings reporting on new trends in smart phone dating apps or meltdowns of transgender athletes refused entry to girls locker rooms.

Scaling this mentality up from road rage and drive-by shootings to relations among nations, results in the same glassy-eyed stupor. To suggest that the country and world could do without war is yelling in a vacuum. American foreign policy comes down to a basic, unstated platitude: It’s our way or bombs away.

So where do I fit in to the savagery that is the new normal?

Am I deterred? Does such a fanatical embrace of human expendability discourage me? Does such indifference to the value of human life intimidate me?

Not quite. Two factors are in play: I was taught to dream the impossible dream. And ironically, there’s some Zen comfort in pointless futility. Dylan said it best: There’s no success like failure.

My two most recent books are about peace. Go ahead. Laugh. I’m happy to put a smile on your face.

THE U.S. AND PERPETUAL WAR came out in May 2023 . . .

As an eBook . . .

As a Deluxe Paperback . . .

WAR IS MAKING US POOR! was published just last month . . .

Both of these were intended for Americans to read. Unfortunately, rarely does anyone in the U.S. buy them. They sell almost exclusively in Canada, England, Europe, and Australia. Not sure why that is. Maybe it’s like I said at the beginning. “Writing about and promoting peace to an American audience might be a thankless enterprise. But to be thankless, it would first have to be noticed.”

Whatever.

Let me close by changing the subject.

Want to know what by far is my most popular book? It’s my novel about trafficking of Asian prostitutes, PETROCELLI, completed and published in 2015.

What about my most popular article over the past couple years? It’s a chapter from my book LIVE FROM JAPAN!, which appeared on my blog site August 4, 2020.

Life In Japan: TVs on TV

You probably guessed it. It’s about the popularity of transgenders on Japanese television.

There’s a lesson in all of this somewhere. Let me know in the comments below if you figure out what it is.

Posted in Books, Japan, Journalism, Living On The Edge, Nihilism, Political Analysis, Social Commentary, War and Peace | Tagged Bob Dylan, guns, human trafficking, peace, Perpetual War, prostitution, transvestites, US foreign policy, Violence | Leave a comment

LIVE FROM JAPAN! Revisited Redux

Posted on July 5, 2024 by johnrachel

I again want to send some love to the wonderful fans of LIVE FROM JAPAN!

My my how time flies! LIVE FROM JAPAN! was published end of January, 2021. I sent the first shot of love here to the fans of the book June 2023. Then, as now, I let everyone know that the saga continues, as I regularly post articles on new happenings and my evolving perspective on life here as an American expat.

While I believe my understanding of and appreciation for the customs and people of Japan is always growing in depth and subtlety, one thing has not changed: I love living here!

There’s no simple explanation for this. All I can suggest is read my book, then read the articles that have subsequently appeared. Judge for yourself..

Here is the entire list of “living in Japan” essays that have appeared on this website, to date:

All of those were written after this splendid book got published. My way of keeping you up to date and hopefully dazzled and delighted.

If you don’t have a copy, you have no idea what you’re missing. Time to remedy that. You can order it from your local book store or visit one of these sites: