Life In Japan: ‘Japan Pom Pom’

They claim proof in this video that age is a state of mind. Well, I’m not quite convinced of that. If a toddler just had a different attitude, he could start using chopsticks or master the Argentine Tango? When your heart stops beating or your kidneys quit functioning, it’s because you’re looking at things wrong? I don’t think so.

At the same time, state of mind is important in achieving a balanced, healthy perspective on age, whatever the number turns out to be. That’s the real message and it’s a good one.

At my advanced age, I love Japan, and Asia in general, because here they don’t demote or disappear people just because they were born a long time ago. The youth culture — should I say ‘youth-worshipping’ culture? — of most Western countries requires that old people be written off as persona non grata, once they get crows feet, or most certainly when they are no longer reproductive-capable. Or as my now deceased friend, British TV character actor David Rayner, liked to say: “We become invisible.”

By contrast, older folks here are respected, often revered, assigned a special, important place in their communities and families. Where it’s standard protocol in the West to get gramps and grannie into a retirement home or elderly care facility — out-of-sight out-of-mind — as soon as the old codgers agree to live in a pre-death camp, here it is extremely common for the oldest members of the family to live with their sons and daughters and their spouses until they die. I had an English student in his 70s whose parents, both pushing 100, lived with him and his wife until they passed away. This is customary.

Then again, it’s not just about work. Contrary to stereotypes about Japanese people, they do like to have fun. Which brings me to the central topic of this piece . . . Japan Pom Pom!

As you already suspect, this is a cheerleading squad. But what makes it unique is all of the ladies in it are over 55, the average age being 70. Their nickname is ‘The Cheerleading Grannies’.

Japan Pom Pom is the brainchild of Fumi Takino, an 85-year-old resident of Tokyo, who wolfs down pizza, and drinks beer and Coke like a 16-year-old high school exchange student.

Fumi Takino.

At 84.67 years, Japan has the second-highest life expectancy in the world, right behind Hong Kong. This is largely attributed to diet and an excellent health care system. I’m sure “state of mind” plays some role. First, Japanese expect to live a long time. Second, they do not let age hinder them from fully participating in society, at whatever level makes sense. Many refuse to retire and work into their 70s, 80s, 90s. I wrote back in November 2020 about Silver-san, aka Jinzai Centers. Jinzai — 人材 — means human resources. But what makes these work centers special is they only employ people over 65.

The video at the top tells the entire story. I really have nothing to add, except this: If you’re feeling old and thinking about just surrendering to deterioration, convinced that your “old age” has condemned you to hopelessness and inevitable decline, watch the Cheerleading Grannies. If you don’t find it a shot of inspiration or a strong case for unfettered optimism, I’m confident you’ll at least enjoy a smile.

Bonus video: If you’re really in need of a good jaw-dropping, check out this performance by 94-year-old Johanna Quaas, from Germany — the oldest active gymnast in the world!

Age is a state of mind? Only if your state of mind is ageless.

Posted in Japan, Living On The Edge, Social Commentary, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Life In Japan: Rice Art Honoring a Great Champion

I’ve been meaning to write about “rice art” for quite some time. But an announcement this week gave me the necessary push, so here it is.

Rice is usually planted here by weird-looking but truly ingenious machines. But as my neighbor is doing above, the job is then completed by hand-planting any areas which the machine can’t reach.

One notable exception takes place a few minutes from my house at a local B&B.

Here the entire field is planted by hand. The observation tower is there for good reason. Because when the rice comes in, here’s what it looks like.

It varies from year to year but my take on this piece is that it’s the Tambasasayama City mascot, a highly romanticized wild boar. Trust me, they’re not at all cute. If fact, they’re downright ugly!

In any case, here’s why I mention any of this. Probably the greatest skater in history — at least I think so — Japan’s own Yuzuru Hanyu, just announced that at age 27, he’s retiring from competition. He’ll still be skating, of course, but not in such demanding, high-stress situations as the Olympics and the myriad of clashes for primacy that surround it.

While looking at this story, I discovered a very special tribute to this great athlete, done as only the Japanese do things.

Rice art. What would be the equivalent in the U.S.? Wheat art? Corn art?

I’ll leave that to your imagination.

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Life In Japan: ヤクザ Raccoon Dog Attacks Again!

I was at the grocery store the other day and spotted some delicious-looking ears of corn. With the current exchange rate, they were about 80 cents each. A real bargain!

But I quickly said, “Nah! We have fresh, organic corn coming up and soon ready to pick in our vegetable garden.” At least six at last count.

I got a photo of our ヤクザ vegetable thief as he passed behind our house.

As you can see from the above photo, we’ve taken some drastic measures in our ongoing battle to protect our veggies from the local raccoon dog. Since everything is growing so well, there’s a lot at stake. Thus everything is surrounded by netting, stretched tight and securely staked to the ground. We — at least I — felt confident we had defeated the furry freeloader regardless of his determination and cunning. To be entirely candid, I though the little fellow was dead. Just last week, a raccoon dog had been hit by a car on a busy street not far from our house. As far as I was concerned, he was long gone from this life here in quiet, rural Tambasasayama.

Well, I was wrong on all counts. Because the day after I took a pass on the supermarket corn, our Yakuza [ヤクザ] raccoon dog was back. He dug under the netting, went full infantry on our corn, feasted on it, then devoured some tomatoes, before moving on to holding up a bank or kidnapping some school child. Okay, maybe I’m going overboard. Anyway, this is what no respect for private property and bad table manners looks like . . .

Tragedy in the midst of an otherwise blissful life.

Actually, we have no right to complain. I mean, if you want to look at this objectively, this is his natural habitat. If we humans didn’t have better lawyers, he’d be having us arrested for trespassing. And even more to the point, there’s plenty to go around. Truth is, we can hardly keep up. We’ve gone through the lettuce and now have pepperoncini, tomatoes, scallions, cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, butternut squash, potatoes, and I don’t know what else coming out of our ears — lacking ears of corn, of course. Even so, fair play dictates that the coon dog raider could have left, say, two of the ears of corn, so we’d have some idea what they taste like. Obviously, this particular raccoon dog has issues.

In terms of the near future, we’re looking forward to a bumper crop of one of the items that has made Tambasasayama famous. You can read more about it in my other attempts at signaling my agricultural sophistication, or is that horticultural enlightenment? Yes, I’m talking about black beans, aka soybeans. Here we are planting forty-eight seedlings, a tad bit late but not such as to compromise our ultimate success. And by the way, we grew the seedlings ourself, starting with — I know this came as a huge surprise to me — SEEDS!

Bear in mind, I grew up in Detroit area, where the only things that grew in abundance were plumes of automobile exhaust and racial tensions. All of this is new to me, and to be entirely honest, exciting in some completely non-exciting way. The excitement is internal as I see all of this unfold, maybe the way a person who was raised in the tundra by wolves would be awed the first time they saw an iPhone.

The real payoff in real time is that we’ve gotten some truly awesome, homegrown, organic, cultivated-by-our-own hands, nurtured-by-our-own-spectacular-personal-vibes vegetables to show for it.

Capping my little report here on the unfolding drama of life in rural Japan with a hugely vast understatement: I sure don’t miss the exhaust fumes and race riots of my youth, nor do I long for the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, horizon-to-horizon cement, and frenetic frenzy of contemporary big city life at all these days — not at all.

I think I finally found my calling.

Posted in Environment, Food, Japan, Spiritual | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

“Daddy is a drunk!”

I’ve spent at least ten years talking about “regime change in Washington DC”, trying to explain exactly what that entails, and why it’s necessary for the survival of our nation.

Here’s my last go at it. Daddy is a drunk! It’s an allegory.

Before I start with this heartwarming story about a dad who’s a drunk, let me just make one qualifier. When I advocate regime change in our nation’s capitol, I’m not suggesting a violent revolution. In fact, the idea is to AVOID that, because if there is a violent overthrow of authorities here in the U.S., I have no doubt it will be the bloodiest, most horrifying one in history. We as a citizenry are armed to the teeth, are obsessed with and glorify violence in our myths about ourselves as people and as a nation. Even those who claim to abhor violence seem inexplicably tolerant, with all sorts of rationalizations for never getting serious about eliminating guns or attempting to refashion a culture which is predicated on less adversity, competition, and confrontation. I’m not here to argue any of that. I’m just stating the obvious. If there’s another civil war, it will be a bloodbath.

Regime change, from my perhaps naive perspective — and I do mean total regime change — can be accomplished peacefully, humanely, and legally. But understand what I mean is truly, in fact, without qualification or compromise: REGIME CHANGE. It is removing every single person now holding public office from power and replacing them with qualified public officials who will actually serve the citizens of the country.

Today’s message is directed to the hugely vast majority of fellow citizens, who to my utter and complete astonishment, don’t see any need to replace ALL OF THEM. They don’t see that there are times in life, when things can’t be repaired. Something is so broken, it simply has to be tossed in the trash and replaced.

On to the most touching story you’ll read in the next several minutes.

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Daddy Is A Drunk!

Daddy in his twenties was pretty much like most guys his age. He liked to go out and have a good time with his buddies. Have a few beers. Cheer the home team at a sports bar.

When he married mom, they’d occasionally share wine with the meal at a nice restaurant, or even once or twice a month have cocktails with their friends or other young couples.

Twenty years later, daddy was a different human being. The kids were in high school, he worked very hard and since he’d been very successful at his job, he didn’t “hang out” with his personal buddies anymore, but spent a lot of time socializing with colleagues from the corporation he worked at, and VIPs from the international customer base they serviced. Lots of travel now. High pressure and high stakes. But he got paid very well for it.

There was one problem. Now he drank constantly. Morning to night. He literally started the day with two stiff tumblers of bourbon, either of which would put most people on their tushies. Drinks at lunch. Drinks at happy hour. As soon as he arrived at home, he’d pour large glasses of whiskey, drink through dinner, then cap the night off with a few “sweet dreams” shots of liqueur before collapsing in a sloppy stupor on their king-size bed.

Daddy was a drunk.

But it wasn’t just his problem. It was a problem for every member of the family, for the few friends he and mommy still had, sometimes even for neighbors. Like when he drove his new Porsche onto the lawn of the neighbors next door, and wiped out $3000 of their professionally-landscaped lawn and garden.

Daddy had changed from a affable, well-liked, often funny, always entertaining young man into a ego-maniacal, self-possessed, graceless, humorless prick. Oh yes, he could still pour on the charm, even be funny, and in his own self-aggrandizing way be entertaining, nice, sympathetic, affable, whatever the occasion might call for. But the Mr. Fun Guy act would eventually fall apart, and behind the scenes he’d again become Mr. Hyde. Life at home was unbearable. He ranted. He paced. Appeared angry most of the time. Never took any real joy or satisfaction out of being there with his wife and kids.

It was tearing the family apart. Correction. Since this had been going on for three years — it started right when their oldest boy started high school — it had already torn the family apart. There was nothing left to salvage. The kids hated daddy. The wife hated daddy.

Over the three years, there had been five sessions of marriage counseling. Daddy had even agreed on and off to get psychiatric help. At least six times Daddy had been in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. He’d even been to a hypnotist. Except for very brief periods off the bottle — only days, not weeks — it was the same story. And getting worse by the day.

Within the family — at least at first — they’d talk to daddy, plead with him, try to reason with him. They said all the right things. They thought what they said was persuasive and would make a difference: Daddy, you’re destroying yourself. Daddy, when you drink, you’re not the same person we know and love . Daddy, we just want to be with you and want what’s best for you. Daddy, you’ll be a much happier person — we’d all be happier — if you stop drinking. Daddy, you’re going to die if you keep this up. Please, daddy!

Through it all, with the rare glimpses of the pain and havoc he was creating in their lives, with a fleeting awareness that he had a serious problem, that he was hurting himself and those he who loved him, daddy would listen and apologize, promise to do better and claim he really appreciated their concern and help. He would do what was best for all of them and quit. Of course, that never happened. After only a few days off the bottle, when he went back, it seemed like he even drank more.

And so the family was — and still is — facing one stark, disheartening, unavoidable reality.

Daddy is a drunk.

Mommy can’t take it anymore. The verbal abuse. No affection. Nothing resembling companionship. No possibility of communication. Nothing could be done to fix things.

It was time for a drastic solution.

Daddy had to go. He had to be removed from the family before he did any more harm.

Mommy filed for and won a divorce. Daddy was gone.

If life is generous, mommy will find another man to love, to love her, and be the father to the kids they deserve.

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What’s the moral of the story? Sometimes things get so bad, there’s so much damage and bad history, you have to start all over.

That’s where we are at with our government, with the elected officials now in office, who time and again, over and over, make it clear they do not and will not serve the people who elected them to do just that. They are beholden to their deep-pocketed patrons, both major parties serve the ruling class. The connection between WE THE PEOPLE and those who are chosen — not by us but by the pay-for-play insiders of the Democratic and Republican parties — for us to vote for on election day, exists as a figment of fantasy, the product of very effective and very deceptive messaging. Regardless of what these puppets say during their money-drenched electoral campaigns, they are not on the side of the people.

We can’t take this anymore. We should be mad as hell!

The abuse of power. No loyalty to the voting public. They sidle up to us when they want our votes, then disappear inside the Washington DC bubble. They talk at us. They don’t listen. The iron grip of the rich and powerful on our current elected officials is absolute. There’s no fixing anything with those now in office.

It’s time for drastic action.

These lapdogs of the rich and powerful need to go. They must be removed before they do anymore damage. Examples: More looting of the Treasury to serve Wall Street and the big investment banks. More stalling on climate change, minimum wage, health care, abortion, criminal justice reform, election reform, infrastructure. None of it will get done. What will get done is privatizing social security, more tax breaks for corporations and the rich . . . MORE WAR!

Throw these bums out! You could randomly go through a telephone directory and select names and come up with a better Congress and White House than this circus of clowns who now pose as our national leaders. No . . . I’m not being funny. I’m dead serious!

And you should be too.

Posted in Corporatism, Deconstruction, Democracy, Political Analysis, Political Rant, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Life In Japan: Revenge Bento

Masumi

Hope you find this as funny as I did when my wife, Masumi, told me about it.

Evidence would suggest that in many other countries, when a wife gets really mad at her husband, she hires an attorney or a hit man. Or she becomes a radical feminist and joins in on militant public displays of man-hating. Shooting and poisoning a misbehaving hubby are also popular options but there are legal repercussions. If she’s truly at the end of her rope, she goes to a gender reassignment specialist and ends up with five o’clock shadow and the ugly habit of spitting on public sidewalks. Finally, at the very extreme end of the spectrum, she goes on a vision quest with a Tibetan sherpa in the Himalaya Mountains, never to be seen again.

Here in Japan, the wrath of an angry wife takes a much milder form: REVENGE BENTO!

Bento is what we Westerners would call a ‘lunchbox’ — ‘Mittagsbox’ in German, ‘boîte à déjeuner’ in French, ‘škatla s kosilom’ in Slovenian.

Bento is everywhere here in Japan. Bento restaurants, bento food stands, bento in schools, bento at the train station, bento at the beach, bento at the ball game.

I have to say, bento is great! Reasonable, healthy and delicious. Quick and easy.

We’re now ready to get into the meat of this article, food for thought on the cultural and psychological forces at work here in present day Japan.

A typical Japanese wife will prepare a lunch bento for her typical Japanese husband, then send him on his way to whatever his job is.

However . . .

An angry Japanese wife will send him on his way . . . but the bento will include a message.

Here are some examples. They are self-explanatory.

REVENGE BENTO!

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” – William Congreve The Mourning Bride

Posted in Deconstruction, Food, Japan, Satire, Social Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Life In Japan: A Not-So-Random Act of Kindness

Something happened the other day which really got me thinking.

Actually, there were two things. One was two weeks ago, the other just a few days ago.

Two weeks ago, I read the story behind the Simon & Garfunkel song, Sounds of Silence, in particular the opening lines: “Hello darkness, my old friend . . .” It is a truly awe-inspiring tale and I won’t attempt to capture it better than than Josh Mitteldorf did, author of this extraordinary article. I highly recommend it. It brought me tears of joy and admiration. Art Garfunkel apparently is a saint and saints seem hard to come by these days.

The second thing happened a few days ago on my “long bike ride”. Most of this 28 km pleasure cruise is on farm lanes and narrow, sparsely-traveled roads servicing the rice, bean, potato, and other fields in the areas surrounding my home on the outskirts of town.

But there is one stretch of road (pictured above) which skirts a highly-trafficked secondary highway. What happened occurred along this stretch.

At one point, I sensed that someone had just pulled into a drive I had just passed, and stopped. I turned to look and there was a man, probably in his 30s, getting out of a small truck. He was smiling, had something in his hand, and was waving it at me.

It was a bottle and it turned out to be a nicely-chilled sports drink.

That day, like many recently, was fairly hot. Of course, when you’re on a bike in the direct sun, it doesn’t take much to generate a slippery sweat, exhaustion, and a formidable thirst. No one says keeping in shape is easy.

I backtracked to the truck, he handed me the cool drink, I expressed my sincere gratitude.

That was it.

But think about this . . . I sure did!

This gentleman saw a stranger, an old guy cruising along in the hot sun on a bike, and actually took the time to share something he must have just bought at a nearby convenience store — there was a Lawson’s コンビニ [convenience store] very close to where he pulled over — purely out of kindness.

That’s the bottle there on the right.

Yes, it’s empty. I drank it. And I have to say, it really hit the spot!

At the same time, I’ll confess to . . . hmm . . . I’m not sure what to call it. Cultural flashback? Too-good-to-be-true paranoia? Be very afraid-ism?

After the initial rush of surprise, joy, gratitude, as the guy drove away, flashing a pleasant smile and a friendly wave of parting, doubt crept in. What if it’s poison? Maybe he’s some “sports drinker killer” and does this all of the time to get some homicidal kick? Have I ever known people like this? Would I even do this, wonderful person that I am except when someone makes fun of my nose or yells ‘Rod Stewart!’ at me?

The US is full of incredibly kind, generous, well-meaning, considerate, just-plain-decent folks. People who might do something like this — especially if they didn’t live in America. But there’s a lot of weird, ugly stuff that goes on. I’ve been attacked just walking down the street. I had a friend who was robbed in broad daylight with a gun pointed at his head, as he sat at a red light at a busy intersection in a beautiful, affluent area in L.A. When I was just an adolescent of 13, some of my teammates peed in a soda bottle and gave it to a fellow they didn’t like to drink. Does this kind of stuff happen everywhere? Do cops gun down people for jaywalking? Do punks ride around in cars and shoot up houses just for kicks or because a young man who lives there said ‘hi’ to one of the gang leader’s bimbos? Remember when they pulled bottles of the painkiller Tylenol because someone was going around lacing bottles with a lethal poison?

I know these things are not “the norm”, maybe not even really that common. But they do happen! And they plant seeds of doubt, suspicion, paranoia in everyone who listens to the 24/7 stream of horrible news which we are subjected to in our media-saturated lives.

Hence, my “cultural flashback” moment. A brief jolt of suspicion and fear.

The thing is — and I’m not saying this to give a rah-rah for Japan or claim superiority for my choice to live here — these ugly sorts of things rarely happen in Japan. There is practically no crime. There are practically no murders. There are few guns and private ownership of guns nearly non-existent. And as I’ve written about before, Japanese are honest to a degree that pushes the limits of believability. This is perhaps the safest country in the world! On every level.

It’s certainly safe to walk down the street or stop at a red light. I never worry about being shot. Or beat up by strangers.

And it’s safe to accept the generosity of a complete stranger . . . and drink a sports drink!

Yes, it sure hit the spot. And all I can say for this man’s not-so-random act of kindness is:

Thanks!

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If you’d like to learn more about what life is like in Japan for an American expat, let me put in a plug here for my book LIVE FROM JAPAN! and alert you to a special ebook sale that’s going on for the entire month of July.

LIVE FROM JAPAN! is now available at 50% off as a Kindle or EPUB ebook (Nookbook, Apple iBook, Kobo Reader, etc.)

Buy it now for only $4.99 at . . . Smashwords.

Posted in Altruism, Books, Japan, Social Commentary, Spiritual | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Life In Japan: Lunch Anyone?

A few days ago, my wife Masumi decided we should go to one of her favorite cafés for a special Saturday lunch. She certainly deserved a weekend reward for her hard work — and her job has been especially stressful the last few weeks — teaching music at an elementary school in nearby Inagawa.

This was the lunch set for that particular day at Café Arbour.

Let me be entirely candid. There are many ingredients in this meal I don’t recognize. There are many ingredients you certainly would never find in a typical American lunch: jellyfish, daikon (radish), koyadofu, soumen, sansyo (Japanese pepper), to name a few.

But isn’t that the point? Isn’t that part of the incredible journey of discovery intrinsic to marrying into and living in a completely different culture?

In a way, I end up with the best of two worlds. We still enjoy Western foods — or the best semblance of favorites from the West which are available here — quite regularly, either by my efforts in the kitchen or by going to any number of area restaurants. But I also get to sample, taste, experience and savor a whole new range of cuisine. And trust me, when you get deep into “traditional” Japanese food — as exemplified by our special lunch at Café Arbour — you end up discovering flavors I never could have imagined before. Some take getting some used to, while others are amazing from the get-go.

Let me give a truly unique example of how this cross-cultural pollinization can work.

Anyone remember this Mother Goose poem? . . .

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper;
A peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper,
Where’s the peck of pickled pepper Peter Piper picked?

I can’t say this piece of doggerel ever inspired in me anything particular profound. And I frankly assumed that ‘pickled pepper’ was a nonsensical phrase chosen for its alliteration.

But . . . I was SO WRONG!

At our lunch, right there for the taking — and admittedly they were delicious! (in a peppery pickled sort of way) — were . . . [drumroll] . . . are you ready? . . .

And that, folks, is how bridges are built between lands and cultures separated by history and thousands of miles of geography!

Posted in Deconstruction, Food, Japan, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

War is over if . . .

John Lennon was idealistic and inspiring. His lovely, if somewhat naive Imagine, embodied the hope and vision most of us share for a better, more peaceful world.

Personally, I appreciate Lennon’s genius even more listening to the background vocals and out-chorus of his phenomenal Christmas ode, Happy Xmas (War Is Over) . . .

The beautifully sung line that really catches my ear and fires my imagination is . . .

John and Yoko certainly had the right idea. It’s an idea most of us want to believe in!

At the same time, despite how good I genuinely feel entertaining such a thought, I see a problem here. That sentiment probably wasn’t true back in 1971 when the song was released, and it certainly is not true in today’s world.

The vast majority of people in the U.S. and across the globe want an end to the wars. But given the current configuration of political power, the realities of who decides where and when the next conflict will take place, what we the people think is completely irrelevant.

We everyday, sane, decent, peace-loving folks CANNOT stop the endless wars for a simple and obvious reason.

We are powerless!

I mean that literally, not figuratively.

WE HAVE NO POWER!

And the people who do have all of the power to make peace or wage war have no desire, have zero motivation to end their aggression, to stop creating more enemies, to reduce tensions, to once and forever retire war as the main mechanism of foreign policy.

In fact, all of the rewards and incentives for those now in power — the ruling elite and their lapdogs in government — are to escalate conflict and confrontation, beat the war drums louder and louder, increase misunderstanding, promote fear and mistrust, and accelerate the march into battle. The threat of war, preparation for war, and starting wars will be endlessly recycled until there is a complete, game-changing, paradigm-shifting challenge to the policies which define the way our government now deals with the rest of the world.

War is among the most profitable investments in play. And the turmoil and chaos resulting from war keeps the current batch of warmongers in power. They make money — enormous sums of money — and lock themselves in a position to make even more money.

Why would they lift a finger to seek peace?

Why would they care whether we want peace or not?

Why would they even pay attention to us when we question them?

Why would those who exclusively benefit and enrich themselves selling war, promoting war, manufacturing and marketing weapons, creating more justifications for more lethal fighting machinery, pushing for endless military expansion, why would these amoral, money-hungry, power-drunk empire builders and imperial plunderers declare ‘war is over’ JUST BECAUSE WE WANT IT?

No, as poignant and beautiful as John Lennon’s inspired and inspiring lyric line is, reality demands we reconfigure it. Maybe it doesn’t sing quite as well or create as warm and fuzzy a feeling in us as his original line. But this is the only way things will change . . .

That is the truth about peace in our time . . . or I should say, perpetual war in our time.

It’s up to us to change the disastrous trajectory that we’re on. It won’t be easy. “They” have the money, control of Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the media, most of academia and the think tanks. “They” have been building a permanent war economy from the 1950s, which even President Dwight Eisenhower tried to warn us about way back when.

On the other hand, we have the numbers. In fact, we vastly outnumber the warrior-class empire builders, and if we are united, determined, focused, and have a solid plan, we can turn the country around and create the conditions for a world at peace.

It’s entirely up to us. Please get involved!

Posted in Democracy, Peace Dividend, Political Analysis, Social Commentary, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Life In Japan: Our New Garden

Yep! It’s that time of year again. Actually, it was that time of year again well over a month ago when we started with the plot of plowed earth pictured above.

Time to plant a new garden!

If anyone doubts just how incredibly hard we had to work to get things in shape, these should dispel any skepticism. (Ignore the smile on our faces . . . admittedly it is fun!)

« of 3 »

Cutting to the chase, here is how things are developing.

We’ve had a couple set-backs. My high-tech rain and bird shielding construct made of the finest netting and plastic didn’t do well during the first serious rain. I had to do it all over.

Then there was some low-tech but highly effective pilfering of our first two cucumbers by a Japanese raccoon dog. Yes, it’s a hybrid of a dog and a raccoon. Not quite sure how how that came about. This particular one is about 50 cm long, new to the neighborhood, and apparently loves cucumbers — not the skin, just the juicy insides. I always thought they were nocturnal but I spotted this fellow strolling by our back window in the bright sunshine of late morning, acting quite casual — FOR A THIEF! Masumi was understandable upset. Cucumbers are an important component of our sense of self-worth.

Anyway, here’s what our little garden looks like right now.

I know I know. This whole gardening escapade can’t compete with all that’s going on in the world . . . Ukraine, Biden’s latest gaffes, the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp trial, the shortage of baby formula, gasoline prices. But it’s not supposed to. Maybe that’s the whole idea, eh?

I’ve mentioned a number of times that we live in the middle of rice and bean fields. Good farming methodology dictates rotation of crops, to keep down soil depletion. Looks like the field in front of our house will be growing rice this year. Here’s our neighbor playing in the mud with his tractor.

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Life In Japan: Children’s Day

Japanese people work very hard. Long hours are the norm. At the same time, they are not averse to taking some time off to spend with family and friends. There are two extended holiday breaks, one in spring called Golden Week [ゴールデンウィーク] another at the end of summer called Obon [お盆].

Then there are the single-day holidays, fifteen in all.

I’ve written about these official holidays here in Japan before. Nothing military EVER! They celebrate everything from old people to mountains to nature to culture to the sun and ocean and the equinoxes.

The official holiday in May coincides with Golden Week. I’m referring to Children’s Day.

A holiday to celebrate children? Well . . . kids are the future. And they’re so darn cute!

I won’t attempt to offer a rationale for Children’s Day. It’s cultural thing, one that wouldn’t hurt the West to emulate. Of course, Anglo-Euro-America conjoined with the Land Down Under and that other place where they filmed Lord of the Rings, has Christmas, an orgy of excessive spending and myths about a virgin birth, a fat old man on a reindeer-powered UFO, and the health benefits of chemical and antibiotic-laced turkey or ham.

Trust me. There is no equivalency.

Just watch the below video and enjoy!

Posted in Japan, Social Commentary, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment