As the hostess of this month’s Matsuri, I posed the question: What has Japan taught you about yourself or your home country? A few brave souls took on the challenge, dug deep and provided us with the posts outlined below. If you submitted your post via the blog widget and did not also put a link on my original matsuri post on this blog my apologies but it will have been lost in a system I seem unable to navigate ( I received no email and cannot find any listing anywhere) so please do email me or add your link in a comment on the original posting and I will gladly update this post to include it
Liv who eats her pigeons gave us a wonderful interpretation of the culture shock process as growing up all over again
Over at The Soul of Japan, Tony warns us never to take anything for granted in Japan but reminds us that this also includes the good things - take time to stop and smell the onsen salts!
Nick’s entry at The Long Countdown had him looking back at England (at risking his mother’s wrath!)
Shane at The Nihon Sun has found that she has learned to live a more simple and less frantic life with an increased awareness of everyday beauty - something we could all learn to do.
Sheena at Girlish/Sheena in Japan shares what she learned about being American in the wake of Obama’s election and the reactions of some the Japanese around her.
My apologies for the tardiness of this post, I’ve been unavoidably off the grid for the last week or so and will probably continue to be so for a little while after this post is up.
One of the things I am really enjoying about living in Japan is re-discovering my love of and respect for the seasons, which had faltered somewhat due to various stressors and, frankly, living in Sydney which doesn’t really have them. The seasons are celebrated here with gusto! Throughout the year there are various religious festivals (matsuris) both national and local, usually based at a particular shrine or temple where the Kami in question is reverenced. Seasonal festivals, like Natsu (Summer) Matsuri which we celebrated in Gifu, are some of the biggest.
The map featured, from Japan Guide.com, forecasts the turning of the leaves all over Japan and are available at websites for the Japanese not just for western tourists looking for views. People will plan holidays or onsen weekends around soaking in the beauty of the turning of the leaves or man’s attempts at controlling the snow and communities around the country will celebrate their local (usually rice) harvest. Similar maps are available in Spring for the Hanami or cherry blossom viewing which is a HUGE celebration.
Melbourne, where I grew up, has its seasons but they are pretty much ignored beyond whether to bring a brolly or a coat (and boy do we know how to read a forecast). The joke, of course, is four seasons in one day but it’s really only true if you consider that getting a little cool and a little rain on a Summer day constitutes winter-like. As I understand it, the local indigenous population consider that Melbourne has six seasons and I can kind of see that (and wish I could find out more but it’s really, really hard.) The only hint of seasonal celebrations that come to the general awareness of the Australian populous are Easter and Yule though, of course, in their Christian form and they are actually at the time of Harvest and mid-Summer in the Sthn Hemisphere anyway. (Yes, I know that the non-Christian elements are still hugely strong within those festivals but that doesn’t mean those of us who are Caucasian and not “of the book” can celebrate openly - calling it Yule, for example, is only acceptable if it’s assumed I’m using the German term lol.)
The cynical (or those offended by the fact that I’ve just revealed I don’t hold Judeo-Christian views ) will remind me how commercial the festivals seem - Hanami particularly with companies competing for the best spots and it being very much “the thing” to do rather than being focused on which Kami is being celebrated. They will point out that the change of the seasons for most people just means new flavours of drinks and snacks in the konbini or changing wardrobes. Well to that I say: Shenanigans!
First of all, if they know that Summer is being celebrated then they know which Kami is being celebrated and frankly it’s kinda hard to miss. Secondly, those new flavours are seasonal flavours (watermelon kitkat in Summer and apple breath mints in Autumn, how much more harvesty can you get than apples!) being aware of the earth in your every day life is an acknowledgement of the Kami (however you want to define them, I find the similarities to Platonic Forms extraordinary) that effect it. Changing your clothes to warmer ones because its cold is a reverence to the seasons at the most basic level and possibly more so when there’s little need to change clothes beyond your coat with heating available indoors. But that’s me getting all kitchen-witchy on you so from a more traditionally western “religious” oogity-boogity framework I say: look at the excitement on the faces of the people in their Yukatas on the way to the fireworks. Listen to the laughter and awed “Sugoi!” at the art form that is man’s attempt at mastery over fire. The smile elicited by the sheer beauty of a cherry blossom or the colour of a leaf. That is real emotion, whatever the affectations of the day to please your boss or your boyfriend, and that is the essence of all this - opening yourself to the rhythms of the earth. Even if they only do it once a season, they come together and allow themselves to be effected by the extraordinary beauty and power of this planet which, no matter how much we learn, can still shake us off its back with a good earthquake.
Whether the Japanese population flocking (and boy do they flock) to the many matsuris and enjoying the food and carnival atmosphere are intellectually cognizant of exactly what is being celebrated doesn’t really matter to me (though frankly I think most of them are). It does a heathen girl good to be able to look ahead to at least a whole year in which she can celebrate by simply joining in with an entire nation!
Dennis at Dead Things on Sticks (one of my favourite working-writer blogs which often crosses into politics) calls our attention to this wonderful monologue from Craig Ferguson . This blog doesn’t often get political but this is really about media and politics … give it a click - important points made expertly.
Afterwards, head over to read Dennis’ post and watch the other just as serious but less funny video he has embedded… it’s getting ridiculous over there.
I know I was going to be lighter today but once again the priorities of those in the society in which I live show through and I am disgusted and saddened.
During investigations for a report entitled “CHILDREN IN STATE CARE COMMISSION OF INQUIRY: ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE AND DEATH FROM CRIMINAL CONDUCT” which was delivered last week , Australians…
“when asked to place in order the matters in society that concerned them most, rising petrol prices came first and child sexual abuse came 14th out of 15″
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that people care so little about helping children who are not their own, given my own history, and yet that shocks me, it truly does.
Every Monday at 6pm and Thurs at 5:30 pm for the last few weeks, a 6ft, willowy Japanese woman named Akiko (written with the kanji meaning “bright”or “shining” & “girl”) comes to our humble flat to teach us Japanese. She will do this for the next few months in preparation for our move to Nagoya in the last weeks of June so that Superman can begin work at the home office of the large car manufacturer he works for (who transferred us from Melbourne to Sydney just over a year ago.) As a lover of japanese design and animation since a small child, this trip will be a dream come true - to actually LIVE there for 18months or so rather than to just be a tourist is how I have always hoped to see the world. The language requirement of such an adventure is of course paramount and is, or so I’m told, a major consideration which stops many Australians (and probably English-speakers in general) from accepting transfers to countries in which English is not spoken at least as a second language by the majority of citizens. That Australians particularly, who grow up in this cornucopia of cultures, surrounded by other languages and English spoken with accents thereof, are afraid or even slightly reticent about language seems both sad and absurd to me - especially when the company is providing the cost of the language study.
We are not complete new-comers to Japanese, as fans of anime we are certainly used to it’s sounds and rythms and we even studied it for a few months in 2004 - just before we decided to take the plunge and allow me to give up work to write and had to tighten our belts - so we knew what to expect. Being presented with hiragana was not an issue as we had already learned that it is actually far easier to learn in kana than in romaji/roman characters because it is phonetic. What I didn’t expect, though, was that learning Japanese would effect my rusty school-girl French and my approach to language in general.
I have long heard the theory that it is easier to learn a third language after learning a second and easier still a fourth and so on… I have always assumed that this referred to having learned a second language to fluency but my French is far from fluent (even given that Superman is right that I have always underestimated how good it is) and yet I am finding a profound effect. Of course there is the obvious issue of being familiar with the general concepts of language learning but something more fundamental seems to be happening to my brain. As I learn new words I’m finding that the French for the same word or phrase will come to mind totally unbidden and that my entire world is becoming more abstract. Objects and actions are less tied to the words which name them - in a fundamental way. It’s difficult to describe, and when I do it sounds silly and basic but I’ll try anyway.
When we are children and we are told what something is called we are not literally told “that is named ‘a book’,” we are told “that IS a book.” Perhaps we take on a metaphysical belief about the essence of ‘book’ so that when we are taught other languages we simply learn by rote that “un livre” is another name for what is actually, fundamentally ‘a book.’ I wonder if the words of the mother tongue continue to be the fundamental basis not just of all language but of reality itself unless something is done to breakdown that metaphysical conditioning.
Those who become fluent in a language know the importance of the moment when you start to ‘think in
‘ When you are no longer translating, even at extreme speed, then you are genuinely fluent but this is not what I am referring to. When I was still studying French and even now when I am watching a French movie or le Journal in the mornings I have those moments (not for terribly long when it comes to le Journal I’m afraid). I know exactly what is going on, I laugh at the jokes when it’s appropriate for the French rather than the English subtitles and it will take me a jarring moment to switch back to thinking in English if someone speaks to me or asks me to translate precisely for them. But this new thing isn’t just ‘thinking’ in another language - I certainly don’t know enough Japanese to come close to doing that - it’s thinking outside language, observing beyond language to the core of things without need to impose a name or even a description until there is a requirement to communicate … everything simply IS.Hmm sounds fairly zen, really, doesn’t it?
I wonder if children raised with multiple languages from birth have a completely different metaphysical outlook?
After we arrive in Japan, we will continue to be given language lessons for the duration of our stay so there is a real possibility of achieving more than a survival level of fluency. Perhaps I will even be able to make a rudimentary translation of Shadowkeeper for pitching to the Japanese anime production houses which have inspired and influenced my writing since I was a child. At the very least I should be able to collaborate intelligently with a translator. Standby for posts in kana!
Several months ago I was stopped outside my local supermarket by two wheel-chair bound teenagers in matching tracksuits with those oversized charity raffle tickets for sale. Having spent a disastrous 3 weeks of my own late teenage-hood failing to sell raffle tickets for the wheelchair sports association I began to reach into my bag for my wallet as I asked them what they were selling them for.
“To get our aussie team to the Special Olympics in Beijing” was the reply.
“Oh!” I heard myself exclaim with an unexpected passion. “No! Noone should be going. Not the able-bodied either. Do you know what’s going on over there, let alone because of the Olympics?”
The boy looked at me dumbfounded, the girl recovered faster and said quickly “Sport has nothing to do with that stuff.”
I didn’t want to pick an argument with them so I refused and apologised again but suggested they do some research into it and shuffled inside before I could be overwhelmed by the shame of my deed. You see, many Australians, I’d even venture to say the vast majority of Australians, would consider that behaviour to have been that most terrible of things: unAustralian - not because I said no to some poor disabled kiddies but because I said no to SPORTSPEOPLE. Worse, I suggested that sportspeople should not pursue their sport with a single-minded obliviousness to the world in which they live.
At the time that I committed my deed the issue hadn’t been discussed in the media since the small flicker of psuedo-concern for a week or so after games had been awarded to China. Now, as the games approach, with the Europeans taking the lead the issue is being bounced around again and the usual “debate” is occurring. Those who believe the games should not be boycotted make statements such as “Sport is above politics” they are nodded at slowly as though they have said something wise and proper, as though they have ACTUALLY OUTLINED ANY KIND OF ARGUMENT AT ALL and the issue is considered dealt with. Those on the other side, who dare to possibly consider that maybe the politics of the situation should perhaps be taken into account, are attacked and even intelligent, usually courageous, political journalists will touch on it only briefly and carefully leave it up to the conscience of the viewer as they do when discussing religion or abortion rights. “Ok,” I can hear some of you saying, “so what’s your argument FOR a boycott?”
Fair question and it is better answered by Chinese activists who are closer to the situation than I. Sen. Andrew Bartlett, whose blog is a great one to read to keep the faith alive that there are politicians who apply both intelligence and conscience to their work rather than PR, provides this link to the article “THE REAL SITUATION IN PRE-OLYMPICS CHINA” by Teng Biao and Hu Jia (who was arrested and sentenced to 3 and a half yrs jail in China this week for writing such things.) It is a good article for those with sport tunnel vision because it addresses Olympic-specific related abuses - and not just human rights abuses but sportsman’s rights abuses too. For example, the Chinese government is barring their top sportspeople from competing if their political views are suspect, or (as in the case of their national disabled discus champion who received his disabling injury at the Tienanmen Massacre) if their injuries remind people of the truth.
“Sure that’s bad, really awful,” some will continue to argue “but it’s not the individual athlete’s job to make political statements”
First of all this is just a politically correct way of asking: why the hell should an athlete give a damn about another human being? and, frankly if I have to answer that one for you then get the hell away from my blog. No, seriously.
But lets assume that it is arguable that the athlete’s shouldn’t have to care that they will be performing in stadia built by the forcible removal of people from their homes some of whom are in prison or re-education labor camps for objecting. The sheer fact is that there is no way round a political statement in this case. There is a choice which must be made here: to go or not to go, there is no default position, a statement WILL be made one way or the other. If you go you support the Chinese government AND the olympic committee’s choice to award the games to China, if you don’t go then you care about human rights. There is NO ESCAPING a statement. SPORT IS NOT ABOVE HUMANITY. The olympic committee has put every athlete into this position - not China, not political philosophers or activists - by awarding the games to China in the first place.
I am not suggesting that any individual athlete should have to bare the weight of a boycott on their own, I am suggesting that every single athlete should refuse to be used by the olympic organisation and China. Look at that phrase: “every single” or “every one” - it takes each individual for it to happen, each person who says they won’t do it because others won’t do it is guilty of stopping it from happening AND is either a supporter of China and the olympic committee’s choice to award the games to China, or, quite simply, a selfish coward.
“But what do you say to an athlete who doesn’t want to give up the opportunity to achieve what they have spent so much of their life working towards?”
A) It’s bloody horrible and the olympic committee should not have put you in this situation but frankly the olympics doesn’t deserve to be the focus of anyone’s life ambitions if it is this kind of an organisation. If you really care about being the fastest, strongest, highest, get your sports union to organise alternate meets where you can do your best times and prove you’re all about the sport and not the fanfare which feeds the corrupt olympic movement… or are you wanting to jump on that gravy-train yourself?
B) Sit down for two seconds at a computer, google torture and get some damn perspective. It’s not that I don’t support and admire anyone who strives to be the best at anything they do - nor that I am oblivious to the important role that sport plays in western countries inspiring technological and medical breakthroughs or allowing people to channel tribal emotions safely into the love of their team instead of into violence (not always successfully.) But sport is a pastime, an entertainment just like any other pastime and equal to them: despite the Australian worship of sport the truth is that a brilliant runner has no moral superiority over a brilliant chess player and in fact both are morally inferior to a doctor or a charity worker or a human being living under an oppressed regime who has the courage to become an activist. If you are really honestly willing to actively support the pageantry of the Chinese government and the olympic committee which was willing to be bought by them for the sake of a few minutes of your life which, experience tells us you will spend the rest of your days struggling to get over and move on from, then you need a serious adjustment. If you make a stand for humanity, you’ll still be wheeled out every four years to wax nostalgic about your olympic experience but yours will have made more of a difference and lasted longer than it took for your record to be broken - and it won’t just be on sports shows either.
“Why not go and say something on the podium about human rights?”
Because this stand isn’t just about China, it’s about standing up to the olympic committee for giving it to China in the first place. The committee’s protestations that the focus on China would help were disingenuous at best. Sport simply does not matter enough for it to make any positive change for China - OFCOURSE this was going to be negative for Chinese citizens, OFCOURSE it would be taken as/spun as support for the Chinese government. And the olympic committee did not care. We all know how corrupt the olympic committee has been for decades, who knows what China offered them but it was enough even to overlook the very suspect drug-use if not at least child-abuse practices of Chinese sporting associations let alone the wider political abuses. Going to the games and saying “I support human rights” while wearing your medal will be a thoroughly empty, hypocritical PR gesture - because you have allowed the games to occur and the olympic committee remains immune. Make your human rights statement at a press conference the night you make the team and say how you lament the posiiton you’ve been put in by the olympic committee but that you will not be going - that AND empty stadia will make an actual impact - not easily editable too-late-now statements. Don’t allow yourselves to be used by an organisation which has shown itself to care about nothing but that its members may continue to live the lives to which they have become accustomed… where’s the sport in that? And where’s your dignity?
A few weeks ago I added a bunch of podcasts to my RSS feeds on Google Reader and have loved listening to things I would usually miss when they are live (mostly from ABC Radio National and mostly on Sundays lol.) Big Ideas has been broadcasting the odd session from this year’s Adelaide Festival of Ideas. Not satisfied with waiting for their picks (this controlling my own media thing takes hold fast lol) I found the website which generously provides downloadable podcasts of what looks to be the entire schedule! I thought I’d pass the generosity on - you can find them here.
Having followed the link from another blog which referred to it as amusing, I began to read it to Superman but was very soon hindered by severe lack of breath, sniffing back tears and the whole when-I-shake-with-laughter-the-screen-shakes issue… I invite those of you with a similar bent to enjoy and those who really don’t see the humour to roll your eyes and declare how odd I am once more…
How appropriate that this has happened to me on May Day ^_^ The new work I’ve been developing, that was tentatively titled “Nephalim”, has been gathering momentum - working away in the back of my mind, springing ideas on me as I read, cleaned the house, walked to the shops, chatted to Superman about other things entirely… These are the signs that, at last, I may have found my next project - one which should be a stayer. You’ll have picked up the qualifications there and they are deliberate because there was still one thing missing: my premise. The moment I discovered my premise for Shadowkeeper was the moment I became capable of finishing it. I discovered for myself what Lisa Dethridge had taught in her wonderful classes at RMIT: that the premise is not just some lofty, over-arching statement of purpose (as against outcome) for a work - it is the axis upon which it turns. Whenever you have a question about story or structure, the premise is your guide. Like a blues harp in the right key, when creativity is lacking your premise will always give you something you can write about till you find the creative angle again (even if you trash what you’ve written to get you there lol.) When you’re totally lost and doubting your skill and why you even started writing this thing and who would care anyway… your premise tells you why.
Today, I found my premise.
How I came to find my premise is worth writing about here because, as my writing friends know, lately I have been exploring the creative process behind how people choose which project to work on. I’ve asked writer-friends and scoured blogs and sooo many writers, it turns out, do what I do: let the ideas take us as far as they are willing, file that away then work on the next till that runs out, then pick up either the next or return to a previous one and so on, until one idea has developed far enough to become dominant (I’ve described above how I know that has happened.) And here is why I’m calling this an epiphany - what I have realised today is that this idea actually pulls together many, many of those embryonic, under-cooked ideas in my box files - going back so far that I feel that I may have been working on this all my life.
When I was about 15, I was lying in bed in the dark looking up at the moon when a huge black cloud drifted across the sky, obscuring my view - at that moment a title came into my mind, fully formed “The War of Wind and Moon”. I turned on my lamp and began to pen what I thought should be an epic poem (obsessed with Vikings as I was at the time.) I wrote two stanzas about the wind deliberately but somewhat impotently obscuring our view of the powerful moon with clouds … but I had nothing except a vague sense that it was “really deep” but beyond my understanding at the time. The title stuck with me for years and every now and then I would ask myself if I was ever going to write it and wonder at the mystery of it … then, one day several years ago (in a screenwriting class actually), I decided that it was just a damn good title and I had just been another teenage writer with a title and no story lol!
Well… today, as I was putting away the shopping at the same time as preparing lunch (for which Superman returns home each day now - sooo cool!), my mind wandered again to the question of why I was embarking on a story set in the mythology of the Christian world when I had spent my life researching so many other mythologies. Why was I putting my protagonist into a story in which she discovers angels and god and demons are real? Was I just trying to undermine my own spiritual exploration? Where do all the other mythologies fit in the story I’m writing? I thought about the other snippets of stories involving spirituality that I have in my box files. I thought about how, in exploring religions and spiritualities (including Christianity) I’d found that they all come back to the same ineffable “Source/Love” whatever the many faces of “gods” and “angels” the mythologies offered … and suddenly everything pulled together and the title came back to me with bright, full understanding.
“The War of Wind and Moon” is the eternal struggle between trusting in that ineffable “Source”, the ‘connection’ to which is so elusive and heavy with personal responsibility, and the desire to pour devotion onto something solid and seen in return for rules and rituals which allow us to avoid that responsibility. And that, my friends who have been wanting details about the new project, is the axis around which this novel will turn. The actual story? Well, there are angels and ‘gods’ and demons at war for the hearts of humans and a young half-human woman struggling with the responsibilities that great power brings.
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