Shoot me. Please, just shoot me.

"I've been to 38 countries around the world, but there's no other country like Japan that has such dynamic seasonal changes. It's incredible. I'm not exaggerating and it really is fantastic," 74-year-old Hymas said in a recent interview in Tokyo.

A resident in Japan since 1974, Hymas said that his more than 40-year love affair with landscapes of rural Japan, which are distinctive in every season [Is this not usual in temperate climates everywhere? WTF?], led him to nearly every corner of this country.

...his current nature phase marks "a huge departure from my earlier work as a professional acrobat," as he put it. Asahi Shinbun (English) Maybe that explains something? Old noggin injury, perhaps?

I must be living in another world.

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Living away from home for long periods seems to give a distorted view of what home was like. For example, since coming to Japan, I have forgotten exactly how dangerous it was there and my memories are that my hometown----if you could call it a town---was much, much, safer than ultra-safe Japan (apples and oranges, but that is acceptable when discussing Japan). Just like my wife had forgotten how safe Japan was when we lived in the States during the Japanese real estate bubble. She would lay awake at night (or have nightmares) worrying about real estate agency hiring some yakuza-connected thug to persuade her parents to sell their home by setting it on fire or running a truck through it.

This sort of distortion affects people in other ways. I find myself wearing heavier clothing than I ever would have before when the "winter" temperature drops to a frigid 50 degrees outside. I start thinking like everyone else, that this is cold weather. I have never seen an icicle in the city in Tokyo, and very, very, rarely see frost and snow is a once or twice a year rarity. (Oh, yea. Global warming. And maybe a latitude on the 35th parallel like that of the southern US states of Georgia/North Carolina?)

It ain't only me. I was talking with a guy from Chicago who told me about how cold Tokyo was. He then predicted below freezing overnight, although I knew that the unreliable weather forecast predicted 45 degrees---and they turned out to be right.

Since I am unable to tell when winter is in the only land with four seasons without a calendar, I have to refer to my own records sometimes to remember that it is winter at this time of year, not a 5-month long March.

One year ago today, the first of two snowfalls hit Tokyo. I fear that there will be none this year which, for one who enjoys winter, will just serve as an exclamation point for how things seem to be going.

Rambling holiday nonsense

November, the middle month of autumn. Cool, crisp nights with frost. Brilliant blue skies above what remains of colorful autumn leaves. The smell of woodsmoke in the air as folks light up the woodstoves or fireplaces. Occasionally, even the smell of burning coal as a few still use it for fuel. Hikes into the woods where is is easier to see wildlife as the foliage decreases and some bigger game becomes more active for breeding season. The bugle of a bull elk. The chance of seeing one of the most impressive animals in the woods---a bull moose.

Oh wait. I am having a nostalgic daydream. I am in Tokyo, Japan, which although it is the only country on earth with 4 distinct seasons (make me barf) I occasionally have trouble figuring out which clearly distinct season it is without the help of a calendar. I still very much miss being able to just walk out the backdoor and be in a forest within 5 minutes like I could as a child. I miss the ability to drive to the woods like I could as an adult in Washington state, Washington DC, or that most beautiful state of Montana without a major undertaking like it is in Tokyo.

The more I live here the more I live to get out of town and at least find some fresh air, hills, and forests. A big bonus is to see wildlife, although nothing interests me less than seeing a damned monkey. Perhaps disinterest that may change someday. But the biggest bonus is to be able to get out in the woods and not see nor hear another human for the whole day. I suppose my wife is OK, but as a city girl she has no such interests. Not in Japan anyway, but she did while in Washington and Montana to some degree. (Usually it involved her getting to eat---picking wild blueberries, or me hunting. Occasionally she enjoyed seeing a bear cub, or some other baby animal.)

Since I can't get out of Tokyo as often as I would like---which would ideally be every damned day---I have to make do with what passes for "nature" here. In order to do that, I look for nature on a much, much smaller scale. I have to ignore all the unnatural surroundings, all of the human activity, all of the noise, and all of the obviously man-made (or arranged for man's pleasure) parts of nature. For example, flood lights on at night so that we can "enjoy" cherry blossoms.

I spend a lot of time near the Tamagawa (river) as it is about the closest thing there is to natural in my part of Tokyo. I can spend hours and hours there on top of what I spend riding my rode bike along the river. There is some wildlife, mainly waterfowl which although very, very wary of humans can provide opportunities to watch, learn, and relax. (There are various species of ducks around as well as egrets, herons, cormorants and other large waterfowl.)

Quite often if someone sees me photographing in the area, they'll come up and start talking. This is not something that is all that common in Tokyo, but it seems to happen a lot there. Most of the time people will be speaking in Japanese instead of assuming that I cannot speak a word of the language. Although this can be a bit of a nuisance if I've been trying to get close to a heron to take a photo and Watanabe-san chooses that time to noisily walk up to me and start asking about the lens I am using, generally I find such encounters very enjoyable as folks speak to me as a fellow human being and don't give me the full (baka)gaijin treatment. I have learned a lot of interesting things about the birds there and the river from older guys who get all excited about the chance to tell me what they know. (Did you know that some of the lava flows still visible at times in the river were formed during volcanic activity 300,000 years ago? Me neither, until earlier this year.)

Anyway, I have spent the last 2 weekends trying to find some signs of autumn. They are here, of course, but on a different scale. It's cooler. A few leaves have started to change. I have become so desperate for fall that I have gather some of the fallen sakura leaves and have a pile on my desk. In about another month, most will have finished and be falling. Fall subtly (and officially) began in September. In small ways. I began to notice the difference in the type of winds while riding my bike by late September. Naturally, the length of the day had shortened and light angles---and thus color---had begun to change. These changes are very subtle compared to what I have been used to for most of my life before coming to Tokyo. Thus, I have found myself becoming more sensitive to them by necessity, because the seasons, the weather, and the outdoors (nature, wild areas, mountains, wildlife---not golf or other games) have always been extremely important to me.

But still, I have to get into the mountains occasionally or I will become completely insane. And within this month, I plan on at least two trips to the mountains. I won't wanna come back...

They tell me of an uncloudy day

Oh, finally, an April day without rain. Won't last though. Although Japan is the only country in the whole universe with four clearly distinct seasons, this year April reminds me of home. Rain, rain, and more rain....

Speaking of cloudy, I recently watched a US news program about healthcare outside of the US. Japan was included. The Japan segment opened with the immediately identifiable Japanese music (shamisen?) which one almost never hears in modern Tokyo and a shot of the talking head reporter in front of Shibuya station which looks nothing like most of Japan. A shallow sugar-coated examination of Japan's healthcare system followed. (Japan's system isn't bad, but it is likely to face huge problems as society ages.)

Perhaps there will be more details about this "report" later as sugar-coating myth-makers are a bit irritating. Especially irritating is that this report was supposed to give Americans an idea of how other countries handle healthcare and thus provide some useful information in the struggle to improve the U.S.' healthcare mess. More shallow half-truths are not what is needed. A hint of the possible future of Japan's healthcare system is here.

...it isn't universal at all. Only those who pay get in.

US taxpayers helped fund that report (public TV). Where is the nutty rightwing when you need it?

But it is Sunday and I am trying not to think of such things...

Global Warming and the land of the Kyoto Accords

Most people generally accept the evidence that global warming is occurring and is at least in some part connected with human activity. Japan, of course, would like become a leader (or give the impression of being a leader) in fighting global warming.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little real action on the part of the government in this area. Recently, Japan proposed allowing more time for countries to meet the emissions requirements of the Treaty. Japan claimed that this was because countries such as India and China needed more time. This was quite thoughtful of Japan and coincidentally would have the effect of also allowing Japan more time to meet its goals (which it is well behind.) We do have to remember, that even though the Accords are attributed to Japan, the Japanese government never approved the treaty until about 2001---fours years after it was created and only after Bush decided to withdraw from it.

Recently, news reports about Kyoto Accords and Japan seems to include the idea that "Japan has already reduced emissions so much that any further reductions will be very difficult." Sort of becoming like the old nonsense that appears in news report about crime in Japan that strict gun laws are the reason. With the mass shooting earlier this year, we learned that the strict gun laws weren't really so strict and were arguably less so than those in Washington D. C. or New York City. I suspect it is the same for emissions in Japan.

It is fairly easy for anyone to see the opportunities for further energy conservation and emission reductions here. Right now most apartments/mansions are very poorly insulated. Even hot water pipes are left bare. Go shopping or to a supermarket and you get huge amounts of unnecessary wrapping and bags. We easily fill a 70 liter garbage can every week with this stuff and we have tried cut down on the use of plastic bags as much as possible. We all know that Japan continues to pave and cover the country in concrete for the benefit of politicians, thus destroying trees and forests and heating everything up.

I personally doubt that Kyoto has a chance as it is already out-dated and few countries will take it seriously. They won't because most people like to debate about it, but I wonder if we are really going to be willing to make the changes needed to affect global warming if it requires much personal discomfort.

Anyway, I do understand that some are skeptical about the Kyoto Accords. After all, how could you trust scientists from a country where most people are educated to believe that Japan is the only country in the world with four seasons to have even the most basic understanding of the climate? You have to hope that the scientists are a little bit smarter than citizenry.

Of course it's not just Japan. Nobody has the answers, we just think we do and in the meantime do little.

Brrrr. 52 degrees out

I am beginning to feel like I am in Texas---where I spent a few years some time ago. Back then, after suffering through summers of repeated days of lows of 75 and highs of 95, when October came and the temperature dropped to the 80s, I could convince myself it was cool. By the time temperatures dropped to the mid 70s, you'd see folks breaking out jackets. I never went that far.

Tonight there is a strong wind blowing and you can smell winter in the air. Or winter as it is in Tokyo. Snow is rare here, maybe once or twice a year. Occasionally, a big storm will hit and drop deep, wet snow which pretty much paralyzes the city. I have been very lucky and not been caught in that on a work day.

I read something by a nihonjinron fundamentalist the other day that the seasons were becoming less distinct in Japan due to global warming. That must explain it. Soon, Japan will be like all the other places on earth with no clear distinctions between seasons. You'll be able to go outside in October and wonder if it is autumn or summer or winter. In old Japan this confusion never happened.

Strangely though, when I lived here in the early 90s, I never noticed the especially distinct seasons. Even when I lived in Toyama. It snowed a lot, but it never really got cold. About freezing was as cold as it got. They even kept the sidewalks clear of snow with water. There were nozzles in the sidewalks which they turned on when it snowed and the water kept the snow from sticking. Gotta go up north to hit real cold.

My very first trip to Japan was in 1977. It wasn't really a trip to Japan, we just transferred at Haneda. I don't remember much about it except for the fact that I thought it was unusually warm for November compared to November at home. Global warming has been around longer than we realize, I guess, and it has probably affected Japan in a unique way.

Education

Back in the mid/late-eighties when I was in college and Japan's economy was peaking, there were all kinds of "the sky is falling" stories about how much better educated the Japanese were than nearly anyone else in the history of the universe. We knew this was true because they consistently had high scores on multiple-choice paper tests. We never noticed that Japanese education is heavily weighted towards memorizing huge quantities of "facts" for little other reason than passing tests. Few noticed that a Japanese university education is a joke---little to no studying takes place in a Japanese university for the majority of "students." Foolish non-Japanese professors who come to Japan to "teach" at a university have found out about this tradition of non-study when they were asked by the fine, polite, obedient Japanese, "Why do we have to study? This is a JAPANESE university." But the idea of a superior Japanese education fit in well with the unique Japan myth.

We get to see this superior education every day. We poorly-educated non-Japanese are often shocked by such facts as "Japan is the ONLY country with four seasons." One could wonder how anyone with any basic understanding of seasons, or climate, or the earth could think this, but that would be because one is too dumb and foreign to understand Japan.

I was talking to a guy (an engineer with an American company in Tokyo) the other day and brought up male colorblindness (the tendency of many males to have some degree of colorblindness to some greens/reds. Naturally, with his superior education and strong belief in nihonjinron, as well as the knowledge that all non-Asians have blue eyes and can see in the dark like a cat, informed me that this was because of our blue eyes. Strangely enough, I never said that this was a characteristic of only blue-eyed non-Japanese, but he figured it was. I was foolish enough to believe that Japanese males were members of the human race like everyone else, but I forgot that they were different, special, unique, and much better educated.

Hints of Autumn

Although many Japanese believe that Japan is the only country with four seasons, it can be difficult at times to tell which season it is without checking the calendar. Due to its latitude, the distinctions between seasons are not as clear as they are in more northern areas, despite the fantasies of some nihonjinron fundamentalists.

It's October 5, and a few trees are just beginning to change to autumn colors in the Tokyo area.