This is gonna be really short, because it’s basically just here to remind myself of the various things I did this weekend.  I would write it out in detail, but I just don’t have time, so I’m gonna write an outline so I can look at this post, which will act as a trigger for everything that happened this weekend.  So basically, there’s no reason for you to read this at all.

Well, the spring field trip started on Friday, early, and I did not get much sleep the previous night, so I was pooped.  Our first stop was a tiny town somewhere, its main export being wax food.

This was followed up by lunch, after which we made our way to the quiet, snow coated town of shirakawago, where we spent two hours or so.

We headed to our hotel for the night after that.  Some of us guys went walking around due to my friend’s desire for local beer, and we made it back in time for dinner.  Cue washoku and karaoke/craziness.

Onsen.

The next day was walking around Takayama, markets, historic district.  Long bus ride to Eiheiji.  Zazen, then tour.  Head home.

Sunday, Mt. Hiei.

Ok, that’s it.

I have very little to say these days.  It’s probably because there’s very little to talk about.  Life goes on, things become normal, and I don’t really have time to devote to my blog.  At this point in life, I feel like blogging about your own life has the ability to detach you from it, to a certain extent.  Maybe that’s a good thing; if you need some distance or need to think something out, that can be a great form of expression.  On the other hand, recently I’ve found no time or need to do that.

My classes keep me very busy.  I’m taking a class on the history of Kyoto, a class on Japanese antiquity and its political uses in the modern era (but so far it’s mostly been about Japanese antiquity), and of course, Japanese.  Aside from that I truly have no time for anything else.  Papers and work have kept me busy.

I suppose I could talk about my last break.  Up in Sapporo, at the beginning of February they hold a snow festival, where they have tons of snow and ice sculptures that hundreds of thousands of people, if not over a million, come to Sapporo to see.  The group I was traveling with arrived a day before the festival actually started, but we were able to see pretty much everything, since it needed to be up by the next day anyway.

There were a couple of truly massive snow sculptures, one depicting a giant owl, a giant fox and some other buildings which I’m told are famous attractions in and around Sapporo.  Another was a huge snow sculpture advertising the Lion King musical, which was being put on in Sapporo sometime soon.  There was also another giant snow sculpture that involved dinosaurs, which was pretty awesome.

The first day we were there was spent roaming around and viewing these sculptures, after which we dropped by our hotel and went back out for dinner.  Now, in Japan, crab is a big fucking deal.  You can’t really find crab in a restaurant unless the restaurant is devoted specifically to crab.  You can probably find crab in supermarkets, but for some reason you just don’t really find it anywhere aside from in these restaurants.  But how do you know if a restaurant specializes in crab?  Well, the giant mechanized crab mounted on the outside of the building is usually a good clue.  Not all of them will have these, but about 3 or 4 out of 5 probably do.

The other thing about these restaurants is that they cost the earth, and then some.  The way most of the places we scouted out in Sapporo worked was that they have individual plates you can get, or you can get a course, with a flat rate for each person in your party.  The cheaper prices for these course meals were about 5000 yen per person, so roughly 65 dollars or so.

We decided to go to one of these restaurants because one of our party members liked seafood but could not eat meat, and wanted to treat herself, a sentiment shared by others in our group, so we looked at some of the menus of these restaurants, trying to figure out which one to go to.  It looked to me like one place had a deal where you pay about 10000 yen (120 dollars or so, rough estimate) and you get about 9 different courses of food, one of which included an entire crab.  I figure that 9 courses and a whole crab is probably enough for 5 people, yes?  So we decided on that particular restaurant.

These restaurants are absolutely ridiculous.  The one we went into had about 5 stories to it, each one with a different, very high class decor.  We were seated on the second floor, I believe, and we browsed the menu a little bit more to make sure we knew what we were getting.  We called over the waitress and said what we wanted, to which she responded, “so, 5 people, yes?” which was when we realized that the 9 course meal was for one person.  We quickly backtracked and asked for more time to figure out what the hell we were going to eat which wouldn’t leave us dead broke by the end of the night.  We picked out individual plates (which still cost way too much money), thinking that if it wasn’t enough food, we could just grab something at a convenience store on the way back to the hotel, which we did, because what we got wasn’t enough.  Honestly, it wasn’t that spectacular either, in terms of the food itself.  Then again maybe that was just my dish.

Anyway, the experience was amusing, to say the least, and we returned to our hotel to quickly pass out, since all of us had gotten up around 5:30 that morning.  Ah yes, let us quickly backtrack to the beginning of this journey.  We got to Sapporo by airplane from Kansai International Airport on a 9:30 flight, which took about two hours, but getting to Kansai was a bit of a problem.  Kansai is about 50 km south from Osaka or so, which is about how far south Osaka is from Kyoto.  Since getting from Kyoto to Osaka takes about an hour, I figured it would take about two to two and a half hours or so to get down to Kansai International.

I walked out of my apartment around 6:10 in the morning or so, and caught the train I needed in order to get a limited express down to Osaka on the Keihan, the train company I usually take to get up to Doshisha.  I got on the limited express and started worrying about whether I would be able to get to Kansai in time.  I had seen on the internet that I could catch a train down to Kansai from a subway stop in Osaka, so I had planned to make my way to that stop then switch to the train.  I got off the Keihan around 7:20 or so and switched over to the subway to make my way to the subway stop I wanted, but did not see any transfer indicators about the train line going down to Kansai at that particular stop.  I freaked out a little and found a sign saying that to get to Kansai I had to go to a different subway stop, which wasn’t too far away.

I bought a ticket that would take me all the way to Kansai, and I made my way to the new subway stop I needed to get to.  I got there around 7:55 or so, and frantically followed the markers to get to the line going down to Kansai.  Why so freaked out?  Well, I had no way of knowing how long the train ride was, when the next train was leaving, etc., so naturally I was going as quickly as possible.  I got to the platforms for the Nankai line, the line I needed to take, at around 8, and discovered that an express to the airport left in 10 minutes.  I got on it and hoped it wouldn’t take longer than 40 minutes or so.

I sat on the train as 20 minutes went by, then 30, then 40, exchanging texts with my friends saying I would be there pretty soon.  I finally got to Kansai around 9 and speed walked to the terminals, getting there at about 9:02.  My friends saw me and told me to check my bag, because they stopped checking baggage in about 3 minutes.  I checked my bag successfully and we got on the plane.

Lucky, huh?

Now we get to our second day in Sapporo, which was mostly us looking at more snow sculptures and getting food, getting caught in a snowstorm and finally making our way around 5 to a bus stop which would take us to our next destination: Niseko.  Niseko is famous in Japan for having some of the best snow on which to ski, and that is precisely why we were going there.

Prior to this trip, I have skied once in my life.  I barely remember the experience, aside from that I sucked and I didn’t like it.  I’m almost positive that I only went that one time, and I retained a grand total of nothing from the one or two days that I did it as a child.  So I more or less went into this trip with no experience.

The bus up there took longer than expected, because it was snowing almost the entire time, and here’s something very important about Hokkaido (the northernmost island of Japan): it’s cold, and there is a lot of snow.  More snow than I have ever seen in my life.  And it’s awesome.  On the way up to Niseko we passed by a couple of smaller ski slopes, until we finally passed a sign telling us we were heading into Niseko.  We got off the bus at a welcome center right next to a couple ski lifts, some of which were still running at 8:15.  Night skiing.  Huh.

Our hotel was actually rather cheap considering it was in a ski resort town, at about 60 dollars a night, but it left some things to be desired.  Really the only issue I had with it was that the showers were…kinda gross, but that was actually a non-issue, for reasons that will be explained later.

The first night consisted of us eating at the hotel’s restaurant, which was good but a bit pricey, after which we decided that we would be cooking our own food for the rest of the trip to save money.  We went to sleep on the early side since we needed to get up first thing in the morning to rent our gear.

Cut to the next morning.  We were all up by about 8 or so to rent our stuff so we could start skiing.  It took us about an hour to get everything rented, and 150 dollars later, we had our gear for the next 3 days (I love my winter jacket, because it’s a great ski jacket).  Two of the more experienced skiers in our group went on ahead, while the rest of us, three in total, finished getting our stuff together and getting changed and etc.

Two of our group of three, me and a friend of mine, were beginners, and the other, our mutual friend, had been skiing since childhood, so she had agreed to help us get our legs underneath us.  We hiked up the main street in our ski boots to the lifts, which was much more of a workout than it sounds; ski boots hurt when you’re not actually skiing, we got our lift tickets, and started to learn how to ski.

We put on our skis so we could start getting used to them, and so we could try to learn how to walk/slide around in them.  After a minute or so of that, we started to head to a trail map so we could figure out a good place to start.  We eventually realized that to get to the easiest trail on the mountain, we had to go down a hill, and what appeared to be a rather steep one, at that.

I was absolutely terrified by the fact that it was so easy to slide over the snow in my skis, and the fact that there was what, in my mind, appeared to be a gigantic hill I had to go down to start out with.  Now, realistically the hill was 50 meters high, with a 20 degree incline, maybe a little more.  Basically, it’s not really that bad; I’d say that the incline is about standard for beginners, and compared to real slopes, the distance is tiny.  But, again, this was my first time, and I did not know how to turn…or brake, and I barely knew how to stay upright.

But I’d be damned if I was gonna walk down that hill.

I headed down the hill first while my other friend who had never skied before was more or less having a panic attack about the hill and my more experienced friend was helping her calm down.  Considering that I wiped out 2/3 of the way down the hill as opposed to 1/3 of the way down, I did pretty well for my first time.  I think my skis had snapped off (skis have some kind of a pressure release threshold, so if too much pressure is put on the thing holding your foot in place, it will naturally snap open so the ski doesn’t get damaged), so gathered them up and waited while my two friends edged their way down the hill.  they met up with me and we very slowly made our way to the slope, which was very mild, and started learning from the beginning.

It mostly consisted of us skiing across the slope on what barely constituted an incline so we could get the feel for skiing, falling a lot of the time.  I started speeding up my progress a bit and I realized that my two friends were a bit behind me, since my fellow newbie was taking it very slowly due to her paralyzing fear.  I decided I did not want to wait for them, so I called them on my phone and told them I was going ahead and would meet up with them on my way down the slope.

I sailed down to the bottom, probably crashing a few more times, and got to the lift that would take me back up to the top of the slope.  I used my lift ticket and got on, and was shortly very fearful again.  I could barely ski, I still didn’t really know how to turn, I barely knew how to brake, and I was about to get dropped off somewhere where I might have to start skiing immediately, or there might be a huge hill, and what if I etc etc.  I got to the top of the lift and was glad that I didn’t have to immediately start my way back down, but I stood at the top of the lift for a few minutes, looking down at the enormous hill I had to ski down.  Oh it wouldn’t have been so bad; I could have skied down and to the left and just sailed to a stop back at the top of the hill I had gone down at first, but I had to go the right, which looked so steep I could only barely see over the ridge.

I started skiing down again, fighting against my fears, and fell down a few more times before I finally learned how to steer a bit, and brake a bit.  I kept going down the slope, braking or falling to prevent myself from going too fast, until I caught up with my two friends, who hadn’t yet made it down to the bottom for the first time.  My friend was still quite terrified, and I went on ahead to the bottom, falling a couple more times, and waited for my friends there.  When they made it down to the bottom, we got on the lift, went back up, and somehow made it to the top of the first hill we ever went down.  We stopped there for lunch.

After lunch, my two more experienced friends went off together to the more difficult slopes, and my other newbie friend took the afternoon off.  That left me and my other friend to go skiing on our own.  So what did we do on the afternoon of my first day of skiing?  We went up a quad lift (so named because it carries four people) to the top of a particularly long beginner run down the mountain.  It didn’t go from the top of the mountain, more like 1/2 to 2/3 of the way up it.  Even so, it was a long way up, and I was terrified.  I had been skiing for what, 2 or three hours total?  I kind of knew how to brake, kind of knew how to turn, and I was gonna go down the mountain?  Well, apparently.

We got to the top of the quad lift and made our way over to where the beginner run started.  Now what we went down wasn’t one long beginner run, it was more like a collection of two or three that were strung together at intersections of routes.  The route started out with the steepest slope I had seen yet, a 25 degree incline or so, then leveled out on a small plateau, where you could get on a lift, or go down an intermediate run on the right or a beginner run on the left.  From the plateau, came another slope, which wasn’t quite as steep, but dropped off sharply to the left, i.e. expert run, i.e. it looked more or less like a cliff, i.e. terrifying, which met up with the intermediate path and continued down to another drop off to the left, another expert run.  To the right of this second expert run came another steep slope which spread out a bit as it met up with the intermediate run again, this time with an expert run to the left, again, and the beginner run continuing to the right.  However, at this particular fork in the runs was the steepest slope yet, probably a 35 degree slope, maybe a bit less.  After that the run narrowed a bit and alternated between steeper and shallower inclines before reaching another fork.  Going straight would put you on a huge hill with an incline of 35 degrees or so all the way to the bottom, while going right would put you on a catwalk, which led to the beginner path to the bottom and to the quad lift which we originally boarded.

All in all, that trail is about 2 km or more to the bottom, which isn’t much when you’re zooming down the mountain on skis; it can take about 10 minutes if you don’t really stop, probably less depending on how easily you want to break your neck.  It took us an hour and a half to get down that slope for two reasons: 1) I was, rightfully, scared a couple of times, and apprehensive the rest of the time. 2) I feel down over a dozen times, maybe over two dozen times.  I think now is a good time to explain something: falling down when you’re skiing is naturally frustrating, but it can also be a lot of fun.  Falling down when you’re skiing can lead to discomfort, wet underclothes, and wondering how you didn’t just twist your ankle (I wondered that at least once), but it rarely hurts, because you’re falling onto snow, which is wonderfully soft.  Believe, I fell more times than I cared to count that first day, and I was absolutely fine at the end of it.  Oh, sure, I was sore, but it was fun, until it got frustrating.  Anyway, falling is not that big a deal.

After we finished that run, I can’t remember what happened.  I either went down the run we had been on in the morning, or we both went back to the hotel.  Either way, I was exhausted and ridiculously sweaty (I was wearing a good six layers or so, so I was not in the least bit cold) by the end of the day.  We crashed in the girls’ room (our party consisted of two boys and three girls, and we had two rooms) for a little bit, until the other guy in the party went down to the kitchen in the hotel to start making dinner (for dinner we went shopping in convenience stores for basic supplies and made dinner from those things we bought; significantly cheaper than eating out).  About an hour later we were eating spaghetti with a light sauce with tuna and some peppers.  Not great, but honestly, we could have done worse, and it was way cheaper than anything else we were gonna find.

After dinner we walked up to one of the onsen in the area, lounged for a good hour or so, went back to the hotel, played cards for a bit, and passed out early.

The next day we split off into similar groups as before; my more experienced friend stuck with my other newbie friend, the other two experts went off on their own, and I stuck on the same slope as former and did my own thing.  The previous day, the steeper slopes had taught me that inverting your skis does not slow you down enough, and my friend had been telling me to make sharper turns in order to maintain a slower pace.  I had not been able to really get the hang of it, so that’s what I practiced that morning on my own.

After lunch, I was with my other newbie friend, helping her along while the friend who had been helping her went off to do some more exciting skiing, for which I can’t blame her.  I helped out my friend for a run or two, then she said she was gonna call it a day.  At this point I was a bit conflicted as to what to do: my friend had left, so I was on my own.  I did not know if I was ready to do the run I had done yesterday solo, but the beginner run I had been doing all morning was already too easy.  I mustered my courage and got on the quad lift to do it again, on my own.

I’d like to change subjects for a moment and talk about Australians.  On the quad lift that second day, I talked to two different Australians who had come up to Niseko to go skiing.  This is just a side-effect of the fact that there were more foreigners in Niseko than there were Japanese people.  The funny thing about Niseko is that it literally did not feel like I was in Japan, because almost everyone there spoke English.  There were a couple times when I used my Japanese, but almost every skier there was Australian or from a European country and able to speak English.  It was the strangest thing, but rather nice.

After talking to the Australian on my way up, we were deposited on the mountain, and I began to make my way down.  I did fall a few times, but nowhere near as many times as I had the day before, and my skis didn’t snap off once.  The reason for my improvement was that I had learned how to make sharper turns that morning, and sharper turns do wonders for slowing yow down.  I was so proud of myself and was having so much fun that I went up the quad lift two more times that day.  All in all I fell down a few times and my skis snapped off once or twice, but I had a tremendous amount of fun, and was extremely proud of myself.  I had run into one of my friends on the mountain, and he watched me ski and gave me some tips for how to improve.

After my third run down, I went back to the hotel the relax for a bit before dinner.  On that day, one of my other friends, one of the two who had gone off by themselves, had switched her ski boots because her first ones had been hurting too much, and she had sacrificed the afternoon to switch her boots, so she wanted to go night skiing, to make up for the lost afternoon.  No one else really wanted to go with her, so what was I to do?

I went with her.

We hiked up the hill for the second time that day and got on the quad lift to make our way up.  We got off and started skiing down, only to stop after the first hill to get on another lift that took us as far up as the lifts went, i.e. close to the top of the mountain, i.e. intermediate runs.  we got off the lift and I looked out on what must have been a 40 degree incline…which I subsequently skied down.

Night skiing may sound dangerous, but it’s actually about as safe/dangerous as regular skiing.  Huge floodlights are positioned on the mountain so that you can see where you’re going, and while some areas of the slope aren’t as well lit up as others, you’re not really in danger of falling off a cliff or anything.

I fell a few times, and I’m pretty sure I broke my thumb because it still hurts a little bit, and it’s been about two and a half weeks since it happened, but it didn’t hurt so much that I couldn’t keep skiing, because I did precisely that.  I had to stop frequently because skiing is quite taxing on your legs, and I had been skiing all day by that point, and my friend went on ahead of me.  I made my way down the mountain, stopping only when I thought my legs were about to give out on me, and after the initial intermediate course, got back on to the beginner course I had done in the afternoon.  The only change I made was going down the intermediate run that led back to the quad lift.  At that point it was about 8:30, when the lifts closed, so I went back to the hotel.

My friend later apologized for going on ahead, but I didn’t really mind.  Once she had gotten back, we all went to the onsen quickly, then passed out once we got back to the hotel from exhaustion.  That night before going to bed, I could think about nothing but skiing, and found myself moving the muscles in my legs ever so slightly along with the path I was imagining in my head.  I consciously stopped myself from doing that at least three times before I finally passed out…to dreams of skiing.

The next day, the third day, was the least full day we had in Niseko, and I was determined to make the most of it.  I agreed to help my newbie friend along in the morning so my other friend could go have fun, and I did my best to help my friend along.  She had progressed a great deal, truth be told; she could more or less turn, she knew how to brake by inverting her skis, but she was just too terrified to have fun.  I helped her work on things I thought she needed to work on, and we went on several runs before our friend came to check on how we were doing.  We continued for a while until my friend decided to call it a day, and I had some more time to myself before lunch.  I went up the quad lift again and went down the beginner’s run a time or two, without falling once, before breaking for lunch.

When all of us were eating lunch, we decided to go up on the mountain and take a picture of all of us to commemorate our time there.  My newbie friend was averse to this idea since she did not want to ski down the mountain, but we assured her that there was a gondola that she could ride down so she didn’t have to ski.  the two experienced skiers went up ahead of us, and the three of us went on the quad lift to meet the other two at the gondola entrance.

This required going down the first hill off the quad lift, which if you’ll remember, was terrifying the first time I saw it.  Also, the weather that third day was worse than it had been the previous two days, and it was hella windy up on the mountain.  My friend was terrified.  We tried to help her down, but she was too scared to go down on her own, so my experience friend let her latch on, and the two of them skied down the hill together.  I followed for a little, then raced on ahead to the gondola entrance.  We waited for a while until we were joined by our other friends, and we got together and took a group picture.  By this time a mild snowstorm had encompassed that part of the mountain, so after taking the picture, my newbie friend went down the mountain on the gondola, and the four of us went to a different part of the mountain that I had not yet been to.

We started out on an intermediate slope, which I made it down slowly, but without falling, then we met up again at a crossroads.  My two experienced friends went on an intermediate run, while me and my other friend went on a beginner run that was terribly boring most of the time, except for two rather steep slopes.

The four of us met at the bottom of the the mountain, and went up a lift.  We were going to go up another lift and take an intermediate run back down, but the weather had continued to get worse, and we were forced to make our way back over to the main part of the mountain.  To do so we had to go down a beginner run, which was thoroughly boring, and take the gondola back up the mountain.  After taking the gondola, we started to ski down…in a snowstorm.  I think everyone has a different idea of what a snowstorm is like, so let me clarify: it was windy, with lots of snow coming down, and my visibility was about 100-150 meters around me.  It was still not the safest situation, and I had my friend stay close to me just in case something happened, but we made it down the mountain fine.  We were so fine, that we went up and did it again, although by the time we were halfway down our second run the snowstorm had more or less blown over.

That was the last of our skiing in Niseko.  That night we hung out with a Finnish guy we had met in the hotel, lounged in the onsen, talked with some Japanese guys, and went to sleep contented (I had a repeat of last night with involuntary muscle movements and dreams of skiing).  The next day we awoke, ate a bit, and got ready to leave Niseko.

So, to recap, in three days I:

1) Learned how to ski

2) Went night skiing down intermediate level runs

3) Skied down the mountain in a snowstorm

I felt awesome.  Still do.

Ok guys, here’s the deal.

I am a very lazy person, or at least, most of the time I am, and so much stuff has happened in the past two months that I haven’t blogged about, that it would take me a long time to write a lot of it down.

So I’m not going to.

Basically there’s about three things you need to know:

1) I went on a two week winter vacation around Western Honshu which was awesome.

2) I switched host families due to a death in their family, and some weird things popped up which I wrote about earlier.  I’m doing fine and my new host family is awesome.

3) I just went on a trip up to Sapporo for the Yuki Matsuri (snow festival) for two days which was cool, then I went skiing for three days up in a place called Niseko.

I might end up blogging about Niseko since it was awesome and it’s relatively fresh in my mind.  Basically, if you want to know about any of those adventures, just ask me, and I’ll be happy to tell you about them to the best of my ability, because I had a lot of fun on my vacations, and it’s not that I don’t want to tell those stories, I’m just too lazy and I have a lot of work this semester.

I probably won’t be updating that often, if at all, because life is pretty normal now.  I have a life here and I’m thoroughly situated, so there isn’t much for me to write about.  Just remember that if you want to hear about my shenanigans over here, ask me in person, or on IM, and anything you’re curious about, I’ll talk with you about, at length.  Ok, I still have homework to do, so I will say good night here.

-Shimon

What with all the craziness I never got around to writing about my winter break, which deserves addressing since it was pretty sweet.

Around the end of my fall break, some of us realized that winter break was about a month off, and that if we wanted to do stuff, we should probably start planning before finals rolled around and hotels started getting booked and stuff.  At this point, two of the participants of our Tokyo trip knew that their boyfriends were coming to visit and they’d be *ahem* preoccupied with them so they wouldn’t be going on any trips with the rest of us.  By that point it was four of us, and one of my other friends states that she can’t really be out and about for more than a few days, and that a two week long trip, which is what we kind of wanted to do, wouldn’t work for her.  At that point things looked grim because it was three of us and we couldn’t decide on what to do.

One of my friends had the idea to go around Kyuushu, which neither I nor my other friend reacted too strongly too, and we all had different ideas about how long we wanted the trip to be.  Things were about to fall apart when my other friend said she wanted to go to Sendai, which is in Northern Honshu, and my friend and I discussed if there was anything we wanted to do, when she suggested going around Western Honshu.  For some reason this really appealed to me, because the format of the trip would be to make a circuit around Western Honshu and just check out whatever seemed interesting to us.

Thus, I looked up the section on Western Honshu and basically skimmed it, looking at the highlights of various areas and deciding what would be cool to go see.  I ended up with a list of things that could keep us occupied for three weeks or so if we had wanted to take our time, but we only had two weeks to work with, and a limited budget, so we drew up a schedule which, once finalized, had us set to go on a 12 day trip around Western Honshu.

One thing I was worried about was our hotel situation.  I figured that since it was around the holidays, there might be a lot of people staying in some of the places we were planning on going to, but we got reservations in a bunch of youth hostels, and ultimately we got what were supposed to be good, cheap accommodations, according to my guidebook.

Finals ended on the 22nd of December, and my friend and I set out on our trip the next morning.  I made my way to Shijo, then took the Hankyuu line down to Katsura, where my friend usually gets on the train to go up to Imadegawa.  She got on the train I was on and we met up inside, then settled down while the train headed to our first destination: Kobe.

As foreigners, we naturally don’t know much about any given country aside from our own unless we’ve taken the time to inform ourselves.  One of those things that people who know bullocks about Japan know about Japan is that there’s a thing called Kobe beef which is really expensive and comes from Japan.  However, that’s not all that’s in Kobe.  Our first stop was at the youth hostel where we would be staying for one night.  Japan has an abundance of youth hostels, so there’s bound to be at least one no matter where you’re going, unless you’re going to the middle of nowhere.

Our hostel in Kobe was actually a 20 minute train ride away from downtown Kobe, which, in a condensed place like Japan, is actually kinda far.  We were hoping to drop off our bags and return later to check in, but they let us check in before the appointed time, and we got ourselves situated.  We were in a small room with a bunk bed setup and an air conditioning unit.  We left our things there and headed out to do things in Kobe.

I previously mentioned that I looked up cool stuff to do in various places, but we had a way of doing things on this trip.  On our Tokyo trip, we more or less had every moment of every day planned out, which let us do a bunch of stuff, but it was exhausting and honestly made some things a bit less fun.  So what we decided to do this time was compile a list of things we would want to do, maybe enough to occupy us for the amount of time we would be spending there, but not commit ourselves to doing anything.  We would get somewhere, decided what we wanted to do, and do it.  If we wanted to do one thing then go back to our room and watch a movie, we’d do that.  The idea was to give ourselves the chance to explore when we wanted to, or to rest when we needed to.

In Kobe we didn’t have much on the list of things to do (one of them was simply, “BEEF,” which we never got around to doing).  There’s supposedly a really cool looking Fashion Museum…and that’s about it.  Aside from that there might be a couple more museums, beef, and temples and stuff.  We didn’t have much time there anyway, so we decided to try and go up on a ropeway to the top of a nearby mountain and check out the scenery.  We took the subway to the stop near the ropeway, and tried to navigate our way over to it, only to find out that it was closed for renovations.

With that plan thoroughly foiled, we moved on to our next plan, which was checking out a church and a temple, both of which were thoroughly unremarkable.  By that time it was getting dark, so we decided to move on to our next big plan in Kobe, which was going up the Port Tower, a tower that stands at the waterfront of Kobe.  We approached it from downtown and got a good look at it as we did.  The Tower isn’t particularly huge, I mean it’s tall, but it doesn’t overshadow everything around it.  It has a lot of lights on it though, with practically every crossbeam covered in lights.

Before we went up the tower we noticed something of a one man circus show going on close by.  We stopped on a raised walkway and observed this one man circus act, not because it was particularly astounding, but because the man who was doing it had the most atrocious accent I’ve ever heard.  If you’ve ever seen anime with foreigners in it, you’ll be familiar with this kind of accent, but for those who don’t watch anime, the voice actors for the foreigners are always Japanese, but in order to convey that these people are actually foreigners (and to reinforce the stereotype of the stupid foreigners) they speak in a very specific accent where their intonation is practically the opposite of what it should be.  That was what this guy sounded like.

Just like how I can’t sit through comedy that involves people being horrible at music because it’s so uncomfortable for me to listen to, this accent was horrible to the point where I was cringing at how horrifically wrong this guy’s intonation was.  It was so bad, that he was probably doing it on purpose in order to attract more attention and get more money, because his Japanese, aside from the accent, was actually pretty good.  His grammar was good, there were some parts that I couldn’t understand because he used vocab and grammar that I don’t know yet, and he even used some keigo, which is the most polite form of speech you can use.  Hell, he might not have even been a foreigner, we were too far away to see his face.

Anyway, after he was done, we went up the tower to admire the view, which was kinda meh, to be honest, but it was still pretty fun.  The viewing floor was neatly lit with dim, darker colored lights, and it set a nice mood for viewing the city at night.  The port was nice to look at as there was a kind of shopping mall that was interestingly lit, and there was even a pirate ship lit up with green lights that was coming back in to dock.

After the tower we got dinner at a cafe, went back to our room and watched a movie.  I will end this post here, since it is late and I have much more to write about.

Shimon

So, my host mother’s father died last night.  This means that I am switching host families, and thus my life as of today involves packing, moving, living out of my suitcase for a little while, and moving again and unpacking.  Then comes integration with an entirely new family.  So, basically, I will not be blogging that much in the foreseeable future.  I have time right now because I’ve just got to pack today (no way I’m doing homework) and I never take long to pack.

Last night I got back from hanging out with some friends a little late, and I found my host mother in the living room, told her I was back and asked if I could take a bath, since it looked like someone was in there and I thought maybe it would still be on.  She said that someone was already in there, then she asked me to sit down.

I sat down and she told me her father had died, so I would be changing host families.  I said that I didn’t know how to say this in Japanese, so in English (which she has been studying) I said that I was very sorry for her loss.  I figured it was important to offer my condolences, and since I didn’t know how to in Japanese, I figured I’d do it in English so she could at least receive the sentiment.

What happened then I honestly can’t explain the reasons behind, nor can I comprehend them.  At that point she began saying how things haven’t really been great in that she didn’t think I had been a good match for their family, and she indicated that she’s thought this for the better part of 3 months.  I began to say that there had been various miscommunications between us, which she kind of responded to by saying she wasn’t sure if they had been miscommunications, which threw me.  I kept going by saying I had screwed up, which I have, and that I was sorry for those times, and I thanked her for her hopsitality, then I went upstairs and sat in a daze, which continued through my shower and for a little while after.

Had things really been as bad as I worried they had been?  Maybe not bad, but they just weren’t working.  I can accept that, but what really bugged me, and what still does, is that I wasn’t really wanted in this (I say this because I’m still here, I move to a Doshisha dormitory tomorrow morning) house for 3 months.  I suppose that’s just speculation since I don’t know and can’t guess at my host family’s true feelings, but it was made clear that my host mother had thought I should be switched to a different family for a while now.

Another thing that really bothers me is when my host mother said, “I don’t know if it was miscommunication…”  This ties into something that the homestay coordinator brought up with me; due to these times when we miscommunicated or when I failed to clarify something, my host family saw that as me being selfish or having my own way.  I understand this, because we both had different impressions of the given situation: I would think things were fine, or I wouldn’t really understand, and the results of that failure to communicate (Cool Hand Luke wouldn’t fly well in Japan, I think) would lead to them seeing me as selfish.  So what bugs me is that even though the homestay coordinator said it was probably miscommunication, and I said that as well, it was indicated that my host mother still thought it was just me being selfish.  I suppose there’s nothing to be done about that, as actions speak louder than words, and I never got a chance to prove their impressions wrong.

But here’s a final thing that bothers me: I feel bad for saying this, but it seems like my host family was never that interested in me.  At first my host mother asked me questions and stuff, and I didn’t do a great job of continuing a conversation because my Japanese was bad, I was nervous, etc.  However, instead of trying some more or encouraging me to speak, at this point, I feel like she would give up, and just leave me be.  My siblings never demonstrated any interest in me, leaving it to me to start talking with them (which I never did my host brother, whoops), although recently I feel like I’d gotten better at talking to my host father.

I feel like they didn’t try hard to get to know me, but in turn, I didn’t try my hardest to get to know them, or to tell them about myself.  We both had our own ways of getting to know people, or ways of interacting with others, and those just never synced up.  I need someone to display interest in me in order to really start talking, because if they don’t, I get the impression that they’re not interested at all, and don’t want to hear anything about me.  I don’t really know what feels natural for them, but they probably have their own way of interacting and bonding with people, which I didn’t play to.

Returning to the conversation last night, one thing that I truly can’t understand, at all, is why she brought these things up.  Why couldn’t she have just left it at “my father died and you’re switching host families.”?  I mean, she did say that if there had been more time maybe we could have gotten along better, but other than that she mostly talked about her doubts so far.  I don’t think she was trying to tell me that I was a bad host student or anything like that, but if she had doubts, then why couldn’t she just keep them to herself?  I was leaving anyway.  I don’t know, maybe the concept of leaving those things unsaid just isn’t part of a Japanese person’s psyche.  She probably couldn’t have predicted my reaction or how I would react, in fact she probably didn’t think that what she was saying would hurt me in any way (which it kinda did).  Despite all of this, I still have no idea why she said it.  She started talking about it right after I offered my condolences, so maybe she mistook what I said in English for something else?  I don’t know.

At this point I need some time without having to worry about a host family, and it looks like I’ll get at least a little bit of time like that in a Doshisha dorm, which is good.  I still prefer independence to fitting into someone else’s schedule.  But then I’ve got to worry about a whole new host family.  With all honesty, right now I don’t want to try this again.  I don’t know what circumstances I need in order to have a successful host family experience, I don’t know what situation would lead to me getting along with my host family.  Maybe an old couple with no children who like video games.  I don’t know.  I don’t want to think about that, and I don’t want to have to worry about it for once.  Maybe I’ll feel differently after some time in a dorm, once I’ve moved past this experience.

I wouldn’t say this experience was horrible, but it wasn’t great.  I mean, they were nice, the food was good, and I didn’t have a curfew, but as I said, they never seemed interested, or after the first month, never tried to get to know me.  I’ve been tempted to think poorly of them, because there was that month where for some reason I felt unwelcome at home, but I can’t really hold a grudge against them.  We’re different people, and we live and act differently, and it didn’t work out.  I’m definitely more suited to independence, which I don’t think fits well with most host families, so I’ve been wondering if that’s something I should or could change, but for now I’m honestly a bit excited at the prospect of living by myself in Japan, if only for a few days.  Sure, I won’t have a kitchen, or a living area or anything, probably just a tiny room with space for a bed and a desk, but right now that sounds pretty good to me.

Hey all.  I haven’t updated for a good 3 weeks or so, maybe more, and a lot has happened in those weeks, mostly good, I’m happy to report, so here’s what’s going to happen.  Over the next few days I’m going to write a bunch of posts to fill y’all in on what’s been going on here.  I figure if I put it into a single post, it would be the length of a short story, and it wouldn’t be very cohesive, so it would be a huge pain in the ass to read, hence multiple posts seems to be the way to go.

I left you guys at “things aren’t going well with my host family.”  I can’t remember if I gave you any more info than that, so I’ll give you a good outline of what was going on and what’s happened since.  For about a month or maybe a little more I felt apprehensive around my host family for several reasons.  I didn’t know if I should be spending more time with them, if I was being polite enough, when I should take a bath, and other things like that, and they added up and felt something like a weight on my conscience.  This pressure built up and culminated in a small breakdown around finals time.

I was extremely busy during finals time, with barely a free minute, so the stress of everything else in addition to the stress at home made me breakdown a little.  I just kind of curled up and silently broke down, then decided that I didn’t deserve that, that I am a good person, and I just need to try a little harder, and if they can’t see that, then bullocks to them.  With that decided I had renewed courage and did my best to talk with my host family.

The day after the breakdown I talked with the homestay coordinator, who had visited my homestay a few days ago, and we talked about what was going on.  It turns out that various instances of miscommunication have been adding up and been making my family feel a little helpless.  The homestay coordinator made it clear that things weren’t terrible, but something should be done otherwise it would turn into a bad situation.  One of the main things was the time I was taking a bath.  This doesn’t sound like much, but there’s only one bath, and okaasan can’t clean up or do the laundry, whatever it is she needs to do, until everyone has taken a bath, and I was taking a bath later than she would have liked.  They had asked me to take a bath earlier, so I had switched it to after dinner, but that wasn’t early enough, and they thought I had just ignored their request.  Hence, miscommunication.

There were a couple other instances of a similar nature, with the bath problem being the biggest.  So I talked with okaasan and changed my bath time to before dinner, which seems to have solved the problem.  As for other instances of miscommunication, I just need to ask more questions if I’m confused, and I think just trying to talk with them more will help.  So as things stand I feel better because I’m trying, and I think they see that in the case of the bath, and I’ll just keep trying to talk and make sure to ask when I don’t understand.

I already made this clear earlier, but finals sucked.  I had a paper to write, a ten minute presentation on the paper, a test, and a movie project for Japanese to edit, so every free minute I had was spent editing the movie, since that’s the kind of thing you can do in bits and pieces, plus we had a bunch of different things we had to put in that I needed to wait on, like voiceovers, etc.  I actually enjoyed editing that movie though, because I got to make the credits and put in my own music and stuff.

That’s about all that happened before my trip, and I’m about to go eat dinner, so I’ll get to my trip in my next post.

Shimon

I’ve been feeling like shit today.  It’s because of my host family.  This past week I barely saw or talked to my host family because I was ridiculously busy, and this weekend I’ve mostly been out.  I got a mail from my imouto earlier tonight saying something like it’s ok if I eat out, but to make sure to tell them properly.  The mail felt kinda passive aggressive and it just kind of set off some worries I’ve been having.

For a few weeks I’ve been really apprehensive around my host family because I have no idea where I stand with them.  I’ve been trying to converse with them, and I think I’ve had more success than I did initially, because I’ve managed to have a couple conversations and I talk with my okaasan at least once during dinner, so I think I get in some conversation.  Despite this fact I feel like my host family isn’t making a big effort to get to know me better, because I’ve yet to talk to my oniisan, I usually have to initiate conversation with my imouto, and I don’t see my otousan that much, so I don’t get the chance to talk to him much.  I don’t know how to feel, but I’m naturally leaning toward the fear that they either don’t care or they don’t like me.

My logic is telling me that this probably isn’t the case, because I heard from the homestay coordinator that my okaasan’s father is sick, apparently, and she’s been under a bunch of stress.  It’s hard to gauge how that’s affecting her and my interactions with the family at large, but it’s probably contributing to the somewhat apprehensive atmosphere that I’ve been feeling.  The homestay coordinator recently visited my host parents, so I’m gonna talk with her soon and tell her some of my worries and see how the visit went and if my host family said anything.

This whole situation has made me wonder about my social skills.  I was really socially awkward for a long time, probably until late high school, and even leading into college.  I didn’t know how to approach people or to talk to them, probably because I was afraid of criticism or belittlement, and I feel like my old social awkwardness and fear are cropping up again, but only in Japanese.  I am able to talk to other native speakers, and even Japanese people speaking English, with relative ease, but all my old reservations and fears come back when speaking in Japanese.  It’s a weird situation.

I think some of my preconceptions about Japanese society definitely play into my social awkwardness when speaking Japanese, but there are many similarities to my previous social problems in English speaking society, so it’s got me wondering.  Makes me wonder if there’s actually something wrong with me, or if I just majorly suck at socializing.

While I think I’ll have more to say about Wikileaks in the future, for now let’s get back to the purpose of this blog, which is my time here in Japan.

I guess I don’t have much to say today, I’ve just forgotten to catalog some of the stuff I’ve done recently.  For instance, around the end of Novermber, the most beautiful temples in Kyoto will light up their grounds at night, and some of them are spectacular.  I only went to two, but they were amazingly beautiful.  I got some of the best pictures I’ve taken in Japan so far.  It’s mostly a mixture of parts of the temple/shrine being lit up alongside the trees and the fall foliage.  It’s hard to describe, because you really have to see it, but it’s truly amazing.  I went to two of these light-ups, one at Kiyomizudera, which had some amazing foliage, and the other was Kodaiji, which has a very beautiful garden, and a bamboo forest which looked amazing at night.

Then, yesterday I went to Kobe, about an hour and a half ride by train if you only take express trains, for the luminarie, or at least that’s what they call it.  I must say it was worth it.  There were a lot of people there, but Kobe is a big enough city that it was manageable, unlike the friggin’ himatsuri.  We got out of the station and started walking the direction everyone else was and eventually say the gigantic line which wound through the streets of Kobe, taking up two or three lanes.  We got in the line and walked for a while, not really seeing anything, then we turned a corner and saw a giant corridor of lit up arches in the street ahead of us.  The arches continued for about two blocks, and the lead out into a courtyard, or square of sorts, where a giant…castle kind of thing stood.  It was constructed out of larger arches and formed a octagon and was amazing.  There was so much light you could see everything in the square pretty clearly.  Best of all were all the stalls selling food.

If you’ve ever watched anime that has matsuri in it, you know that there are those stalls with games and stalls selling food like takoyaki and yakisoba and stuff.  There were a ton of those stalls selling those things, as well as skewers of beef, gigantic hot dogs, and desserty things, like fruit with candy coating (so good), and tiny little cake things called baby castellas, or something like that, I’m not sure.  It was a lot of fun, and it kind of made up for the fact that all the matsuri I’ve been to have been lacking those stalls.

Other than that, things are ok.  The Wikileaks thing kind of grabbed my attention and had me in a bad mood, until my facebook link to the article turned into something of a forum, where I got to talk about it with some friends.  I think that let me talk with someone and just debate it out.  Things are up and down with my host family.  I talk to them with some frequency, and I figure as long as I keep trying things will turn out alright.  So yeah, that’s more or less where I stand for now.

~Shimon

So, this is unrelated to Japan, but I feel like writing a little about it since it’s been on my mind, and seems to be occupying most of my thoughts.  How do we make decisions about events?  When I was little, I would more or less go with what my parents said and thought was right and wrong, because they were my parents.  They knew what they were talking about, right?  Well, as we grow up we argue with our parents, usually about insignificant things, and we lose our trust in their judgment, either fully or to a small extent.  What do we do then?  We grow up and we develop our own morals and ways of thinking which guide our actions. 

Now we get to something like this Wikileaks event.  In regards to all things political, I feel like some people simply take sides because they trust people with similar morals and viewpoints as theirs to make decisions as they would make them, and to do the right thing.  I can hardly blame people for thinking this way, because it makes sense, but as has been demonstrated time and time again in American politics, our elected representatives have a tendency of making decisions which don’t protect our liberties or best interests.  A lot of them are also phenomenally reprehensible for various reasons.  Moving on.  Segregation and prohibition are good examples of failures to protect the liberties of American citizens.  The failure to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is another good example.  The Patriot Act is another excellent example, and, while not a piece of legislation, many politicians vehemently advised against the building of the Islamic Community Center several blocks away from Ground Zero, which is an attempt to suppress freedom of religion.

Some Facts (and a couple of opinions)

Having established some examples of our elected representatives being, quite frankly, dumbasses, we come to the Wikileaks event.  What is the Wikileaks event, you ask?  Well, to start off, as I understand, Wikileaks is a place where people can go with classified documents to leak them to reveal illegal or immoral doings by people in positions of power.  That may not be an adequate description of the site’s purpose, but the site itself protects the identity of the supplier of documents and is an effective way to expose wrongdoing.  Personally I think that Wikileaks is an important site, because it’s a way of exposing wrongdoings by people in positions of power while protecting whistleblowers.  It’s a great way of protecting people’s liberties around the world and bringing attention to violations of those liberties around the world.  You know, transparency, all that good stuff.

Well, about a week or two ago, Wikileaks began releasing classified U.S. diplomatic cables exposing various embarrassing things for the U.S. government.  As a result of these cables being released, Wikileaks and Julian Assange, the editor in chief of Wikileaks came under fire from governments around the world, with the heaviest criticism coming from the United States government.  That’s a very short summary, to whet your appetite, so let’s dive into what’s causing this controversy: the cables.

The cables that have been released so far (1000 or so have been released out of 250,000 total cables) show U.S. diplomats making condemning comments about various countries, and other communiques which shed light on our interactions with other countries.  The most damning evidence comes from cables which expose the violation of the privacy of Representatives of the United Nations, and moving Guantanamo Bay prisoners to prisons in different countries, often by bribing the countries in question, instead of releasing the prisoners.  There are a number of other revelations in the cables, but I believe these two to be the most significant for the matter at hand.  So, we have our government violating several principles that our nation was founded on.  Great.

Let’s move on to the effects that these cables have had on the U.S.  Obviously, our diplomatic relations with other countries have suffered as a result of this, but the estimate is that those relations can be rebuilt.  There have been reports that these cables have not caused anyone to be hurt, killed, or even relocated.  Additionally, perhaps the most damning release for Mr. Assange was the release of a cable that listed places vital to U.S. national security.  The exact locations and specifics of these places were edited out before being released, so while their names have been released, and as a result their general location with their names, they do not appear to face any immediate threats.  So all in all, so far it appears as though the U.S. government is terribly embarrassed, and a blow was struck to diplomacy with other countries.  Claims that people and resources have been put in danger remain without any hard evidence to back them up.

Now, on to the reactions to these cables.  The most vehement reactions have, obviously, come from the United States, specifically, U.S. politicians.  Many politicians are criticizing Assange for releasing these documents.  Other politicians are calling for the designation of Wikileaks as a terrorist organization and it’s complete destruction.  There is support to try and arrest Assange and convict him under the Espionage Act of 1917, and there are a number of people calling for the assassination or bodily harm of Assange and his family members.  No warrant has yet to be issued by the United States for Assange’s arrest, but Wikileaks has been the victim of DDoS attacks and was dropped by its server.  It was offered a place on Amazon’s servers, but was quickly dropped when pressure was put on Amazon by congressman Joe Liebermann.  To be honest, I’m not entirely clear on the history of the website itself and its pitfalls since the latest leak.  For more information, please see my friend’s blog post, which has a little more info on this particular aspect of this event: http://dotq.org/democracy

Rage

With that summary of the facts surrounding this event, I’d like to get to my boiling rage.  My first comment is, why the hell aren’t we calling these politicians to account?  We have evidence that our politicians have violated the privacy of United Nations representatives, which violates United States law and international treaties, and they have also infringed on the rights of those formerly imprisoned in Guantanamo by transporting them to different countries, in spectacularly shady ways (like negotiating a visit with Obama in exchange for taking a prisoner).  No one has tried to call our politicians to account for these things.  Our government may have a history or being scumbags, but that is no excuse not to make them answer for what they’ve done.

While important, this is almost incomparable to the fact that Freedom of Speech is being trampled on.  First of all, Wikileaks has the freedom to publish any content that they receive from sources and to expose wrongdoing.  To try and censor any of the material being released by Wikileaks, which the government is attempting to do, is an infringement on free speech.  If Wikileaks solicited the information from someone, then they have technically committed a crime, but as was established in the Pentagon Papers case (which I’ll discuss further later in this post), the press has a right to publish classified information they may come into possession of.  Furthermore, I believe that Wikileaks is justified in doing this, and they are in protected by the law in doing so.  So, try to understand my anger at the fact that the very people who are incriminated in these documents are not only not being called to account for some of these things, they are in fact actively trying to shut down Wikileaks.  There is something extremely wrong here.  This is both an attempt to stop themselves from looking bad, and an infringement on Freedom of Speech.  You know; what the government tried to do back in the case of the Pentagon Papers.

Having referenced them twice in this post, I think I should explain.  Now, I know my generation is too young to remember this, but the Pentagon Papers, a scandal from the early 70’s, greatly resembles the current situation.  If you are not familiar with the events surrounding the Pentagon Papers, please look them up so you have a better idea of what I’m talking about.  Of course, the current situation with Wikileaks is different for various reasons, but the main point surrounding classified documents and the exposure of deception within the government is very similar.  A document detailing the history of the Vietnam war was deemed sensitive, and was eventually leaked to the New York Times.  The New York Times began publishing excerpts from the report which exposed lies about the Vietnam War.  The government then attempted to censor the New York Times in a case that went to the Supreme Court.  There, it was established that a (paraphrasing a little here) “free press is essential to exposing deception within the government.”

Ultimately, the decision to publish classified information is up to the media outlets in possession of these documents.  I think Assange may have showed poor judgment in publishing some of these cables, specifically the one listing places that are supposedly vital to U.S. security.  The publishing of such cables  doesn’t seem to serve a specific purpose, and I think that was a poor decision on Assange’s part.  However, many of the other cables he has posted contain information that we deserve to know.  Assange is not entirely free from blame, but he is nowhere near as guilty or evil as he is being painted by the politicians and media of the world.

Having admitted that Assange made a bad call or two, I can get back to being outraged.  In the past year we have seen documents leaked displaying facts about the Afghan and Iraq wars, painting a grim picture that is different from the picture painted by our media and our government (strangely, at those times no attempt was made to arrest Assange for espionage).  Now we have a leak exposing further deception by our government, although other cables are not quite as revelatory, and we are seeing an attempt by the government to silence those publishing the information.  As you can hopefully see, this situation is greatly similar to the Pentagon Papers events.  However, while there are people trying to defend Wikileaks and Assange, the vast majority of people in America seem to be siding with our elected officials…who violated people’s human rights.

Perhaps something else to mention would be this desire of our elected officials to arrest and convict Assange.  There is talk of doing so under the Espionage Act of 1917, under which politicians think they could convict Assange for “intentionally harming the U.S.,” but that’s paraphrasing.  Having already commented on the fact that Wikileaks is within its rights to publish this information, let me comment on the idea that Mr. Assange has committed espionage.  The Espionage Act of 1917 makes it a crime to, “convey information with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies,” or “convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies when the United States is at war, to cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or to willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States.”

I apologize for the lengthy quotations, but they’re necessary to emphasize the fact that this act is only applicable to interfering with military actions, not diplomatic ones, which is really the only thing that’s been damaged, as we’ve established.  Aside from diplomatic embarrassment, we’ve seen that no one has been hurt, killed, or relocated, and major military operations have not been endangered so far.  Thus, we can conclude that there is no basis to arrest Mr. Assange under this act.  Additionally, you would think that they would have tried to do this with the two previous document leaks, which did pertain to the U.S. military.  I guess now that individual people are being embarrassed and not the entire government, they’re getting pissed off.

Devil’s Advocate

Perhaps I’m being too heavy-handed; maybe I’m stretching it by saying that these politicians have violated other human’s rights, but they have invaded the privacy of United Nations representatives.  Perhaps they were merely transferring those Guantanamo Bay detainees who they had good reason to imprison, but then again, maybe they were keeping them there unlawfully and for no good reason.  It’s hard to say because admittedly I haven’t read those cables yet, so I don’t have detailed information.  At the very least we can say that our government invaded the privacy of U.N. representatives to a large extent, and they had some shady dealings with people involving the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo.  You’ll notice this section is short, because honestly, any other criticism or point I could make against Assange or Wikileaks is contradicted by the information already presented.

Conclusions: Why You Should Be Angry

To summarize: we have politicians, some of which are guilty of violating various tenets of our constitution such as a right to privacy and some basic rights of Guantanamo prisoners, arguing for the abolition of Wikileaks and imprisonment of Julian Assange, the former being an infringement on Freedom of Speech, and the latter having no basis in United States law.  The worst part: hardly anyone seems to give a shit.  That’s a little unfair since there are people who have criticized the government’s reaction to this leak, but a large number of people and governments are criticizing the leak and Assange.

Yes, our government has a history of deception and trying to cover it up, and it’s understandable not to be surprised, but in the words of an anonymous Duke student: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

This sentence may be overly dramatic, but it encapsulates democracy so well (falsely attributed to Voltaire, this sentence was written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall).  You may think Assange is a douchebag of the highest order, and you may not like the things that he is saying, but, while he is technically not a U.S. citizen, our constitution and legal precedent give him and Wikileaks the right to publish this information.  Whether or not it’s a good idea to publish these cables is still unclear since there is a surfeit of cables yet to be released.  Aside from this, the fact remains that Wikileaks has put no individuals in danger in the case of these leaks, or at least not yet, and the U.S. government has been embarrassed by these cables, but no one has died or been injured as a result of this.  In fact, the Espionage Act, which appears to be the law under which people want to convict Assange, covers acts which subvert the U.S. military, and these cables have absolutely nothing to do with the actions of United States military.

Having thoroughly convinced myself that our government is in the wrong here, the next step is figuring out what to do.  Get outraged.  Check.  But now what?  You can do the usual stuff: write a letter or email to your representative, the president, etc.  Spread your opinions and talk with other people.  I guess the only thing we can do is express ourselves.

I always used to think that “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel was about the lack of critical thinking by people and their inability to speak against a trend.  “People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening,” always felt like people talking without thinking and saying something meaningful, and people absorbing information but not thinking about it and accepting it.  Apparently the song was inspired by the Kennedy assassination (who knew), but the song has renewed meaning for me in that it’s important for us to speak out; it’s how we bring about change and prevent deception and corruption.  In this case this is extremely important, because it is all we can do.  If there is more to be done, then by all means, do it, and inform me so I can help.

Remember: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

-Shimon

Hey guys, another quick one since I have to leave in like, 10 minutes.  I’ve been going through a tougher time recently.  I think part of it is that I still don’t feel like I’m connecting with my host family.  I’ve gotten better at talking with them, but I’m still hesitant some of the time, and it just feels like there’s not much to bring up or discuss.  Well, I guess that’s not true.  There are things we could discuss, like my trip, which I did talk about, but I have pictures which I haven’t gotten around to showing them yet.  I think it’s more like I’m unable to talk about things on a more serious level.

This ties into the problem I have with not having many Japanese friends.  I feel like it’s hard to go in depth with a topic of conversation.  People who I really connect with are usually people who I’m able to share some measure of depth with.  As in, I’m able to express myself freely and share something complex with them, some thought or emotion.  Some of my best friends are people who I’m able to talk at length with about things like what makes anime good, or the emotional pitfalls of relationships.  As of right now, my interactions with Japanese people have mostly stayed at a pretty shallow level.  It’s fun to talk to them, but so far I haven’t been able to go into that level of depth in the context of a conversation.

Part of it is my belief that my Japanese isn’t good enough, but at the same time I don’t know how that kind of conversation would be received.  I feel like they wouldn’t be interested, or they wouldn’t know what I was talking about.  However, this this belief is definitely rooted in some of my preconceptions about Japanese people, so I guess I should just try sometime and see what happens.  Ok, gotta go now.