Working... for now at least!

• Internet seems to be working fine.
• Verified that I can also connect to iNAGO Japan and Canada VPNs and also access the internet simultaneously.
• Continue to watch out. If things do seem OK then will have to call NTT and report screwy router.

Called Nifty

Problem happening a fair bit, especially in Yahoo! Groups.

Called @nifty光ファイバー専用サポートセンター
0120-539-240
Spoke for a long time with Aihara-san, good guy.

• Try setting primary and secondary DNS in router.
• Still getting the problem.
• He asked if problem is limited to US sites.
• Confirmed that it also happened on Yahoo! Japan
• He suggested two possibilities: The router is buggy or there is a problem in some remote server somewhere.
• To verify the router I disconnected it and connected my PC directly to the modem.
• Had to add a new Nifty connection in Network Connections of the OS.

NTT Support guys arrive

• Difficult to reproduce problem.
• On both phone jacks - office and kitchen - they find something called a condenser.
• They remove the condensers.
• Still difficult to reproduce but happens.

Called NTT Support Line

• The guy said to compare both PCs, mine and Kasumi's.
• If both machines have the problem then pull the plug on PCs then router then modem, wait at least 10 min, turn on modem then router then PCs, and have a look.
• If it is still bad then call again.
• Still bad, so I called again. Scheduled support personnel to visit tomorrow.

Fascism by Consensus

It is well-known that in Japan, there seems to be an ingrained tendency in society to put the squeeze on people. As someone who has lived here for 14 years now, this blog finally gives me the chance to vent about it. It is not going to be the last time either. I think I will have to keep writing about it and writing about it till I get it right.

If this squeeze was merely a case of the rich oppressing the poor, or the strong oppressing the weak, well, I could intellectually deal with it. It has been the central ebb and flow of Western culture for the past few centuries right now. Colonialism, independence struggles, communism, fascism, wars both cold and hot, politics, philosophy, art, sex, the workplace, relationships, you name it. The struggle between the powerful and the powerless - not to mention struggling to know in which camp you stand from situation to situation - is part of our very life force.

Japan is unique in that it is the common people who are oppressive. It is not the politicians or the greedy corporation. It is the average working person or the average housewife.

You do not hear people talk much about oppression. Instead, typical conversation centers more on clamping down on he who is causing a nuisance. Nuisance is not what we think it is. What we may see as a small transgression or inconvenience is often viewed as a major disturbance.

Some examples: A foreigner in an apartment building puts out his garbage on the wrong day, a male office worker goes home early because his kid has a cold (“Is his wife incompetent?”, they whisper behind his back), a female office worker presses for greater accountability from her managers, a flamboyant wealthy young entrepreneur tries to buy a majority stake in a moribund but famous media company…

Nuisances all. But no worries, the average middle-class paragons of mediocrity who make up the vast majority of this country will put these people in their place, and good!

I hate to use this old saw but nothing describes my current sentiment better – in Japan the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Motivational Posters

I hate corporate insincerity. A lot can be written on this. For now let us just focus one obscure little corner of it.

Take those motivational posters and calendars that say have these messages about making great effort in your work, setting goals, and related platitudinous blather. Meanwhile your boss is an incompetent and mean-spirited dunce who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. Why doesn’t he go all the way and make a fool of himself and tell his staff that cleanliness is godliness? Or make his accounting section squat on the floor chant like the Cub Scouts, “We’ll do our best! We’ll do our best!” Do your best at what? Inflating the balance sheet?

I much prefer the slacker posters saying things like why do it today when you can procrastinate. Or telling you to stop and smell the roses, and if it is fun then just continue smelling the roses.

Companies will bring in some management consultant who will give a stock speech about work-life balance, and cookie-cutter statements on people being the most valuable resource. Then come next Monday management is back at its predatory ways.

I am not knocking a sincere love of excellence. I certainly have it (whether I always achieve it or not is a separate issue!). However, motivational posters and platitudes are just plain annoying if the company does not follow up on its side of the bargain.

B FLET'S connection is touch and go

Sometimes cannot connect to the internet. Sometimes I can but images are not downloaded.
No predictability. Same link, clicked a few seconds later, connects fine. Sometimes have to wait several minutes.

Hockey hurts

Played street hockey at Komazawa koen.

Really banged up my shin, particularly the left one.

I was hit in the same goddamned spot, TWICE, by sticks. And further up that same left shin I took a slapshot.

We have a rule against slapshots. But in the heat of the moment...

Soft

Went klubbing with Tanaka at a place called Soft, off Roppongi-dori near Shibuya.

Really nice cute peppy little place, all white shiny walls, pretty artsy.

A few performance art pieces and some dub. Then this great DJ comes on, playing all these oldies. I couldn't believe it. Phil Spector, The Crystals, all awesome stuff.

It was a pleasure to hang out with Tanaka that evening, one of the last true intellectuals. A cosmic dude.

All the young dudes, carry the news, boogaloo dudes, carry the news...

Yes, he is one of the few people I know in Japan with whom I can discuss Mott and the Hoople and that whole glam period.

Drank endless gin-and-tonics.

Left the place as dawn was breaking, took an early train from Shibuya to Ikebukuro. Did not want to wait for the train home so I took a taxi back.

Sushi burgers

In Tokyo I often eat at kaiten sushi restaurants.

These are the places where patrons are seated around a large oval-shaped counter and plate of sushi revolve on the counter on a conveyor belt. When you see something that catches your fancy you grab it. You can also shout out your requests and the sushi chefs will musically shout back something like “one freshwater eel coming up!”

My wife, and other Japanese women I have known, have told me that they have never been to a kaiten sushi. Indeed, you don’t see many women there by themselves. The shouting of orders, the repeating of orders by the chefs, and the occasional humorous interactions that follow are perhaps more in tune with a male kind of camaraderie.

Anyway, yesterday I walked past a new HUGE kaiten sushi place. I was looking for a place to have lunch and was curious about this place so I walked it. It was unlike any others I had seen. The counters were very large and there were about four of them in the restaurant. There were entire families there, not just the usual cadre of men by themselves. In such a large place you would have to shout your requests pretty loudly to be heard. With so many customers a veritable cacophony would be the inevitable result. So they got around this problem by placing intercoms in front of each customer!

But the most striking feature was the menu. While the orthodox sushi bar fare was available – and really good, I may add – there were some pretty bizarre items. There were cakes going around on the conveyor belt, a nice-looking chocolate cake, a sedate cheesecake and a gaudy pink strawberry-icing cake. They also took freedoms with the sushi. They actually had strips of roast chicken or roast pork on little beds of rice. But what really took the cake (no pun intended) were the miniature hamburger patties on rice. They were cute and looked good. I was in the mood for the standard fare and put a rain check on the weird stuff.

Needless to say, I will be back.

Conservatives and Racism

A couple of weeks back, Michael Jackson’s parents, Joe and Katherine Jackson, spoke to ITV interviewer Daphne Barak about how they were dealing with the recent travails of their son.

Joe told Barak that he believed that racism played a part in why America had turned against Michael.

Predictably, commentators at Free Republic and various conservative blogs began their knee-jerk diatribes against Joe’s accusations of racism.

A thought occurred to me. Maybe the right wing bashes political correctness because for them such bashing is the next best thing to out-and-out racism. Since the latter no longer works in America, this is the only way they can express their basic intolerant impulses.

These are the people, had they been adults in the early 60’s, who would have voted against integration of schools. In the 30’s, they would have been the ones supporting broad-based Jim Crow segregation. In the 1800s, they would have been the good-ole boys supporting slavery.

I am not saying that every single conservative out there is a racist but I suspect that a large number of them would be in slightly modified circumstances. Conservatism in a nutshell is the worldview is that life is a battlefield and you have to bunker down and look out for number one. You could be a perfectly nice person at heart, and many conservatives I have met are, but as long as you hold this worldview you are going to be more susceptible to racism and xenophobia than someone whose worldview is based on kindness and inclusiveness.

As for Joe Jackson’s comment? I certainly do not believe that racism is to blame for all of Michael’s troubles. He has shown incredibly poor judgment. He may be guilty as charged. But I think it is true that when a black man in America is successful, wealthy and powerful, it helps him to be polite and deferring to the establishment like Colin Powell. If he speaks his own mind, there will often spring up a movement to take him down. So many famous blacks actually end up doing jail time. How many famous white people end up in the big house, besides Martha Stewart?

At the end of the day what really got me was the alacrity with which any accusation of racism gets attacked by the right, without any discussion of the possibility that there may actually have been some racism in the situation.

Flu epidemic

Man, I can't seem to get better.

One thing after another since I returned to Japan in mid-January. For a while I was sick with the flu, a bit of an epidemic going around.

Then as I started feeling better it came back. After shaking that I was OK for a while.

Then last weekend I wanted to see a movie in Ikebukuro. My usual course is to have lunch at this gaudy sparkly restaurant called Milky Way that is packed with high school kids, then go to the movie theater on the Sunshine Dori street. Well I order my food, this really good Italian-style gratin dish, and while I am waiting I feel this quesy feverish sensation come over me. For the rest of my meal I was feeling slightly cold with this subtle stiffness in my muscles and bones. That goddamn flu-like feeling again. So I did the smart thing, skipped my movie and went home to bed.

Then over this past week I started getting this inflammation on my upper right gum. It got worse and worse and now it is really awful. The right side of my head hurts. The dentist gave me medicine and told me to take it easy. I don't know if this has anything to do with the flu but the dentist did say that flus and colds and fevers can make one susceptible to gum infections.

I am getting tired of taking it easy weekend after bloody weekend, I wanna party but I can't.

Gaijin can't aim their wang?

In Japan I find that whenever there is something slightly amiss in a public space and foreigners have been observed in the area, suspicion immediately falls on us.

For example a number of foreigners work in the building where my main client's office is located. I guess the cleaning staff have complained of having to to, well, go beyond the call of duty when cleaning the washrooms. So guess what, warning signs go up in English.

Actually, to their credit the signs are bilingual, but the English portion is definitely more prominently displayed. And I have to say that I am impressed by their command of English, this is way above and beyond the level you normally encounter here.

In fact I doubt I could even have come up with this!