Saturday, April 16, 2016
In case you haven't heard, the island at the southern tip of Japan has been hit with three earthquakes in the past few days, the latest and strongest at 7.1 a few hours ago. In addition, Mt. Aso volcano in the same area started erupting today. Worse, torrential rains are expected this weekend, with major flooding. (Remember when the tsunami hit, and within days they had a blizzard? Those people can't catch a break.)
Taiwan was also hit by earthquake today.
Taiwan having also been hit would indicate that this is a very broad plate movement, so who knows where more epicenters might happen? Anyone worried about tsunamis?
Sheesh.
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
3755 Periodic thing.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
I do something weird every so often. Every so often I get what can only be described as an obsession, which can last anywhere from three weeks or so to three years. It's sort of like bipolar, in that it lasts for a while and then goes away, but it doesn't seem to involve depression or mania.
After the year that Jay (and both of my dogs) died, I got heavily into estate auctions and eBay. I bought stuff. Lots of stuff. The country house is chock full of stuff, some of it lesser junk, some of it very good (from live estate auctions). That's what's so overwhelming about sorting out that house. I understand that part of it then was real situational depression, and an attempt to fill a suddenly empty and echoing house and life with something I could love. That went on for three years.
But every so often, something similar but of shorter duration happens. It might be needlework, when I spend every waking moment knitting, embroidering, sewing, and doing nothing else that has to be done. Or reading, when I feel like I absolutely have to read the entire backlog of books on the shelves. Or the past month and a half, when I started watching videos on YouTube, in particular some expats living in Japan who do videos on the culture, houses, customs, of life in Japan (**see below), and video tours of old Victorian houses - to the exclusion of everything else (including, as has been obvious, the updating of this blog).
But I'm not depressed. I still enjoy stuff. Even after Jay died, I still managed to get out, like I joined the fire department and got EMT training, went to the county fairs and the antiques fairs and the Renaissance fairs, took bellydance lessons, etc., I just don't pay bills when due, or clean the house, or do the dishes or the laundry - in other words, when I'm in the house, it's all obsession. As if I want to escape responsibilities?
I didn't really realize that pattern until now. I've been thinking back, trying to figure out when it started. I think it started when I married Ex#2. The guy who didn't talk to me for weeks at a time, who would go away on business trips without mentioning it to me and couldn't understand why I worried when he didn't come home after work (pre-cell phone days), the guy who wet the bed almost every night and crapped his pants whenever we were in the car going somewhere he didn't want to go, and refused to admit there was a problem, let alone see a doctor. That's when it started. I was so alone, and I read and did needlework to fill my empty days. Projects, projects, projects.
It was just Saturday that I came out of this latest (the YouTube obsession) cycle. I got a bunch of stuff done around the house this weekend; suddenly I wanted to clean up and check things off to-do lists. I wonder if, now that I'm aware of it, I might be able to see it happening and control it.
--------------------------------
**On the Japanese videos -
Lots of good things about Japan, like very low crime, beautiful countryside, it's very clean, people respect others, and so on. But there's no way I could possibly live there for any length of time (even beyond the fact that immigration is strongly discouraged).
The houses, even new ones, have no central heating and no insulation! People use space heaters to heat one room, and the space heaters are kerosene so you have to keep a window cracked, and the heaters turn themselves off periodically, so if you don't get up pre-dawn to turn them back on, you wake to a freezing house.
Westerners are amazed by the toilets. They are very fancy, electronic, and have heated seats. Well, yeah! THERE'S NO HEAT!
All social and professional interactions are governed by rank and seniority. You must defer in all matters to those who rank above you, which means that if someone of higher rank than you says you must do something that makes no sense at all, is stupid or dangerous, you must guard your facial expressions and react with enthusiasm. You NEVER correct or criticize the ideas of anyone of higher rank. This is not just professionally - it's socially, too. (Your bosses will expect to sit in the front and at the choice tables at your wedding, for example, ahead of your family.) You never say anything negative. If you want to say "No", you say "Perhaps".
Husbands outrank wives, so a wife is to expect that her husband will have affairs, and she is to ignore it in all ways. Some husbands may never stray, but he's considered a fool if he has the opportunity and doesn't.
You have to fill out pages and pages of forms to do anything if you are more than just a short-time tourist, and there are no English translations of anything, not even the directional signs in official buildings, and next to no one speaks English. Learn Japanese, or starve.
Some YouTube channels:
- softypapa
- thejapanchanneldcom
- thesillyolddude
.
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
--Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.--
-----------------------------------------------------------
I do something weird every so often. Every so often I get what can only be described as an obsession, which can last anywhere from three weeks or so to three years. It's sort of like bipolar, in that it lasts for a while and then goes away, but it doesn't seem to involve depression or mania.
After the year that Jay (and both of my dogs) died, I got heavily into estate auctions and eBay. I bought stuff. Lots of stuff. The country house is chock full of stuff, some of it lesser junk, some of it very good (from live estate auctions). That's what's so overwhelming about sorting out that house. I understand that part of it then was real situational depression, and an attempt to fill a suddenly empty and echoing house and life with something I could love. That went on for three years.
But every so often, something similar but of shorter duration happens. It might be needlework, when I spend every waking moment knitting, embroidering, sewing, and doing nothing else that has to be done. Or reading, when I feel like I absolutely have to read the entire backlog of books on the shelves. Or the past month and a half, when I started watching videos on YouTube, in particular some expats living in Japan who do videos on the culture, houses, customs, of life in Japan (**see below), and video tours of old Victorian houses - to the exclusion of everything else (including, as has been obvious, the updating of this blog).
But I'm not depressed. I still enjoy stuff. Even after Jay died, I still managed to get out, like I joined the fire department and got EMT training, went to the county fairs and the antiques fairs and the Renaissance fairs, took bellydance lessons, etc., I just don't pay bills when due, or clean the house, or do the dishes or the laundry - in other words, when I'm in the house, it's all obsession. As if I want to escape responsibilities?
I didn't really realize that pattern until now. I've been thinking back, trying to figure out when it started. I think it started when I married Ex#2. The guy who didn't talk to me for weeks at a time, who would go away on business trips without mentioning it to me and couldn't understand why I worried when he didn't come home after work (pre-cell phone days), the guy who wet the bed almost every night and crapped his pants whenever we were in the car going somewhere he didn't want to go, and refused to admit there was a problem, let alone see a doctor. That's when it started. I was so alone, and I read and did needlework to fill my empty days. Projects, projects, projects.
It was just Saturday that I came out of this latest (the YouTube obsession) cycle. I got a bunch of stuff done around the house this weekend; suddenly I wanted to clean up and check things off to-do lists. I wonder if, now that I'm aware of it, I might be able to see it happening and control it.
--------------------------------
**On the Japanese videos -
Lots of good things about Japan, like very low crime, beautiful countryside, it's very clean, people respect others, and so on. But there's no way I could possibly live there for any length of time (even beyond the fact that immigration is strongly discouraged).
The houses, even new ones, have no central heating and no insulation! People use space heaters to heat one room, and the space heaters are kerosene so you have to keep a window cracked, and the heaters turn themselves off periodically, so if you don't get up pre-dawn to turn them back on, you wake to a freezing house.
Westerners are amazed by the toilets. They are very fancy, electronic, and have heated seats. Well, yeah! THERE'S NO HEAT!
All social and professional interactions are governed by rank and seniority. You must defer in all matters to those who rank above you, which means that if someone of higher rank than you says you must do something that makes no sense at all, is stupid or dangerous, you must guard your facial expressions and react with enthusiasm. You NEVER correct or criticize the ideas of anyone of higher rank. This is not just professionally - it's socially, too. (Your bosses will expect to sit in the front and at the choice tables at your wedding, for example, ahead of your family.) You never say anything negative. If you want to say "No", you say "Perhaps".
Husbands outrank wives, so a wife is to expect that her husband will have affairs, and she is to ignore it in all ways. Some husbands may never stray, but he's considered a fool if he has the opportunity and doesn't.
You have to fill out pages and pages of forms to do anything if you are more than just a short-time tourist, and there are no English translations of anything, not even the directional signs in official buildings, and next to no one speaks English. Learn Japanese, or starve.
Some YouTube channels:
- softypapa
- thejapanchanneldcom
- thesillyolddude
.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
3218 Thoughts on despair
Saturday, April 16, 2011
In a recent post I took issue with the declaration that this is the greatest nation in the history of the world (or maybe the phrase was "that the world has ever known", whatever).
I'll back that up.
The US spends less on infrastructure than any other developed nation, by far. Other nations spend three to five times as much.
Our dams, roads, and bridges are deteriorating.
Generating plants of all kinds are aging and inefficient, and we aren't seriously considering the development of alternate sources of energy.
Railroads are falling apart. We have no high speed rail. Every time it comes up, it's stomped down. In Europe, you can get anywhere you have to go by train and bus, quickly and cheaply, and even in Asia trains are efficient. And fast.
All of our materials are transported all the way across the continent by truck! That's incredibly inefficient, given how little one truck can carry, the amount of gasoline it requires to do it, and the amount of additional wear on the roads. Trains can do it quickly and cheaply, with trucks used only for local delivery.
We may have good doctors and hospitals, and medical research, but only if you are rich. The average citizen can't afford decent medical care. And even if you can afford it, many treatments and options available in the rest of the world aren't allowed here.
We don't take care of our elderly. It's a scandal the way we turn our backs on them.
All we're really good at is making money and waging war. And the top 1% makes all the money while the bottom 50% does all the dying.
This is not "great".
-------------------------------
I have enormous admiration for the Japanese people. In all they've been through, the devastation, the dislocation, note that there has been no looting. None. A shortage of food? Rather than grab and run, they share. Looting from destroyed homes and stores? They have actually gathered salvageable bits and pieces and put them in small bins in reclamation centers, where people can go and look for their belongings and claim them. They have centers where people are cleaning found photographs and then posting them on a bulletin board so people can find them. People stand very patiently in long lines, waiting for food distribution. No pushing, crowding, or shoving.
And then there are the people who volunteered to work in the damaged reactors, with the certainty of early death, but no promise of reward beyond the knowledge that they are helping the country and their people. I can't imagine that anywhere else.
The Japanese people are working together for the good of all, and they don't seem to be aware there is any other way to act.
(Yeah, ok, I know about what they did in China, and in WWII, and whatever else "Jap Haters" want to bring up, which is also an outgrowth of the culture. Go away.)
-------------------------------
Every single time I have gone north to the old house, The Hairless Hunk has seen me, even if I didn't see him. It's getting creepy.
I drive past his house on the way to my house, and I always automatically look to see if he's working in the yard, or if his vehicle is there. Mostly I don't see him --- but he always sees me. Often he passes going the opposite direction on the road. It's weird.
Last Tuesday, I took the tax documents to Piper's office in the village, but I didn't go to the old house, which is 2 miles farther north. I was in the village, in Piper's office, then walking with Piper up the street a little less than a block to the diner, then back down to my car outside Piper's office, then I left to head back south.
The next day, I got an email from THH that he'd seen me in the village!
It's like he has a GPS tracker on me or something. ESP. Strange.
--------------------------------
I guess everyone has heard by now about the young woman who drove her car, with her four children in it, off a boat ramp and into the Hudson River in N3wburgh, NY, last Tuesday evening. The oldest of the four kids was 10, and he managed to get out of the sinking car and swam to shore.
And people are wondering why?
She was 25 years old (although I've also heard 24). The oldest of her four children was 10. That means she was pregnant at 14 (or 13), which means she likely has no education, training, or skills to support herself and her children. She was married to the father of her youngest three, but I gather he was not living with her. She had recently moved to N3wburgh, into an apartment in a slummy area of God-forsaken N3wburgh (if you've ever been there, you'd know what I mean. The newspaper describes it as a "humble river city").
According to neighbors, she was a good mother, and had a job. There was apparently a "domestic dispute" that evening. She finally had confirmation that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had been a serial cheater all along.
This is speculation, but I think I can figure it out. The husband had probably left her wherever they had lived and "went north" to find work, so he could support her and the children. That happens a lot. She probably moved to N3wburgh because she didn't like the separation. He'd been able to hide the girlfriend(s), but now he couldn't. He didn't want to move in with her. She suddenly realized that she couldn't count on him any longer.
What else is there to understand? Her world collapsed and she could see no other possibilities.
.
Credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
In a recent post I took issue with the declaration that this is the greatest nation in the history of the world (or maybe the phrase was "that the world has ever known", whatever).
I'll back that up.
The US spends less on infrastructure than any other developed nation, by far. Other nations spend three to five times as much.
Our dams, roads, and bridges are deteriorating.
Generating plants of all kinds are aging and inefficient, and we aren't seriously considering the development of alternate sources of energy.
Railroads are falling apart. We have no high speed rail. Every time it comes up, it's stomped down. In Europe, you can get anywhere you have to go by train and bus, quickly and cheaply, and even in Asia trains are efficient. And fast.
All of our materials are transported all the way across the continent by truck! That's incredibly inefficient, given how little one truck can carry, the amount of gasoline it requires to do it, and the amount of additional wear on the roads. Trains can do it quickly and cheaply, with trucks used only for local delivery.
We may have good doctors and hospitals, and medical research, but only if you are rich. The average citizen can't afford decent medical care. And even if you can afford it, many treatments and options available in the rest of the world aren't allowed here.
We don't take care of our elderly. It's a scandal the way we turn our backs on them.
All we're really good at is making money and waging war. And the top 1% makes all the money while the bottom 50% does all the dying.
This is not "great".
-------------------------------
I have enormous admiration for the Japanese people. In all they've been through, the devastation, the dislocation, note that there has been no looting. None. A shortage of food? Rather than grab and run, they share. Looting from destroyed homes and stores? They have actually gathered salvageable bits and pieces and put them in small bins in reclamation centers, where people can go and look for their belongings and claim them. They have centers where people are cleaning found photographs and then posting them on a bulletin board so people can find them. People stand very patiently in long lines, waiting for food distribution. No pushing, crowding, or shoving.
And then there are the people who volunteered to work in the damaged reactors, with the certainty of early death, but no promise of reward beyond the knowledge that they are helping the country and their people. I can't imagine that anywhere else.
The Japanese people are working together for the good of all, and they don't seem to be aware there is any other way to act.
(Yeah, ok, I know about what they did in China, and in WWII, and whatever else "Jap Haters" want to bring up, which is also an outgrowth of the culture. Go away.)
-------------------------------
Every single time I have gone north to the old house, The Hairless Hunk has seen me, even if I didn't see him. It's getting creepy.
I drive past his house on the way to my house, and I always automatically look to see if he's working in the yard, or if his vehicle is there. Mostly I don't see him --- but he always sees me. Often he passes going the opposite direction on the road. It's weird.
Last Tuesday, I took the tax documents to Piper's office in the village, but I didn't go to the old house, which is 2 miles farther north. I was in the village, in Piper's office, then walking with Piper up the street a little less than a block to the diner, then back down to my car outside Piper's office, then I left to head back south.
The next day, I got an email from THH that he'd seen me in the village!
It's like he has a GPS tracker on me or something. ESP. Strange.
--------------------------------
I guess everyone has heard by now about the young woman who drove her car, with her four children in it, off a boat ramp and into the Hudson River in N3wburgh, NY, last Tuesday evening. The oldest of the four kids was 10, and he managed to get out of the sinking car and swam to shore.
And people are wondering why?
She was 25 years old (although I've also heard 24). The oldest of her four children was 10. That means she was pregnant at 14 (or 13), which means she likely has no education, training, or skills to support herself and her children. She was married to the father of her youngest three, but I gather he was not living with her. She had recently moved to N3wburgh, into an apartment in a slummy area of God-forsaken N3wburgh (if you've ever been there, you'd know what I mean. The newspaper describes it as a "humble river city").
According to neighbors, she was a good mother, and had a job. There was apparently a "domestic dispute" that evening. She finally had confirmation that her husband was not only cheating on her, but had been a serial cheater all along.
This is speculation, but I think I can figure it out. The husband had probably left her wherever they had lived and "went north" to find work, so he could support her and the children. That happens a lot. She probably moved to N3wburgh because she didn't like the separation. He'd been able to hide the girlfriend(s), but now he couldn't. He didn't want to move in with her. She suddenly realized that she couldn't count on him any longer.
What else is there to understand? Her world collapsed and she could see no other possibilities.
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)