Scot is now in Japan.

I went to a day-long forum put on by the research center. All of the departments and labs presented their research. Some of it was interesting, some boring, and some just too full of technical jargon outside of my field.

I went to lunch with one of the asst. professors in my dept., a woman who'd done almost all of her academic work in the U.S. and spoke perfect English. She told me about her research interests, and we also talked about her difficulties as a female academic and as someone who no longer identified with and accepted the rigid hierarchy in Japanese academic culture. (If anyone ever did, I guess.)

She was very outgoing, very ambitious, and a good self-promoter. I eventually found myself annoyed by her in some way. Was I feeling jealous? Perhaps. I think things would be easier for me if I was more ambitious and more of a self-promoter. I would at least have more in common with other law students. Was it resent? Perhaps. Some of her outgoingness and ambition sounded like an endless list of dropped names. Was it her unrelenting faith in market mechanisms and "objective" data? Probably. I just don't know what to do with people who won't admit that the law and economics paradigm breaks down. A lot. It's just one tool in the box, not the answer to all of the universe's mysteries. Was it sexism? God, I hate to think so, but I don't know if I can rule it out. I'm just not so naive as to think I could say, "I'm not sexist," and be totally confident of the truth.

OR WAS IT A MOSTLY ABSTRACT PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFERENCE? By Jove, I think we've got it. She waxed on about market data and the importance of making public officials/legislators face the music about incentives in the patent system and the advantages of some future global patent process, instead of relying on subjective mushy stuff like "culture" as a bulwark against homogenization/harmonization. I asked carefully if she thought there was any value to the culture argument when trying to resist legal change motivated from outside one's own country. She said maybe in some cases, but science and technology were culturally homogeneous enough to be beyond such considerations, and besides, if you can objectively prove that the outcome will be a greater supply and availability of medicines, who would complain?

I was shut inside my own head by that point, trying to find my way out of the rabbit hole. "ARTIFACT OR ESSENCE?!" I kept asking myself. Culture is mushy, I agree. It doesn't fit into any plottable data forms. There is no clean way to talk about it. But what she was saying was utter tripe. I especially caught on the statement that science/technology were culturally homogeneous worldwide. Impossible. The very statement was without meaning. Consider: what she was calling "science and technology" had to be similar enough as she found it in each country for her to be able to call it "science and technology" in the first place. If that was so, she was comparing a fixed value to itself. (a=a), A tautology. Her description made it clear she had excluded everything that didn't already fit into this singular concept.

And the "objective" data. I don't think I've ever seen any "objective" data. The very decision to record one type of information instead of another is loaded with its own value judgments, a bias the numbers themselves never escape. What then? How can you foist the misery and hypocrisy you have injected into these numbers onto another person, and berate them for not accepting it as truth? Crime. Shameful. Maker of angst and alienation.

And what about me? I guess I'm no better. I'm brow-beating someone who can't hear me or respond. And not over anything important, either. Just meaningless, squiggly little bits of sophistry.

I wish I could just make nice and have a pleasant lunch. I struggle with the everyday polite fictions that allow conversation to continue. I can't help thinking sometimes that I am just a sad misanthrope, miserly with my affections, dense beyond hope.

These are times when it's good to go for a walk in the park.

Arai-san and Kato-san just took me out for a nice lunch, since they had heard I was getting tired of cafeteria food. Very sweet of them.

While there, we talked about food, among other things, and Arai-san said my face looked as if I had lost some weight since arriving. I told her how it was often said that male foreigners in Japan lose weight, while female foreigners tend to gain. She came up with the expected response that women eat when stressed, while men don't.

I fessed up that I missed American breakfast diners terribly. Bottomless cups of coffee, crispy yet not-too-brittle bacon strips, eggs over easy with the yolk still soft, slightly charred hashbrowns with lots of seasoning, and toast triangles, already buttered. I dream about these things.

On the way back, Kato-san said he sometimes had a hard time getting along with all of the women in our lab. I asked him if he had a girlfriend. He said yes, but that she was studying in Europe and wouldn't be back until next summer. I asked how he was doing. He said that when you're with someone, there is an increase in the levels of dopamine released in the brain, causing a low-level and constant euphoria. One gets used to these raised levels, however, and pretty soon you are at an even keel despite the increase. Then that person goes away, your dopamine levels drop, and like a junkie, your normal state is one of withdrawal. Finally, you slowly reacclimate to the dopamine levels your body previously found normal. He said he had "kicked," in other words. Love is a drug habit.

I had to stifle laughter when he explained all of this. I have tried for ages to keep myself from saying the exact sort of thing when asked, even though some part of me believes it. And yet, here was this guy who could calmly pass off a chemical reaction as the whole of his involvement with his girlfriend. Funny, or sad? I don't even know anymore, but my first instinct was to stifle a laugh. I guess I knew it was funny, but also sad enough to make laughter inappropriate.

This was kind of in theme with something I noticed recently. I can't read male authors when I am lonely or sad. Female authors do a much better job of allowing me to believe life can be lived in an emotional state without reducing those emotions to analytical pot-holders out of fear or simple obtuseness. You don't find many female authors talking about dopamine levels. But female authors do know that love is a drug habit. They just dwell on the pain and the longing rather than the chemical itself. Suffering is beautiful, if you can refrain from talking about it in purely analytical terms.

So the female authors are in with me right now (currently reading Margaret Atwood's "The Blind Assassin"), at least until my body readjusts to my newly-lowered dopamine levels.

I leave you with this brilliant little gem from Atwood, especially relevant to the art of blog-writing:

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

Impossible, of course.

I pay out my line, I pay out my line, this black thread I'm spinning across the page.

I had my first patents class with my advising professor last night. It was the first time I'd spent that much time in his presence. He's a fairly busy guy.

Much to my surprise, he cracked everyone up for the first solid hour. That's unusual for a patents class, and I've been to a few. He started out by admitting that he had a cold and had taken some valium earlier. Then he launched into a very funny diatribe about the history of the law faculty at UT and how the teaching style hasn't changed in 120 years. Then he went off on the Ministry of Education, the Japanese Legislature, and even the sometimes astronomic budget of labs in our own research center! Apparently one lab here has an electron microscope that is used by only five students, and each one of those students is equipped with a super-fancy laptop...

But the academic content of the class was excellent, too. He went into very interesting detail about historical and policy background for the increased strength and importance of patent law, as well as reviewing some very important U.S. precedents. Good stuff. I had read all of the U.S. cases, so it was nice to show up and be more informed than just about any of the other students... That's getting to be a pattern, actually. Japanese graduate education is very different from that in the U.S. The pedagogical assumptions are completely different.

But I think I've been blessed with two teachers who deviate from the Japanese norm. They expect students to arrive informed and willing to participate, as is the (usual) expectation of U.S. graduate students. However, most of the grad students here are neither informed nor ready to participate. Their experience of higher education has already been set in an unfortunate mold by the years of undergrad classes through which they slept or just skipped. When the professors ask them direct questions, the students hem and haw, even though these questions are inevitably of the type that do not have a right answer (as do all the good questions in grad school, I suppose).

I am getting used to the feel of things in classes here. The readings before class are light (compared to J.D. or LL.M. classes in the U.S.), but I still may be among the minority of those who actually do the reading before coming to class. That's right. I am a grade-A bona-fide Japanese law nerd. Nothing much has changed.

No blog yesterday either. I must be slipping. I did have another Biotech Patents class last night. I now know that I will be called on in every session to answer some question that ends with the phrase, "So how do they handle this problem in the U.S.?" That's fine. At least I know what to prepare for. I feel sorry for the poor Chinese girl taking this class with me. She gets the same question every session, but related to China. Unfortunately, the professor has decided that he needs to ask her in English, because her Japanese isn't good enough. It's the only time he speaks English in the entire class. I think she feels very much embarrassed by the whole thing, but there's not much she can do about it. And English isn't her native language, either. Not only that, but Chinese Patent Law is a holy mess that would be difficult to talk about in any language. Poor girl.

My dad asked me about a news story he saw describing how a childless Japanese couple had a child by an American surrogate. The Japanese government then refused to grant citizenship to the child, because it was not born of a Japanese mother, I suppose. Crikey.

Japanese immigration policy has always been in a terrible state. Third-generation Korean-Japanese who were born here, have never left, have Japanese names, and only speak Japanese can't even get nationality. There are many big changes planned however, since Japan's labor pool is dwindling rapidly. But until those take effect, terrible decisions like the one my dad was referring to will be the norm.

It doesn't help that the Immigration Office occasionally grants citizenship to cartoon characters or harbor seals that have captured the public attention. This just infuriates the Korean-Japanese community even further, but they have no political power with which to act, and the media are not very interested in them.

At least, to the best of my knowledge, the Japanese couple can still adopt the child that is genetically theirs. But what a pain in the ass...

I just got the hairs snipped. There was a ridiculously cheap (for Japan) haircut deal "for foreign students only." I was intrigued. I only distantly suspected that it was an organ-harvesting operation run by the Yakuza.

It wasn't. It was a regular mom-and-pop salon (only slightly more upscale) that converted on Sunday nights from a steady stream of regular clientele to a flash-mob proportion of foreign exchange students. To handle the volume, the staff went from the mom and pop themselves before 8pm, to a group of 7 or so spikey-haired kids who just moved us through assembly line style after 8pm. It must have worked out for them financially. Smart work, mom. Smart work, pop.

But I missed some of the extras, like the after-haircut neck/shoulder/scalp massage, the hot lather shave of the neck, face, and sometimes, the space between your eyebrows! This was definitely the no-thrills version, but for one-fifth of the cost, it's hard to complain.

As soon as mom and pop left the salon, they switched off the muzak and played all of "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust." So you bet your sweet glitter I'll be going back. Wooness. Yayness. All things in harmony.

Loathe as I am to admit it.

I actually downloaded a few TV shows from Bit Torrent. And, I am ashamed to say, they were Smallville episodes... Vengeful gods above, that was hard to confess. But nothing says 'home' like crappy TV from the WB...

Tokyo living isn't easy. I miss Alli. I miss my friends. I can't believe how many people turned out to see me off from Seattle before I left. I had no idea. I wish they were here now.

So here I am, sitting in my dorm room, downloading American TV. I'm even tempted to order a pizza. There are plenty of Domino's and Pizza Huts in Tokyo. That would clinch it. If I did that, it would be like a collapsing house of cards. I could definitively be said to have given up. The sound of rushing air would be heard as the vacuous place that was once my pride in being almost bicultural was exposed and filled with...pepperoni.

But it wouldn't be giving up...not really. I felt this way in Shimane, especially those first two years when I just thought I'd not hang out with other foreigners. I kept on. I made some community. I took my guitar and several bottles of beer down to the river and screamed my lungs out at 2AM. (It would have sounded better if I could play anything reliably on the guitar. I guess I thought I would learn while I was in Japan. As it was, I only pulled out the guitar in moments of intense frustration that were rarely conducive to learning.)

I reached out to absolute strangers. I wondered if I had never learned reliably how to be alone. I vaguely remembered people saying it took strength of character to move someplace new where you don't know anyone.

The only person who had the same urgency of need for human contact as I did that first year in Japan was a friend of a friend doing a Peace Corps stint in Morocco. We traded strange commonalities. Her letters to me sometimes contained desert sand. My letters to her had beautiful commemorative stamps. We became penpals. Then one day she wrote me the most exquisite and pained expression of the sexual frustration that had built up as she lived in a hut in the desert for a year. I realized I was much better off. What had been mutually beneficial now felt like charity. My correspondence with her trailed off after a few more letters... It must have felt like rejection to her. I'm a bastard.

But I feel much better now. Confession and imagining people worse off than yourself often does the trick.

I was feeling bummed out from my moribund museum visit, so I decided to go see a movie. Kill Bill.

I liked it just fine, but... Why did Tarantino feel compelled to make his English-speaking actors foist such bad Japanese on the rest of us? Everyone in the theater erupted in laughter whenever Uma Thurman or Lucy Liu spoke Japanese. And I even had a hard time understanding what the non-Japanese actors were saying in a few places, because the Japanese dialogue is, of course, not subtitled here. I understood the Japanese actors just fine...

Weird. What's with all of the movies coming out recently that feature Japan but are very much made for Americans? (Lost in Translation, Kill Bill, The Last Samurai.) I know Tom Cruise is going to suck ass trying to speak Japanese. And I know Japanese people will love the movie anyway...

I think the prize for worst Japanese dialogue ever by a non-Japanese actor still goes to Sean Connery, though. His work in Rising Sun and You Only Live Twice should be required viewing for any actor who is considering taking a role with Japanese dialogue. Although, strangely enough, Connery's Japanese was worse in Rising Sun than in You Only Live Twice, even though the former came 26 years later. What force of nature caused his Japanese to get worse over time?

Couldn't sleep last night. Stayed up until 2AM reading, which meant I didn't get up this morning until almost noon.

But I did that weird weekend thing, this habit of mine I've been noticing. On weekend mornings, I am filled with some unspeakable dread, some strange feeling of loneliness and isolation that makes me bolt out of the dorm with no particular direction in mind. At these times, I have only the shameful sense that I SHOULD have a place to go or a person to see.

But I usually find something. Last time, it was the Onsen in Azabu-Juuban. This time, it was the Setagaya Literary Museum, which had an Abe Kobo Exhibition running. Abe Kobo is one of my favorite Japanese authors. He is often compared to Kafka, but only in the most superficial sense: they both create protagonists who are ridiculously isolated and must resort to minute analytical steps to resolve their problems, though this usually only makes things worse. Kafka's prose actually bears little similarity to Abe's, however. At any rate, I relate strongly to those types of characters.

There wasn't much in the exhibition to get very excited about. His handwritten manuscripts and first editions are not so old that their display is such a wondrous thing. But I did like his photographs and media projects. He was such a weird guy. He was totally obsessed with photography, and later in life, listening devices, computers, synthesizers, and other hobby-niche technology.

Abe is one of those authors whose writings strengthen my convictions that all we say and do can not express us fully, that the emissions and thrusts of our actions and words into the universe will inevitably be received by another as artifact, not as essence. We cannot communicate our true feelings, not only because of the limitations of human senses, but also because of the limitations created by the separate consciousness of our audience.

And so, the perfection of artifice is just a craft into which we pour our industries, hoping for the impossible. I really do believe that. It's the one thing that may make me seem like a fairly dark person to others (if they ever found out). On the whole, I like to think that I am lighthearted, emotive, and caring. But that's probably just me hoping for the impossible also.

I guess Abe Kobo isn't the best person to read or talk about when you're feeling isolated...

No post yesterday. Too tired, I suppose. I had a long seminar during the day, and I went to a night lecture about branding. I just didn't have any good blogness in me.

But there's something I've been thinking about that I may be ready to write about now. It's all of the Tokyo expats I've met who say that Tokyo is not 'The Real Japan.' I heard this a few times, and I just couldn't imagine what they meant. It seemed real enough to me. But then a few people began to articulate the feeling.

Quite a few said that the real Japan was the one with temples and shrines, and they often referred to Kyoto. One of these was an architect, so I suppose he had an excuse. But this seemed like a rather poor way to sum up the essence of Japan.

Another person gave me a slightly more satisfactory version of this idea. He said that everywhere in Japan except for Tokyo has some definable local character, something that makes it placeable in the continuum of Japanese culture, and very often unique. I guess part of that is true. The dialect of Tokyo is supposedly the true 'standard' Japanese, the one used by newscasters. And the local character touted in Tokyo, the "shitamachi" or "edokko," vibe is pretty thin. Tokyo doesn't stand out from the standard much. But you might also say that is because Tokyo IS the standard. Most of the people in Tokyo are from somewhere else, and when here, they merely try to conform to a bland, centrist, ideal of standard "Tokyoness."

So to hear these expats say that Tokyo was not the real Japan was confusing, and maybe a little disturbing. What is it, then?

For me, Tokyo (or Osaka, or any LARGE city in Japan) is the only part of Japan I feel like I DON'T know pretty well. I've lived in small towns for years. I've been part of a community. I've spent time in towns of less than 3,000 where everyone knew my name, where I was the only non-Japanese person in a 15km radius. What I didn't know about was the way of life in the sprawling, impersonal metropolises filled with people from all countries. Tokyo was like the missing piece for me.

I can accept, on some level, that Tokyo is a bit bland when one considers the amazing diversity of language and culture in the rest of Japan. But there seems to be a logical disconnect here. If Tokyo represents the bland center from which the rest of the areas in Japan diverge, then why can't one just as easily say that Tokyo is the 'Only Real Japan'? I think some haughty Tokyoites would agree with this implicitly, given their reluctance to leave the city, and the sometimes nasty and deprecating attitudes they show towards people who live in other places in Japan. Making fun of people's accents and provincial attitudes is the sport of Tokyoites in many ways. It comes out a lot at drinking parties and on TV shows, from what I've seen.

So these Tokyo expats must be referring to something else, right? What is it? Well, perhaps Tokyo just hasn't met their expectations.

In fact, when I think of it now, I can at least understand the expressions of envy and awe that I hear from those expats in Japan who've only ever lived in Tokyo when they find out that I've lived for four years in rural Japan. I think that they long for the idea that they might be part of a small, tight-knit Japanese community in a lush, green, mountain valley with a river running through it, and rice fields on all sides. And I had all of that when I lived in Shimane!

I would say that this is a really common vision for people who study Japan. Studying the language and culture becomes a game where the prize is total acceptance. It's basically some lurid James Clavell 'Shogun' fantasy come to life. It's kind of ridiculous, but I should be careful. I felt that way once, too. I even resented other foreigners when I saw them in my small town. I would think things like, "Who the hell are you?! These are MY Japanese people! They love ME!" I didn't think those things verbatim, of course, that was just the pre-verbal rush of emotion that I am now putting into words...

But do I feel that way now? No, of course not. Tokyo is great for disabusing one of the notion that he might be the only person studying Japanese, the only person who 'gets it,' and is fully accepted.

In Tokyo, you really have to share Japan with the rest of the world. So the longing I see in the foreigners here for the real Japan that lies outside of Tokyo, then, is the result of their frustrated dream. The dream that Japan belongs only to them.

And what can I say to that?

Oh, and I think I may have found a topic for my research paper this year: U.S./Japan Comparative Study on Patentability of Haplotyping Inventions. It's an interesting area of debatable biotech patentability that hasn't really been written about much yet. There's more than enough divergence on the issue internationally for me to do a good U.S./Japan cross study. Too bad my other idea has already been done to death, but whatever.

Woo!

And I may have found a Japanese co-author, as well, the patent attorney friend mentioned in the post immediately below. Let's see if we can work something out...

I went to a lecture on technology transfer given by someone from the University of Wisconsin today. Quite good.

But the real craziness happened afterwards when a Japanese patent attorney, who came to the event and who I had met previously, offered to show me his firm's office. "Alright," I said, thinking it would be a fun little jaunt. IT WAS A JOB INTERVIEW!!

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I could use the work. We need the money. And I still have time to work despite classes and research. But the whole thing was...just...so...GRUELING!

It was all in Japanese, of course. I interviewed with several partners for a short while each, did a short test translation (aced it), sat and talked with some ancient guy who was Of Counsel for about an hour (he even talked about WWII, the old coot!), and then a named partner came in and just fired mean questions at me for ten minutes, seemed satisfied, and left.

I had no idea I was going to be subjected to all that. I hadn't even made a firm statement that I wanted to work there! It was like some kind of weird reverse psychology used to pick someone up in a bar that you've never met: You walk up to them and say, "So what makes you think you're good enough to go out with me?" Then they actually have to form a persuasive answer! I had never seen anything like that. Freakshow deluxe, people.

Well, now I'm just knackered. I'm going to have to be careful to anticipate situations like that in the future.

Thank god I was wearing a suit today...

I went out with a friend of a friend last night, a journalist in Tokyo. He put a very journalistic spin on all of my ideas for fun little sociology/anthropology experiments this year. I was surprised I never considered approaching my little projects from that perspective. But the more I talk about the things I want to do this year, the more people suggest I should write about these experiences.

Talking with him also helped me rank my 'projects' in order of feasibility. In order from most to least, they go something like this:

1. Visit Sanya, the Tokyo slum. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Listen to peoples' stories.
2. Visit the Fuji Jukai, the dense, supposedly haunted forest where many Japanese people go to commit suicide. Spend the night there and freak myself out royally. Record my impressions.
3. Find an introduction to some of the exclusive bars in Shinjuku-2-chome, the 'gay quarter' of Tokyo. Record some of the drag queens' life stories.
4. Make a friend among the homeless 'tent people' in Yoyogi or Ueno park. Record their stories. Also, could I find a homeless American in a Tokyo park? It's worth a shot.
5. Somehow get a ride-along on a loudspeaker propaganda bus with Japanese right-wing nationalists. Figure out how their organization is structured, record anecdotes and life stories.

These are all extra-curricular activities, but I've got a year. And let's face it, I've been to temples and shrines and museums. I'm sort of done with that for right now. I want to know what's going on in real Japan...

My first class in 'Biotech Patents' last night went well. I was a little disappointed to realize that the law content was a bit too basic for me. It is a graduate-level class, but the students are mostly science and engineering students. Also, the teacher has a Ph.D. in Biotechnology, but no degree in law, despite the fact that he is in the Intellectual Property department. Even the biotech content was too basic for me. I only have a B.S. in Molecular Biology, but many of the students in the class were in Physics or some field totally unrelated to Life Sciences, so I guess the Prof. had to slow it down a bit.

At least it's good for my Japanese. I was happy to learn that I could not only follow the lecture, but I could also anticipate those pedagogical moments where he would leave a knowledge gap so that he could form a question later... Maybe that comes from the four years or so of teaching I've done? Who knows.

I ended up speaking a bit in class, and was often asked questions about points of U.S. law. I'm going to have to be careful not to overdo it, though. I don't want to be that one person in class who won't shut up. I wonder (with good reason) if I was that person in UW law classes... I definitely want to be careful about that here--I imagine the threshold for 'talking a lot' is much lower, if you know what I mean.

Sounds like the title to a punk song, but it's just what I thought of when I saw a certain movie last night, Kyouki no Sakura. It was about a bunch of nationalist thugs who bounce around Shibuya, beating people up for dealing drugs or being impolite or talking too loudly in restaurants. Ostensibly, we are supposed to believe that they want to preserve the 'soul' of Japan from the corruption of Western culture. At one point, the main character even says that he doesn't eat beef, because it is a practice imported from Europe. That didn't seem to stop him from swilling Heineken or listening to hip-hop, however.

I did like the parts where he struggled with his own identity, trying to determine if he was a revolutionary, an activist, or just an ideologue. It reminded me of 'The Believer' in that sense, only this movie wasn't quite as good. I didn't like the part where they decided to beat someone up just for being a transvestite, even if they did find out later she was dealing drugs.

The whole thing was just meant to be a stylistic action movie, but still, I rented it because I wanted to know about nationalists and right-wingers in Japan. It was hardly reliable as documentary, but it was fine as a flick.

My October stipend is in! No more tunamayo for me! But for those of you who still want more tunamayo information, check the website here.

And I got a wire transfer today, also...

But I have learned the value of money again, so to speak. People often say that, in terms of spending power, 10,000 yen feels like U.S. 40 bucks. That sounded like too little to me, but I think I'm starting to agree. I thought I had plenty of money when I got here, but maybe I was remembering what it was like to spend money in rural Japan, where I didn't have to pay rent, I had everything I needed, and I ate cheap-ass school lunches most days. Tokyo is a different animal altogether.

And on the way to and from main campus to pick up my stipend, I did all my reading for the class tonight. Shukudai nante hecchara sa!

My head hurts. I hate these stupid job applications. I want to just hop on a train and go to the beach. Somewhere nice like Kamakura. It's so beautiful outside right now. My weekends have been consistently rainy, and my weekdays consistently sunny. I hate you, God.

But I have my first class tonight, the Biotech Patents one.

And I may not be so skint anymore if that bank transfer came through. Maybe I'll go check after lunch...

Things might be looking up after all. I'm glad. I wasn't sure I could actually eat tunamayo all week without lasting gastrointestinal or psychological damage...

Did feck-all today. Sat around reading and such.

All of my good ideas for how to have fun ended up requiring money.

So I just started thinking of how to make sure I can still eat until my stipend comes in.

The answer? An amazing product I was aware of but still haven't tried all these years in Japan: tunamayo. That's right! Tuna and mayonnaise mixed up in one squirt bottle. For some reason, it's cheaper than buying tuna and mayo separately. Suspicious, eh?

Well, as it turns out, the stuff's not half bad on white bread. It tastes just like the tuna sandwiches from Japanese convenience stores. Which got me thinking, they must have one huge squirt bottle of tunamayo in a secret factory somewhere that squirts little dollops of this stuff all day on whitebread triangles with the crusts cut off. I almost laughed out loud trying to imagine a bunch of Japanese factory workers in tunamayo-smeared overalls panting and clinging to the sides of the huge squirt bottle, as they heave and chant in unison: Wasshoi! Tunamayo! Wasshoi! *SPLORT* ...a sandwich is born.

I got a cell phone yesterday. It's blue! It has a camera and e-mail capability. It can also download songs and movie clips, which I guess makes it second generation. And that was the absolute cheapest one around.

The third generation phones are already out here in Japan and selling quite well. They are wireless broadband, which means they can be used as full videophones. Pretty amazing, really. But they're a little expensive still, at least for me.

I also, quite unexpectedly, got the use of a bicycle for the year. It's also blue! The Research Center has a couple, and they said I could use one while I was in Tokyo. That makes getting around quite easy for me. I can bike to Shibuya and Harajuku in no time. I'd like to see how much farther than that I can go. I have really revised my distance perception in Tokyo. I used to think things were so far away because I was always taking the train. Now I realize I can walk three train stops easily, and bike five with no problem.

But my big day out on the bike in Harajuku turned rainy. I did see some clumps of shanty-towns in Yoyogi park while I was there. I think they can be found in just about any large park in Tokyo now. I still think a lot about the homeless in Tokyo. Why don't I think about homelessness this much in the U.S.? I guess the problem there just seems less solvable somehow...

The more I think about it, the more I want to visit Sanya, the major Tokyo slum. I understand that Maki and Kenta's mom volunteers at a soup kitchen there. Kenta said she would probably take me if I asked to go with her sometime. I think I just might. Maybe when I have dinner at Kenta's, I'll try to bring it up.

But tonight, since it's rainy and I don't have much money, I just rented a couple of Korean films and I'm watching them in my room. Ever since I saw "My Sassy Girl" and "JSA," I've had a real thing for Korean Cinema. There are some really good films coming out of there right now. I love discovering something new, something culture-specific and fresh that doesn't just mine the shallow inspirations of Hollywood dreck. Korea is a good place to look for that at the moment.

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening in Kichijoji and Mitaka at the end of the Inokashira line from my dorm. First I went to the Ghibli Museum (Ghibli is the animation studio of Miyazaki Hayao, creator of films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke) in Mitaka, then I met up with Kenta (Maki's brother) and his friend Mikio. The three of us went out to an Izakaya (a Japanese bar/grill/pub) and just ate and drank and chatted for a few hours before I caught the last local back to my dorm. Kenta and Mikio are good guys, and I had a nice time. I'd definitely be happy to hang with them again.

I didn't know whether we would be speaking in Japanese or English, but, as it turns out, the key to hanging out with them is that you have to speak BOTH. Almost all of our conversation addressed issues of being bicultural, bilingual, or biracial. We represented an interesting spectrum of bilingualism. All of us have spent a significant amount of time in both the U.S. and Japan, but we each fall in a different place according to comfort-culture, identity, and how others perceive us. It was a very interesting conversation. Code-switching is always fun to talk about.

And the Ghibli Museum was all systems go. It was quite fun, although a little crowded when I went. The building itself is ornate and complex, but with an overlay of warmth and surface-level simplicity, rather like Miyazaki's movies. It's the kind of place you could find increasing levels of detail and wonder if you looked closely enough, or you could just be content with the comfort of the place as a whole. The viewer/participant has the freedom to choose their own level of engagement. That's a very attractive design philosophy, whether applied to architecture, film (I mean those films with layers of meaning that can safely be ignored), or games... I dig it. It's all about navigation and self-determination. I wish more art was that way.

As you might expect, the visitors with the most navigation options are children. The building is designed with both child- and adult-sized passageways and stair cases. Adults probably only get about 80% of the experience of the place. Likewise, there are some exhibits that deal with technical/artistic features of animation that may go over children's heads, even though the utmost effort is made to preserve animation as a thing of wonder rather than a cold science.

To get 100% of the experience of this place, then, one would have to be a midget with the heart of a child and the mind of an adult.

What am I here to do? Research. What am I researching? Not entirely sure yet. Something to do with U.S./Japanese patent law and the patentability of genetic material.

What else am I here to do? Get a job. How do I do that? Send in applications, ask for recommendations. have I done that yet? No.

Need. to. get. on. the. fucking. ball. How do I do that? Scheduling! Budget my time and set personal milestones.

Time Budget: Mornings will be spent on job search and applications. Afternoons will be spent on research.

Milestones: 1) Two applications for jobs per week, and make 'em STERLING. 2) Read 2-3 articles and 2-3 cases per day if in English, one per day if in Japanese, taking notes, and adding them to my outline. 3) Outline must be finished and presentable in ONE MONTH. 4) Must have draft ready and reviewed by no less than three professors at the two-month mark. 5) At the three month mark, must submit paper for publication to a reviewed journal.

If all milestones are met, then nights and weekends are free. If not, plow on, plow on.

Why this sudden burst of drive? Well, I've been here a little over a week, and the "getting settled" activities are starting to slow down. Time to engage.

Plus, last night I helped a Chinese student with his personal statement for an application to the doctoral program at the MIT Media Lab. Yeah, the really disgustingly famous one. Well, I kept telling him the same thing over and over again: "Visualize yourself there...What is the culture of MIT...What makes it better than Stanford...Now show them that you know the difference and that you are perfect for MIT...Make them SEE it...Make it IMPOSSIBLE for them to deny that perfect vision of the future you plant in their heads..."

After we were done, I started to wonder why I had no clear vision at the moment about my research or job search activities. Why wasn't I following my own advice? It seemed so clear when I was telling him what to do.

Isn't that always the way? At any rate, I'm glad I helped him. It really helped me snap things into focus.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

That was my first quake for this trip in Japan. Apparently it was centered in Chiba prefecture, but we definitely felt it here in Tokyo. The Mainichi Daily is saying that it was a 5 on the Richter scale, and on the Japanese scale, which goes up to 7, it was a 4. Woo!

Tokyo is way overdue for the big one. Maybe I should buy some more bottled water...

I now have a research student ID, which means I can now get a cell phone with a half-price discount. It's all about the paperwork here...

But on my way to pick up that disproportionately meaningful trifle of documentation, I finally found the specialty law bookstores around the periphery of the main campus of the University of Tokyo! They were amazing, dingy little places stacked ceiling-high with sometimes ancient texts and usually only a narrow passage between the stacks. The guy running the store at the second place I went was like Yoda: old, wizened, and bent. RAWK!! I was so excited. The Japanese Law books section of the University of Washington School of Law Library is impressive, but this was even more so. I realized then, as if I didn't know before, that I am an unabashed Japanese law nerd. I couldn't afford anything, of course, but I made a mental list of a few patent books to pick up when I have money again.

Yeah, did I mention I'm pretty much skint right now? I paid rent for this month, and took out most of the rest of the money in my account for food and such. Only 1000 yen left in there, but I think my October disbursement is sometime next week. It's okay. I can afford meals at the cafeteria until then, but probably nothing more lavish than that. I didn't realize how quickly it would go when I was out there buying towels and lamps and stuff....

So which makes me feel more like a foreign research student: this ID card or being on a really tight budget? Being on a tight budget, of course. It's kind of fun, actually.

What's with the rain? It's getting colder, too.

Nothing much to report here, except that the most common word Japanese people use to describe me, or rather the things I like in Japan, is "shibui." "Shibui" can mean, depending on usage, a number of things, from "cool" in the sense of "a cool leather jacket," all the way to "bitter," in the sense of "a bitter cup of tea."

As applied to me, however, I realize that it has an unexpected connotation. It is the polite way for Japanese people to express surprise at my interest in weird, neglected, old-fashioned Japanese stuff. It came out several times today, once when I told people I went to the small natural onsen in Tokyo, and again when I told them the lamp I was looking for this weekend was an Andon light of the kind used on tatami floors in old Japanese houses to read by at night as you lie on your futon.

I'm fine with that reaction. It's not a bad one at all.

On another topic, I must be losing weight, because the first week I was here, I lost a notch off my belt. Then today, I lost another one. Must be all the walking and light meals. It would take a while for me to waste away to nothing, however...

That's how this day started and ended. I got up to the melodious beeping of an electrical system test in the dorm. Urgh.

Just to get out of there, I hopped out of bed, slapped on some clothes and took the subway to Azabu Juuban Onsen, one of the few public baths in Tokyo that is actually fed by a natural hot spring. It was a small and sketchy place, probably visited mostly by locals. I lathered up, rinsed off, and had a good soak. The water was a dark, murky brown, apparently from the mineral content, and the water was just right at 45 degrees Celsius. I stayed in until I got a little heat dizzy, as I usually do, and rinsed off again.

The whole time, there was this funny guy with a blue mohawk doing naked calisthenics and checking himself out in the mirror. Hey, whatever.

Going to public baths in Japan has a ritualistic order to it. People are often so transformed by the event that they need to just drink a cup of tea and lie on a tatami mat for an hour to recover. That's what I should have done. Getting in those baths really elevates your body temperature, and you may continue to sweat for a good 30 minutes after you leave the bath. But without thinking, I decided to just start my day. Bad move. Within ten minutes, my T-Shirt was fairly damp with sweat, even though I was totally clean. Live and learn.

I followed a friend's tip that I could find nice Japanese paper-shaded lamps in Asakusa. When I got there, I realized he must have been thinking of those gaudy red paper hanging lanterns sold to tourists. What the hell? I may dress cheap and tacky, but I still like nice stuff.

So I saved the trip by popping into the nearest dept. store and ordering a nice lamp for my room. Going to have it delivered and everything. But when I got back to my station by the dorm, there had been such a sudden deluge of rain that the station was hemmed in on all sides by a ten-foot wide moat of water above my ankles. Urgh.

I waded through and returned to the dorm, realizing I had spent most of the day wet...

I finally broke down and went to a movie theater. I wanted to see Kitano Takeshi's take on the old blind-swordsman series, Zatoichi. I have to say, well done.

I was skeptical at first that he could fill the shoes of the one actor who'd played the part for so many years. Shintaro Katsu, who died of cancer in 1997, was made for the role. I had hoped Takeshi, known for thumbing his nose at the industry, would treat the franchise with some respect. In the end, Takeshi's Zatoichi is more lighthearted and playful than the originals, but definitely true to their spirit. (You might wonder why the hell there are those few inexplicable "Stomp!"-like dance numbers, but when the swordfighting with lots of arterial spray comes back, you know you're in the right place.)

One thing I hadn't expected, however, was that the movie would have English subtitles. That was the first time I have ever seen a movie in Japan with English subtitles. Can anyone explain this to me? And it was only Zatoichi. There were other Japanese movies there without subtitles. Go figure. Anyway, I was secretly happy--with a tinge of guilt--that it was subtitled. Those samurai flicks tend to have dialogue that is near incomprehensible at times, because everyone is using such guttural, rough Japanese.

Good one. Maybe I'll see Kill Bill next when it opens in 2 weeks...

Last night started strange and just got stranger. There was a welcome party at the dorm for international students at 6pm, which was mostly crazy undergrads stuffing their faces like animals, though I did finally get to meet a few reasonable English speakers. I went out with said R.E.S.'s to a bar in Shibuya that seemed to specialize in British Invasion Vinyl and kept the music at a steady stream. We had a few beers there, and then our numbers dwindled again as some went home, and the rest decided to go to one of the opening parties for Tokyo Designers Block.

Now, before I left to come here, Josh in Seattle told me that I should try to go to some of the "cutting-edge" parties thrown by artists and design people in Tokyo. I remember telling him I wasn't cool enough to be invited... Well, there I was. It was a party put on by Klein Dytham architecture and the people at SuperDeluxe. But, to my disappointment, it was really, really boring. Maybe if I had been ten years younger, then the people, and the music, and the drinking, and the not-so-cutting-edge-at-all stageshow would have been more interesting.

It was essentially a large gallery space in Roppongi Hills packed with foreigners, mostly European, I think. There was loud house music playing, and there was a catwalk on which two Japanese girls in bathrobes sauntered out, danced a bit, then took showers behind plastic sheets while backlit with red lights so you could see the outline of naughty bits. I hope that description doesn't make it sound like too much fun, because the whole thing was incredibly dull.

It was just a bunch of design hipsters making the scene at a party. There was no interesting design to be seen, and even the architecture students from Montreal and Chile that I was with admitted it was just a lame piss-up with pretentious surroundings.

So I grabbed a cab home with Guillaume and Jean-Olivier. Thus ends my career in "cutting-edge" design parties.

My phone works now. When I got in last night, I had messages from Alli and my mom. Then Alli called me this morning and I finally got to talk to her in my own room.

I can't tell you how good that feels.

There are a few things that really let you feel settled in a place, and this last week has reminded me what they are:

1. Having keys and a bank account
2. Being reachable to the outside world from your current location
3. Knowing where you can sleep, eat, bathe, and go to the bathroom without lots of searching
4. Having at least one local phone number you can call if something goes wrong

Without any of the above, it is impossible to feel anything but...transient.

Speaking of which, I have been seeing more shirtless, wild-haired, wandering loner homeless men in Tokyo urban centers than I did on the last few visits. I wonder about them a lot. I mean, Japan has such amazing social services compared to the U.S. I wonder how they fell through the cracks. (And I generally have no doubt that they did. The only other possibility is that they chose this existence through disgust with the world at large or through something like insanity.) Are they the victims of institutional racism? Are they just resistant to any help that may be offered? I don't know.

They are markedly different from the cleaner, more organized, and less conspicuous people who live under blue tarps in the shanty towns of various parks like Ueno and Yoyogi around town. I will try asking someone. I love seeing the uncomfortable look on the faces of genteel, ordinary Japanese folk when pressed about an embarrassing topic like homelessness or institutional racism.

Not that they couldn't turn around and do the same to me...

It's (probably) true. Yahoo told me so.

So now what? I don't necessarily have to refine my philosophical or theological views, because none of them were predicated on the idea that the universe was endless. But I'm curious... What happens at the end? Is there just no more matter? Or is there an end even to space? If there is an end to space, what happens when you try to go beyond it? If it is only the end of matter, how do we know that there is not more matter some great distance beyond the last bits we have detected?

I could really use a universe FAQ if anyone knows of a good one.

I leave the country for less than a week, and Arnold Schwarzenegger becomes governor of California. Last time I went to live in Japan for a while, George W. Bush became president....

Maybe I should just stay home from now on...

Would have to be the one Kaneshiro-san and I had today. I told him how I was always really nervous about what to do with my hands on crowded trains. Why? Well, in Japan, there are people who actively seek out opportunities to molest women on crowded trains because most Japanese women won't say anything out of sheer embarrassment or helplessness. But Japanese women are fighting back these days by yelling "Chikan!" (which means "Pervert!") and trying to restrain the guy until authorities can arrest him.

So basically, I don't want to accidentally rub some girl the wrong way, so I've been holding my hands above my head whenever I can on the really crowded trains. Which makes me feel stupid, and probably looks pretty goofy, too. When I told Kaneshiro-san this, he laughed and said (loosely translated), "yeah, but if some girl yells it anyway, just run like hell." I gave him a puzzled look, and said that running would surely look like an admission of guilt. And he replied, "yeah, but haul ass anyway, because they don't care what you say. They'll book you, and that'll be the end of your scholarship. BUT THEY WON'T CHASE YOU OUTSIDE OF THE STATION..."

Now forgive me if you haven't seen the Dukes of Hazzard, but weren't the Duke boys always running despite the fact that they were, "never meanin' no harm"? And didn't they always find refuge in whatever Hazzard hollow lay just outside the jurisdiction of Boss Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane? That just cracks me up. I meant to ask him if he'd ever had to run from a molestation scene in guilt or innocence, but I was laughing so hard, I choked on my seaweed...Damn.

Anyway, it's not like I'd get too far. I stand out like a sasquatch in a mostly non-sasquatch country.

Woo-yeah, baby! We are cooking with steam again. It turns out that the main campus law classes don't even really correspond with my interests. But the classes taught here at the research center are on topic, easier to register for, and easier to get to! Screw main campus! RCAST all the way!

I am now all set to take two courses: a comparative international patent course by my advising professor, and a biotechnology patent course taught by a professor who is just upstairs from my desk at the research center. And get this: I went to talk to the Biotech Patent Professor, and HE GAVE ME THE TEXTBOOK FOR FREE!

Take a look at the cover:


It was only 3700 yen, but still, that kind of thing just doesn't happen in law schools in the U.S. I mean, I show up after classes have already begun, I say "uh, hey, can I take your class?" and he gives me a freebie! A-freakin'-mazing. He wrote the book himself and published it here last March. I guess he had a few extra copies lying around. I feel so stoked I'm going to go grab a beer somewhere.

This is what my dorm looks like from the outside:



When you first get there, the rooms look like this:



Only this picture doesn't fully convey the musty smell or the shouts of Bangladeshi engineering students.

Big ups to Rich for teaching me how to embed images in my posts.

No I won't. Hell no. Not even if classes are starting this week and they won't let me register. Not even if they say I won't be able to receive grades for coursework. Not even if people at the Law Department on the main campus of the University of Tokyo are cold, cold, stiffs.

No. I won't lose the good buzz of my first week here. Not even if I feel at odds with things at times. Like the faces of people who look terrified of the prospect that they might have to speak English to me. Like the already monotonous parade of plastic trays at various school cafeterias. Like the way I can slowly create an empty space on the subway because people won't sit next to me, but they won't get up just because I sat down next to them.

The highs are high, and the lows are medium. I can't complain.

All this time I thought my phone didn't work, and it turns out that I had simply left out one digit.

Maybe I'll start to get some calls now...

E-mail me if you haven't received the correct number. If you know me, then you will already have my e-mail address.

If you want to call me, then it's probably best to try my 7-8 AM or my 6-8 PM. If you want to know what time it is in Tokyo, click here.

If you want to know how to call Japan, click here.

Call me!

Wow. I spent all day with a couple of research fellows translating/writing a paper with them. I felt very much appreciated by the end of it, and they said they would give me a nice acknowledgement. That's always a good thing.

I am such an absolute sucker for that kind of attention. I'm just happy to be hanging out and working with everyone. I know this is all very honeymoon phase, but I am loving it.

And they've been so encouraging! I'm told classes start next week and I can still register for them. My advising prof. has a comparative patent law class that I'm sure to take, then I don't know what else... The other research fellows also assured me that my other two goals of publishing and working in a firm here were well within reach. Amazing.

And I still can't figure out if all of those compliments on my Japanese aren't just extreme exaggerations... They might be... I always fall for that one... Modesty really does suit me better. Time to let all of the air out of my big head and float gently back to earth. But still--what a day...

I have to remind myself that it's only my second day in the research center.

Well, the people from the center took me out for sushi and beer. Whee! They seem nice. More when I sober up a little...

So, I finally took off my 'tard hat and learned how to FTP to my student web page so you guys can look at pictures here. So far I've only got pictures of my Research Center, RCAST. As you can see, I've also learned how to use links in this blog. I'll try not to go crazy with it.

Pay special attention to a few pics of note, including this mysterious object found in the lobby of the research center where I will be based. Also, I got there before anyone else did this morning, so I did the normal thing--I climbed out on the roof and looked around. I ended up with a fairly clear view of Shinjuku.

Well, now that I'm so damn good at it, I'll try to get more of these up when I can.

Went to the research center today and met a few people. Most of them were busy or out of the office, it seemed. Things will probably get started slowly, and I imagine I will need to be very disciplined to get stuff done this year. But that's about the only downside of having a laid-back, hands-off environment like this one appears to be...

I do hope I can find a few friends there. I took it upon myself today just to assure poor Ms. Doi the secretary that I was perfectly satisfied with all of the arrangements that had been made for me. The dear little lady seemed so apologetic that she hadn't found couple housing for Alli and me. I only met a few more folks besides her, so more later.

I have to admit that I have a preconceived notion about Tokyo: I expect the strange and disgusting secrets of the city to well up behind the well-placed facade of busy streets and urban design. Perhaps it's just from reading Kobo Abe and Murakami Haruki.

But so far, I have only found these 2 small moments of metropolitan darkness--

1. At the nearest station, an old woman who was squatting behind a trash can completely hidden from sight stood up, walked over to a vending machine, purchased a drink, and returned to her hiding spot to consume it. How long had she been there before she decided she was thirsty? How long would she stay after finishing the drink? Was she homeless, crazy, or just shy?

2. A pile of human feces and urine puddle on the sidewalk in front of a catholic church. Was it a protest of the intrusion of a foreign faith? Was it just the random droppings of the homeless or deranged? Or did it come from a very, very large dog with an inconsiderate or absent owner?

Oh, and I guess a close runner-up would be when I saw the regular students' dorms at the University of Tokyo--they made me immediately regret any complaints I may have made about the place I'm staying. It was straight out of Silent Hill...very, very scary. Stained concrete walls, overgrown with weeds, rusting scrap metal lying about in piles, and every once in a while a sallow-faced student with dark circles under their eyes skulks past. Eeek!

Everything else is not bad at all. Although I have learned that I hate hate hate Shibuya. The crowds drive me insane and everything there is overpriced and useless. Where do you go to regain your sanity when you live around here?

Still don't have my luggage, even though JAL sounded pretty confident when they said it would be here last night. You can only turn your underwear and T-Shirt inside out so many times before that trick just stops working for you altogether...

Still, I can't complain much. My dorm room is spiffy clean now, thanks to my efforts yesterday to carpet bomb the AC with "My Pet" anti-microbial spray. It worked quite nicely.

I also went to Shibuya yesterday for a few amenities, and I ended up spending way too much on relatively simple items. Like towels. I bought two for about 4,000 yen each, which seemed like a lot to me. But they said "SUPER-ABSORBENT," so what could I do? Well, as it turns out, they are in fact the best cyborg towels in the universe. In fact, they are so super-drying that they kind of cling to wet areas, only to fall loose again when that area is dry. It's kind of...creepy.

Come to think of it, maybe I'll just shop at the 100-yen store for non-cyborg amenities from now on.

I found the Research Center where I will spend the more productive hours of this year. It was in a very high-tech funky block of buildings. They all had cast concrete and shiny metal exteriors and contained things like Super-Beam Laboratories, wind tunnels, artificial organ labs, and Nanotechnology Laboratories. I was fairly impressed. I plan to snoop around when I get the chance. Though, now that I think of it, I have seen a few nanotech labs before, and as you might expect, there is really nothing to look at. The buildings were all closed today, and I didn't have an access card. Rather like trying to get into Shin-Ra, it was...

At any rate, I am excited. I am surrounded by what look like excellent research facilities.

I am here in Tokyo now. I was bumped up to business class, but karma decided my bags should stay in San Francisco. Ah, well. I'll see them soon enough.

The Komaba International student house is very dorm-like, very undergraduate. I'll be fine though. I'm airing the room out now, thank you.

I managed to sleep until 6 AM! Good for me. It's just about time to go forage for random stuff like towels and shampoo...

Am I happy to be back in Japan? I think so. I just still can't quite wrap my head (or heart) around being away from Alli for a year...