On Returning
My experience has been that you can never go home again. Indeed it was good to have it salient in my time in Genova, that this was it. This was the defining time I would spend in Genova and all further visits would be just that, a visit only to try and recapture my time there. My memories.
That hasn't been tested yet, but I've returned to Japan probably 4 or 5 times now. I used to try and go every 3 years at least but it's been 6. In no small part owing to me switching it up to Italy. Tomorrow morning as of writing, I leave. It's been a good trip, though I'm ready to leave. So in some ways returning is just more leaving... kind of like an office worker looking forward to the weekend on a Wednesday even though the workdays remaining to them are exactly as long to be endured as the weekend they are looking forward to.
But I don't know, it's much nicer than that. A kind of Aloha situation, were returning is a good chance to appreciate that you have this time together. The scarcity creates value.
This country is particular though. There are many people I love here, I haven't been able to catch up with all of them, I'm not sure I love this country though.
I'm not sure.
I'm really not sure. And the point is worthy of emphasizing. Japan is a bit of a sausage factory, not to be confused with sausage fest (that'd be China) in so far as you don't want to see how the sausages are made. It's easy for me to get down on Japan, when you have people you care about here, it hits you in the face those cultural downsides - like they can't take annual leave to spend time with you, and apologists might leap to point out that the Japanese do indeed have annual leave, sick leave, parental leave etc. They don't take it, and in so far as emotions are what moves us, the don't becomes a can't...
And I can't go into it. If it boggles your mind that a person with legal leave entitlements doesn't find it socially acceptable to take a couple of days off to make the most of an old friend visiting, Miyamoto Masao's work Straightjacket Society and Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons are far more thoughtful, qualified and intelligent commentaries than I could ever offer, and certainly can't improve upon. But that's the sausage factory tour of Japan, and many people love these sausages.
So when I look around Japan and admire for example, that there's a place in this country for women to be unapologetically feminine, a place for perverts to be unabashed perverts, menial labor is still dignified, there is community engagement, a place for ritual, tremendous generosity, the ability to economize on space etc. I genuinely love all these things about Japan, but I can't say whether the price the Japanese pay is worth the benefits reaped.
Tremendous energy is exerted to make the Japanese, Japanese. But it's kind of a confusing mirage that has real effects. Get to know the Japanese and they quickly cease to be cute animals for white people to gawk at, but real people with the whole range of nuanced emotions. The range of personalities is ostensibly as diverse as anything psychometric offered by the west could identify, yet everyone is fastidiously tidy for example, where in Australia this would be exclusive to pedantic fussy types.
Japan functions on global participation, and I'm concerned, intuitively on vaste swathes of the population being bent out of shape. The thing is though...
I'm not overwhelmed by any argument that would suggest Australian's are happier. The impression I left Australia with, is that Australians are some of the world's most miserable people. Possibly have evolved into a people who enjoy being angry and outraged all the time.
Thus is it better to be neat and tidy or lazy? These are meaningless.
I feel it far more useful to compare a country like Italy to Japan, than Australia. Australia is too rich to be a good place to live.
Yet I really don't know enough about Italy to draw any firm conclusions. It's more just that Italy's dysfunction comes across as warm, and Japan's dysfunction comes across as cold.
Italian's to me, but I have only the surface impression. Care about the right things: Love, family, food, work worth doing.
Japan cares too much about what the neighbors think of them. And again, Japan is at a disadvantage because my relationship goes back, literally more than half my life-time with a lot of the people here. Where I spend a good deal of time with them, and then they'll almost universally say something, let something slip that I find incredibly sad. Almost universally in the privacy of a car, with no eye contact something will slip.
I assume we all have some sad secret we could share, and again, my relationships in Italy are too shallow for a comparison, and those in Australia too deep. It probably comes down to fit, and few of us would ever choose to be someone other than ourselves - and I am not a good fit for Japan.
Because despite believing that we can never go home again, if there's a place where the speed of change is slow, it's Japan. Again one thing I do admire about Japan is that they don't get rid of shit that works well for the sake of an appearance of progress - at least in the transport sector. The trains haven't changed in the entire 18 or so years I've been coming here. They don't look 'modern' like Melbourne's new trains do, but they are immaculate (again at huge cost to individual self-expression) and they are both cheaper and faster than anything Australia will ever achieve. And that's not talking about the bullet trains. I'm a cheapskate, I go local or if decadent - local express.
For the most part it's been easy to go find a place that sold a particular snack I liked to eat, 10 years ago. The place will still be there. Indeed it's easy to believe that Japan hasn't gone anywhere since the bubble burst in 1990. There are some aspects of Japan I could believe haven't gone anywhere since 1950, 1920 even. One of the paradoxes I'm going to walk away with is that the same friends I have that hate Trump and everything he stands for, love Japan. And Japan is nothing if not MAGA, exactly what Trump is selling to his voters (though thankfully has not the competence to deliver).
In Japan, although there are trans people here and you see them around. Men are men and women are women. Foreigners like me, who notice exceptions rather than norms, when picturing 'the Japanese' probably picture some Harajuku eccentric teenager with rainbow hair and makeup trying to be Kawaii. But the norm of Japan is a middle aged man in shirt and slacks anonymously making his way about town from office to lunch spot and back.
Capital of bullshit jobs, most Japanese are hard at work hardly working, women either full blown domestic slaves or slaves in training. This visit I am convinced that Japan really does conform to the trailer for that 'Hypernormalization' documentary that I, and I suspect most people never got around to watching - that their job is fake and their real job is to shop.
I love that an old man with a baton and a uniform can usher pedestrians across a completely safe street attached to an office mall and have dignity and pride in the work he does. Also that there's something gentle about a society that doesn't eradicate all these jobs that need not exist.
Except on the other hand, it's 40 degrees, and this person is 60+ years old in a full police-esque uniform doing something of no real value except as an elaborate pretense to distribute some money to someone in return for suffering.
See how confusing it is. There's all this good and bad, an elaborate welfare state where 'work for the dole' is kind of completely literal. Yet it's evident these old guys take pride in their work, and I suspect would spiral downwards if told simply to 'take it easy'.
Japan is going nowhere through sheer momentum, it's too late for these old people they've been shaped to identify solely with doing productive work. But do you train the young kids to disrespect them?
I don't know, young people are rebelling but it seems to be a reaction, like a medical condition rather than a change of direction into the 21st century for the country.
Most confusing of all is that as of this writing, the nations most popular comic 'One Piece' itself an epic adventure story about a kid who wants to be the Pirate King because the Pirate Kind has the most freedom in the world - this is the most readily identifiable and popular fictitious character in Japan - has embarked on a story arc in the fictitious country of Wano a Japan facsimile, where the corrupt central government has bled the provinces dry and polluted the country side to the point of being near uninhabitable.
Japan's pop culture is saturated with such satire and commentary. Ghibli did it, virtually all the popular manga espouse western values like individualism and self-determination (as well as, admittedly an obsession with blood lines and family ties, it's hard to find a Japanese comic that in some way doesn't revolve around a hereditary blood line, which isn't very Western) and every Japanese person I've talked to about the issues of Japan seem well informed and aware, though they'll range in response from very enthusiastic to discuss them, to embarrassed, to highly defensive.
I must conclude from returning, that Japan is very different to Australia. Australia has (quite recently) become a very anxious and afraid country. It is not on average, producing healthy individuals. Even those doing their best to live a healthy lifestyle, don't seem capable of actually enjoying it. The wounds and vulnerabilities of Australian's are very transparent to my eye, such that in most cases I feel I could reach across and stick my finger right into someone's wound and make them cry out in pain, these wounds have to be navigated in conversations to promote healing though, a strenuous task of which I grew quite tired.
Japan I don't know, there's so much repression, I'm not sure who I'm talking to ever. Almost as if everyone's turned to the side to protect their wounds. There's a kind of natural stoicism that keeps the Japanese keeping on, and maybe that's the best that can be hoped for, I hope not though. Because it's hard to tell stoicism from masochism.
It serves though, to preserve such that Japan of all the places I've been and visited, does for the most part stay the same. A pop-group everyone's supposed to care about will change, the latest snack fad will have changed... but not much else. It's both nice, but something I'm glad I am personally unburdened with. Then again...
I am travelling, and while in my mind it is for professional and personal development, necessary to prevent me from going backwards, when I look at other Australian's travels all I see is running away. So maybe it would be good, like the Japanese to actually stay close to home? Stay connected to family and actually persist in a job?
Constant change can be as much avoiding dealing with problems as dogged refusal to change.
I've returned and leave Japan feeling more ambigous towards the nation (not it's people) than before. A successful trip.
Indeed, if I find I can indeed return home again after my time in Mexico to Melbourne, then I won't have achieved what I set out to do, which is find a way to be uncomfortable in Melbourne again. Too much comfort is unbecoming. I'm trying not to be a masochist though.
That hasn't been tested yet, but I've returned to Japan probably 4 or 5 times now. I used to try and go every 3 years at least but it's been 6. In no small part owing to me switching it up to Italy. Tomorrow morning as of writing, I leave. It's been a good trip, though I'm ready to leave. So in some ways returning is just more leaving... kind of like an office worker looking forward to the weekend on a Wednesday even though the workdays remaining to them are exactly as long to be endured as the weekend they are looking forward to.
But I don't know, it's much nicer than that. A kind of Aloha situation, were returning is a good chance to appreciate that you have this time together. The scarcity creates value.
This country is particular though. There are many people I love here, I haven't been able to catch up with all of them, I'm not sure I love this country though.
I'm not sure.
I'm really not sure. And the point is worthy of emphasizing. Japan is a bit of a sausage factory, not to be confused with sausage fest (that'd be China) in so far as you don't want to see how the sausages are made. It's easy for me to get down on Japan, when you have people you care about here, it hits you in the face those cultural downsides - like they can't take annual leave to spend time with you, and apologists might leap to point out that the Japanese do indeed have annual leave, sick leave, parental leave etc. They don't take it, and in so far as emotions are what moves us, the don't becomes a can't...
And I can't go into it. If it boggles your mind that a person with legal leave entitlements doesn't find it socially acceptable to take a couple of days off to make the most of an old friend visiting, Miyamoto Masao's work Straightjacket Society and Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons are far more thoughtful, qualified and intelligent commentaries than I could ever offer, and certainly can't improve upon. But that's the sausage factory tour of Japan, and many people love these sausages.
So when I look around Japan and admire for example, that there's a place in this country for women to be unapologetically feminine, a place for perverts to be unabashed perverts, menial labor is still dignified, there is community engagement, a place for ritual, tremendous generosity, the ability to economize on space etc. I genuinely love all these things about Japan, but I can't say whether the price the Japanese pay is worth the benefits reaped.
Tremendous energy is exerted to make the Japanese, Japanese. But it's kind of a confusing mirage that has real effects. Get to know the Japanese and they quickly cease to be cute animals for white people to gawk at, but real people with the whole range of nuanced emotions. The range of personalities is ostensibly as diverse as anything psychometric offered by the west could identify, yet everyone is fastidiously tidy for example, where in Australia this would be exclusive to pedantic fussy types.
Japan functions on global participation, and I'm concerned, intuitively on vaste swathes of the population being bent out of shape. The thing is though...
I'm not overwhelmed by any argument that would suggest Australian's are happier. The impression I left Australia with, is that Australians are some of the world's most miserable people. Possibly have evolved into a people who enjoy being angry and outraged all the time.
Thus is it better to be neat and tidy or lazy? These are meaningless.
I feel it far more useful to compare a country like Italy to Japan, than Australia. Australia is too rich to be a good place to live.
Yet I really don't know enough about Italy to draw any firm conclusions. It's more just that Italy's dysfunction comes across as warm, and Japan's dysfunction comes across as cold.
Italian's to me, but I have only the surface impression. Care about the right things: Love, family, food, work worth doing.
Japan cares too much about what the neighbors think of them. And again, Japan is at a disadvantage because my relationship goes back, literally more than half my life-time with a lot of the people here. Where I spend a good deal of time with them, and then they'll almost universally say something, let something slip that I find incredibly sad. Almost universally in the privacy of a car, with no eye contact something will slip.
I assume we all have some sad secret we could share, and again, my relationships in Italy are too shallow for a comparison, and those in Australia too deep. It probably comes down to fit, and few of us would ever choose to be someone other than ourselves - and I am not a good fit for Japan.
Because despite believing that we can never go home again, if there's a place where the speed of change is slow, it's Japan. Again one thing I do admire about Japan is that they don't get rid of shit that works well for the sake of an appearance of progress - at least in the transport sector. The trains haven't changed in the entire 18 or so years I've been coming here. They don't look 'modern' like Melbourne's new trains do, but they are immaculate (again at huge cost to individual self-expression) and they are both cheaper and faster than anything Australia will ever achieve. And that's not talking about the bullet trains. I'm a cheapskate, I go local or if decadent - local express.
For the most part it's been easy to go find a place that sold a particular snack I liked to eat, 10 years ago. The place will still be there. Indeed it's easy to believe that Japan hasn't gone anywhere since the bubble burst in 1990. There are some aspects of Japan I could believe haven't gone anywhere since 1950, 1920 even. One of the paradoxes I'm going to walk away with is that the same friends I have that hate Trump and everything he stands for, love Japan. And Japan is nothing if not MAGA, exactly what Trump is selling to his voters (though thankfully has not the competence to deliver).
In Japan, although there are trans people here and you see them around. Men are men and women are women. Foreigners like me, who notice exceptions rather than norms, when picturing 'the Japanese' probably picture some Harajuku eccentric teenager with rainbow hair and makeup trying to be Kawaii. But the norm of Japan is a middle aged man in shirt and slacks anonymously making his way about town from office to lunch spot and back.
Capital of bullshit jobs, most Japanese are hard at work hardly working, women either full blown domestic slaves or slaves in training. This visit I am convinced that Japan really does conform to the trailer for that 'Hypernormalization' documentary that I, and I suspect most people never got around to watching - that their job is fake and their real job is to shop.
I love that an old man with a baton and a uniform can usher pedestrians across a completely safe street attached to an office mall and have dignity and pride in the work he does. Also that there's something gentle about a society that doesn't eradicate all these jobs that need not exist.
Except on the other hand, it's 40 degrees, and this person is 60+ years old in a full police-esque uniform doing something of no real value except as an elaborate pretense to distribute some money to someone in return for suffering.
See how confusing it is. There's all this good and bad, an elaborate welfare state where 'work for the dole' is kind of completely literal. Yet it's evident these old guys take pride in their work, and I suspect would spiral downwards if told simply to 'take it easy'.
Japan is going nowhere through sheer momentum, it's too late for these old people they've been shaped to identify solely with doing productive work. But do you train the young kids to disrespect them?
I don't know, young people are rebelling but it seems to be a reaction, like a medical condition rather than a change of direction into the 21st century for the country.
Most confusing of all is that as of this writing, the nations most popular comic 'One Piece' itself an epic adventure story about a kid who wants to be the Pirate King because the Pirate Kind has the most freedom in the world - this is the most readily identifiable and popular fictitious character in Japan - has embarked on a story arc in the fictitious country of Wano a Japan facsimile, where the corrupt central government has bled the provinces dry and polluted the country side to the point of being near uninhabitable.
Japan's pop culture is saturated with such satire and commentary. Ghibli did it, virtually all the popular manga espouse western values like individualism and self-determination (as well as, admittedly an obsession with blood lines and family ties, it's hard to find a Japanese comic that in some way doesn't revolve around a hereditary blood line, which isn't very Western) and every Japanese person I've talked to about the issues of Japan seem well informed and aware, though they'll range in response from very enthusiastic to discuss them, to embarrassed, to highly defensive.
I must conclude from returning, that Japan is very different to Australia. Australia has (quite recently) become a very anxious and afraid country. It is not on average, producing healthy individuals. Even those doing their best to live a healthy lifestyle, don't seem capable of actually enjoying it. The wounds and vulnerabilities of Australian's are very transparent to my eye, such that in most cases I feel I could reach across and stick my finger right into someone's wound and make them cry out in pain, these wounds have to be navigated in conversations to promote healing though, a strenuous task of which I grew quite tired.
Japan I don't know, there's so much repression, I'm not sure who I'm talking to ever. Almost as if everyone's turned to the side to protect their wounds. There's a kind of natural stoicism that keeps the Japanese keeping on, and maybe that's the best that can be hoped for, I hope not though. Because it's hard to tell stoicism from masochism.
It serves though, to preserve such that Japan of all the places I've been and visited, does for the most part stay the same. A pop-group everyone's supposed to care about will change, the latest snack fad will have changed... but not much else. It's both nice, but something I'm glad I am personally unburdened with. Then again...
I am travelling, and while in my mind it is for professional and personal development, necessary to prevent me from going backwards, when I look at other Australian's travels all I see is running away. So maybe it would be good, like the Japanese to actually stay close to home? Stay connected to family and actually persist in a job?
Constant change can be as much avoiding dealing with problems as dogged refusal to change.
I've returned and leave Japan feeling more ambigous towards the nation (not it's people) than before. A successful trip.
Indeed, if I find I can indeed return home again after my time in Mexico to Melbourne, then I won't have achieved what I set out to do, which is find a way to be uncomfortable in Melbourne again. Too much comfort is unbecoming. I'm trying not to be a masochist though.
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