Summer 1940

Mom's Memories of Summer:

When your grandfather worked for Locket, he had a week off every summer in mid-August. A week or so before the trip, my parents would take everything out of storage, open it all up and air it out. They’d put a big mattress in the back of the truck, which had 2’ high walls, and drive up to Sequoia National Forest or even as far as Yosemite. The year Margaret was born (‘37), we went to Big Bear Lake.

The drive north was always an adventure because I-5 hadn’t been built yet. Going up the steep and winding road over the Grapevine was hard on the cars which would vapor lock and stall.

Once at the campsite, we would back the truck in, and tie up some sheets for privacy. Mom and Dad slept on the mattress. We also had a canvas-like teepee with cots that we kids—your uncle Jim and I—would sleep on. In later years, Winford, who was 13 years older than me, lived by himself, attending Fullerton Junior College, so he couldn’t come with us. He would end up working for North American Aviation until the war started.

At the campsite, they hung glass lamps on the trees for lighting. I remember the lamps came from China.

In the morning, Dad would make a fire and brew a pot of coffee. Mom would cook baked beans and fry up some bacon which always smelled so good. Eggs would then be deep fried in bacon fat. It tasted great but couldn’t have been too easy on our arteries.

After Pearl Harbor was attacked and America entered the war, gas was rationed. To get it, you had to drive all the way to Orange which was five miles away. Still, Dad was able to get a bit more gas than most people because he worked on a farm. He’d save up the ration tickets to have enough gas for our summer trip. In 1942, we didn’t have enough gas to get all the way up into the mountains and ended up staying in the King’s River area in King’s Canyon.

My grandfather at work on the citrus farm

3 Lil' Injuns

Well, there goes my career in politics.

This was taken in 1971 or 1972 at, I believe, Teddy’s birthday. That’s his home, I think.

Our birthdays were about a week and a half apart from each other—eleven days to be exact, my favorite number—which helped cement the feeling that we were "the most bestest buddies for ever and ever and nothing could ever, ever come betw . . .” (record scratching) But then my family moved to Oregon . . . (sad trombone song).

A year or so after we had moved to I-be-gone, I visited Teddy in Santa Ana and spent the night at his house. Not having any pajamas on me at the time, I slept in my skivvies, which that day happened to be white "superman underwear". Well, Teddy and his older brother John just laughed and laughed and laughed. No one in So Cal, at least no kid with any sense of sense of dignity, would be caught dead in such ugly things. Hell, you're just begging for a wedgie.

Teddy and John were, of course, wearing boxers, which is what I also wore before we moved to Woebegone, where I discovered that those rugged mountain men were wore tight-fitting Fruit of the Loom skivvies under their denim coveralls when they cut down trees.

Homesick

Blame it on the dreary weather we’ve been having, but I’ve been as homesick as a recruit in boot camp lately. It’s tempting to blow my meager savings on a ticket back to the States, to see my friends and, yes, even my family.

I miss it all: lazy summer evenings at the zoo, sitting on freshly cut grass and listening to live music; sweaty nights on crowded dance floors in the smoke-filled dives of Old Town; slow Sunday mornings reading the Oregonian over huge American breakfasts; and Bohemian afternoons loafing in cafes in Northwest Portland, sipping demitasses of bitter espresso, the pinky raised.

And my mind must be poisoned by nostalgia, because I don’t think I’d even mind being dragged along to the Sunday morning Mass at St. Cecelia’s. I could check out how the gorgeous Dougherty girls have filled out in my absence, listen again to the nonsensical sermon of our stuttering and apoplectic Father O’Brien, and, afterwards over the doughnuts and coffee, just to get my father’s knickers in a twist tell him what a bunch of crap it all was.

I want to borrow a car and take an aimless drive into the countryside, following the road as far as it will take me and talk with the nutty, loquacious hicks I’m sure to find out there.

I want to drop in at Escape From New York Pizza, stuff my face with greasy slices of pepperoni and wash it all down with a bucket of Dr. Pepper. I’d love to satisfy that craving for the Satyricon gyros that has been with me these sixteen months, to lick the yoghurt sauce as it drips down my forearm. Oh, to be able to sit on a bench outside of the Santa Fe Taqueria and pig out on carne asada burritos stuffed with frijoles, red hot salsa and cilantro, and put the fire out with cans of Tecate.

I long to spend an evening in the Dublin Pub, packed to the Reilly with the Irish Diaspora, to rub elbows with the good Catholic girls and rub up against a not-so-good Protestant one . . . introduce her to “Paddy”:

“Got any Irish in ye?” I’ll say. “No? Would you like some?” (Slap!) “Is that a no?”

I want to belt out Irish folk songs, keeping the throat lubricated with pint after lovely pint of pitch-black Guinness, sing until the bouncer tells me to put a sock in it and gives me the boot.

But, more than anything, I want to stop playing the role of brooding loner that was thrust upon me when I stepped upon the Japanese stage. I yearn to have my friends’ arms around me, to be embraced again by that motley cohort of slackers I parted with when I came to Japan. I’m starving for the conversations we used to have, the conversations inspired by cheap bottles of pinot noir and pints of microbrew that would keep us up all night laughing until our sides hurt and the neighbors got sore, and they could fuck off for all we care, so would you like another drink? All the conversations I’ve had the past several months have left my gut half empty.

Letters from America don’t come as often as they used to, the phone calls have stopped altogether. I worry more and more that I’ve lived for so many months cloistered in this silent vigil, that I am beginning to lose my voice. I feel it in the awkward self-consciousness that overcomes me whenever I talk to someone for the first time, in a new reluctance to break the ice, in the creeping shyness that has its hands around my throat and chokes me where I once sang.

---

This is an excerpt from A Woman’s Nails. Click here for Chapter One

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available on Amazon's Kindle.

Band of Brothers

After watching the HBO series Band of Brothers half a dozen times over the years[1] I finally bought the book by historian Stephen E. Ambrose upon which the series was based. Although it has taken me about six months to get through it—hard to read with a young child in the house—I found Easy Company’s tale even more engrossing in print than it had been on TV. The odd thing about a book like this is that you almost feel sad that the war and the saga come to an end. You want to go on having adventures with the guys. (View the route Easy Company took here.)

Reading Band of Brothers, I was struck by a number of things that are worth mentioning.

One is how so many people volunteered to fight in the war. If I am not mistaken, all of the original members of Easy Company were volunteers. What's more, their story was one of constant shortages. When fighting in Bastogne, for instance, they had little ammunition, no winter clothing, very little food, and yet had to contend with a major counter offensive by the German Army. The shortages were not only endured by soldiers on the front, of course. Back on the home front, all sorts of things from sugar and butter to nylon and gasoline were rationed, limiting what people could buy even if, and this is important, they could afford to buy more, meaning everyone was, to some extent, feeling the effects of the war.

Contrast that with the situation today in the U.S., where in our two most recent wars the general population was never really called on to make sacrifices. Rather than reintroducing conscription which would not have been unimaginable considering America was involved in two wars,[2] members of the National Guard and reservists were instead sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Guardsmen who often joined up thinking they’d only have to put in one weekend a month, two weeks a year were now being mobilized for twenty-four months. During the height of the Iraq War, some 28% of troops were Guardsmen or reservists. (In the meantime, their homes were being foreclosed upon. Utterly shameful.) And, instead of, say, raising the tax on gasoline at the pump to help pay for the wars, Bush (What me worry?) pushed through a second round of tax cuts. Almost as unthinkable, the government continued to give a tax break to businesses which bought gas-guzzling SUVs, thanks to a tax loophole so big you could drive a Hummer through it. (And many did.) Were average Americans asked to sacrifice? No, they were told to “get down to Disney World in Florida”. Unbelievable.

The second thing that occurred to me is how little time had passed between the end of the war and my debut on this planet of ours. I was born in the mid 60s, a little over twenty years after the end of the war in Europe. I’ve been living in Japan for longer than that now and it seems like only yesterday when I first arrived. The war, I imagine, must have still been very fresh on the minds of those who had fought it. By the 1960s, many of the veterans would have been in their mid forties, my age at the time of writing this.. (Easy Company was made up of kids when they jumped from planes into Normandy.) They would have witnessed the U.S., which had once been a reluctant entrant into that most destructive and deadly of wars, become an enthusiastic dabbler in other nation’s affairs.[3] I wonder how they felt about that.

Although my father was only fifteen when the war came to an end†, two of my uncles on my mother's side did serve. One of them was only 14 or so when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, but the war would drag on long enough for him to become old enough (17)  to enlist. Imagine that. His brother who was nine years his senior was drafted and joined the US Army Air Forces. 

Born in the 1960s, I grew up watching a hell of a lot of TV dramas and movies about World War II. On the boob tube there was Hogan's Heroes, one of my favorites, Combat, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and so on. Hollywood produced classics, such as The Dirty Dozen, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Kelly's Heroes, The Great Escape, A Bridge Too Far, The Bridge over River Kwai, The Longest Day, Patton, From Here to Eternity. . . And these are just the ones that I can name off the top of my head. I even played with plastic toy soldiers that were modeled after WWII soldiers and a replica machine gun. So, even though I had been born two decades after the war's end, it still felt close, far closer than what was happening in Vietnam, oddly enough.

The proximity in time of the war hit home again when as a teenager in the mid 1980s I lived in Germany. It was not unusual at the time to find buildings that showed evidence of damage due to the fighting or to see men in their fifties and sixties who were missing limbs. The grandfather of one of the families I lived with in had been a tank driver on the Eastern front and had lost an eye. Some six to eight million Germans would die in the war, that's 8 to 10 percent of the country's 1939 population.[4]There were Germans, believe it or not, who were still bitter at what the Americans had done to them. I recall one old woman giving me an earful as she recounted the “cruelty” of the Americans forcing her to bury the dead at a concentration camp. (No, I am not making this up.) Looking at the map, the closest concentration camp to Göttingen, the city where I lived the longest, was the notorious Buchenwald camp fifty miles to the southeast. At the time, it was located in the DDR, or East Germany.

Despite the hardships, many Americans endured before and during World War II, the so-called “Greatest Generation” lived through some of America’s darkest and brightest days. Sons of the Great Depression they saw a country, which had been down on its luck, muster the strength to stand up to and eventually defeat two of the most awesome military powers the world had known. They would return victors, start families, and enjoy a prosperity that expanded the middle class, making the American Dream readily available to so many people. They would go on to retire in the mid 1980s when Reagan declared that it was morning again in America. They sacrificed much, but gained much in return. I wish the same could be said today.

---

[1] The series was released on DVD in Japan in 2002. I am currently rewatching it for the nth time.

[2] I have long been an advocate of conscription without deferments (period) as a way to prevent war. It’s very easy to say you “support the troops” or back this military action or that if you don’t actually have skin in the game, so to speak. If it were your son who was going to be shipped off to a foreign country to fight in a war that is based on questionable grounds, you might be inclined to demand more evidence before jumping on the bandwagon. The sons and daughters of America’s congressmen should also be forced to serve in conflict zones at times of war.

[3] First Indochina War (1950-1954); Korean War (1950-1953); Second Indochina War (1953-1975); Laotian Civil War (1953-1975); 1958 Lebanon Crisis (July 15 – October 25); Bay of Pigs (1961); Cuban Missile Crisis (1961); Cambodian Civil War (1970-1975); Invasion of Dominican Republic (1965-1966). And that’s just before I was born. Sheesh!

Interestingly, there was a lull of about ten years between the end of WWII and America’s intervention in East Asian/SE Asian conflicts. There was another lull of about ten years from the end of hostilities in Vietnam until Reagan’s Grenada and other follies. Is this merely a coincidence or is roughly ten years the amount of time needed for the American public to start forgetting about the most recent war?

†He would, however, join the Navy reserves upon graduation from high school at the age of 17. He drafted and entered the Marines (don't know why) in his second year at Boston College. He would spend the next decade or so in the Marines, including one year in Japan and a stint in Korea during the war there. An injury to his hand the day before being shipped out probably prevented him from having to do any fighting in Korea and may have saved his life. Dumb luck.

My paternal grandfather ran away from home, or so the story goes, and joined the Army at the age of sixteen or so by using someone else's ID. He served in Europe during WWI. I recall seeing a picture of him once standing next to one of those massive cannons that were moved around by rail. Now that I think about it, there were quite a few vets on both sides of my family. None of my brothers, brothers-in-law nor I ever served, but a number of my nephews have. One even graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis a few years back and is currently training to be a fighter pilot. He's one very driven young man. 

[4] 30% of Germany’s troops were killed in the War as opposed to only 2.5% of American troops, which seems awfully low by comparison. I think this points to the large number of Americans, some 16.6 million people who were mobilized for the war effort. If my calculation is correct that comes to 11.8% of the population in 1945, or roughly 20% of the male population.

Within 2.54cm of My Life

Several years ago, the White House issued a response to a petition on its “We the People” site which had called for the adoption of the metric system. The petition had garnered almost fifty thousand "signatures". Although many proponents of the meters and liters were disappointed with the response, I found it to be rather convincing.

Patrick D. Gallagher, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, wrote:

“Right after the Civil War, President Andrew Johnson signed legislation that made it ‘lawful throughout the United States of America to employ the weights and measures of the metric system in all contracts, dealings or court proceedings.’ In 1875, the United States was one of the original 17 nations to sign the Treaty of the Metre. Since the 1890s, U.S. customary units (the mile, pound, teaspoon, etc.) have all been defined in terms of their metric equivalents.

“So contrary to what many people may think, the U.S. uses the metric system now to define all basic units used in commerce and trade. At the same time, if the metric system and U.S. customary system are languages of measurement, then the United States is truly a bilingual nation.

“We measure distance in miles, but fiber optic cable diameter in millimeters. We weigh deli products in pounds, but medicine in milligrams. We buy gasoline by the gallon, but soda comes in liter-size bottles. We parcel property in acres, but remote sensing satellites map the Earth in square meters.”

The “bilingual” nature of the way we Americans measure things around ourselves hadn’t really dawned on me until I read this.

A bio/chem major in college, I have long known that the metric system with its ease of convertibility is a superior way to measure the world’s phenomena. A Calorie (1C) for instance is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. One kilogram of water is equivalent to the mass of one liter of water, which is also equal to the volume of a cube with sides ten centimeters in length. Try to make these calculations in the U.S. customary system and you’re bound to come up with the wrong answer.

Gallagher concluded, “In our voluntary system, it is the consumers who have the power to make this choice. So if you like, “speak” metric at home by setting your digital scales to kilograms and your thermometers to Celsius. Cook in metric with liters and grams and set your GPS to kilometers.

“We were thrilled to see this petition from ‘We the People’ succeed. Feedback like this from consumers shows everyone from policymakers to businesses how important having this choice is to Americans.

“So choose to live your life in metric if you want, and thank you for signing on.”

After reading this, I realized that while I had been living the metric system for over two decades, I wasn’t completely committed to it. My speech was still being corrupted by pounds and inches and gallons. 

So, from today on I will “speak” pure metric. On a clear day, I will I exclaim “You can see for multiples of 1.609 kilometers!” When a colleague puts in extra effort, I will thank him for “going the extra 1,609 meters.” I may even buy him 0.57 liters of beer to show my appreciation.

When I’m under intense pressure to perform, I may perspire what feels like increments of 3.785 liters and may still end up missing a target by 1.6 kilometers. Shylock will now demand 0.453 kilograms of Antonio’s flesh in Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”. And, when adamant, I shall not budge, not even 2.54 centimeters. And when I die, they may lay me 1.829 meters under.

TV Dinners

And speaking of green peas, I can't believe I ate this crap.

“When eating the Salisbury Steak, one must remember to use the proper fork.”

2 big, meaty pieces! “Whipped potatoes”, not that lumpy mashed crap your mother makes.

Oooh, "ocean fish"! That will surely satisfy the hearty appetite of this hungry man.

Thanks to Mr. Wiki, I learned today that Salisbury Steak used to be called “Hamburg Steak”.

Shall I kill myself before or after this "Turkey Dinner"?

A lot of living rooms in the 60s and 70s had this color scheme, which begs the question of which came first, the interior decorator or the Swanson Dinner?

Where would I be today?

While we were in Portland in the summer of 2018, my wife asked me where I would be if I had never come to Japan two and a half decades ago. Boy, what a question.

“I dunno,” I answered after a moment’s silence. “I really don’t.”

But ruminating on that question for the next few days, I came to a number of conclusions.

For starters, in that alternate universe where I remained in the U.S., I would most likely weigh twice as much as I do now. (And so, would my wife, whoever she might be. And I would love her to pieces all the same and never eversuggest she go on a diet, because, heaven forbid, I wouldn’t want to “fat-shame” the love of my life.)

I’d probably have somewhat maladjusted, yet overly confident kids. Although there would a perceptible gap between their inflated self-esteem and actual abilities, Daddy would never be able to tell them that. Wouldn’t want to prick a hole in that optimistic bubble of theirs. “Self-esteem above all” could be another motto for America.

Japanese kids, I find, tend to be more modest (and perhaps realistic) when assessing their own capabilities; the parents more demanding. Ask a Japanese girl if she can play the piano and she might with some coaxing say, “Yes, a little” only to go on and perform Chopin’s “Nocturne in C Minor”. An American boy will boast that he was pretty good at the piano and then bang out “Chopsticks”.

Those alternate universe children of mine would probably be in college by now (rather than in elementary school) and I would be worrying myself sick (not to mention bald) as I struggled to pay the extortionate price of tuition there.

I’d have a mortgage double what I currently pay in rent. On the plus side, though, I would have: a large yard maintained by Hispanic immigrants, rather than a berandā cluttered with drying laundry and recycle bins; a gorgeous kitchen (that seldom got used); and loads of storage space filled up with useless crap. I’d have a car—perhaps three—instead of a bicycle, and I would be driving everywhere instead of walking, cycling, or taking public transportation as I do now.

As a result of all that driving, I wouldn’t be nearly as fit and healthy. And speaking of health, I would be paying through the nose for mediocre healthcare insurance and be on my knees praying to my Catholic God that I never get sick and actually have to use that insurance.

Because of the running costs of being an American are much higher than those of living as an expat in Japan, that alternate universe doppelganger of mine would probably be one more of that hapless class of Yanks who are considered house-rich, but cash poor.

I would probably have a more relaxed work schedule, though. I would finish early enough to have dinner with my family in the evenings. Eating together as a family just doesn’t register as importantly here as it does in America. Weekends would as a rule be off. (I have always worked on Saturdays ever since coming to Japan, even when my head was screaming with a hangover.) On the other hand, I wouldn’t be able to take as many long vacations as I do now which I hope compensates for the back-breaking sixty-hour work weeks.

I guess I’d be tossing good money after bad in the Catholic Church’s offertory on Sunday mornings rather than pocket change into the saisen bako at my local shrine. My parallel universe kids would have been raised Catholic out of inertia more than any deep-seated feelings towards the religious tradition I was steeped in. Meanwhile, my flesh-and-blood sons’ views towards faith, if they have any at this stage in their lives, are more syncretic—a blending of Buddhism and Shintō with hints of Christianity (and Santa Claus-ism). How they will eventually be able to resolve these mutually contradictory beliefs in no god, eight million gods, and One Almighty, Omniscient Father in Heaven, is anyone’s guess. I really don’t care so long as they don’t end up boring me and others with their beliefs.

I suspect I would have continued writing no matter where I settled or what kind of career path I took, but I may have had more access to people in the business had I remained in the States than I do today like a literary castaway in Japan. What I would have ended up writing, however, is anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure, my writing would never have been influenced by Japanese aesthetics and literature.

I wouldn’t have become as keenly attuned to things like the changes in the seasons as I am today. And I’m not just talking about the flowers and foliage, but the insects and the noises they make, the winds and their names, and all the different rains, the seasonal delicacies such as the pungent smell of sanma (Pacific saury) being cooked on the grill and filling the house with oily smoke in autumn. I would not have learned that the year can be divided up into more than just four seasons. The East Asian lunisolar calendar has 24 points, with each divided into a further 3, giving 72 kō (候), or micro seasons, in a year. As I write this, we are experiencing the 49th micro season, Kōgan Kitaru, “The Geese Arrive”.

I would not have been exposed to Japanese literature, film and art, which has definitely influenced my sensibilities. Likewise, I would have never experienced teaching Japanese literature and culture to students from all over the globe at the university level. (How on earth did that happen?) It is through this study that I have learned more about Japanese history, culture, language, art, literature—you name it—than I could have ever imagined possible.

I wouldn’t have traveled throughout Japan and come to fall in love with some of her regions—Kyōto, yes, but also Kagoshima, Kamakura, and Okinawa. Oh, Okinawa! What would my life be like today without traditional Okinawan music or the local firewater, awamori, in it? Bland!

And speaking of saké, had I never come to Japan, I may not have ever been exposed to shōchū, a drink distilled from a wide variety of ingredients depending upon the region, from saké lees in Saga and sweet potatoes in Kagoshima, to barley in Ōita and sesame seeds in Fukuoka. In the alternate universe, I am drinking local microbrews and wine and thinking the world of it. Ignorance is bliss.

Had I never “immigrated” to Japan, I wouldn’t have traveled around Asia nearly as much or become as familiar with the region’s cultures and languages. For my friends back in the States, traveling to, say, Vietnam is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure that must be documented on Facebook and Instagram. For us in Fukuoka, though, it’s just a five-hour flight away. Shanghai is closer than Tōkyō for us; Seoul, less than an hour’s flight; and, Taipei and Hong Kong, about two to two and a half hours away. Europe is, of course, much farther, but no more remote than it was when I was living on the West Coast of the U.S.

Had I never come to Japan, I wouldn’t have a national holiday or local festival to look forward to every few weeks. In the past month alone, we had Music City Tenjin, a free outdoor music event downtown, the equinoctial week which happened to coincide with the moon-viewing festival Jūgoya, Oktoberfest—yes, complete with lederhosen and yodeling—Shinkōsai, a six-day long Shintō festival with lanterns held at Dazaifu Tenmangū shrine, another Shintō festival at Kushida Shrine called Hakata Okunchi, a number of light-up and lantern events in late October, and the 3-day long Kunchi festival in Karatsu City held around Culture Day on November 3rd. I could go on and on. I used to get so depressed when Christmas came to an end as there was very little but darkness separating that very festive time of year and Easter in America. Here in Japan, though, Christmas is followed by New Year’s which is just as merry, if not more, and lasts five days rather than only one. And right on the heels of o-Shōgatsu is Seijin no Hi, or Coming-of-Age-Day, when twenty-year-old women dressed up in elaborate kimono are a feast for the eyes. And that is followed by Setsubu, which is followed by . . . Well, you get the picture.

And though you don’t need to be patient when it comes to waiting for the next holiday or festival, thanks to my coming to Japan I have learned to be patient and courteous (I hope) towards others, never raising my voice or bursting out in anger. Do I ever get irritated? You bet! On a daily basis, no less. But, I have mastered the Art of Gaman and seldom let my feelings get the better of me anymore. People sometimes say I am a cold bastard, that emotion doesn’t register in my face anymore, and perhaps that’s true. I certainly don’t smile as much, or as naturally, as I did before. But, I would never explode in a fit of apoplexy over something so inconsequential as a parking space, either.

What else? Like many of those interviewed, I am more punctual than I imagine I ever could have been had I never moved to Japan. I am more detail-oriented. I’m more honest, too. If I found a cash-filled wallet on the street, I would take it to the nearest police box because that’s just what you do in Japan.

So, the short answer to my wife’s question is this: I wouldn’t be me had I never come to Japan. But more importantly than that, I wouldn’t have found my wife who I adore. I wouldn’t have had my two sons who fill me with so much love and pride, yet manage to run me into the ground all the same. I just wouldn’t be me.

Once Upon a Time in Portland

   I wander Northwest Portland and look at all the things I can’t afford—cars, Victorian houses, fashionable clothing, beer, girls, hope . . . I wander Northwest in search of someone who can sympathize.

   A friend of mine recently moved to Germany to begin working as an analyst for an English securities firm. He’ll be making $55,000 a year which sounds like a fortune to me, considering I’ve only got two dollars in my wallet and some change in my pocket for the bus home.

   I go to Brian’s apartment on NW. Irving. Or “Oiving” as the Boston native calls it. Brian is always good for a laugh, always listens and soothes if only because he knows what I am going through. I doubt he’ll be in this early in the afternoon, but I’d rather wait on his front porch than head home and face my parents and their questions, their disappointments, and their unwelcome advice on how to get a job.

   I walk up the rickety wooden steps. I fell down these steps a year ago when I was drunk and cracked my skull on the sidewalk. I sometimes wonder if I did permanent damage.

   To the immediate left of Brian’s place is a shabby halfway house for mental patients. The windows are covered with a filthy film of neglect. In each window hangs a different set of mismatched curtains from the Nixon era or soiled sheets draped across to conceal the depravity within. Though many of the patients seem content to sit on the porch day after day in a lithium-induced daze, there are others bursting with energy; one paces back and forth like a caged animal, another is prone to outbursts of profanity. We have come to call him Pally.

   I twist the aging ringer on Brian’s door.

   “Goddamn cock-sucking sons of bitches!” shouts Pally next door.

   I give the ringer another twist. The door has a large single diamond-shaped window in it that is cracked. The building is in an appalling state. Paint is chipped. The floors creak. The carpets are stained and funky.

   Across the street all the houses have been bought up and remodeled by not-so young anymore, but definitely upwardly mobile professionals. Before long, this side of the street will also be cleaned up and both Brian and his roommates, as well as Pally and the rest will be told to shove off.

   Brian appears at the top of a flight of stairs that rises just behind the door. He waves me up.

   “Yus! What’s up?” He says as I’m climbing the stairs, and then noticing that I’ve gotten my hair cut exclaims, “Yus! What happened to you?”

   I had been growing my hair out for over two years, but this morning went and had it all whacked off.

   “You look like a human being! Respectable, even. What’s with the suit? You gone Mormon on me, Yus? Cuz if you have, you leave NOW! None of that missionary crap in here.”

   “It’s worse than that, Brian,” I say as I plop down on a third-hand couch that came with the apartment. Dust billows up. “I had a job interview.”

   “What for, Yus? President? Yus for President, ninety-two! Yup, it’s Yus! How about that for a campaign slogan? ‘Yup, it’s Yus!’”

   The doctor is in. A smile cracks across my face. All you have to do is listen and laugh your cares away.

   Brian sits down on the floor next to the TV. “So? You had an interview?”

   “Yeah, with my exploratory committee. President of the U. S. of A. I’m running, goddamnit!”

   “Where?”

   “Small company,” I lie, too embarrassed to tell him the truth. “It’s downtown . . . Didn’t expect you to be home.”

   “Oy gevalt, Yus!” he exclaims, wiping his weary eyes with his thick, short fingers. “Uncle Milt was in a historically bad mood today.”

   Milton is my former boss on “The Hill”, the medical university and its related research facilities. It was on The Hill that Brian and I first met, experimenting with mice while we were still students. The two of us continued to work there after graduation despite Milt’s choleric disposition, which kept all of us research assistants constantly on edge.

   In many ways, I did enjoy my time in the lab, I even liked Milt on his good days. But it was exhausting watching out for the old man’s wild mood swings. Add to that the suspicion that my chosen career, Medicine, wasn’t for me, and well I felt I had no choice but to leave when my contract was up. Brian remains, though, working part-time. Until he can find a full-time teaching position, that is.

   “Yus, I was trying to do the experiments that you did, and failed, because Yus doesn’t take very good notes. See, I’m reading Yus’s wonder lab book: ‘Page forty-two. And the method for extracting the protein from the cell is as follows:’ I turn the page, page forty-three. And, it’s BLANK, Yus!!! You didn’t write down any notes, Yus. Let me tell ya, Uncle Milt was really happy about that one. Oy veh, he yells at me and he’s shaking and red in the face. He says, ‘Chemsz, did you have your head up your butt?’”

   Brian starts laughing and I can’t help but laugh too.

   “Yus, you know what I say? I says, ‘You’re right, Milt, as a matter of fact I did have my head up my butt. See, I was only following Yus’s brilliant notes right here on page forty-three. Yus, I’m tellin’ you, I’m sending your lab book to Stockholm. That’s Nobel Laureate material you did on The Hill.”

   We laugh hard and the darkness of that dim living room lifts as if the roof has been torn away from the rafters.

   “Yus, I sometimes feel I ought to be next door with old Pally. After today, I almost went there instead of home.”

   “Well, the way I’m going, me too, Brian.”

   Brian’s apartment is a mess as always. None of his roommates seem to care. The Escape from New York pizza box with a half-eaten peperoni pizza is still on the coffee table where I saw it three days ago. The grease has congealed, the cheese has grown hard. There are plastic cups with flat beer in them. The Oregonian is scattered in piles throughout the room. Finding today’s paper, I pick it up and open up the classified section.

   “By the way, Milt said if you want, he’d hire you back on, but only part-time, like me, Yus.”

   “Great, Brian, but what’s the catch?”

   “No catch,” he says, chuckling. “You only have to work just as much as the full-time staff, but earn less. See how that works? Uncle Milt, gets two people to yell at for the price of one.”

   Accountant, Accountant, Accountant, Accountant . . . 

   “Actually, Yus, you’re the only one who knew how to do all the paperwork on the hill. Now he’s got poor Anne doing it and of course she’s making all the same mistakes you used to make, but does Uncle Milt yell at her? Hell no . . .”

   Attendant . . . Appliance Salesman . . . Appliance Serviceman . . . Appliance Technician . . .

   “No, Yus, he yells at me. Me! What did I have to do with . . .”

   Barber, Barber, Barber, Barber . . . Bartender, Bartender . . . A friend of mine was laid off from Paramount Pictures and became a bartender. Good money, he said. Good tips and you can meet girls . . . Then again, his car was repossessed. Maybe the money’s not so good after all . . . 

   “Yus, you listenin’ t’me? Yus never listens to me. All he hears is blah, blah, blah, blah.”

   “Sorry,” I say, putting the paper down, but spread out on the pizza box so I can still see it. “Reading the classifieds has become an exercise in futility lately. At times, I just want to give up and say, Fuck it! You heard back from any schools?”

   “Nothing yet,” Brian says, lying down on the floor. “The subbing has been pretty irregular. Good money when it comes around, but it’s only September, so I’m stuck up on The Hill until then. Why don’t you come back? Not with Milty, of course, but in a different lab. It is a job.”

   “Thanks, Mom.”

Shh!! I'm recording!

How many of you out there remember holding a microphone up to the speaker and recording the radio onto a cassette tape? I do.

In 1983, cassettes tapes accounted for 47.8% of music sales; vinyl 44.6%. The jump in casette sales was a result of the debut of the Sony Walkman in the early '80s. Although CDs overtook cassettes in 1991, their sales peaked barely a decade later in 2003. Downloads overtook CDs in 2012.

In 2013, CDs accounted for 30.4% of all music sales. Downloads, meanwhile, accounted for 40% (singles, 22.4%; albums, 17.6%) Sales of ringtones peaked at 11% in 2008.

iTunes was released in January 2001; the iTunes Store in April 2003. The first iPhone was released in 2007.

When it comes to tech, I feel I was born at just the right time.

When I was young, we were riding rockets to the moon, exploring space. When I was in high school, the first personal computers were just starting to debut. In my first year of high school, I was typing reports on a clunky manual typewriter. Later, I was using an electric one that had all kinds of new-fangled gadgets like a correction tape. By my first year in college, the Mac was released, changing everything.

I experienced a range of cellphones and digital devices, such as “pocket bells”, simple digital cameras and electronic dictionaries, electronic notebooks, etc. Then Steve Jobs did a presentation of the first iPhone and a tech revolution followed that even the eggheads at Apple couldn’t have predicted.

Armstrong and Aldrin got from earth to the moon with only 4K of computing power. I now carry 64GB in my back pocket. Kids today probably can't imagine what it was like before computers and smartphones.

Home is where the washlet is

We’ve been back about a week now so I thought it would be interesting to jot down some impressions about “home”.

The first one is the idea of home. When people here ask me where I’m from, I’m often at a loss to say where. The last place I lived before coming to J-land was Portland. Having been transplanted there—kicking and screaming at the age of ten and forever pining for the sun, palm trees and beach—Portland never quite felt like home. At a party two weeks ago, a cousin told me firmly that I was raised in California. I guess I was. But where? I went to kindergarten and the first years of elementary school in Orange County, but summers were spent in sleepy Wrightwood in the “Samberdino” Mountains, weekends in Palm Springs. Later, I would go to uni in “Sandy Eggo”. After half my life—more!—spent in Japan, this country has become home and stepping off the plane I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief. 

In Japan, things are predictable, safe. And quiet. That was the first thing I noticed. It was also the first thing I noticed when when we left Japan at the departure gate in Haneda. The foreign ground staff yelled at the passengers. The kid gloves were torn off and thrown to the floor almost as if they were taunting the travelers. “Get in line! Passports! Boarding cards out!!! Group C get your asses in gear!”

We were late for our connecting flight to Fukuoka, so the JAL staff ran with us to the monorail with comp tickets and got us to the domestic departure counter fifteen minutes before our flight was to leave. Had we been stateside, our seats would have been given to someone else, our bags would have been sent to Timbuktu.

On the flight from Haneda to FUK, my son vomited in the aisle. When I noticed what had happened and went to the restroom to help, I found one of the veteran stewardesses was with my boy, cleaning him off. I doubt that would have happened on the flight to LAX.

Food. On our way home from the airport, we dropped in at a yakitori-ya, EVERYTHING was fantastic. I mentioned this before, but my socks were blown off. They may still be there at that yakitori-ya. And it only cost fifty bucks for five people. EVERYTHING I have eaten since I’ve been back has been phenomenal. The yakitori, yes, but also the keema curry, the Thai gapao rice at Gamrandi, the spicy curry at Tiki, the Sri Lankan curry at Tuna Paha, the tacos at El Borracho, even the rice balls from our neighborhood connivence store . . .

Service. I had some lenses put in the hipster frames I bought in Portland and the staff who checked my eyesight and filled my prescription were so damn professional. The same was true at the Softbank shop when I returned an old iPhone. No attitude, just stellar performances by shop clerks who think nothing of going above and beyond.

Cleanliness. I was constantly admonishing my sons to get off the floor, to not touch this or that, to stop putting their hands in their mouths after having touched something. I was quickly becoming a germaphobe. Back in Japan, though I stopped caring. Public restrooms here are cleaned several times a day. I think Disneyland tried to do a good job of cleaning up the restrooms, but they were no match for the ones here. One of my students from NYC said she didn’t mind putting her “whole butt on the toilet seat”. That cracked me up. (No buns intended.)

The girls. Slim, fashionable, pretty. I could go on and on. The skinny buck toothed girl at the reception desk at the public pool this morning was adorable. (The women in California, to be fair, were rather attractive.)

Public restrooms are not only very clean, but just about EVERYwhere.

As for the negatives, I found all my allergies returning when I was back in Fukuoka. My nose ran. Eczema behind the ears. Intense back pain. The vacation was OVER. I had to go back to work and think about money again. 

I don’t care for the stupid swim cap rule at pools here. Even men bald as eggs must wear swim caps because rules are rules. And the pools have too much damn chlorine in them. They are nice and warm, though. 

One reason it’s so quiet here is that people don’t talk to strangers much. They tend to keep to themselves. My Tokyo friends tell me this is a Fukuoka thing. I think so, too. Edo-ko are much friendlier than Kyushu-ites. That said, even people in Tokyo refrain from telling strangers on the bus their life stories.

Buildings here tend to be shabby and cheap-looking. Little is built to last anymore which is a shame. The Japanese used to have pretty good sense when they built in the past. Now function trumps everything.

Although we spent a lot (most?) of our time outdoors in the States, I never got sunburnt. A few hours at the beach here and I was red as a lobster. Beach sand here is drier and hotter than in California. You cannot walk on it in bare feet here, but Venice Beach was no problem at all.

Speaking of Venice Beach, there were trash cans every fifty yards or so. I wish Japan would bring back the trash can. So annoying having to carry a wad of garbage for miles and miles in search of some place to dump it. Perhaps Japan and America could do humanitarian airdrops. Japan could heli in high-tech washlets and America can deliver low-tech garbage cans.

I forgot to mention the fucking humidity. It’s been killing me. Let me tell ya, it was nice to have been spared it for four weeks. In the States, I didn’t sweat; didn’t stink. Here, I have to take a shower two or three times a day.

We are seriously considering going back next summer for another long stay, but there are things we need to bring with us if we do. Knives that cut or perhaps a stone to sharpen knives. Kitchen scissors. Saran Wrap, chopsticks and saibashi. Aji-tsuki shio kosho, chōmiryō, Japanese rice. 

Traffic Jam

We went from barreling down 18-lane freeways in Southern California at 120 kph to this. 

“‘Scuse me. Pardon me. Would you mind moving over a bit? And could you retract your side mirror? Thanks. I appreciate it.”

マイ・ファミリー

父のアラン二世 

サッダーム・フセイン似の父ちゃんの夢は俳優だったけれど、子供が多すぎたのであきらめ実業家になった。（中東の独裁者になれば良かったのに〜）お父さんが何を考えてこんなにたくさん子供を作ったのか、ぼくにはわからない。「父ちゃん、調子に乗るな！」を言うのはもう手遅れです。

母のローイス

百発百中で子供ができるお母さんは、まるで、よく当たりが出るパチンコ台みたい。次からつぎへと当たりが出るので、ほんとのパチンコ台だったら、すぐに取り替えられてしまうだろう。

何でもできるお母さんは車の免許はもちろん、看護婦の資格やパイロットのライセンスなど持ってる。（本当）パソコンも年のわりには自由に使えるから、週一Skypeで話してる*

お母さんはこの間79際になった。まだまだ元気です。来年の80歳の誕生日を向かって、スプライズパーティーを計画してる。

長女のマーガレット

マーガレットお姉さんはみんなにペギーと呼ばれてる。

（マーガレットという名前はどうやってペギーに進化したのかダーウインを参考してください）

副長女。実は、長女はキャシーでしたが、小さい頃に先天的な病気で亡くなったらしい。マーガレットは３回結婚して、３度目の正直！のはずだったのに、残念ながら、３回も離婚した。でもあきらめずに、次の旦那を探してる。２人目の旦那とバカ息子を２人生んだ。その一人は去年、パパになったので、ペギーはもうお婆ちゃんになっちゃった（ひえ～）。

次女のテレサ

マーガレットの双子の妹。テレサはできちゃった結婚してもう３０年たった。お母さんとテレサは同じ時期に妊娠していて、テレサの長男・ブライアンは、ぼくの一番下の妹・メーガンと同い年。（ひえ～！）息子が二人いて、次男も結婚し、４人も子供を持ってる。このお姉さんもグランドマザーだ！

【補足】ペギとテレサは子供のころ、この決まってるヘアスタイルをしていた。スタートレックに出てもおかしくないだろう。

三女のデボラ

ぼくが小さい頃、お母さんが２つ上のクレアの世話で忙しかったため、デボラ（愛称；デビー）がぼくの面倒を見てくれた。ぼくはデビーを「お母さん」と呼んでいたらしく、そのことに嫉妬した実母マムはそれ以来ぼくのことが気に入らなかった。つい最近までぼくとお母さんの関係は「冷たい」関係でしたが、いまは昔より打ち解けてきました。デビーとの関係は最高です。デビーはレバノンの首都ベイルートに住んでいて、子供が４人います。長女のブリジットは数年前日本に来てぼくと一緒に暮らしてた。長男のジョンは顔も性格もぼくに瓜二つ！とてもカッコよく、女性に大人気です。本当に。

四女のバーバラ

ぼくが小学校１年生のとき、他の生徒より読書が苦手で問題になった。今もあまり変わってないけど、集中力が乏しかったからだ。当時高校生だったバーバラ（愛称；バーブ）お姉さんは親に命令されて、毎日厳しく読書を教えてくれた。まるで、両親から与えられた彼女への罰のように、彼女は全然楽しくなさそうに教えてくれた。例えば、僕が文章を読んでいる最中ぼーっとすると、彼女に強く殴られた。ちょっとでも間違えたら「違う！」と僕の頭を叩く。

今、大人になって、上手に文章を読み書きできるようになったのは、よくバーブお姉さんのお陰と言われるけど、本当のことを言うと、自己防衛のためだ。今でも、読書はそんなに好きとは言えない。本屋さんに入ると、鼻水やくしゃみがすぐ出てくる。（…トラウマかな。）バーブは子供が４人もいる。みんな上手に読書ができるらしい。

長男のアラン三世

マキニス家の長男。お父さんとおじいさんと同じ名を付けられ、「アラン三世」というロシア帝国の皇帝のような立派な名前を持ってる。ぼくが若いとき、アラン三世はぼくのヒーローだった。スポーツも上手だったし、何より超頑固。反抗期のとき、アラン二世（父）にも絶対に負けず自分の主張を押し通した。アラン三世は、今では禿げた郵便屋さん。あれ？

【補足】朝鮮戦争の後、お父さんのアラン２世はショービズネスに手を出した。当時「アル＆バディー」の腹話術はとても人気だったが、ある鋭い客が叫んだ。「おい！あれはダミーじゃないよ！本物の子供だ！」

アルとバディーは必死にトマトや卵を避けながら舞台を降りることになった。

次男のジョージ

ジョージは双子の悪役の方を見事に演じた。中学生のとき、少年院みたいなところに入れられたが、今はしっかりしていて、会社のくそ真面目な社長になった。お金持ちだけど、ドケチです。奥さんと養子のフィオナちゃんと暮らしてる。

【補足】当時、２組の双子が生まれるのはめずらしく新聞にも載りました。「Twins Again !」という見出しで、双子のお姉さんが双子の弟を抱えている写真でした。

三男のジェリー

ジェラルド（愛称：ジェリー）は小さい頃、パンを焼くことやバービー人形と遊ぶことが好きで、みんなに「ジェリー・ザー・フェリー」（「ホモのジェリー」）と呼ばれてた。今では３回も女の人と結婚して、男兄弟のなかでは唯一子供がいる。安心、安心。

【補足】ぼくは子供の頃、ジョージとジェリーに激しくいじめられた。双子のにーちゃんたちは、プロレスのタッグチームのように交代で、ぼくを毎日ボコボコにした。ぼくは奇跡的に生き残った。この経験のお陰で、ぼくは小さい頃怖いものなしになった。今でもそのとき身に付けた生意気さは残ってます。

五女のマリア

５つ上のお姉さんのマリアにもいっぱいいじめられた。（はぁ〜、よくみんなにいじめられたなぁ。ため息）彼女は１９歳のとき、できちゃった結婚した。しかしその後マリアは一人目の旦那と別れ、ぼくより年下の男と再婚し、田舎に引っ越しして消防士になった。子供は２人いる。その子供は山と海のように性格が正反対で、娘はハワイ在住、息子はプロースノーボーダーです。

六女のクレア

僕が８歳のとき、クレアは肝炎で亡くなりました。生まれつきの障害があまりにも重かったので、言葉も話せなかった。今でも彼女のことを思い出すと涙が目にあふれてしまう。

四男のぼく

ハロー！可愛かったでしょ。上の写真はぼくが末っ子のときの家族写真。末っ子黄金時代は５年間もつづきましたが、ある日幼稚園から帰って来たとき、突然妹がうまれていた。お母さんが妊娠していたことさえ、ぜんぜんしらなかった。そんな感じでこの家族はさらに増えていった。ちなみに、午年のぼくはなぜ猿に似てるの？

七女のカースティン

マイクロソフトで働いて、今自分のコンサルティングやコーチング会社をやっているバリバリキャリアウーマン。まぁ、とにかく、運がいいです。いつもケチケチじゃなくてケラケラ笑っています。

８女のメーガン

んーーー、我が家の問題児の末っ子。頭は悪くないんだけどね。

Free-Range Kids

I was watching the US news earlier today, and there was a report on a "free-range parenting" law passed in Utah. The report mentioned Oregon as one of the states where kids under ten are not supposed to be left alone/unsupervised.

The law states: "163.545 Child neglect in the second degree. (1) A person having custody or control of a child under 10 years of age commits the crime of child neglect in the second degree if, with criminal negligence, the person leaves the child unattended in or at any place for such period of time as may be likely to endanger the health or welfare of such child."

Under a silly rule like that, we, and I'd say a lot of parents in Japan, would be found guilty of neglect. Our boys (5 and 7) routinely go out and play by themselves, as do many of their friends from school. My main concern is whether they look both ways before crossing streets. 

When did Americans get so nervous? When I was a kid, my mother was more than happy to get rid of me for hours at at time. Be home before dark, I was told. And I usually was, albeit covered with mud and scratches.

The other day, I noticed my son had some bad bruises on his arms from karate. He was going to have his annual measurement-taking at school later that day, so I asked him what he would say if someone asked him where the bruises came from. He replied: "I'll tell them Momma did it."

We laughed about it at first, but I warned him against making a joke like that in America as it probably wouldn't end well.