But what moves me to write tonight is that all the people who supposedly unjustly scorned the hero were actually mostly correct to do so.  The job that he does, as portrayed in the movie, is performed as an essentially mandatory social rite, part of a funeral, which people would be made to feel guilty about or shamed for if they left undone.  Basically, it’s the ornamentally performed dressing of the body of a deceased person in ceremonial clothes and makeup before the person’s family, in their home.  In the movie he masters this task sufficiently to be able to do it solo within a few months.  It’s unclear how long it’s supposed to take to perform a single job, or how often jobs come in, but it seems unlikely to be very heavy on hours.  He’s also compensated well enough ($5,000 a month, in a very rural community) to make it clear that the service they provide is quite expensive.  The scenes of him and his boss performing this service naturally feature plenty of tearfully remorseful (to the deceased), regretful (to themselves) and thankful (to the undertakers, although probably just because there are no other appropriate outlets for thankfulness available) family members, none of whom seem to be the one paying the bill.

The ostracism he suffers from the community and his wife stems from the “filthiness” of the job, which of course IS irrational and prejudiced.  I think they’d find more sturdy ground on which to shun him if they instead focused on the fact that he performs an apparently simple job that people are more or less forced to hire him for at a time they’re most vulnerable to emotional blackmail.  He deserves resentment for that, and the family members at those services have the right to feel taken advantage of and disdainful of someone who would earn a handsome living that way.

Growing up in Southern California, where everyone has a car, you wouldn’t really come across the scene above. Things might just have been easier if they’d bought a smaller tree.

By the way, I do think the beef-snarfers from the outside world are hypocritical to be all up in arms about this – but yes none of Japan’s arguments for this practice stand up to scrutiny.  Yes, it’s part of Japanese food culture – and it was the culture of many other places too before they stopped doing it for many of the same reasons they’re trying to stop you from doing it now.  Yes, it can be hunted sustainably – but only if you are the only ones doing it, and why do you get to be the exception?  I can understand the “screw the rest of the world, we know we’re right” attitude… but you’re wrong.  You can still eat all the daikon you want.

-Time spent living here

-Language

-Cultural fluency

-Interest in Japan

And maybe a few more I haven’t the sociological state of mind to come up with.  On any criterion besides the one with immutable physical manifestations, I win the Japaneseness race with my dad and probably any of my other “pure-blooded” relatives under the age of 60.  I suppose I might lose on self-identification too, but of course my self-identification as an American, and theirs as Japanese, would probably change if we weren’t all living in the societies we’re living in now.

I know I say this a lot, but I don’t keep bringing this up because I want my legitimate membership in club Japan recognized by a greater percentage of the population here.  I rather want to use my family as an example of just how useless “race” is as a determiner of one’s personal characteristics.  It’s not true at all that I devalue my Japanese-American family – I just don’t value much at all the fact that they’re Japanese.  They’re my family in California, and have practically nothing to do with my connection to this place.

I’d be negligent not to include the obvious media-presented stereotypes of non-Japanese as illiterate but lovable dunces in the causes for this assumption, but many of these kids and their parents have been going to different English schools for years – plenty of time to meet a few other pasty faces who aren’t completely out to sea in the Japanese language. Am I wrong? Can the half dozen or so other native English speakers really have been so worthless at the language of the country they’re presumably living in? Or are they just hiding it, as unfortunately a lot of them and a lot of Japanese people believe is the only “professional” way to run an English class?

I prefer honesty here. I enjoy learning language and I want my students to feel the same. There is a lot of wisdom to be discovered in the gap between English and Japanese and I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by pretending they exist in entirely separate universes.

I have to dig a little deeper to find things to complain about these days, that’s all. Once I settle into a routine again maybe I’ll post a bit more.

Recently, I’ve been very busy with school-related things, which has seriously cut into my time. Combined with the change in weather, I don’t go outside as much anymore as say during the summer. Hell, I haven’t even been to Margit Sziget in a while, which presented its fair share of amusements.

Perhaps I need to find a new direction for what I want to do with this blog. It’s quasi-personal, but I don’t feel like updating you on my daily ongoings, not just because I’m that private, but also because I lead the boring life of a grad student and describing how many pages of my own work I edited today is really not that exciting for even myself.

In terms of other things to write, another problem is that much of what I could write either ends up with my job at All Hungary Media or if not, it’s just a bit too racy to perhaps include here. One stupid quick piece I attached my name too on Pestiside.hu about a month or so ago ended up being the top return in Google, and let’s just say if I wasn’t able to remove my name, it would probably still be there, and I wouldn’t be too thrilled about it.

In essence, I frequently have to self-censor myself simply due to the random occurrence that someone someday might find this site and simply think “we won’t hire him” due to some flippant remark I made here. So, the obstacle is making my writing interesting without being potentially offensive. For the record, I suck at wholesome, so that’s not an option either.

Anyhow, I hope I figure things out. I should have more time to devote to this in a few weeks’ time, and we’ll see how things take off or absolutely crash then.

It’s probably not good to expect your language’s onomatopoeia to translate well.

Actually though, this would be impossible to render in the Japanese syllabary, answering for me the question of why they didn’t just leave this in Japanese, but unfortunately leaving the one of whence they drew the inspiration for this unfortunately handicapped kids’ racing jacket.

I reiterate: learn a language to the point you can use it competently, or don’t use it.  At least wait until you can trust yourself to order a #3 combo at any given McDonald’s in the English-speaking world before you start soaking every consumer object imaginable in your malodorous Engrish marinade.