March 16th, 2004
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Forgetting the door to old Japan
Over my pork cutlet and tofu soup this afternoon I realized that I have indeed been living in “new” Japan for the past five months or so, and am doing a pretty good job missing out on half of perhaps the world’s most binary country.
There is a Japan that a large number of foreign residents know, it involves Tokyo, the Shinkansen, discount electronics chains, a lot of clubs, fancy apartments, and import furniture. It’s country of technology beyond present day (and occasionally practicality), awe-inspiring varied architecture, and a marriage of fashion and commerce that exists several planes of existence above any fathomable economy. This is the Japan I’ve been living in for pretty much all of my preproduction phase at work. It’s not bad, it’s actually really nice… really too nice.
Aside from paltry two-to-five social to work cycle, a guy could get used to it. My problem is I’m too used to it. This is another big time of change for me. New apartment, new furniture, new bills, new diet, new community. I admit I’m kind of binging on the prefab consumer yen for the moment, but I attest it’s only a hurdle to get over. Better to hit it fast and get it out of the way, so I can go about appreciating the fruits of my labour.
When I do eventually surface from this pike dive into the coffers of teflon wonderment, I’m really going to have to get my mind (and my art), back into “old” Japan, the one fate rotated me around when I first came here and lived in Nara. There is a lifetime’s worth of religion, history, and nuances to discover here… a long, winding road into the mountains, covered with sand and scattered with stones. It’s time I took a break from looking past the horizon and started paying attention to the soil under my feet.
