Once you accept something...

Well, I can't keep going on about India, as much as I would like to. But Japan is real and Japan is everyday and I'm back in Japan.

Ya know, I'm really starting to like Kiso valley. It's funny, when I first came the mountains looked so dreary - I've never been a nature person, and I would have described rolling mountains more as repetitive than as peaceful and refreshing. I wished that I could tear a few of them down so I could see a little farther, and perhaps have more time with the sun during my day. I felt a little trapped and a little claustrophobic. Japan is also a bit careless when it comes to their treatment of natural resources, you have two types of trees in these mountains, conifers and deciduous (I think deciduous, like evergreens), one being brown and one being green. These trees have been stripped and subsequently replanted, but not replanted in a natural way. While naturally they are mixed together, when they were replanted they kept trees of the same species together, so now, as my friend so aptly said, they look like tiger stripes of green and brown over the mountains. It's not as beautiful as it would look naturally, and you cannot front to yourself like they still have that pristine type of beauty. The other thing, since I'm on the topic, are that practically all the rivers are dammed, I think only 3 rivers in all of Japan are not dammed (is nuclear energy the future?) so the river that makes Kiso vallye is now just lots of rocks with a little bit of water streamig through. While it looks quite beautiful, you can imagine those rocky rivers, to me a full gushing river would look a lot better (especially since the rocky river isn't natural).

That being said, I'm starting to really appreciate it here. I think it's because the sun is finally coming up and the flowers are starting to bloom, so the mountains look a lot softer and the area feels a lot more alive and happy, but I look at these mountains now and instead of wishing for some sea or some grass or some tall buildings, I just...like what I see. It makes me feel good, kind of happy, like this is the way that the world is supposed to look and there's no reason to change it. I always liked it in a beautiful and mystical sense, in a sense that nature is grandeur and I like grandeur, but I actually never enjoyed it. Go for a hike? Why go for a hike? That's just walking. Walking is boring. And once you've seen one tree you've seen them all. Why would I want to go walk with some trees, I'd rather play soccer or do some kung fu.

But now...Sunday I was at a barbeque put on by some of my hoikkuen students' parents. It was fantastic. I was in front of this beautiful river (even if all the water is dammed up), with some people fishing, drinking Kirin and just grilling some yaki niku, kids playing on the side, guys talking about random things, beautiful sun and weather, trees starting to turn green, a camping tent and lots of laughing and joking, all in the middle of the mountains. I was having the best time of my life. All stress was gone, I had no complaints about being in Kiso, and this sure beat being in the middle of somebody's backyard.

Yesterday, someody asked me if I wanted to go kayaking. Heck yeah, I said. I remember hating it when I went in 8th grade, I hated the life vest and the stupid repetitive motion with your paddling, but i think I'm going to love it. I'm discovering all types of new things here, with huge ice falls buried somewhere deep in the mountains and plateu towns with nice soba restaurants. Scenic drives with spectacular views of some of Japan's tallest mountains cradling small parochial towns that lie in its foreground. I've also found historical towns like Tsumago that have been preserved in there original layout and windy mountain roads that make you feel like you're traveling to the sky. A lot of people complain about these woods, but sometimes I think all people ever do is complain. I'm starting to really like it here, the people are great and the environs are spectacular. I don't think I will ever stop being a city kid on the inside but this experience is teaching me to like something I never really would have forced myself to like. All my city friends (that's all I have actually), I don't expect you to feel what I'm saying! I couldn't have understood if I didn't actually live here. I never would have understood why people love nature. But there's a certain feeling out here when you get out and experience it, something that shows me just how simple happiness probably is.

India, part 3

You also need the bargaining.

Do you remember the show Gladiator. I think that was what it was called, but it consisted of contestants going on a TV show to participate in a range of trials and competitions to see who could come out the strongest and most physically capable. One of the most interesting games was when two competitors would stand on two small platforms high up in the air, each with a long staff between their sweat slicked hands, the staff wrapped in cushions on each end. They would try to knock each other off, but if you swung too hard you could fall off yourself and if you swung too weak your ass was also vulnerable to your opponents counterattack. The game was a test of your ability to predict the other persons moves, react accordingly, and to know your own limits of attack before exposing yourself.

Such is the game of bargaining. It's a tough game mind you, tougher than anything you might experience on Gladiator. Some have the knack for it, and always come out on top, some just sink before they even start, you can tell from the kind demeanor they have as they approach the vendor. The vendor knows he's in for a treat when he spies these types. They don't make eye contact, they are not confident because they don't know the going rate, they don't know exacty what they want, and therefore are easily swayed by the vendors effortlessly glib pitches about items that the buyer most certainly doesn't need and most certainly never ever even wanted. On the flip-side, you have your purchasers who could make the vendor feel like he just entered his game. The guy who knows the going rate. The guy who knows what he wants, can turn any serious statement of the seller into a joke, the kind of guy who can turn any lie into an truth and any truth into a lie. I feel like I'm describing a politician. But that's what you need. I you don't want to get screwed, or if you want to screw the other person, those are some of the skills you need to survive in an Indian bazaar. It's not a game for those who don't like stress and certainly not a game for those who don't want to argue with people. It's a game best for lawyers, politicians, or mothers who have a keen eye on their budget for the day. Was it a game for me? I'll be honest, sometimes I was quite proud, and sometimes, I felt like a fish in a pond of sharks. But hey, I couldn't even speak Hindi, so I'm not too hard on myself.

India is poor, and I learned to respect that. People have hard lives, and I learned to respect that. You have to respect that if you're going to bargain with other people when you know they have infinitely less money than you. I lived in India for 3 weeks with the equivalent of 200 dollars, granted I always had free shelter and free food for the most part, and this was just the money for travel, gifts and occasional eating outside. Still, that's pretty good. In order to see my point of view, you have to say to yourself, well, this guy works hard and is making money, and I'm not going to disrespect his profession by offering more money than the going rate, basically treating him like he's a beggar, and I'll give him what I owe him. I guess I didn't want to pity people because they were poor. It's hard to explain, it may sound like an excuse to save my own money, but feeling sorry for people doesn't really help anymore. I feel cold, knowing my privilege over their's, but if you respect people's dignity, you really will help people help themselves. The best type of giving I think is in that fashion. In the heat of it all I still couldn't bargain with a ricksha driver, the guys that do the hard labor, nor did I even want the stress of it all. And of course, just giving doesn't hurt all the time. But I didn't want to pity people because they are poor. It can take away your dignity, but it doesn't have to.

I helped my cousins and nieces and nephews learn English, which will help them get ahead when it comes time to go to college. I never thought of teaching English as actually helping people, but if I truly believed in education as helping people, than that would help them, especially practically. Not that I want to teach English for the rest of my life. I guess there are lots of professions that are helping people, it just depends on your motivation, whether you're doing it for money or to actually help. There are people in the education business who are in it for money, I've talked to some teachers who have had experiences with them, but trust me, compared to other professions, there are a lot less. Some of the teachers here have blown me away with how caring they are, and how little they recieve for how good they are as people. It's a bit crazy, as I meet more and more people like this, the more I feel ashamed of my at times self-righteous attitude and the less I look up to people who are known in textbooks and stuff. Teachers deal with this stuff everyday and most people do nothing but claim their profession is easy. I guess they don't know what motivates teachers, at least the ones who care.

I feel a lot better with what I'm doing here, a lot more motivated, with viewing it as helping people (I'll be honest, when I first came here I didn't view it in exactly that way), I can feel a lot more creative and motivated. I don't think money will ever motivate me, I can just subsist on so little!

Don't get me wrong, I'll be the first to tell you that this type of helping doesn't come close to people who work in group homes or in development organizations, or who do a million other things that takes a lot of giving, but it's still a small part of the total pie.

India taught me a lot of other things, still needing to be pieced together. Kids are the same everywhere, they're all little brats that care so much if you care for them, and the little ones dont mind if they walk around naked and pee on themselves, or on you. I saw at least 4 naked boys in the Agematsu nursery school today, one of which was quite proud to show his penis to anyone who wanted to, or didn't want to look. It's getting harder to write about India as time passes, it feels like so long ago and the descriptive and vivid aspect of my memories are becoming less and less while the whole experience is becoming intellectualized and fitted into what it needs to be fitted into, my whole world-view. It's funny how quickly you readjust when you have to. Don't get me wrong, I miss India and will quickly go back to it, it's just harder to write about the experiences descriptively when your everyday experiences are here. It would be much easier to write about my day at the nursery school, the playground, the fact that I'm upset that they get to eat udon for lunch while I never get it at the shogakko or the chugakko, can you believe they even get to eat ramen and pasta? I have to eat rice everyday. Lucky little monsters...

But India is far from over, there's just more of Japan now.

India, part 2

It really was hot. I thought that the month of March would still be cool and refreshing, with all the dust that comes up from the road but without all the heat and sweat to make it nasty, but, I was wrong. It's only my second time to India as an adult, so I'm not to blame. Ahem...my parents are. They grew up there - why did they tell me to bring a sweater? Anyways, the heat didn't prevent me from moving around, well, actually, yes it did. But once I did start moving around, it didn't prevent me from having fun. Okay yes it did, let me just change the subject.

It's hard to describe the intesity of India. Like many things in life, like such gradiose notions as love and spiritual awakening, it must be experienced to be known. India, with it's "I have to move forward and build a country even if I have only had 60 years to work with since the British were here before that and took all my money those greedy bastards...and the Mughals before that but lets stop blaming the British (It's the white man's fault my autoricksha broke down!) since that's just lame and pathetic now" predicament, has reached the level of such legendary emotions as the aforementined. You can take pictures, but the pictures have a way of clouding up reality; you cannot feel the heat in a picture, you cannot hear the horns blasting in the bakground, accompanied by the sound of birds and noisy children, the local subjivala screaming the prices of his vegatables, the sound of the chain laboriously rotating over the gears on a ricksha. You cannot feel the eyes that may have momentarily looked in your direction, the dry wind and the sweat on your legs that make your already tight pants even tighter, the confusion of so many people and the pressure of the overbearing sun. You can't smell the smell that is Indian people, sometimes somf, sometimes a general mix - a masala if you will, though I hesitate to use the hackneyed word - nor can you smell the environs, sometimes the smell of pan, sometimes the smoke from the garbage that people burn on the streets in the morning, sometimes the ridiculously delicious subji your bhobbi has made. You need to wake up at 3 in the morning with the sound of people singing - the leader using a loudspeaker - at the morning worship in the Hindu temple in front of your house, with the pillow over your head thinking, why in God's name do they need to sing with a loudspeaker! That's just rude!! Then you need to realize that you're in India, and you can't get mad at things like that - western etiquette doesn't apply - good luck with the second part though. Then you need to sleep in your other cousins house and go through the same thing, expcept this time is the kirtan (Sikh religious/devotional music) from Harminder Sahib blasting on TV (same great time though!), and though it's much more peaceful music, it's still not as peaceful as your dreamy sleep. You need to be heading back to Delhi on a rickety metal bus with no cushions after you're long trip to Punjab, be halfway between the land of dreams and the land of...well, India could be called a dream, the bus driver needs to be going ridiculously fast, maybe 75 km an hour, and you need him to abruptly hit the brakes as your bus zooms to the left accompanied by the loud screeching wail of rubber burning on asphalt that throws your heart into a gear it's never been in before, and you instictively throw your wieght down on the seat, as if you could counterbalance the centirugal force with your own gravitational force, only to feel him turn to back to the right as you turn to the left and realize that you cannot prevent what will happen over the next few seconds (actually it lasted at least 10 maybe 15, but I've heard moments like that tend to be longer in our minds than in reality so I may be wrong) and that your fate is inextricably tied with that of the bus and the natural driving talent of your driver; do you know what if feels like to have a bus lose control like that? Of course you don't, you've never been to India. You need to hear by rumor from the guy in the front that we barely left the early morning passengers of an autoricksha surviving, and then you need to wait three minutes, look around you, and see that everybody has fallen bacl asleep, including your father, while you cannot help the instinct to start praying to a God you do not nearly pray enough to in you daily life for the safety of the rest of your trip back home. And then, you need about 10 more minutes, maybe 15, till you resign yourself to fate and fall asleep yourself.

You need it all. India is an iinflux of senses that must be experienced to be understood, it is an experience you can never forget, nor would you ever want to forget. It's much more than that though, to be continued in part 3.

India, part 1

Well, I'm back. The past three weeks have been quite good. India was a lot different in many ways - things that I thought might be different weren't and things that I thought were the same had changed. It was good though. Yes, lots of good food and painful diarrhea, yes, lots of sweat and dirt, yes, lots of bargaining and horns blasting on the road compiled with near death experiences (which eventually you get used to, and eventually I could even fall asleep on the back of a small motorcycle packed with 4 people when tired enough - the equivalent of falling asleep on a rollercoaster ride), yes, lots of big hugs - India is a place of big love for family members, lots of consternation, fatigue, relaxation and overbearing love, lots of genuineness - actually, a lot more than I expected, some cute girls but too many are still inside the houses because it's still India, not as much poverty - NEARLY as much, as I expected, (when I came to Delhi airport 5 years ago I was greeted by dismembered beggars, this time there was not one) but people told me to go to Bihar and UP = mind you, India is the seventh largest country by land in the world, the second largest by population, and Punjab is a very small chunk of only 25 million (I didn't leave Punjab or Delhi this time - next time...), but poverty is a topic for a longer discussion, yes, the caste system still runs in India, just not officially, yes, Indian food is MAAAAAAAAAAAD spicy, yes, people will be in your photos, and the kids love to be in them, yes, there are lots of people, but it's just in the cities, yes, India is hot hot hot, no, there are no such things as postcards in India, I looked all over for them, yes, I did find postcards in Beijing, but I only had two yen left when it came time for mailing, yes, I did get food poisoning in Beiijing and had to vomit my "new orleans" KFC burger back up, yes, India is a senses overload, it's just intense, yes, people did try to screw me in delhi, not, people did not try to screw my in Punjab, yes, a lot of people do manage with English, but really wikipedia says only 25 million, it just shows you my cirlce of people is not the average Indian, yes, you can pick berries off the trees and eat them, yes, marijuana does grow freely in the park next to my cousins houses, people just don't notice and most probably don't even know what it is, yes, with all the dust, dirt and stess of India you wouldn't even think people notice, they still seem to be happy and live it up, and no, even though we read of all the horror stories of India, a lot of people are kind, gentle, and incredibly welcoming. Yes, I did have a tough time, but I had a great time as well.

The only thing I wish was that I had more time to spend there. I learned how to apply mehndi, some cooking, as well as how to tie a dustar (have to do a lot of practice though), as well as a lot of Hindi, and some games native to Punjab that I'm going to teach in the schools here. Because I wanted to actually learn parts of the culture that I could take back home, I spent a lot less time traveling (one of the initial goals I had in going there was to see the diversity - which I decided wasn't as important as my other goals of looking at the educational system as well as spending time with family and picking up some activities I could take back to Japan), and spent most of the time seeing my extended family. So most of my pictures are for my students, they don't know what an autorickshaw is or sugar cane juice, or juicevalas and Sikh people, so I'm afraid they might not be interesting to you guys when I put them up, They're normal pictures of culture that my students (I hope) will find really interesting.

It's good to be back, more than I thought it would be, though I kind of miss India already. I have a idfferent outlook on how I want to spend my time here, don't really know how to explain it yet. but, yes, I'm still recovering from food poisoning in Beijing, so I will explain all that in the next post, brain doesn't feel like producing any output. Pictures up soon, it's good to be writing to you guys again.

Yeh mera Indiaaaaa....(this is my Indiaaaaa...a popular song from a popular hindi film..)