Glibertarians.com 2018 Archive

Author: straffinrun

  • You Looking at Me?

    It’s a pity that, “Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer” doesn’t translate into anything but gibberish in Japanese. The old fart at the coffee shop is staring at me. Normal people here look away once you bust them ogling you like Steven Gawking, but not these old guys. They’re bored and going to the coffee shop and people watching is their low cost entertainment. My initial reaction is to tell Mr. Miyagi that I don’t want to learn the crane technique and I’m glad his wife died. That is just an evil first thought, so I default to what I usually do in these situations; give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

    So what possible reason could Miyagi have for this atrocious behavior? Maybe his wife really did die and his only connection to humanity is these brief moments with strangers. Maybe his eyes are shot and, while I made eye contact, he simply saw a blob of whiteness sitting across from him. Maybe he’s been fucked by a system that promised him respect after decades of busting his ass at work, but, once he retired, they changed the rules and everyone makes jokes at his expense. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t give a shit about the rules.

    I just fucking hate being stared at. Let me think about that. Why? Maybe it’s because I’m a middle child with five siblings. In our family it was prison rules; if you’re staring, you wanna fight. Damn. That’s more an indictment of my faulty interpretation of the situation than it is a critique of Miyagi’s lack of social grace. Would I have gleefully accepted the gaze of a geezer 40 years later if I hadn’t been raised with psychos?

    To me, the benefit of the doubt doesn’t mean giving the other person a generous interpretation of their behavior. It’s about questioning the little story I’ve concocted to justify why I feel the way I do. FFS, I love the look of pretty young things when I’m the object of a crisp glance. If I was having a cup of coffee and a 7 foot 5 inch guy sat across from me, I’d probably stare, too.

    I can’t say why they do it, but Japanese people tend to give you the benefit of the doubt through their reactions, if not their thoughts. Maybe they do want to kick your ass when you bump into them on the sidewalk, but a “sumimasen” flies from their lips instead. Different culture and it seems to work because they have much fewer problems in the social sphere than we do.

    My brother and I were having a jolly conversation on the train a few years back. We got to his station and he got off so I made some stupid faces at him through the window as the train chugged past him on the platform. This pissed off some tiny old man on the train, and he extended his arm so his palm was an inch from my face and held it there.

    Somewhat crowded train, so I couldn’t squeeze out of the way. I told him in polite Japanese to move his hand. Nope. Second warning. Nope. Finally, I snapped, grabbed his wrist and forced his arm down by his side. “Raise it again and I’m going to fucking kill you.” (No, I’m not teaching you how to say that in Japanese). He stood there quaking because my face was filled with rage.

    Fuck. What am I doing? “I’m sorry. It’s dangerous to have your hand there. The train sometimes stops suddenly.” That wasn’t enough, evidently, because he was still trembling. “We were drinking and may have been talking too loudly. Sorry about that.” At that he apologized to me. By the time we arrived at my station twenty minutes later, I had seen pictures he pulled from his wallet of his wife and kids. In my hand I had his business card with the location of the izakaya he ran. We shook hands as I got off the train.

    When I was walking to the escalator a 20 something kid I tapped me on the forearm. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Good job.” He’d seen the whole the interaction on the train. I wasn’t proud of yanking the old fart’s wrist and maybe I had been acting obnoxiously on the train earlier. I was proud that I gave the old fart the benefit of the doubt and, at least in this case, that caused him to reciprocate with giving me the benefit of the doubt. I never went to his izakaya, though. He was an asshole, but even assholes deserve the benefit of the doubt from time to time.

  • Movie Review: Otoko wa Tsurai yo

    You cannot step in the same river twice
    -Heraclitus

    Travelling salesman makes his way back to his hometown after leaving in a huff twenty years earlier because of a fight he had with his father. A prodigal son story, but Tora-san is not your typical character. Vulgar, heavy drinking and incapable of following social norms, this semi failure of a salesman is a combination of Dice Clay and Forest Gump. He is exactly what his hometown needs and he gives it to them good and hard.

    The creation of writer/director Yoji Yamada, Otoko wa Tsurai yo ran for an incredible 48 installments from 1969-1998. Western audiences and critics have largely failed to embrace Yamada’s masterpiece which stands in contrast to the love Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo, Seven Samurai), Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story), Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer) and other Japanese directors have received over the years. Wanting to see Japan as subtle, cinematically pleasing and inscrutable or violent and grotesque, Western audiences just couldn’t find a place in their hearts for Yamada. Otoko wa Tsurai yo presents Japanese as people with simple, base desires and flaws that are universal. Tentacle porn can be amusing, but it doesn’t really help you understand what the average Japanese person is thinking.

    The plot for the 48 installments is simple: Tora-san, played by Kiyoshi Atsumi, returns to the Shibamata area of downtown Tokyo, falls in love with a woman known as the “Madonna” character and causes all hell to break loose with his antics. The “Madonna” shows interest in Tora-san, but his awkwardness with women destroys any chance he had with her and she ends up getting together with another man whom she was destined to be with. The series is a love story despite the crude jokes and domestic violence.

    I am Tora-san. I may not step out of your bathroom, patting my stomach and compliment you for having the fanciest toilet I’d ever seen. “That’s the sink, you idiot!” I haven’t bitch-slapped my demure sister for no good reason other than being drunk off my ass. I’ve yet to make jizz jokes at formal dinner parties where my sister is being introduced to her ultra conservative potential in-laws. I have mistakenly asked my mother-in-law, at first meeting, if she was still born. I’ve asked the elderly check out lady at the supermarket where she kept the breast milk. (Bo-nyu is breast milk, To-nyu is soy milk. Whoops.) We all fuck up and Tora-san is a ninth degree black belt in it.

    We don’t toss Tora-san in a pot of boiling water for a couple of vital reasons. First, he is an injection of chaos into what can be an oppressive and stratified group-centered society. Tora-san’s outrageous behavior gives the audience a look at the Honne (real feelings) of average people. They may look stoic, but all Japanese people have wanted to crack a relative in the head at some point. Many have a great spooge pun pop into their head during a meeting, but they keep it walled off behind their Tatemae (social face). Tora-san is a vent that releases some of the steam in a country that has 30,000 or so suicides a year. Good on him.

    Another reason we accept Tora-san is that without him, the star-crossed lovers would never end up together. Love, it seems, needs someone to smack it out of its reluctance. The “Madonna” can’t hook up with her true love unless someone kicks him in the balls and tells him to stop being such a pussy. While Tora-san’s advice may be awful, following terrible advice is better than whining like a bitch in the corner.

    At the end of each installment, Tora-san leaves Shibamata in an act of temporary self-exile. He has to leave of his own accord or he wouldn’t be allowed back. Pushing people to their limits and then backing off, giving them time to digest what happened, is a skill sorely missing these days. Being 100% pure, concentrated chaos, Tora-san realizes that prolonged exposure to chaos would destroy his family. He leaves Shibamata and crosses the Sumida river until his services are needed once more. You may not be able to step in the same river twice, but you can piss in it multiple times.

    The opening scene:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mb5PbkxxY

     

  • Another 5 Minute Japanese Lesson

    障害の長男  檻に２０年
    監禁容疑  父親逮捕

    Last time I introduced you to Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji, but today I’m going to be solely looking at Kanji. Kanji are the Chinese characters stolen by Japan and NBA players that have bizarre neck tattoos. I’m not going to give the full explanation of each Kanji in the headline, but I will explain the basic meaning and by the time I’m done, you’re going to want to lock the asshole up in a cage yourself.

    “Like the tat?”

     

    障害

    This is pronounced “shougai” and means “obstacle”. It also is used to indicate that someone has a disability of some sort as in 視覚障害 or “shikaku shougai” which means “visually impaired”. The Japanese have also fallen victim to PC language and have tried to steer away from judgmental terms when describing people with disabilities, but for some reason “obstacle” person hasn’t been changed.

    の長男

    の is from Hiragana and is pronounced “no”. It’s the possessive “s” in Japanese, if you remember from the first lesson. 長 is the Kanji for “long” or “boss” and is pronounced “chou” when used in combination with another Kanji. 男 is a Kanji that you will see often. It is read as “otoko” and means “man”. Any guess what “long man” means? Nope, not that. It means “oldest son”. 障害の長男 means “the oldest son (who has) a disability”. It wasn’t clear from the article what type of disability is was, but usually it would indicate some kind of serious mental disability.

    檻に２０年

    檻 is pronounced “ori” and means cage and or prison. Maybe you’re starting to figure out what is happening. に２０年 is read as “ni nijyu-nen”. 年 means “year”. に is Hiragana and usually means something like “at”, “in” or “for”. So far we got a mentally disabled, oldest son that was locked in a cage for twenty years.

    監禁容疑

    “Kankin” is how the first two Kanji are read and means “confinement”. “Yougi” is how the last two Kanji are read and mean “suspicion”. Someone is under suspicion of illegal confinement of a human being. As a side note, 禁 means “prohibited” and you shouldn’t enter a door with it plastered on it. I remember back to my single days and a gal jotted 禁 on a napkin when I tried to hit on her at a bar. Rejection is a good way to learn and I appreciated her subtle rejection rather than getting slapped.

    父親逮捕

    Here’s where the story gets infuriating. You may have guessed that “oldest son” meant that it was one of the parents that confined to poor kid in the cage for twenty years. Good for you because you’d have been right. 父 is “chi chi” and means “father”. 親, or “oya”, means parent in this case. The last two Kanji are read as “taiho” and that combo means “arrested”.

    Disabled Son Kept in Cage for 20 Years. On Suspicion of (Illegal) Confinement, Father is Arrested.

    The whole is story is heart breaking. The mother died in January and the father, 73 at the time, called social services for help with the son. Evidently, he didn’t know what he was doing to the kid was wrong. He bathed the kid every other day and had a heater and fan set up inside the one meter high, two meter wide cage. Bathroom breaks included! What a dad. Only the introduction of the state could make this story any worse. When the old man called and asked for help, a social worker came and saw what was happening. Instead of removing the poor kid on the spot, the government worker set up another visit. At the second visit, the worker explained that they would be coming by three days later to take the kid into their custody. Any normal human being would have gotten that kid out immediately upon seeing how he was living.

    *Link to story in the Yomiuri Newspaper*