Hey, hey, Minna-san (Everyone!)
After the delay of posting, I finally got the garbage post up! PLUS, I will have a couple of event posts that I will hopefully get to this week. I have a 3-day weekend (technically 4-day for me) this week. It kicked off today (Friday) with a trip to the historical town of Nikko. I will have a post dedicated to this and the reason for the 3-day weekend. Now tomorrow and Sunday are our school festival days! I will definitely have pictures....assuming that I can find my camera charger.....But that's beside the point. So we have at least 2 event posts coming this week!!!
With that announcement aside...I have one more. I have been confronted about my lack of posting over the last couple of weeks. I think I've said this before, but...my plan with this blog is to post once a week....at least. Since I am trying to keep up in school and with work on my manga, doing multiple posts each week is not feasible. That's why my goal is once a week. Sometimes, depending on what's been going on, I might be late and I apologize in advance with that! When I have large events, I will try to post the following week when memories are the freshest. So! Don't been surprised to see only one post a week. Try checking on my posts on Weds and Suns, since these two days are most likely when I will have posted. Just wanted to make that clear....gomen nee! (sorry!)
And now! What we've all been waiting (too long) for: Japanese trash system!
Think back to the growing standard in American trash. Those in town will probably have a "greens" barrel for the gardening greens, a "recyclables" barrel, and a "general" trash barrel, which we have to drag out of our backyards or side yards each week on the designated trash day. Three barrels to fill each week, to drag out each week, all on the same week...taihen! (So difficult!). We Americans have it so hard sometimes....
But wait!
In reality, our trash system, though we typically hate doing it each week, is really easy-peasy compared to the Japanese trash system. To exemplify this, let's discuss my dorm room. It's a small one-person room with a personal toire, or toilet room. I got enough space for a small fridge, a shoe rack, a set of drawers and closet combo, my desk and my bed. Yet, I have four trash cans. Doushite!? (Why!?) Let me post the link to my ward's trash calendar. Remember, a Japanese ward is similar to a California county.
If you open up this pdf file (click the link), you will notice on the first page a fillable section saying something to the effect of "Recyclables [ day]". Above the box that has the word 'day' in it, there will say something like "Once a day on...". One particle fillable space that I would like to point out is the "Combustable Garbage" that has two fill-in boxes. If you haven't figured it out yet, Japan has multiple trash-pick-up days. These days are trash-specific, meaning you actually do have to separate your trash before tossing it. If you don't, then you have to do the walk of shame to pick up your rejected bag of trash and try separating it correctly again for the next pick-up day....
In Japan, trash is separated into three basic categories: Combustible, PET Bottles, and Incombustible.
These terminologies differ slightly from ward to ward, prefecture to prefecture. I am currently living in a different ward than I lived in when I stayed in 2010. So I can attest to the slight differences in the trash separation. But, the listed categories are the most recognized types of trash throughout Japan.
Combustible trash is any food leftovers or paper products. Don't freak out just yet. Japan is kind enough to include the trash type on the labels of products. Combustible trash is often designated by this recycle sign . Inside the recycling sign is the kanji for 'paper' (which is read as kami....same reading as "god" but different kanji). The Japanese phrase for this type of trash is moeru-gomi, meaning "burnable (moeru) trash (gomi)".
Incombustible trash is generally plastics. However, other types of trash can be included depending on the ward. In Shinjuku (my ward), this type of trash is translated into "recyclable trash". The recycle sign that one wants to look for is this. Inside this symbol is katakana, syllable-based writing for non-traditional Japanese words. It reads pura. Who can guess what this means? It is from an English word!.............If you guess 'plastics', you are correct. This is a borrowed word from English meaning 'plastic'! Since the sound transitions in English words is difficult for the Japanese to make, they often truncate our words when they borrow them.
The last general category of trash is PET bottles. PET bottles are any plastic bottle that is made using petroleum. Truthfully, you are mostly likely not going to find very many plastic bottles that are not PET Bottles. These are separated from the rest of the plastic trash because they are processed differently from other trash...or so I've heard. I really haven't looked too much into the reasons for the separation of trash. All that I do know is that the Japanese have to immediately destroy or recycle trash because they do not have room to store. So, in order to save time and resources, the citizens are asked to separate the trash prior to pick-up. As you can guess, that which is burnable will be burned and that which can be reused will be reused.
This brings up another interesting point with the PET bottles and incombustible trash...you have to wash them before tossing them. Yes. You. Wash. Your. Trash. In. Japan. Since these types are going to be reused, having them wash beforehand helps on minimize the resources necessary for prepping the trash for being melted down and reused and preventing any unwanted oils and particles that may render the melted plastic unusable (or so I've heard).
Combustible trash, however, does not need to be washed since it's going to be burned and utterly destroyed anyways.
Dang! This is a long post! In that case, I guess I should make it into a multi-part post. Today's post was on general Japanese trash separation. The next trash post will be on my ward's trash rules specifically. Then, I will have one last post on trash separation in town. Here, I will explain how you separate trash while at a public place. These posts will most likely come after my event posts for this weekend's various activities!
Til then, Later Peeps!
Friday, November 2, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Follow-up to yesterday.
Hey guys, I just wanted to follow-up yesterday's post. It was a difficult subject on Hiroshima and cultural perspectives, so I felt that a follow-up was needed.
As I had mentioned in the post, this topic of cultural perspective pertaining to World War II was brought up by the excerpts I had to read of Ota Yoko's "The City of Corpses" for class. The excerpts were, in fact, the first 3 chapters from the book, which has 7 chapters in total. The first chapter dealt with the atomic sickness from a human perspective, the second dealt with the scientific perspective of the a-sickness, and the third chapter was Ota's experience of Aug 6th. The first chapter, to me, is the most difficult to read due to the emotional response it conjurs within the reader. But, each chapter is difficult in its own way. They are each very informative, but do not convey a sort of "pity-party" for Hiroshima. As harsh as that sounds, sometimes accounts of difficult events are made romanticize the events to invoke guilt. Ota does not do this, which is why it is so difficult emotionally. Her work is more journalistic in that sense.
So, in class, we had two days of discussing "The City of Corpses" as a literary work, rather than as a historical book. I actually was so emotionally disturbed by this book, that I left class for a few minutes yesterday. Today, it choked me up but the response was nowhere near as bad as yesterday. Because I had to bottle up my tears yesterday, I was actually getting sick feeling in class. Never had I experience such a powerful response to anything like this. But, I realized yesterday that my response was in part due to the fact that I am caught between the Japanese and American cultures that still are wounded from WWII. This was why I was trying to stress that I was not trying to put blame on either side, but rather acknowledging the conflictions between these two cultures.
But today, I realized something else about the book. As I was reading, the imagery, both in physical objects and emotional responses, were so vivid to me. It was partially due to Ota herself being to successful in conveying the scene at hand. However, there was another reason why the imagery was so powerfully conveyed. It had nothing to do with Ota's writing. Rather, it was from my own experience.
Ota described the scene following the bomb's explosion as people emerging from the wreckage, bloodied with ash-colored skin. Mind you, this is not a direct quote, but a merging of terminology and descriptions she gave. Ash rained down from the skies as people chaotically ran about, trying to figure out what had just happened to them and their city.
Did we not just experience this scene in our own lifetime?
The descriptions in "The City of Corpses" unconsciously brought back visions of 9/11. Wrapped perfectly in the setting of Hiroshima, I failed at first to recognize my own memories of our horrific experience. I also had never really experienced 9/11 with such devouring anger and twisting of emotions, so it was not clear to me that my memories were intertwining with Ota's memories and experiences. But is this not how grief works?
Grief is not something that should come natural to us. We were, in some ways, not intended to experience separation and evil within the world. I say "some ways", my Christian friends, because though God had made us to be in a relationship with us, He knew that we would be engulfed by sin and still allowed it to happen. Thus, "in some ways" we weren't meant to experience grief.
As a result, mentally we can't fully comprehend grief and thus cannot truly experience it emotionally, either. We will never be able to fully process the grief we experience. That is why it continues to return, resurfacing years and decades later. That is why parents, who lost their own mothers and fathers early in life, will grieve over at their own children's weddings, unable to experience this miraculous event with their mother and/or father.
Our inability to fully process grief is also the reason why mothers who have had an abortion will be devastated years later when they realize their aborted baby will never experience life and its miracles. This is also why we grieve for our pets years after they have passed on.
Having been a middle-aged child when 9/11 occurred, I was unable to fully grieve for our nation's loss. There was a disconnect within myself and within the nation between our mental processing of the tragic and our emotional response to it. We were deadened to our emotions, lost in the sea of confusion, pain, anger, and fear. I can honestly say that I have never been able to deal with my emotions from that day. That is why year after year I rewatch the footage from that day and from the days after it, hoping to invoke such an emotional response to it that I can finally sort out what I felt that day. This wish, however, is impossible because the colossal size of such tragic is too much for our feeble human minds and hearts to fully comprehend.
That is also why we can find outlets for our emotions, allowing us to deal with them in way that is separated from the source of our grief. "The City of Corpses" was my outlet this week. Eleven years after 9/11 and I still have grieving left to work through. That is why amongst our WWII survivors, there is still anger towards the Japanese. There is still anger towards us from our Japanese counterparts, as well. But, maybe we can learn to understand why our two nations acted the way they did and finally direct our anger to the real reason World War II happened. That reason is the brokenness of humans and its manipulation by Satan.
Til then, Later Peeps.
As I had mentioned in the post, this topic of cultural perspective pertaining to World War II was brought up by the excerpts I had to read of Ota Yoko's "The City of Corpses" for class. The excerpts were, in fact, the first 3 chapters from the book, which has 7 chapters in total. The first chapter dealt with the atomic sickness from a human perspective, the second dealt with the scientific perspective of the a-sickness, and the third chapter was Ota's experience of Aug 6th. The first chapter, to me, is the most difficult to read due to the emotional response it conjurs within the reader. But, each chapter is difficult in its own way. They are each very informative, but do not convey a sort of "pity-party" for Hiroshima. As harsh as that sounds, sometimes accounts of difficult events are made romanticize the events to invoke guilt. Ota does not do this, which is why it is so difficult emotionally. Her work is more journalistic in that sense.
So, in class, we had two days of discussing "The City of Corpses" as a literary work, rather than as a historical book. I actually was so emotionally disturbed by this book, that I left class for a few minutes yesterday. Today, it choked me up but the response was nowhere near as bad as yesterday. Because I had to bottle up my tears yesterday, I was actually getting sick feeling in class. Never had I experience such a powerful response to anything like this. But, I realized yesterday that my response was in part due to the fact that I am caught between the Japanese and American cultures that still are wounded from WWII. This was why I was trying to stress that I was not trying to put blame on either side, but rather acknowledging the conflictions between these two cultures.
But today, I realized something else about the book. As I was reading, the imagery, both in physical objects and emotional responses, were so vivid to me. It was partially due to Ota herself being to successful in conveying the scene at hand. However, there was another reason why the imagery was so powerfully conveyed. It had nothing to do with Ota's writing. Rather, it was from my own experience.
Ota described the scene following the bomb's explosion as people emerging from the wreckage, bloodied with ash-colored skin. Mind you, this is not a direct quote, but a merging of terminology and descriptions she gave. Ash rained down from the skies as people chaotically ran about, trying to figure out what had just happened to them and their city.
Did we not just experience this scene in our own lifetime?
The descriptions in "The City of Corpses" unconsciously brought back visions of 9/11. Wrapped perfectly in the setting of Hiroshima, I failed at first to recognize my own memories of our horrific experience. I also had never really experienced 9/11 with such devouring anger and twisting of emotions, so it was not clear to me that my memories were intertwining with Ota's memories and experiences. But is this not how grief works?
Grief is not something that should come natural to us. We were, in some ways, not intended to experience separation and evil within the world. I say "some ways", my Christian friends, because though God had made us to be in a relationship with us, He knew that we would be engulfed by sin and still allowed it to happen. Thus, "in some ways" we weren't meant to experience grief.
As a result, mentally we can't fully comprehend grief and thus cannot truly experience it emotionally, either. We will never be able to fully process the grief we experience. That is why it continues to return, resurfacing years and decades later. That is why parents, who lost their own mothers and fathers early in life, will grieve over at their own children's weddings, unable to experience this miraculous event with their mother and/or father.
Our inability to fully process grief is also the reason why mothers who have had an abortion will be devastated years later when they realize their aborted baby will never experience life and its miracles. This is also why we grieve for our pets years after they have passed on.
Having been a middle-aged child when 9/11 occurred, I was unable to fully grieve for our nation's loss. There was a disconnect within myself and within the nation between our mental processing of the tragic and our emotional response to it. We were deadened to our emotions, lost in the sea of confusion, pain, anger, and fear. I can honestly say that I have never been able to deal with my emotions from that day. That is why year after year I rewatch the footage from that day and from the days after it, hoping to invoke such an emotional response to it that I can finally sort out what I felt that day. This wish, however, is impossible because the colossal size of such tragic is too much for our feeble human minds and hearts to fully comprehend.
That is also why we can find outlets for our emotions, allowing us to deal with them in way that is separated from the source of our grief. "The City of Corpses" was my outlet this week. Eleven years after 9/11 and I still have grieving left to work through. That is why amongst our WWII survivors, there is still anger towards the Japanese. There is still anger towards us from our Japanese counterparts, as well. But, maybe we can learn to understand why our two nations acted the way they did and finally direct our anger to the real reason World War II happened. That reason is the brokenness of humans and its manipulation by Satan.
Til then, Later Peeps.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Garbage delay....
It was my intention to post about the garbage system, seeing that it is remarkably different from that of the US. However, the last two days brought up a topic that I felt more pressing personally than the trash system. So that previous post (which has been started) will have to wait.
So, background of this new topic. This semester I am enrolled and actively taking a Japanese literature class that is focused on the literary works either published during the Occupation Era of Japan (post-WWII) or were popular during that time.
Thus far, it has been a truly interesting experience as a student, lover of Japanese culture and a young American who is not conscious of the lingering feelings from World War II-era America. There is truly a mix of emotions driving me to learn more about the international lead up to WWII and not just the American viewpoint of it. Having learned a little bit about the Japanese lead-up to the war, I have realized that there was more to the Pacific Theater than most Americans realize. Is this not the benefit of experiencing another culture: to better view the world and its history from the most well-rounded perspective? With this being said, this is not meant to be a dismissal of Japan's violent acts towards the cultures it was in contact with during the War, it is merely a recognition that there was a depth of confliction and turmoil politically and culturally in Japan during the lead-up of the War and amidst the battles.
So, to arrive at the topic of today's post. This week's reading in the class was a collection of excerpts from the book, "The City of Corpses" by Japanese author Ota Yoko (Sur-First). There are truly only two, maybe three critical historical events that one can assume will be the topic of this book: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and maybe Tokyo firebombings. And you are right. Amongst these events, is the topic of the book. That is the bombing of Hiroshima.
"The City of Corpses" is the recount of the author's experience of the devastation of Hiroshima and its aftermath. This, as you can imagine, is quite difficult. Ota is able to draw you into Hiroshima 1945 and forces you to experience all the fears and horrors of living in the days following the Bombing, not knowing when you might die because of the mysterious, swift and hellish atrocity that is atomic sickness. She makes the overwhelming...well...devastation of watching your neighbors go from being healthy and recovering to dead in the matter of days, often times less than a week or even a half of a week. This is something that we Americans do not know how to comprehend. We dropped the bomb, how are we expected to face the horrors that followed. This is not a statement of anger, this is a statement of human nature. We, as humans, do not like being confronted by the consequences of our actions, especially when the consequences have hurt another. This is the same human nature that troubles Japan in confronting the atrocities their men and government committed during the same era.
This memoir of events does not focus only on Ota's afflictions from the war, but is the afflictions of the people around her from her own view point as she tries to get a handle on what has truly happened to Hiroshima and its surrounding areas. For me, it does bring up the question of "Was the bomb too harsh?", but this question is laid in my desire to say that the Japanese did not deserve this. I love these people, so to admit fault on their side to the point of finding such horrifying destruction of them permissible is downright difficult. But, this is not meant to find blame on either side, this is to inform you of the confliction one has when caught between two cultures she loves that were once enemies of each other.
When I read literature usual, I tend to read as much as possible in one sitting, since it is not guaranteed that I will find my way back to the work at a later date. If I am really engrossed by the work, I might just finish in just a few sittings, depending on the length of the book. This work, however, was one that I could not do that. Just reading the section in regards to the atomic sickness was so emotionally horrifying that it was making me sick. This was in part to my love for Japan and the guilt-reaction to having come from the culture that dropped the bomb, causing the sickness. Again, not meant to put blame on the US, it is just the confliction within me.
In short, read this book! It has been published in English, so you can actually read it. I want you to read about the other side of the War, one that we do not discuss often. There is a cultural barring of indulge one's desire to understand the Japanese side of the War, as if there maybe blame to lay on our soldiers and our Nation. However, what was done was done on the information that was available at that time. This is referring to both government actions and civilian actions. To fully understand the mindset of each side of the war, you need to look past what the government was dictating and involve yourself with the understanding available to the civilians. Specifically addressing Japan, the entirety of its people should not be to blame for the atrocities committed, but rather the people who committed the atrocities themselves. I challenge you to explore the reasons behind Japan's refusal to admit responsibility for the atrocities and look to see who were refusing such admission. Look pass the government's actions within the war and explore why the soldiers acted in the manner they did, why the Kamikaze existed, when they actually were formed. The culture behind Japan's actions within the war and following the war is difficult for us Americans to understand, but trying to understand their reasonings is not a condoning of their actions, it's merely trying to understand the motivations of the War and the Japanese culture of that time.
This topic, as you can see, is a sticking point for me. To be caught between cultures of once-enemy countries is difficult. I just felt the need to jog you guys out of the American views and see the world as it really is: a mess of conflicting cultures and human sinfulness. When you get pass politics, sometimes in war, there is not one side who is completely in the right, nor is there one side who was completely in the wrong.
Sorry for the tough pill to swallow. As I repeatedly said, this is a topic that I am confronted with time and time again. Please, without ragging on the perceived brutality that has been found within historical Japanese culture, try to understand the cultural underworkings of both our culture and theirs that brings us to define Japanese culture as being "brutal".
Til next time, Later Peeps.
So, background of this new topic. This semester I am enrolled and actively taking a Japanese literature class that is focused on the literary works either published during the Occupation Era of Japan (post-WWII) or were popular during that time.
Thus far, it has been a truly interesting experience as a student, lover of Japanese culture and a young American who is not conscious of the lingering feelings from World War II-era America. There is truly a mix of emotions driving me to learn more about the international lead up to WWII and not just the American viewpoint of it. Having learned a little bit about the Japanese lead-up to the war, I have realized that there was more to the Pacific Theater than most Americans realize. Is this not the benefit of experiencing another culture: to better view the world and its history from the most well-rounded perspective? With this being said, this is not meant to be a dismissal of Japan's violent acts towards the cultures it was in contact with during the War, it is merely a recognition that there was a depth of confliction and turmoil politically and culturally in Japan during the lead-up of the War and amidst the battles.
So, to arrive at the topic of today's post. This week's reading in the class was a collection of excerpts from the book, "The City of Corpses" by Japanese author Ota Yoko (Sur-First). There are truly only two, maybe three critical historical events that one can assume will be the topic of this book: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and maybe Tokyo firebombings. And you are right. Amongst these events, is the topic of the book. That is the bombing of Hiroshima.
"The City of Corpses" is the recount of the author's experience of the devastation of Hiroshima and its aftermath. This, as you can imagine, is quite difficult. Ota is able to draw you into Hiroshima 1945 and forces you to experience all the fears and horrors of living in the days following the Bombing, not knowing when you might die because of the mysterious, swift and hellish atrocity that is atomic sickness. She makes the overwhelming...well...devastation of watching your neighbors go from being healthy and recovering to dead in the matter of days, often times less than a week or even a half of a week. This is something that we Americans do not know how to comprehend. We dropped the bomb, how are we expected to face the horrors that followed. This is not a statement of anger, this is a statement of human nature. We, as humans, do not like being confronted by the consequences of our actions, especially when the consequences have hurt another. This is the same human nature that troubles Japan in confronting the atrocities their men and government committed during the same era.
This memoir of events does not focus only on Ota's afflictions from the war, but is the afflictions of the people around her from her own view point as she tries to get a handle on what has truly happened to Hiroshima and its surrounding areas. For me, it does bring up the question of "Was the bomb too harsh?", but this question is laid in my desire to say that the Japanese did not deserve this. I love these people, so to admit fault on their side to the point of finding such horrifying destruction of them permissible is downright difficult. But, this is not meant to find blame on either side, this is to inform you of the confliction one has when caught between two cultures she loves that were once enemies of each other.
When I read literature usual, I tend to read as much as possible in one sitting, since it is not guaranteed that I will find my way back to the work at a later date. If I am really engrossed by the work, I might just finish in just a few sittings, depending on the length of the book. This work, however, was one that I could not do that. Just reading the section in regards to the atomic sickness was so emotionally horrifying that it was making me sick. This was in part to my love for Japan and the guilt-reaction to having come from the culture that dropped the bomb, causing the sickness. Again, not meant to put blame on the US, it is just the confliction within me.
In short, read this book! It has been published in English, so you can actually read it. I want you to read about the other side of the War, one that we do not discuss often. There is a cultural barring of indulge one's desire to understand the Japanese side of the War, as if there maybe blame to lay on our soldiers and our Nation. However, what was done was done on the information that was available at that time. This is referring to both government actions and civilian actions. To fully understand the mindset of each side of the war, you need to look past what the government was dictating and involve yourself with the understanding available to the civilians. Specifically addressing Japan, the entirety of its people should not be to blame for the atrocities committed, but rather the people who committed the atrocities themselves. I challenge you to explore the reasons behind Japan's refusal to admit responsibility for the atrocities and look to see who were refusing such admission. Look pass the government's actions within the war and explore why the soldiers acted in the manner they did, why the Kamikaze existed, when they actually were formed. The culture behind Japan's actions within the war and following the war is difficult for us Americans to understand, but trying to understand their reasonings is not a condoning of their actions, it's merely trying to understand the motivations of the War and the Japanese culture of that time.
This topic, as you can see, is a sticking point for me. To be caught between cultures of once-enemy countries is difficult. I just felt the need to jog you guys out of the American views and see the world as it really is: a mess of conflicting cultures and human sinfulness. When you get pass politics, sometimes in war, there is not one side who is completely in the right, nor is there one side who was completely in the wrong.
Sorry for the tough pill to swallow. As I repeatedly said, this is a topic that I am confronted with time and time again. Please, without ragging on the perceived brutality that has been found within historical Japanese culture, try to understand the cultural underworkings of both our culture and theirs that brings us to define Japanese culture as being "brutal".
Til next time, Later Peeps.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)