This song is always playing in my mind. / Now I can share it with you.

Moved By Modern Media / Twitter and Google

Since the quake, I have been totally addicted to watching the news. I am watching it on my phone or my computer or with a normal TV. But I have noticed that I am watching less and less TV news and more news through live streams like Nico Nico Douga.

When the quake first hit, I didn't have access to a radio or a TV. I didn't have anyway to easily get news without searching Google news on my phone, but I signed into twitter, out of habit perhaps, to say that I was ok and I saw a steady stream of news from people directly or retweets from news organization.

I think I was just as informed as someone watching tv. Then, I saw a tweet about the NHK World Live app for the iPhone and I was waiting outside in the cold watching nearly flawless streaming video on my phone.

The more I watch the news through twitter, the more I see calls for volunteer translators to translate things like procedures for decontamination after exposure to radioactive materials etc. I found myself compelled to try and work on these. Google documents has proven to be an amazing, AMAZING tool for this kind of cooperative work. Someone shares a document to the public and tweets the link saying they need the Japanese in the document to be translated into English and instantly dozens of anonymous users are in there. You can see others cursor as it hops around reading and translating and there is a chat on the side to discuss the material.

The set up by the person requesting the translation is important as well. They post a line that says "Verified by a second translator" and a check box or an underlined YES/NO that starts underlined under no.

Take for example this document, which I worked on myself this evening. The whole document was translated by myself a several others just a few minutes after the request was posted. I am amazing at that kind of quickness.

All of that made possible by Google Documents and Twitter. What an amazing age we live in.

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News Websites / Call for Translators

The following is a post I posted on another blog but thought I would share more widely. Enjoy: 

Hello everyone. I am glad to hear from so many of you that you are ok. Everyone else that hasn't posted yet are you ok? Please tell us your story.

My sister came to Japan for a week and just flew home yesterday. It was just a 9 day spring break trip but we did a lot. We went sight seeing to a lot of different places and that is what we were doing on Friday when the quake happened. We were visiting the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural museum when this happened:


I was unable to use my phone of course and as many of you probably know already (so many of us are iPhone users) that the internet was working fine. I was stuck outside without a tv and i got all my news and updates from people via Twitter. I couldn't SMS anyone so I got in touch with my friends and family through Twitter and to some extent facebook and skype.

For iphone users, if you don't already have the "NHK World Live" application for your phone, you need to get it. It is 24-hour live news for free. It was amazing to have that open and running while I was stuck outside in the cold for several hours.

I wanted to give some more informatoin about news networks, there are several channels running in English and Japanese giving 24-hour news coverage.

In English, NHK World Live has a web stream as well located here:

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

And in Japanese you can view NHK and their feed about the quake and news in general here:


Lastly, there have been many international and Japanese twitterers calling for volunteer translators. I have been trying to help out myself but anyone else who can read English and Japanese who wants to help out, please do!

You can do so by watching the feed on Twitter here: http://bit.ly/JPQuakeFeed

Or this blog here on: http://jpeq311.posterous.com/

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From the Great Vast Ocean, A Pearl / Engaged

This is going to be a fairly short blog entry with more pictures than usual.

Last night, I proposed to my girlfriend Monica and she said yes. Here is the ring!

We don't know exactly when we are going to get married yet but we have talked about it for a while. She knew I was planning to propose and thought it was going to be on her birthday coming up. Well, she was right! So, I had to switch it up because I feel like a wedding proposal should be a surprise.

And a surprise it was!

I proposed just before bed. Every night we discuss interesting things we have read or heard or thought about during the day. It is romantic every night with her, but last night more so.

The ring is a Japanese pearl from the waters near Kyushu and Okinawa. Monica likes pearls, but we first hung out and got to know each other on the beach in Takanabe, Miyazaki (Kyushu). I don't really know how long it takes for a pearl to be made but I like to think that from that day the pearl was growing in the water just out to sea from where we were walking in the sand.

Thanks to everyone for all the congratulations wishes on facebook, skype and twitter.

And lastly, here is a picture of her. I am not sure I have posted a picture of her on here before but this is a picture of her at a wedding for a friend of hers in Hawaii last year. She is, as always, trying to make a funny face:

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Life Updates / Teachers College

I have been thinking about posting some of my thoughts about going to the countryside to see an old traditional-ish Japanese wedding. It was the smallest town I have ever been to in my life and it was really beautiful to picture old Japanese life in a valley between tall mountains. But I was too busy to post it when I got back and then I couldn't recall everything I wanted to discuss.

So today, it is Saturday and my day off. I have an office drinking party tonight to go to. I am relaxing and taking it slowly with coffee this afternoon.

Things are going to get very busy soon. I want to just report a few new developments in my life in this short blog entry.

The biggest thing is perhaps the one I can say the least about. My girlfriend, Monica, and I have been dating for about four and a half years now and living together for about 3 years. Next month, around her birthday I am going to propose to her. She knows this is coming, but doesn't know the details so I can't say too much here now. To those of you who know some of the details, please remember to SHH!

Number 2 is that I got into Columbia University's Teachers College in Tokyo. I am going for a Masters and I start around January 22nd. I haven't been super busy with work recently, but I have been lazy in all of my spare time. Pretty soon, I will not have that luxury. I will once again have 1 or no days off during the week and I will be doing homework when I am not in class or teaching classes. It is a little daunting to think of the work ahead but I am really excited about being back in school again. I have had a few months off since finishing up my work at Keio University.

I don't know why, but I love taking classes and I love being involved in academia. I have been making gradually more and more money in teaching although less than I did on JET, but once I get this degree I should really start feeling like an adult!

That is all for now. More information as it comes up and I will try to write more about my trip the countryside if I get a chance.

I am super excited about going to Columbia!!


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Early Orientalism / Smaller but Still Larger

Orientalism

Recently, I have been tweeting a lot, of course, but I haven't really blogged regularly at all. I have found myself sometimes writing a string of tweets to capture an idea or to speak to something that doesn't fit in a a single tweet. I have decided that instead, I will not, not write blogs just because I don't think the idea is deep enough to be a long blog entry. If I have something I write to write a little about and won't fit into a tweet, instead of stringing a few tweets together I will instead write a small blog entry about it. Since I am using www.twitterfeed.com anyway and the blog post will be put onto twitter where someone who wants to read it can and someone who doesn't won't have to see a giant string of tweets.

Last week, a teacher of mine from Keio University sent me a message asking me if I minded helping her younger sister out who works for the NHK International Radio department and wanted help becoming more fluent with her English.  I met her sister and talked to her at first in only English and then as the topic got deeper Japanese. Then when the conversation got deeper and my Japanese alone couldn't handle the depth, I ended up using a mix of English and Japanese. I feel like my English is getting worse recently and my Japanese is getting better but neither seems to be enough to express certain ideas easily.

I didn't have any great ideas for how to make her more fluent but since she expressed a great interest in reading English-language books and silent studying by herself, I suggested we read a book at the same time and discuss it together. She offered to pay for the books and last night I recieved an English and a Japanese version of Edward W. Said's Orientalism. She has already read it in Japanese, I think, but wanted to discuss the ideas in it with me.

I decided to read it in English first because it was originally written in English. I will read it in Japanese later on.

The book is a long essay about how the "West" used to think about the "East" as "The Orient" but the place didn't really exist as Europeans and Americans perceived it. I am only about 30 pages into the book so far but it is pretty interesting. There is a lot of talk about how the idea of Orient and Occident allowed the British and French to colonize parts of Asia and allow themselves to feel superior to the Asians by use of (perhaps unintentional) falsehoods. I am not sure of the scope of this but there is a lot of description of how so and so took over somewhere somewhere and then power shifted and so and so was forced to leave somewhere somewhere by somebody somebody and how that affected the perception but still missed the reality of the "Orient".

Out the Window

I am reading all of this while drinking Iced Earl Grey tea at the McDonald's by Omiya Station. The internet isn't set up yet at my new place yet and I wanted to try and download some stuff. One of which is an old version of the game Civilization. At the end of Civilization it shows you a color display that shows where the civilizations started and how their control and influence spread or diminished across the world. It is really interesting to see this in timelapse and at the end of a long game it is particularly interesting to see it and remember what you were doing in your civilization at the time that colors on the map are shifting.

I would love to see something like that about the history of Earth. Humans come out of Africa and spread around and Europe and Asian civilizations start. The Native American civilizations are initially isolated but Spain, England and France spread around the world and control areas like India. India switches from one color to the next and then back to its own color again but the shade is different cause the society's structure is forever changed. Orientalism is just about mostly the past 200 or so years but I would love to see it go back farther toward the Agricultural Revolution.

Daydreaming about history, real ones and fake, I will go back to reading.


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Float On / Solidarity in Solipsism

I rarely write short blog entries but I wanted to write this down real fast and then get back to doing homework.

I am progressing though my homework rather fast while listening to songs I haven't listened to in a long time. I still have a lot to do though.

I quit Muji this week. I have started the preparation for working a new job. There are no more days off left in this semester of school. It is just a homework, test heavy straight shot till the end of it all.

It is 9pm and I am drinking coffee.

People at work were really mean to me today and I wonder if it is because they knew I turned in a 1 month "I quit notice". I came home tired and not feeling well from my bad day knowing I had to just do homework until I fell asleep. I get home and felt rejected at home a little too because I wasn't in a good mood.

I am progressing well in my homework though and I can't feel like a little like Nietzsche (on a vastly tiny tiny tinier scale)

He was pressed out of society for different views and was likely sick of it and literally sick with syphilis. But he sat down and closed himself off into his study and wrote until quite literally he was in too much pain to write anymore.  I am only in the slightest of physical pain and there is no way the slight reject I have felt tonight in any real way compares to his experience, but it seems like that feeling of rejection translates into the vigor in which one can write and study.

My hands are on paper writing about the Meiji Era of Japan but my mind is holding hands with my special someone walking on warm sand at Aoshima Beach on the Miyazaki coast. Modest Mouse plays in the background.

Of Futures / Of Distance Education in an International World

It is about 5:30 in the morning. I have been awake for about an hour or two trying to fall back asleep.

Monica is still asleep in the other room and my tossing and turning was waking her up and she was making little half-asleep annoyed noises. My mom is visiting me and staying at my place. This is her second time in Japan and she is exploring a lot on her own because I am busy with school and work.

I have been having a lot of problems recently trying to figure out what to do. I know my last blog entry was really vague and didn't talk about most of the options my teacher was explaining to me. But since then I have received a lot of extra information. I went an information session for Columbia Teacher's college and I met some really nice people telling me about how teaching English works and how lucrative it is. I met a guy who had a master's in philosophy and he was explaining how hard it is to be a successful teacher of philosophy in this modern world. The demand for philosophy teacher's is few and far between and in Japan especially it would be hard for a foreigner he said.

I talked with several people and they all said I am wasting my time working a job that has nothing to do with teaching. I should be teaching now, even if it isn't at the college level just so that I have as much experience as possible when I apply for degrees.

They also suggested that I get a master's and then begin teaching lower level college classes while working on a second master's or a PhD in order to start moving up in the academic world. That as about a week or so ago and I have been thinking about it ever since. There is a university in Kanagawa that seems cheap and good and respectable where I could start working on a relevant master's but it is rather far away and if I don't do most of the classes online I would probably have to move.

Sidenote: I don't know how I feel about online courses but I know of a lot of people who are successful who did at least one of their degrees online and as the world gets used to the Internet more and more each year an online degree holds more and more weight.

Sidenote 2: I don't particularly enjoy my job right now. The manager is a bit strict (not necessarily to me but just in general) and the job stresses me out for no apparent reason. I really like the Muji store but I don't ever really enjoy going to work. Whereas my job in Miyazaki as an English teacher, I may not have been super excited about going to work (cause work is work after all) but I enjoyed what I was doing and I wasn't stressed or insecure all day long.

Anyway, so yesterday I was working and being stressed out about it. I get off work and I notice I had a missed call from a lady who runs a business English school. I applied there in... when was it February I think? She said I passed the interview and she would love to hire me. She also mentioned the pay and it seemed fairly high (definitely more money than I am making now) and the schedule was fairly flexible and the job expressed a decent amount of freedom. She, however, said she couldn't hire me cause there were not presently openings but in a few months they were moving to a new location that was bigger where they could take on more students and therefore require more teachers. When she called me yesterday, presumably she was looking to hire me.

That is why I woke up so early this morning haven't been able to go back to sleep. As far as I see it, I have at least 3 options.

Option 1: Quit Muji, take this job and hopefully they can get me an extension on my visa. While working this job I work my ass of at a master's online and then once achieving the master's I move on to college level teaching.

Option 2: Quit Muji, take this job and hopefully get the visa blah blah blah. While working that job attend the school in Kanagawa. Take classes online when possible to reduce having to commute 1.5 hours each way to the university, get a master's and then move to college level teaching.

Option 3: Quit Muji, move to Kanagawa, attend that university mostly in person (I imagine) and hunt for a job teaching in the meantime down there.

Mostly, I would prefer not to move. I really like where I live, moving in Japan is expensive and just in general regardless of where you live it is just a pain in the ass. Plus, if we move it puts Monica in the awkward place of having to look for a job in Kanagawa too. That is while living an hour and a half away and before we have found a place to live.

I suppose all of this depends on if that lady hires me and how much the job there will actually pay. And regardless, it looks like I won't be working at Muji much longer because I need to be getting as much teaching experience as possible etc.

A lot to think about still but it really seems to be coming together a little better now!

And if anyone has any information or any experience to relay about having taking classes online or degrees online I would love to hear about it!