Happy Halloween!

I went to a designated English elementary school called Ikiriki today with about 15 other ALTs for “Orange Day.” something the school has been doing for about 20 years.  It’s pretty nuts to hear a 7 year old Japanese say “let’s go!” and then start asking you about things you like in English.  After seeing 14 year olds that can barely say “My name is _____” it was really nice to see.  You can definitely see the difference that a commitment by the entire faculty of a school can make to achieving a goal.

My 9-day vacation starts tomorrow and I probably won’t be posting until I get back.  I hope you are all having fun in crazy costumes!  Extra points to those of you who dressed up as Sarah Palin.

What Is Happening In America

From FiveThirtyEight

Now I have a confession. Even Brett doesn’t know this. I hope it doesn’t lessen the professional work we’re trying to accomplish in chronicling this historic election on the ground, but if it does, I’ll live with it. There is something stirring in America.

Back at the rally, after the march had left MLK Gardens, I’d gone back for the car while Brett took photos, and I spotted a very old black man in a sharp Sunday suit walking slowly at the very back of the huge march. He hadn’t yet arrived at the voting center, and I decided to find him when I got back.

I wanted to go talk to him, to ask him what this moment meant to him. He was a guy who you take one glance at, and know, that guy’s seen it all. I wanted a quote. I had my journalist hat on. I thought, this will be great.

So when I got back to the voting location with the car, I went to find him in the line. Eventually I spotted him, and was ready to walk up the few feet between us and introduce myself when I stopped in my tracks.

A young black boy, no more than eight years old, walked up to this man, who was at least eighty. The boy offered the man a sticker, probably an “I Voted” sticker, but I couldn’t see. The man took the sticker and paused. Silently, he looked down at the boy, who was looking back up at the man. The man put his hand gently on the boy’s head, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I didn’t ask the man for a quote. I didn’t need to. I walked over by myself, behind the community center, and I sat down on a bench next to the track, and wept.

The Plan

１１月１－４日：神戸、京都

１１月４－５日：小浜市

１１月５－６日：大阪

１１月６－９日：東京

Nov. 1-4:  Kobe/Kyoto

Nov. 4-5:  Obama city

Nov. 5-6:  Osaka

Nov. 6-9:  Tokyo

More details as they emerge…

My Votes In This Election: Obama for President, Smith for Senate

Finally, I just voted.  For Obama.  And Smith.  And yes, I am now on record.  The first vote was easy.  It’s hard to believe that after nearly two years of following this election so intensely, it is actually down to the wire.  I never felt so happy to mark a ballot in my life.  It’s a big moment, filling in that circle.  There is something so completely different about this year in contrast to 2004.  Something massive is happening.  I don’t think America will fully realize how far we’ve come or what we’ve actually done with our votes for some time.  But this is an incredible moment in our history.  This man’s father went to school under a tin roof shack in Africa.  And now he will be the first post-racial president in our history.  Putting aside the massive problems that will be passed on to him from his predecessor, it’s worth stopping amidst all the chatter and reminding ourselves just how amazing this moment is.  If John McCain wins, well, that won’t happen.  But if it does, I guess I can hold out in Japan a little bit longer…

The second vote was more difficult, but it is the right decision, and one I will defend to the death.  This is the first time I have voted for a Republican for any major office.  The Republicans are to blame for so many failed policies that have put our country in this mess.  But that doesn’t mean that every Democrat is better than every Republican, or that one more Democrat in the Senate is necessarily better than a very good Republican.  In fact, the presidency, the Senate and the House will be controlled by Democrats, and the margins in both the Senate and House will be huge, no matter whether Smith wins or loses.  It is worth remembering the lessons of the past with regards to one-party government–primarily that it can backfire hard on the party in power.  It did to Carter and it did to Clinton in 1994.  The Democrats will have to be modest about their wins and not spiteful or condescending to the Republicans that still make up so much of this country.  Obama understands that people have very different viewpoints and the fact that we can disagree without being disagreeable or having coups or violence is what makes this country great and what is at the heart of a healthy democracy.  Obama will be under immense pressure to pass a lot of–mostly good–Democratic legislation.  In this situation, he will need decent Republicans in the Senate to work with him, to convince Republican colleagues of the worthiness of his plans, and to give him input on how to win support for certain bills.  Obama will need Republican allies as much or more than Democratic ones.  Smith would no doubt be one of those allies.  He has worked with Wyden, Kerry, Kennedy, and so many other Democrats on a number of major issues, and he would no doubt work with Obama as well.

For all our talk of bipartisanship, we rarely follow through when we have a chance of showing it.  Smith is in the center of the Senate in terms of ideology.  He is calm, not shrill.  He is thoughtful.  He and Ron Wyden have probably the best relationship among any state’s two senators, a relationship that pays off for Oregon.  Smith has seniority in the Senate and chairs a committee (that I worked on) that has huge influence over health care issues.  Through his position on that committee, Smith helped pass landmark mental health legislation.  He is pro gay-rights.  He wants to withdraw troops from Iraq.  He is not George Bush, or John McCain.  And finally, while I respect Jeff Merkley, he appears all too often as simply a generic Democrat who spouts talking points.  His rhetoric contrasts hugely with Obama’s:  Obama is about reconciliation and the fact that we are one America, not a red and blue America.  He doesn’t blame “Republicans”, persay, for our problems, but bad policies.  Smith speaks to the same longing in all of us.  Merkley simply shouts about Republicans.  Additionally, Merkley would have a lot of work to do to cultivate Smith’s level of influence and relationships that is so crucial to getting anything done in Congress.  Even if he succeeds at attaining influence–and I have my doubts that he will, given Wyden’s role as the senior Democratic senator from Oregon–it will take him a very, very long time, because that is simply how the Senate operates.

So, I am a split-ticket voter for the first time in my life.  And let me tell you, it feels pretty good.  If this were 2004 again I might have voted the other way…it was so important to try to give the Democrats a majority in the Senate.  This time, there is no question that the Democrats will have a very large majority in the Senate.  But this is not 2004.  We live in a different time now.  And we should consider that and vote accordingly.  Both the candidates I am voting for speak to coming together around a common purpose, respecting differences, working across the aisle, and working pragmatically toward good policy, not policy that passes ideological litmus tests.  I have immense confidence in both of these men.

But especially my vote for Obama…..Kerry in 2004 was an easy choice, but I never knew how melancholy I really was about voting for Kerry until I was given this  opportunity to vote for Obama.  There is no one alive today that I would rather vote for, and I could not have truthfully said that in 2004.

Please feel free to sound off in the comments, whether you agree or disagree with my decisions.  I will reply to everything.

Speeding Up…

Oh my how I love 長崎市。。。

Getting out of Isahaya reminds me of two things:  1)  How mediocre Isahaya is as a city, and 2)  How much else there is out there…The best thing about living in Isahaya is it is one of the best places to live for ease of transport to neighboring areas and to the rest of Japan.  All the trains go through Isahaya.  I plan to use them.

Plans are forming for my upcoming 8/9 day vacation.  Nov. 2-4 will be spent either in Kansai, Nagoya, or a random place of my choosing, depending on who gets back to me and which of my friends from 2-3 years ago still live in the area…If I don’t hear from them in time, I will pick up the Lonely Planet and hit something on my own that I’ve never seen.  I miss that freedom that I had with the Shinkansen pass 3 years ago; but at least I can get a taste of it again.  Nov. 4-5 will be spent in Obama city watching the election with Jason, another ALT from a suburb of Nagasaki who is as obsessed with politics as I am.  I have heard the city is actually kind of a dump (Clay), but we don’t really care.  We’re there with a specific purpose in mind:  See Obama win, erupt in cheers, buy a duffel bag’s worth of souvenirs, and head out.  If it sucks REALLY bad, we will head straight to Osaka where there is a big foreigner party for the election.  Nov. 6-7 are up in the air, but we have a lot of ideas and a lot of random friends in random places.  Some options we’re considering are the Japan alps, and I’m thinking about hitting up Ise Shrine.  Then on the 7th (Friday) we head to Tokyo for 2 nights on the town in the big city.  Jason and I both have a lot of friends there, and they are impatiently awaiting our arrival.  Sunday at 6:40pm we board our flight back to Nagasaki.

Got some books today, including　ごっちゃん　by Natsume Soseki, クレヨンしんちゃん, an updated Lonely Planet guide to Japan, a book aimed at junior high students about Barack Obama’s life that is full of pictures and has Japanese translations at the bottom of each page, and Jessica Williams’s “50 Facts That Should Change The World,” the first being “The average Japanese woman can expect to live to be 84.  The average Botswanan will reach just 39.”

I have also decided to do a major overhaul of my aparment (*room*).  There isn’t much here and I need a bigger desk to lay out all my stuff when I study Japanese.  So I’m working on cleaning it up first, and then I will measure it, sketch out a plan, and make it happen.  I don’t know exactly how it will turn out when the furniture has been bought and it is all set up.  But I assure you, it will be classy.

In Like Flynn

Honestly, I don’t even know where that reference comes from.

But I think it makes sense.  I went back to the Taiko group I went to last week, and practiced for a good couple hours.  Best exercise I’ve had in a while.   I’m going to go watch some shows with them on Sunday too.  Pretty sure I’m in this one for the long haul.  Check that off the list of things to accomplish.

And oh yeah, I got the days off to go to Obama city for the election =)  I can’t wait…it’s going to be a big day when two Americans stroll into Obama wearing Obama shirts and buttons and ready to party hard.  I plan to be just as happy and crazy as I was depressed four years ago on the same day.

I have a few days of vacation/weekend after the election, so I will probably go to Tokyo and spend it seeing exchange student friends of mine from Waseda that I haven’t seen in a year, or two or three for some of them…depending on whether I get the last day I requested off too, I may have a 9-day vacation coming up.  I hope so, because that would be just incredibly epic.  But if not, Obama and Tokyo should make for a pretty damn memorable 5 days.

Overall, my schedule has become more full than I thought it would be.  I have to get up at 6-6:30 to make it to school on time, then I spend most of the day around a lot of people speaking Japanese really fast, and then I get back at 5-5:30 pm and just veg a lot.  That’s been the pattern for most of the past 2 1/2 months, with some notable exceptions and very slow but steady improvement.

Adjusting is an interesting process, and it’s different than I thought it would be.  I never really experienced culture shock in the regular sense, or felt alone, or scared, or homesick even, really (though I do miss the good beer and coffee…).  Adjusting for me has mostly been about the subtleties of life here that have taxed me while I barely notice.  The attention and focus that I give to trying to understand every Japanese word that comes out of someone’s mouth on the bus, in the teacher’s room, from my kids, all the time.  In the U.S. I just tune all of it out as background noise, as we all do.  But when it’s in Japanese, I want to know what people are saying.

I also just found out that I have to decide by November 13 whether to recontract for another year or not.  That is in a mere three weeks and only a few days after I return from my epic journey across Japan.  This was a surprise to me because the formal time to recontract is in February.  But apparently Isahaya likes to get everything in ahead of time for *financial* reasons that I won’t explain in detail here…Since arriving I’ve just assumed I would stay a second year to really make the most of my time here, since a lot of the first few months of the first year is spent running around like a chicken with your head cut off.  And to save up some more money, and of course, to cement my Japanese ability into a real asset to bring home.  So I’m leaning toward the second year and haven’t really come up with any reasons for why I shouldn’t stay.  I’ve got a good gig here, and I might as well take advantage of it for the time being.  I consider myself a pretty reflective person.  So I think that when the time comes, when I decide what I want to do next, I will know and will come home.  Until then, let it ride.

いじょうです。

Historical Context

Devastating back-to-back election cycles are truly rare: They have happened only twice in the past 80 years (40 elections) — to Republicans in 1932 and 1934 and to Democrats in 1950 and 1952. Usually, when voters kick the heck out of one party, their anger is satisfied and they move on. Voters rarely come back the very next time and kick the same party hard again.

It looks like this time, that is exactly what will happen.

Charlie Cook, National Journal

“My Greatest Weakness, It’s Possible That I’m…A Little Too Awesome”

He actually said it! I’m in stitches.  Just when I was thinking the exact same thing.  Barack, you are welcome anytime at Casa de Awesome.  (That would be Lewis & Clark College, East 210, about a year ago).

Drums and Hair

Today:

1) I went to a second Taiko group to watch them practice. This one is close by, isn’t tons of people, is a good mix of ages, and the people seem really friendly. I’m going next Thursday too. If it goes well, I’ll probably be able to join. Even the 20 minutes of practice I did exposed me to the reality of muscles I haven’t used in probably 15 years.

2) I resolved to get my first haircut in Japan (and only my second non-self haircut in the last SEVERAL years) tomorrow by a friend of a friend. Wish me luck. I’m just full of new experiences. And I promise to post the result, good or shockingly bad.

Oh Sweet Jesus Wish Me Luck

…in getting vacation days in 3 weeks.  If I get them, this will be my reward:

オバマ、頑張れ！ファイット！！White House へ！

Make sure to listen to the audio.

And, more great articles about Obama city:

The New York Times, AFP, and The Guardian.