Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
The excitement never stops here is the Japanese countryside.
A few months ago, we planted potatoes. This weekend we harvested them!
I still regard this whole experience as something of a miracle.
Of course, growing up in Detroit, Michigan — which at the time was the automobile capital of the known universe — I was very familiar with plants. There was the Dodge truck PLANT over on Mound Avenue. There was the auto assembly PLANT in Sterling Heights. My whole town was full of and surrounded by such plants. From age 14 through high school, I worked as a shipping clerk assistant for an automation machinery company which sold their product internationally. We shipped 150-200 foot-long machines which machined everything from cylinder heads to crankcases to intake manifolds, by sea and land to automotive manufacturing plants in Germany, England, Argentina, Australia and so on. Some of our behemoth product lines were even painted green, I guess to go with the wallpaper in the gigantic factories which would house them. True, I had heard of this thing called a “farm” but thought it had something to do with cultivating baseball players for the major leagues. Not really curious enough to give it much thought, I assumed that since people needed food, it just somehow showed up at the supermarket. The idea that edible plants had to be planted, then slowly and organically grow into something useful and hopefully delicious, was never on my radar.
Okay . . . enough about my pitiful agricultural ignorance.
It’s never too late to learn unless you’re dead. Since I’m still alive and minimally sentient, I have embraced the whole gardening thing with random relish and earthy delight.
But enough talk. Feast your hungry eyes on our potato harvest. While you do that, I’ll be surfing the internet for potato recipes. Because yes . . . we’ve got a lot of potatoes!
You’ve heard the expression, “The world is an oyster.” It’s attributed to Shakespeare, from The Merry Wives of Windsor. I have to come clean. I never bought into that. In fact, for some reason lately I’m leaning toward: “The world is a potato.” Which puts a whole new spin on global warming, wouldn’t you say?
I want to send some love to the wonderful fans of LIVE FROM JAPAN!
First, I thank all of you for the enormous outpouring of praise for my book. All 5-star reviews at Barnes & Noble. Fifteen 5-star reviews at Amazon. More satisfying than charts and book sales is knowing that people truly enjoyed the book. That’s the main and certainly most important reason for writing it in the first place.
Beyond my heartfelt gratitude, I want to remind everyone who has an interest in learning about the “real Japan”, that my sharing my unique life and experiences did not end with writing LIVE FROM JAPAN!
Since it was published in February 2021, I’ve continued to write articles and post them here at this website. Like the book, it’s a mixed bag of anecdotes about both life in my traditional rural town, and stories of travel and news from other parts of Japan.
I’ll make this very easy. Here is a list of all the articles to date, starting with the most recent:
I believe in seeking the truth. And seeking the truth requires careful observation, collection of all relevant evidence, and a dispassionate, objective evaluation of that evidence, drawing from it an acceptable and incontrovertible conclusion.
For all of my life, I’ve been looking at paintings. The fact is — as boring as this makes me as a person — when I visit a new city, among my first stops is an art gallery.
This means that over the many decades of my life, I’ve viewed thousands of paintings, works of art ranging from centuries past right up until the present.
Only very recently, however, I noticed something which had previously never caught my attention. And while I can’t put an exact date on it, this mind-blowing epiphany is . . .
Until only about 200 years ago, NO ONE HAD EYELASHES!
Go ahead! I challenge you. Find me a painting from the 18th Century or before where a person who either was part of some broader scene or individually featured in a portrait, has eyelashes.
YOU CAN’T!
I don’t see any eyelashes. Do you?
Now the indisputable truth is that until various fanciful post-realism genres — e.g. Impressionism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Cubism — caught hold and laid the visual foundation for the social-political chaos we are now immersed in, artists were meticulous, not to say OCD, about capturing every detail and nuance of the objects and subjects of their paintings.
I’m forced — by my strict adherence to the laws of empiricism and logic — to draw only one conclusion: If people had eyelashes back then, we would see them in the paintings.
Which means, eyelashes are a recent phenomenon, a genetic innovation which burst on the scene, literally thrusting itself suddenly and dramatically into the human genome, only quite recently.
Could I be wrong?
Come on! Rembrandt wasn’t a hack. NO EYELASHES!
Actually, why should we be surprised? Do you think anyone moonwalked before 1932? Is there any evidence of a knock-knock joke that pre-dates Shakespeare? When it comes to humans, it doesn’t necessarily take millennia for big evolutionary leaps to occur.
I’m sure that this “missing eyelash” enigma can be explained with some careful, focused investigation, rigorous research, applying scientific method with precision and a passion for discovering the truth. So here’s my offer: If the National Science Foundation or any other charitable trust is willing to allocate a few million dollars, I’m more than happy to look into this rather curious matter, producing some solid and satisfying answers.
As I write this, my wife Masumi is in Hiroshima with the entire 6th grade of her school, over eighty students. They’re on a field trip to visit the Peace Park and the Peace Museum.
This trip is something that they do every year. And it’s common among the elementary schools here in Hyogo and other prefectures throughout Japan. When the kids are in their last year, they go to this world-famous city to learn about the horrors of war.
Not only is it a vital learning experience, but it’s quite an adventure, even if it’s only two days. Masumi’s kids took the Shinkansen — high-speed bullet train — from Kobe, and traveling at up to 320 km/hr (200 mph), it only took an hour-and-a-half to get there. By car it’s a five hour drive.
First day, they went to the Peace Park and sang a beautiful song called “Negai” — which means ‘hope’. I recorded Masumi’s piano performance of the song and she played that over a portable speaker at the park. The kids sang this beautiful, hopeful song.
Here are the lyrics.
There’s so much to see and take in. The museum is a phenomenal experience. Masumi took me to it years ago. When I left, I decided that everyone on the planet — especially Americans, who seem to think war is fun and games — should spend a couple days learning both the real truth about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and understand that even having one nuclear weapon is sheer insanity. Currently, the US has 5,428. Russia has 5,977. Plus seven other nations additionally have 1,360 among them. Apparently, the human species has a death wish embedded in its DNA. Is there a vaccine for total madness?
The “dome” is the only structure to survive the atomic bomb, which detonated about 500 feet directly overhead. The photo is what it still looks like, the drawing is a rendering by Masumi’s 6th grade students.
Japan has no nuclear weapons. According to its constitution, specifically and unambiguously stated in Article 9, Japan can only have a purely defensive military.
Unfortunately, the reality of the “defense” force here is not that squeaky clean. The U.S. right now is encouraging a more aggressive Japanese military, one that will support U.S. efforts to contain China and maintain its domination over the rest of the world. Perhaps it will come as a surprise that the U.S. currently has 56 military bases in Japan, meaning it is still an occupied country — from a war that ended almost eight decades ago!
Thus, there is internal tension here in Japan about war and peace, just as there is in the U.S. and most countries. The people if Japan — the everyday citizens — have long memories. Japan was almost totally destroyed as a result of their attempt to conquer this part of the world. Lesson learned. Even now, most regular people want no part of it.
BUT . . . there are highly nationalistic individuals who’ve stayed in power. The ruling party — the one initially installed and still favored by the U.S. warmongers — has been continuously in control of the things since the U.S. dictated the terms of surrender to Japan after World War II. The U.S. has kept them securely under its thumb, assuring that 1) Japan never entertains again the idea of becoming an independent world power, and 2) Japan dutifully serves the national interests and geopolitical ambitions of U.S. empire. World domination-obsessed American puppet masters play on the nationalistic leanings of this group, who proudly want a powerful Japan as a major player on the world stage, and promote divisiveness and hostility, making sure that Japan is never on amicable terms with any other regional entities. Though Japan officially claims to only be committed to “self-defense”, it has a formidable fighting force, including submarines, fighter jets, infantry — far more than it needs to defend the homeland.
Which makes the extra-curricular education of the trip to Hiroshima even more vital. As with America, it’s the people who must keep the government in check, applying constant pressure to the official leadership to embrace diplomacy and peace.
It’s obvious that Masumi’s students get it. They wrote this declaration for their visit.
I’m so fortunate to be married to someone as deeply committed to ending war as I am. Unfortunately, not everyone Masumi works with is so enlightened. Prompted by U.S. propagandists, the government and media — just like in the U.S. — spread fear, mainly of China and North Korea, and try to convince the everyday citizens of the need for a bigger, better-equipped military. Of course, much of the additional equipment would come from the U.S. weapons manufacturers. How convenient!
Peace is a tough sell in today’s world. All we can do is tell the truth and hope for the best.
