Life In Japan: Planting Soybeans

Sasayama, the traditional rural town I live in, is famous throughout Japan for two food items.
One is wild boar.  We even have a wild boar festival!  Can't say I get very excited about wild boar, either in the wild, or tearing up the local farm land, or on the plate.  Cooked it looks like pork but to my taste buds has a weird flavor.

The other item is black beans, better known as soybeans. 

Soybeans are eventually harvested in two stages.  When they first mature, they are green and relatively soft.  They are best eaten fresh, right off the vine, boiled for 12-15 minutes. 



When you go to a Japanese restaurant and order edamame -- 枝豆 -- this is what you're eating.  They are served in the pod, which is boiled and lightly salted, and you pop the green beans into your mouth.  Delicious!  And nutritious!

Many of the soybeans are left on the vine to mature to the second stage of harvesting.  They become very dry and extremely hard, and they turn BLACK!  The advantage is that these can be stored without refrigeration and used throughout the year for a whole variety of recipes.  Black beans are even extensively used in very sweet soups and pastries.

Regardless of whether they end up as "immature" young green beans or black beans, the whole business starts in spring with the planting.  My wife Masumi and I even get in on the action, planting a couple rows we rent from our neighbor.



Fasten your seat belts. The excitement builds fast as we make some holes, then insert greenhouse-grown seedlings, push the dirt back in the hole, wait, read a book, build an atomic submarine in a bottle out of used match sticks, wait some more, fertilize the plant a couple times in the summer, keep waiting (patience is very important in farming) as momentum on the soybean growing scene steadily keeps gathering steam.  Did I mention there's quite a bit of waiting involved?  Then finally sometime in October it all climaxes in a earth-shaking, rib-rattling, jaw-dropping, game-changing finale (I've dedicated a separate article to the harvest).

Whew!  I'm surprised they haven't made a Movie-of-the-Week out of it.

Anyway, sarcasm notwithstanding, the soybean fields are quite beautiful.  And the farmers are very hard-working folks.  Masumi and I are hobbyists.  The growers are the real deal.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]




Life In Japan: Planting Soybeans

Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Barbecue

Notice something about the barbecue in the photo?

There are two things. 

Typically in the U.S. barbecuing is open flame, either over wood, charcoal, or with more sophisticated high-tech grills, over gas.  In Japan, it can be any of those, but just as often barbecuing is done with a hot plate, as shown.  Conveniently, they have hot plates for indoor barbecuing, both at home and at restaurants. 

We own a high-temperature electric griddle so we can barbecue in the middle of winter or during a typhoon without filling the house with smoke or being asphyxiated.

Secondly, I'm used to seeing mounds of meat and only meat.  Yes, they also barbecue mounds of meat here: Unbelievably delicious beef, pork and sausages, though rarely hamburgers and hot dogs.  But the Japanese also love to barbecue just about anything else that can be barbecued!  The volunteer chef above is "barbecuing" -- actually stir-frying -- noodles with cabbage.  Later, he removed the plate and open-grilled the entire range of items for the day's feast.  Corn, squash, onions, eggplant, potatoes, different varieties of mushrooms, garlic cloves, squid.

It seemed odd to me when I first arrived.  Now it makes total sense.  Barbecued vegetables are fantastic!  And don't get me started about squid.  Squid is one of those things I thought was completely weird before I moved here.  Squid and octopus.  Now I'm totally addicted.
We have a village barbecue at our community center every year in the middle of July.  The neighborhood organization pulls out all the stops.  A splendid time is had by all!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Barbecue

Life In Japan: Shinto Monk Home Blessing

All of us at one time or another have had strangers come to the door.  Maybe it's Jehovah Witness or Mormon recruiters; someone looking for a prior resident; a person whose car has broken down; a magazine salesman; one of those people who go around stuffing fliers in mailboxes, advertising a new gym, a sale on snow tires, a new restaurant opening down the street, a holiday sale; a person with Alzheimer's disease who wandered out of the back door of their house down the street.

But how many of you folks can say they've had Shinto monks come by to bless your home, your life, and all of those in your immediate family?



Of course, they're seeking alms.  But that's really standard operating procedure here in Asia.  When I was in Myanmar, shortly after sunrise, young monks would fan out through the neighborhood where I was staying and ask for a daily contribution for their sustenance and the continuation of their spiritual work.  The community values their presence and what they contribute to the social equilibrium, and shows its appreciation with pocket change and small bills.  Is this so different than passing the hat, collection basket, handheld wireless ATM at a church in the U.S.?  I think not.

Besides, the Shinto monks who go door-to-door here put on a nice little show!  See for yourself . . .

It must be working.  No one around us that I'm aware of has gotten the plague, we've had no invasions of locusts, blood seems confined to the arterial systems of the hosts, we never get thunderstorms of hail and fire.  We have our share of frogs but quite honestly they're cute little critters.  Noisy but cute.

I'd say Japan is better off than most ancient civilizations.  Meaning, if it ain't broke don't fix it.  I'm certainly looking forward to another visit from the Shinto good fortune team when they run out of money.  Until then I think I'll just levitate . . .





[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Shinto Monk Home Blessing

Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Curry and Bingo Party

Curry is of course from India.  But the Japanese put their own spin on it and have come up with quite a few of their own variations, some spicy -- but not that spicy -- some mild, all quite delicious, at least to this Westerners palate.  Curry is extremely easy to prepare and is a very common everyday dish, one served at school lunches, outdoor markets, festivals and other social gatherings, restaurants, certainly at home for evening dinner.  Curry here is always served with rice.  Here we only use homegrown local product, often grown and harvested by the very people in my immediate community.

Bingo I assume was imported from the U.S. -- though it's roots are in Europe -- and is quite the rage here.  When I used it as a teaching tool for my English students, it made sense.  Match pictures and words.  Build a vocabulary while learning to "hear" English. 



But I soon discovered that Bingo is played all of the time here.  It's certainly fun for all ages and a good excuse to give things away, something else Japanese love to do.  Giving gifts is like shaking hands or breathing here.  Whether it's a social obligation, heartfelt gesture, tradition, or habit, it's always great to be handed a special gift by another individual. 

Every year our village of Noma has their curry-bingo party in November.  Last year I won some kitchen utensils and two years ago a kite.  I can feel your envy across the vast stretch of cyberspace!



There is so much community here in Japan, at least where I live.  Maybe this isn't the case in the big cities, but certainly here, the folks living in Noma, the neighborhood community on the eastern edge of the city I reside in, get together regularly and work on some project, celebrate a holiday, hold a ceremony, or just have a good time.  It's very charming!  More importantly, because of all of these social affairs, I feel like I belong here, as a member of an extended family.  The regular socializing also gives everyone a stake in keeping the neighborhood safe, clean, wholesome.  Friendly smiles and greetings are the norm.

I say sometimes I feel like I'm living in a fairy tale.  But maybe what I have is just the comfortable, civilized way things should be for everyone everywhere.  Life's not just singing solo.  A little harmony greatly improves the song and the rhythm of life.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]




Life In Japan: Annual Neighborhood Curry and Bingo Party

Life In Japan: Jennifer the Cat, Media Darling!

As an attention-starved author and overgrown baby, I of course am always trying to attract publicity.  Again, one of my kitties has humbled yours truly by being featured in our local newspaper.
 
Maybe I'm approaching this wrong.  Do I need to learn how to purr to get noticed around here?

Of course, the selection of local pets for cameos is not random.  And since our kitties are the most beautiful in the world, what choice is there but to run their photos and say a few complimentary, if inadequate words?  I'm frankly surprised they don't write them up on the front page with a huge eye-catching headline like . . .

JENNIFER THE CAT STEALS EVERYONE'S HEART IN SASAYAMA

. . . or create a special standalone section for them like the Arts & Culture Magazine of the New York Times.

You think I'm biased?  Check out these photos!

Which gets to the heart of the challenge for me personally.  At least in the cuteness department, I simply can't compete.  So I need to create my own separate niche.

I got it!  I'll write novels!  Incredibly cute novels.  With cute covers.  And cute characters.  Cute story lines.  Cute plot twists.

Novels that purr!

Hmm . . . I may have gotten off to a bad start. Politics?  Satire?  Human trafficking?  Growing up in Detroit?  The end of the world?  Drug smuggling?  Eating giraffes?

What's cute about any of that?



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Jennifer the Cat, Media Darling!

Life In Japan: Tilling The Soil

I can't say that growing up in Detroit exactly gave me a strong agricultural awareness.  Though for five years my mom and dad had mobile home north of the urban sprawl and the trailer park was surrounded by undeveloped land -- literally fields and even a small forest -- none of it was farmed.  I think the first time I saw a tractor was at the State Fair and it was parked, sparkling clean, gleaming in the artificial light of an exhibition hall.

One thing I truly enjoy about living in a farming community now is that the growing cycle parallels the cycle of seasons.  Back in Detroit, it was the weather that marked the seasonal changes.  Truth is, it's more that the weather drives the growing cycle of food production.  This seems obvious now but simply never occurred to me.  When I was growing up, we got food at the grocery store.  How it got there wasn't anything we worried much about.  That's probably still true for most people.  I hear that urban kids -- at least up to a certain age, around 13 or 14 -- now are shocked to find out that Chicken McNuggets didn't magically show up at the Drive-Thru window of McDonald's, that someone raised real live animals, chopped off their heads, yanked out the feathers, carved the deceased into bite-size chunks.  This imagery is not exactly mouth-watering.

Anyway, as belated as my agricultural epiphany is, I'm finally aware of what's been going on "behind the scenes" for 20,000 years now.  Please don't laugh.  I know my ignorance is pathetic.  But better late than never.  Or is it?

I'll pretend you didn't answer that.

First stage in getting stuff to grow?  Preparing the soil!

Actually I can relate.  What boy doesn't like to play in the dirt!

Preparing the soil -- or more poetically, tilling the soil -- takes two similar but distinct paths here.
One is churning dirt in order to grow vegetables.  This looks the same as what they do in Ohio, Iowa, and Nebraska.

The second is what they do all over Asia, where rice is the main staple.  It is more about churning mud.

There you have it.  I make no apologies.  This may seem mundane, quaint, or even boring to most of you.  I've lived in farm country now for over ten years.  I find it . . .

Comforting?
Ennobling?
Spiritual?
Actualizing?
Holistic?

As a writer, words are important to me.  So I need to find that perfect word or phrase for capturing the cognitive and emotional essence of my reaction to all this plowing, turning, separating, blending, mangling and manipulation of dirt.

Ah!  I've got it.  I find all of this farming stuff . . .

Really neat!




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Tilling The Soil

Life In Japan: Harvesting Rice

First, they prepare the soil.

Then they plant the rice.

The rice grows.

Then . . .

[ DRUM ROLL ]

They harvest the rice!

Can you feel the excitement?

Granted it's not as riveting as World Cup Rugby. . . or watching the Oscars . . . or having Vladimir Putin drop by for lunch.

But it's what they do here in Tambasasayama — year after year.  It's the cycle of farming, the rhythm of the seasons, the drumbeat of life.

Being raised in a major city, a factory town no less, I find this whole business fascinating.  Almost magical!  Detroit didn't have any farms back then, though I hear these days there are quite a few organic gardens in the empty lots remaining after the houses are burned down.

To really do this right requires bringing out some industrial-strength gadgetry.

I tell people I live in the middle of rice and soybean fields.  Indeed we do.  They of course rotate the crops to keep the soil full of vitality.  And throw other vegetables into the mix.

Just a few days ago, quite late in the season, they finally harvested the rice growing directly in front of our home.  As you can see in the photo below, we have a forest right behind us.  That's my wife Masumi's Mazuda Demio sitting out front of our place. 

She thinks it's funny I take so many "farm photos".  I guess it is.





[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]




Life In Japan: Harvesting Rice

Life In Japan: Festival of the Portable Shrines

Every year during the third week in October we have a most unique and marvelous festival here called the Festival of the Portable Shrines.

I don't exactly know either its "purpose" or how to describe it.  Hopefully the photos and video will offer some idea what an exhilarating two days we have here in Tambasasayama, as the streets fill with colorful costumes, huge shrines either on wheels or being carried by the heartier men -- many of whom are extremely inebriated on local sake -- and visitors from all over who come to enjoy the festivities.

We see a lot of unfamiliar faces.  This festival coincides with the soybean harvest, and our town is known for having the most delicious soybeans in Japan.  So we see Japanese from all the surrounding prefectures -- the Japanese equivalent of states in the U.S. -- even from as far as Tokyo, which is over 500 kilometers (320 miles) away.  There's also a decent mix of Westerners in town.  ALTs -- Assistant Language Teachers who typically teach English in the area junior and senior high schools -- converge from the entire region.  This is also the time that the exchange students arrive from Walla Walla, Washington -- which is Tambasasayama's sister city in the U.S. -- to experience a two weeks concentrated dose of Japanese culture.

And here's a short video compilation from just last week.

See you next year!  Bring your smiles.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Festival of the Portable Shrines

Life In Japan: Western Holidays

I admit, at first I had mixed feelings when I encountered Western holidays in Asia.  Wasn't it cultural pollution?  Wasn't any place safe from Ken and Barbie dolls, the Easter Bunny, Superman, Santa Claus, Ronald McDonald, Taylor Swift?  Was Western capitalism going to turn the entire surface of the planet into a Universal Studios City Walk?

Gradually, however, I've adjusted to the fact that in Asia, Japan in particular, the modus operandi tends to be a sponge more than a condom.  The cultural roots here are so deep, a little cross-pollination in fact reinforces the uniqueness of the region's distinctive features.

Besides, Japanese are a bit selective, tending to embrace the funner holidays, with a clear preference for those which can be commercially exploited.

That brings into the fold Christmas, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Easter, Valentines Day -- which I've written about in another article as well as its enhancement with the addition of White Day -- and Halloween.

Japanese already exchange gifts at a frenzied pace.  It's considered rude and unacceptable to visit anyone without bringing a gift.  It's not just social visits.  I had a lady almost drive into me when I was riding my bicycle.  She barely brushed against my pant leg with her car and I just laughed, smiled and waved, then rode off.  She actually took the trouble to track down "the American" and the next day showed up at my house with an interesting present -- it was a bag of fresh eggplants and a note.

As you'd then expect, all of the Western holidays are celebrated with gifts, maybe holiday cards.  But that's it.  They don't shut down the stores and banks.  There are no Halloween or Easter parades.  To alert the buying public about these holidays, decorations come out, appropriate to the occasion.  There might be some posters in the windows of a store, and special products display.  At Christmas in our traditional rural town, there are a few large coniferous trees decorated with Christmas lights.  For Halloween candy is put out on sale, as much as six weeks in advance.  But the reality is, these holidays are entirely low key affairs, certainly not the extravagant spectacles we often experience in the West.

Let me qualify that slightly for a some locales other than Japan.  In Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam, for the month of December, the whole town goes into a Christmas frenzy.  Tons of decorations, tinsel and gaudy trees, fake snow, fake snowmen -- is that PC? maybe it should be snowpersons -- and Santa's helpers (usually cute girls) running around handing out advertising fliers.  And then there's Bangkok, Thailand, which gives Ho Chi Minh City a run for its money -- literally, as it's entirely about sell sell sell -- for Christmas hoopla.

Having said all of this, I will confess that I can't suppress the allergic reaction I get when I walk into a Japanese supermarket, restaurant, mall during November and December and am subjected to the Christmas carols I typically heard back home in my homeland of birth, holiday songs which cumulatively I've heard at least 100 million times.  Maybe more!

The problem for me mostly is the schizophrenia of contemporary Christmas.  Or maybe a better way to characterize it here in Asia is the "disconnect".

The schizophrenia infects the U.S. and Canada.  What was once a fairly sacred holiday celebration has over the years become an orgy of consumer excess, with brawls and fist fights breaking out over Christmas sale items at Wallmart and other stores. 

Not that the religious version holiday itself didn't have some problems.  Stepping back from the official story a bit, it all seems rather unsavory and unlikely.  Virgin wife and her presumably sexually-frustrated but stoic husband are traveling.  Failing to have access to Trip Advisor or a good travel agent, they can't get a room.  To complicate matters, she's pregnant by God, creator of the entire Universe.  Why did the creator of the Universe choose this particular lady in the first place?  Virginity was "the thing" back then and God certainly had His pick.  Anyway, she goes into labor so they decide to hole up in a manger. Talk about unsanitary!  Cow and goat poop everywhere.  The potential for very serious infection is high.  But no worries.  She spits out the Son of God under these inauspicious circumstances.  Giving birth was that much of a breeze back then that a carpenter -- her patient and enduring husband -- was able to pull this off.  With carpenter's tools?  What did they do with the afterbirth?  Being part-and-parcel of the birth of the Son of God, it seems it would have some sentimental value.  Then after the birth, three wise men show up, guided to the mangy manger by a heavenly object we presume wasn't a helicopter.  They just happen to know the Son of God, halo in place and in full view would be there, thus they brought appropriate gifts to celebrate the special occasion.

The result is that among the enormous piles of "stuff" people shop for starting on Black Friday -- how weird a name is that, for Christ's sake? -- are Nativity scenes.  I guess that makes maxing out credit cards more of a sacred, heavenly-endorsed exercise. 

Some folks erect huge, expensive, gaudy Nativity scenes on their front lawns. 



(Rumor has it that Jeff Bezos has live humans in his Nativity scene.  They're, of course, given occasional bathroom breaks and the chance to run down to 7-11 to buy food.  Their families are allowed fifteen minutes on Christmas Eve to visit them as long as they don't attempt to cross the electric fence surrounding the charming, real-life action portrayal of the birth of Jesus.  This is, of course, just a rumor, one I'm starting right here, because the beauty of the internet is that you can say what ever you want and people will usually not question it.)

Anyway, what was considered over the centuries by Christians as a defining moment in time, inaugurating for eternity a new era for all that is and will be -- the birth of the Savior of Humankind -- has in the U.S. mutated into the most defining moment each year for the consumer economy.  Around 1.9 billion Christmas cards are sent out annually and the average person does 25% of all their discretionary spending during the holiday, even though it's questionable how much discretion they show.

Christmas is less schizo and for me here in Japan, as I mentioned, more of a 'disconnect'.  Being a Buddhist and Shinto country, there is no attention paid to the virgin birth and the epic arrival of Jesus on Planet Earth.  It's strictly a commercial enterprise, though not on the scale of the U.S. and many other Western countries.  It's an excuse to buy stuff and give gifts with pretty wrapping.

It's also an excuse to eat fried chicken!  Yes . . . fried chicken.

In a stroke of marketing genius, several decades ago KFC embarked on a campaign to convince the Japanese that fried chicken was the preferred meal at Christmas in the U.S.  No one apparently bothered to ask any Americans or they would have found out that it's either turkey or ham at Christmas and no one in their right mind would eat fried chicken.



The campaign worked and now people place orders with KFC, of course, sometimes as far ahead as a month in advance -- can't risk having no fried chicken on December 25th -- for buckets of the Colonel's unique blend of herbs and spices.  Honestly, it's such a novel idea, this year I may try it myself.  Why not?  How does the expression go?

When in Tokyo do as the Tokyoans!

Something like that.

One recurring incident which never fails to amuse me is when people who should know better -- friends who know I live in Japan, not in the U.S. -- ask me something like . . .

"How was your Thanksgiving?"

Now I'm not an expert on Japanese history, but I feel safe in saying that in spite of the fact that navigation was touch-and-go back then, the Pilgrims never made a stop here.  And if they had, they wouldn't have had fried chicken for their welcoming banquet with the local folks.  Maybe sea cucumbers?  Or sashimi?

For related reasons, the Japanese don't celebrate Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Martin Luther King Day.

So don't ask.


[ This originated at the author's website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Western Holidays

Life In Japan: My Bike Ride to Teach English

I've recorded what is possibly the most boring video ever made but some snoopy folks wonder if I really do live out in the country, in the middle of rice and soybean fields.  Well skeptics, here's proof.  Sorry the camera shakes so much but maybe viewers can get some idea how incredibly beautiful it is here in rural Japan.

If you actually make it to the end of the video, you'll see that I teach my classes in a yurt (photo above), a structure which is Mongolian in origin.  What can I say?  The Japanese love to mix and match.  Unfortunately, this one leaks in the rain, is a cauldron in hot weather, and a freezer in cold.  What I endure to spread the mother tongue!

Now I only have adult students.  But a while back I had two young sisters, ages 6 and 7, who were about to move to Guam.  Because it's a U.S. territory, English is the predominant language and for them to attend school there required them getting up to speed.  Here are Mio and Joyce.



I also had some "guest teachers" for one class, a recently-married couple from Sweden -- actually they're German but live in Stockholm -- my wife Masumi and I met couchsurfing a few years back.  They came to Japan and since their English is so good, I paired them up with my adult students for practice.



That's the story.  I ride my bike to and from class whenever it's not raining.  Many of the photos appearing in other essays at this site were taken on that bike ride.  I frankly never get tired of riding anywhere here in our traditional, rural town.  There's still a lot to see and discover.  People I hardly know often wave.  Smiles are our common language.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: My Bike Ride to Teach English

Life In Japan: The Naked American

I taught English full-time here in Japan for a whole year in 2008.  There were all levels of classes, all ages, from beginner to advanced, from 4-year-olds to folks in their eighties.

One Friday morning in August or September, I walked into my advanced English class, situated at a cross-cultural community center on the edge of town, and it was obvious something was being shared my students thought was funny which I apparently wasn't supposed to know.  They were giggling and looking conspicuously guilty.  It was a small class, only five students, and I guess I caught them somewhat by surprise.  Which itself didn't make sense, since it was one-minute before class was supposed to start.  Perhaps they wanted to be caught in their conspiratorial pow wow.

"Okay, students.  What were you talking about?  What's so funny?"

"Nothing, JD.  We were laughing about something?"  As they continued to giggle.

"We have no secrets here.  You're required to tell me what your conversation was all about.  I think it might be a law."

(Conferring among themselves.)

"Should we tell him?"

"Really?"

"I'm embarrassed.  You tell him."

"No, you tell him."

Finally, one of them spoke up.

"Uh . . . it's just . . . actually . . . you have a nickname here in Sasayama."

"A nickname.  I have a nickname?  What nickname?"

"Yes.  People here call you [more giggles] . . . the naked American."

"The naked American?  The naked American!  I don't understand.  Why would they call me the naked American?"

"Well . . . people see you riding around on your bike without a shirt."

Without a shirt.

I thought about it.  I'd never really noticed.  Did I ever see any guys without their shirts?  It's not something I really pay much attention to.

Of course, in the U.S. it's very common in hot weather for us fellows to whip off our shirts to stay cool.  There are even signs in convenience stores:  No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service!

I started to look around.  I've been paying attention to this important item now for about eleven years.  And quite honestly, I have only seen a man without a shirt once or twice.

In eleven years!


This reminds me of my three months in Nepal, a rustic, conservative country.  For six weeks I lived in a beautiful town called Pokhara, enjoying its natural beauty, lovely lake, Peace Stupa, friendly locals, great hiking, calm.

I specifically remember thinking how insensitive many Western girls were.  All of the local women dressed very modestly, as Hindus and Muslims, covering themselves head to toe in beautiful genuis, informal sari-like gowns.



It was very obvious what the local standards of modesty were.  Agree with them or not, this was their culture and I thought it appropriate to be respectful.  Yet, because the weather in Pokhara was hot to very hot, the ladies from Australia, Europe, and so on, walked around in halters and bikini tops with their bellies bared, side boobs and cleavage in full display.  Then there were the shorts, short shorts, very short shorts.  The overall effect was more exposed flesh than covered.

How inconsiderate!

How insensitive!

How rude!

Uh . . . sort of like me riding around on my bicycle without a shirt here in Japan.

Busted . . . and humbled!



At the same time, I now understand things are changing in the U.S. in some unanticipated ways.  Not that I have any intention of going back to witness the new "freedoms" in person, I just read that women can go topless now in six states in the U.S., as decided in a recent federal court ruling.  "It’s a huge victory for plaintiffs Brit Hoagland and Samantha Six, who sued the city [Fort Collins, CO] over its law as part of the #FreeTheNipple movement, calling it an attack on gender inequality."

See?  I was WAY AHEAD of my time, the creator of a new social movement, and I didn't even realize it -- the #FreeTheNipple movement!

I'm so heartened that people are putting time and energy into the real threats to happiness and health here on this planet.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: The Naked American

Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

There are so many answers to that question, it's difficult to know where to begin. But here are a few right off the top of my head, based on our current foreign policy and the thinking mapped out by the truly remarkable collection of political leaders currently at the helm.  One of these real geniuses offers insights into the kind of guy he is in the above video.

Anyway, please stand at attention with your hands over your hearts, as I offer twenty-four of the reasons why we should wage war on Iran.

1)  Because we can.

2)  We have all these bombs.

3)  What good is a military if you don't use it?

4)  We love spreading chaos!

5)  Destroy, divide, conquer.

6)  Have you ever seen Hassan Rouhani on Dancing With The Stars?  Obviously he hates our freedom and our television shows.

7)  God told us to.

8)  Israel told us to.

9)  Saudi Arabia told us to.

10)  Lindsey Graham told us to.

11)  We want to start a world war (see #2 above).

12)  We got over the Vietnam Syndrome but now we have to get over both the "Afghanistan Syndrome" and the "Syria Syndrome".

13)  It'll piss off Russia.

14)  It'll piss off China.

15)  It'll piss off Hillary Clinton because she wanted to be the one to start it.

16)  Donald Trump will get re-elected because when we're at war we have to rally behind the president (I think it's somewhere in the Bible: "Don't change horses' asses in the middle of a war." Leviticus? Corinthians?)

17)  Hollywood needs new settings for its upcoming war movies.

18)  War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges.

19)  Americans love war as long as it's NIMBY.

20)  Jared Kushner.

21)  War makes lots of money for investors, especially the already ultra-rich.

22)  It'll hasten the Rapture.

23)  Peace is for pussies.

24)  Iranians revealed their diabolical anti-Americanism by putting their country in the middle of all our military bases.

There's more.  But I think this is a damn good start!

You have a problem with this?  Too bad.




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Why should the U.S. wage war on Iran?

Life In Japan: National Holidays

                                     Coming of Age Day: January 14, 2019, Tokyo, Japan.


Here are the official national holidays and dates for Japan in 2019 . . .

New Year's Day: Jan 1 (self-explanatory).

Coming of Age Day: Jan 14 (turning 20 means adulthood, so all the new 20-year-olds dress up in kimonos and yukatas and have a party).

National Foundation Day:  Feb 11 (a very old celebration going back to 660 BCE when Emperor Jimmu ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne and Japan was born).

Vernal Equinox Day:  Mar 21 (yes, the Japanese celebrate the spring equinox!).

Showa Day:  Apr 29 (the first holiday on the Japanese calendar commemorating the birthday of the Showa emperor).

Constitution Memorial Day:  May 3 (commemorating the inauguration of the current Japanese constitution, back in 1947).

Greenery Day:  May 4 (celebrating and expressing thanks for nature and its splendor).

Children's Day:  May 5 (celebrating kids!).

Marine Day:  Jul 15 (celebrating the ocean and the sun and the bounty they provide).

Mountain Day:  Aug 11-12 (lots of mountains here and they're honored for contributing to happiness and natural beauty).

Respect for the Aged Day:  Sept 16 (the elderly are accorded great respect all throughout Asia, but this day is specially dedicated to honoring them; lots of flowers and cards).

Autumnal Equinox Day:  Sept 23 (heading into fall; the harvest after all is a big deal!)

Health-Sports Day:  Oct 14 (honoring health, fitness, sports).

Culture Day:  Nov 3-4 (people go to museums, also celebrate the post-war announcement of the new constitution, and the birthday of Emperor Meiji).

Labor Thanksgiving Day:  Nov 23 (unions march to celebrate labor rights, farmers give final thanks for the harvest, hopefully a fruitful and profitable one).

Notice anything missing?  Where are the military parades?  Where is the nationalism?  The self-aggrandizing political speeches?

Short answer:  There aren't any military celebrations.  Maybe honoring the constitution is "political" in a way.  It celebrates the political framework of Japan, but I believe without being nationalistic.  The birth of the country?  Again, it's about self-respect rather than superiority and "indispensability".
Most holidays, as is evident, are very innocent, focusing on people and nature.  Celebrating mountains?  The oceans?  The position of the Earth in its orbit around the sun?  Old folks? Kids?  Adolescents becoming adults?  Without getting drunk and hurling bottles at passing motorists?  Or eating seven times my body weight in barbecued ribs?

Some westerners might be tempted to sneer and make some snarky remark.

I can't help but smile and be grateful I'm not hearing war drums, 21-gun salutes, and parades of politicians moralizing about the honor of dying on the battlefield.

I'd rather thank the trees for being so green, the sun for showing up on time.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: National Holidays

Life In Japan: Ground Golf

There's "community life" in my community.

In my village called Noma, which is on the very eastern edge of town, as I've mentioned before, we get together regularly to clean up the "neighborhood".  Of course, most of the area which hosts the 40 or 50 houses in our village consists of rice and soybean fields.  When I refer to the neighborhood, I'm actually talking about the irrigation canals and ditches, retainer walls, our shrine hillock dedicated to Benten, a goddess of art and music.  We also have an annual barbecue, our curry and bingo party, and a number of ceremonies celebrating holidays throughout the year.

That's just my local village get-togethers.  Mind you, similar ones are taking place across the entire city, in each of the twelve or so local villages.  All of these are organized as neighborhood happenings, where it's likely everyone attending will be at least somewhat familiar with one another. 
Then there's all of the city-wide activities for Sasayama -- just this past May renamed Tambasasayama [丹波篠山市] in a special election -- organized for all 42,000 of the city's residents.  I've mentioned elsewhere the Dekansho Festival in August and the Festival of the Portable Shrines.  There are many more -- tea festivals, sports day festivals, the black bean (soybean) festival, wild boar festival, as well as street fairs, special markets, and so on.  For a relatively small city, there are certainly a lot of officially organized events.  But this is true for all of Japan.

There's one activity, however, I'd like to call special attention to.  Because it's just so darn charming, and so thoroughly Japanese!  That's the game of Ground Golf that takes place, weather permitting, every day here for six or seven months out of the year.

Not that Ground Golf is Japanese.  I don't know where the game originated.  Being called 'golf' certainly suggests non-Asian roots.

It's just the idea of it!  As the photo shows at the head of this article, it takes place on a huge flat field of sand.  The city maintains this play area just for Ground Golf.  There's not much else it could be used for.  Maybe a beach, if climate change causes a 150-meter rise in the level of the ocean.

Why do they have this?  To give old folks something to do and an excuse to socialize.

Can you imagine?


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Ground Golf

Julian Assange: Lest We Forget What Courageous Journalism Looks Like

New Zealand citizen journalist Suzi Dawson, herself a whistleblower who has taken political asylum in Russia to avoid persecution by the New Zealand government, listed what she considered the ten most important achievements by Julian Assange and Wikileaks.  This was in a interview with Jimmy Dore, October 27, 2018.

Here they are:

1)  "Wikileaks has been keeping the historical record intact, and is actually combating the digital loss as web pages and websites are constantly being taken down from the internet by the powers that be.  In this current paradigm they're actually scrubbing entire websites and domains at every opportunity.  They're trying to erase information from our living history.  And Wikileaks' founding charter says that any information that's at risk of censorship or deletion can find a safe harbor at Wikileaks."

2)  "Wikileaks enables victims of persecution to have admissible evidence to fight their cases in court.  40,000 cases around the world have had Wikileaks documents submitted as evidence to the court."

3)  "They've maintained a 100% accuracy record over ten years of publishing."

4)  "Wikileaks is still publishing despite the full force of the Empire being used against them.  Intelligence agencies, financial service providers, hostile media and law fare, and of course now Julian Assange's solitary confinement, we still see Wikileaks releases being published."

5)  "Wikileaks has established a digital library of over 10 million documents, containing pristine datasets, the full relevance of which will only become apparent years into the future.  Every current news story can be further informed by doing a key word search to see what Wikileaks archives contain about topics or persons or places that may be relevant to that news story."

6)  "Wikileaks has established a whole new way of doing journalism.  They also initiated the first anonymous drop boxes, which we now see that a similar technology is being used by media outlets across the globe."

7)  "Wikileaks has become the vanguard of press freedom, always pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable in publishing.  And that is incredibly important because as they are pushing those boundaries further and further out, it allows independent media and citizen media to fill that space in between.  We can go further and do more significant things because Wikileaks is out there taking the heat for us."

8)  "Wikileaks has published leaks on every country in the world without geopolitical bias."

9)  "Wikileaks leaves no source behind, and not only do they go above and beyond to support their sources, they've actually established other organizations to support other at risk journalists and whistleblowers, such as the Courage Foundation, and we now have proven that Julian Assange was involved in the establishment of the Freedom of the Press Foundation."

10)  "Julian saved the life of Edward Snowden, who is renowned as the greatest whistleblower of our generation, and was brought to you by Wikileaks."
Julian Assange should be getting a Nobel Prize, not being persecuted.

What can we do to save this courageous, heroic man?  This is not just about one man, as admirable and honorable he is as a person.  This is about freedom of speech, freedom of dissent, being able to stand up to power and avoid complete and total, across-the-board repression by burgeoning corporate-state totalitarianism.  The media is already a pitiful shell of what it once was.  Silencing the Julian Assanges of the world will just accelerate the demise of public discourse built on honest investigative reporting.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Julian Assange: Lest We Forget What Courageous Journalism Looks Like

Book Review: “The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin”

It takes enormous courage to write a book like this, which goes completely against the narrative promoted by America’s foreign policy and military establishments.  Courage because now any defense of Putin and Russia as actors on the world stage will not be met with reasonable, polite rebuttal and rational well-supported refutation, but personal vilification, marginalization, attacks on character and integrity, aspersions about disloyalty and lack of patriotic commitment, allegations of treachery and even sedition.  Lacking anything — e.g. facts — with which to rebut and refute the message, opponents of a balanced, objective, truthful analysis of Russian-American relations must resort to attacking the messenger.

Early in the book, Mr. Kovalik describes the process which radicalized him, what personal events opened his eyes to the barbarity and hypocrisy which has been centerpieces of America’s history from its earliest days.  His transformation occurred during a visit to Nicaragua during his college years.  He learned then to question and always be highly skeptical of the “official rationale” inflicted on the general public in the U.S., because it was often driven by the covert intent of obtaining — often manufacturing out of thin air — consent for America’s diplomatic bullying, manipulations, wanton aggressions, destructive interference, regime changes, and outright subjugation of countries across the planet.

History is the best teacher for understanding the present.  Our history, as is thoroughly explored and documented in this short but incisive volume, is riddled with false flags, misrepresentations, distortions, propaganda and outright lies, all carefully calculated to serve the real agenda of our government.  This is to provide unambiguous support for U.S. corporate interests; ruthlessly undermining any nation which dares to consider even the most diluted iteration of socialism; and punishing — all too frequently destroying — any country, often even murdering its leaders, for independently adopting policies which don’t disproportionately benefit the U.S. and honor the authority of the U.S. as world hegemon.

What has Russia under Putin done?  It put Russia’s interests first, it openly criticized the U.S. for its wanton aggression and disregard for international law, called out the U.S. for its consistent meddling in the affairs of other nations, including all too often violently overthrowing governments it doesn’t approve of, and moreover had the audacity to deploy national defense mechanisms which frees it of being blackmailed by U.S. military might.  For the U.S., which regards itself as the “exceptional” nation selected by destiny to control the world, these constitute an inexcusable affront which must be answered, a challenge which must be eradicated, even if this requires a world war which might go nuclear.

So it’s Russia bad, Putin badder.  Every imaginable and imagined accusation, typically presented as fact, is spewed out and flung at Putin and Russia.  And thus what we get as “news” these days is a childish white hats vs. black hats depiction of the momentous battle of Great Good America vs. Scary Evil Russia, a facile scenario now dubbed as the Second Cold War.

The extremes our government spokespersons and the obsequious media has gone to in order to strike fear in all of us about Russia and to incite a personal hatred for Vladimir Putin, should by themselves raise suspicions and reasonable doubts about what’s going on. But when the media is controlled by six major corporations with unshakeable deference to official government propaganda and those who fabricate it, and political leaders from both major parties who are owned by Wall Street, the big banks, the corporations, the ruling elite who obscenely profit from perpetual war, all everyday people get 24/7 is yarns about the Russian threat, Putin’s bloodthirsty desire to return to the glory days of Russia as a great power, Russian aggression, Russian invasions, Russian meddling in our otherwise perfect democracy, Russian targeted assassinations, Russian plots to subvert and destroy freedom-loving countries, Russian blame for everything from STDs to plugged toilets and family squabbles. It’s a premeditated program of brainwashing inflicted on a gullible and generally hapless American public.

The only possible pre-revolutionary antidote is thorough, unbiased investigative journalism, potent research, historical knowledge and perspective, personal insights shared with candor and clarity, all of the foregoing assembled by an author of the high caliber of Dan Kovalik, into an immensely readable and superbly informative book like The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]


Book Review: “The Plot To Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin”

The Richest Sociopath in the World

 

[ This article appeared almost a year ago at OpEdNews and Dissident Voice.  It was written before Jeff Bezos divorced his wife, MacKenzie, after 25 years of marriage. While the final settlement affects his total net worth, the important calculations and the overall thrust of the article are still solid.  Wealth inequality of this level is a grotesque, socially destructive artifact of capitalism.  I think I was able to capture the scale of Mr. Bezos's wealth and mind-numbing callousness to his employees and the country which has been instrumental in helping him build his empire.  Mr. Bezos had better hope that the "camel through the eye of a needle" warning was just the mad ravings of a smelly proto-hippie wandering in the desert way back a couple millennia ago. ]

Obviously the above pie chart is a put-on.  It is well-documented that working conditions for most employees of Amazon are abysmal, dehumanizing, bordering on the abuse we normally associate with slavery.

Moreover, the median employee's salary under Jeff Bezos' imperial lordship is $28,446.  No one working a regular job there has paid off their credit cards and is driving to work in a Mercedes.
Jeff Bezos is referred to as The Richest Man in the World and his personal fortune, while growing by $191,000 each minute, is currently estimated at $168 billion.

So "$28,446 vs. $168,000,000,000? While I can acknowledge the simple math, I find the contrast of such numbers on a gut level difficult to grasp.

To get a handle on such inequality, let's try approaching it from different angles.

One way to put the disparity into perspective is to recognize it takes Bezos just under nine seconds to earn what Amazon's median worker does in an entire year.

Another is to recognize that for a worker to go through Jeff Bezos' current personal fortune -- and of course, it continues mounting at accelerating levels as I write this -- at his/her current median annual income of $28,446 per year, WOULD TAKE 5,905,927 YEARS! That's close to 6 million years!
For Jeff Bezos himself to go through his current $168 billion, assuming his earnings stopped dead this very moment -- which as you and I know they won't -- SPENDING $1,000,000 A DAY, would take NEARLY 460 years. Yes, even spending $1 million a day, in the year 2475 he'd still have plenty of cash, tens of million of dollars mad money.  We can feel confident that he wouldn't be foraging through the dumpster behind 7-11.

Now, further consider that while the $28,446 median salary is above the national poverty line for a single individual if that person is the sole breadwinner for a family of four, it is marginally above it, which is why many Amazon employees must rely on government assistance to keep from starving.
As well as calculation, I did some speculation -- a simple exercise in imagination.

Apparently Bezos' wealth generating machine is raking it in so fast, he's currently making $11.5 million per hour ... every hour ... 24 hours a day ... seven days a week. $11,500,000 per hour!

So here's what I was picturing in my mind's eye ...

If for 40 hours of the 168 hours in a week, Bezos were willing to scrape by on a mere $5,840,000 per hour, he could give every one of his 566,000 Amazon employees a $10 per hour raise.  Of course the remaining 128 hours in each week, Bezos could continue earning his normal $11.5 million per hour, not having to share any of it with the pathetic slobs who work for him.

Rhetorical question: Does Jeff Bezos have any concept of what that $10 per hour increase would mean to his employees?

I'm not going to even suggest here I'm offering this for Bezos to entertain.  There are so many advantages to him both as a putative member of the human race and the employer of over a half million workers -- advantages that are so OBVIOUS -- if they haven't occurred to him by now, then his brain functions in ways beyond my understanding.  For one thing, he could point to his new fig leaf of "generosity" and ask people to stop calling him a selfish prick.  Second, Amazon employees I'm sure would respond to his largesse with greater company loyalty and increased tolerance for his onerous working conditions.  And he'd still be the richest SOB on the block and could mock the pauperish Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as pitiable wannabees.

Consider . . .

The most poorly paid Amazon employee now makes $12 per hour.  The $10 per hour raise I proposed would boost those $12 per hour workers right up there with Costco employees, who make an average of $21 per hour.  And with the across-the-board $10 per hour increase, Bezos' higher paid employees would be earning among the finest wages in the world provided by a major corporation.
And by golly, there's a plus side to the plus side . . .

Bezos's bold and gracious gesture would result in a public relations coup of cosmic proportions!  Amazon would no longer be demonized -- well, not quite as much -- by us bleeding-heart lefties as a capitalistic scourge and one-way ticket to Hell for the future of mankind, even if its environmental record is appalling and its business model generally the stuff of steroid-laced neo-feudalism.

Granted, Bezos would have to do some belt-tightening.  He'd have to watch his pennies but could probably manage it, eh?  Maybe he could skip a couple meals and do some of his own weeding at his estate.  After all, after lavishing the $10 per hour raise on all of his employees, he'd only be pulling in $1,705,600,000 per week.  I know I know!  Like me you're probably getting all teary-eyed for the poor guy.

Let me get to the extremely anti-climactic conclusion of this lament qua analysis.

Since nothing will change until the system itself changes, meaning the one in place now that creates, incentivizes, and lionizes the obscenely wealthy -- reference current holder of the Office of President of the United States of America -- I can only recommend this ...

We have been labeling Jeff Bezos as 'The Richest Man in the World'.  Yet, quite honestly I don't personally know any human, man or woman, who behaves like this gluttonous chunk of self-indulgent meat.  It actually makes me nauseous to think we're members of the same species.

Thus, from now on let's use the correct terminology.

Let's call Jeff Bezos what he really is . . .

THE RICHEST SOCIOPATH IN THE WORLD.

We could probably order bumper stickers to help correct the record . . . from Amazon, of course.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



The Richest Sociopath in the World

Book Review: “The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela” by Dan Kovalik

In one concise statement, Dan Kovalik sums up the criminal — if self-serving and for now effective — foreign policy of the U.S. across the planet:

“The US appears to be intentionally spreading chaos throughout strategic portions of the world, leaving virtually no independent state standing to protect their resources, especially oil, from Western exploitation.  And, this goal is being achieved with resounding success, while also achieving the subsidiary goal of enriching the behemoth military-industrial complex.”

A divided Korea, a decimated Vietnam, endless war in Afghanistan, a barely functional Iraq, a destroyed Libya, ongoing destruction of Syria and Venezuela, relentless attacks and incipient war on Iran, give us more than a glimpse into the awesome power of America’s military might, its malice and ruthlessness in projecting that power, its no-holds-barred no-moral-qualms no-body-count no-questions-asked ends-justify-the-means tactical use of genocide, its jaw-dropping hypocrisy in portraying itself as a force of good, its psychopathic exceptionalist world view which judges all other nations and their populations as dispensable, and its ultimate loyalty to a tiny autocratic ruling elite who use “democracy” as just another tool in their bag of tricks to promote absolute corporate tyranny — the framework of fascism Sheldon Wolin calls inverted totalitarianism — and global hegemony.  It’s for good reason that the U.S. is now often referred to as the Empire of Chaos.

The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela: How the US is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil, as the title suggests, more specifically focuses on the horrors inflicted by the U.S. government on Venezuela.  This thorough, extremely well-researched, and fully supported exposé covers the current crises in and about Venezuela, intentionally and purposefully instigated by the U.S. to overthrow its current government and plunder the country’s rich oil reserves.  Just as importantly it offers rich and revealing historical accounts of America’s past dealings with Venezuela and almost identical scenarios with other Latin American nations, detailing the darkness and corruption that lies at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, and how that has cast a pall of oppression over the entirety of South and Central America, the nations of which have the geographical misfortune of being in America’s self-declared hemisphere of influence — read that as hemisphere of total domination and ruthless exploitation.  From Chile to Haiti to Panama to Honduras to Nicaragua to El Salvador to Colombia, we see the brutal deployment of U.S. political and military assets leaving whole countries impoverished, the poor without hope — often deprived of even food and water — and piles of nameless corpses in escalating numbers, dismissed by the U.S. government and its lapdog media as collateral damage of the Great Imperial Project. 

By the end of Kovalik’s chilling indictment of U.S. malfeasance in its war on the people of Venezuela, what is astonishing and shocking is that the U.S. is again getting away with such overt and illegal aggression, by not only using the same play book, but by using the same players.  With Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, John Bolton as National Security Advisor, and Elliot Abrams as Special Envoy to Venezuela, at the helm of the project to take Venezuela’s government apart and replace it with the puppet regime of the unelected Juan Guaido, we have three of the most notorious of the notorious — murderous, lying thugs — doing the dirty work.  All three have sordid histories of inciting war and orchestrating regime changes.  Abrams was indicted and convicted for lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair.

The thought-provoking Plot to Overthrow Venezuela is very well-written, with a clarity, accessibility, and erudition which puts it in a class with the best works of Noam Chomsky.  The Foreword by Oliver Stone is a worthy and deserving way to get things started.  I give it the highest possible recommendation, truly one of the most engaging and informative books I’ve read in ages.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]




Book Review: “The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela” by Dan Kovalik

Life In Japan: Japanese Maples

熊野新宮神社, Kumanoshingu Shrine, is not too far from our house.  It's famous around here for its spectacular Japanese Maple trees, which in November turn fire red, yellow, orange, brown, and every shade in between.

We make a point of going there every year, as do many other people.

Temples and shrines are everywhere here.  They come in all shapes and sizes, from huge sprawling complexes which take up several hectares, to single buildings sitting on a tiny patch of dedicated land.  There are the obvious ones which are located on main streets but I personally love the ones that are tucked off in a copse of trees, that are at the end of a trail up a mountain, or just sitting somewhere in isolation.

Temples are Buddhist.  Shrines are Shinto.

[ This originated at the author's personal webpage . . . https://jdrachel.com ]




Life In Japan: Japanese Maples

Life In Japan: Passion For Reading

Does anyone in the U.S. read anymore?  I mean read something longer than a tweet, or a comment on Facebook.  Do people have time to read a book?

Recent statistics tell us that literary reading in the U.S. is in steady decline, despite the fact that the number of people with bachelor degrees or higher has almost doubled since 1982.

To the chagrin of those who think the revolutionary introduction of digital books -- ebooks -- may make these numbers skewed, these stats include ebooks.

What are people reading?  The ingredients labels on their protein bars?

I can also report that, much to the detriment of the forests in the world, printing on paper is very alive and well here in Japan.  Japanese love their books, magazines, travel guides, self-help owners manuals, printed and hand-held.  People regularly pack bookstores the way Americans flock to Walmart for Black Friday -- on a regular basis!

I'm not sure what any of this definitively says about Japanese culture vs. Western culture.



I do know, as a person who used to never go anywhere without a book, and used every spare moment waiting in line, between this something-or-other and that something-or-other, on a coffee or lunch break, traveling, during awkward silences in a conversation, to read, I feel right at home here.

Everyone's different.  If you feel good about carrying a soccer ball everywhere . . . just do it!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: Passion For Reading