Excuse me, you want to give me what?

Among the number of befuddling papers I've gotten lately by far the worst of them arrived about a month ago. It was marked IRS or something like that, so I opened it with nearly shaking hands as I rode up in my elevator and as I read it over carefully walking down the dark half open corridor to my apartment my consternation increased. Maybe its just one of those routine things they have to send out to people even if they are not eligible I though to myself, but when I read more carefully my credulity reached to a pique of ire.

I was politely informed that I might be eligible for a stimulus package. You know that paltry three hundred dollars the government might give you back on your taxes, except hears the big thing. I don't PAY taxes! Now I'm not saying I should pay taxes. I haven't lived there for almost the last ten years, and I faithfully pay my taxes to the Japanese government. And when I file my obligatory forms I mark the box that says tax home outside the US. But I still qualify for the refund apparently.

Now most people thing the whole thing is generally speaking a bad idea, were trillions of dollars in debt and spending more every day. Many people think its also a little insulting considering they took the money in the first place. Like a mugger saying OK I'll take this two hundred dollars out of your wallet and hears ten for you so you can get home. But this is Bushes fabulous plan, he gives you three hundred bucks and you'll go out and spend it and the economy will be saved. But how in the world does it help anyone me getting the money. If they take it out of your pocket and send it to me its not like I'm going to spend it in the US. I'll be stimulating the Japanese economy, right?

I really hope I don't get the money. I really really hope they don't send it to me. You've got to know things are getting really out of hand when someone is thinking to the government 'please for the love of god don't send me three hundred dollars.'

But this is why I'm feeling a little ambiguous about the idea of the government running heath care or any other business that has hither to been privatized. There just not to good at running things. If you look at the current state of the education system I think most of us would agree its been run into the ground. In fact it would be a waist of space to list all the things that they've managed to mis manage. Rousseau along with many other philosophers that wrote on idea forms of government insisted that democracy needed to stay small. Among the reasons he mentioned there is the fact that the larger a group gets the larger is the disenfranchised minority. Also that people will loose interest in becoming involved. More to my particular point today, that the larger a body you govern the more and more an apparatus becomes necessary, and the more people that get involved in that apparatus the more space there is for corruption and arbitrary behavior. Petty officials will tend to be petty and inefficient.

And hear we are, do we want it to spread into more fields? Do we want them running the Internet for instance? Its not like most of them understand it. Do we want looking over the shoulders of scientists telling them what to publish? Its not like they understand most science either. Oh well lets just cross our fingers and hope they don't send me the money.

Swarmed

In the last few months a bunch of paperwork all hit me in the face at once. I needed to reapply for my passport, pay my taxes, find some insurance (which I'm still working on) apply for an absentee ballet and a few other sundry things. Now I've always known these things never go too smoothly. One charming incident involved getting a notice in the mail that the regulations for taxes had changed two weeks before the hand in deadline. Mind you I got the notice about a month after the deadline and it referred to tax law concerning home ownership and well. . . I don't. So yes, I expected a few bumps in the road.

The first one I hit was, more like a blip. A month after I turned in my application for an absentee ballet I was sent a notice saying I wouldn't be able to participate in the primaries, which. . . well ya, I applied a month after the primaries, they'd already been called. I looked at the paper went 'hu' and continued with my day. About a week ago I got the state of Maryland's fallow up which was to send me a letter written politely in both English and Spanish (in case I as a Japanese resident cant read English) politely informing that I was all registered to vote at the voting station on Good Hope road, about ten minutes to my parents house. I can imagine how my application for an absentee ballet may have been hard to recognize for what it was what with the huge black letters 'Application for absentee ballet' written across the top. But what I was a little interested to know is didn't the person sending the letter to me find something. . . a little off when they mailed it to my permanent address in JAPAN? I am now not quite sure how to communicate to them that what I want is an absentee ballet if sending them the correct application doesn't do the trick. Maybe I'm a little sensitized due to the week I spent hunting around to get just the right size of photo for the passport renewal considering they assured me on their web sight that any of the ones I could get hear in Japan were the wrong size and would result in a rejection of my application.

In an age where the inter net has made everything else wondrously easy, why is this so hard? If I can send a flower arrangement to my mom from hear why can I not VOTE considering they have spent so much of your hard earned money on assuring that right? The situation forcibly reminded me of that line from the declaration (since I've been on the subject) a complaint about a different George mind you.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

I feel swarmed. I feel a little bit harassed. And they might not be actively taking my food the prices of food are defiantly going up.

Boiled Frog

The other day I introduced one of my students to the idea of the boiled frog in reference to my husband. We all know that charming little story about sticking a frog in cool water and heating it slowly. Apparently this isn't of those things thats carried over to japan. She listened with fascination and then asked me if its really true or not, which I have to admit, I don't know. Considering riveting all the things scientists have discovered lately (like men don't really understand women) I wouldn't be surprised if someone has actually tried it. So if anyone knows one way or another I'd love you to tell me.

But anyway, as I got up this morning and opened my fridge the smell of Godiva coffee wafted deliciously over me and my husband sat on the floor in the living room in front of his lap top smelling faintly of slightly poached frog (metaphorically of course).

You see I'm trying to introduce him to the idea of honest to god hiking. Its apparently unheard of in this city. I've seen maps of hiking courses that lead you to a leisurely stroll along the side of a crowded road with shops leaning heavily against your shoulder on the other side. So I started my sweet little city boy off with gently sloping mountain roads some time back and were working our way up to trails made of dirt.

Yesterday I said lets go hiking and considering everything else is way to crowded on Golden Week, he agreed. I let him pick the place and he chose a trail sight unseen. It started off behind a somewhat crowded fair and headed strait up. REALLY up. There were places that I was pulling myself up by trees. It continued like that almost uninterrupted for about twenty five minutes, where my husband stopped mopping sweat off his face and breathing very hard. "Lets go back." he said it with a smile but. . . I could see there was something behind it. "I'm sure it will get better soon." I coaxed. So we started off again. We were walking along something that was halfway between a waterfall and a creak. It got very rocky in places. After about five more minutes he stopped again. "Lets go back." his suggestion got more emphatic. Begging and negotiating got him another five minutes along. "I'm serious, lets go back, this is impossible." I tried walking VERY slowly. I tried being encouraging. There were a few more stops along the way each getting longer and each time he seemed more convinced he didn't want to go on. Finally I said I'll walk ahead and see if it seems to flatten out. I clamored up the trail for four or five minutes more where I found several middle old ladies resting on their way down and a sign that said something like 70 more minutes steeply up hill. I got my husband right about up to that sign and then he insisted finally and firmly that we go back. I can see my frog needs a good deal more boiling.

I have to admit I didn't see anyone else headed up the trail. So he may have had something of a point. It was really pretty hiking though while it lasted. I wish I'd taken some pictures but. . . well. . . I didn't.

What I want

As I sit at my computer, from time to time I look down at its gigantic hulking mass. (I ordered a custom computer from Dell, and when it arrived, to my surprise, it was almost as big as my bedroom. I exaggerate of course, but it was in fact so large and heavy that I tore a muscle in my arm setting it up.) I still think of my baby as new, but I know its not new new, in computer years. Its reaching its first birthday. And as a computer starts to age I inevitably start to think. . . 'hum . . .upgrade?' I don't know why exactly. I'm just automatically wired to want to upgrade.

Thought looking at my own personal salary I would hardly even be considered middle class, especially for Tokyo, I am very lucky to be surrounded by many people that love me, and very often ask me what I want with an eye toward providing it to me. So it wouldn't be at all impossible to endlessly upgrade everything in my life, cloths, shoes, ipods, cell phones, computers, the list goes on and on. I have to admit my one weakness is the computer parts. I'm not an expert or anything, but I have a nearly endless hunger for better and better graphics. So I always want a better video card.

I think both advertising and human nature lend a lot to this cycle of unending desires for something new. That connects to the idea that it will make us happy. Better graphics = happy. I've come to the conclusion that Aristotle has a much better idea on the subject. He says that things are a means to the end. Like money or power or love. The goal of all those things is happiness but most of the time it doesn't get us there. He believes that happiness is most easily achieved by a well balanced and virtues life. Virtue to him is the mean between the extremes. Its not good to starve yourself, its not good to be gluttonous, you should eat the right amount. Its not good to be rash, or cowardly. Bravery is what is between. Virtue is wanting the right thing at the right time in the right way and the right amount. For him happiness is striving to achieve that balance. And I have to admit seeing it that way has really improved my over all contentedness and enjoyment of life.

Of course I still twinge. When my mom asks me what I want, which she often does, its tempting to say new cloths ext. ext. When I started jogging I slipped. I got myself a new ipod thinking it would help me jog more or faster or something. And new jogging cloths for the same reason. The truth is, of course, if I want to jog I should just get my but up out of this chair and jog. But the one thing I really want now is books, since the ones I like are impossible to find in Japan a box full of books from home always brightens up my day. But for the moment I have more then I can read, so even as each minute ticking makes my computer that much older and further behind the most shiny and best I'm still happy.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Yesterday, like every day of the week I set out for work, a twenty minute walk through the congested side streets in the outer nowhere regions of Tokyo, and then another twenty minutes on the train. Earphones slipped over my head to block out the inessential din of advertisement and fortify me against an average of half-a-dozen times I am nearly run into or over by cars and bicyclists and mothers pushing strollers. I used to just listen to music. A year or so I graduated to podcasts, and recently have made another move. I've stated listening to a variety of different lectures. The one I was listening to basically traces the ideas of governing from ancient Athens to America today. As the lecturer read the first few lines of the Declaration of Independence I was reminded forcefully of how hearing something again and again somehow makes us not really hear it at all, just repeat it by rote as meaningless sound.

'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Even when people do think about this often quoted refrain they usually just attribute their own meaning to it. What they figure happiness is. In a capitalistic society usually I think people see it as life, liberty, and the pursuit of money. Which is slightly ironic considering where the line originated. Its basically lifted from Locke. Except his version really was 'life, liberty, and property.'

A different lecturer said that it was probably changed due to the controversy over slavery. The writer(s) (Jefferson)* wanted to include nothing that might encourage people to argue that they had the right to own another person. But perhaps he also foresaw how badly people might misinterpret the idea of 'property.' Something we can see every time we turn on the news. Our ideas of entitlement and ownership over the last few decades have spiraled completely out of control. Intellectual Property is probably one of the best examples where thats true. Patents and copyrights are perfectly good ideas if you keep it within reason but when it gets to the place that one company is suing another because they used the same color in their logo we ought to know something has gone wrong. People can not own colors, people can not own words, and charge you for the use of them. You may notice that in my photos there are very few pictures of people, and one of the big reasons is that I cant get over a feeling someone is going to sue me for using an image of them or something. Not 'your stealing my soul' but 'you are depriving me of my god given rights to profit from the use of my own visage.'

Corporations and private individuals strive harder and harder everyday to plant their flag in some new concept, some new combination, trying to expand their territory further and further into what we used to think of as belonging commonly to us all. After all there has to be a buck to be made. Locke believed that we own in common all of the world and everything in it. Only the labor of a persons hands could set something especially apart for him or herself. If you work the land to grow food, the food becomes yours threw your labor. If you build a chair, even thought the wood you built it from was owned in common the chair is yours because you made it. That was his meaning when he said property. He believed every man had a right to profit from his own labor, and to own what he himself made.

Often it seems like thats the one thing that people don't have anymore in the US. The lion share of any profit for any labor goes to the company not the worker. What you make is sold for hundreds or millions and you yourself get only a pittance. Anything you make can be instantly snatched out from under you by patent squatters.

As responsible citizens we should read these things for ourselves. If the Declaration of Independence and much of The Constitution are based on ideas in Locke, we should read Locke. Modernly we have no idea what the meaning of life liberty and property really was, and a lot of time I have a feeling we have a fairly poor idea of what happiness is too.

*Jefferson was given the task of writing the original document but it was edited by John Adams from MA, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of PA and Robert R. Livingston of NY .

People pay around ten dollars a day to fish in the pond.
There was a shed in the middle of nowhere. In theory all of the cedars are for logging, but a lot of times they dont get around to it.


This is the run off for the pond, they want to make sure its exactly the right depth. It is massive, which you unfortunatly cant tell from the picture.