Open Letter to All Companies Who Employed me in Japan (except Lapin)

WARNING:

If you are an starry-eyed westerner looking to teach in Japan look elsewhere. Or please read this and learn the truth.

Dear Companies,

You suck.

While I got a pretty good deal with Interac and the staff never really tried to manipulate me, I know from others that I was just lucky.

I was never clued in on my rights. I was never told how the taxes and social securities or insurance systems worked. I was never helped. I was never taken care of. I was used for my convenience then dumped when no longer economically helpful. I am a foreigner in Japan, granted I am nearly fluent and I can read Japanese newspapers, BUT that is in NO WAY congruent to knowing the inter-workings and inanely bureaucratic machinations of the Japanese government.

Remember when you said to me in an meeting “What made you think that you could be fired at anytime?” You made me feel terrible. Then you made me feel like I was paranoid. I was not paranoid. I was right. It says in the freaking contract at the very end under “Probation Period.” – the director can terminate this contract anytime. Don’t make me quote it to you. But that is not the only shady then that went down.

How about the fact that you never told me what all these complicated government documents even mean or that the company was not going to be paying into my Social security. All I knew was that I was not getting Health care Insurance. Thank you for nothing. I am angry and I will not be appeased soon. If you or someone else in the company or any of the other god-forsaken companies i worked for in this country don’t tell me what all this deeply complicated social security, insurance, and social security insurance is, then, tell me, who is supposed to do so? Taking care of your employees? Ha what a joke! I have the government breathing down my neck to pay them a lump sum of over 100,000 yen. I don’t have it. I’m hoping that I can get the next years social security payments waved, because of this terribly unfair circumstance that in no way is my fault.

I buckled in the Social Security offices. Angry, hurt, abandoned. Forgotten and abused. I never felt so low – so unhappy with my life. My hands clasped my head. Tears welled up in my eyes. Japan the country I tried so hard to understand, the country whose language I worked to master. the country whose culture i loved, I know can’t stand.

Thank you dear lady in the Social Security offices who finally explained it all to me. It took great composure to treat me nicely as I almost lost in it on you.

WARNING:

If you are an starry-eyed westerner looking to teach in Japan look elsewhere. Or please read this and learn the truth.

Vegan Skate Shoes

A year and a half ago I became vegetarian in short order I became a Vegan along with my wonderful, inspirational partner. When I did I realized – It’s time to get changing ALL of my consumption habits. I immediately starting looking up vegan skate shoes. Fortunately there are quite a few pioneers in the industry and blogosphere with vegan only kicks, reviews, picks, and even one will look into a shoes for you.

However, still the picture of vegan skate shoes vs the regular shoe is rather grim. With little variety and only a handful of brands blatantly branding, and labelling their websites and products.

The best I believe after two years of skating Vegan skate shoes are the very helpful Etnies and Emerica (RIP eS). They label their products so in-store if you know their labels (which you should familiarize yourself with) as well as these wonderful collections every season (fall and spring) of the new vegan colorways and models.

veganskateblog.com is a wonderful blog featuring skate shoes before and after shredding with in-detail notes of the kind of skating they do. He also posts blog about vegan skate trips where to eat and skate which is SUPER AWESOME! Inspiring stuff for me.

These are awesome blogs as well. Check em out!

http://vegankicks.com/

http://www.kineticskateboarding.com/products.cfm/Footwear/Mens%20Shoes/Vegan%20Shoes

As I have been inspired by these blogs I hope to do similar posts about the shoes I will be skating as while the above blogs are good. There is always more to be done to expand the information available to the vegan skaters.

I will post a review of the Jameson Eco 2 and Emerica The Hsu that I just got soon! Stay posted!

Let the haters hate. But never hesitate to skate and participate in changin’ the fate of our furry friends.

KINKI SPOTS BARAKO

Second installation in the KINKI SPOTS series. Skater: Me, Filmer: WiFi BacPac HD HERO
Location: Sakai-shi Baraike Park　堺市原池公園
Access: Fukai St. on the KOYA SEMBOKU line

Lost Potential

Bullying the world for its own selfish gain. A nation of largely ignorant pawns deluded and mesmerized by prefabricated political platitudes. Candy-coated opiates. Just like the processed poison called food we gleefully consume our own demises. Arrogance defies reason. The obvious degradation covered by complacency – covered by no one. Ignored by the irresponsible media for platitudes, placation, and paranoia. Roads, dams, schools, cities, towns, parks, rivers, oceans, lakes – diseased and dying. All the while the bulging pocket of profiteers prosper. Prosper on the death of our posterity, on the death of our lands. on the deaths of foreign wars. wars without clear goals, and objectives with clear holes. A joyride in profiteerism and murder. “War crimes!” Ha! Don’t make these murderers laugh. “We made those rules. We will break them.” Grab a scapegoat and punish it.  This torture went all the way to the top. She will stand trial but the Dick will be free. Corporations as people as psychopaths. 10% of wall street is a psychopath. Psychopaths run your government. Buy an election, then go out for coffee. All in a day’s work.

Psychopaths run your army. Ha! Could anyone else do it? Could empathetic individuals run a systematic murder company?

The run your country’s economy Freidman, Bernacke, destroy a developing nation’s economy, convince dictators of the greatness of being bought up like a colony, sold for pennies to the wall street swine. “Throw your pearls before the swine. Don’t whine! It will only hurt a little.” Shock Therapy. Once a CIA, Chicago School collusion to empower US, the WORLDBANK and IMF. The new multinational colonials. Neo-colonialism. Blood diamond. Ha! That the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Your ipad to your banana. Is it worth the blood?

Or has the bloodbath come home?

Like a hot air balloon filled with nothing but angry demonstrators. Keep feeding the flame. We will never know that it was them letting the ballooning economy continue. Soon to explode. Occupy! Impotent efforts. It will fade. Its fading. it faded. Now there jaded. Placate the masses! We don’t need to. They have already sterilized themselves. While you were away in the streets. They destroyed the schools, cut the teachers, bludgeoned the young with debt, removed jobs, disillusioned a generation of hopefuls, and shaved the cream off for themselves and threw the rest out. Before the crowd of hungry… strikers suddenly aware of their hopelessness.

Death and Disaster

Recently, in a conversation with my mother she expressed a deep grieving and heart-ache over knowing that a large percentage if not all of those dying or dead in the March 11, 2011 earthquake here in northern Japan are without salvation, no knowledge of the their Creator. I never thought about it in that manner. The grief, the pain, and the suffering and my own sense of helplessness in the face of their struggle preoccupied me. But as I thought about this idea and talked to my wife. I realized this not so an astonishing reality. If a Christian should feel such duly painful grief over a natural disaster slaughtering so many unsaved people, then they should NEVER EVER even think of condoning, facilitating, allowing, or participating in actions that take people’s lives. One must allow those people as much time as possible to live and be saved. One cannot think themselves free to kill in any circumstance under this presumption.Take a step further. Who in the world then deserves more compassion than any other? The Muslim terrorist. Not only hell-bent on murder but firmly believing that he will be saved by another god if he does.

But on the other side of the coin, American soldiers could be put into the same situation through metaphor. The gods – the state, the nation. salvation honor, bragging rights. But I lack compassion for soldiers and servicepeople( a great weakness of mine). If i think of these military people as the most pitifully confused and misdirected group in America – deluded by ideas of fun, excitement, valor, honor, they plunging into a bloodbath of pain, and psychological trauma.

If one wants truly wants the souls of the world to be saved than a supernatural pacifism is absolutely necessary. Not just necessary but required. This takes a great deal of compassion not just rhetoric.

The Military State – USA Military Spending 40% of World Total

A great Christian political activist by the name of Jim Wallis once said, “a budget is a moral document.” In light of this common sensical concept the USA has a deeply difficult question on their hands: to make a nation of peace, humanitarianism, and love  with a strong, educated, healthy country of international individuals or one of insatiable militarism, imperial foreign policy, and fear tactics. The militarism poisons the officer, the family, the individual, and the society that supports it with hatred, fueled by a crass nationalism, funded by profiteering “private security” companies, and arms dealers (the very embodiment of the word “rapacious”). The victim (the opponent, “enemy” or civilians) decimated, dehumanized, denigrated with nowhere to be free to live in peace, only in constant fear.

This reality is on my mind constantly. As I seek answers to my great moral questions and concerns of a quickly maturing adult desiring to settle down in the next decade, I cannot avoid the thought that this is a moral ill that Americans, especially Christian ones should scrutinize.

Here is the infographic

Military Spending

Review and Musings on Andrew Xia Fukuda’s Crossing

Andrew Xia Fukuda, a Half-Japanese, Chinese American born in the states, moved to Hong Kong, then moved back to New York, wrote his debut book on the isolation, depression, and anger of the racial outcast. Under the shadow of the VT killer, a Korean-American by the name of Sueng Hui Cho, he feel the crushing icy glares, and stares of his all-white town pining him, categorizing him, ostracizing him. But Andrew does not leave this tale in the predictable bounds of victim and victimizer. The main character, Xing, presents the psychological complexity not only of an individual but an Chinese immigrant youth of middle-school age in a racist all-white community. The narrative structure eludes direct revelations; intimations, unaswered questions and the purposeful inclusion throughout of minute details enhance the suspense and mystery of the novel. The main character’s struggle finds real feeling, depth, and versimilitude such that the reader cannot but hope for his redemption. This hope combined with the psuedo-crime thriller plot line create a haunting, irresistable, and informative read. Pick it up. I give this book five stars. Here it is on Amazon (also for the Kindle where i read it). http://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Andrew-Xia-Fukuda/dp/1935597035/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275514550&sr=8-1  

This books images, so visceral, raw, and heartfelt stay with so vividly as if the main character was your closest friend sharing his/her life with you. I have often daydreamed about the book thinking i was thinking about someone I knew only to realize that it was just a dream of a book.

Notably this book also won various awards including best Asian American debut.

“Seventy-Seven Condoms”

Written across the faceless cleavage,

At the back of every US daily

People are proffered as Amazon products.

Customizable!

(Down to the tits and tats)

Convenient locations!

Sex sells slaves,

Behind this farcical façade

Of blacked out windows.

A few bills will do.

For this sex any excuse will do,

To leave me shackled.

Through endless graveyard shifts

Despair clings in every client’s grope.

Eromatic oils, cheap perfumes,

Ritual scents wriggle over every pore.

As selfish sex shelves the conscience.

I clamor about counting condoms

As mind-forged manacles clang

In hollow desolation.

Nameless as I

Each cityscape

Presents me

With more rape

To be free is to fear.

Government

Deportation

Murderous handlers

Familial shame

With such ease society sees me:

Destitute,

Degraded,

Decaying,

Demented.

– 04/20/09

Another poem written for a creative writing exercise. Inspired by an article published in 2010 April issue of Texas Monthly, this poem seeks to present the mind of sex trafficked individual with socio-economic and political consciousness of an outsider. Enjoy or critique! Comments of either are greatly appreciated!

“Bagheera”

Clothed in umbrageous fur

Nature sought to obscure

 Your great figure of grace:

Broad and slender, swift, powerful.

The light ignites the darkness

With slivers of silver shimmering,

As sinews tense

In royal, macabre tints:

Gloomy purple hues

Green and gun-metal blues.

No victim sees or feels

The quickening death at its heels.

Your ember eye of amber gleams

As light darts in chaotic beams

From the canopy overhead.

                 -04/07/10

Written at the above date in a creative writing workshop. Enjoy or critique. Hopefully you entertain both in the comment section.

Musings on Interracial Marraige Today

As one, for whom sociology and psychology are a constant interest alongside the academic studies of literature and Japanese language and East Asian history and culture, i find myself drawn to sociological studies on diversity and race in America. This book, Diversity in Mind and in Action, caught my eye during this exam week but only now that i am done have i been able to get around to it.

The part of interest was the chapter titled, “Interracial Marriage: Current Perspectives and Unanswered Questions.” Here are somethings i found particularly amusing, interesting, or eye-opening.

African-American men are much more likely to report marital happiness – measured by quality of love received-  if they are accepting of other races and have a strong racial identity. Upon reading this i wondered if this could be applied to other races especially women of minorities marrying white men. Why do women – especially white women – feel more stressed in interracial marriage as opposed to intraracial marriage? Can this relate to the propensity for someone to give up their culture in a marriage, most commonly the woman’s for the man’s? If an asian woman gives up her culture for her husband’s, is he tyrannical? Or does she have internalized inferiority issues? How can the Asian-American community stop the media juggernaut that portrays Asian men as nerdy, effeminate, wimpy, and unathletic or gangsters and tyrants from influencing their daughters? One study, using a group of 1o0 Vietnamese and Korean girls in the States, found that they often juxtaposed this image of Asian men with the perfect masculinity of white men. sad, scary, reality… call it how you like it. I think it is very sad.

Through these musings, I have finally found the nexus of my discomfort with marrying outside my race. It was never based on race issues or family non-cooperation or discrimination but rather I wanted to believe that love could take place in a vacuum away from these factors. I did not want to feel like the empowered white man, alleviated of negative stereotypes, and worshipped as better than. I feared the inability to properly respect and carry on the culture of my non-white partner.

In response to these questions, the journals resound with a disappointing theme of “no race talk.” Race is just not discussed as a way to act as if no differences exist. This inevitably leads to destructive family situations and adverse cultural, interpersonal effects.

Thus the article has exhumed and revealed the dark secrets of my own thoughts, but not without encouragement. I know that in my relationship at least the discussion of race, and class differences is common and open. We have discussed and will continue to discuss the quality of our differences, celebrating them, and encouraging them.