The problem with blogging - the problem with all these little updates on the internet - it's like an autobiography. But unlike a good autobiography, there's no flow to the story. It's all just little atoms in the void - people making little noises, wondering if anyone hears them. Like a mad bugger talking to themselves. Little fragments of the story. No quality control. Many people have told me that my blog reads like too much of a big whinge - but that's partly due to the fact that when I'm busy and happy, I have no time to blog. It's only when I've had life kick me in the teeth and I'm having a little rest in bed that the urge to update the blog falls upon me. So rest assured, for every monthly update that reads like I'm having a bad time, there's 4 unwritten ones that would have told you about me having a good time.
That's the problem with blogging.
I find facebook status updates to be a lot more cheerful. I enjoy reading well thought-out little quips, or wildly enthusiastic updates with too many exclamation points. I particularly find the "I'm angry with a specific person, so I'll make some kind of interior monologue I'm composing to them my status update" approach pretty funny. It comes across as seriously sad, mad... and bad. Blogging isn't as bad as facebook. The status update approach lends itself to the off-the-cuff, one liner, Groucho Marx approach to personal cowardice. Facebook is totally trite.
Facebook may well be the devil, but I think Twitter sounds even worse. I am still refusing to get a Twitter account. Anything that has Twit in the title is already consigning itself to the land of the foolish. It sounds like nothing but status updates on Facebook. Vacuous to the max.
I've been watching the commentary surrounding the "white flight" from myspace to facebook - a cyberspace mirror image of the move of whitey to suburbia, leaving people of ethnic origin in the inner city. The internet, the web that was supposed to bring us all together has now been divided into similar real estate divisions as we have created in the real world. How true it is that our exterior and our interior landscapes reflect each other.
That's part of the, dare I say it, fun of being in the current generation - watching as all of these information technology developments are played out. From our little Atari playing fingers in our youths, to our Palm Pilots, iPhones, Blackberries, Nintendo DS, PSPs. I don't know many people who don't have a laptop computer, or some kind of computing installation in their home. Paul Virillio talked about the information age being all about speed. It's about being first, being new, being in the right place at the right time - myspace is dead - everyone go to facebook! Why? If you ask why then you're not 'getting it.' When all information is power, we begin to lose quality control. We start to have tweets in the void, mad fragments of interior monologues. Virillio observed that we begin to be unable to cope with the sheer volume of information. Information becomes white noise, static, and we start to have trouble picking out voices in the roar of the crowd. Everything is reduced to one virtue. Everything is traveling somewhere, regardless of direction. Everything is speed.
Is blogging like just being a voice in the crowd? Or is it like having an extended conversation with yourself? I think I tend to veer toward the latter, and end up composing these extremely introspective little pieces. Quite strange, really. Sometimes I wonder why I do this. I wonder who reads it, who enjoys it, who dis's it. I wonder if it's really worth the time.
So, to actually blog a bit rather than just muse, things in Camp Osaka have been difficult, but I think we're starting to get through the worst of it, so to speak. The hottest time of the year is upon us, our air conditioner is failing to cool our room effectively, and Tom's been sick. It's like he never got better from a chest infection we had in October last year. I shook mine off and have been pretty well ever since (food poisoning aside), but Tom's unwellness has developed into a persistent cough, with accompanying catarrh of varying shades. The cough flares up when he gets a cold (which seems to be that he gets every little bug that comes past - in our line of work, you are exposed to germs on a daily basis), and it also flares up whenever he exerts himself, which has meant that he has been unable to exercise or sing. As we have now got a date for our first gig, this has brought the coughing crisis come to a head, and we are now seeing a doctor to try and get his lungs sorted out. The doctor gave him a chest x-ray - looking for tuberculosis, it seemed. Ridiculous doctors! Would they have suspected tuberculosis if he were Japanese, I don't know. It's that constant irony of never knowing if you're being singled out for being a foreigner or not. Tom was quite upset by his first visit to the ward office/doctor, because the doctor gave him a really hard time about his health insurance card not being updated with his new address, and then the ward office seemed totally unable to explain anything to him about his health insurance in English or even simple Japanese, so he was left feeling that he had no insurance, and no way of getting medical treatment. We finally managed to find someone (still with no English) but competant enough to help us at the ward office, and so now we are both sorted out. So, on our second visit the doctor seems to have given up on the tuberculosis angle and now thinks it's allergies (which I think is highly unlikely, considering that I have so many allergies I am a bit of an expert in the field - allergies give you runny clear snot out the nose, not technicolor snot off the lungs). The doctor has given Tom some anti-histamines, anti-biotics, and some kind of anti-sputum drug. If this doesn't work, then we're going to take him to another doctor. One of our students is a doctor - he's a high level English speaker and an expert in internal medicine. We'll see if we can't track him down at his workplace. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I'm an experienced patient, and I'm pretty sure he's got bronchitis. If only we can get a doctor to treat him for bronchitis, maybe we can get on with having a good time rather than feeling like Tom's firing on 3 cylinders all the time.
Either way, last couple of weeks, with Tom being ill and since I decided to have a rest from all the drinking (my bottom is on the improve - thank you for your enquiries of bottom related health), I've been occupying myself quite well with some other pursuits. My new camera has been having a bit of a work out, trying to get the hang of the new compact format. It's so tiny I find that I don't hold it entirely upright, resulting in slightly off-kilter photos. I was used to the heft of the old camera, the new one seems so light as to be a bit plasticy. But it's got lots more pixels and more zoom - generally it's a more modern camera - and it cost half as much as the old one! Oh, modern life, you move so fast.
So, yesterday I went for a good old trudge around Kyoto by myself. It got me thinking about the strange role that religion plays in Japanese society. Most of my students go to their hometown to clean their family grave in Obon, or go to the shrine or temple for New Years Eve, but are generally unfussed by religious fervor. Buddhism and Shintoism co-exist, but it hasn't always been a peaceful co-existence. In my experience, Shintoism is a strange, animist, and somewhat mercantilist religion. Buddhism seems like quite a relaxed religion (at least in it's Japanese interpretation). Buddhist priests are often rather cheeky, good-humoured. Shinto priests tend to be pushed into their line of work by their family, and tend to be a bit more pained in their profession. The style of the architecture also seems to be quite divergent, with the Buddhist buildings often focusing on dark wooden forms, and the Shinto shrines having lots of red and white, with colourful eves. I sometimes toy with the idea of becoming a Buddhist. My major problem seems to be desire - desiring more, desiring otherness - if I could start to let go of my worldly desire, perhaps I would be a more contented person...?
But it would probably make for less interesting blog entries.
Here is a photo album from Chion In, from my trudge around Kyoto:
Chion-in
I've also been taking myself off to the local ridiculous spa - about 5 minutes walk from door to door. It's quite fun.
Spaworld
It's all been good, clean fun. A little anti-social, I know, but I'm happy enough with the state of affairs as they are. In other news, my Mum's made some murmurings about visiting in September, and I will be catching up with Aunt Mary rather soon too. More news when there is some.
