"All the Japanese men want Japanese girls. All the Foreign men want Japanese girls."
 
Thus my white girl friend sums up the predicament of caucasian women in Japan.  But ladies, I'm really on your side! Let's examine this together, shall we? Why do all the fellas want Japanese girls?

 

Girl: "They dress like children!" (Read the old black: "They're stick-thin!")

 

I love watching gaijin girls watch Japanese girls. The raised eyebrows as another schoolgirl with a waist-level skirt wiggles by, or the double-take at the lacy housewife blouses. It's like they're dressing up for a 10-year old's birthday party isn't it? You can smell the ice-cream cake. It's all such childish fun!

 

And so what is the opposite of 'childish'? Sexy?

 

Sexy is overrated. Sexy implies maturity. Maturity implies complications. Complications lead to suffering. There's enough nuance and complexity in this world thank you very much. Bring on the cheesy, plain innocence.

 

But there's a subtle trick. They may dress like children, but they don't dress like little boys, do they? Japanese females wear clothes that clearly announce their femininity. Skirts, scarves, camisoles are all tres girly-girl but there's no mistaking the message. Wearing a basketball t-shirt and slacks? You look like a guy. It's too hard to interpret your fashion statement. Put on a dress. It doesn't have to be frilly or borderline Harajuku cosplay. Dress like a girl!

 

That said, my homegirls have kitted themselves out in Prada only to get no ROI. What gives? There's more work?! Hey, it's called a 'catwalk' not a 'cakewalk', baby.

 

Next season's threads: "They act like children!"

Part 3 - Checksum (Read Part 1 and Part 2)

Error: You imply good does not exist.
Error: You imply we can never know good.
Error: You suggest no course of action but anarchy.

 

Well duh. Good exists. Charity is good. Truthfulness is good. These are obvious goods. In complex 'gray areas' like abortion or euthanasia our moral position depends not on whether we believe good exists but on where we believe it to come from. Don't try to tell me there are no gray areas, that there is no situation for which a moral calculus cannot apply flawlessly. Grey areas exist as surely as good and evil do and they exist because of how we formulate our idea of morality.

 

The gray areas are most apparent when we watch the movies or read a book. Good inside, evil outside or vice versa is one moral inconsistency arising from adaptating morality to a medium. In case you haven't read between the lines, ALL we know is adaptation. Having said that, we CAN know good. But even if we could know good perfectly the irony is that we would not be able to pass on any more than another approximation.

 

True good and true evil is like the rest of nature: analog, possessing infinite variations and inconsistences - the clicks and pops that make that vinyl sound unique. Regardless of where it's made - whether it defiantly shines into the savage night or we just make that shit up - its form does not lend itself to binary representation. The rough circle of square blocks does not make a true circle. There will always be jagged edge, a gray area.

 

However, the good-evil system is the best we have. It is most importantly strong enough to be transmitted through history despite the intervening noise of anarchy. We must not use its flaws to say all is excusable. But we must also not mistake the signal for the source. We must not mistake the myth for reality. The recording is good but it is not perfect.

 

If we lived in a precise world - a digital world - then the signal itself could stand as the source, being of similar nature. In a digital world no fetus would need aborting because a 16 year old could not feed two mouths. No cancer patient would need to beg for a calculated morphine overdose. When we assume we live in a digital world - where our concepts can be substituted for nature - bad things happen. Altruistic acts go awry like a surprise party that starts a heart attack. Hence the saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." In a digital world things would be simpler. Bad guys would always wear black and our constructed systems would fit perfectly indeed, just as a CD plays in every player.

 

However we don't live in Narnia or the Matrix. We don't live in a digital world, we live in an analog one.

 

And that's why 'good' may not always be the best choice.

"All the Japanese men want Japanese girls. All the Foreign men want Japanese girls."

 

And thus my white girl friend summed up the predicament of caucasian women in Japan. The love just dries up. Back home they were fighting off invites but here they practically have to take their tops off to get a glance. A long time ago, these girls sold my seat on their table at the Year 12 formal to more popular people but I'm not vindictive enough to gloat at their misfortune. I'm not like that, really.

 

Okay I am, but it's one of those ironies that never stops being funny.

 

But I've had my laugh. I've given too many platonic hugs and dried too many Chu-Hai soaked tears to think this is not worth examining. Assuming it's not just paranoia, Why do all the fellas want Japanese girls?

 

Girl: "They're stick-thin. They don't eat enough. (I feel like a whale.)"

 

Shame on men for demanding such unhealthy body shapes. Shame on the media for mindlessly pushing it.  And pity those naive Japanese girls who starve themselves blindly. But ultimately - after the outrage is vented at this week's karaoke - you're still the big-boned beauty admired from afar (far afar) without a convenient Shoppingtown to skank-watch yourself better.

 

Well there's an easy solution to that, innit? If you didn't tank up at pastry shops and Starbucks I'm sure you'd be in the running for 'Twig of the Year' too. But no, you insist on Gai-Jin food like cheesy pasta, and wiener schnitzel. Like that doesn't contribute to your weight. What does 'the competition' eat? Why, the same thing they've eaten for centuries: rice and miso! It's tasty, it's obviously healthy enough to keep them alive, so why not give it a try? When in Rome ...

 

 

Guys like skinny chicks. It's no shameful secret. Girls like tall guys. Nothing wrong there either. Good news! Unlike height, slimness is something you can do something about.

 

But it's not just the weight thing, right? Otherwise your waify south east asian sisters wouldn't be hating the Japs too. And there wouldn't be so many Gaijin guys with minger J-Girls on their arms. (Believe me, that's the rule rather than the exception.) So what else might she got that you don't?

 

Next: "They dress like children."

Stardate: 20060827

 

Rear deflector shields failing. Science Officer tells me it's quite hygenic. Can't ... take ... much ... more ...

 

What is this strange Earthling ritual they call 'douching'?

The mountain from 5th station is as spartan as an Olympian myth. There is a foggy car park, straight out of an amateur slasher film. There is the smell of 5th station, like leaving your hands unwashed after visiting a toilet. The clouds stream below you like a river of cotton. The mountain sets the rest of the scene. It's as clinical as a city at dawn, with only a path and no other option but to climb it.

 

You have your companions. You start your odyssey. A Greek tragedy in the making.

 

At first, you share backpats for climbing at night in the off season. There's no one around to see you take a leak behind a rock. It's free, unlike the Y300 mercenary bog-shacks at each station. Then fatigue, solitude, and cold bite, and the 'shouldn't have...'s start to outweigh the 'lucky that...'s.

 

Altitude sickness spins the fable. Meek men become Titans. Aches become agony. Placid ones change from howling laughter to sobbing in despair every fifty steps.

 

Spoiler alert: NOTHING happens to make it better. No spectacular view, no re-forged friendships, nothing to round the tale off. There is nothing at the top except fog and a pissy little shrine/koban/souvenir shop. The only knowledge you are rewarded with is that the climb down is as long as the climb up, that you will once again be sticky and sweaty when you descend back into the Japanese summer, and that your comrades will be crawling up your skin every step of the way. On the climb down however, you will now be tired, hungry, and ready to kill someone.

 

It's temptingly easy. Fuji-san is steep and there's plenty of sharp rocks.

 

Any life lessons learned fade with the babbling, blustering, sarcasm, and tantrums that become your soundtrack for the climb. The god of dreams mercifully takes it away during your first sleep on the bus as it winds down through the clouds. Heaven's reward for heroes is that what happens on the mountain stays on the mountain.

Overrated.

 

I'd take a porterhouse back home any day.

 

Trust Poon to be posted to a town named after a porn star.

Legend has it that some 8th century genius thought of taking forests, temples, and deer, and jamming these delights into a small town between Kyoto and Osaka.

 

This oriental Willy Wonka also conjured up the largest wooden temple in the world to house a giant buddha. Crawling through buddha's nostril will supposedly earn you enlightenment.

 

Japan's full of little spiritual-physical challenges like that; precursors to modern game shows. Shizuoka has a giant stone staircase which, if you climb it, ensures your place in heaven after your massive coronary.

 

I did both. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing and attain enlightenment on average twice a week.

The honour, spirit, soul of the samurai.

 

Y8000 at a flea market near Yunoki war shrine.

 

I am now officially packing heat.

Dragonball Z vs Onepiece vs Naruto.

 

What's better than a fighting game based on a hit anime series? A fighting game based on THREE hit anime series.

 

BattleStadium DON is in the house!

 

I caught the Naruto vs Son Goku vs Luffy demo fight and I had to snap it with my phone.

 

But what I really want is Naruto vs Harry Potter. Kage Bunshin no Jutsu against a Crucius curse? Place your bets please.

Part 2 - Scratching the Wax (not playing the CD)

(Read Part 1)

Your CD is grossly overweight. In efficiency terms it's a fat bastard. True, it's all just ones and zeroes but there's a heck of a lot of them - probably a lot more than needed. Digital encoding - ones and zeroes - is only is the building blocks for layers within layers of redundant data and error correcting algorithms called checksums. There are even checksums to check the checksums.

 

One and zero, on and off, is a perfect representational system ... for ones and zeroes. It is simple and foolproof in and of itself but using it to record reality with fidelity requires heavy abstraction and ciphers thousands many degrees more complex than the Enigma code. Even then it only records an approximation of the studio sound.

 

A CD is only 'perfect' in that the range it records is greater than what we can hear. Apart from that it records just 2 to 6 separate sources of sound, nowhere near the richness of reality. Reality is analog - the antithesis of digital. Infinitely nuanced, infinitely varied. Natural sound, like natural heartbeats, vary so much in pitch, tone and rhythm that calling them 'waves' is slightly incorrect. Recording it digitally is like trying to fit square blocks into a round hole by approximating a circle with the tiny square blocks.

 

It's like measuring a coastline. There's no way you can measure around every rock, cliff, grain of sand. If you tried to, you'd get infinity. Even simple patterns in nature quickly form fractals which fold into each other endlessly.

 

Furthermore, we are analog creatures. How do we know? Sing your favorite song today and tomorrow. You will sing it differently both times. Your singing is affected by your environment and your feelings. Digital recording may only be an approximation but it is a darn sight more accurate than we are. Even so it is strange that we use a recording method so incongruous with our nature.

 

Why bother recording digitally? For fidelity of reproduction. Because it is based on solid ones and zeroes, the recording can be transmitted endlessly without ambiguity errors creeping in. LPs used the depth of pits in the groove to determine the sound produced. Analog is all about shades. Stronger, weaker, higher, lower. Problem is that it's hard to preserve the message let alone copy it faithfully. The digital system - whether a pit exists (1) or not (0) - is a lot more definite and less likely to vary due to wear, between media, or the player which plays it. A digital signal though imperfect keeps its quality.

 

So too with good and evil. Our IDEA of good and evil is at its heart a binary system which is excellent for flawless transmission. The evidence is clear: good and evil as concepts have outlasted all religions, or dare I say attempts to codify good and evil like CD burners codify ones and zeroes. Religions that don't embrace strong positives and negatives ... well, we don't hear about them any more do we? Their signals die too quickly. Cynically speaking, a moral system need not be good approximation of true morality as much as it needs to be propogated. To that end, God is best transmitted as '1', not 'maybe-ok'.

 

But like all binary systems it can only represent an approximation of the real thing.

 

Next: Less questions, more answers.

A conversation with my higher self:

 

"Hey you, higher self! I don't give a rat's anymore about consequences. Just give me what I want."

"Well my child, what DO you want?"

"Money, fame, and the adoration of sexy women (who are willing to share) for starters. You can also drop the 'my child' schtick."

"What if all that were harmful to you? Would you still want that?"

"You only live once. Is it better that I learn to expect NOT to get what I want?"

"So, why do you want those things?"

"What are you, like some kind of supply department? I have to fill out a form?"

"I just want you to be mindful of your purpose."

"Hey, my purpose my business. Just give me it and if it doesn't fit my purpose, I'll send it back and ask for something else. No big deal."

"But love, I already gave you all you wanted."

"No you didn't, or I wouldn't be scrounging one yen pieces, sitting home alone, surfing porn, or - in fact - asking you for help. No compadre, YOU wanted to live like a monk. That's what YOU want. That's what YOU want for ME!"

"My dearest, I AM you."

"That's where you're wrong. *I* am me. People have a higher self, higher selves don't have people. You are a part, a fingernail, a skin flake. I've read books on you. I visited people who tried to 'channel' you. I stopped denying you. I give you props. Now you need to get with the program. It's time to collect, homes."

"I didn't realise this was an exchange."

"See that would be because higher selves don't think of things like that. It's all white light and scented candles to you, isn't it?"

"That's right. Infinite, boundless love."

"That's why I'm talking to you and not to any other body part. You can hook me up with the good stuff. If it's really infinite then surely you can spare some of it to turn into a book deal or a Mami Orihara."

"Indeed and so I have given you the power to get all those things."

"(I must have gotten the higher self without the 'listen' function.) Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I don't want to 'go out and get' those things. I want you to GIVE them to me!"

 

Chop chop! Now! Move! Go go go go go go go!