it’s a jungle out there

This blog is rapidly turning into a place where I can air my identity crises. The crucial difference between this blog and real life, though, is that around here I can’t be interrupted. In their past lives, my blogs were forums for confidence issues and (barely) veiled jabs at various girls who had gon’ up and don’ me wrong, but I guess these days my problems are more existential in nature, and are probably, in the long run, better off for it.

My desk is a hideous mess of Australiana (dig that rad kookaburra), lollies I use to bribe minors, Japanese textbooks that I have skimmed, not read, and a variety of teaching materials that, surprisingly, have been getting a pretty solid workout of late. While it is true that at times I may have been something of a lazy ALT, that trend has definitely been reversed as I’ve been able to identify the more bothersome areas of my job and work on improving those, rather than the aimless stressing of eras past. I’m steadily realising that bored, unmotivated students aren’t the problem; it’s disorganised co-workers. I am repeatedly inundated by inconsiderate and illogical requests for help with classes that aren’t mine, translations of things of a singularly personal nature, and so on. I believe the thought process resembles something like this: Darren is an ALT, and ALTs aren’t busy or just don’t work very hard. だから、Darren mustn’t be busy. It’s beautifully Socratic.

Anyway, in light of these revelations, job satisfaction is at an unusual high, as I have adopted an even more nihilistic approach to my job: I chat with students whenever I feel like it, and about whatever I please. I play DS with them and snap unflattering photos of them. I ask them about their boyfriends and girlfriends and point out cute girls in magazines. So when it comes to classes, most of them are comfortable enough with me by now to play along with whatever I come up with. However, I think the main thing that has improved my working life is that, as the months have rolled by of late, I have become increasingly willing to strike up a conversation in punctuated Japanese, and the kids have started to realise that I am actually a living organism of equal or greater intellectual capability, one who has thoughts and feelings of his own and the gift of self-expression. Who would have thought – a foreigner!

I’m definitely beyond repair. When I start visiting – and enjoying – websites such as this (a cute girl appears in the day!) there seems to be little chance of redemption. To make things even worse, this link was sent to me by a female Japanese friend of mine. There’s just something irresistible about homely girls posing for coy photos and bashfully describing their personal traits.

The longer I spend observing other cultures, the more convinced I become that the world we inhabit is governed primarily by sex and money. The sex industry in Japan is omnipresent and, as a young woman, there is no better way to make easy money than to become a hostess or waitress in a fancy bar. Middle-aged men pay through the nose to merely be in the company of these creatures, and while prostitution itself is outwardly frowned upon, its no secret that money can buy everything, the porn industry is rampant, and the vast majority of establishments fronting as pleasant, classy lady bars are little more than extortionately-priced brothels. On a more personal level, it seems that wherever I go in the world, the thing that impresses the majority of girls with the most boring regularity is a boy with money and the willingness to flaunt it, both on himself and on his girl. The extravagance that passes for class and style in Japan can be truly sickening, especially when a dude in parachute pants can be considered cool just because they cost hundreds of dollars. Oh, and on that note: fuck you, Ed Hardy. I hate you and everything you create.

I always misspell the word ‘opinion’ and it comes out looking something like ‘onion.’ Perhaps there’s something in that.

Dudes. I’ve been all over this new Paramore single for a week now. How is it better than anything they have done in the past? Let me count the ways: Hayley’s voice isn’t as pitch-perfectly auto-tuned as the last album, and, moreover, she sounds way more pissed off on this track. Whilst ‘Misery Business’ was definitely a catchy (dare I say good?) song, it always seemed a little trite and forced to me. On this one, she simply spits out the lyrics in a much more natural meter, and the whole song is better off for it. Next, this song plays with time signatures and syncopation in a way that would make even the most capable metal bands envious. Its structure consists of multiple layered elements and constantly blurs the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge distinction. The arpeggios in the pre-chorus and breakdown are simply insane. Paramore’s drummer is awesome and is clearly the most impressive thing about the band besides Hayley’s voice. Listen carefully next time!

This movie was rad. The first half of District 9, in particular, takes the now-familiar mockumentary style into pretty interesting and challenging territory, offering a charicature of bureaucracy that is comical, satirical and confrontingly honest. Its themes are superficially obvious, and its a kind of wonder that it has taken so long for sci-fi films to come up with this idea. But the allegory extends further that just ‘how should governments deal with illegal immigrants,’ into far more personal territory: how do we overcome language barriers with foreigners? Is there any way to deal with the issue whilst retaining personal sensitivities? Indeed, can there even be a non-violent resolution to these kinds of problems? It nods towards the pervasive racism issues with a handful of ingenious quips, the kinds of slips-of-tongue usually reserved for mid-level politicians that are likely to see their superiors caught up in some heated PR backpedalling:

“I mean, you can’t say they don’t look like that, that’s what they look like, right? They look like prawns.”

It is amazingly well-acted, particularly by Sharlto Copley, who carries the second half of the film single-handedly and prevents it from ultimately becoming little more than a gruesome FPS-inspired alien blastfest, although even Copley can’t save it from crashing and bashing its way to a somewhat underwhelming end. District 9 combines some of the cinematic elements of Independence Day, Children of Men, The Host and…well, Starship Troopers, but its South African orientation gives it a pretty unique feel overall. Definitely see this movie!

Well, there was going to be more, but now there isn’t. ‘Til next time!

flutterby

The onslaught of material worth writing down in Japan is so torrential that it washes away all other consecutive cognitive processes in a mire of fractured memories and splintered shards of recognition. I should resort to poetry or (gasp) lyricism. Alas, all that inspires me to write is that most inappropriate of sources; that want for an audience of sorts, or recognition of the fact that I have but finally put pen to paper, or fingertip to typepad, as it were.

Japan, I’m sorry. You alone cannot force my hand, not this time, no sir. It requires a mocking tenacity, goading persistence of spirit to cause this bird to rear, retreat, take flight, open the gates, surrender the fort. Greatest pleasure of late has been found in mapping out an itinerary for persons not myself, lining up the dominoes in order to hastily and improperly knock them down, setting myself again the task of restructuring and organising, resolving and inevitably abandoning in the larval stages the germs of real accomplishment.

Documentation and opinion to be redirected henceforth towards a more wholesome and practical arena. Endless depths to be explored and then occupied, both here and there, but to different ends.

A handful of albums that have had a considerable effect on my life, my worldview, my perspectives on certain events and my appreciation for art and beauty, presented in the chronological order in which they appeared and ignited something within me. Apologies to those who probably deserve to be on this list but aren’t. These are, after all, my formative years that are in plain view.

• Oasis  - What’s the Story (Morning Glory)?
• Everclear – So Much For the Afterglow
• Propellerheads – Decksanddrumsandrockandroll
• Lagwagon – Double Plaidinum
• Saves the Day – Stay What You Are
• Staring Back – On
• Jimmy Eat World – Clarity
• Jets To Brazil – Orange Rhyming Dictionary
• Smoking Popes – Destination Failure
• Blueline Medic – Text_Bomb
• Miles Davis – Miles Ahead
• The Black Keys – Thickfreakness
• Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – Streetcore
• The Lawrence Arms – The Greatest Story Ever Told
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Hearts of Oak
• Elliott Smith – X/O
• Built To Spill – Keep It Like a Secret
• Common – Be
• The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America
• mewithoutYou – Brother/Sister
• Twin Vickers – Demo
• Muscles – Guns, Babes, Lemonade
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call

Until we meet again – so long, friends.

the paper chase

This is madness! Two blog posts in one night?! Note: like last year, this stuff didn’t necessarily come out in 2008, but let’s just pretend.

favourite albums of 2008:

mewithoutYou – Brother, Sister
Twin Vickers – Demo

These two recordings were so far beyond anything else I heard in 2008 that I feel the need to break up the list in order to point out this fact. The rest can be considered more or less equal.

Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Muscles  – Guns Babes Lemonade
The Decemberists – The Crane Wife/Picaresque
Smoking Popes – Stay Down
Bayside – Shudder
The Benevento/Russo Duo – Play Pause Stop
Dinosaur Jr. – Beyond
The Black Keys – Magic Potion
The Maccabees – Colour It In
Annuals – Such Fun
Judy and Mary – The Great Escape
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call
Crystal Castles – S/T
Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
Foals – Antidotes
The Hold Steady – Stay Positive
New Order – Substance
Ratatat – Classics
Justice – †
Kanye West – Graduation
Louis Jordan – Greatest Hits
Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
Oh Mercy – Priviliged Woes
The Bronx – III
The Presets – Apocalypso

favourite songs by bands/off albums i may or may not necessarily give a shit about:

Twin Vickers – The Way To Walk Out Of Here
mewithoutYou – O Porcupine/The Dryness and the Rain/Wolf Am I!
Oh Mercy – Can’t Fight It
The Greasers – Shelley
The Bronx – Past Lives
Annuals – The Tape
Cut Copy – Feel The Love
Death Cab For Cutie – I Will Possess Your Heart/Cath…
Common – Be (still probably my favourite hiphop track)
Kanye West – Robocop
Bayside – The Ghost of St. Valentine
MGMT – Time To Pretend (I liked this when everyone was still obsessed with ‘Kids’)
Muscles – Jerk
Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor
Driving Music – Demo (all five tracks)

bands that should have quit in 2008:

Fall Out Boy
Jimmy Eat World
Saves The Day (hurts me to mention these last two)
Bloc Party
Kaiser Chiefs
Coldplay (still)
Metallica (still)
The Getaway Plan

bands that shouldn’t have quit in 2008:

Blueline Medic…

best new bands/new to me:

The Paints
Kimbra
The Benevento/Russo Duo

biggest disappointments:

Kanye West – 808s and Heartbreaks
Common – Universal Mind Control
Lagwagon – I Think My Older Brother Used To Listen To Lagwagon

best gigs:

The Paints @ Noise Bar
mewithoutYou @ Soundwave Festival
Saosin @ Soundwave Festival
The Matches @ Soundwave Festival
Ratatat @ The Espy
Kimbra @ The Toff
Twin Vickers @ The Old Bar
Justice @ Ganban Night ‘08
Lagwagon @ Club Quattro Tokyo

i just don’t get it:

MGMT
Deerhunter
The Gaslight Anthem
Vampire Weekend

biggest surprises:

Local artists outshine just about everything else regardless of genre
After shockingly saccharine Plans album, Death Cab release scary good song with ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’
I develop a nasty affinity for nasty electro (although I can pinpoint this to one very particular night)…
Sum 41 most popular pop-punk band in Japan (not really surprising actually)
Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading, mental

best movies:

Let The Right One In
Wall-E
The Dark Knight
The Killing
Tekkonkinkreet
Burn After Reading (Coen-lite but still hilarious)
Battle Royale
Hidden
5 Centimetres per Second
Tokyo Story
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (why are there so many thrillers on this list?)

worst movies:

I didn’t watch anywhere near as many movies this year so thankfully I didn’t see many bad ones. Let me think…

Babylon A.D. (stumbled across this on the plane to Cambodia, I couldn’t look away it was so appalling)
The Orphanage (not bad by any means but just a bit of a disappointment)
Ghost In The Shell (so overrated)
Pineapple Express (had its moments but ehhh)
My Blueberry Nights (ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

best television shows:

The Colbert Report
Monster
Death Note

worst television shows:

The Office (quit while you’re ahead!)
Heroes
Lost

best games:

The World Ends With You (DS)
Space Invaders Extreme (DS)
Kirby Canvas Curse (DS)
Jump! Ultimate Stars (DS)
Geometry Wars (DS/PC/360)/Grid Wars (PC)
Everyday Shooter (PC)
N+ (DS)

best books read in 2008:

The Grapes of Wrath
The Name of the Rose (it took me like four months, it must be good…I think…)
Red Dust
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler

best book read in 2008 that i didn’t really care for:

Slaughterhouse-Five

most anticipated/fingers crossed/predictions for 2009:

New Decemberists album redefines indie rock, tops both Pitchfork’s best albums chart and the New York Times book review
Fabled second Postal Service album finally drops
Kimbra becomes the next Björk sans the cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof act
Blueline Medic reunite and finally get the recognition they deserve
Hacking the Wii becomes even cheaper and easier
Nonetheless, Nintendo continue their march towards total world domination
Barack Obama launches rocket full of conservatives into the sun
Kevin Rudd’s internet filter blocks every website except tubgirl
Electric cars
People start talking about how many Yen gold can buy, not the other way around

That’s a whole year’s worth of pop culture right there! Sadly I can’t even remember half of the stuff I read and watched in 2008. The first half was spent in a warbly daze and the second half swimming in neon and smokey karaoke bars. Consider my lesson learned.

よろしく。