I love this country; I love almost everything about it. My biggest complaint is that the chairs are too low. In the US, the chair seats are about 18″ off the floor – I think there is even a US standard somewhere – in Japan, the seats are about 12.5″ to 15″. For the first couple of days, I would go to sit down, then go lower, then lower, and then into freefall for the last 3 to 6 inches. When it is time to stand up, it’s more like getting off the lowest step than a dining room chair.
While I’m complaining, almost everything is too low and/or too small. Stair railings are about knee height, so I have to bend over, way over, to inch my way down a high set of stone stairs. Right now, I’m sitting on a low stool bent over my computer on a small round table about kitchen stool height. Most restaurants are tiny, three to six small tables tiny.
Balance that against great architecture, smiling, helpful people, great food, and the list goes on and on.
“We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us” Pogo (well. Walt Kelly, really).
We’re not in the US, but I can feel the trauma, the shock, of the election. The people voted, and the majority of them didn’t vote the way we wanted and expected them to vote. A couple of days ago, at a Craft Fair at the Shiinoki Cultural Complex in Kanazawa, Michele got into a conversation with a local, and he asked, “Why?” Michele said she didn’t have an answer.
I don’t really either. But the distraction of being in a new environment gives me the luxury of not thinking about it very much. That makes it easy for me to fall back on my old answers, and I don’t think, at 84, my old answers are really the answers that fit today. My politics are almost a perfect match with Senator Bernie Sanders, so I love his answers, but as much as I love them, I think Bernie’s answers are outdated.
What I do think, however, is that Harris and the Democrats didn’t lose because Harris didn’t go on Joe Rogan enough or used the wrong typeface in her ads. I don’t even think that Harris lost because we are a sexist or racist nation. We are, probably, but that’s not why we lost. I think we lost because the economy was better under Trump. It turns out that most people thought their lives were better under Trump. I don’t mean because of Trump; I think Trump looked good because he inherited the fruits of the Obama recovery. But that may just be my Liberal rationalization.
Coastal California is one of the most Liberal parts of the country, and our Liberal policies have not solved any of our biggest problems. California has the largest homeless population in the country, and we give our children a shitty education. We are #37 in Pre-K-12 education and #22 in High School Graduation Rate, according to U.S. News & World Report. How can that be if our ideas are so much better than, say, Florida, ranked #10 in Pre-K-12 education and #19 in High School Graduation, or Georgia, #25,#17?
What we do do well is take care of our elite selves. Silicon Valley is booming; we have 186 billionaires, an almost infinite number of millionaires, and our elite colleges are the best in the world. We have great parks – National, State, and local – and we keep the homeless out so we don’t have to see them and feel bad or even guilty. Many of our highways are perpetually congested, so we are making special lanes so those who can afford it can pay a little money – for them – to get where they want to go faster.
Don’t get me wrong; I love my life in the United States of America, and especially in California, but the laws and policies are made for me – by people like me – and that is not the way to get votes from people who are not like me. I don’t know what the answers are, but I do know that saying that people who voted for Trump are stupid or saying that Trump is a fascist is not effective.
Japan likes tunnels, or maybe it should be the Japanese like tunnels; it is hard to know which way to put it. Either way, there are a lot of tunnels in Japan: train tunnels, road tunnels, even a tunnel hacked through solid columnar basalt that is an art piece.
Yuzawa is a resort town in the Japanese Alps. Well, the Chamber of Commerce says that Yuzawa is in the Japanese Alps, so I should believe them. However, I think the signature feature of the Swiss Alps, which tops out at 14,691 feet, is its glaciated topography. The Japanese Alps top out at 10,475 feet, so they may have had lots of glaciers, but Yuzawa is at only 3,875 feet, and there was not a sign of glaciation anywhere.
Still, there were ski slopes and chairlifts, and I was reminded that it snows at sea level here. We stayed in a large stand-alone hotel that kind of reminded me of the hotel on the Indian Reservation near the newly formed Tulare Lake. We were here to see at least part of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and, especially, the Kiyotsukyo Gorge Tunnel.
The next three nights, we spent in Joetsu, an off-the-tourist road city, so we could double back to the eastern part of Triennal and then drove – mostly along the coast – to Kanazawa, at the center of the tourist road. We are now in Kanazawa, surrounded by American – or, at least, European-American looking – young people.
This part of Japan is known for its rice and its sake. Michele says that the rice is very good, but my taste buds aren’t refined enough to taste the difference between this rice and, say, Luna Koshihikari Organic Rice from the Sacramento Valley. The Sake was different; the local stuff was terrific.
As we leave the shoreline, we come back into rice country. I’m amazed at how the rice fields seem to fill every empty space, but on reflection, I think it is probably the opposite. As family fields get divided between heirs, some sell their plot and it then gets filled with buildings.
