Some recent discussion with some immigrant friends prompted an analysis of what a friend is. We all agreed that clichés like the giving up the shirt on his/her back for you was pretty much common, but we had great divergence when it came to the issue of criminal activities. Read »
Winning is beautiful and ugly at the same time. How do we cope with this apparent contradiction? How can we benefit from it without getting hurt by it? Read »
“Live like there is no tomorrow” is a popular piece of wisdom. Most of us have tried to imagine what that is like, and have figured that it would not work. But, at the same time, the idea of it resonates in us in some way. How can we interpret the wisdom beyond the apparent logistical problems? Read »
What is happiness? This question is different from: What makes you happy? I have no interest in the latter, for it is entirely subjective. We can semantically and philosophically argue what constitutes happiness, but there is a certain amount of commonality in the way we use the word “happiness” in ordinary situations. This commonality, I simply pretend to be fixed in meaning in order to present the following arguments. When you see a friend whom you haven’t seen in a while, you might exchange a few pieces of information about the state of your lives. After that, you might ask, “Are you happy?” And, your friend replies, “Yes, I am.” Then you say, “Good, that’s what counts.” The happiness that I want to discuss is this particular one. Read »
To unite is to stabilize. To divide is to destabilize. But these forces are one and the same. Because every unity is artificial, it necessitates division whenever the artificial imposition of unity contradicts reality. Read »
These days, we are all keenly aware of the changing roles of genders. There were days when one had to take on, against one’s wish, a role assigned by one’s own gender because of material necessities. It made sense for men who were physically stronger to go hunting, and for women who were physically equipped to nurture children to stay home. Today, chiefly because of technological advancements, the differences between sexes became less relevant. We all therefore strive to evolve ourselves more ideologically. The question I want to address below is this: If technological advancement renders the differences between sexes irrelevant, then how about the concept of family? Read »
Racism in Japan manifests differently from it does in truly multi-racial countries like the US. As I have said in my past essays, there are two independent forms of racism: unconscious/psychological racism and conscious/ideological racism. They must be addressed separately. We are all racists to a degree in the former sense of the term. In the latter case, we choose to be or not to be a racist. Without distinguishing these forms of racism, we cannot effectively analyze racism in Japan. On one hand, Japanese people can be exceedingly nice to foreigners, but on the other, they can be as rude as any nation can be. Read »
In our late teens to early twenties, we must deal a lot with our own feelings of angst, insecurity, and frustration, and they are often exacerbated by the expectations of the older generations, because the latter often cannot communicate effectively to the former. Many of them feel that their empirical wisdom is inexplicable, so they do not even try. They would say, “You’ll understand once you are my age.” Such expressions feel dismissive to the youths, even if there are no bad intensions. This problem is compounded by the fact that some adults do have negative intensions, and try to make the youths feel naive. This happens because the youths can threaten the adults with their physical and logical superiority. Read »
In my 20’s, I was always craving to “hang out”. After work, I would go straight to my friend Nadav’s apartment and spend a whole evening hanging out with other friends who commuted to Nadav’s every night. We would watch TV or play video games while bingeing on beers. Nothing productive. Nothing constructive. We just sat around watching the clock go around and around. Now I think back, it seems wasteful, but I don’t regret it. Our 20’s are, in many ways, about a sense of belonging. Part of the process of defining who you are, is to find where you belong. It is ironic that after spending a whole decade trying to find your identity by struggling to belong somewhere, you find that to know who you truly are, is to know that you don’t really belong anywhere. That is, you are you; any differences or similarities that you see are only in your head. Anyone can be similar to you or different from you depending on which aspects you focus on. Read »
It seems that as we live longer physically, we age quicker mentally. Especially now with our technologically driven economy, we are made to feel that the people in their late 20?s through early 30?s run the world; everyone else is riding on their wagon. I notice now that any inadvertent implication of someone being “old” is swiftly followed by an apology or by an attempt at an explanation of how it was meant “in a good way.” I wonder if this perception of age has always existed, or if this is a recent phenomenon. Read »
Before I discuss the future of the Internet, I’d like to briefly talk about how I ended up here. Although I have lived in America much of my life, I’m not a typical Asian American because I was not born here. Psychologically, I don’t feel like an American any more than I feel like I’m Japanese. I was born and raised in Japan until I was 17, then moved by myself to California through an exchange program. In retrospect, my high school years were very interesting. I was a typical Asian nerd, much like Long Duk Dong in the movie “Sixteen Candles.” Though there were many Asian Americans in my high school, none of them bothered to talk to me. It’s quite obvious now why they didn’t. After all, I was contributing to the stereotype of Asians being nerdy. Perhaps, some of them even had a feeling of anger towards me. Remember, this is the mid-Eighties: there was no Chow Yun-Fat or Jet Li. Our only representative who wasn’t a nerd was Bruce Lee. So, since most of the Asian-Americans I met did not want to be seen as nerds, I was alienated from my own people. In fact, I’ve never felt Asian Americans to be “my” people. This lack of sense of belonging is something that continues to this day. Read »
I must be getting old. Watching “Naked Chef” makes me dizzy. The continuous extreme close-up and the jerky motion of it make my eyes tired. I remember the days when all the adults around me would complain about the same thing when I watched MTV. Not so long ago, as a motion graphics designer, I would design a piece where each clip was no longer than a few frames (on NTSC TV, there are 30 frames in a second). I thought that was cool. Now I don’t. In fact I can hardly take it. Read »
The aim of art originally was to represent beauty. That is to say it tried to reproduce the beauty that existed in nature. Abstract Expressionists came and changed that. Their works of art did not represent beauty, but were themselves the beauty. What did not change with the Abstract Expressionism was that it still expressed artists’ subjectivity, that is, it expressed their subjective sense of beauty, their human experiences, pain, sufferings, and joy, which appealed to the viewers’ emotions and feelings. We believed that art represented essence of the artists’ self. Then came Postmodernism where any style of art including those of Abstract Expressionists became a mere vehicle of representation. Pop Art, especially, treated every style and movement of art history to be a mere symbol, or an icon. Representation was back again, but this time, beauty is not in what it represents; it is in its use of representation. What we have lost in Postmodern art is the sense of self, or at least so it seems. Read »
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