Thursday, Sept. 17th. The brutal heat and humidity of the last six weeks had finally dissipated, and the clattering din of the season's cicadas had given way to flights of dragonflies, and the early evening chirping of crickets - signals that summer 2020 was formally drawing to an end. It was still dark when I got up. The days were getting noticeably shorter. Over breakfast, Mina reminded me that it was Okasan's birthday *(Okasan = Mother). Eighty-six years old. We'd be cheering her on when she made her customary LINE call that evening.
It seemed that everyone was getting fired up for the upcoming four day weekend...Monday being 'Respect for the Aged Day', and Tuesday, the Autumnal Equinox. Around ten years ago this stretch of national holidays was dubbed 'Silver Week'...for what reason, I'm not sure. Conjecture over here is that the term is just a new way of selling the extended 'holiday' period to salaried workers, to rev them up for some frivolous spending, and promote bookings for seasonal local travel and tourism. They're the only ones that get to enjoy these breaks. For Japan's increasing number of part-time and non-contract labourers (ostensibly referred to as 'freeters' in the often incomprehensible, sometimes amusing foreign loan-word <'gaigraigo'> riddled modern J-vernacular), it's business as usual. Spring has its lucrative 'Golden Week' holiday period at the end of April/beginning of May - so I guess the feeling amongst the career capitalists steering the economic ship in Tokyo was that early autumn was being left out. Mid-September needed its own festive seasonal tag, to push the nation's bored and affluent punters to crack open their piggy banks and spend in the otherwise notoriously slow period between Obon, and the profitable mid-late autumn 'leaf viewing' season in early November. Thus, 'Silver Week' was born.
None of it meant much to us.
Mina only had the Saturday off...and this being 'The Age of Covid', it was pretty certain that we wouldn't be doing any touring around or dining out. Maybe a Saturday afternoon walk to feed the carp out at the traditional Japanese gardens along my running course by the Horikawa canal - if the weather held. As usual, the jury seemed to be out on that, though Weekend forecasts looked to be changing every six hours, or so. I didn't have any classes for the duration, so it would be nice to have two consecutive days off together, anyways. A whole Saturday and Sunday. It really doesn't happen too often.
If all else failed, and it pissed rain, we could at least get a jump on our weekly shopping, then hole up and find something to stream. I'd managed to build up a pretty healthy queue of things I wanted to see...not to mention there were still a few discs I'd amassed over the last year that we hadn't had a chance to watch. I bought an HDMI Firestick from Amazon a couple of years ago, and it's probably the best ¥5000 I've spent in decades. Standard Japanese TV is just so mind-numbingly banal and stupid; the cable TV channels that are bundled with our internet access package are simply perpetual loops of endless repeats. On History Channel, they're still playing the same episodes of Ancient Aliens they were running three years ago. It's like the local operators purchase blocks of legacy content from these global cable TV franchisees every few years, and just loop it. The most recent programs are dated 2017 or 18; but most of the stuff is a lot older.
Sometimes it's a real nostalgia trip. Like Thames Television's, 'World At War' documentary series (1974). Growing up in Vancouver, I remember spending rainy Sunday afternoons holed up in the basement, watching that on the Seattle PBS station. I must have been all of 8 years old. I guess actual history doesn't change a whole lot, so the show (largely comprised of old newsreel footage) is still relevant enough. I can watch that stuff over and over again - like I'd devour all the endless re-runs of Gilligan's Island or The Monkees after school every weekday as a kid. Man's inhumanity to man.
Never gets old.
The same thing with the repertory commercial free movie channels over here. Almost never any new offerings. I must have watched Scorsese's 'Gangs of New York' thirty times in the space of a year. That fifty buck HDMI Firestick represented nothing short of a revelation. It was like being released from tele-purgatory.
Now the dilemma is what to watch in our narrow daily viewing window. Choices are limited, as by 10:30 pm, I'm usually fading fast, and pretty near catatonic. That's what getting up before 5 am will do to you. Saturday night's no exception, either. When the clock strikes 10:30, I promptly turn into a pumpkin. Funny. I used to stay up doing all manner of things until two or three in the morning pretty routinely. I'd also sleep until at least 11 am most days. Alas...the faded glories of a misspent youth...depending on who you ask, I suppose.
Anyways, the prospect of couching it in front of the TV for at least a few hours of our two day 'Silver Week', and possibly catching a couple of movies was definitely appealing. It certainly didn't look like we'd be going out to the theatre anytime soon.
The summer COVID peak had passed, and the daily rate of PCR positives here in Nagoya had dipped below 30 for the last week or so. After my run, I got the laundry sorted and hung out, and decided to ride up the hill to the used CD shop in Kanayama. Music has always been a big deal to me. It seems like I'm into something different every other week.
Being at home so much recently, I've been plowing through my iTunes library. Thousands of albums. I dig stuff up that I haven't listened to in a long while...or had perhaps overlooked and never given a proper chance when I first picked it up. These days I play full albums when I do housework, cook, or warm up for my run. I'd just gone through a stretch of 'Electric Warrior', by T-Rex...cut with a bit of vintage Black Sabbath and Roxy Music. Then the hellish heat seemed to demand another spate of 'Bush Doctor', by Peter Tosh. That perennial favourite led me back to a few old Bob Marley and the Wailers albums that I hadn't listened to in a long while. 'Burnin' and 'Catch a Fire'. I went down that rabbit hole hard. I forgot how much I loved those albums. For a couple of weeks, they were all I listened to.
As usual, I started obsessing about filling in gaps in my physical collection. It's all CD's. I know it's not 'hip'. I had a massive vinyl collection back in the day. I loved my records; but finally sold most of them off for a fraction of what they were worth. Like my long gone boxes of painstakingly fussed over comic books. Regrets. The few things that I did hang on to were picked over and lifted out of storage in my Gramma's basement after I left Vancouver in the early 90's. Of course no one knew anything about 'that' when I finally went back looking for them, during my Mum's prolonged battle with cancer. Typical. Everything was gone. Funny...I still dream about that shit. Losing it all was a real trauma, I guess. Over the years, I gradually rebuilt most of my collection with CD's. There's no way I'm going to go back to vinyl and restart at this stage of the game. It's too expensive...and while records do have their nostalgic charm, they're finicky, unwieldily, and ultimately, a pain in the arse.
Anyways, I digress.
I needed to get some physical copies of Bob's old albums...particularly Catch a Fire and Rastaman Vibration, more Peter Tosh, and possibly some Jimmy Cliff.
The used CD shop wasn't too busy. Almost a year ago, before the pandemic hit, they'd downsized. I guess the idea was to reduce their rent. Now that the floorspace had been halved, it was more than a bit claustrophobic. I'd been avoiding going there for most of the summer, as it's just the type of cramped, poorly ventilated space that 'the virus' loves to spread around in. There were only a few other guys perusing the racks when I walked in - all wearing masks. In addition to all the mostly used CD's (there's still a big market for that format over here), there's a bit of vinyl, and a cramped, over-stuffed DVD/Blu-Ray area. Mostly un-sorted, there's a lot to go through - and usually some good deals, if you have the time and patience to do some digging.
I'd only been in there about five minutes when I looked up and there was some gaunt, shabby looking middle-aged Japanese guy without a mask poking around just behind me. Fuck. It seemed he was after something just over my shoulder, and wasn't going to wait until I had moved on. He started leaning in and angling to reach past my head. I could smell the stale cigarette funk coming off him. He was getting way too close. No concept of social distancing, whatsoever. He wanted in, so I was going to have to move and wait somewhere else while he did his business.
Fucking pushy dickhead. Typical.
At this point, there were four or five other customers scattered around, and the clerk. They were all masked up. What the fuck was this guy's problem? Didn't he feel conspicuous?
I moved on to another section. Within a couple of minutes he was right behind me again...and trying to angle his way in to look at something else, just like he did before. It was almost like he was doing it deliberately. I cursed, gave up and moved back to the reggae/dub section.
A couple of minutes in, and.... bingo.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, 'Catch a Fire'. A used copy of the newer, expanded remaster version. Pay dirt. Nothing else of interest. No Peter Tosh. On my way to the counter, I stopped by the miscellaneous bin. An Island Records 'Reggae Greats' Jimmy Cliff sampler comp. for five bucks. I snapped it up and decided to forgo the extended browse, and get the hell out of there.
Mission accomplished.
I know the whole mask thing is more contentious in Canada and the States. People over here are actually pretty good about wearing them, as masks are nothing new in this society. I suffer from allergies and chronic asthma, so I've been masking up for years. It's not necessary to wear one all the time. When I go out for a run - or a bike ride - I don't bother. Out walking by myself, there's no need. Driving around with Mina...no mask. When I teach over at Mr. Insecthead's kindergarten, I'm masked up. If I go into a shop or crowded area, you'd better believe I wear one.
Yet...there's this fringe asshole contingent (albeit smaller over here) that just doesn't seem to give a shit. Every time we go to the supermarket on the weekend, there are inevitably one or two middle aged looking guys parading around totally mask-less. These days that's almost akin to walking around in your underwear...yet, they don't seem to give a rat's arse.
The other day, while I was waiting for Mina in the foyer of the bulk supermarket up the road, I watched an older middle-aged guy peel off his mask in front of the cashier at the checkout, and go about debating the price of something or other in his basket, while digging around in his wallet for change...the mask dangling from his left ear the whole time. Fortunately for her, there was a transparent vinyl curtain separating her from his spray down. As he finished their transaction, he casually put his wallet in to his back pocket, put the dangling mask loop back over his ear, and proceeded to the bagging counter. All in a day's douchebaggery, I suppose.
On a crowded pandemic Sunday earlier this spring, I watched another older guy over at the Sappore specialty supermarket actually pull his mask back, sneeze violently, then put it back on. I couldn't believe it. What the actual fuck?
Japanese men.
The whole masking thing is a matter of courtesy. There's also an adequate supply everywhere these days. It's easy. Just fucking wear one in shops or crowded places. It doesn't necessarily matter what you believe, or whether you like it or not. It's not political. Don't be a douche. Apparently this is too tall an order for some people to deal with.
Maybe I was being a little more sensitive due to the situation with my brother-in-law. It had been six weeks since he was hospitalized, and things had not gone particularly well. He had ended up having a tracheostomy procedure after two weeks on the ventilator had failed to adequately resolve his breathing situation. Then there was the emergency dialysis after his kidneys shut down, and the midnight incident in which his vitals went mental and he almost died. He'd finally been taken off the ventilator about a week ago, and was breathing on his own. His kidney situation had also resolved, so he no longer required dialysis. He'd been moved out of the ICU to a regular ward, as he had tested COVID negative. Very good news, and seemingly cause for celebration... but he remained unconscious.
Mayumi had been cleared to go out and visit him. She sat by his bed, and apparently clutched at his hand. Nothing. He was totally unresponsive. In the last week he'd had an episode of severe internal bleeding, and the attending physician determined that he'd be able to go in and do a quick fix; but were it to happen again, the hospital simply didn't have enough surplus blood for emergency transfusion to go about the procedure again. They were uncertain as to what the cause was, and why he wasn't coming to. Mayumi speculated that the bleeding might have been the result of an adverse reaction to some of the strong medication he'd been on. Mina quietly doubted it. This was all so random and mysterious. Apparently the virus (or the after affects thereof) were still moving through his internal organs and wreaking havoc. And perhaps most troubling...he just wasn't waking up. What was going on?
I got back from Kanayama around 3:30, and the front room that I use for an office smelled like Fidel Castro's arsehole. Again.
If I opened the widow, it would just get worse. I went to the living room and opened all the sliders on the south side in an attempt to get the smell out. The kitchen smelled like hacked nicotine loogies, too. It had been coming in from the range top fan hood.
Again.
I clicked it on 'high'. It makes a hell of a noise. Like a fucking hydrofoil. About ten minutes of that I'm ready to have a conniption. I turned on the rotary fans we set up on either side of the apartment, in an attempt to coax all of the stale, cruddy air out of the corners. It's amazing how fast that shit smell seeps in.
It seems like all that used up slag next door does is stand in her kitchen and blow smoke up her range hood.
All. Fucking. Day.
She's at it from 6:30 am, until after we go to bed. Every day. That's some real dedication.
'At least she's not smoking on the front balcony'.
Yeah. I guess.
I went about loading the Jimmy Cliff album I'd just snagged into my iTunes library. I had to update and sync my old school iPod on the computer, then shift some stuff around, as it was getting full. I've been using it in the living room, where I connect it to the TV surround system, which is on its last legs. It actually doesn't sound too bad. My proper stereo set up (a thunderous old Sony component system that I'd nicknamed 'The Evictor') is still in our bedroom closet. I'd inherited that from my ex-wife's sister 25 years ago, and had given it a good run. It was at least part of the reason that I'd got the boot from my last place, 18 years ago. Mina's been on my case to get rid of it for the longest time. That, and all the other antiquated tech that's just sitting in there, taking up precious storage space. It seems like a shame to dump it...but I imagine sooner or later she'll win out, and it'll go the way of my rotten 30 year old 14 hole Dr. Martens, and inoperable, antique monochrome screen Mac Classic 2. Out to the trash cage at edge of the east parking lot, to wait for the local pickers and scavengers. I should have kept that dead old Mac. It had to be worth something to some enthusiast, I imagine. Some intrepid junker's lucky day, I guess.
Oh, well.
The smell was gradually starting to clear up a bit; the laundry was dry, so I brought it all in and did the folding. It was taking some time for the iPod to update and sync, and I needed background noise, so I clicked the TV on, and listened to BBC World...which also runs in a loop. They seem to have about thirty minutes of fresh news and weather every 12 hours, which they continuously repeat. Everything is coronavirus this, and COVID that...but nothing really new. The U.S. presidential election cycle was approaching, so there was usually some fresh example of Trumpian assholery peppered in with the usual fare. Thoroughly depressing. Ten minutes in, and fortunately my iPod update and sync had finally finished, so I could turn it off, and put on that Jimmy Cliff album. Old school reggae can turn things around.
The stress of everything this year was starting to get to me. Would that Japan weren't such a backwards country, stuck in the hysterical grips of a mid-twentieth century bout of 'reefer madness' ignorance and paranoia, life here may be a bit more palatable - particularly at this juncture. Lord help you if you are found to be in possession of even the smallest amount of this feared contraband. You will be shackled, and treated worse than a rapist or child molester by the brutish and stupid Japanese police. No quarter is afforded pot smokers.
It's hard to believe that before General Douglas MacArthur imposed the draconian U.S. inspired 'Cannabis Control Law' during the U.S. Occupation in 1948, it had been cultivated and used widely on the archipelago for millennia - going back to the Jomon period (14500 - 300 BCE). Upon implementation, the U.S. agitated criminalization of hemp/cannabis was not at all welcomed or broadly supported by the Japanese; but seen as a punitive move. Perhaps the true motivation was less to protect the heathen conquered Japanese from the ravages of the 'Devil's lettuce', than to keep it out of the hands of occupying American G.I.'s, who were raising a bit too much hell on their R&R in Tokyo. The resulting enforcement of this punitive legislation destroyed an ancient agricultural concern, and an entire way of life.
When the most visible of the American GI's left in 1952, the unpopular Cannabis Control Law (while still on the books) essentially lay moribund for the next decade and a half - until the late sixties - when it was dusted off and resurrected at the behest of Japan's 'minders' at the U.S. State Department. As elsewhere at that time, there was a burgeoning student movement in Japan, and everything in 'the establishment' was being called in to question. Front and center for these protestors were Japan's complicity in providing logistical support for American Forces in Vietnam, and the U.S. military's continued 'un-official' occupation of large swathes of the country, vis-a-vis its numerous and prolific bases. It also seemed that, as in 'the West', the Japanese counter culture and student leaders (hippies) had a soft spot for cannabis, which had become symbolic of the global anti-establishment movement. Japan's frustrated U.S. advisors 'recommended' dusting off and weaponizing the mothballed 1948 MacArthur edict, and using it as a tool to terrorize and subjugate the student 'trouble-makers'. They convinced the Japanese government that these problematic 'communist leaning' students not only represented a real threat to Japan's nascent economic resurgence, but to its burgeoning 'democracy', and that - wielded effectively - this 'law' could help them quell this dangerous dissent, and establish real, lasting control. The truth of the matter was that Washington feared that the students were on the verge of swaying popular opinion - and potentially jeopardizing their precious regional strategic military foothold on the archipelago. The Cannabis Control Law was resurrected and enthusiastically enforced by the National Police Agency. Cannabis was now 'Public Enemy #1. Its use now represented a threat to the very fabric of Japan's ancient social order, and users were considered akin to dangerous subversives, social agitators and traitors. The very stiffest of penalties and sentences were passed down for any violation...and slowly but surely, the student movement fizzled.
Control.
Fifty years on, the U.S. military continues to have its way over here...largely un-challenged by a neutralized, apathetic Japanese populace. A half century of fear mongering has worked. Most 'average' Japanese now equate cannabis with heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. Seventy-odd years after it was criminalized by MacArthur, the people running the show seem about as likely to decriminalize it as sell off the Emperor's only daughter as concubine to entertain fat Kim Jong Un.
As usual, the further forward the rest of the world moves, the more Japan obstinately clings to its feudal, authoritarian past. They are absolutely terrified of change. It is anathema to them.
Lord forbid they permit anything that could lubricate even the smallest amount of free thought. As stated, the name of the game here is control. People mustn't be permitted any time or opportunity to reflect or relax. The prevalent thinking is that alcohol and tobacco should be adequate stress relievers. Never mind the destructive social malaise routinely caused by the former, or cancer strewn legacy of the latter.
'An idle mind is the devil's playground'.
This is a society in which rape and paedophilia are apparently more socially acceptable than cannabis use. It will be interesting to see what the government's official reaction to the recent sweeping decriminalization in the U.S. will be - after all, Japan remains a U.S. client state, subject to Washington's whims and policy decisions in almost every way.
I'm not holding my breath for change. For the foreseeable future, old school reggae CD's are going to be as close as we get.
Of more immediate local concern now was the matter of getting dinner on the move...
There was still rice in the cooker, and a load of leftover stir-fry in the fridge, so fortunately sorting dinner wouldn't be a big deal, but it still remained to be seen as to whether Mina would have to work late. Usually I get a quick call or message after 5:15, if that's going to be the case. Her section has been running shorthanded forever, and she often has to put in ten to twelve hour days
Around 5:00, as I was pulling stuff out of the fridge, the phone rang. A bit early for Mina. Maybe another telemarketer trying to get us to change internet providers? These idiots could be real persistent shit-heels. Sometimes they were just professional yakuza hucksters posing as NTT sales reps, cold-calling from long lists, trying to harvest people's personal data.
"To answer, or not to answer..."
I picked up, and it was Mina. Her voice was a bit shaky. Odd.
She had just spoken to Mayumi.
Her husband had died.
My heart dropped.
"Oh, no."
Mina's boss was going to let her leave on time for once. Her shift was almost over, anyways. She was fighting back tears.
"What happened?!?"
We would talk when she got home.
TO BE CONCLUDED...
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