Japanese hydrangea (aji-sai) are pretty much emblematic of this time of year. The rain let up on June 10th, and after my morning appointment, we stopped by this beautiful park out in Tokai-shi, near my dermatologist's clinic. Mina got some rteally nice shots.
Rainy season ('tsuyu') touched down just over two weeks earlier than it did last year.
Once upon a time, the weather would mostly turn to shit around June 6th or 7th, and stay that way until the third or fourth week of July. Last year the six week piss down started on June 14th - just over a week late - and this year, a week earlier than usual - on May 29th. The real drag is that the onset of rainy season basically brings the curtains down on the most idyllic time of year - at least as far as the weather goes. The month between the second weeks of May and June are typically gold - warm, pleasant...and if you're fortunate enough to have access to less urban local environs, green, lush and gorgeous.
I feel robbed.
From here on out, it will get increasingly dank and humid. Around the beginning of July, just as the cicadas start their two months of screeching and clattering, the stifling jungle heat will start to kick in. As the temperature and humidity rises, the natives start going into collective brain melt. As all common sense evaporates...impulsive idiocy becomes 'king'.
Welcome to 'The Season of Stupid'.
From here on in, everything gets just a bit harder to deal with.
The divider between 'lovely and temperate early summer' and 'dank, sweaty, stupid' is typically the big local fireworks display put on by the money grabbing Shinto-priest types over at Atsuta Jingu Shrine, just over the Meitetsu and JR line tracks about a ten minute walk west of us. This year's big pyro-event fell on the evening of Monday, June 5th...at which point it had already been raining for most of the preceding week.
I'd actually been crossing my fingers that it would get rained out...but alas, no such luck.
This is the event's second year back, after two years of COVID cancellation. Despite the virtual news media embargo on anything even vaguely related to the current status of the virus, and the steadily increasing number of unmasked mouth breathers milling around the local supermarkets pretending 'it's all over and done with', the virus is still very much with us. As the number of patients queueing for tests at local hospitals and fever clinics steadily climbs, it's seems certain that we're headed for another viral shit show of a summer.
Unlike myself, Mina loves to go out and watch the Atsuta fireworks, and since the COVID-era demise of my long-running Monday evening doctor's class, I'm now free to join her out on the broad pedestrian fly-over between the north and south park danchii (apartment buildings). While I'm not crazy about the local crowd scene, I adore seeing her broad smile, and the glint in her eyes when she's out doing something she loves. She's a dyed-in-the-wool 'event-er', and our chances to take in these types of things are definitely fewer and further between these days.
There's always a mob of at least a hundred low-class riders out on the pedestrian over pass, milling around and 'making the scene'. It seems like a good chunk of the crowd are just up there to shoot the shit with their neighbours, drink cheap-ass happoshu (Japanese 'near-beer) and take up space.
The few people that are actually there to watch the annual low-rollers light show seem to be in a perpetual state of flux, shuffling around and trying to jockey for decent fixed vantage points or a coveted open space along the crowded bridge railing.
In typical fashion, no sooner do said individuals manage to secure one of these illusive front-row spots, than they almost immediately lose interest in the proceedings at hand, and start fiddling around with their smart phones. Engrossed in handset-land, they invariably end up completely ignoring the concussive time-lapse thump of the distant explosives and aerial pyro-tech, in favour of whatever is unfolding on their infernal devices.
Why not just stay home? I suppose their real priority is 'making the scene', like I said...unmasked, of course. Never mind the close quarters crowd coughing, sneezing and yapping in each other's faces.
T'is indeed the dawn of The Season of Stupid.
The actual fireworks are launched from a spot along the Horikawa canal, about a kilometre due west - right along my running course. The people that aren't engrossed in twiddling around on their phones, gossiping, swilling shitty fake beer or screaming at their kids, seem pre-occupied with recording the distant event on their handsets.
This has become a common site at all live events of late...a motionless crowd hoisting a virtual sea of illuminated hand-set screens into the darkness. Don't their arms cramp up? Does anyone really go home and watch what they've spent an hour filming?
Wouldn't it be better to put the phone away, and take in the event in real time...as it happens? I notice the same thing happening at concerts and live performances these days. Even Mina has her handset out, filming away.
I sometimes wonder if I'm the only that still watches shit unfold in real time? Could well be...I'm the only person I'm aware of that doesn't own a smartphone, and still walks around proudly 'disconnected'.
As far as the fireworks display goes, it's the same thing every year, with little to no variation. If you've seen it once, that's basically it. I wouldn't bother at all if it weren't for Mina. Of course, as soon as we're positioned, she's angling for the best shot. She thoroughly enjoys it all, though...and when Mina's smiling, all seems right in our little corner of Deadbeat City...at least for a bit. Those fleeting happy moments are what kind of offsets all the less than sparkly and shiny ones, and makes everything sort of worthwhile, at least for that narrow window in time.
Those all-to-brief fleeting moments...the kind that you likely cycle through in your final seconds on this mortal coil. Snapshots for your quick end of life montage. Grab 'em when and while you can, folks.
Mina made sure to finish up on time Monday evening, so we could be up on the flyover in plenty of time to secure a good spot and see the fireworks from the beginning...but as lady luck would have it, t'was not to be.
I received a text at 5:37 pm announcing that she'd got a flat (apparently her first EVER), and was parked off waiting for the insurance company to send 'the cavalry' to change her tire and get her on her way. It took almost exactly two hours for them to find her and resolve her situation, and by the time she managed to circumnavigate the local traffic snarl and get home, it was just past 8pm... and the fireworks were into their last half hour.
She came in, obviously flustered, dropped her bags, made a brief pit stop at the loo, and we beat it across the road and up on to the crowded flyover as fast as our late-middle aged legs could carry us. By that time, it was almost forty-five minutes into the hour long event, and the ADHD throng of smart-phone filmers and cheap swill drinkers appeared to be rapidly losing focus.
We shuffled about trying to find a good spot, then - as if by magic, or divine intervention - the final coveted space along the end of the flyover railing right in front of where we were standing suddenly cleared. Mina was delighted.. and all was right in the universe for the last 15 minutes of the show.
They always save the biggest, most spectacular explosives for the finale...and Mina managed to get them all on her handset. Short, sweet and to the point. I didn't think that we'd actually make it, so things turned out surprisingly well.
I would have hated to see her miss it.
This is essentially the extent of what goes on over the Horikawa Canal for the better part of an hour . There are few minor variations, and at the very end they shoot a bunch of them up at once. Thrilling stuff, and the gateway to all manner of mind-numbing foolishness. So begins 'The Season of Stupid'.
Like clockwork, everything wrapped up at 8:30 sharp, at which point we beat it off the bridge, down the stairs and back across the street to have dinner, which consisted of our usual Monday evening fare - a couple of re-heated keema curry/ tandoori chicken dishes with some veggie samosas that we'd picked up from the 'Curry Zone' table at Tachiya Bulk Supermarket the afternoon before.
Over the last ten years, Indian food has become increasingly mainstream and common place over here, with 'Nepal' Indian restaurants cropping up in almost every neighbourhood. 'Curry Zone' is the first mass-market 'bento-style' start up I've seen in these parts. They contract orders out to bulk supermarkets, and set up tables stocked with a range of take-away items...mostly curries and nan flat bread sets, with a variety of common 'side dishes' like samosa and tandoori chicken, fried rice and Indian style yakisoba (fried noodles). We'd had our doubts about their stuff when they first appeared a couple of years ago, but rolled the dice and picked some up just to see what it was like. We became converts in fairly short order.
Of course, their curries aren't nearly as spicy as I like...but 'ethnic' dishes adapted for the mainstream Japanese palate rarely retain any of their native kick. We've also yet to be poisoned or otherwise waylaid by anything off their table (touch wood)...and their prices are good, so we've become regulars. It beats patronizing horseshit places like McDonald's in every way. It's also been over three years since we've been out to an Indian restaurant, so being able to get ready-to-eat stuff like this at a Japanese supermarket is great. Not only does it break the monotony of having to choose from the standard 'strictly Japanese' bento-box fare of the past, but it speaks to some broader changes afoot in the society at large - namely, the changing face of the working classes.
Over the last ten years, a chronic shortage of young Japanese workers willing to take on less glamorous and lower paying manual labour and service industry jobs has forced the ne'er do well Japanese government to cast their tentacles further afield and start accepting more grunt workers from east and south east Asia, as well as the Indian sub-continent.
It's common to see these young people working in supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, in hospitals and on construction sites. They're allowed in on fixed period, non-renewable five year working visas provided they can manage with a minimum level of spoken and written Japanese.
Of the recent import newbies, the Vietnamese appear to be the most prolific and visible group. Over the last year, I've noticed a lot of small Vietnamese restaurants and grocery stores have quite suddenly cropped up (seemingly out of nowhere) to service this growing diaspora. In local shops, I'm also seeing a lot of Vietnamese labelled products and import food items that I've never come across over here before. While it's nice to see this place becoming slightly more multi-cultural, I hope that there is also a bit more genuine tolerance and acceptance than there has been in the past.
It's easy to put foreign labelled products on store shelves and do the attendant 'window dressing'. It's harder for a society as set in its ways as this one to really make headway adopting new, more respectful attitudes towards people of different races and ethnicities. With the long term problems this country faces as a result of plunging birthrates, one obvious solution would be to encourage more immigration. To welcome these young people, and provide them with opportunities to settle and make homes for themselves here...not just offer them limited non-renewable visas, work them half to death for pittance wages and send them packing. Doing this squanders a lot of potential good will.
Instead of trying to seize the moment and make the most of the opportunity for change these people represent, the Kishida administration instead seems intent on trying to encourage young JAPANESE couples to pump out more babies by promising to avail them with marginal cash rebates, tax incentives, and promises to work on reforming the unforgiving, 'top-down' work culture this country was rebuilt on in the post war period. Kishida asserts that he can and will change the post-war 'work until you drop' system to create a kinder, more sensitive environment for young JAPANESE parents to raise their JAPANESE babies in. As far as the folks who don't or can't have children - for whatever reason - they will have to work harder, to pick up the slack. This will be their penalty for being selfish and un-patriotic. Sounds fair.
It seems to me that the last time the Japanese government did this was in the run-up to its disastrous 'Pacific War'. When governments pull this, it's historically when they are on the cusp of war. With the Japanese government's current, unapologetic drive toward re-militarization, the optics here are pretty bad. It's scary that nobody is saying anything.
I really wish people here knew their history a bit better.
What the Jiminto (Liberal Democratic Party) government fails to see is that there are multiple reasons the younger generations aren't having kids - key generational and social issues that small cash incentives and lip service promises to implement societal 'change' simply aren't addressing.
Popular attitudes toward traditional institutions like marriage and child-rearing have changed. The priorities and values of the younger generations of Japanese (the Generation Y's and Z's) are completely different than those of their predecessors. It's not the place of the government (a cadre composed primarily of privileged older males) to spend tax payer's money leaning into a campaign to encourage disaffected young people to marry and have children, when the vast majority of them simply don't feel inclined to do so. It's over-reach, and none of their fucking business.
Perhaps it's time for Japan to drop its insistence on maintaining an ethnically and racially homogenous society - a Japan 'of and for' the (ethnically and racially pure) Japanese, if you will - but instead start working on changing antiquated mindsets and attitudes.
The effect of such a fundamental shift in attitudes may go a great distance toward helping the local natives realize the prosperities a truly modern and diverse 21st century Japan has the potential to realize.
In short, perhaps even more than a steady flow of much needed tax revenue, Japan desperately needs new blood. The enthusiasm and energy that immigrants bring as they put down roots and start new lives would inject much needed new life and vitality into this moribund and senescent society.
The answer to the county's problems is staring it straight in the face, but the face is a foreign one, and the deep rooted xenophobia and racism that permeates the very basis of Japan's society prevents the people running the show - the old boys club over in Tokyo - from making eye contact.
The future here could be a very exciting one...but it won't be. It will simply be more of the same. Sad old men in grey suits, who think 'being progressive' means going to the office without wearing a tie at the height of Japanese summer, making the same tired judgement calls and race based decisions while tax coffers dwindle and the archipelago's future becomes more uncertain.
Perhaps a load of missile batteries and rockets from the U.S. military industrial complex will shore things up? Bring in more slave labour from the continents...but make sure to keep them on the margins, and swap them out out for fresh recruits when their time is up.
Here's a prediction...within ten years (likely sooner), Japan will re-introduce military conscription for all young men between the ages of eighteen and thirty, for the first time since 1945. There will be many reasons for this move. Many excuses. Front and centre will be an assertion that Japan's nascent military partnership with South Korea and Taiwan as U.S. proxies against Chinese and North Korean 'aggression' and ambitions in the northeast Asian theatre will necessitate Japan to adopt policies similar to those of the Taiwanese and South Koreans, so as to save face and present a 'united front'. It will be sold to an initially resistant and skeptical Japanese public as 'a good thing'...advantageous for the young recruits, who would receive valuable training and vouchers for university and college educations...as well as the opportunity for unique 'coming of age' adventures. With the horrors of WW2 far enough back in the collective rear-view mirror, the romantic and patriotic aspect of military service will be played up. The system adopted will be very similar to the one in South Korea.
The 'bad old days'...depending on who you ask, of course. Everyone knows how this ended.
The Japanese government has already made its first cynical move toward introducing this scheme, by lowering the age of adulthood from 20 to 18...that is, 'adulthood' as in the age of legal suffrage (the dubious 'right' to be manipulated and coerced to vote for shady political figures), and the right to take out loans and get a credit card - but not the right to drink, smoke, carouse or engage in other 'adult behaviours' (patronizing houses of ill repute, etc.). Best of all, by making 18 year old kids here 'adults', they can be legally drafted into compulsory military service right out of high school.
It's as if the post-war pacifist constitution didn't exist.
Young rightists cos-playing a bygone era at Yasukuni Shrine. Would the Germans tolerate the same type of behaviour?
The times, they are a changin'.
With that, we're into 'aestival' - the mid-summer solstice. I'm still working on getting rid of the stubborn pre-cancerous keratosis spots on my nose. Another month of burny cream treatments, a month off, then another biopsy. So much fun.
Three months after my initial surgery, the finally tape came off of my surgery scar at the beginning of June. If I grow my beard in, it's harder to see...but it's still pretty noticeable, especially after I shave. It's not a happy thing, being disfigured.
Why my face? Anywhere but my face. Like Mina says, 'better than being dead of cancer'. Of course...but it still sucks.
At least I can hide behind a mask when I go out to work or shop.
It'll be another summer of masking up, with no end in sight to COVID over here. Number wise, things are starting to look a bit concerning in Okinawa, with infection tallies four times what they are in Tokyo or Osaka. Their hospitals are already running out of space for new (COVID) patients...and the summer vacation rush hasn't even started. The virus is now considered 'endemic'...meaning that, like seasonal influenza, it is here to stay.
Mina and I got our sixth jabs the third week of May. Hopefully we can dodge getting infected this summer. I'm still having occasional bouts of brain fog from last December's go round. I'll be OK, cooking or doing whatever, then 'BAM!'...everything in my head suddenly turns into a massive heap of jumbled, incomprehensible shit. It can take a couple of minutes to straighten it all out.
Fortunately Mina seems fine...though we just read a medical paper that suggested the virus never really disappears...kind of like herpes. It just goes inactive and lurks. Wonderful news.
The scene over at Insecthead's kindergarten has been fine. No more poisoned pool, and the trifecta of cunts that rode roughshod all over me and wrecked the five year old's class last year has been disbanded. They all work in separate classes, now. It's made all the difference.
The situation with Mayumi and the old lady seems to vacillate between middling bad and worse.
As of my last entry, it had looked like Mayumi was turning the corner and being a bit more friendly with Mina. Like the situation with okasan had finally settled down, and maybe everyone had adjusted.
Nope.
Mayumi seems to operate like a terrorist. Like Putin lobbing drones into the Ukraine...stopping for a little while, giving them a chance to re-group and re-build...then starting up again. Threats. Histrionic shit. She's taken to showing up at Mina's section and harassing her toward the end of her shift at work. It's unclear what her objective is. We can't do anything for her. We can't accommodate the old lady over here - full or part time. Things went seriously south even trying to take her two weekends a month. That we managed for two years is amazing.
The single best thing to came out of last year's disastrous Christmas (the third worst one of my life) was ending the old lady minding situation. It had run its course. My priority is our marriage and sanity.
If we don't advocate for ourselves, no one else will.
We don't have money to pay Mayumi for the old lady's support, either. Combined, we can 'JUST' manage to take care of ourselves. As the eldest child, it's Mayumi's responsibility to deal with okasan. That's the rule here in Japan. Common knowledge. She doesn't like it. She's butthurt. She is the definition of butthurt. So, it'll be a week or two of quiet, then another histrionic outburst or terrorist event at Mina's workplace. Threats, cryptic shit that makes no sense. Like calling us out of the blue on a Sunday afternoon to demand that Mina drop everything, and rush over there immediately with a bottle of rice vinegar that Mayumi had given us months before, because the old lady suddenly wants to eat 'thinly sliced spring potatoes'.
What the actual fuck?
Not a medical emergency or anything that would legitimately warrant Mina dropping everything and racing across town in Sunday afternoon traffic.
No.
'Mother wants potatoes with rice vinegar! Bring the vinegar! COME NOW!!'
Against my advice, Mina made the mistake of caving and going over there, only to find that Mayumi had plenty of rice vinegar in the fridge, and that okasan had simply made an offhand comment about the spring potatoes and vinegar - not a demand to have it right away. Upon arrival, Mina was also expected to prepare the raw potato dish, and wait on the old lady while her sister stewed in the other room.
Needless to say, okasan felt shitty that Mina had been made to drop everything and rush over to service her. It really hadn't been necessary. Apparently Mayumi's nose was out of joint because Mina hadn't agreed to drive the old lady and her two even older sisters out of town to pray at some long dead relative's memorial that morning.
Her resentment boiled over, and she decided to balance the scales by lashing out and punishing the old lady AND Mina in one fell swoop.
The following weekend, she called us up again and pulled a similar stunt, but instead of demanding Mina rush over with rice vinegar, it was a call to inform Mina that the old lady had 'bruised her arm', and that Mayumi didn't want to be 'blamed' for not informing her. That segued handily into her mantra for that day,
'you should think about what you should do'
In other words, 'drop what you're doing and get over here right now, because it's all somehow your fault'.
After a round of thinly veiled bullying and guilt tripping, our plans were in the shitter again...and Mina was rushing back across town to see what the problem was.
When she got back a couple of hours later, she said that her mother did have a nasty bruise...but it wasn't anything life threatening. Apparently she'd hurt her arm trying to fish some stuff out of her closet on Mayumi's orders...a morsel of information that had conveniently escaped the original narrative. With a house full of able bodied individuals, why wouldn't one of them help the old woman move that heavy stuff?
Was this really our fault?
The following week, she called us up yet again...this time right around supper time. She tried to order Mina to go over there and act as the old lady's servant from mornings to evenings on Saturdays and Sundays. Never mind our lives, or the fact that six perfectly capable people live over there, besides the old lady. What the actual fuck? Of course, this was never going to happen. Mina refused, and then told her that while she didn't mind helping out, we would like a bit of consideration beforehand, so we can organize our schedules accordingly. This was too much of an ask.
Mayumi told her that when the old lady needs service, Mina has to be ready to drop everything and come on a moment's notice...for any reason, and at anytime.
This struck me as outrageous. She was pushing our buttons. Baiting us.
My latent tourette's kicked in, and I started yelling 'fuck you!! fuck you!! fuck you!!' in the background. This took her off-guard. While she got the message and ultimately backed down, I'm now referred to in the third person as 'MR. FUCK YOU'.
'MR. FUCK YOU'. I kind of like it. I should open a string of Cantonese style noodle shops under that banner. We could sell t-shirts online, and get famous.
If there is a silver lining to all of this, she HAS stopped making the harassing weekend calls...at least for now. Some people only understand profanity. Polite language and diplomacy go nowhere.
Mayumi has taken to behaving like some class of half-baked, neurotic, tin-pot dictator. It's clear that she has some sort of undiagnosed borderline personality disorder. She would undoubtably benefit immensely from therapy. A course of strong anti-psychotics or tranquilizers probably wouldn't hurt, either.
Bullying and gaslighting are her trademarks. She exaggerates and over-reacts to everything. She can't be reasoned or negotiated with. There is no middle ground. It's her way or the highway. All or nothing. This type of attitude raises my hackles in big way. I can't tolerate bullies. I don't respond to threats and orders. I'm sorry that Mina has the misfortune of being related to an individual like this. It puts her in a miserable situation. I suggested calling our lawyer and looking into getting a restraining order if things don't cool out. Mina said that would escalate things even more...though I can't figure out how.
Somewhere in the middle, the quandary of what to do about the old lady remains. There seems to be a bit more going on over there than meets the eye, but no one will be honest or come clean. I think someone has an agenda. In a house with seven occupants spanning three generations, there are going to be issues. From a distance, it seems like Surly Sump Son is initiating a lot of this from behind the scenes. He wants the old lady out so his son can take the room upstairs. The real solution would be for him to get a steady job and an apartment, and start taking care of his own family. The possibility of this happening seems remote, and as Mina says...her sister enables their behaviour.
Mina has been doing some research, and looking into government subsidized housing options for pensioners, with an eye on maybe getting the old lady out on her own again. Since there is no dialogue, there's no way to discuss alternate ideas. No straight talk. Just Mayumi showing up at Mina's workplace (unacceptable) bullying and threatening, then ducking out of sight for a week or ten days, before coming at her again. It's not only counter-productive - it's a fucking nightmare.
If a giant sinkhole opened up and swallowed that house with the lot of those surly fuckers in it, I'd cry nary a tear.
That's where we'll leave it for now. Mid-summer solstice here in Olde Nagoyaland is rainy and a bit cool. It'll be no more than 21C today...around eight to ten degrees cooler than it's been for the last couple of weeks. The humidity is down a bit, which is good news. The piss down will keep me in and off the canal track today...but tomorrow looks like it'll be a bit drier, so there won't be any excuses.
We're supposed to be in for a bit of a hotter summer than usual...which is fine with me. I'm trying to get into the habit of putting on sunscreen every day, but it's so easy to forget. I guess it's a routine I'll have to get gradually get accustomed to.
It could be that there will be another blog installment to unspool before the autumn equinox, but it's been a bit harder to rally the troops and marshal enough enthusiasm to sit here and pound the keys for hours on end in my sweaty little corner...so no unrealistic promises. These tend to consistently end up being a lot more time consuming than I ever intend them to be when embark on the process. Perhaps a shorter entry? We'll see.
In any case, there will be more forthcoming. A big thanks to the few stalwart regular Olde Nagoyalanders that have stuck with me on this journey. You lot are made of some stern stuff, to be sure. Cheers!
In to the 'Season of Stupid' we go.
Until next time, it's well worth remembering that no matter where you go...there you are.
There, and nowhere else.
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