James Wynn

Since returning from Japan I’ve had terrible jet lag; stay up till 1am only to wake at 4am followed by an energy crash at 3pm. Luckily the crash is short lived. This insomniatic state has given a chance to work on things though.

For instance, this morning I added OpenID to my blog so that people from livejournal, deadjournal, or any other OpenID enabled blog can comment more easily. This also allowed me to comment on any of those blogs without having to be added to their communities. Few things irritate me as much as having to sign up to new networks every time I want to comment on a blog. So instead of spending 5 minutes creating a new account this morning, I spent 30 minutes implementing OpenID on my server. Hooray for wasting time.

My morning have also given me a chance to get to know my new BlackBerry a bit better. Its nice being able to read the morning mail and news from bed, or anywhere else for that matter. I was totally psyched when I finally got a phone with AIM, email, and a decent keyboard, but my head exploded when I realized that I could use Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Maps on it. Handiest damned phone I’ve ever used. Now I just need to get one of those nice bluetooth earbuds so I can talk without holding it. And yes, I promise not to wear it in public, that’s just creepy looking.

Aside from the mid-afternoon energy crash, the only other downside to this new allotment of morning is having much more time to think about D.C. Just being on the same continent as Jessie makes it so unbearably tempting to jump in the car and drive to her. But I will be visiting soon enough… well not soon ENOUGH, but soon…

I need more distractions… Please people, send me your blogs so that I may be entertained by your drivel.

I hate it when you work on a post for a good hour, and then because of a fluke wordpress follows a link and destroys everything. Fuck you wordpress. Fuck you very much.

Most people who become interested in Japan, and even many who aren’t have a certain number of assumptions and illusions about this country.  I don’t want to sound overly critical or jaded, but many of these are just plain false, or misrepresented.  When people think of Japan they invision polite intelligent people in a very technologically advanced society.  And they probably imagine all these people watching lots of cartoons, bloody movies with sad endings, and reading manga a lot.

From what I can tell, most Japanese are no more polite than any given American.  Really I mean Oklahoman when I say this as they are what I’ve had the greatest amount of experience with and I’ve heard it said that Oklahomans are quite friendly, but that is beside the point.  They will talk to you if you ask questions, they will offer directions on occassion, and generally helpful if you seem to have problems.  One exception to this is when you are on bike.  While biking you are at best invisible and at worst down right dispised.  People often don’t move for you to get by, and have often moved directly infront of me while looking straight at me.

The technology part is what amazed me.  Aside from making many things much smaller, there really is not a great rift between Japanese technology and the states’.  But then there are cellphones.  The Japanese have us in a headlock when it comes to cellphones.  Most of the features our phones in the states are just now implementing, they have had here in Japan for years.  Nice cameras, mp3s, video, tv, internet, etc.  And the Japanese use these phones constantly.  I would guess that the average Japanese sends 5-10 times as many messages via their mobile than an American.  Perhaps more.  Sadly, their failing in my eyes is their quality of internet connectivity.  Most of the locations that I have tried accessing the internet from have had poor connections, and lousy download speeds.  Not what I would have expected from such a “technologically advanced” country.

From what I can tell, Japanese do not watch many Japanese movies, nor do they listen to much Japanese music.  They too have been inundated with American culture.  I’ve not met a great deal of Japanese that still watch anime either.  Perhaps this is more of a subculture.  Perhaps this is something left to the ‘otaku.’  Although there does seem to be quite a few animated movies coming out.  On the other hand, manga are still extremely popular and you can see people reading them all over, especially on trains.

I still like Japan, its a wonderful country to live in most of the time.  My advice to any of you interested in living in Japan for a stint is this, assume anything you read/saw in a manga/anime is wrong, people are generally nice but don’t want anything to do with you, and get an awesome cellphone.