speach tree

Two unexpected weekends in a row... Last weekend, we went to the beach when SF got an unexpected day off from work. It was nice to spend a day together, after a long stretch of only seeing each other for a few sleepy hours a day. But where is my life going? This weekend, many poorly laid plans fell through and I am home feeling a little relieved and a little empty. I did some gardening, which gave me a sense of both accomplishment and dread. Accomplishment from the beautiful little globes hanging where flowers used to be, dread because I don't know what to do with the dirt once we move in December.

My brother came to visit over the Memorial Day Weekend, and it was an action-packed weekend, now that I think back on it: Lunch at Cha-An Tea House 230 E 9th St. Shopping and browsing in Lower Manhattan. No picture available :( Coney Island, where Y is being burried alive... slowly... Dinner niku-jaga, ohitashi. Protest at Kawa Sushi Restaurant It was a blast though!

Today, X said to me and V (and U and Z and C were also sitting around the table as usual), "So many young people try to do things one way and when it doesn't work, they get depressed." I thought about a lot of young people and I noticed a few things... Like E, for example. If E would only zoom out for a second she would see how ridiculous she is. Everyone can see that E has been provided for and spoon-fed for most of her life. She has been given so much attention from her family that she has come to expect this even of others. Every time someone comes to me with a new story about E, I am reminded that what we do is not for the purpose of building an extended family of people who will buy us presents, call us when we are lonely, entertain us. It is to identify and develop fellow fighters in the struggle to win against the enemy. Or like F, who thinks that his main problem is that he doesn't know how to deal with people who are different. Even before the "dealing...

According to NY Times I will be 53 years old when Social Security runs dry. EXcellent.... And yet it doesn't seem like people are working any less. In fact right now a lot of undocumented workers are being exploited to the point where miscarriages and stress-induced cancers are not uncommon. Many work two people's jobs and get paid half - some even pay to work. What if all these people got paid the legal minimum (or - gasp! - enough to survive) and what if they weren't criminalized so that they could actually pay income taxes (they already pay sales tax) and become citizens? Then there would be more than enough tax revenue for Social Security and more than enough jobs for workers born in the US... But then we wouldn't have slaves to wash our dishes anymore. Gosh, I just can't decide which is better!

Since returning to NYC in March, I've been accompanied by a strange cough that gets worse when I lie down. I was really sick at the top of the month, and had to fight it down in order to dance at the lunar new year celebration. Because of the rest I forced onto myself, I got into the habit of staying home more, which is both a downer and also allows me to do a lot of historical and theoretical study on my own. I feel that this is where my main interest lies right now, to be honest. Lately, whenever I try to work with TW especially I feel a lot of resentment on both sides and it's not great. I need to learn how to work in a team and solve problems. So why am I studying right now instead of going out into the work-force?? I want to take advantage of unemployment to work on my communication skills, and also to deepen my understanding of what we are building towards. In order to work as a teammate, I need to resolve my conscious and subconscious disagreements regarding the directio...

The taxi driver told us that Toyota's recall scandal really demoralized workers in this area. Toyota is the leading job-provider in this prefecture although Nissan and I think Mazda are also headquartered here. I had heard from the neighbors that a lot of the factories use Brazilian immigrant labor which is why there are so many Braziltowns along the highway. There are also a lot of Brazilians around downtown. They have their own groceries and international call plans... I know that the government used to allow the ones who are part Japanese to stay and work, but I had also read that this was a scam to exploit workers. I read a novel about this by a Peruvian writer. He described subcontracting companies that would ship impoverished Japanese Latin-Americans (mostly Peruvian and Brazilian) into Japan with promises of quick money. When they finally realized what was going on they found themselves in company housing with a dozen people to a shower, poor hygiene, 80+ hour work-weeks, a...

Last night we stayed at the funeral home and kept my grandmother company all night for the last time. (We had to greet visitors from the neighborhood who wanted to pay respects. About 40 people came to the wake.) I got up at 4:00am as usual and went across the street to the convenience store. I had seen yakuza in Tokyo before on a few occasions, but this was the first time I've seen one in my grandmother's neighborhood. He was with his girlfriend and a chubby drag queen. There's not much to do around here and it looked like they had been out clubbing, maybe they were coming back from the city... Here are some pictures of the neighborhood in daylight: This is the playground where I hid from my mom whenever we got into a fight. There are a lot of rich farmers like this one around here. They opened up a cafe in their old storage building next to their fields. A lot of them pave over their fields and live on the monthly parking fees they charge other residents. This is the insi...