adrift

When one feels adrift is it better to grab onto anything nearby, or is it still prudent to use discretion in choosing one's connections? Is "any old port in a storm" really the best advice? My horoscope today rang a bell.

Be aware of the differences between your current situation and your future goals, but don't try to resolve the two yet. Taking direct action too soon won't be worth the trouble it creates.

My instinct is telling me to maintain discretion but not be overly critical. I think it is ok right now to just not know and to remain a little adrift.

Learning a foreign language

I found this wonderful page on how to learn a foreign language. It is not about specific tasks or tricks or details. It is not about method or technique. It is about the motivation and the process which applies to all foreign languages.
http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/learn-foreign-language/

He listed five main points which make so much sense. It isn't about drills and teachers and which book or method is correct. It is about immersion and time (just like how a child learns)

1. Spend the time!
2. Listen and read every day!
3. Focus on words and phrases!
4. Take responsibility for your own learning!
5. Relax and enjoy yourself!

And he has a learning website which I will try out.http://www.lingq.com/
I am thinking about taking a language class (twice a week) in April, but maybe I should just grab my Japanese language books and practice.

Where you go I can not follow

Just something that really has been popping up a lot recently. I think in science there are a lot of people who are loaners but wanting to be leaders. But it means there are very few followers. Many people who follow are doing it as a temporary step out of necessity. But then again maybe this is human nature. But it is very interesting when one reaches a point where one starts to pull their head up and look around and start asking some questions and wondering. Especially when others are leaving and trying to get others to follow.

Holiday season

I always find the Holiday season a real mix of emotions. It is a time of year when many reflect back on the previous year, think about the good and bad, and plan for the next year. It is a time when many go back home to spend time with their families too. I know many love this time of year, the shopping, the lights, the festive nature. But I have always found this time of year always difficult. There is no obvious reason why I find it difficult and I have heard many accounts of why this season is difficult for them. I know part of it is the cold and short days and a general lower level of energy. But I think there is something else. The best I can say is that I look at my life at this time of year, I look at the choices I have made and the life I have created for myself, and I look around at what I percieve others lives to be. Of course there is a huge amount of the "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" that clouds any of these thoughts and I know this, but I can't help myself some times. Like today I saw a woman on the train with her young daughter. She was western and her daughter was half Japanese and I realized how there really is a part of me that would have loved to had a child of my own. I guess this is the hardest part. I love working and using my brain (I am cursed with being clever with math and science), and I think it would have been impossible for me to let go of that and just raise a child. But yeah I think this might be essence of why this season is so hard for me.
But for all the others out there who love this season, I wish everyone a very happy holiday season.

tame tigers?

I read a nice article in Japan Times introducing the blog Geisha Interrupted by Lea Jacobson. Of course I was curious and wandered over there. I also realized that I use my blog more as an open journal, but hey no one reads this anyways and I am just a scientist who gets bored sometimes and blogs to vent into the void.

But she had a great comment that just rings so true. I will reqoute and reference her. It was within a post about translating an anime

After discussing her [anime character's] dilemma with Japanese friends over the past few months, I may have finally discovered something interesting from all this. That is to say, I no longer believe that the "ideal" Japanese woman need be dumb and submissive. No, no, it`s more difficult than that. Instead, she has to be naturally capable of great things, yet filial enough to sacrifice every ounce of her potential for the sake of her husband and family. For more proof of this, just look at Japan`s crown princess Masako.

I have always had a similar confusion about Japanese women's roles. Every one of my Japanese girl friends is incredibly smart and clever, aware of everything, incredibly strong, but yet are always so proper and controlled and subordinant and obedient for lack of better words. Never in my experiences have I believed that Japanese women strive to be percieved as dumb. Only if one looks at them with western eyes and at external behaviour would one think "dumb" is the goal.

I think Lea has helped translate this really well. It is strange but it is also what my Mother has been trying to teach me my whole life. It is about being strong, being the rock and foundation, and supporting. But I don't think it is about "sacrificing every once of potential" but more like pouring that potential through support and teaching into her family or group. I am convinced that women have always been this and the best societies understand this. It is not the western way of pushing down women and making them feel inferior, making them dumb, making them weak. It is about a society that understands womens power, builds up its women as strong as possible but supportive.

I had dinner with a friend last night who has said something many times that I think I understand better now. She says that if she works for a Japanese company overseas, she will likely need to behave Japanese, but if she wants to learn how to work for a western boss then she will need to eventually work for a western company. Then when she comes back to Japan she can work for either a Japanese or Western boss. It is not about escaping Japanese roles and seeking "freedom from oppression" as a westerner might think, it is about becoming even stronger and more flexible and skilled.

I have been searching for an english word to capture this idea and I can not find one, and maybe that is why this is such a hard concept for westerners to understand. It is not about "being submissive to the will of others" nor obedient, nor docile, nor easily controlled, nor tractable. The closest words is either amenable or tame (present tense not past tense as in 'has been tamed'). It is about women who strive to be strong, who strive to grow stronger, and about a society who supports and encourages this strength and tries not to break its women (test them, but not break them). But at the same time which has very strong rules of behaviour and self control.

I am convinced that Western society tries to break its strong women while eastern societies try to keep their women strong. But I also think this difference is why westerners have so misunderstood eastern women and where this mix of obedient surface but strong, critical thinking, core is misunderstood and where the wrong idea of Dragon-lady comes from. To tame a tiger without killing it; because a tiger will never stop being a tiger and even a tame tiger is only tame because it is choosing to behave not because it is broken.

No genetic difference between men and women?

I stumbled on this thread and decided to post a reply.
Title of other thread: "Women genetically less intelligent than Men?"
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=397875

I decided to copy my reply here.

I know I am coming to this discussion late and I appologize if this was stated by someone else, but...
why does anyone care?

We are all people and there is a huge amount of variety in our species no matter how one tries to divide us all into groups (male vs female, race, age, height, weight, ...). I could go into all sort of technical reasons on why there is no basis for "genetic" differences between men and women (men and women are not genetically different).

- huge amounts of chromosomal homology between X and Y chromosomes (for example PRKY (y homolog) and PRKX (x homolog))

- SRY gene (DNA bindining protein coded on the the short arm of Y chromosome which triggers sexual differentiation to male). People with a Y chromosome but a non-functioning SRY become female though. And transgenic mice with SRY addition anywhere in genome become males - it does not have to be on the Y chromosome to work.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14645115
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=480000
http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/geneview?gene=ENSG00000184895


- SOX genes (SOX1 to SOX18) which actually are involved in sexual differentiation are scattered on many chromosomes (none on Y, but SOX3 is on the X chromosome)

- in some non-mamalian vertebrates, sex determination is temperature induced and not genetic

- some studies in humans are showing that SRY may not be the magic "male gene" originally thought and that there may not be any genetic component to sex differentiation in humans (it may be a complex cascade of growth rate related effects caused by the fact that Y is shorter than X and that certain growth repressors on the X chromsome are in 2x the quantity with XX individuals and only 1x in XY individuals)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11001834

The only purpose of such a discussion is political and social. Someone or some group is feeling threatened or inferior and they propose something to try to make "us" appear better than "them". It is human nature, we are a social species with hierarchy and territoriality. It is much easier to create an artifical "group", label them and create "logic and evidence" as to why "they" are inferior and "we" are superior. Previously such "science" was called Eugenic and it was very popular in a certain part of europe around the 1930s and 40s.

The truth is that we are all the same and all different. There is so much variety within the species that sampling error or bias can easily swing a result from group A to group B. The truth is probably that any human hierarchy is inherently artificial and an illusion of the mind and social conditioning.

I think Eleanor Roosevelt said it well "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

- Jessica

Dating?

So I had a really wonderful "3d date" with my new friend yesterday. I am realizing that some of the concepts instilled in us growing up might really be just constructs. It all gets back to language and ideas and underneath it all desire and biology. It just seems that the more I experience in life, and the more different people that I meet, that more and more of these "ideas" get shaken. So right now it is the idea of "dating". So technically I have been under the belief that I last "dated" someone in 1999. But that does not mean that I have not fallen in love with many people or had many friends, some more close than others. Back in america it was all framed in a group context which made sense. Kind of neo-hippie and with people who were shedding social constructs and allowing each friendship to be whatever level it is. Letting things just develop, in parallel, with several people, with minimal constructs.

It is funny but the truth of the matter is that there are physical limits to relationships and friendships. There are only so many hours in a week and with a career many of those are already claimed by work, sleep, and basic life maintenance. It basically means that it is easy to figure out who is important by who we spend time with. And the funny thing is that this might really be all that we need. Each friend is who they are, each with a certain level of trust, each with a certain level of closeness. And each may grow or change into whatever it may become. And maybe that is the essence of it all.

Learning Japanese

I found this wonderful page on the pain of learning Japanese

http://pepper.idge.net/japanese/

It made me laugh so hard. It is mostly exaggerated, but it has enough half-truths in there to ring true. For any student of the Japanese Language, this is a must read. It isn't this bad, but some days it really does feel like this.

Back from UK wedding

I just got back from a week in Cambridge, London, and Edinburgh. The main reason for the trip was for my friend Wei's wedding. It was an amazing wedding. Wei looked absolutely stunning. I am so happy for her and her new husband Bobby. I wish them a wonderful life together and hope to keep in strong contact with them through the rest of our lives.

It was good to go back to the UK. It was good to see old friends and walk the familiar streets in Cambridge and London, but it also was different. It lost a lot of the glamour it had possessed while I was there. It is a great place to visit on Holiday, but I am in no rush to live there again. Life just seemed slower there than Tokyo. But then strangely coming back to Tokyo, I was struck by a slower pace here to. It has been hard to figure out what it is, but I think I have an idea. People in the UK rush around a lot more, they walk fast there, while in Tokyo people "flow" and sometimes the flow is actually pretty slow. People walk on the street at a more slower pace here it seems, almost as if they enjoy the process of walking around. I have needed to slow my pace down since coming back (and paying more attention to the people around me). Almost as if in Tokyo the process of walking around, window shopping, and watching people is in itself a relaxation.

But the UK seeemed overall slow and borring. Kind of what made me leave, it felt old and kind of stuck in their own past. Not really exciting or energetic. Tokyo is full of energy and life and change, in the city and the people. At least that is how it strikes me. Lots of little things too, but basically I was bored and relaxed in the UK and I feel alive and motivated in Tokyo.

Funny, but I think the holiday changed me a little, but I am not sure how exactly yet. I am for certain much less scared of catching peoples eyes here in Japan now, and I am realizing that people do look around and don't just walk with their heads down. I am also just a little more comfortable with Japanese too. Vocabulary is starting to stick. I think overall I just feel a little more comfortable and a little less like a stranger in a strange land.

So yeah, a UK Holiday is perfect, but I am so much happier living in Tokyo. Just wish my friends Wei, Michael, and Hans lived closer.

the after date

So last week, I had my first date in too many years to admit. She is very nice and we got along great. Very easy to talk with her. But there was not really a spark or a lot in common between us. I think she will be a good friend and I want to spend some more time with her. I think this might be a good sign for me. Before I was so needy that I would jump at any positive signs. Now I seem a little more selective. Maybe it is just that I don't NEED someone right now and that I have waited so long since my last partner that I am OK waiting and looking for more of what I hope for. Not ready to settle for less right now. But this was a good first step. Got over a lot of initial fears about dating in Tokyo and about falling back to where/who I was before. But I think I realize now what I am looking for. I think I am ready to post my own personal ad very soon.

Letting someone in

I realized something as I was cleaning my apartment. It all comes back to the idea that

love will come into ones life when we are ready to let it.

But this has been so hard to understand, but it is a truth I always realized was real. I think it might be as simple as being ready to let the guards down, but not become vulnerable. It is easy to be vulnerable, it is easy to be guarded, but it is really hard to find the proper mix. Opening one's heart to let another in, to potentially fall in love and loose one's sanity for awhile, is a little like standing naked in the world but trying to maintain inner strength and some level of calm.

Funny thing is that I realize that a simple thing like, all the junk I fill my apartment with, is part of that armour. If I want to let someone in, I need to know which parts are negotiable and which parts are not. It is not about being someones lap dog, or being a spoiled brat and demanding everything. I think this is why it failed to launch with the last person I was interested in. He wanted me to join his world, he really didn't want to meet in the middle at all. That is not who I am anymore.

It is about distance and closeness, about finding the right balance with the right person. Not really that different to making friends, but so much harder to maintain proper distance.

So yeah, damn I have a lot of crap in my apartment :) Japan is being really good for me. Really helping me to clear away and find those things which are really important to me. Maybe I have finally reached a point where the universe is ready to let me find a partner.

Spring fever

It's been a while since my last post, but life has been mostly a coast recently. There was a lot of excitement around the end/start of our contracts on April1, but it all worked out. I should be able to stay in Japan now for another 5 years at least. But I think the main thing is that I am starting to feel really comfortable here now. Nothing seems odd anymore. I also feel like I really could live here for a very long time. I have also come to realize that work is not as bad as it originally felt. It could be a lot worse, especially compared to some stories I hear about more traditional Japanese companies.

I have found a wonderful Yoga studio nearby called gllow. There is one teacher there who speaks perfect English, and everyone is really friendly and I feel very welcome. All the classes are taught in Japanese but they mostly use the english or sanscrit names for poses so I can stumble through with the little Japanese I understand. They also use many standard series. This has given me so much, and I am so happy to have found this place.

I have also become much closer to the women in my language exchange lunch group. I think we are getting closer to having more useful exchanges where we can learn better from each other. Their levels are all so different, it is really hard to make everyone happy. But I also think that there is a chance I will start to learn more Japanese through the exchange soon.

So that is maybe the main thing different now. I feel like I am on the verge of really starting to understand Japanese. I am surrounding myself with Japanese so much more now. Yoga, friends at work, constantly listening to jPop music. I recently discovered the music of BoA , she is my favorite artist right now! And I also found two wonderful websites which are really helping me now. This one which summerizes the JLPT tests and a series of Japanese lessons from NHK. Looking at these I really feel like I have a chance of passing level4 in December. So this is my focus now on the weekends. It is also cheaper than going shopping :).

I am hoping that if I can develop a basic conversational Japanese then it will be so much easier to makes friends and have more fun with people. I have also taken the jump and responded to a personal ad. We have our first date on Tuesday. I hope it turns out well...