RANMAGAZINE.COMApril/May 2011

| ISSUE 10 |

FREEPAPER!¥0

02 |RAN|

MISTAKENIDENTITYforward.

► by tdhouchen

This FORWARD is about progress and ownership and reality.I think these three things are pretty

important.You might not.

Some people would have you believe that what you are seeing and/or feeling is not real.Other people seem to be going around pretending to be somebody they aren’t, or not recognizing who they really are. Like if you work in a school most of the time, ‘teaching’ people, adults or children, then most likely you are a teacher of some sort. Lots of people might say they aren’t teachers, and even think they aren’t teachers, but what it looks like they are doing is teaching.

To me, this is a case of mistaken identity. Being a teacher is pretty cool I think. Kind of noble.I think so anyway.

Some people are going around lying, but somehow they don’t think they are liars. Some other people are going around saying one thing, and doing another thing, but they don’t think they are hypocrites.Some folks are taking the low road, back-stabbing, eluding, hiding, but they somehow think they still have integrity. Other folks take the high road, and spend lots of time being extremely judgmental of the rest of us. Glass houses.

You might think what you’re reading now is a judgment of you. I don’t think it is, but let’s call a spade a spade shall we? Who are you really? Not who do you think you are, but what do your actions say about you? No

one is perfect, but is something wrong with taking real ownership of your real thoughts, feelings, actions, and behavior? Ownership can be a very empowering thing. Try it.

Restraint is one thing, denial is another. How long have you, should you, conceal your real feelings, for the sake of ‘harmony’, and how real is that harmony if it’s based on you not being able to express your reality? No one is advocating you kick and scream at every opportunity, but how about you yourself acknowledging how you really feel in any given situation? It might help. Counseling helps. There’s a free counseling service available at the International Center. It’s a wonderful and perhaps essential tool for you to be able to have just a moment of total expression. Those moments are very few and far between here. Some of us need those.

People constantly act in one fashion, but want to believe, and want YOU to believe, that the way they are ACTING somehow has nothing to do with WHO THEY ARE, or who they THINK they are.Here In Japan, appearances are everything. Outer forms are more important than content.I think, most of us know, appearances aren’t everything and outer form loses meaning and depth without the content behind it. But lots of folks take these two aspects of Japanese culture to an extreme.They think if they look decent, then they must also be decent. They think if they carry out the rituals, then the rituals themselves justify any behavior they display.It’s like wearing a suit of armor, but not really being a Knight.Misrepresentation screws everyone up.

You’ve gotta be your real self at some point, at least I think so.

Who are you being today? I mean really being? Not just looking like you’re being, but really really being.Are you even really be-ing? Or are you just act-ing like you’re be-ing.Which?

I’m still struggling with lots of this culture’s ticks and quirks.The no expression thing still really slaughters me, the blank faces and the dodgy interactions.I find myself lost and confused a lot, it’s more than just the language.

If any of this strikes you, read author Alice Miller’s work. Enlightening.

If you’re having issues, can’t quite cope as well as you’d like, are confused and misunderstood, sad, lonely, hurt, tired, confused--and you need someone to talk to, a professional who won’t judge you, call the International Center, 052-581-0100. It’s a great service.

Reality Check, that’s all, no judgment, a little reality never hurt anyone.The cover feature of this issue is MAKE-UP, what mask are you wearing?Hope you dig this issue, we worked hard on it.

Summer’s on the way.Gon’ be HOT.Come outside and play.Peacetdh

|RAN| 03

Publisher: TD HouchenLayout Designer: Adam PasionEditor: Adam PasionPhotography: Achim RunnebaumWeb Manager: Jason L. Gatewood

Send story ideas, art, photography, and advertising inquiries to:

tdhouchen@ranmagazine.com

Promotional Events/Co-Promotion:tdhouchen@ranmagazine.com

www.ranmagazine.com

CONTENTS

cover photo: Matteo Giachetticover model: Mayuko Tomidatable of contents photo: Achim Runnebaum

Girlfriends

Intercultural frienship

All Shook Up

Are you prepared for when the big one strikes?

Parlez-vous français?

News from Nagoya's French community

Fashion

Street fashion with CMBMC

8

10

27features

28

4 The Green Spot

A Radiant Future?

SUCCESS

The Hard Way Up

PLAY

Nagoya International Volleyball Club

HELP

HOPE International

CREATE

The Art of Making-Up - Yeni

READ

Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan

LISTEN

Baionzoku

TASTE

Nagoya Supper Club

GO

Asian Destinations: Vietnam

The Pagoda Diaries

Missing Yesterday

COMICS

6

12

18

19

20

21

24

departments

29

11

9

The green spot.

04 |RAN|

Like many of you (I’m sure), I’ve had to reassure friends and family overseas that there are no Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles running around Nagoya, or even the shores of Fukushima - even

with all the contaminated water being released into the ocean after the earthquake and the resulting meltdown. The recent events in Japan have certainly been a wake-up call in many ways. Fact is, the world is hungry..... not just for food, but also for power. When you come home after a long day of work, turn on your lights, plug in your iDevice to charge, sync your latest songs, check your emails, and cook your dinner, do you ever think about where all this “power” comes from? We’ve become so dependent on our ever increasing hunger for electricity that we see it as a natural part of life. Most people probably don’t really think about their energy consumption, but the fact is that this power we take for granted on a daily basis has to come from somewhere. If you’re in Japan, chances are that the electricity you use for your daily life comes from nuclear plants, as Japan is #3 in the world for nuclear power, with about 54 plants operating at the moment (more like 53 now; behind....you guessed it......the US in first place, followed by France). So dig this, there are over 50 nuclear power plants built in one of the world’s most earthquake prone countries. And you thought Japanese were not risk takers...With all the shaking going on, the debate of Nuclear Power has certainly come under fire recently, resulting in hundreds of protesters taking to the streets in Tokyo last month. Is hell really slowly freezing over? Japanese people protesting?! Let’s take a look at the debate of nuclear power and what it means for us. How Nuclear Plants work:The power source is heat, which is produced by a controlled nuclear fission chain reaction using either uranium or plutonium. These elements are struck by a neutron and are

thus split. The result of the fission of these larger atoms is the creation of new, smaller atoms as byproducts, which brings with it radiation, as well as more neutrons.These neutrons travel outwards and strike other Uranium or Plutonium atoms, creating a chain reaction. This releases immense amounts of heat (550 degrees Farenheit/287 degrees Celsius), or energy. Water is then heated up and converted into steam, which then is used to turn the blades of a turbine to generate electricity. In simplest terms, it works a bit like a steam engine, only without all the harmful waste produced by burning coal. So far so good, but this is where the debate starts. Here are some pros and cons of nuclear energy.

Looking Towards a

Radiant Future?► by Achim Runnebaum

+Nuclear Power emits very low amounts of CO2 in an efficiently run plant. This is great news for the environment when compared to wasteful coal-burning facilities. +It is possible to emit a high amount of electrical energy in a single plant from small amounts of nuclear fuel.+No air pollution when compared to energy sources that burn fossil fuels.+Although the initial costs of building nuclear plants are very high, the running costs are very low as most of the initial capital has to be allocated to implementing safety measures inside the plant and for storage of spent fuel rods.+Provides a lower dependence on foreign oils and natural gas (less need to import, thus also reducing the carbon footprint of shipping). +Since Plutonium is created as a byproduct in the fission process, it could help with achieving energy independence.

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So taking all this into consideration, I leave it up to you now to decide whether nuclear energy is an actual, long-term solution to our growing energy problem, or is it the source of many of our problems? It’s a tough call. On the one hand, there is the promise of relatively green, relatively cheap energy. On the other hand, there are many dangers, and also long-term storage needs that should be considered, which begs the question: With all the risks associated with nuclear power, do the benefits outweigh the risks for us and our future generations?

One thing is for certain though: It is important to realize that the energy problems in the world can only be solved when we stop wasting energy, and when we start to use energy much more efficiently. The technology for a more efficient use of energy does not have to be invented first. Such technology already exists! We as consumers only have to ask for it and to use it. We, the people living in the world, sharing and using the resources, have to decide if our future will be a radiant one, or not. The time to make a decision is Right About Now.

-Waste Disposal. The problem of long-term storage is still unsolved. Waste is extremely dangerous and has to be carefully monitored and stored for several thousand years (10,000 according to the US Environmental Protection Agency). Currently, spent fuel rods are generally stored underground or underwater in protective encasings. What material do you know that lasts for 1,000, let alone 10,000 years?

-High Risk. Nothing can be made 100% safe, no matter how many security systems are in place, as we’ve seen here in Japan recently. Due to the nature of chain reactions, it is extremely difficult to contain a situation, once out of control. Because of this high volatility, an out of control reactor could cause severe damage to people, the environment, and potentially the whole world. Just very recently, a reactor catastrophe similar to Chernobyl was avoided (without much media coverage, of course) in Sweden, for example.

-Potential targets for terrorist attacks. Nuclear Plants are highly vulnerable to deliberate acts of sabotage and attacks, as stated self-admittedly by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) recently. Think Fukushima was bad? What would

happen if there was a deliberate attack?

-Sustainability: Uranium is a very scarce resource as evidenced by the recent price hike to over $100/pound. Supplies are estimated to last only for the next 30-50 years depending on demand. Potentially not available for future generations. Plutonium, is more readily available though. Another factor to consider is manpower. Not many people actually want to work in or even near a nuclear reactor. Would you? Answer this question honestly. So getting enough people to replace the workforce in all nuclear reactors could become a problem in and of itself. In Japan, this has been a problem in past. More info on this can be found at: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/higuchi100411.html

-Power Output/Cost Ratio: It’s expensive. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, when all costs are factored in, nuclear power costs an estimated $59.30 per megawatt hour. This is expensive compared to other means of generating electricity. Wind power costs $55.60 per MWH; coal $53.10/MWH and natural gas $52.50/MWH.

cons

06 |RAN|

I: For those who don’t already know, can you just give us a quick rundown of who you are and what you do in Nagoya?T: I’m the general manager of two clubs, ID and Abime. I teach martial arts and I train a couple of pro fighters.

I: Okay, so how did this all get started?T: I was in the entertainment and security business in Los Angeles and a headhunter showed up from an agency in Japan. They asked me to do some modeling and a bunch of different things. At one point while I was here, there was a violent situation that I neutralized. At the time there were so many dangerous foreigners coming into the country. The company knew that they needed somebody who could handle them so they introduced me to some of the top people. That’s how everything took off.

I: What were your initial impressions of the country when you arrived?T: The people were, at the time, so excited to see foreigners. Everyone was extra nice to me. That was nice, to be special. But you’ve got to be honest with yourself and not get caught up in the Japanese paint, the “oh… you’re so cute, you’re so good looking you’re so sexy” or the flattery. If you can get through all that and really stick with the morals that you grew up with, you can get ahead in this country. You’ll be given a chance. A lot of people think the Japanese are racist, but they aren’t. They’re just trying to survive like everybody else. Japan is not in a good economic situation. They’re not having enough children to produce a younger generation. So, I worry a little about this country. But, they’re strong people and they’re gonna be able to work it all out, to fight it out.

I: You mentioned your interest in martial arts. How did that get started?T: Growing up in Los Angeles and having spent most of my life there, I was surrounded by an extreme amount of violence as a child. It was dangerous, everyone knew it. The people around my neighborhood were tough guys so I was brought up around self-defense. When I was eleven years old, my father brought me into a Judo dojo because I was a hyperactive child. I was also so impressed with Bruce Lee’s movies and I used to go to this little martial arts shop and look at all his books and catalogues. When I came to Japan, a girl took me to K1 and it was one of Musashi’s first fights. I watched them pound on each other so hard that… that was just my dream. I knew right then and there that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I:Would you mind listing some of your accomplishments as a martial artist?T: I got into Tae Kwon Do while I was still in the US so when I came here to Japan and got into full contact Karate, I was also getting my TKD black belt and certifications from South Korea. The Karate was very hard for me. Japanese Karate is their culture; it’s like their samurai sword. I went to the hardest dojo in Japan and I was the only foreigner there. You know, you break a foot and they expect you to walk on it and keep fighting with it. That’s just the way they are. People get their legs broken, their shins broken, their ankles broken, their ribs broken and they’re gone in one year. I understood that and I broke some bones and kept it up. I did a lot of damage to my body but finally got through the tournaments and got my black belt. At that point, I was in the corner of Peter Aerts the world Muay Thai heavyweight and four-time K1 champion. I was working with him and he was a very good friend of mine. I wanted to work on my boxing so I left my dojo and went to Matseda Boxing gym. That was about 6 years ago, and I left there about a year ago.

I: Tell me about the toughest fight of your career.T: I’d have to say my toughest fight was against Lee Cham Pong, the M-1 world champion. That fight was vale tudo rules, in a cage with elbows and stomps. He was 20 kilos heavier than me and I got tumbled by him. It wasn’t that I was scared of the tumble, or of the damage that he was going to do to me, it was that I had not believed in myself. I kept questioning my heart because he was

Success.

► by Ian Roth

|RAN| 07

heavier, he was more experienced, he was famous. I kept watching him on the net in Russia, in Holland at all the M-1s just pounding on these big, tattoo white guys. I made the mistake of looking at a paper tiger. You make yourself your own enemy; you make enemies inside of your head. I let the paper tiger scare me. I let it get to me, the pressure from the crowd, from the cameras, from the lights, from the mafia that’s involved in all this business. That’s why I lost that fight.

I: If you had to name a few key elements to the successes that you’ve had, what would they be?T: The guidance I got from my family and my experiences growing up led me to realize that, when I have a chance in life, if I am honest and straight with people, I will be successful

I: You seem to value honesty yet Japan is a country known for being dishonest. What’s your take on that?T: Yea, I was surprised by that. You know, how the Japanese will sweep the real problems underneath the mat and then paint a pretty picture for the public. I didn’t understand that right away. Everyone has their own ways. The Japanese are extremely sensitive.

They don’t want to cause turmoil. The reason I’m

staying honest is because

there was a

culture here

hundreds of years

ago, samurai…

honest soldiers. And

that’s all I want to be is an honest soldier. I’m 47 now and I can’t say I’m perfect, but I’m trying to get better every day. You’ve gotta stick with honesty, you know, with yourself. It doesn’t matter if it’s Japan or not.

I: You’re a pretty big personality in Nagoya. What’s that like?T: My club is extremely popular. It gives me a lot of popularity, but at the same time it takes away my privacy. Wherever I go, whatever I do I’m being watched. And, besides that, my job is so serious that the cops and government watch everything that I do. There’s good and bad, but for some reason it has worked for me.

I: Any advice specifically for those who plan on staying in Japan for a long time?T: The only advice I can give them is if they’re leaving anything at home, their mother, their father, their brother or sister, their child is that… that time won’t come back. Once those people die, once you start losing your family you will pay a price for spending so much time here. I can’t tell everybody what to do, but if your destiny is here, if your dream is in Japan, just believe in it and work towards it every day and it will come true. I think that’s true anywhere.

I: What’s your opinion of all the English teachers that you’ve seen come and go? T: I’ve seen some good English teachers and some bad ones. I’ve seen some go to jail. I’ve seen some get beaten up badly. I’ve seen some simply disappear. They probably have a lot of stress when they come here and they don’t speak the language. They come to my club and they’re drunk out of their minds and looking for Japanese women most of them. Japan is a man’s country. The women are so nice; it’s like a candy store here. Then again, the women that are teaching English are really nice too and the guys don’t even look at them. And they should.

I: What is the next mountain for you to climb?T: I’d like to open another club in a different part of Japan. The clubs that we have now are so busy that I can’t get off the door. I’d also like to open my own martial arts school and maybe meet the right woman, get married.

I: The way you run security, you seem to be friends with everyone. How do you balance being a nice, friendly guy with the ability to get down to business when it’s necessary?T: I was kind of born with a chameleon kind of character, a gift for talking bullshit. The way I grew up, I survived by using that ability to cope with a lot of different situations, with different types of people. I was in a lot of dangerous areas, so I have a sense of danger. I can feel it coming. I can sense whether a customer is dangerous. They’ll be drunk and crazy and I have to deal with that, but at the

same time there may be somebody waiting to stick a knife in me so I have to prepare my staff to watch my back. I grew up knowing how to work with drunks and druggies, violent people and sick people. It takes a certain kind of person to deal with them. You can’t take somebody that grew up with their mother and father till they were 18, went to college, been taken care of and they’re 25, 26 years old and put them in front of my club and tell them to run it. The first day they would shit their pants.

I: You run a crew of scary guys. What is it that makes them respect you as their leader?T: The reason they respect me is because I respect them. And, I have to have respect for them at every level. I can’t look over them. I have to look with them. So when I deal with Africans and Brazilians and Peruvians and Iranians and all those people that are working for me, and they’re all over 100 kilos and they’re pro fighters, they’re not working for what little money I give them. They’re working because of respect for me and my respect for them. And that takes time. You know that didn’t come yesterday. That came with a lot of incredible experiences. A lot of bloodshed. A lot of bloodshed. If a man’s brother is going down, if they’re in trouble, they know that I’ll be there. And they give me that respect… that honor.

I: What are those situations like?T: You’ve actually got to be real ugly, to know that this is not the ring, it’s not the dojo. This is bottles, glasses, guns, pistols, knives, everything and anything. It moves in slow motion. It’s strange. You do what you have to do. That’s a man’s world. We’re a bunch of dogs, ya know. Every person, there’s an animal in that person. It just depends on what animal possessed you. I don’t like violence. I’m not a violent person. Going down the street, beating up innocent people and thinking I’m bad… boy I definitely ain’t going to be doing that because I know that God will definitely hit me with a bigger fist. What goes around comes around. It always happens, so I am really careful of hurting people in my club and of hurting people who don’t deserve it. That’s the thing that has kept me so long in the club business, is making sure that innocent people don’t get hurt as much as I can. It’s very important to me.

I: Thanks for talking with me and for protecting the innocent people of Nagoya. Did I mention you’re my hero?

08 |RAN|

This article is about friends. Girlfriends to be specific. Not your girlfriend. My girlfriends. Girls for good ol’ fashioned camaraderie, sorority sisters, my girls, my homegirlz, my pink possy. I made

a disturbing discovery a while back about my own girlfriends, who they are exactly, and more specifically the striking absence of one particular group of women. To get to the point, I realized that I do not have any Japanese girlfriends. I want to know why I don't have even one close Japanese girlfriend. Not a one. Nada. Zero. 一人もいない. About a year ago, a Canadian girlfriend and I were waiting for a third friend to show up for drinks. She was late as usual and I asked why. “She had to see this girlfriend of hers, so she may be a bit late.” I tend to have a few mutual friends with most of my gaijin girlfriends in Japan so I asked who it was. Her response for some reason shocked me. “Keiko”, she said. Keiko? A Japanese girlfriend? I used to know what those were, but for some reason, I couldn’t seem to remember the last time I had one. Don’t get me wrong, I have lived in Japan since the early 90’s and have been here on and off for 15 years. I have had plenty of Japanese girlfriends, mostly made during my years at university here, and a few after that while work-ing, but now? I can’t even count them on my fingers, because there aren’t any! How can that be? My Japa-nese language ability is level 1, I work at a Japanese university, consider myself pretty outgoing and I am surrounded by 64,490,000 Japanese women. (2010) Granted the number keeps dropping with the Japanese population, but it still leaves a lot of women to choose from. I sometimes keep in touch with a few old friends over email and New Years cards, but only two came last year and none this year. Most of the others have moved away or we simply lost touch. Perusing my local Facebook “friends,” I could see plenty of Janes, Michelles and Sarahs, but where were the Keikos, Makikos and Michikos? I could not find one Japanese female on the list that was not the wife, girlfriend or “friend” of my male friends. Not one of them who I would seriously consider calling up to meet for dinner or drinks on the weekend. What happened to me? Could I have become unintentionally prejudiced against this group of women without my own knowledge?

I have been trying for months to find the answer. At first reluctant and embarrassed to admit this weird discovery, I eventually did a 180 and decided to make it public instead. Maybe others are experi-encing the same thing? Or maybe I’m just a snobbish, elitist, narrow minded Palin-tainted conservative anomaly. I still wanted to know, one way or the other…

First of all, what do I as a female, ultimately want with another woman? Why do I call up my girlfriends dur- i n g the week to arrange drinks or din-ner on the weekend? I have a life partner and kids whom I adore, what do I need from these other women so badly, and why aren’t any of them J a p a n e s e ? After much t h o u g h t

Girlfriends► by mzlove

and inner reflection on this topic, I realized that what I need and want is a woman to equally match my semi-matured intellect. What I mean by my “intellect” is, in general terms, my Western woman’s intellect, and all that that entails. I’m a big girl now, financially independent, and responsible for other smaller people (one a little bit bigger than the others). I like to think that I’ve got my ducks in a row, and I just want to use my downtime to hang with likeminded individuals. But that, my friends, is the crux of this situation. There are only a certain number of women my age or within a ten year range, in my expat circumstance, who grew up with the same values, culture (like hug-ging!), music, fads and let’s face it, TV shows, which probably formed a bigger part of our mutual psyche than we care to admit… and I’m thirty-something. It was great, necessary and exciting to have friends from all over the world when I was twenty-something in Japan. The more countries the better, but now, I guess I’m just more selective about who I spend my precious time with. It was not a conscious de-cision on my part to exclude Japanese girlfriends. Just as it would be slightly unnatural, now that I’ve realized this quirk in my personality,

to artificially seek them out. What can I do? Post a personal ad? Foreign woman seeks Japanese woman for friendship? Or answer one of those ads at the International Center for free Japanese/English language exchange? Not until I’m feeling suicidal. I

have so been there, done that it’s not even funny. No, I just want to be able to go out and, if I feel like it, throw out some obscure Pop-eye reference, or get excited when a Violent Femmes song is played or laugh about how many hours we wasted as teenagers watching Three’s Company, or The Cosby Show. My point is not that I set out on the weekends to meticulously go over episodes of The Love Boat, but simply that if my friends and I tried hard enough, we probably could come up with the plot to an episode or two. I don’t know why that possibility is important to me, but I guess it just is.

I still go to end of the year parties and obligatory functions, but sometimes I just want to go out and have some real fun. Stupid fun. The kind of nights where in the cab ride home all you can think of is “I hope no one that can remember anything tomorrow can bear wit-ness to that pathetic display.” NOT having fun would be repeating to every Japanese woman I meet how long I’ve been in Japan, why my Japanese is almost too good to be true, what country I am from and why I am sure I don’t have Russian roots despite the fact that I seem to look pretty Russian to them.

So, is that the simple answer then? Birds of a feather flock togeth-er? Like attracts like? Even in this age of globalization, am I more a slave to my Western culture than I care to admit? Yep, I guess so. Three’s Company was a damn funny show. Phew. Now I can relax.

Multiculturalism, internationalization and globalism have taught me much, but the biggest thing I learned is that it’s just a lot of fun to be myself...

I sought out the differences between my culture and foreign ones when I was younger, enjoyed them, learned from them, married one of their number, benefited from my time being a “global citizen,” but now I just want to be me. Multiculturalism, internationalization and globalism have taught me much, but the biggest thing I learned is that it’s just a lot of fun to be myself, and I like being with people who are like me. I should do what comes naturally and be friends with people whose company I enjoy. Life gets tough as you get older. I just want “comfort friends” now and I don’t think there’s any shame in admitting it. It’s like comfort food, but healthier. I would like noth-ing better than to have loads of Japanese girlfriends but for now, I’ll just continue to hang with whoever naturally pops into my mind on a boring afternoon while making weekend plans. No use swimming against the current when I’m having so much fun going downriver. At least I’ll reach the destination less stressed and happier. Maybe.

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play.

Nagoya International Volleyball Club has been running for about a year and a half. It was originally set up to give people the chance to play some sport, meet people from different

countries and have some fun. Right from the start, the games have always been mixed (men and women) and have been played in a friendly spirit. Now, there are over 180 members from various coun-tries around the world.

Games take place on Sunday afternoons and national holidays. The cost is just 400yen for three hours of play, and no equipment is required. There are two levels (one for beginners and another for more experienced volleyball players) and both English and Japanese are spoken. After the games there is usually a chance to get a coffee/drink with some of the other players.

The games take place indoors, at venues in Fushimi, Nakamura Koen and Fukiage, and there are also a couple of beach volleyball games every summer at Utsumi beach. Recently, our members have started two sister clubs- ‘Nagoya Futsal’ and ‘Nagoya Indiaca’ (which is like volleyball but with a giant shuttle). Whatever your level of ability, it is worth coming down to the next game, getting a bit of exercise and meeting some new people. You don’t need to be six foot tall- you just need to be up for a bit of fun!

Search Facebook for ‘Nagoya International Volleyball Club’ or email nagoyavolleyball@gmail.com

SIDEOUT NAGOYA

►RAN Magazine Staff

ALL SHOOK UPearthquake preparation

10 |RAN|

As we sit down to pencil out this little piece of information, Japan has had over 1000 earthquakes since The Big One hit March 11. That’s about 25 quakes every day, and by the time

this goes to print, that number could well be significantly higher. Be Still Mom Earth. Please.

But, owing to the fact that Japan sits on not one, not two, but FOUR highly active tectonic plates, Japan is going to continue to have earthquakes, so best be prepared rather than caught off guard.

That in mind, here’s a list of stuff, precautions, and actions you can take before and during The Big One when it comes calling here in Tokai. And, for the record, that Big One has been predicted to hit any day now for the last 30 years.

Any Day Now.

Get Prepared.

・Cash ・ID/Passport・Water (3 Liters per person/per day)・Canned Foods・Mobile Phone/Portable Charger・Kleenex・Towels (5 is good)・Flashlight・Radio・Rain Gear・Seasonal Clothing・Gloves

・Mask・Large Garbage Bags (Protection against weather, container use)・Plastic Wrap・Blanket・Newspapers (Protection against weather)・Pictures of Family (So they can be identified)・Medication・Sanitary Goods・Music Player ・Can Opener/Small Knife

stuff to have

what to do

when evacuatingStay away from cabinets, refrigerators, bent walls, leaning poles, narrow streets, bodies of water, active volcanoes

Watch out for BROKEN GLASS

Move to Higher ground if you are near the ocean, quickly and orderly

Wear a helmet or hat

Wear a mask or cover mouth with damp towel

Go Toward wind in case of fire

Stop Driving

If in a car, open windows and TURN ON RADIO AT HIGH VOLUME

Open Windows and Doors for quick exit

Put emergency things at entrance

Wear thick-soled shoes

Close main gas line

Charge phone if possible

Shut down circuit breaker in case of power failure

Calm Down

Crouch beside items such as COUCH, DESK, TABLE, and cover your head. These things will absorb the impact of falling items. It is NO LONGER RECOMMEDED to get UNDERNEATH tables, as these will be crushed and SO WILL YOU. Nor is it recommended to stand inside doorways, as the top could be crushed by col-lapsing ceilings and floors above yours, and with you standing there, you could theoretically get splattered like a pancake. Don’t do that.

Get to an OUTSIDE OPEN AREA if possible

Avoid staircases and elevators, stairwells are given to swaying to and fro during powerful earthquakes and in many cases get shredded and ripped apart. Elevators need electricity to go up and down. No electricity, no movement.

・Police 110・Ambulance/Fire Department 119・Emergency near Sea 118 (Japan Coast Guard)

emergency numbers

Check If you have emergency provisions listed aboveA Sleeping Bag is a very good thing to getSleep with your socks onClose curtains (This prevents shattered glass from scattering)Use towel to keep door from jamming

before a quakethis means now

The saying “it’s better to be safe than sorry” is true. Prepare for the worst and expect the best, if that’s at all possible. We live in a very different time than just recently, disasters and major cataclysms are on the rise, and Japan is in the crosshairs.

Be Safe Out There.RAN Magazine

help.

HOPE International Development Agency, Japan (HOPE-JP) has been continuing to deliver supplies throughout the devastated communities in the Tohoku region and assessing

the needs of communities for the reconstruction phase.

Since days after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11 2011, HOPE-JP has been working in the region alongside city governments, communities and local organizations to provide direct help to survivors. They deliver desperately needed supplies by truck and helicopter, with the help of JAPAN MERCY FLIGHTS, to shelters and community centers in hard-hit areas. The agency now has trucks permanently stationed in the area, making daily distribution from two warehouses (in Fukushima City and Kurihara).  Faithful to HOPE-JP’s philosophy, harboring relationships of trust with neglected communities has been key to all activities. A local branch office has been established in the city of Kurihara, located 45 minutes from the coast in Miyagi prefecture. It will serve as a base for reconstruction projects in the future and serve as a distribution warehouse.

HOPE-JP activities in Tohoku are made possible by generous donations, monetary and in-kind, and by services from Oak Lawn Marketing and their OLM X HOPE = GENKI JAPAN Fund. More than half of the funds raised will be used for the long-term economic reconstruction of the region.

The organization, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, was established in Nagoya after a group of local leaders discussed how Nagoya and

Japan residents could “extend compassion to the neglected poor,” as well as learn about world poverty. What started as a HOPE Charity Dinner in 2002 bloomed to the organization it is today.

HOPE-JP currently has projects in Cambodia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, India, Afghanistan and the Philippines. The cornerstone of all HOPE-JP projects is self-reliance. The first step towards self-reliance is access to clean water. One out of 7.7 people in the world has no access to clean, uncontaminated water. Women and children spend hours daily collecting water from far, often dirty, sources. Without a water well, contaminated water has to be used for cleaning, cooking and drinking; every year more than 3 million people die as a result of diseases related to water contamination. Without access to water, people are trapped in a cycle of poverty and sickness. Having a well and training in sanitation is the starting point to being healthier and also having more time to be productive. When children are no longer needed to fetch water, they can attend school. The ripple effect is in place and families are then ready for sustainable livelihood programs such as microcredit, education and helping others in turn.

HOPE International► by Isa Pierron

|RAN| 11

Photo by Achim Runnebaum

12 |RAN|

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create.

Nagoya resident Yeni Kartikasari paints faces, but not in the way you may think of face painting. She’s a creative make-up specialist who does much more than simple make-up. She

uses her talents to completely redesign faces, whether for beauty, fantasy, or just for fun.

We talked to Yeni about her art, herself, and her favorites.

td: Where are you from originally, Yeni?yk: I’m from Banjar Patroman, Indonesia.

td: How long have you lived in Nagoya?yk: I’ve lived here about 6 years.

td: Why did you come to Nagoya?yk: When I was in college, I studied Japanese for about a year, and I thought it would be great if I could visit Japan and try to live here. A friend of mine was living here. She told me about Nagoya, so I decided to try here.

td: What do you like about Japan?yk: Transportation. It’s so easy to get anywhere without worrying about missing the train! I also like the food; my favorite is nabe.

td: What do you dislike?yk: Discrimination. Some Japanese look at me so low, they think I have no skill because of my inability with Japanese.

td: What do you miss most about your country?yk: I miss my mom! She is the best rule for me. I learned a lot from her about life. Also, food. We have lots of different kinds of food. My favorite is meat ball and nasi padang, which is a traditional Sumatra food which is very spicy and tasty. I also miss my old neighborhood, talking to people who live next door to my home.

td: What did you study in college?yk: I studied computer economics, you know, computer accounting and business. I had a job as a receptionist at a hotel after college, but I didn’t like working in an office, so I changed my career.

td: How long have you been doing make-up?yk: Two years. I was in love with the Youtube make-up artists. They do the best to teach women to be beautiful.

td: What is your greatest dream with your make-up career?yk: To become a professional make-up artist.

td: Do you think of make-up as ART?yk: Definitely. They put color on your face and/or body, they treat your face and body like a canvas.

td: Are there any make-up artists that you admire?yk: Yes. I love Kevin Aucoin; he inspired my make-up style. Also, I love Nina Flower and Sultan Raja; they aren’t afraid to use colors. Make-up is just about a feeling, there is no ‘right or wrong’, it’s just expressing yourself without fear of failure.

td: If you could be anywhere, doing anything, where would you be and what would you be doing?yk: I’d be in LA, doing prosthetic make-up for the new GODZILLA movie, because my dream is to be a professional make-up artist for special effects.

td: What is your favorite thing about yourself?yk: My spirit and positive attitude. I believe if people work hard and never give up, they can get whatever they dream about.

td: What do you like least about yourself?yk: My boobs! They’re too big! My shoulder sometimes can’t support them very well and it bothers me and my activities. And my feet, they are ugly and dry…ha ha!

Well Yeni, if dry feet and big boobs are your biggest problems, sounds like you’re doing pretty damn good.

Did someone call for make-up? Contact Yeni at: misspiggy-cute@i.softbank.ne.jp

the art of Making Up

16 |RAN|

|RAN| 09

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18 |RAN|

Aftershock - Adam Pasion (editor)

read.

In the wake of the terrible events of March 11, people all around the world were left with the gut-wrenching feeling of being helpless to do anything. Rescue teams and nuclear technicians scrambled to control the damage, while relief organizations worked around the clock, to provide care for the victims. The Self Defense force deployed task forces, CEOs made generous donations, doctors, churches and civil engineers offered help wherever it was needed, but what about the rest of us. What could we do other than put a “supporting Ja-pan” badge on our Facebook page? This book answers the question that was likely on the mind of many creative types around the world: “What is the role of the artist in the face of disaster?” The answer is simple; create. The best thing anybody can do to help is to do what you have always done, what you excell at, and what only you can do, but do so with renewed fervor and gusto. A disaster on this scale needs creative solutions and outside the box thinking to overcome and rebuild.

Aftershock is a compilation comic book that collects artists reac-tions to the disaster from all over the world. With over 30 contribu-tors spanning 4 continents, this book is truly a global project. Pieces range in style and content, from personal accounts of the quake to memories of playing nintendo, or watching ninja movies as a child. Seeing each contributor’s connection to Japan demonstrates just how far reaching Japanese culture is to the rest of the world. One art-ist discovered Japan through Noise Music, another through origami, and yet another through a former lover who was studying abroad. In Aftershock, moments of tragedy are interlaced with tenderly light-hearted scenes, which coalesce to form a sort of “open letter” to Ja-pan, showing love, support, solidarity and more than anything, hope.

And hope is precisely what Aftershock sets-off to do. The publisher and all of the artists have pledged to donate all of the proceeds to relief work in the disaster struck regions.

Aftershock will be released later this summer as a digital download from Top Shelf Productions. www.topshelfcomix.com

|RAN| 19

listen.

Dirty. Sweet. Oh Yeah.Baion ZOKU is the hottest drum band in Nagoya. Possibly the hottest drum band in all of Japan, and most definitely super

funky. This collective of accomplished musicians absolutely rocks the house in every gig they play. They routinely get the crowd on their feet; people dance wildly at their shows, and they GET IT ON and GET IT IN at the same time. You’re going to sweat at a BAION ZOKU party. Guaranteed.

Bang A Gong.

Peep FUMI, Baion ZOKU’s leader/founder describe their style.Africa meets Japan meets Nagoya.You should be listening.

What’s up Fumi. Tell us what BAION ZOKU means.BZ: “Baion” means overtone. “Zoku” means tribe.

How did you think of the name?BZ: Usually people use the African language for African bands. We used Japanese kanji, so I like this name.

How long has the band been together?BZ: Since 2007, four years.

How did you find the band members?BZ: I was playing bass in so many bands before. I called some drummers who have a good groove. I wanted them to play West African traditional music.

How long have you been playing drums?BZ: For 8 years. Djembe, dundun.

Why make a drum band?BZ: Because I love rhythms.

How often do you practice?BZ: We practice once a week for Baion Zoku. I play many instruments. I practice almost everyday, because I use many instruments.

What kind of music do you like?BZ: West African music, North Indian classical music, flamenco, ambient music.

Have you thought about adding other instruments? Guitar? Singer? Keyboard?BZ: Yes. We want to have melodic instruments. We used Jews harp, balafon (xylophone), didgeridoo, flute, etc. We’re not using those now, though. Rhythm is the most important thing for us. We want to have more members, though.

What is your best memory of playing live?BZ: The last MISFITS regular show in July 2010. There were over 200 people in a small space. I couldn’t breathe, let alone sing.

How is playing in Nagoya? How are Nagoya audiences?BZ: It’s good to play in Nagoya. Some musicians say Nagoya is not good to play concerts, but I don’t think so.

What do you like about Nagoya?BZ: It’s not like Osaka or Tokyo. I think it’s a kind of strange town in Japan; like food, language, culture, history.

What is your ‘regular’ job?BZ: I teach many kinds of percussion instruments. I play concerts (flamenco, Indian classical, west African music), compose music for TV shows, commercials and animated shorts.

What is your dream for BAION ZOKU?BZ: To continue playing in this band for a long time.

What makes you happy?BZ: When I compose a really good song. When I play a good concert.

Let’s Dance To The Drummer’s Beat.Baion Zoku.

Overtone Tribe.

► by tdhouchen

bang a gong

20 |RAN|

taste.

► by Davo Olaf

Nagoya Supper ClubHave you ever noticed that after finding your

favorite Italian place or perfect Thai joint your motivation to seek out new places disappears?

Yet daily you walk by great little restaurants and think one day you`ll try them. You are not alone. The Nagoya Supper Club is a group of foodies dedicated to checking out these holes-in-the-wall diners.

First stop: Taverna BabboAt the table tonight: MK, RS, WZ, MH and DDFive course meal plus one bottle of house wine.Price: 2,500 yen per person.

Taverna Babbo is in Shinsakae, just off Iida Kaido, a five-minute walk from Shinsakae Station (exit 2). Small and cozy, it has five tables and two Japanese-style tables. The atmosphere and food have a homespun feel and taste.

For the past decade chef and owner, Hedeki Baba, has been delighting his regular patrons and going to great lengths to share his style of Milano pizza throughout the region.

I found the rounded contours of the chef especially reassuring; I distrust restaurants with thin chefs.

---M.K.

Chef Baba explains, “I used to eat pizza with my grandmother all the time, it was our favorite thing to do together. While going to school I worked at an Italian café, it seemed like a natural choice for me.” Knowing that he would not be satisfied as a kaishain, Hideki passed up a job offer at Toyota to attend cooking school in Osaka.

House wine: bright upfront, with strong cherry and citrus notes; medium-full body with a mild finish . . . one of the best house wines I’ve had in a long time.---R.S.

The house wine was a mild-flavoured, medium-bodied geografica tipica from Salerno and extremely affordable, at 1,500 yen per bottle. Babbo’s wine list is modest, changing and not written down. Selections and prices are quoted at the table when ordering. Baba prides himself in finding strong but undervalued wines for his patrons.

The Antipasto Misto arrived with a beautiful array of prosciutto and melon, eggplant, sautéed mushrooms, pumpkin and roasted basil potatoes. It was all very good. The group favorites were the prosciutto and melon and the sautéed mushrooms. Overall, a great sampler.

The Beef Carpaccio and arugula was next. This dish was as gorgeous as it was generous. The arugula and black pepper balanced out the beef and olive oil, and the parmesan added nice bursts of flavor. Overall, the dish was good, but would have been great with the addition of a squeeze of fresh lemon or some capers.

Arriving next were tender sautéed vegetables on a sturdy, homemade tagliatelle. Chef Baba gets all his vegetables from local, organic growers whenever possible. The final course was the pizza margherita, a house specialty. Served Milano style and measuring 40cm across, the pizza was impressive. But the group consensus was marked with mild disappointment. Though very good, it seemed lacking in balance of ingredients - or perhaps in comparison to the wonderful dishes that preceded it.

Other Babbo stalwarts include the clam and mushroom pasta, the octopus and pepperoncini pasta and a wonderful salad capressi. The menu is modest, but diverse. Meals can be ordered à la carte, or as a course meal for the table.

Chef Baba once promised his grandmother that one day he would make her a pizza. Although he never got to fulfill this promise, the Chef visits area retirement homes monthly with volunteers; they serve his Milano pizza in memory of his grandmother. He is always looking for new volunteers; if you are interested, he urges you to come by the restaurant or join him on Facebook.

Taverna BabboShinsakae2-12-7, Field City Shinsakae1F052-259-2644

Hours: Tues-Sun 6:00 – 2:00amEnglish menu not available but staff speaks a little. Reservations and catering available.Girl’s Night Out course meal with 4 hour nomihoudai 4,000 yen.

MAKE YOUR RESERVATION!

DISCOVER South East Asia:

VIETNAMgo.

► photos and story by Mark Campbell

I decided to keep the R&R in Asia this year. I scraped up some air miles, booked a flight to Ho Chi Minh (previously Saigon) via

Seoul, and I was on my way. I did almost no real research before I went. I knew practically nothing about Vietnam. I was a clean slate.I landed in Ho Chi Minh late at night, and caught a very inexpensive taxi to my very modest hotel in the centre of town (District 1). I was only staying for three nights, so I figured I’d just rough it. The next morning, I got a map and some basic information from the very friendly hotel staff, and then headed out to see what the city had to offer. I think there were some temples that I could have visited, but after living in Japan for almost ten years, I’ve had enough of temples and shrines. I headed straight for the shopping. It would have been a 15 minute walk under normal circumstances to the Ben Thanh Indoor Market, but try crossing a road in Vietnam. It’s the most dangerous thing you’ll ever experience. It was like playing Frogger. cars, trucks and

scooters constantly coming at you, never stopping, regardless of traffic lights. At least with Frogger I could get another life, as long as I had another coin. Eventually, I got to the market. It was incredible. Clothes, textiles, shoes, luggage, jewellery, you name it, they had it. Tropical fruits were everywhere, so not going to Jamaica this spring wasn’t a complete loss, and it was all so cheap. Some of the stuff might have been “fake”, or “fallen off the back of a lorry”, but you could not question the quality: Top notch. I regret not packing lighter, because I would have gone crazy if I had.The next day I did a day trip to the Mekong Delta by boat, returning by coach because of low tide. This was excellent. It was under ¥2,000, including lunch, and offered a chance to really see the more traditional side of Vietnam. I especially enjoyed the snake wine, which is said to offer health benefits to men. For the remainder of the trip, I spent time in Nha Trang (north-east of Ho Chi Minh)

and Mui Ne (east of Ho Chi Minh. I went to Nha Trang by domestic flight, which was under ¥5,000 one way. It was a bit chilly, but nothing a light jacket wouldn’t remedy. The rest of my domestic travel was done on coaches. This was a great chance to see the countryside.I highly recommend Vietnam for your next Asian destination. The people are friendly, the food is excellent (even for vegetarians), the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful, and everything is so cheap. The only disappointments were the beaches. Perhaps it was due to the time of year, but there was no clear blue water to be seen, and the waves were very rough. Maybe it’s better further South. You can get direct flights from Nagoya to Vietnam with Vietnam Airlines. Most people need to apply for a visa (Japanese citizens are exempt), and that can be done online at myvietnamvisa.com. Also, make sure you have US$25 cash per person, ready to pay for the second half of your visa application.

22 |RAN|

|RAN| 23

24 |RAN|

PAGODADIARIES

THE

| Story and pictures by EJP |

You’d hate for anybody to think you’re a complete pussy. But you’re a complete pussy. You can’t drink for shit. You’re still hung-over from your night in Sendai. It was two nights ago, and

you still haven’t recovered. And last night in Tono didn’t help, in spite of all your well-intended restraint. You’re tired. You’re soft and weak. Your belly has started to bulge out of your shirt again. This morning at the festival in Tono, in fact, somebody offered to take a photo of you standing shoulder to shoulder with four gorgeous girls in their bright red, green, and yellow festival attire. Since Kumamoto Castle, where the Korean girl offered to take a photo of you with her friends and immediately dropped your camera in the dirt, you’ve been reluctant to let anybody else use your camera, but this morning they were all persistent and you relented. And now there you are, recorded forever in digital imagery, standing in the midst of these lovely ladies, two under each arm, all of them beautiful with gorgeous smiles and white lines of paint down the bridges of their noses signifying something, though nobody you asked about it seemed to know just what, and none of them stands even as high as your armpits. So you aren’t shoulder to shoulder after all. You’re shoulder to navel. You’ve got on the Sgt. Pepper shirt and your camera bag still strapped around your waist. The bottom button on the Sgt. Pepper shirt is open and your belly is bursting out hairy and pale like the bulk of an abalone baked in its shell. You’re a mess. You’re tired, fat, ugly, old, grey, and very, very blue. This trip has finally caught up to you. With one-hundred-and-three pagodas down and five to go, it feels like you’ve been traveling forever.

You’ve got those endlessly, friendlessly, railroadin’ blues. Maybe you’ll write another silly song, it occurs to you now, as a little

melody starts to form in your mind. Maybe you’ll write one when you get some energy together, you mean. Not now. Now all you have is that silly little line rolling endlessly, friendlessly through your flabby mind over and over and over again like the wheels of the train roll over the joints in the tracks beneath you.

You’re ridiculous in your utter and mindless simplicity. You loved Tono, and it was hard to leave there this afternoon. It

was peaceful, calm, gentle and loving like a large and unruly family. But on the train out of town you fell almost immediately asleep, and waking up now you’re just pulling into Kamaishi, on the Pacific coast. You’re the only one in your RR car except for two young girls who are oddly standing across from you—in an otherwise empty car—and staring at you. Also, your feet stink again, and you can’t help but suppose there’s a direct cause and effect relationship between these two phenomena. Also, you can’t help but speculate on what those girls must be thinking.

That simple refrain is still on your mind. You’ve got those endlessly, friendlessly, long distance blues. Fussing and busing and railroading through. You’ve revised it in your sleep, somehow, for better or for worse. Well, probably for worse. But that’s the way these things go. In fact, that’s the way it seems most things go.

The area around Kamaishi is dark and strangled by hills crammed up against the wet sky. Here you don’t find that wide-open feeling you loved so much in Tono. Rather, it’s narrow, confining and closed, and you genuinely don’t like it here. This is the first such bad feeling you’ve had about any place you’ve visited all summer.

This town, Kamaishi, is known nationwide as Rugby City. That’s because the local Nippon Steel Kamaishi Works rugby team won seven consecutive national championships, and eight out of nine during the years from 1976 to 1984. They also won it in 1970 and

almost won it in 1989. This has made them something like the Boston Celtics of Japanese rugby, not that anybody in Japan really gives a damn about rugby. Or the Boston Celtics, either.

Kamaishi also has the distinction of being the first city on Japan’s four major islands to be shelled by allied ships during World War Two. That happened on July 14, 1945. Lying so far north, Kamaishi was out of range of land based B-29s that were devastating the rest of the nation so the US Navy turned a task force loose on it. The first bombardment lasted almost two hours and was discovered after the war to have been a complete success, except for the death of five allied POWs being employed illegally as slave labor in the steel mill there. Another source says it was 42 POW slaves who died that day. What a discrepancy. It’s hard to know what to believe.

Naval intelligence wasn’t convinced of that first bombardment’s overwhelming success, however, because the mill’s buildings didn’t suffer the same amount of damage as the works within them, so on August 9, 1945, the same day Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, they had another go at it. This time the US Navy was assisted by ships from the Royal Navy and the bombardment lasted more than two hours. It completely destroyed one of the two POW camps here and killed an additional 27 POWs, not to mention several Japanese. In fact, the sounds of this bombardment were broadcast live on radio in the U.S. via a radio relay onboard one of the ships. This must have provided enthralling entertainment for the American listening audience—the cacophony of big guns going off over and over again, like so many volcanoes erupting—and this second bombardment would make Kamaishi also the last Japanese city to be bombarded by Allied ships, though looking around now it’s hard to imagine why those ships even bothered. There’s nothing here to bombard but ugly grey buildings and narrow grey roads.

But now is now and then was then. And then Kamaishi was one of Japan’s largest steel producing towns. One of Japan’s largest plants here, and that was the target of the bombardments.

Japan’s entire steel industry had its start in 1857 when Japan’s first blast furnace was installed near the iron mines here, in fact. This would make it one of Japan’s few pre-Meiji attempts at industrialization and modernization.

And what did they produce here? Cannons. The plant would be nationalized in 1873 with the establishment of

the Meiji government. It went through several ownership changes, and eventually became part of Japan Steel Corporation in 1970. Japan Steel Corporation would go on to become the world’s largest steel manufacturer, and during its heyday, which peaked in the 1960s, the Kamaishi plant would provide the livelihood for 8,372 workers and their families. Steel workers at the Kamaishi plant constituted 36% of the city’s work force, and Kamaishi was the classic example of a company town. There were even disparities between company employees and other people in terms of standards of living and lifestyle, to the extent that people called it “segregation.”

Not so now. It’s been downhill for the steel industry in Kamaishi ever since. The

last blast furnace was shut down in 1989, shortly after the Nippon Steel Kamaishi Rugby club lost the national championship game to a team from Toyota Motor Company, and now there remains only a wire production facility that currently employs 223 workers. This is up from a low of 147 in 2005. Nippon Steel corporation employs a mere 0.8% of the city’s work force now, and the entire steel industry in Kamaishi employs only 4%. Steel ranks fifth among industries here

Missing Yesterday

|RAN| 25

Missing Yesterday

today. This is no longer a company town by any means. It isn’t even a steel town anymore.

The population too has been in constant decline. From a peak of 92,123 in 1964 it’s down to under 40,000 now. And, like everywhere, the population is aging. In fact, Kamaishi can possibly be viewed as a microcosm of Japan itself, except that the decline of Kamaishi began a decade or two before that of Japan Inc.

Some professors at Tokyo University have done a study on Kamaishi in which they use it to introduce an entire new field of study in the social sciences which they call kibogaku, and which social scientists in the West have translated as “hopology.” It’s the study of hope. And the name of their publication is Is There Any Hope for “Kamaishi”? : The Regeneration of a Former Company Town. Their conclusion is a cautious maybe. Your own guess is no.

Never mind that Kamaishi has been producing steel for over 120 years. And never mind that the city still produces a full 80% of those little steel balls used in Japan’s thousands of loud, smoky and smelly pachinko parlors—those ubiquitous gathering places for the astoundingly stupid. And never mind those seven consecutive national rugby championships. Though they still loom large in the collective memory here, the truth is they occurred a long time ago, and though the team still resides here, it’s no longer winning championships, and it’s no longer a Nippon Steel company team, but a club team going by the name of the Kamaishi Seawaves.

The Kamaishi Seawaves! That’s an interesting name considering that the city was completely destroyed by a tsunami—a sea wave—at 7:32 pm on June 15, 1896. The tsunami was caused by a 8.5 magnitude earthquake off the Iwate coast. It created a wave that reached a height of 24 meters in some places. Now, in 2008, that wave stands as the highest tsunami ever recorded in Japan. Though here again, there is some disagreement, as other sources say the 1896 tsunami reached as high as 38.2 meters in places, which, if true, is the record now and will continue to be even after the upcoming tsunami of 2011.

And speaking of records, the port of Kamaishi has been working for 30 years on a federally funded breakwater that will be 1,950 meters long and 63 meters deep—the deepest breakwater in the world according to the Guiness Book of World Records, and also the world’s most expensive one—when it is completed in March of 2009. The main purpose of the breakwater, of course, is to provide employment, money, livelihood and fiscal health to the city of Kamaishi. But it has another purpose, as well, which is to hold out the waters of the next big tsunami.

It will fail on both counts.You have no intention of spending the night here, but this is the

end of the line in more than just a figurative sense. You’ve been traveling on the JR Kamaishi Line since yesterday, and it doesn’t proceed beyond here. You have an hour to wait for a train on the Sanriku Tetsudo Minami Riasu Line to Ofunato, so you exit the station and walk towards the ocean. It’s always the same in these seaside towns. The railroad lines hug the base of the mountains and it’s a short downhill walk to the sea.

There was a festival here earlier. Maybe yesterday, maybe today. But there is nobody around now. You see very few cars on the streets, and only one person out on the sidewalk. He’s a man about sixty years old with small eyes and a grey twisted face. He’s stocky and strong, and in his blue cotton trousers and shirt, he works fast. He’s walking south to north along the main street between the station and the port. In

his arms he has a bundle of Japanese flags—those blood red drops of the sun on pure white fields of virginal snow. They have been lined up along the edge of the road and he is systematically pulling them up from their perches with one hand and tucking them deliberately under his other arm as he goes. He hasn’t rolled the flags up, and the whole arm full of them is flapping in front of him like he’s a crew-cut marine leading a drum and bugle corps, but in exaggerated parody. He has five or six flags under his arm and when you see him coming, as nonchalantly as possible, you pull your camera out of your bag and adjust it quickly for the awful lack of light. Everything in sight is grey and ugly, including the man, and only the armful of flags in his arms provide color or texture or hue.

Okay, you’re saying you do this nonchalantly, but be real. Be honest. Face the sad fact of your existence here. It’s simply not possible for a huge white guy with hair half way down to his ass and a filthy Sgt. Pepper shirt on, not to mention shoes that smell worse than road-kill, to be anything even remotely similar to nonchalant on a deserted street in back-country Japan, and you aren’t fooling anybody. The man has your number from fifty meters away and he glares at you the whole way as he walks. You try to smile. It doesn’t translate. He squints at you and juts his jaw forward. Fuck it. You don’t normally photograph people who clearly don’t want you to, but this is too good to pass up. You put the camera to your eye and take his photo. But you only take one before you run out of memory on your chip, so you’ll just have to hope for the best. In English you say “thank you,” trying to sound stupid enough to put him at ease, like you’re just too dumb to know anything about manners anyway. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. If looks could kill, you’d be dead. You’d be lying stiff on the sidewalk here in Kamaishi, soon to start smelling as bad as your shoes. But as it turns out, though not quite in perfect focus, this will become another of your favorite photos from the trip. You’ll go on to display it in at least three photo shows, and eventually it will end up hanging on the wall in your office. You may end up looking at it everyday for the rest of your life. Or at least until you retire.

It’s raining again as you leave Kamaishi. It’s dark. It’s ugly. It’s ominous. A mere ten minutes out of the city you’re once again the only one in your RR car. You feel alone, forsaken and doomed.

You have two eight-gigabyte memory chips for your camera and they’re both full now. You spend the first half hour on the slow, rackety train between Kamaishi and Sakari deleting ridiculous photos you never should have taken in the first place. Most of them show beautiful faces that had carried soft, thoughtful, sublime expressions or laughter and vivid smiles when you began to point your camera but are now grinning in the photographs like goats behind the goddamn two finger peace sign. You hate that goddamn peace sign. You want to kill the bloody bastard.

Japanese people are trained from birth to pull that motherfucker out of their pockets at the merest hint of a camera pointed their way. You’re not joking. You’ve seen mothers teaching their two-year old children to do it. Camera? What? Wham! The goddamn peace sign. It’s been going on at least as long as you’ve been here, and even Pavlov with his dogs would be shocked to see this phenomenon with such absolute consistency, you figure. You wonder what conclusions he may have come to had he lived half his life in Japan. Because, indeed, conditioned response seems as inherently Japanese as sushi and shitty English.

Fads will come and fads, thank goodness, will go, but this one has

26 |RAN|

shown staying power that seems impossible to fathom, and though it drives you crazy, with all your experience here in Japan, you actually do understand it. So you’ll explain it.

Though American wars have continued through the latter half of the American century like fires ravaging a forest, the peace sign itself more or less died out in America when her futile and indefensible involvement in Vietnam did. And American President Richard Nixon, whose administration was largely responsible for that American involvement in Vietnam, lent the peace sign itself an utterly ridiculous air when he flashed it before the world, with both hands, from the steps of an airplane upon departing in criminal disgrace from the highest elective office in the world. In short, nothing in America is more blasé, if not more downright embarrassing in liberal and moderate society, than the two finger peace sign. Not so in Japan. Here it carries connotations of neither Haight-Ashbury acid trips nor Watergate and Tricky Dick. In Japan, in fact, it doesn’t connote anything, not even peace, which, after all, is not a Japanese word anyway. The most common Japanese word for “peace” is “heiwa,” and the two finger peace sign has nothing to do with that.

So what does it have to do with? It has to do with cheese. That’s right. As in “Everybody say cheese.” Snap. There’s another photo for the family album. These days you rarely hear it, but twenty years ago, when posing for a photo, Japanese people didn’t simply throw the two finger peace sign with reckless abandon into every photograph anybody ever took of them, they actually said the word as well. “Peeeeeeeace.” This was exactly equivalent to Americans saying “Cheeeeeeeese,” when they’re being photographed, and that silly practice, of course, is one that everybody in America takes for granted. It’s neither good nor bad nor strange nor sexy nor cool. Rather it’s an innocuous part of American culture that’s been around since . . . well since you don’t know when, but at least since you were about two years old and your mother patiently taught you how to say it whenever the camera comes out.

And though you hate the peace sign at least as much as you love peace, you see its ubiquitous usage here as the perfect example of how the Japanese, renowned for their ability to adopt and adapt, can take even the simplest of notions from a foreign culture, improve on it a little bit, and make it entirely their own. And who, after all, can possibly say that peace is not a distinct improvement on cheese, not only in this situation, but in any situation one can think of that doesn’t involve people starving to death? It’s just that that damn peace sign, which first merely accompanied the word but has since come to almost replace it completely, has ruined so many of your photographs. You sit quietly on the train, rolling through the damp and the dank and the dark out of Kamaishi, patiently erasing photo after ridiculous photo from both memory chips till you figure you’ve got enough space to get you at least to Morioka where you can buy eight more gigabytes of memory if you need to. Then, by the time you get to Sakari, where you need to change trains again for the five-minute stretch to Ofunato on the JR Kesenuma Line, you’re prone again on the bench and you’ve fallen asleep with your camera in your

hand. Many small rural towns throughout Japan still maintain the

tradition of ringing a bell at 5:00 in the afternoon, except that these days it’s no longer a bell, but chimes blaring a song over a system of loud speakers. In the mountain village of Yoshino, the careful reader may recall, it was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that came rushing out of the loud speaker at precisely the same moment you began the five o’clock chant with the monks at Kinpusen-ji. In the small fishing village of Ofunato, you happen to know, the five o’clock song

is Lennon and McCartney’s Yesterday, and you had wanted to get there in time to hear it.

You fail. It’s around 7:00 when you arrive at

Ofunato, and you’ve missed Yesterday altogether. This sounds like the story of your life—missing yesterday. And though you know Yesterday will play again tomorrow, you don’t believe you’ll be here to hear it.

In fact, you don’t like it here.The 4,000 yen hotel room you find

smells like an ashtray, but otherwise it’s clean and neat, and the one woman working here is helpful and kind. The corridors are lined with pictures painted by the hotel owner. They’re huge—at least two meters by a meter and a half—and they all depict the local scenery, which is to say ships, docks, fishing, lumber, mountains and fog. There is one in your room, as well. The owner has certainly kept himself busy with his paintbrush. And his work isn’t bad either. Though it may not end up in a museum anytime soon, you wouldn’t mind having a piece to hang on your bedroom wall. The paintings of the town are in fact a lot prettier than the town itself is.

You take absolutely no photos in Ofunato. Part of this is because you know you don’t have much memory.

Part is because you’re just tired. But part is because you simply don’t see anything to photograph.

You don’t see much in the way of places to eat either. The town is quiet, heavy, stumbling, like a fighter on his last leg. The town is punch drunk. You walk along the river towards the harbor. Then you turn back north. Then you turn west again. All is off white and grey and nothing is inviting. You decide on a place called Sandwich Bar Sanen because they have pumpkin salad advertised on their little signboard. You love pumpkin salad, something you’d never even heard of before you came to Japan.

Inside, there is a counter enclosing the kitchen on three sides, two young men sitting on stools at the side farthest from the door, smoking, reading comic books and ignoring each other, and a thin woman in front of them, busily preparing something. She’s in her early to mid thirties, maybe. It’s hard to tell. What isn’t hard to tell is that she’s very pretty. This doesn’t necessarily surprise you. Japan is full of pretty women. You run into them everywhere you go here, no matter how remote, and it never surprises you anymore. It does, however, catch your attention.

“Hello,” she says. “Where are you from?” Her accent is not bad and her English is fine. At least she gets this much of the conversation correct, which is more than a lot of people here do. But fuck a duck. Another goddamn English lesson. You’re way too worn out for this, but you don’t want to be rude, and you’re just about to say something in reply when the two guys put down their comic books and start giggling as if they’re third graders and you’ve just walked into class wearing a Humpty Dumpty suit.

PAGODAD I A R I E S

THE

Fuck that. You can be Humpty Dumpty when you have to, but right now

you’re not in the mood. And there’s no way you could possibly realize that you’re making a decision you’re likely to regret for the rest of your life. In fact, you’re going to start regretting it tomorrow. But now is now, and you’re tired and blue. You ignore them all and walk to a little table in the farthest away corner, strutting aggressively like you own the place. The décor is quite Western, and so is the menu. You remember when it was almost impossible to find a good sandwich in Japan, but now even here in Ofunato, on the coastal fringes of back-country nowhere, there’s an avocado, bean sprout and tomato sandwich on the menu. After all the beer you’ve poured into your system you feel starved for vegetables, so you order that and the pumpkin salad. The woman, who has come from behind the counter to take your order, addresses you in English. You reply in Japanese. It doesn’t matter. The Japanese words for these things are the same as the English words, or so the average Japanese person thinks, and the woman seems to have no idea you aren’t speaking English to her. She does, however, seem to have lost interest in where you’re from. And as you order you can’t help wondering exactly how many white people have come in this little place alone without the least ability to communicate in Japanese. In fact, you wonder how many white people have come into this little place at all. Ever.

Where are you from, my ass! Who cares where you’re from. And what difference does it make. You’re from Nagoya. You’re a long distance traveler. You’ve got those endlessly, friendlessly, long distance blues. You’re fussing and busing and just passing through.

There are some strange books on your table. One is called Suicidal Bunny or some damn thing. But that’s not the one you pick up. Instead, you grab one called simply Sad Book. Nothing, you figure, could cap your evening off better. It’s a Japanese translation of a book originally written in English by Michael Rosen. It’s about a man whose 18 year old son has died. In fact, that man is Michael Rosen himself. The book is nonfiction. And get this: It’s a children’s book. You read it

while waiting for your meal. You can’t help but notice that the son’s name is Eddie. So was yours when you were young.

In Sad Book he writes, “Sometimes I’m sad and I don’t know why. It’s just a cloud that comes by and covers me up.”

This evening is really depressing you. The young men at the bar apparently tire of smoking, reading

comics and giggling at you, and before your meal comes they get up to leave. Sayonara. So long. See you later. Goodbye. Good night and good luck. When your meal finally comes it’s delicious. You eat it quietly as you finish reading Sad Book. You drink a cup of coffee. It doesn’t help to perk you up. Nothing could.

In your hotel room your nose is running and you’re coughing. You sit on the edge of the bed and try to write your notes for the day. Your mind doesn’t focus, and your notes show it. They jump all over the last couple of days. Tono, Sendai, Tono, Yamagata, Sendai, Kamaishi, Ofunato, Sendai. French speakers, Italian speakers, Japanese speakers, English speakers. Dancers and dances and singers and songs. Suicides, salads and sad books. Memories are slow to emerge. They keep popping up like ghosts wandering through a fog. And they’re intimately engaged with the ghosts of last night in Tono. You grab all the ghosts and insert them into the middle of your tiring day. You only hope you’ll be able to sort them out later.

You write “Note how messy your room was waking up in Tono this morning—a life out of control.”

You note that the bicycle you rented this morning was taller than normal. Actually, what you write is “Note: Tall bicycle today.”

You write “Note: Got angry at the information girl at Sendai—the usual thing—that indefatigable Japanese tendency to assume that you must be mentally retarded. Need to call them.” Of course, you know you’ll never call anybody.

And never mind that you spell indefatigable wrong. You get into bed at nine o’clock. Your nose is still running, and

there’s nothing to wipe it with but the towel from the toilet. The last thing you write before you fall asleep is “This is a sad town.”

LOOK OUT FOR

MAGAZINES

SUMMER BARBEQUE BEACH PARTYand

MUSIC CAFE OPENING SOON!

WATCH THIS SPACE.....

comics.by s

imo

n ta

ylo

r

14 |RAN|

|RAN| 15

fried sushi by liam akin

later...

renewable resources by adam pasion & soma itou

Los Novios Mexican Restaurant

32 |RAN|

Los Novios Mexican Restaurant

|RAN| 33

26 |RAN|

NAGOYACLUB GUIDEHIP HOPCREAM BARinfo@bar-cream.com052-261-1766 Located In Sakae.Open until 6am.

The Undergroundwww.underground.co.jp/index.html The Underground is actually a three-club conglomeration located on three floors in Toshincho.Lush/052-242-1388Cypher/052-264-9603SoulGround/052-241-7366

STEPSwww.steps-nagoya.net/info/1.html052-242-7544Located in Sakae.Open until 6am, 7 nights a week.

ID Caféwww.idcafe.info052-251-0382Located in Sakae.

ABIME 2030www.abime.info052-951-4155Large modern space near Sunshine Sakae.

Club Shelterwww.club-shelter.com052-242-8030Off in the cut behind the Chunichi Building.3rd floor, same building as Arena.

Ozon/Spiralwww.ozon.jp.comLocated in Sakae near Wakamiya Park.Upstairs, SpiralDownstairs, OZON

PLUS PARKwww.plus-park.com052-261-1173Located in Sakae.Open late.

Rock Electric Ladylandell@ell.co.jp052-201-5004Located in Osu.

Club Quattrowww.club-quattro.comNo phone number available.Located in the Parco Building in Sakae.

Diamond Hallwww.diamond-hall.com052-265-2665Located between Hirokoji Dori and Sakae.

Heartlandwww.theheartlandstudio.co.jpNo number available.Located underneath The former Hard Rock Café

Huck Finnwww.huckfinn.co.jp052-733-8347Located on Imaike’s backstreets.

The Bottom Linewww.bottomline.co.jp052-741-1620Legendary big hall in Imaike.

HOUSE/DANCE/ELECTRO

Magoinfo@club-mago.co.jp052-243-1818Located in Shinsakae.

Aboutwww.club-about.com052-243-5077Located in Toshincho.

Emporiumwww.theemporium.jp052-262-7027Located in Sakae.

Club JB’swww.club-jbs.jp052-241-2234Located in the Toshincho club cluster

Dominainfo@cafe-domina.com052 264 3134Right around the corner from JB’s.

Plastic Factoryww.plasticfactory.jp090-2346-1682Located on the backstreets of Imaike.

Ask details/お問い合わせ：info@mondo-books.com/　080-5166-6318http://www.facebook.com/MondoBooks

Mondo Books is now

Mondo Books Lounge!Mondo Books is now

Mondo Books Lounge!Mondo Books is now

Mondo Books Lounge!

問答 Books はリニューアル

を得て、新しくなりました

。

リラックスできるスポット

、問答 Booksラウンジで

楽しいひと時を過ごしませ

んか。

2

3

K NakaÊHealthÊCenter中保健所

NagoyaÊBank名古屋銀行

Launch PartyLaunch PartyLaunch Party

Kamimaezu St.上前津駅

リニューアルオープンパーティーリニューアルオープンパーティーリニューアルオープンパーティー

March 26th, 5 p.m. （3月26日5時～）　

フリードリンク(カクテル、ビール、ジュース)とスナック。アップルの iPod ナノが当たるチャンス !

Free food and drinks. Come and win a new Apple iPod Nano!

場所は昔の問答 Books の近く、上前津駅二番出口から東へすぐ、通りの反対側の名古屋銀行の隣、２階。

New location just minutes from the previous Mondo Books, 40 seconds walk from Kamimaezu Sta. Just �nd exit #2, cross the street and look for Nagoya Bank on the east. Next door from Nagoya Bank, second �oor.

4000 冊+、コーヒーや紅茶のサービス、wi-fi アクセスのパソコンもあり、テーブルでゲームもできる空間になりました。

4,000+ new and used books in English, drink corner, huge seating space, WiFi access, table games!