there's our catastrophe

for part of the time when John Howard was Prime Minister my sister happened to be working for the Japanese government, and once she met the Japanese Minister for Agriculture at an official function where people had gotten a bit shitfaced

and he said “so… I met your Prime Minister…”

and she was like “yeah, he’s a nong, we’re really embarassed, sorry”

and he laughed and said “ok man one time he was busting our balls trying to get us to buy more Australian rice, which, whatever, we don’t need more Australian rice”

“so I pretended to speak English really badly”

“and patted my stomach and said ‘very sorry, Japanese have only small stomachs! we cannot eat so much rice!’”

“and he totally fell for it!  man, what an idiot”

1.  ugh why can’t I have a simple answer about What Is To Be Done about the state

2.  has anyone written anything on Japanese literary history and écriture féminine?  (I don’t “agree” with much of what Cixous says or even really know her work that well but I find her an interesting place to begin.) apparently women are overrepresented in early Japanese-language writing because Chinese (maybe better described as Sino-Japanese, depending) was the prestige (& therefore mostly male) form of written language until much later in the game.  like, obviously women wrote the Tale of Genji and the Pillow Book, the pillars of Japanese literature.  is this that different from how women dominated early English novel-writing, back when it was embarrassing and stupid to read novels?  yeah, if only in that they were basically creating written Japanese as they were writing it.  (still, both make interesting case studies in the transition of a work or genre from pulp fiction to high literature over time & the connection of pulp literature to women.)  also: apparently reading the Tale of Genji is a super-disorienting experience for the modern Western reader because none of the characters are ever referred to by name, only by title, and of course they have multiple titles and relationships at any given time and these change over the many years over which the novel takes place.  the same character can be referred to by two different titles in one sentence.  but this is not necessarily a sign of a feminine form of writing that is relationship-oriented, fluid, and ambiguous; rather it is a feature of Japanese language and society and particularly of Heian-era Japan.  European feminist literary theory: possibly Eurocentric???? 

3.  but back to my original point: can anybody sling any non-Marxist theory on the relationship between the state and finance capital my way?  I am not opposed to a bit of Marxism but I am not really a Marxist (who is?  was Marx?  but you know) and I am desperately keen to know what other perspectives are out there.  like I’m kind of shocked by what a black hole in my knowledge this is?  bonus points for discussion of the middle classes, property development, or the urban environment, but this is not necessary. 

My personal thoughts about Japan earthquake

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I am a 24 year old Japanese living in Tokyo.

About the CNN anchor’s joke. Someone wrote the anchor was “giggly” while reading the news and did not say a word about Godzilla. So it seems that joke thing was half true, half wrong. (Thank you for the information.)

I noticed some people are saying “Japan deserves this for the things Japanese did at WW2 and Pearl Harbor”. I’m not angry knowing about this. I am not writing this to accuse them. You cannot criticize someone just because they think different from one another. Besides, the history is true. We lost in WW2 causing many damages to other countries, leaving many damages on peoples hearts. That is the history, it is unchangeable.  I know People have the kindness to feel sorry when they see someone dying in front of them, even when they see it in TVs. I think those who said “Japan deserves this… ” were thinking from a view seeing Japan as a “country”. 

Japan, as a country, is facing many problems. Problems with near by countries such as China, Korea, Russia. We have the Okinawa military base problem with America. Japan has many domestic problems too. The politics!!! The prime minister changes so often. As a Japanese citizen, I feel the government and the citizens are always misunderstanding each other. I do wish the whole society in Japan will become much more grateful to all of us. If so I may have to understand and support the government, but it is really hard to understand what they are thinking and is hard to give full support to them.

What we should do from now on. For now, this cares the most. I wish people, mostly Japanese citizens, will never forget what happened the day before and not to forget to supporting people who are suffering right now. At the same time, there are many suffering people around the world. We should not forget about them too. Even if it doesn’t make many changes, we should do what we can do.

If you have more interest in the earthquake, here are my other posts.

2011/03/11 Japan Now 

2011/03/12 Japan Now 2 

2011/03/12 For those who don’t know much about Japan 

my post 2011/03/11 Japan Now was rebloged & liked by tons of people. I’ve got some encouraging messages too. I am so surprised. It was way beyond my thought that many people have interest in this earthquake. 

I did not write those to earn followers or to get more “notes”. After writing Japan Now, about 90 followers increased. I guessed these 90 people have interest in this earthquake. So I wrote more. I wanted to tell what I know and what I felt. The only thing I know that is true are my feelings and thoughts.

Thank you for those who gave me messages. I have read them all. Sorry for not replying individually. 

Thank you to the all countries who are giving support to Japan. We do understand it is dangerous to come to save people here. We do know they have families and loving ones left at their homes. Thank you so much. Thank you for reading.