another day in Tokyo

1 month into the job, I'm starting to develop some sort of a routine in my daily life in Tokyo. waking up at the same time because my body clock is used to it etc. i get up at like 830am latest even on weekends now. which i think is a really good thing. routines include making myself a warm cup of coffee or tea in the morning, getting dressed etc. in the morning, when I get to work, the roads at my place are congested with people, I even have a routine of which side of the road to walk, same thing for Tokyo station. I get to work, and I have a routine of keying in my pass number to log in the time etc.. I even have a certain time at which I go to the washroom. which is why i thought the human body has this amazing ability to time things and make it function like a robot man. i normally go to the same bento place to buy a cheap bento and have it in the pantry where some of my female colleagues would have made their own bento which they brought to the office.

at night, sometimes I return to my station, and having meals alone have also been somewhat of a routine here. if U think i'm becoming a loner, think again. everyone does that here. I reach home and the routine starts again, just that I am undoing everything I am doing in the day. throwing the laundry into the washing machine, checking email, etc..

The Cove

before I even head there, to talking about how I feel after watching it, I just have to say, that its hard to be an activist. I head back from work, and by the time I finish watching a show that triggers me to be active, or so the narrator said, its really 2250 at night, I have to work tmr, with all the bills stacking up.. thats life in the city. sure I have a choice. but thats just it. no excuses. and i'm not going to start with all those arguments about why we should stop whaling and well, maybe all the so called natural reactions. reactions that are, by design supposed to be stirred by having your emotions being touched so badly... I'm just going to say... its hard to be an activist without a cause, to go to the extent of those filmakers. one of the things that I observed in the film was their attempt to subtly get more people to want to be active like them in the bid to 'free' the dolphins. but if we carefully examine, all of them had their special encounter with dolphins. one of them was responsible for building that dolphin aquarium industry thats why he felt guilty, remorse and so on and therefore a special reason to free those dolphins. he is in a way, indirectly the one who started all these and just attempting to correct what he started. another character had a dolphin save him from a shark while surfing. sure, i am not going to go down that road about every culture has their traditional food and if we slaughter chickens and cows, why cant we slaughter dolphins? but I bought in to their idea that if its their culture, why doesnt the rest of Japan know this? is it their culture to sell dolphins as fake whale meat? I do not mind sharing this, but I was guilty the other day. out of a curiosity to taste 'whale' meat, I ordered a sushi. and i noticed that whale sushi wasnt displayed on the sushi restaurent's menu, but instead just one of those written note on the conveyor belt. i wonder if it was their attempt to tone it down on whale meat, altho i was told it might be just the season menu thats why its not on the perm menu. I seriously wonder if I ate dolphin and i wouldnt be surprised if i did. It tasted like horse meat, which is something else that japanese people eat. red meat that tasted like horse meat sashimi. I wonder if there was another horse lover to the equivalent extent of that guy who would go and shoot an activist film on horses.

despite all these sarcastic remarks, I really am in support of ending this trade. of course then some japanese with the exceptional talent of filmography could shoot a documentary on how the lives of those families affected by the wipeout of that dolphin industry suffered and trigger this back and forth of who makes the most intriguing films and garners the most international support to their causes. I doubt that japanese version will have a good argument tho. bottomline, with those dolphins slaughtered, where are their meat sold to? i dont see that much dolphin meat being sold.... and I really do suspect that alot of those whale meat is actually dolphin meat. and if it is true that dolphin meat contains a toxic amount of mercury, then why?

I think u need a life changing experience to be an activist. I am wondering if that guy did not have his turn of fate, would he be where he is today, being an activist and so on. but i do think that he should all be aware of this and watch it. what they went thru to be able to shoot the film is just unbelievable. And I do think that this country has lots more examples of things that they have been trying to hide, media censorship, alot of which is triggered by this sense of 'nationalism' that has been mentioned in the film. I really dont think I can fully explain this because I do not know. but I really do think it is an interesting country in which there is a blend of this western adoption of their own model of democracy, free speech, yet many things that are done in a way that is not questioned... time and again I have heard of the phrase 'the nails that juts out has to be hammered down' in this place. 出る釘は打たれる

thoughts in Japan

so many thoughts that ran thru my mind just these 2 days. If i'd like to analyse it logically, once again its those transitions that sets you thinking, you suddenly plunge into a totally different routine etc. I started work over the friday, and realised that I am so lucky I actually started on a friday because there is so many things for me to catchup! just translating those japanese stuff is even to kill my weekend. but then again there is also this excitement, although I thought i'd be able to use more english in my time there. I guess I was wrong, even as the company culture is very very english in nature, I think its still predominantly japanese, at least from the language standpoint. which I guess is going to be a good challenge for me because then I am forced to learn japanese. haha.