knives

If you poke around the kitchen in an old Japanese house you will probably find the knives that no one uses but are too good to throw out.  They may already be red with rust.  They are made with good carbon steel.  They will take an edge better than any stainless steel thing made.  And they are genus in their construction and their design.  One wide bladed square ender for vegetables, one shorter, with a point, thick thick steel for popping the heads off of fish, and cleaning them out, and a long slender pointed blade for thin slicing sushi.  These knives evolved with Japanese cooking, and like so many old things Japanese are simply perfect, but also ferociously labor intensive.

You can not just pick these knives up and use them.  It takes practice and study  They also take care, to keep them from rusting, and to keep them razor sharp.  This is probably the reason that they are still in the old kitchens, and the reason they are rusting away as no one in the family uses them.  People use western styled stainless blades that work OK, not nearly as well, or as sharp, but OK.  I even see sushi chiefs using western styled knives these days.

I have found a few great blades in old junk shops for almost nothing, and am trying to fix them up for use.  The one below rotted the steel out of the handle.  The blade is great, but it is a bit of a challenge to figure a way to get a handle on it.

Energy Shift Parad, Yoyogi-shibuya-Omotesando

The march Sunday was very Japanese.  it was organized by Greenpeace among others.

It was for and called, "Energy Switch" -  A bit of Japanese English that was supposed to say. "Hey, we are not against anything, we just kind of think it would be a good idea to consider a switch to safer energy sources."  Which is a Japanese way to say, "Shut down the fucking nukes, now!"

It was well attended, and in a Japanese style organized, divided into 7 groups of about 1000 each, mothers and children first, A group with lots of banners after that.  I was in group number 6 don't know what our theme was supposed to be.  Behind us were people with instruments that can not play them well enough to actually entertain anyone, but are still capable of making some noise.  I would have been there had I brought a banjo. 

Each group was whisked through a very busy part of town surrounded by cops and so divided that we did not see any of the other groups beginning to end.  After I realized it was sort of like a Matsuri, Japanese festival, the way they organize the mikoshi, portable shrines.

It was a long time getting started and waiting, standing in our divided groups in the NHK parking lot.  We were over 7 thousand strong, but looked pretty weak when compared with the throng of people shopping in Shibuya and Omotesando that day.

When I was most beautiful

When I was most beautiful,
Cities were falling
And from unexpected places
Blue sky was seen.
When I was most beautiful,
People around me were killed.
And for paint and powder
I lost the chance.

Noriko Ibaragi (1957)

The above is part of a poem that Pete Seeger used to make a song some years ago.  It was about the end of the second world war, but I kept humming it during one pf my schools graduation this year.  Students were not allowed to wear pretty Kimono this year because of the earthquake/tsunami.


A lot of the past seems to be reflected in the current troubles.  I feel like visiting the Luck Dragon again.  It was interesting to restudy that incident that was the motivation behind that Japanese, then the world, Ban the Bomb movement, fighting above ground testing and the movie Godzilla.

Not the big one yet

A friend in Yokohama asked me about my earthquake experience, after 3 weeks I feel about what I felt those first few seconds of the shake.  It was kind of big, but for Tokyo not the big one at all.  Just a very smooth shake.  Tohoku of course got their big one.

I was in Maruzen bookstore.  No books fell.  In my studio (my Taisho built old wooden studio)  my banjo was still leaning against the wall where I left it.  Pretty smooth shake.

I put a link to William Faulkner's Nobel Prize speech up on my facebook yesterday.  It seems particularly appropriate to Japan, especially to the Tokyo area.  He was talking about fear of the bomb in 1950, but I think it is a lot of that pent up residual fear we see folks wallowing in here today.  Also we are being plagued but "the peaceful atom" a scam by the defense industry to make people more accepting of nuclear weapons.  Or perhaps just a by product there of, like the modern fertilizer industry after the WW2 bomb factories were looking what to do with their massive production of nitrogen.

So it goes. 

But none the less a sunny day.

 Faulkner's speech -
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

Terrorist Group

I was in Tokyo in 1995 when the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult bombed the subway here with sarin gas.  People were killed.  I was also in Tokyo watching TV when the religious Saudis ran commercial airlines into the World Trade Center in New York, where I used to live.

In spite of witnessing these two events I have to say that the Tokyo Electric Power Company, (TEPCO) is the most successful terrorist organization I have yet encountered in my 50 plus years on earth.  I do not believe it was TEPCO's purpose to spread terror.  But I do believe they have done it far better that any other group to date.

Fear of Food

The things up north promise to be a lot of trouble and heart ache for a long while, but will get better day by day.  Japanese are type A  people and will peck away at it and make it right.  Thought they have not seemed to be able to do the same politically yet.

Ginza sans neon

Ironically, things in Tokyo for me have been better than usual, probably because I have been mostly on vacation.  But in reality many changes are good changes.  People wasting less electricity, less cars on the roads, shorter lines at the movies.  Ginza all dark, but the pizza ovens are still gas fired and the pizza is better than 90% of the stuff you get in NY, thought my kids prefer a big slab of tomato cheese and dough and that's it.

For me it is mostly good.  It is a little like my feeling of the US housing crisis.  I would feel differently if my life savings were tied up in a house that went to shit.  But I like cheaper houses.  I think houses are for people to live in and not to pay the bank 1/3 of your income over 20 years - the cheaper the better.  I know there are a lot of economic shocks involved.  But they were too damned expensive and prices should fall.

One bad thing in Tokyo now is fear of food.  People hoard and people fear.  People are afraid of the water, of spinach, all greens really, soon it will be the meat and fish.  And not unreasonable fear.  Real answers about food safety are hard to get.  The government will sometimes talk about iodine, but cesium is not mentioned.  We know it is there but where and how much?

No one trusts the government to protect or even monitor the food supply, so we run on rumor and fear.  This is the country that came up with Minamata Disease, the poisoning of a whole population of people with mercury to protect the industries involved.

Tokyo announced the levels of Iodine in the water when it went over the legal limit, since then no numbers released, "Safe"  safe by 1% point, safe by a mile?

And again, when they announced iodine levels Cesium was not mentioned.  Cesium imitates potassium, your body takes it in and it never leaves.  It stays radioactive for 200 years, as opposed to iodine which is gone in a month.

I did notice at the National Ministry yesterday they had a cop out front on the sidewalk with that scary big stick they hold while on guard, and inside a cop with a gun, both firsts in my 20 years working in the ministry.  This Ministry is in charge of Nuclear safety and information.  I guess they think some one may have cause to be unhappy with them now.

Life goes on.  We will watch the vegetables, milk, fish and water, though how one does that I do not yet know.

A muddle

My life continues to be a muddle.  Yesterday I accomplish very little.  All this earthquakeing has thrown me off direction.  I managed to clean up a part of a hall way I had piled high with papers and notebooks, old lessons and test results for the last couple of years anyway.  Found some treasures I apparently don't really need not having seen them for over a year and not missing them.