From one edge of the world to the other
Plus why we travel
There’s only so much we can do.
So do what you can.
Over the past week Cyclone Gabrielle has been wreaking havoc on New Zealand, most notably the eastern coast of the North Island.
This is one of the most beautiful places of one of the most beautiful places in the world. It’s also a place I used to travel to annually for rugby tournaments, so this hit rather close to home.
Long story short, I just donated to the support efforts.
Who needs a passport?
Where I live in north Japan, it’s almost a point of pride people here don’t have passports. It’s something like 10% of people living in Tohoku having one.
This is ridiculous. I don’t know how you could live a full life without ever not even wanting to go see how other humans inhabit the world.
But that’s not what I want to get at.
As those of us who have been overseas know, travel and interaction with other cultures teaches you so much more about your own culture than you could ever imagine.
We travel to learn more about ourselves. Or at least, that seems to be a byproduct of travel.
Maybe they’re too humble. Maybe they just don’t want to be selfish.
Or maybe they’ve found the perfect life and don’t feel the need to tell the world about it.
Maybe that’s what it is.
Characters showing character
When I applied for my job at a university here, I gave them a handwritten resume.
Japanese people take such pride in the printing of characters. Being able to write them ‘correctly’ is seen as of the utmost importance. So much so you can be marked wrong on a test for having the wrong stroke order (I’m not even joking).
With an alphabet of over 2000 characters needed to read a newspaper, that is asking a lot.
If you’ve been out of the loop, I’ll give you the heads’ up.
The Japanese language has three alphabets: Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana.
But why?
In 2021, I came across a mountain named after a centuries-old pot full of handwritten sutras shoved into a gap between two rocks. It was such an interesting find I went on to describe in detail exactly how these alphabets came about.
Kyogakura-san “The Peak of Sutras”.
Then this week on Twitter, Gaijin Otosan asked some questions about Japanese, and he got a very interesting response from DavidBHimself. A response that was turned into an interesting blog post indeed:
Why is the Japanese language still using Kanji? (and a few more questions about Japanese writing)
On the blog
This week, focus on what you’re focusing on. Make it a forethought. Increase your output by increasing your ideas, but not before convincing the right number of people it needs doing. And if you’re having trouble doing something, try the black jellybean theory, then remind yourself that it’s not the tools, it never was.
Here’s something that’s been brewing in my mind for a while now but I never fully articulated: Happy Yet Hungry.
And finally, some musings on the Asian squat.
That’s it for this week
Let me know what you enjoyed, and what you didn’t. I’ll try and get more of the good stuff out to you.
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Ka kite ano.
Tim.