Hunkabutta Archives
12.25.02

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Another Christmas has come and gone.

One of the toughest things about living abroad is missing out on all of the annual rituals and family get-togethers back home. You take them for granted when you're young, but when you're older and you don't have access to those events, you miss them.

Christmas here was subdued, but it was still pretty cool. It felt great giving presents to Jack even though at age one and a half he was just as interested in the wrapping as he was in the presents themselves.

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Two of Karen's friends from Vancouver, Julie and Mark, are coming today to stay for a week or so.

What this means for you is that there should soon be a lot of new pictures on Hunkabutta of the various tourist attractions around Tokyo.

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I came across an interesting article on the politics of consumption today via wood s lot. It was written by Juliet Schor. Dr. Schor seems to be one of those rare academics who can write a scholarly paper that has the feel of popular literature but doesn't seem trite or condescending.

Her work on the economics of consumption is tied in to some interesting social debates and grassroots organizations such as The Center for a New American Dream.

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12.22.02

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Yesterday our friend from the neighbourhood, Kayako, took us to a small bonenkai (end of year) party at a little school about an hour outside of Tokyo where she teaches English a few times a month.

She reserved a room at a local community center. There were only about six or seven kids and their moms, but it was fun. We sat around on the floor, ate chips and donuts, and played English bingo. Jack had a great time running around with the other kids.

Karen has been calling me 'Mr. Donut' all day because of a certain faux pas of mine: I ate my Mr. Donut cream puff without waiting for everyone else to get theirs first. Looking back on it, I should have known better, but I was just too hungry to wait.

It's customary when eating communal food to wait until everyone has a portion before you eat your own. I've known this for a long time. But yesterday when I was the first person to get their cream puff my stomach got the best of my cultural sensitivities and I immediately scarfed it down in about two bites. Karen pretended to be mortified, but I guess it wasn't really that big of a deal.

Nobody said anything about it, but then on the other hand, the people here are so tactful that I could have run through the room naked and screaming and nobody would have said anything.

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12.19.02

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Jack has a cold and he kept us up the other night coughing and whining -- poor little guy. He's fine now, so don't worry. That night I hardly got any sleep, but of course I had to go into work the next morning anyway. So, do you know what I did? That day at work I took a long nap while sitting at my desk. I just slouched down in my chair, leaned way back, rested my chin on my chest, and drifted away.

This might sound strange, but sleeping at your desk at work is okay in Japan, people do it all the time, though I generally try to avoid it. This is not something that is done in secret. Most Japanese offices (in fact all the ones that I've been in) are open concept, so when you sleep you're right out there in the middle of the room for everyone to see.

Once I even saw a guy lie a tarp down and sleep on the floor beside his desk.

There are a few reasons why sleeping at work is permissible here even though there is generally a very strong 'over work' ethic.

First of all, if you sleep at your desk people assume that it's because you worked late the night before and didn't get enough sleep at home. This is kind of counterintuitive to most Westerners -- The more you sleep the more you appear to be a hard worker.

A second reason why it's okay to sleep at work is because people do often work incredibly long hours, so they really have no choice. If you're at the office for 14 or 15 hours a day, and spend two hours a day on the train commuting back and forth to work, then nobody's really going to begrudge you a cat nap.

Finally, people sleep at work because they come in no matter how sick they are. There is no such thing as 'sick leave' in Japan. If you stay home sick, then that time comes off your 'holiday' time, which I think is usually about 10 days a year. Sick people need to sleep, it's as simple as that.

It's after 1:00 a.m. now as I write this and I'm feeling pretty sleepy. Maybe I will take another nap at work tomorrow...just this one last time.

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12.16.02

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I don't have time to write anything today so I'm just going to leave you with some pictures of the going away party that I went to last Friday. It was at a yaki-niku (grilled meat) restaurant.

Enjoy.

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I can't help but mention this really cool new google viewing utility that I came across on ericalba.org. Check it out now!

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