The Gospel According To Marc - Part 1: Spirituality

I've said it before. I'm not a big fan of self-help culture. It's essentially hokum. It's pop psychology but lacking any scientific rigour. It also has elements of being a cult because usually there's a book or even a series of books to buy.

It think the most spiritual idea I've ever found in contemporary society is Fight Club. One could say that Fight Club has Buddhist influences. "I say never be complete. Let the chips fall where they may."

I think my big argument with this kind of spiritual, self-help garbage is that it's all about conformity and fitting in. (More about this in later posts). Maybe it should be regarded less as self-help and more as a kind of Stepfordism.

There are also the professional 'non-conformists' who abound in publishing, and on business advice and productivity websites. Usually there's a 'wacky' or even 'zany' picture of them, or else it's a shot of them building an orphanage in Africa while they live on their trust fund for a year. These people operate on the 'buy my book and you can be just like me' slogan but seriously, a four-hour work week and retiring at 35 just isn't going to happen for most people because we have real problems to work through, not problems like which Granola bar to buy but more like how to get out of credit card debt.

I say eschew these phoneys, and that's about the only advice that you'll ever get on this site. If you're really into the idea of letting somebody else do your thinking for you, join one of the established religions because at least they have upwards of 1000 years experience in doing that.

Me, I just do what I like providing that nobody's going to get hurt on the way. If you trust your instincts, brush your teeth twice a day and don't shave side-to-side then there's really nothing that can go wrong.

Guide to the Japan Blog Landscape

It does seem that almost everybody in Japan and their dog has a blog. There are several archetypes: some painful, some awesome, some painfully, awesomely bad.

My Crazy Adventures In Japan

Typical post pattern:

"I went to a town that has no Starbucks and the McDonalds is ten-minutes walk from the train station. Did you know that Japanese people eat octopus and squid. Lol!"

Anime blog:

Typical post-pattern:

"The reason that Gundam is better than Star Wars is that Gundam's universe, while not as complex as that of Star Wars, is based more in reality and gives one a truer reflection of the culture that created it."

Should Have Gone Home or Not Come at All

Typical post-pattern:

"I hate my life. Japan is stupid. They don't even have proper toilets like back home. The ATMs close at 3 p.m. Why can't I find Famous Amos cookies here?"

Well-Meaning, Earnest but Misinformed


Typical post-pattern:

"You can come to Japan without a visa and teach for 90 days in Starbucks and live in an internet cafe. I know a guy who knows a guy who knows somebody who did this and he made a million yen but spent it all searching for that schoolgirl-panties vending machine."


Boring Blogs About What I Ate For Dinner


No need to write a pattern. Check the un-understand archives at the side.

Anyway, if one were so inclined, you could send me a link to a Japan blog that you think is good in the comments.

Invisible

As a person who has spent a long period of time in the past with bored adolescents in the bodies of bored adults, I have been asked the question "If you could have any super power, what super power would you have?" more times than I care to remember.

I honestly don't know, and I'm not sure I really care, but one thing would scare me: invisibility.

To the narcissistic, being invisible is our worst nightmare. Nobody to acknowledge our existence, to tell us how interesting, beautiful, engaging or life-changing we are.

As one gets older, one finds that invisibility just happens. People don't look twice at you. Certainly, fewer people wish to talk to you and one is never heard quite so clearly as in one's youth.

Maybe this is why teenagers tend not to blog so much as twenty and thirty-somethings. They're too busy living and being gazed upon while we're shouting desperately for attention, trying desperately to keep attention in case we become invisible and cease even, perhaps, to exist.

Notes on a Musical Youth

Self indulgence warning!



When I was a teenager I absolutely knew that I'd be famous. I was hooked on music. I poured every drop of my being into music. All for nothing. It was fun while it lasted, apart from the final few months of a band who lived in each others' pockets, whined about each other and kept the knives sharp. We're all friends now, bar one. Not that I see them much anymore, but that's a geography thing, not down to disliking them (because I don't). We were all pretty bad at keeping in touch anyway.

Instead of messing about moving here and there I wonder if I would have become a musician had I stayed in Sunderland, working in a call centre or subtitling darts and wrestling. It's possible, but then I know that my ego would only have got in the way of me doing anything with any kind of musical ability that may have come about.

I can write this with impunity because nobody in Sunderland ever reads this blog at all. I don't even think my friends from university do either.

I think that perhaps my band's biggest talent was drinking, or maybe that was mine. I did my share, because it was rock and roll. I intended to give up drinking several times but the singer insisted I was boring without a drink. Episodes with drink included drinking a whole bottle of vodka at a party, going clubbing and being refused entry, then proving my sobriety by performing press ups and star jumps, eventually being allowed in and then falling down two flights of stairs. In another incident I almost got me, the singer and a friend into a fight after swing my belt around pissed and thinking I could be just like Iggy Pop. I got a smack in the face and fell backwards in broken glass. I also fell into broken glass on a walk home before and drank more vodka at a the bassist's flat to numb the pain of pulling a three-inch shard out of my hand from behind the gristle of my palm.



Maybe on the whole, the band's talent was resenting each other. We resented the singer because he was full of self-pity; we resented the bass player for his popularity with women, and also for not realising it; we resented the other guitarist for his ambition; they probably resented me for my narcissism (when starting the band I once quipped that it should be called the Marc Jones Experience). Nobody resented the drummer except, perhaps, the drummer. The bassist and singer were the best of friends who also hated each other's guts because the bassist could sing much better and had ten times the charisma of the singer. The singer was very good at writing lyrics but not very good at singing them. And he hated singing the songs I wrote but had no choice due to lack of songs otherwise.

We loved other bands. We hated other bands. We even did both at the same time sometimes. Just not as much as we loved and hated each other.

I did not become a pop star. I'm not even a musician of any description any more. Maybe I already am what I'll be. I keep children marginally entertained enough to teach them five new words of English every week and have conversations with people who want me to correct their grammar and let them know what the long words I use mean. I don't mind it but it was never part of my planned trajectory. I could do it long term but quite how well it will go down when I'm old and grey is questionable.

I know the tone is bitter if not downright miserable and I don't honestly like posting like this but I suppose that you're all adults and you can take a bit of dark meat along with the jelly and ice cream.

A few friends who work in music meet their heroes and pursue what used to be a hobby for a living. It makes me jealous and relieved. Jealous because I'd love to be the one meeting the people behind my favourite albums, but I'm also relieved because I don't think I could handle it. I'd be either in prison or in Alcoholics Anonymous by now if I were doing what they were doing and having the Facebook contacts and Twitter followers they are having.

I honestly looked forward to being thirty because I thought I'd finally have everything sorted, and I don't mean a musical career because those days are long gone. I thought I might become a writer but more importantly I thought I might get a private life that was successful. Instead, things unravelled. I now live in a crap flat that's too hot in Summer and too cold in Winter with the only violence that occurs in Tokyo within earshot.

There is a little bit of sugar coating though. Things that unravel can sometimes be knitted into new and surprising garments. My girlfriend can knit, sew and crochet too.

Strange Weather

Yesterday it was humid enough to have thunder and lightning occur with only the merest hint of drizzle. Despite the lack of rain, I had to stay indoors due to a phobia of being struck by lightning.

Apparently the instances of lightning striking people has been increasing (according to a documentary I saw in 2007). And it mostly happens in cities.

In addition to being housebound for a couple of hours, I have sunburn from walking around taking photographs on film in Ogikubo with Brent.

Here's a pic from my Flickr stream (not taken in Ogikubo).

You don't know what I did this summer. Oh, you do.

Taking photos, and scanning old ones on my new film scanner.



Writing, that is redrafting the old book I thought I finished. I got about 30% redrafted so far.

Too much internet.

Comforting Princess Prettygood, whose new job is at least as bad as her old one, if not worse.

Holiday, it *could* be so nice

The summer holidays are great, aren't they? What better time to catch up on the mountain of laundry and cleaning that you haven't done for ages. Today, despite waking up at 11 o' clock I managed to sweep and scrub my floor, do two loads of laundry, throw out the expired food that was in my fridge.

In addition, seeing as my book got rejected with some cracking advice to make it a bit longer, I've been working on yet another redraft. Despite the lovely weather outside I've managed to get about a third of it done.

Next on the to do list: throw out all old papers I don't need (tomorrow is the paper recycling collection day), sort out all the photos I need for a competition and try to have more of a social life.

Best Coast

In a rare music post, I have decided to share a YouTube Video by Best Coast, who have rudely interrupted my Serge Gainsbourg addiction. It also has lip-synching in the video which I usually hate as it contravenes my artistic tastes, but this video is basically rather good indeed.

Enjoy!

Differences Between Japan and the UK

It's the summer holidays! What better time for obsessive blogging?

Since I have been teaching English to mainly Japanese people, I have been asked countless times with varying degrees of perfection in the grammar, "What is the UK like?"

The answer comes out with a bit of waffle but is effectively summed up by "Er, I dunno, I just come from there."

So then we look at the reason I am in Japan. In comparison there appears to be less violent crime. There is still the sensationalism in the media of extremely violent and/or bizarre crime. But I've never had anyone try to mug me in Japan. I've been mugged once in Sunderland and had three attempts that were unsuccessful. If, in an Un-Understand first, we check the United Nations data for deaths by assault for 2005-2006, it does appear that the UK is more violent that Japan, with a UK rate of 0.7 per 100,000 people compared with 0.5 per 100,000 for Japan.

Japan also has a lower infant mortality rate, which is a significant social indicator. Japan has a rate of 3.2 deaths per 1,000 live births. The UK has 4.8. As I mentioned, this is a massive social indicator; Zambia has a rate of 94.6 deaths per 1,000 live births. (All data for the years 2005-2010). So the UK and Japan are comparable, but Japan fares slightly better.

"Ah, but England is a very beautiful country!" my students would say at this point. Perhaps. It's the whole Peter Rabbit country myth, where the UK is still a green island, with one city only - London - where everyone commutes by a red double-decker bus and every man wears a bowler hat and carries a black umbrella.

The UN data shows that the UK had a forested area of 11.9% in 2007 compared to Japan's 68.2%. That Japanese figure is staggering: a relatively small archipelago, much like the UK, but with over 5 times as much forest. I looked at Google Maps just to check this out.

Japan looks like it has about 30% -40% grey on it's map:


大きな地図で見る

Wheres the UK has about 50% grey, and it's nearly all England south of the Peak District and east of the West Country.


大きな地図で見る

"Oh, but Marc, you're just slating England."

Absolutely not. There are some fantastic things about England. We help more refugees (and others of concern to the UNHCR. The UK had 306702 by the end of 2008, whereas Japan had only 5880. I know this is because it's more likely that refugees have a greater likelihood of some English language experience than Japanese language experience, but still!

The UK government spent a greater proportion of GDP on education in 2005-2008. Britain spends 5.6% compared to Japan's 3.5%. Cuba's was 13.3% though.

Other highlights of both countries:

Japan
Cheaper to eat out. Public transport reliably good. Technological innovation. I see more people reading books.

The UK
Better music. Free museums. I see fewer people playing video games in public.

References:

UN Data for Cuba, Japan, the UK, Zambia.
The above embedded Google Maps.
My own experience.

Film Photography Tips from a Non-Expert

Last week, somebody on Flickr asked me for advice on taking photographs.

Me. I've only been shooting film a little over a year. Saying that, I do have video experience from university and so on, so I have some basic compositional knowledge. However, this person was all about the technical stuff.




The Sunny 16 rule. In a nutshell, set shutter speed to the ISO/ASA number of your film or higher. Then set aperture according to light conditions: f22 sun with sand or snow, f16 sunny normal, f11 hazy sun, f8 cloudy, f5.6 overcast, f4 dark clouds.

It's also worth knowing that your depth of field increases with the f number (also known as f stop). To get greater depth of field on a darker day, you'll need to up your f-stop and decrease your shutter speed.

I was also asked about good films. I don't know really but films I have really liked are:

Colour Negative: Fuji Superia 400, Fuji Venus 800, Kodak Ektar 100 (current favourite), Ferrania Solaris 200, DNP Centuria 200 (this last one is no longer available, I believe).

Black and White: Only ever tried and got developed Rollei Ortho 25 which was expired but was lovely.

Colour Reversal (slide): Fuji Trebi 100C is nice to process as a negative. I've never shot slide as slide because developing costs a bit more and slide film is quite unforgiving with exposure apparently, though I may shoot some in the holidays.

Other useful resources are: I Still Shoot Film and searching Flickr groups.

So, there's your rank amateur advice.