re: Alan Cummings' comments on the Haino interview I'm living in Osaka at the moment, and while I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was going to smack my head on doorframes a lot when I moved here (which I did), I was really surprised to see that, while I *am* taller than the vast majority of the over-30 crowd, I'm not freakishly tall when compared with the current crop of high-school and university kids. (Still taller than average, mind you, but I've seen plenty of guys younger than me who also have to crouch to get out of a JR train.) Obviously, you can't hang this entirely on the (admittedly entertaining) image of some great corporate fist ramming Big Macs down everybody's throats, but when asked, a hell of a lot of the kids that I talk to at work will say that their favourite food is yakiniku (essentially barbecued beef, a recipe that was imported from... <liberal shudder> KOREA!). So, yeah, the Japanese diet has changed a lot, coming to incorporate red meat and dairy products on a much greater scale than ever before over the last 100 years or so, and when combined with the gradual changes in the health-care system (though as a Canadian, I have to admit that I hope I never have to spend any time in a hospital here), life span, body sizes, etc., are all changing. Still, as is the case with beef, nobody is forcing anyone here to buy Louis Vuitton purses, Vans, Eminem CDs, or the like. On the other hand, it's hard not to find something creepy about presence of the Gap store across the road from the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. It's strange, actually, finding myself living here and wondering why more of the locals aren't as routinely frustrated by the overwhelming foreign cultural presence as, say, my roommate and I are. I'm sure that there is just as much of a poo-pooing of these "cultural impurities" as you're likely to find in the underground/indie scene at home, but as with so many other things in this country, I'll be damned if much of it is open to me as a foreigner, and now that I think about it, that's probably worth considering as a part of what Haino is saying. Until 1853, Japan had been pretty much entirely closed off from the rest of the world (though trade with Korea had continued during their 200+ years of self-imposed isolation); we're coming up on the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Matthew Perry and his little convoy of warships that pretty much demanded the signing of a trade treaty that has made all of these changes possible. When I think about all of the swell things my parents and grandparents have to say about the cultural contributions of immigrants to Canada, it doesn't seem completely out of line for somebody who wants to hold on to some sense of his country's uniqueness (and you wouldn't believe the number of Japanese who insist that their country *is* completely unlike any other on the planet, never mind having borrowed almost all of their language from the Chinese and/or the fact that huge swaths of what is said in the context of popular culture reporting is said in a mangled sort of Japlish) to start thumping his chest a bit in an interview. My, but that was wordy. re: the other thing I got to thinking about a philosophy professor that I had a class with a long while back last week, and particularly a tape that he lent me at one point. It was a fairly old mail-order effort that some guy had evidently made in his home, and included recordings of a dozen-odd solo piano compositions written by Friedrich Nietzsche. Does anybody out there have any idea if its still available, and if so, where I might get a copy? (I've found references to a couple of CDs online, but they look like they're almost all ensemble recordings.) Anyway, happy Saturday. -moi ______________________________________________________________________ Post your ad for free now! http://personals.yahoo.ca