NaNo NaNo

Yes, yours truly has decided to join the NaNoWriMo and NaNoBlogMo for this month. What an earth possesses me to do this, I have no clue. If you are interested, go to http://50000wordsinnovember.blogspot.com or just click the title "NaNo NaNo" above. Why such name? The National November Writing Month invites and challenges bloggers to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Yes, many a crap will have been produced by the end of this month, including mine. I am supposed to have written about 1600 words per day if I am to finish this on time, but as it is, I am already late!!! Second day, and I am only at 1006. Hm, the at-the-moment election coverage at CNN and BBC News do take away my focus, but what do they say about excuses?

Xmas Starts to Pop Up

In the mid-80s in the U.S., this was how things worked: Stores had their Christmas decorations and merchandise for sale the day after Thanksgiving. In the late 80s, Christmas-related items started to pop up after Halloween, moving one month ahead before Thanksgiving. Shortly thereafter, in the early 90s, Christmas items ridiculously showed up in July in a major department store in San Francisco, which is not too bad compared to the year-round Christmas-stores in some small towns somewhere in the United States.

Here in Tokyo, on my outing tonight, I saw the first hint of Christmas shopping season. With the temperature dropping steadily in Tokyo, with the light of day diminishing ever so quickly in the late afternoon, and with people donning their scarves and overcoats already, the Isetan department store in Shinjuku 3-chome started to put up their dripping lights, metallic red garlands, and glass balls. Just a few weeks ago, the Halloween decoration was up in several shops and cafés. I have yet to see how October 31 will actually be celebrated here: whether the Tokyoites will actually run around the city, go to work in costumes, or whether any locals (expats excluded) will go trick-or-treating.

My feeling was that in the U.S., holidays were mostly created so that retailers can have a reason for putting things on sale. Somewhere in the lobbying world of the Washington, D.C., there must be some reps from the card industry that tried to get new holidays created so as to generate new greetings cards and boost up sales. In Tokyo, there is already a new kind of day called "the White Day" in response to the Valentine's Day. You see, VD (yes, that's Valentine's Day) in Tokyo is for the women to "give things" to the men; therefore, the White Day was created so that the men could return the favor. There is yet any indication about what happens to children who give their parents something on Valentine's Day (why children do this to their parents in the first place really confuse the meaning of that day. Wasn't VD created for lovers or does the term 'lovers' have an expanded postmodernist meaning now?)

The original intent of Mother's Day and Christmas and the likes was to honor the people or the history involved, but really, these days, those holidays concerned more with what to get for whom rather than remembering the spirit of the event. Do I sound like a much repeated broken record out there? Perhaps. I better shut up and do my Xmas shopping now.

Here Quake, There Quake!

I thought I had left the earthquake country behind when I moved out of San Francisco, California, but the quake had found me hiding in Tokyo. Yep, just now, we experienced an earthquake followed by tremors in the longest span of time I had ever known. A year ago, when I was still living in San Francisco and my partner lived in Tokyo, we were talking on the phone. I was at home, and he was at a café with his colleagues. Suddenly, through the phone, he told me that he just experienced his first earthquake ever. Interestingly enough, few seconds later, in San Francisco, the earth moved under my feet. It was as if the ocean between us never existed with us experiencing different earthquakes in two separate countries at the same time.

Tonight's earthquake happened while we were both sitting in the study at home. We were both working on our computers when my partner alerted me of the first mild jolt. Immediately we looked at the Toraja (Indonesian) funerary dolls that I had placed on the top shelf of the bookcase; shortly thereafter came the swaying. My initial reaction was to head under the door frame, but foolish enough, I decided to ask my partner to join me in preventing the bookcases from falling. They were neither bolted down to the floor nor attached to the wall, and we had plenty of books. I thought if I were to die, I would like to be buried under those books.

Unlike any earthquake and aftershakes I have had before, this one had many tremors in the hours to come. Much later on while I was in the kitchen cleaning the counter, my partner rushed in and asked if I had felt another jolt. I said, "Not really," but as I just finished saying that, again I felt the ground shifting a bit. Then I saw the artwork swaying on the wall. We checked with CNN online and found out about the magnitude and center of the quake: "Ojiya, a city in Niigata prefecture (state), about 260 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Tokyo. The quake was about 20 kilometers (12 miles) beneath the earth's surface, the Meteorological Agency said."

The Autumnal Equinox

The most recent Japanese holiday celebrated the Autumnal Equinox, a time when the sun appeared to cross the celestial equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, this phenomenon ushered in the Fall Season. And so it really began: the unbearable heat and humidity of the summer days slowly gave way to the cooler and dryer fall weather. In the past week, since September 27, it has rained almost everyday. A typhoon was supposed to be working its way to the city, but the only evidence I saw was the gusty wind. If there was a rainstorm, it must have happened during the time when I was fast asleep.

Slowly, the leaves in our trees start to cover the earth in our garden. It is true that only in any place that truly observes the four seasons could one appreciate the change of the season. I have lived in San Francisco for over ten years, but the year-round beautifully mild weather of the Bay Area had always left only a tiny hint for me that we were entering a new season. Here in Tokyo, where for the past three months I have been wearing the heat and humidity of my skin, I am now exchanging it gladly for the cape of cool breeze and occasional sprinkles.

Honor Thy Handicapped

When I was a student at Vanderbilt University many light years ago, I had a Classical Mythology professor, F. Carter Philips, who was an advocate for access for the physically disabled. I never recalled him mentioning anything about it in class, but one day, I saw him in a wheelchair, wheeling himself to the lecture hall. I thought that he had been in an accident, but as it turned out, once a year in Vanderbilt, he encouraged the students to pick up a "disability" and to act like it for an entire day to see how life could be for a person with a disability. I chose to be blind for a day, but nary an hour passed before I chickened out. To be blindfolded, holding a stick, standing in a busy intersection, and attempting to cross the road was way too nerve wracking for me. The exercise had an obvious objective: until we experienced how it was to be in such a condition, we would never be able to understand how frustrating it could be to live with a disability. The exercise also taught us to appreciate what we normally took for granted.

Long before professor Philips, however, my parents had taken us as children to the school for the blinds (my father was an ophthalmologist). Further, my high school (Loyola College Prep in Shreveport, Louisiana) obliged us to complete certain hours of volunteer work, which I chose to do at the Shriner's Hospital for Crippled Children. In the 70s, my maternal grandfather was semi-paralyzed from stroke, and decades later, in 1995, my father survived a massive stroke but ended up in a wheelchair. Disability is therefore rather a familiar sight, and I thank my parents, Loyola, and Vanderbilt for further educating me on the subject.

Compared to some other countries, the U.S.A. to me is very accessible for people with disability. Ramps leading to buildings, wider bathrooms in public restrooms, Braille on the elevator buttons, TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf) and elevators are things that we tend to take for granted. In Hong Kong and in Japan, I see "guiding mark" on the sidewalks and lobby of certain buildings. These marks are rows of dashes (for straight walks) and rows of dots (for intersections or the beginning of steps). People with visual disability (the blinds) will "walk" their canes along these lines and dots to navigate them around the city. There are chimes or some sound that some traffic lights make to guide the blinds in crossing the roads. Other places in Asia, such as in Indonesia, attempt to accommodate people in wheelchairs by creating ramps, but these ramps are usually too steep (think about a 45-degree ramp) and/or too slick (in Asia, polished tiles are the norm in malls and shopping centers). None of these facilities will have any meaning without an understanding from the general population. In Indonesia, when my father was on a middle level of any shopping center, he had difficulties getting an elevator to go up and/or down; no one would yield to him. If we waited until the elevator came back down, it would be full; by the time it came back up, it was already full again. The elevator attendant, if there was one, most likely did not react to anything except for some pocket money.

In Takashimaya, a huge department store at the heart of Shinjuku, there are elevators designated for people with disabilities, parents with strollers, and seniors. One elevator even has two uniformed attendants, while the other ones are on the honor system. When there are attendants, it becomes much easier because they can bar unqualified people from boarding, but with the other no-attendant handicap elevators, it is a hit and miss.

At one time, when one of these designated elevators opened, it was chock full. This was not the first time that it had happened. Quickly I scanned the elevator and saw that 90% of the occupants were mostly young people who did not seem to need such an elevator. They all just stared at us and at the people with strollers behind us, but not a single person volunteered to get out. I paid no attention and decided to push my father's wheelchair and take my 72-year old mother and squeezed all of us in that crammed elevator. They were aghast that I would push the wheelchair into such a crowded elevator, but I simply met their disbelieving stares with daggers flying out of my eyes. Still, no one got off, but they can suit themselves. Few floors down, the door opened, and a befuddled woman with a stroller looked disappointed at the crammed elevator. I shot glances at the people around me to get them to understand that someone else more qualified needed the space, but either they were oblivious or they avoided eye contact. Behind the woman, four other sets of parents with strollers frowned.

Clearly no one in Japan wants to offend. On the one hand, the woman and the other parents with the strollers did not raise any voice, not wanting to confront; on the other hand the people in the elevator avoided eye contact and were either oblivious, inconsiderate, or just too ashamed to do anything else. I wanted so much to drive another point by getting out of the elevator and give my space to the woman with the stroller facing me, but as it was, my parents and I had been skipped by several elevators, too. Maybe I, too, was too selfish and inconsiderate.

The week before, in the same department store, we had been waiting for a long time, but when it opened, five healthy-looking ladies got on it and were turned down. The ladies did not budge, and as a result, we were asked to wait. Forget it; I seized the first available regular elevator and went up all right. It was a good thing that the store provided these designated elevators and the attendants, but as I said before, without a general understanding from the population, this would be worthless; even the attendants needed to be sterner.

The Narita Airport has an acceptable wheelchair facilities. Just like it is in most of the international airports in the world, it sends a staff member to aid the handicapped, including a separate lane for immigration and customs.

Tokyo has done some good in providing access to the disabled, but it could do more. The many subway stations still need better access, such as elevators, even platforms or designated ramps for boarding the trains (in some stations, a Metro staff, when alerted, will stand and wait for a train that carries a handicapped person; the staff will then lay down a wooden ramp that bridge the gap from the train to the platform.) Major stations do provide these, like the Tokyo and the Omotesando stations. There have also been many people who had provided help without being asked for; those Good Samaritans do exist. In Roppongi Hills one Saturday, unsolicited, two people rushed to help my partner and me lifting my father's wheelchair while descending a flight of stairs. At another time, a woman about to cross the road helped hold the door to a taxicab while I was trying to position my father. She missed her cross, but her help was much appreciated. The society does revere the older generation, and the older generation seems not to want to be dependent on the young ones. I am very confident that the people with disability here, just like disabled people elsewhere in the world, would like very much to be independent; however, for that to be realized, much more had to be done, and it can start simply with an understanding and appreciation from the people around them.