More sakura love and urban fun

So, it's been a little while. Things have been kinda crazy and kinda random, but then again, that's often the way life is out here in Japan. On Thursday, Aaron and I caught the sakura fever and decided to make our way up to Osakiyama Park near Sanjo to take a look at the blossoms there. The journey itself was a bit of an adventure, but the blossoms were definitely beautiful. I also loved the view from the top of the mountain - it gave a rare glimpse of Sanjo and Tsubame, with Mt. Yahiko looming in the distance.


Sanjo and Mt. Yahiko, Osakiyama Park
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Kristi, Osakiyama Park
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Afterwards, Aaron and I decided to go to Pizza Hut for dinner. That in itself was fairly unusual, given that it was only our third time visiting the place since arriving in Japan. But lo and behold, who should we run into but Sarah and Nuria? Anyway, the four of us enjoyed our gaijin fare and then topped it off by visiting the brand new Baskin Robbins in Tsubame. (It's telling when these kinds of places are exciting, isn't it?)

Anyway, my very blustery Friday was spent down in Nagaoka at a Board of Education meeting, and Saturday I hung out with some old friends in an attempt to escape Niigata for a while. Again, yay for onsen. Saturday night I met up with Melissa, Kate, Kayvohn, and Errol for a little fun out in Niigata City. We went to a place called Hallelujah, which ended up being a lot of fun.


Kristi, Kate, & Melissa, Hallelujah
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

And now it's Monday and the day has been pure insanity. I just taught five classes in a row, something that has never happened before. And I also didn't know about any of them beforehand, so talk about starting things off with a bang. :) I'm happy though, my least favorite JTE left and has been replaced by one who seems fairly nice and very capable. Looks like tomorrow is going to be crazy too - I kinda feel like I should go straight home and just start sleeping now. ;)

Undeniably Spring

You know, it just isn't springtime in Japan until the cherry blossoms have graced you with their presence. The sakura is Japan's unofficial national flower, and it's amazing how culturally important it is. Actually, when the word "flower" is used in traditional Japanese poetry, it generally refers to the sakura. Even now, people closely follow the sakura forecast for an estimation of when the flowers will come to their town. And once they appear, it's time for hanami, a tradition of eating and drinking with family and friends under the blossoming trees that has been around since the 700s. I swear, it's all any of my Japanese friends have talked about for the last couple of months.

So, this past weekend, the sakura really started coming out in Niigata (pretty late, really), and as expected, they're beautiful. I took a walk around Kamo yesterday to take in the springtime beauty and snap a few pictures. Cherry blossoms are fickle things; the slightest bit of wind or bad weather can send them away as quickly as they came. That's part of the Japanese fascination with them, of course - they symbolize the fleeting nature of life. Anyway, I'm going to be quiet now and show you the pictures.


Spring Sunset, Kamo River
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Cherry Blossoms, Kamo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

I really like that last one, but it is better appreciated at a larger size. Been shooting in RAW lately, and it makes me wonder how I ever coped without it.

Anyway, it's been an extremely busy day at school. I taught four classes in a row this morning, something that's only happened once before. And I'm basically designing a new English curriculum to be published in book form, which is a huge task. Better get back to that. ;)

Why Japan doesn't have Daylight Savings Time

Sunrise, Mt. Fuji
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

So, this post is a bit late, but did you know that Japan doesn't observe daylight savings time? I was baffled when I discovered this but never really received a satisfactory explanation for its absence, other than the fact that it "used to have it". So, I decided to do a little digging to figure this thing out.

Today, more than 70 countries have adopted daylight savings time. Of the 29 OECD countries, only Japan, South Korea and Iceland don't observe the convention. In Japan, daylight savings time (sanma taimu) was introduced after World War II by the U.S. Occupation authorities imposed DST on May 1, 1948, as a means to combat coal and power shortages, explaining the regime was being installed to "promote the health and welfare of the Japanese people, conserve valuable resources and to cultivate an appreciation of time among the Japanese." (The Japan Times, Aug. 10, 2005)

Only three years later, in October 1951, the Diet passed a bill to dump the unpopular system, less than a month after the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed. It was abolished in April 1952, as soon as the GHQ packed up and departed from Tokyo's Yurakucho district. A government poll in 1951 showed 53 percent of the Japanese wanted to scrap daylight savings time, as opposed to 30 percent who wanted to keep it. There seem to be several different reasons for this opposition.

• Some say that lack of prior debate and the execution of daylight savings time just three days after the bill was passed generated deep hatred of the concept. Daylight savings time suddenly became equated with the humiliation of defeat; it was seen as something the GHQ forced on the people, and this continues to hinder the movement. Bad memories of the Occupation still haunt Web sites critical of daylight savings, with messages like "Daylight-saving time is fascist!" "It is a pain to change the clock, and it's hard on people's biological clocks." "People will lose sleep, and be made to work more overtime."
  
• This fear of over-work seems to be another explanation. Several business sectors have expressed concerns that the measure could result in workers voluntarily working longer hours. The truth of it seems to be suspect. One article in The Japan Times claims that many people opted to work after their regular workday had ended during the Occupation. But another article cites that the Japan Council of Metalworkers' Unions found that labor hours fell during daylight savings time.
  
• According to Japan scholar John Dower, daylight savings time was opposed on the grounds that it simply extended the difficulty of "daily" life. Dower describes a condition of exhaustion and despondency in Japan immediately after the war, causing people to prefer an earlier darkening so they could escape into sleep or drink. In today's prosperous and seemingly happier Japan though, it seems like it shouldn't be very relevant.
  
• Another reason seems to be that the Ministry of Education was concerned that lighter evenings would entice school children from their homework. (Um...)

Anyway, there are some very sound reasons to introduce daylight savings to Japan, although it's hard to "prove" them. Experts say the change would increase the amount of usable sunlight per day, cutting crude oil use by 930,000 kiloliters and greenhouse gas emissions by 40 tons. The Japan Productivity Center further estimates that 100,000 new jobs and 970 billion yen in additional economic benefits would be generated by shopping and leisure as people take advantage of the brighter evenings.

It seems like change is in the wind though. On April 22, 2005, a group of lawmakers on Friday approved a package of draft bills to introduce daylight-saving time nationwide, with an eye to submitting them to the Diet next month, members of the group said.The change would be implemented in 2007 and would be reviewed three years later, the draft bills say. Some municipalities, such as the Sapporo Municipal Government, have experimented with daylight-saving time. In June 2005, hundreds of companies and government offices launched a 42-day daylight-saving experiment in Hokkaido as part of a campaign to turn it into a national practice. Some 15,000 employees came to and left work an hour earlier than usual. Doesn't seem like anything has really happened since, at least that I could find.

Kinda random, but somehow, it seems very fitting for Japan.

Guess I wasn't quite done yet

So, I was accepted to a seventh graduate school today - UC San Diego just came through with an offer of admission and a full four-year funding package. Wow. It's probably best that I didn't know about this last week. At least I finally got denied by the University of Michigan (where I was also initially waitlisted) - that keeps things a little more sane. :)

Final Final Grad School Results

Admitted to:
UC Berkeley
Princeton
Cornell
UC San Diego
UCLA
University of Wisconsin
University of Washington

Denied at:
Harvard
University of Chicago
Columbia
University of Michigan

Koinobori and the coming of spring

Spring is cementing its hold on Niigata, slowly but surely. To celebrate, the city of Kamo holds an annual festival. Somehow, I'd been so wrapped up in my thoughts that I almost failed to notice it (it's quite impressive when you consider how close I live to Kamo River and the Omi Shrine, two of the city's cultural hot spots).

Koinobori are carp-shaped flags that play a role in many Japanese festivals; they are traditionally flown to celebrate Children's Day in May. Traditionally, the Japanese associate carp with boys because of the strength of carp that swim upstream. In Kamo, huge streamers ranging in size from one to over three meters are suspended over the river and allowed to flutter in the wind. It makes for a rather magical atmosphere - and a good place for a person to destress after a long day at work.


Koinobori, Kamo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Koinobori, Kamo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Koinobori, Kamo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Koinobori, Kamo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Old Downtown, Kamo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

I am quite fond of this place.

The Decision

I am happy to announce that this fall I will be beginning a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The official acceptance forms have been sent in and I'm currently in the midst of sending decline notices and thank you emails to the dozens of people who have helped me during this deliberation process. Started looking at fall courses today and felt a glimmer of excitement here and there. Maybe it will all be all right.

In other news, today was a very rainy and blustery day in Kamo. I've been holed up inside my apartment - things just don't look inviting out there. Been watching a lot of TV; I definitely get my money's worth out of my cable subscription. But they recently deprived me of my daily 1-hour Simpsons fix, which I find really distressing. That 6-7 pm time slot got me through a lot of rough times out here. The Saturday viewing was a little lacking, so I started watching the first season of Lost on DVD, something I picked up on my last jaunt through the U.S. *Highly* addictive. I look forward to spending many hours engrossed in it.

Oh, and Star and I decided to go to Okinawa for a weekend in May. Should be an islandy good time. Yay for the Niigata Airport.

U.S.A. Whirlwind Trip Report

So, I made it back to Japan and am actually writing this from my desk at work. Of course, there's incredibly little to do, given that the kidlings are all on vacation. But I am fairly happy just to be sitting still and on my way to absolutely nowhere in the near future.

The last week was really too crazy to relay in detail, but I'll try to hit a few of the high points. It all started on Thursday night, when I took the shinkansen to Ueno station and was met by Star, who had ever so kindly pre-located a yakiniku restaurant for us to feast at (I'm so predictable). Our friend Richard was in town, taking a break from his busy grad student life in Syracuse, so we hung out a little that night and Friday morning. Star and I saw a few of the first cherry blossoms in Ueno Park and I would have gone back to see more, had time not run out on me.


Richard and Kristi, Tokyo
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

After that, it was off to the U.S.! I didn't sleep much on the plane. I find the games and movies on the Northwest Airbus flight to be quite addictive, btw - highly recommended. Anyway, I took care of some business in Seattle and got to hang out with my brother and Adam for a little while, which was nice. Oh, and I got a much-needed haircut.


Chris, sporting his DMZ souvenir
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

After that, it was off on the whirlwind graduate school tour. After two planes, two trains, and a lot of walking, I arrived at Princeton University and embarked on a series of appointments bookended by a lunch and a dinner with various graduate students and faculty. I really liked a few of the people I met, particularly Jennifer Widner and Lynn White. The program has hired something like 16 new faculty in the last year and a half and about 60% of the faculty has been there for 3 years or less, indicating some sweeping changes and perhaps an exciting department to come. But things could also go the other way. I'm going to refrain from saying anything that could be considered "sensitive information", so you should ask me if you have specific questions. The funding was definitely a big selling point for Princeton, one that came up again and again - not too surprising, given that Princeton is the second most well-endowed university in the U.S., but still. It's a strong, mainstream program with a lot of resources to offer. But it's not very strong in terms of Japan, and at the end of the day, is lower ranked than Berkeley. To be honest, I liked it and have a feeling I would be well-served by going there. But it was my least favorite of the three.

After my dinner, I went up to New York City and spent the night in Manhattan with a very nice Princeton grad student couple who were amazingly hospitable and accomodating - and I was amazed at the PoliSci student's job prospects! Five offers and pretty great salary choices, all of which made me feel a lot better about academia as a career choice Since I had never been to New York, Gabriel was nice enough to walk me through Times Square and a bit of that area.


Kristi, Times Square, New York
Originally uploaded by kristi-san.

Tuesday morning I caught a bus to La Guardia Airport, where I boarded a fairly small plane to Ithaca. You know, the kind of plane where they strategically seat passengers in order to balance weight. A short while later, I was at Cornell University, which was experiencing uncharacteristically warm weather and was truly beautiful. The campus is huge and really majestic in its scenery - waterfalls, gorges, hills... I again embarked on the marathon lunch-appointment-dinner schedule, but came away with a much better feeling than I did at Princeton. The Cornell Government Department seems really congenial and welcoming - and a place where I would feel very comfortable. I really liked Rob Wiener and Valerie Bunce in particular. I wish I could've met with Peter Katzenstein, whom every since student *raved* about, but alas he was out on travel. I also went bowling with a bunch of the grad students, which was good fun. I really liked the feel of the place and found Ithaca to be charming and quite livable. I wish it were ranked a tad higher - to be honest, I feel a pull towards it, even more so than to Berkeley. I also liked that the cohorts are so small - 12-15ish versus Berkeley's 20-something.

After a brief stopover in Detroit (which has a very nice airport, btw), I found myself in San Francisco and then in Berkeley shortly thereafter. The West Coast really does feel a lot more comfortable to me, I've gotta say, though this has its good and bad points. Anyway, Berkeley was pretty much everthing I thought it would be. Unfortunately, my visit occurred during their Spring Break, so I met with the department chair and T.J. Pempel (who was also everything I thought he would be) before heading back out to San Francisco to meet my best friend Camden. I was pretty destroyed by this time, so we stayed in, ordered pizza, and caught up on stuff. Anyway, Thursday I met with four different grad students who were all very nice and quite sharp. One girl there has interests remarkably similar to my own - something that I hadn't encountered at any of the other schools. Berkeley felt good. It felt big. Like UW on steroids, kinda. In general, I like big, but wish I could've come while classes were in session... I get the impression that I have an *amazing* funding package in the Berkeley context, which makes me very happy. And the area seemed just as exciting as I'd heard. So... yeah, probably the most logical choice, given my professed goals.

So yeah, things are still up in the air. I'll probably choose Berkeley, but was surprisingly drawn to Cornell. I'll let you know when I've made the final decision.