Shoes

 Japan does most everything well. Electronics, automobiles, trains, and unmanned space flight are all testament to Japanese hard work and ingenuity. 

Japan does two things poorly, bread and shoes. I will write about bread another time. Today I will write about shoes.

The Japanese shoe trade is bereft of innovation, customer choice, and and affordable products.

There were two television series that ran recently that both featured stories about running in tabi. Tabi are a style of socks with a split toe for wearing with sandals, or by themselves if they have a rubber sole. One of the series featured a story about a modern tabi manufacturer that was on the brink of failure, when they helped an injured runner overcome his problem by designing a running tabi just for him.

The second series was a story about an actual athlete, Kanakuri Shizo, who participated in the seventh and eighth Olympics. He ran in tabi that were made by a company in Tamana, Kumamoto.

As a result of the series' popularity, I expected to see a boom in running tabi and other minimalist shoes in general. In actuality, crickets.

What is on offer at shoe stores in my area is a selection of lower-tier, big brand name shoes. It's easy to find big name products at shops, but they are the poor quality range of shoes that these corporations make. I can find the higher quality shoes online, but I don't want to buy shoes online. 

The cost of shoes is also prohibitive. A reasonably good quality pair of running shoes from a reputable US maker sells for around ￥13,000 online at a US site. The identical pair of shoes from a Japanese website is priced at ￥33,000. That's more than twice the price for identical shoes.

My current solution is a pair of plastic clogs. The company who makes them now sells a version that is good for walking in, come in my size, and are affordable at about ￥6,000. 

Some people say that Japan has never been

a shoe culture. That's fine, but companies are not even trying. Japan has never been a space culture either, but Hayabusa and Hyabusa II have been magnificent successes. 

Shaving

 Most men in Japan shave their faces. I think that has been the custom for some time. Probably as an influence of Western culture, some men grew facial hair during the early part of the 20th Century.

I shave, not every day, but on days that I have to look presentable. I also shave my head as well as my face.

I started to shave when I was in high school. I used an old double-edged, safety razor that my grandfather used. Then I used an injector razor that happened to be in a drawer in the house.

I used my father's electric shaver for a while, but that didn't cut it. (Yes, a shaving joke.) I don't think they made them that shape anymore. It had a cord and was squarish, like a bar of soap.

Electric razors have always been my second choice for shaving. They are just another electric device that requires attention.

I prefer blade razors and soap, shaving soap if I can get it. They seem to give me a closer shave.

I have tried all kinds of bladed razors. First, I just used what was cheapest. Single bladed razors work best for me, though. As the razors went from one blade to two and more, I found that the small space between the blades gets clogged up with whiskers and soap. I use a metal-handled, single-bladed razor made by the Kai company. It does the trick, and they last.

Shaving soap is my favorite. I prefer it to shaving foam from a can, because the can is a total waste of resources. My fist experience with a shaving brush and soap sealed it for me. Warm suds on my face rather than cold, smelly stuff from a can anytime!

As I said, I shave my whole head. While I started losing my hair in middle age, I struggled to find barbers and hair styles that would work. None of them did, so I just cut it off. I messed around with an electric hair cutter, but again, just another electric device to maintain. Now I just lather up my head and shave it off.

Shaving my head as well as my face saves on a variety of concerns. I don't worry about going gray, having hair that's too long, hair gels or sprays, shampoo, rinse, conditioner, or about bald spots. I just shave a little move.

One thing I think Japan misses out on is men's shaving experience. There isn't enough attention paid to comfort, luxury. If there's an advertisement for men's shaving products, it's all about the product, a clean shave. Any shaver should be able to do that.

What I want is a focus on the warm, satisfying experience of shaving. Doing the job is only half of it. Warm, nice smelling foam, and the feeling of completion, being ready for the day, that should come along with it.

I'll write move about shaving in Japan, because I think it is part of the Japanese hair fetish. 

  

Coffee

 I've been a coffee addict for forty years or more. I've liked it for a very long time. My family were all coffee drinkers.

When I came to Japan I was pleasantly surprised by the cafes. There were small, dark, smoke-filled rooms all wood grain and velvet cushions. The coffee was good, and the food was what it was, nothing fancy.

The menu offered a variety of hot and cold coffee drinks as well as soft drinks and alcohol. It also had sandwiches, pasta, curry and a variety of cake.

A customer could sit and read the variety of magazines, newspapers, manga, or novels that the cafes always had on offer. No one was going to chase you out, because, for one reason, servers do not work for tips.

In the Nagoya area a majority of the working population eats their breakfast at cafes. "Morning," as it is known, is a meal offered before lunch. It includes various things, but mostly some combination of ham, eggs, bread, and a veggie salad, plus a cup of coffee. 

I think most of the people who frequent cafes in the afternoons are businessmen who need a quick meal and a cup of coffee, or retired people who want a place to meet their friends.

Recently franchise operations, like Tully's, Doutor, and Komeda have made serious dents in those old Showa period cafes. They offer a number of differences to the older types, standardized and recognized coffee and other drinks. They offer some food, but none of it  as good as the old cafes.

Convenience stores have also begun to offer a variety of good coffee drinks for a very low price. A small cup of coffee costs around a dollar, where the same size cup of coffee might cost three to four dollars at a cafe. Customers can buy goods or services there, and have a good cup of coffee, a latte, or an number of other hot or cold coffee drinks for a reasonable price. 

If you like to make your own coffee, you are covered, too. You can buy coffee beans of different varieties, roasted to your specifications in many places. I live in a relatively rural community, and I can get a bag of freshly roasted coffee beans at a cafe just ten minutes away from my house. If I wanted to have a larger selection, I could go to the nearest department store and buy a bag of beans from their large selection of freshly roasted coffee. 

At home we drink Peace Coffee from Peace Winds Japan (PWJ). PWJ is an NGO that helps people around the world. One of their projects is coffee production in East Timor. They have helped the people there to establish their own coffee growing operations that supply coffee to people all over the world. 

It appears that more people drink tea than coffee here. That means that there we really have the best of both worlds here, high quality tea as well as coffee. 

Homeless Animals

 Every weekday, I wake up at 5:00 to go to a shelter that houses homeless dogs and cats. I walk two dogs every morning, four on the rare occasion.

The animals are there for various reasons, mostly because they have been discarded by a human. Some were born without a home. Each one has a different story.

There are many animals that end up in a shelter like ours, but there are many more that end up in pounds that kill unclaimed animals. There are even more that live their brief lives on the brink of starvation, pregnant, injured, sick, and unloved. 

There is a mountain nearby where people go to dispose of unwanted animals. They take them there, dump them out of their cars, and drive away. The animals have to fend for themselves, but most eventually succumb to hunger, disease, or injury.

Our group goes there to try to rescue some of the animals. We take the ones we can catch, clean them up, get them medical attention, and work to find them permanent homes.

There are so  many stories, so many animals. Most of them find good homes. Some of them are not fit to be with humans. They are not mean, on the contrary, they are too afraid of people to ever want contact with humans. We take care of those dogs and cats through out their lives.

Many of the dogs recently have come to us from breeders, where they used the female dogs to make puppies to sell at pet shops. The females are tired out by ten years old. In the past, those dogs would just have been killed, but now they come to us. 

We don't need any more dogs or cats to be sold at pet shops. There are so many animals that want to have a forever home.

I don't own any of the dogs I walk, and I think that is a great relationship. They own themselves, and I help to give them the life they were denied at some point. My guess is that
they would like nothing better than to live in a home where they could give and get care and love.

Use a Utility Bicycle in Japan

 Utility bicycles are the best bicycles for commuting in Japan. They are sturdy, safe, and secure. 

Utility bicycles are sturdy to a fault. This also makes them quite heavy unless you get an aluminum frame. I have a steel frame, and it is heavy. If I want to load it into my truck, I have to either use a ramp and push it, or lift it up over the side. I can lift it, but it is hefty. On the other hand, I never have to worry about the integrity of the frame.

Every thing about these bikes is meant to last. Many high school students park them out in the elements in front of train stations, because they use them as part of their commute to school. They either ride from home to the station or from the station to school. Bikes are left exposed to the elements. They are often blown over in windy weather, and aside from a mix-up with a car, I have never seen any part of a utility bicycle dented or bent. 

In the past it was common to hear a bicycle making a clunk-clunk sound  as it rolled by. The chain requires regular lubrication, but if neglected the chain would rust. This was especially true of the type in the photo below where the chain is completely encased in a metal covering. The chain would rust into a bent position, and make a noise every time it made a revolution, striking against the inside of the cover. 

Current models have replaced chains with a belt drive. Belt drives are cleaner, lighter, cheaper, smoother, quieter and require less maintenance or adjustment than chains. My bicycle is an older model with a chain. I don't mind that, because I enjoy tinkering with mine, but for people who would otherwise neglect their chains or who do not enjoy getting their hands dirty, belt drive is the answer.

Utility bicycles come equipped with a light in front and reflectors on the spokes, on the frame at the rear of the bicycle, and on each of the pedals. Modern lights turn themselves on when it becomes dark enough, and they are charged by a generator in the front hub. That eliminates the need to reach down to the front tire and flip the switch that puts the generator in contact with the rim or tire. If it is dark, the light comes on. 

Japan has a reputation for being a crime-free country, and that is true, except for bicycles and umbrellas. If it is unlocked and unattended, someone is going to snatch it, take it where they want to go, and ditch it. Any utility bicycle you might buy these days comes with a locking system where, when you lock the rear wheel, the front wheel is also locked. This effectively gives you two locks for the effort of one. You can also register and insure your bicycle when you buy it, which puts it into a system that records bikes that are stolen. This makes it easier for the authorities to return stolen property, or for the owner to use insurance to replace one. 

Bicycles are great transportation, and for the daily commute they cannot be bested. Most of them come with a rear rack and a handlebar basket. They are built with the busy rider in mind, who does not have the time or will to maintain a bicycle that is coated in road grime. My stur
dy, safe and secure ride has never let me down.

My Hometown in the Future

Towns have histories. They may be older or newer, but they were built where they are for a reason, and those reasons will probably influence what happens to them in the future. The towns may change, but they will probably remain.

For example, my hometown was built near a big river, because fuel and materials for manufacturing were carried on the river. Glass factories grew up along the river.

My hometown has changed a lot since I was born there. The glass factories disappeared during my lifetime, and the river area has become a park area.

Yokkaichi is on the Tokaido, and the junction where the road split, left to Ise Shrine and right to Kyoto, is in Yokkaichi. That is one of the reasons the city of Yokkaichi grew where it is.

Yokkaichi was known for its beaches and hot springs on the Ise Bay. Most of those were later lost to industrialization, because the waterfront area became useful for other purposes. Yokkaichi’s population has been stable at about 300,000 for several years.

Yokkaichi’s sister city in America, Long Beach, had a similar history. Long Beach is on the Pacific Ocean. It is a port town, with industry along the waterfront, but they have also maintained the beach area for people’s enjoyment.

Long Beach, as the name suggests, has a very long beach area, with walking and cycling paths that run the length of the beach from downtown to the border of the next town. Though Long Beach’s population grew after World War 2, it has been stable at about 460,000.

As Japan’s population declines, some towns will be abandoned, or may shrink back to the space that they occupied before the growth in population that happened in the 1950s and ‘60s. Long Beach’s population will change, too, possibly declining, and allowing the city to return to its roots.

No matter how the cities may change, those areas have been attractive to people for thousands of years, and for good reason. They will continue to be population centers in the future, because there are features that make them attractive to people.

Dreams

Dreams

There was only one thing I wanted to do when I started college. I wanted to do more of what I was already doing. I was going to school and getting good grades, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. As it turned out, I started down the wrong road to the right place.

College was a way to get the work I thought I wanted. I paid for my own schooling, so I had to work a lot. I have friends, and we played a lot. During a couple of summer vacations, I got the chance to work, as a part timer, in the career that I had in mind.

That career was in Forestry. I loved being outdoors. I worked some summers as a staff member at a camp for young people, but what I really enjoyed was working outdoors. Getting ready for the campers, cutting trees that had fallen down over the winter, breaking beaver dams that would flood roads, and hiking around the area were my favorite activities.

My summer job working in a forest was the best. My job was to walk through random parts of the forest and make a record of the kinds of trees and plants that were there, how fast the trees were growing, and the direction of the slope. It was in some very steep mountains.

I did not walk on roads. I found my way through the mountains by looking at photos that were taken from an airplane. Since I was so far into the forest, away from other people and cars, I saw lots of animals. I saw deer, a couple of bears. I also found some stone tools made by Native Americans a very long time ago.

That job was terrific, and it gave me an opportunity to see what real, college-educated Foresters did at work. They spent a lot of time in offices, working at desks. Working at desks was not what I wanted to do.

I decided to change my major to English Literature, and my dreams changed. I wanted to travel, just travel around the world. I didn’t know how yet, but that was my dream.

After college, I decided to study foreign languages. I thought it would be good to find out more about them, because language is something everyone has in common. If we could learn more about languages, we could learn more about people. 

I still wanted to travel, but one of my teachers, my Japanese teacher, was very good. She suggested that I should go to Japan. Japanese is an interesting language, so that is where I went.

Flash forward nearly four decades, and I’m still in Japan. Now my dreams are different, but only slightly. I spend my free time in the woods and in the garden. I started down one path with one set of dreams, and the path has changed ever-so-many times. Had I told my 18-year-old self where I would be in 2020, he would never have believed it. But had he thought a while, he would have to admit that the dreams have not changed that much.  

Important Places in My Hometown

Everyplace people live has some important places. I was listening to a man telling a story about a small town in America. His name is Mike, and he was walking across American.

It is a small town in the Great Pains. It is very flat there, and very difficult to see far away, because there are no high spots. The town grew up around a rare hill. Early settlers from Europe could see for long distances from that hill, so it was a safe place to be.

That small hill became an important place, and so a town grew up around it. I imagine some buildings in the town are taller than the hill now.

Important places to you don’t need to be important to anyone else. They don’t have to be famous or well known to others. Some important places are only important to us as individuals.

There are places around that are important to someone, and interesting to me. They are places that were very important to people a very long time ago.

One is a settlement where people lived during the Jomon Period in Japan. Some workmen found it as they were building a highway. People lived there thousands of years ago, before people started eating rice in Japan. They left pottery, stone tools and outlines of their houses.

Other important places include some Yayoi Period tumuli and shell mounds. The tumuli are concentrated around a small area near a river. The Yayoi people buried some important leaders there.

There is also a shell mound in that same area. There are various explanations for why they made shell mounds, but they are important places for people, even now.

The final important place is where there was once a castle. Its ruins are located on top of a hill. There is a story about the well that was at this castle.

I like to think about these places and the people who used to live there. Those places excite my imagination. Maybe they are not that important to many people, but they have existed, relatively undisturbed, for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

They are also important enough to people that they have made signs and monuments that help others know about them.

Maybe some important places are those that are significant to you, too. For example, some shopping areas are important to giving a place identity. Osu in Nagoya is one place like that. So is Kurokabe Square in Nagahama, Shiga. 

Environment is important, and places where we can go to enjoy natural wonders. Takachiho in Miyazaki Prefecture has a very old history and a breathtaking natural beauty.

No matter where people live, there are features that give their hometown an identity. Whether they are historical, economic, natural, or a combination of all of the above, they give our hometowns identities all their own. 

Where is your hometown?

A hometown, where you consider your hometown to be, is really important. I have lived in many places, and some for longer than I have lived in the place that I consider my hometown.

Some people have moved around a lot more than I have, and so saying where their hometowns are might be difficult. Basically people choose their hometown based on a few factors. Where did they live during their youth? Where do most of their family live now? How do they feel about those places?

What is a hometown? A place where one has spend his/her formative years making friends, having conflicts, successes, failures, romances, traumas, and maturing toward adulthood. It would be a place where people lived in their childhood or adolescence. It may not have been an entirely happy experience, and some may even come to hate or resent their hometown. Whatever the relationship turned out to be in the end, our connections with our hometowns are principally emotional.

It's not just the people, either. Part of a hometown is the physical parts, the schools we attended, the parks where we played, the place we had our first kiss. Those are all part of the experiences that make a hometown what it is.

Towns change for the better and change for the worse. That park where we played might get paved over for a new road. That house where we lived may be run down and vacant.

Towns change for the better, too. The dirty, abandoned factories down by the river might be changed into a park with biking and walking paths. A new hospital with all the best facilities could be built, saving many lives in a growing community.

When we tell people about hour hometowns, what do people want to know? First, if they are not familiar with the place, they may want to know where it is. We can start big and zoom in on the place as we explain. for example, my hometown is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. If someone didn't know where that was, as people in Japan often don't, I would explain that it is in the Eastern US, in the state of Pennsylvania, in the southwest corner of the state.

People often want to know what your hometown's weather is. Pittsburgh's weather is similar to weather here in Japan. It is hot and humid in summer and cold in the winter. It is a little less humid in Pittsburgh than in Japan, but it's similar otherwise.

People often ask if it is a big city. The population there is 303,000 people. It is almost the same as Yokkaichi, which has 310,000 people. Aside from the population, though, it has a big city feeling. It is culturally diverse with thriving Jewish, Polish, and Italian populations. It has two very good universities, University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University. It also has a big downtown area, several professional sports teams, and lots of manufacturing in the city.

No matter how big or small, well-known or hidden among the mountains and woods, your hometown is where you grew up. Everyone has strong feelings about those places. I think most often the feelings are bitter-sweet. I haven't been back to my hometown for many years, and I might never go back there again. There are parts of it that make me angry when I think about them. There are also places, experiences, and people that fill me with longing and nostalgia.