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@JezebelKat
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Jun 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Well, @tenshimelt asked me "So, what DID Uesugi say in 1928" and while I picked just one year during the ongoing narrative... well...

Gather round children. Let's talk about the Emperor Organ Theory and one of the framers of the modern Japanese Constitution, Minobe Tatsukichi: @tenshimelt More here, which doesn't mention Uesugi, but he would be in the "and ultranationalists" group mentioned. alchetron.com/Tatsukichi-Min…
Jun 1, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Hi new followers, sure are a bunch of you.

This is a quasi-professional/quasi-personal account. I tweet about Japan, as I live here andmy grad focus was on Japanese early modern politics (pre-war), unions in Japan and elsewhere, New Mexico, Vans, and Kimagure Orange Road. My background is 11 years in Japanese schools as an ALT, PA, ELT, HRT, and Social Studies teacher, about 20 years of student and professional journalism, 9 years of union activism, and recent IT and GIS professional.
Jun 1, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Scholar blocks another scholar for adding to a scholarly discussion of political tropes in Japan, which is an area of overlap for both scholars?!

I wasn't criticising, I was engaging in mutual discourse! Fellow JP studies scholars, is this normal?! Image Maybe he thought I was literally telling HIM to read things he probably has already read, when I was t point general readers to look to the sources to answer his question about ahistorical discourses in Japanese rightist circles of exclusion.

Not opposition, addition!
May 31, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Hi, scholar of Japanese radical ultranationalism here:

Has been since 1825. I mean that. Go look up the 新論, then fast forward to the 国体の本義. And keep going with modern expressions of 日本人論.

Taking modern rightist ideas and covering them in the claim of JP tradition. Totally not at all out of norms in the Japanese political norms to take outside ideas, reformulate them to make them Japanese tradition, and then use them against outside ideas.

Rinse, wash, repeat.
May 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm the last two weeks: two colleagues on different labor and political committees have caught COVID. And one classmate of a child of another colleague died.

And that's why in Tokyo rush hour I'm wearing an N95 and an additional cloth cover mask. The Rona still walks amongst us. "the pandemic is over!"

Really? Then why are people still being infected and dying. Vaccinated people! It may be a small minority of people, but are we to just consider them acceptable losses?
May 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I owe the pension office a bit of an apology, they actually sent me a new credit card form to fill out. I thought they didn't do that.

Hours after I already paid them for a year. Now I need to find the time to go in (Friday?) and ask if they can still take a card for year 2. Then I need to EXPLICITLY get them to say, one way or another, if that is a card that MUST have a Japanese address. Because I just do not think (deadline by June 12th) I have the means to even load up my Japanese Mastercard debit card that quickly. With what cash?
May 30, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Today is not my day. My US credit card was, surprise surprise, not accepted by the payment processor for the Japanese pension office, they did not inform me until the cheaper coupons deadlines passed, so now I have to pay one year with 12 coupons. This is a problem because I was told by immigration if I had two years of payments covered at once, plus my past payments already all taken care of, I would be able to apply for PR once a year had past from the settling (November 2022, so November 2023).
Jun 20, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Bathroom work continues. I couldn't clean this plastic part so I just used white duct tape on it. Looks better. And I piled the plywood. You can start to see what the interior will look like. Though I'm thinking of hanging reed curtains and need to figure out how to put on shelves and hanging plants without poking holes.
Jun 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
This is a very good review by @MabuMeru, and I appreciate anyone willing to engage with KOR and go through to the end.

I will only nitpick this criticism. Not the criticism aspects themselves, but the claim "usual problems."

Can't yet be usual when you're part of the genesis. @MabuMeru The thing is that of course these elements were present in other manga and anime somewhat disjointedly, but the idea we have of the stereotypical manga/anime love triangle came in part directly from the model Matsumoto set when he created Kimagure Orange Road.
Jun 20, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Went for a walk and grabbed breakfast to think more about this problem. How would I solve this it if this was management?

Two possibilities:

1) They want control? Ask them what THEIR solution is to the problem.

2) Go above their heads. Ultimately I don't care what the solution is to the ugliness out my front door. I just want it fixed. I have preferences on how to fix it, but ultimately, we the people who live directly in front of it, should not have to deal with overgrown, muddy, weedy eyesore public land.
Jun 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Landlord talked again to the neighbors who complained about our (my) plant box. They were worried its purpose was to illegally farm on city land.

This *should* be about the arson of a shed set up by Chinese residents ON FIRE* instead is mostly about that.zakzak.co.jp/soc/news/17082… Thoughts:

1) it mentions the river on which I live, so that explains the paranoia

2) still clearly instigated by these reports of DERN FERNERS doing it, so that also explains the paranoid

3) I had only intended to put in ornamentals. Now it will just be ugly ass mud
Jun 19, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Setting aside today's difficult conversation, two projects were started today. I put down some free Italian tile and rock flooring in the bathroom area. I'm going to repeat it inside the ofuro/shower floor. I need to redo the shower door step it had disintegrating foam. Additionally, due to the neighbor complaining about everything we have done plantwise, my landlord and totally destroyed all the trees out front, I had to pull up the planter box I was putting together, and we comprised with small front plants.
Jun 19, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Thread breakout:

Another thing I'm tired of hearing; Japan is not weak.

Japan does not have a weak military. Japan does not have a weak economy. Japan does not have weak intellectual property.

Japan has the legal ability to end SOFA, but the LDP doesn't *want to.* Japan has one of the premiere navies on the planet. It's air force is pretty good. Its ground forces aren't great, but that's to be expected as a self defense force.

Japan is the 3rd largest economy with a fraction of the population of PRC and a 3rd of the population of the US.
Jun 19, 2022 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Had a really, really deep conversation about my experience with discrimination in Japan with my landlord. Even my landlord, married to someone who is not Japanese (but is still Asian), had some misconceptions about the type of discrimination I have faced. I would consider my landlord not just progressive but extremely so for Japan, and her view that people with "European" features, and especially those believed to be American receive constant deference, and only ever experience "benevolent discrimination" at worst was a surprise.
Jun 18, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
*resentful and sullen sigh* current house buyers (closing at the end of the month) are complaining about everything, but in my view they just crossed a line: they said that the lawn had not been well maintained.

My father was out there working on it every day, so that's a lie. Look, you buy the house as-is and you make a lower offer. I don't understand why people are making their offers AND then trying to make us pay for stuff. Like... just make an offer that includes subtraction for what you would have paid had it been done.
Jun 18, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Hey hey, after a year of me wondering if it was dead and then noticing the top of the stump had rotted and lopping it off and sticking it in a jar and forgetting about it, my Alocasia Polly (African Mask) suddenly decided to wake up with three new growth points. Now potted up. ImageImageImage This thing was basically falling apart in June of 2021. Hard to believe it was actually still alive! But in its jar it wasn't really taking up any space, so I'm glad I didn't throw it away.

But I need to make sure that top cut fully scabs over exposed to air so it won't rot.
Feb 20, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
@toranosukev The detransition rate is so small as to be a total red herring. Statistically insignificant. Also people like this often try to inflate the number by including people who simply questioned their cisness at one point before settling on it. Totally invalid. @toranosukev To even approach the subject of legal or medical transition for a trans child/adolescent, the three -ents must be present. Insistent, Persistent, and Consistent:
Feb 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Actually, not only is not profitable, it has become a maintenance nightmare because entire lines have almost no ridership due to even the subsidised cost being too high for most, and too slow for those who can afford to fly.

China's HSR system isn't the model it first appears. China built some really necessary and even aspirational-turned-crucial HSR. And there is an argument to be made for some lines leading out to the rural far west. But China never stopped building, just like with real estate, to shore up short-term construction for job security.
Feb 20, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I read Colin's piece so you don't have to. It:

1) Misunderstands what transgender vs cisgender means
2) Presumes trans people are all "activist ideologues" when most just want to live lives unharassed
3) Presumes people routinely walk around asking about pronouns. Absolutely false. Gender *presentation* non-conformity does not make one transgender or non-binary. Colin here obviously hasn't hung out at a Dyke Weekend if he thinks that. You'll see everything from High Femme to Stone Butch represented amongst cis women.
Feb 17, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Remember when I said that management had a week to decide if they wanted find out after having fucked around?

Week is over. No unfuckification occurred.

This afternoon, we go to labor commission. Labor Commission is to Japan what the NLRB is to the US, fyi.

Labor Commission starts with prefectural labor commissions. We usually start with Toroi, or Tokyo Roudo Iinkai. And then move on to Churoi, central or national, Roudou Iinkai. After that, courts, if necessary.
Dec 6, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It feels like it that's time again to say: I love Japan, Japan is my home, I still intend to get PR, and I may even continue my paused citizenship process some day.

All of my views on Japan are shared by the Japanese comrades with which I work and organise. I am not alone. We are a political minority. I understand that, and I accept it in the sense that making the changes we'd like to see will take a lot of work. Years. Or decades. We may not even see the fruit of all of our labors. But that doesn't mean it isn't work that is worthwhile.