Fulfilling the Promise III

This brings us back to Japan…

I have friends who are Japanophiles.  I was once one, myself.  But there’s nothing like experience to dissolve the fantasy.

When I was a younger fellow, Japan was a distant land full of strange wonders, source of cool gadgets and animation, comics and schoolgirls with sexy skirts, candy boxes with toy robots or Ultraman figures inside.  If the books I read were to be believed, the people were the closest things to aliens living on our planet as you could get.  Everything was efficient and clean and it was a great place to be.

Now, it’s a place.  A real place, with real problems.

Oh, there are definitely wonders.  The animation and comics are here (though the stuff they brought over the pond was, for the most part, the cream of the crop).  There are the boxed candies and capsule machines with cool toys.  And yes, there are indeed sexy schoolgirls with little skirts.  I have discovered other wonders as well, which I was not even aware of before… hot springs and Japanese-style mountain inns and artist enclaves deep in the mountains that produce startlingly original and beautiful work.  And I’ve learned to love my fish raw.

But there is also corruption and crushing bureaucracy and stifling social rules and a very broken education system.  The government does not protect the environment.  Litter is everwhere.  And while individual people I meet are some of the most wonderful anywhere, the politicians are (mostly) xenophobic, racist, and reactionary, as is the national network, NHK, which might as well call itself Fox News Japan.

Masako and I have a lot of fun.  We travel on the cheap in our local area, enjoy the mountains, have picnics, sample local delicacies, drive to the coast and look out to sea.  We have friends.  I love my co-workers and my students.

But they are people, flawed people, as are we all.  Japan has its ups and downs and problems and more than its share of inconvenience.

This is not a fantasy land.

It is a place, unique, but rooted in worldly concerns, and touched by worldly problems, like any other.

More to come.  Take care.

Fulfilling the Promise II

A few more thoughts…

Then (the beginnings of the Space Shuttle program, me at age nine) and now (currenly July of 2009, when I am thirty-seven…) compared:

Then:  New and exciting, endless potential, the beginings of a new space age, bright tomorrows.

Now:  A little cynical, worn out.  The cornucopia held some tasty treats, but the horn is looking a little bit empty.  Time for the next thing… which will not be a panacea, a magic bullet, a cure for the world’s ills, because such does not exist (or can not exist as implemented by frail and imperfect humanity).

But it’s still the same machine.  It still does the same thing.  And it still inspires dreams.  Those dreams may be more tempered now, less ambitious, more realistic.  But they are still dreams.

Take care.  More to come.

Fulfilling the Promise

Well, I’ve done it again.

Too long has passed without a posting.  I’m sincerely hoping that changes, since I’m now on summer break and thus won’t have endless paperwork for the next forty days.  Between that and keeping up with my writing, this blog has taken a distant third in my priority list.

On top of that, this post isn’t even about living in Japan.  I did say when I started this blog that I would occasionally put in other stuff.  Well, it’s time for some of that other stuff.

The other day I watched the launch of the Endeavor, as I do with every space shuttle launch.  It still brings tears of joy to my eyes, and it never gets old for me.  This time, however, it occurred to me just how long these things have been flying.  I watched live on April 12, 1981, as the first shuttle lifted off.  I was nine years old.  I’m 37 now.  Most things in my life are different now.  The shuttle, and the wonder it inspires, has remained.

This most recent launch was a milestone.  The four-person crew became the 499th thru 502nd persons in space, passing the magic 500 mark.  But how many people out there thought, in the heady days of the Apollo program and early days of the shuttle, that it would take until 2009 to reach this amazing-yet-piddly mark?

Around 1984, I took a test / quiz thing that ran, I believe, in Omni Magazine (RIP, possibly the coolest magazine ever).  Basically, it matched your predictions of the future against the opinions of the late great Arthur C. Clarke.  I frankly don’t remember the contents of the quiz, or my answers, save for a single one.

The question was, by what year will tickets on the Space Shuttle be available to the general public?  The question assumed a pod built to ride in the cargo bay, to be lifted out by the robot arm so that folks inside could get a view of the Earth, and then back again.

My answer was “never”.

Clarke’s answer was “by 1990″, and I remember that the writer of the quiz seemed rather cross if you dared to disagree with Sir Arthur.

My reasons for saying “never” were that, even then, at the tender age of 12, I could tell that the system was too complicated, too fraught with fragility issues (did you know that every one of the heat resistant tiles on the shuttle’s underbelly are specifically made for one spot, and one spot only?  The whole thing fits together like a jigsaw puzzle!), too vulnerable to bad weather and leaks and who knows what else.  I also knew that stuffing people in something that is basically a controlled bomb, subjcting them to launch forces, etc. was not something that would go over well with lawyers… especially on a truly commercial scale.

As of now, the shuttle fleet is supposed to be retired late next year.  Looks like I was right.

I’m not writing this, however, to toot my own horn.  I’m writing it to point out just how long we have to go before we have space vehicles like those depicted in science fiction… ones that are no harder to start, fly, and land than a car… or, at the very worst, a helicopter or airplane.  Who the heck could have thought that something as jury-rigged and awkward as the shuttle, using such volatile fuels, could ever be easy enough to take into space on a truly regular basis?

There is a lot more refining to be done, a lot more work, a lot more engineering. It is such an enormous task, and I myself do not have the training or background to contribute one bit.  I can only dream along with the rest of humanity.

The promise was always that the shuttle would be easy and cheap and quick.  It was impressive.  It did its job.  But it was none of these things.  I’m coming to grips with the idea that I’ll never go into space (I don’t have $20 million to take a ride with the Russians).  I hope someday that someone will be able to hop in their ship and go for a spin to the moon and back.  It probably won’t be anyone I know, though.

In the meantime, check this out.  A 400-second ride that’s very, very cool.

Back soon.