The call of the mountain

There's a mountain behind my home. It's not particularly big or beautiful, as far as mountains go. But it forms a pretty backdrop against the crowded tangle of apartment buildings, utility poles and power lines in my north-eastern Kyoto neighbourhood.

From a distance, the mountain's cedar-covered flanks appear smooth and symmetrical, rising up to meet each other in the shape of a slightly lopsided volcano. At almost 900 metres tall, the mountain stands high above the rolling hills that form a coiled border around the ancient capital's edges.

I am magnetically drawn to the mountain, my eyes pulled toward it by some uncontrollable force. Maybe it's because the mountain is a paradox: always the same and constantly changing. It is electric green and sharp in the morning. It is purplish and soft in the evening. It hides under layers of fog in the rain. It hibernates in the winter and bursts with life in the summer.

But it's not enough to just look at a mountain. You need to climb it. To breathe its forest-filtered air. To hear its birds sing overhead. To sink into its mud underfoot. To reach its summit and to see nothing but mountains beyond mountains all the way to the horizon.

The reward for all that effort is not to feel as though you have conquered the thing but to feel humbled by it -- to surrender yourself to the realization that you are nothing more than an insignificant speck on a tiny planet in a vast universe whose mysteries we know very little about. But to also feel, with unwavering certainty, that we are connected to everything and everyone. This is the gift the mountain gives us.

Mountaineer and philosopher Arne Naess calls the view from the top of a mountain "philosophically important." He says the smaller you are in relation to the mountain, the more intensely you feel that you are part of it. "You get greater. You get on par with it. You get to feel good with it. So, the tinier you are, the more in some sense you are together with something great and, therefore, get something of this greatness" (from The Call of the Mountain).

This feeling of greatness, of feeling an intense oneness with nature, is what drives me to climb the mountain behind my home. I suppose it's the same feeling that has been driving people into mountains for centuries. My mountain, Mount Hiei, has long been considered the home of demons and gods. It has been the subject of poems and books. It has sheltered warrior monks and inspired marathon monks -- monks who run the steep mountain trails for seven years straight in search of spiritual enlightenment.

Many scientists have studied this human connection to nature but few have explained its importance as eloquently as biologist E.O. Wilson: "Wilderness settles peace on the soul because it needs no help; it is beyond human contrivance" (from The Diversity of Life). He argues there is a human need to have a deep connection with the natural world. It's a hypothesis that feels intuitively true. It also feels increasingly important as our urbanized, globalized and industrialized world continues to view nature as something to tame, conquer and exploit in the name of unlimited economic growth.

Somewhere along the way we deluded ourselves into thinking of nature as something disconnected from us. But nothing could be further from the truth. We are nature. We are the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink.

"We did not arrive on this planet as aliens," writes Wilson. "Humanity is a part of nature, a species that evolved among other species."

Being in the mountains reminds us of that irrefutable truth.

The less we identify with nature, the more quickly we will allow the crowded tangle of apartment buildings, utility poles and power lines to creep up and swallow the mountain whole.

Early Spring in Rural Ontario

I stand amid a cluster of trees on my grandparents’ farm,
a 10-year-old girl pretending not to hear
the voice of my mother as she calls to me
about dishes in the sink that need to be washed.

I hide in the trees that border the garden,
desperate to stay outside a little longer.
The ground is wet and I’m drowning
in a pair of black rubber boots that belong to my grandfather.

The trees stand in uneven rows,
their veins dripping sap into aluminum buckets
that hang on metal taps bored into their trunks.
(A few days from now my grandmother will boil the sap on the stove,
and I will sit transfixed at the kitchen table,
watching maple syrup being made.)

I stick my tongue in the spout
and am surprised to discover
the sap tastes slightly sweet.
I unhook the bucket from the tree, wrap my lips around the rim,
tilt my head back and drink the whole thing,
a 10-year-old girl pretending not to hear
the voice of my mother as she calls to me
about dishes in the sink that need to be washed.

-- Sarah Marchildon

In defense of Jersey Shore

I watched George Stroumboulopoulos interview Rex Murphy the other night. At the end of the interview, George asked Rex what his guilty TV pleasure was. To my surprise, Rex said he wholeheartedly and unabashedly loved Jersey Shore.

I was floored. Here was one of Canada's sharpest and most accomplished political commentators coming out of the closest to confess his fond feelings for the debauchery of the Shore. A man known for his love of literature was publicly admitting that he also enjoys watching a bunch of gorilla juiceheads getting jacked, dodging grenades and creeping in the club.

All I could think was: I'm not alone!

Embracing high art does not mean you have to snub low art. I love books and I love Jersey Shore. Rex Murphy proves it is possible to appreciate both Shakespeare and Snooki. So why is this such a difficult concept for some people to wrap their heads around?

I once told a friend I was a fan of the Shore and she acted as if I had slapped her in the face.

"But, but, but," she stammered. "Your lifestyle is the complete opposite of their lifestyle! They're so stupid. How can you watch that garbage?"

Because it's funny. Because it's fascinating. Because it's dark. Because you don't have to be stupid to enjoy the stupidity of it all.

We all know a triple-fudge brownie is bad for us but that doesn't make it taste any less sweet. It's the same with Jersey Shore. It's junk but it's delicious junk.

To be fair to my friend, my lifestyle really is the complete opposite of the one enjoyed by the Shore cast mates. I don't tan. I don't club. I don't creep. I don't drink to the point of inebriation every night of the week. I don't have fake hair, fake boobs, fake nails and fake eyelashes. I am not attracted to guys with big muscles and small brains. And I most definitely would not be DTF with Vinny, Mike or Pauly D (and even if I was DTF, they'd probably think I was a grenade so it's out of the question on all counts).

Rex Murphy defends the Shore much better than I ever could. He explains that the environment of our common consciousness is television and the Internet. And, like it or loathe it, Jersey Shore is part of our collective consciousness.

"I mean, you don't have to want to marry Snooki to watch it," he said. "But as long as you're aware of it, at least you know the world you're in. But this idea that you seal yourself off in some purist castle and read Descartes and Kant and snub the world, it's idiocy! And as I often say in this kind of context, Moby Dick really is a great book and you really should read it more than once but you shouldn't read it every day. It's a bad habit." (Source: George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, interview with Rex Murphy, May 3, 2011)

In other words, it's all about balance. A little bit of Shakespeare, a little bit of Snooki. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Thoughts on a bittersweet election

Let's get one thing straight: Stephen Harper may have won a majority government but the majority of Canadians did not vote for Stephen Harper.

The majority of Canadians (more than 60 percent of us) voted against Stephen Harper. The Conservative Party did not win a majority government because the majority of Canadians support the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party won a majority government because the majority of Canadians split their vote on the left.

The numbers in this election tell a very important story: 39.7 percent of Canadians voted Conservative; 30.9 percent voted NDP; 18.8 percent voted Liberal; 6.1 percent voted Bloc Quebecois; and 4.5 percent voted for something else. That means more than 60 percent of us voted against Stephen Harper. The majority of us voted for change.

But we shot ourselves in the foot. We split our votes between the NDP and the Liberals. And, in turn, the NDP and Liberals canceled each other out and sent votes to the Conservatives. In the riding of Scarborough Centre, for example, the Conservative candidate won with about 13,400 votes. But if you combined the votes that were evenly split between the Liberal and NDP candidates in that same riding you'd end up with more than 23,000 votes against the Conservative Party. In the end, this vote splitting is how the Conservatives built their majority.

Still, it was a momentous night for both the NDP and the Green Party. The NDP made a huge leap to second place, winning more than 100 seats and forming the Official Opposition. The Green Party now has a seat in the House of Commons for the first time in Canadian history. This is huge. And it is very exciting. I'm elated to know the NDP will hold Harper accountable on social justice issues. I'm overjoyed to know the Green Party will be in the House of Commons to speak up on environmental issues. I feel like shaking a bottle of champagne and spraying it all over the room.

Watching the election results come in was quite the wild ride. I was shocked to see Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff lose his seat to the Conservatives (I was sure he'd win by a comfortable margin). I was also shocked to see the destruction of the Liberal Party and the collapse of the Bloc Quebecois. Of course, you can't write either party off entirely. Parties crash and burn and rise again. In the 1993 election, the Conservative Party dropped from a 154-seat majority to just two seats. But they managed to claw their way back into power. There's no reason the Liberals can't do the same thing.

So where do we go from here? I think the main challenge is for Jack Layton to be an effective Opposition leader. He has to make sure the "orange wave" keeps surging forward, especially in Quebec. He has to make sure the party's popularity stays high.

Because we now have a majority government, we won't have another election until 2015 (election law dictates that a majority government has a four-year mandate to govern). So we're stuck with a Conservative majority for the next four years.

In the meantime, I think we need to talk seriously about merging the left. A recast NDP that includes Liberals is probably the surest way to defeat Stephen Harper in the next election. I don't want to head toward a polarized two-party system like they have in America but we have to do something about all of this vote splitting.

The next four years will be a critical test for the NDP. If the NDP and the Liberals decide not to merge, then Jack Layton is going to have to do a bang-up job as Opposition leader. He is going to have to convince Canadians that he'd be a better prime minister than Stephen Harper.

Stephen Harper just has to continue governing the same way he's been governing all along -- disrespecting the democratic process, tightly controlling the message, restricting journalists' access to information, ignoring the environment, trashing our international reputation, freezing foreign aid to Africa, cutting corporate taxes, buying fighter jets, beefing up prisons, loosening environmental regulations, and generally just putting competition ahead of compassion.

The deeper Stephen Harper corkscrews us down into this cesspool, the better Jack Layton is going to look. Maybe we'll be ready to elect an NDP prime minister four years from now.

The election may have ended tonight but the real work begins tomorrow.

Not voting is not an option

My special ballot finally arrived in the mail this week. Never before has voting felt so unsatisfying. Never before have I had to choose from a more lackluster list of candidates.

I voted in the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, in the middle-class Toronto neighbourhood where I grew up and where my parents still live. The strange thing about voting from abroad is that you get to choose the riding you want to vote in. You can either vote in the riding where you last lived or where a spouse or family member currently lives.

You can even choose the dubious option of registering an address of "a person with whom you would live if you were not residing outside of Canada." This seems highly subjective. I mean, I would totally live with my friend Annelle in Vancouver. She has a nice house and a cute cat. The fact that she probably wouldn't want me to move in with her is irrelevant. I could register her address anyway. Which means that those of us living overseas can pretty much vote in any riding we want.

But I decided to keep it simple and cast my ballot in the place where my emotional roots run deepest. I may have lived in Vancouver for seven years but Toronto is home.

Like any good civically minded citizen, I did a little bit of research before I voted. This is what I found out about the five candidates running in Etobicoke-Lakeshore:

Bernard Trottier, Conservative: His key issues are (surprise, surprise) lower taxes and continued economic growth. If he had a slogan, it would be Business as Usual. The environment and social justice are nowhere to be found on his website. He's a senior consulting manager, "working with Canadian and international companies to improve their competitiveness and profitability" (words that deaden the soul). He claims to regularly mix with the immigrant community by attending religious celebrations at Polish and Ukrainian churches. The guy is a shortsighted, out-of-touch relic from the last century. Next!

Michael Erickson, New Democrat: His two big issues are increased funding for public transit and the environment. He has solid community-activist credentials (works as a high school teacher, takes teens on social justice trips to Ghana, served on the LGBT Youth Line Board of Directors, worked with the Metro Network for Social Justice, and volunteered as a poverty and disability activist). Of all the candidates, he is the kind of politician I'd most like to clone. Ottawa needs more compassionate and socially progressive people in power. But he's running in the wrong riding. He doesn't have a hope in hell in Etobicoke-Lakeshore. No one here votes NDP. The first and last time Etobicoke-Lakeshore elected an NDP Member of Parliament was in 1972.

David Corail, Green: He wants increased federal funding for public transit. He wants to build a community centre for young people. But he's too inexperienced. According to his website, he's lived in the area for almost 20 years and is raising his family there. And that seems to be all he has done. Also, his website contains horribly worded and utterly meaningless phrases like, "We must also invest in peace. And we must shockproof our society against unforeseeable events by building in resilience." Huh? He's probably a nice guy but he's not a serious contender.

Janice Murray, Marxist-Leninist: She is "calling on the women, workers and youth in the riding to join her in organizing to empower themselves and elect an anti-war government." Workers of Etobicoke-Lakeshore unite! The only problem is that the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada is supportive of North Korea and batshit crazy Kim Jong-il. Next!

Michael Ignatieff, Liberal: The incumbent. The leader of the Liberal Party. The potential prime minister. Ignatieff is the heavyweight in this riding and he casts a long shadow over all of the other candidates. His intelligence borders on brilliance (he's an award-winning writer and deep thinker who has held senior academic posts at Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard). His background is extraordinarily, intimidatingly impressive (check out his wiki page for all of the eye-popping details). But his campaign has been safe, inoffensive and banal. He talks about the importance of families, jobs, health care and seniors. But there's no substance behind the spin. No fresh ideas. The Liberal Party is just so middle-of-the-road. Not quite left wing. Not quite right wing. I'm sure Ignatieff would be a competent and strong prime minister, just not an inspiring one.

So there you have it. The lackluster list of candidates I had to choose from. Not that my vote is going to make much of a difference. The Liberals consistently win this riding and they win it by a large margin. According to unscientific research conducted by my mom, Ignatieff's lawn signs currently outnumber all others by about 99 to one.

I voted with a sense of resignation, not feeling particularly inspired by any of the Parties. The Liberals are too dated, the Conservatives too out-of-touch, the Greens too amateurish, the NDP too idealistic. I say this in the most non-partisan way possible. I always vote based on the merit of the individual candidates, not based on an allegiance to a particular Party. And that's why I decided to vote for Michael Ignatieff this time around. I don't particularly like the Liberal Party. I do, however, like Michael Ignatieff. Or, rather, I like the gravitas of his experience. He is ready to govern.

Having said that, I think Jack Layton would make the best prime minister of the bunch. Of all the leaders, he is the most appealing. I like his focus on social justice and the environment. I like his sincerity. I like his emphasis on hope. I think he would be the one to best steer Canada back to its compassionate roots, both at home and abroad. Stephen Harper has steered us so far in the opposite direction that we need to take a hard left to bring us back on track.

But I'm not telling you who to vote for. The most important thing is to vote. Just vote! If every single one of us voted, then we'd have a truly democratic government -- one that actually represents the majority of Canadians. Not voting is not an option.

A post in which I compare the Canadian federal election to high-school calculus (or, two things that make me cringe and want to vomit)

The Canadian federal election is about as painful, as uninspired, and as humourless (unless you count the unintentional hilarity of watching wooden politicians try to deliver barn-burner speeches as if said speeches were on par with Martin Luther King-inspired greatness when they're nothing more than pandering, partisan gibberish devoid of any real meaning or substance) as high-school calculus.

It occurred to me to make the connection between the campaign and calculus a couple of weeks ago. It was the first day of the spring semester at Kyoto University and I decided to take a graduate-level class on economics. The class started with a pop quiz. We were asked to answer a bunch of questions. Stuff like "calculate dy/dx where y = f[x, z(x)]" and "solve the following optimization problem where max z = -x squared + 2x."

Two full pages of math problems. I left the whole thing blank. Those of us who failed the quiz were advised to brush up on high-school calculus. But how do you "brush up" on calculus when you never learned it in the first place? I dropped the class immediately.

I'm just not wired for math. I love words. I hate numbers. I love stories. I hate formulas. I love ideas. I hate details. I love improvisation. I hate memorization.

I was thinking about all of this as I made my way out of the classroom when it hit me. I suddenly understood why I was so turned off by the Canadian election and by each of the federal leaders. This campaign is too much like calculus.

A formula calculated to win votes

Just like numbers on a page, the federal leaders' words are cold and calculated. Their messages don't come from the heart. They come from the head. Each message is carefully crafted and controlled. Each message is brought to life not by inspiration but by polls and focus groups. Each message is shaped and massaged by campaign strategists and communications experts. It's a formula calculated to win votes.

The end result is messages devoid of meaning but full of partisanship and pandering. All spin, no substance. Do they think we're idiots? To speak of "family values" is to insult our collective intelligence. What does "family values" mean anyway? I'm pretty sure that Stephen Harper, who voted against gay marriage, has a very different concept of "family values" than Jack Layton, who makes a point of marching in Toronto's Gay Pride Parade every summer.

But it's too easy to just pick on Stephen Harper. All of the leaders are aiming low. They're all trying to woo us with talk of families and health care and jobs and money for seniors. I mean, how can anyone be opposed to any of that? I suppose that's the point. It's banal and safe and inoffensive. It's how you win votes in Canada.

Ordinary Canadians

I can't stand the way they call us "ordinary Canadians" as if we are some sort of homogeneous blob that thinks and acts the same way. When the leaders want to get in touch with us ordinary Canadians, they go to Tim Hortons and hockey rinks and churches and mosques and synagogues. They loosen their ties, undo a button or two, roll up their sleeves, maybe even wear a baseball cap.

It's an image contrived to make us think, "They're just like us!" Except it's an "us" I don't identify with. I'm not religious, I don't watch hockey, and I don't think anyone over the age of 10 should wear a baseball cap unless they are actually playing baseball. You can't generalize about the tastes and habits and hobbies of average Canadians. We're all different. (Although, I will admit to a fondness for the occasional double-double and chocolate dip donut from Tim Hortons).

I'm starting to think our political leaders have a low opinion of us "ordinary Canadians." It seems they think the only thing we care about is protecting our jobs, our high standard of living and our families. Could they be any more insulting? Oh, yes, they could. They bombard us with attack ads that are so amateurish and silly that it feels less like an attack on the other parties and more like an attack on our intelligence. I don't care about how much of a loser you think your opponent is. Drop the ads and spend the time and money on something else, like a well-designed website with detailed information on your policies and your long-term vision for Canada.

This what I would tell the leaders

Be bold. Be brave. Say something you really mean. Say something off-message and unscripted. Say something controversial and original. Say something that touches our hearts. And say it in plain English. Answer journalists' questions honestly and directly. Tell us about your policies. Tell us about your dreams. Stop pandering. We're not stupid.

I'm tired of only hearing about the safe stuff. Let's talk about corporate tax hikes. Let's talk about ending government subsidies to the Alberta oil sands. Let's talk about public transit. Let's talk about bullet trains. Let's talk about a carbon tax. Let's talk about the shameful living conditions on First Nations reserves. Let's talk about compulsory voting legislation. Let's talk about universal daycare. Let's talk about poverty. Let's talk about secularism. Let's talk about art and books and poetry.

I'm not naive. I know that if the federal leaders talk about this stuff their opponents would tear them to pieces. And they would lose credibility and votes. I think this is why they play it so safe during the election campaign. Better to offend as few people as possible in order to get as many seats as possible. Then, once you're in Parliament, you'll have real power to push your real agenda forward.

I just wish it didn't have to be this way. I wish we could elect sincere, honest politicians who don't stick to a script when they talk. Campaigning needs to be less like math and more like life. Stop calculating every move, every word. Make your speeches messy, emotional, moving. Touch our hearts and stir our emotions. Inspire us to follow you. Create a vision for Canada that leaves no one behind and makes our hearts soar with hope and possibility.

But what do I know? I'm just an ordinary Canadian.

Stories for Japan

Write for Tohoku is a collection of stories about Japan, with 100% of the proceeds going directly to the Red Cross to help the earthquake and tsunami survivors rebuild their lives.

The project's website describes the book's content and goals in a concise and lovely way.

"The ebook contains stories of Japan from over sixty writers, both Japanese and foreign. We share our memories of adjusting to Japanese culture, experiencing the kindness of strangers, forming close friendships, discovering the country’s natural beauty, challenging ourselves through new experiences, and coming to feel at home in whatever corner of Japan we find ourselves.

We have two goals for this project: to raise funds for disaster relief, and to share with overseas readers the beauty and warmth of Japan."

The book costs $9.99. You can buy it here.

Global anxiety and the disaster in Japan

This morning, for the first time in more than a week, my in-box was eerily devoid of panicky messages urging me to get out of Japan. The melodramatic media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear crisis seems to have cooled. In turn, my parents are no longer pressuring me to come home. I feel like I can breathe again.

There's a discrepancy between the way people inside Japan are reacting to the disaster and the way people from outside Japan are reacting to the disaster. Most of the panic is being generated by people from other countries. My Canadian friends are more freaked out about the possibility of a nuclear meltdown than I am. People in Vancouver are stocking up on potassium iodide tablets, afraid of a toxic cloud of radiation blowing west across the Pacific Ocean.

I can't blame the rest of the world for thinking the apocalypse is upon us. A nuclear crisis on top of a tsunami on top of an earthquake -- just one of these things would have been horrible enough. But to deal with all three at the same time? The aftermath has been overwhelming (8,100 people dead, 12,000 people missing, half a million people homeless, entire towns wiped off the map, nuclear reactors exploding, radiation escaping, electricity failing, shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine, aftershock after aftershock).

But through it all, life went on elsewhere in Japan. People went to work. Kids went to school. The trains ran on time. The buildings remained standing. This ordinariness was nowhere to be seen in the media coverage coming out of Japan. And why would it be? It's not news. Journalists rightly focused all of their attention on the unfolding tragedy. There wasn't room for subtlety and nuance, which maybe partly explains why the foreign reaction seemed to verge on panic while the Japanese reaction was comparatively calm. Maybe it's because people from outside the country were looking at Japan through a very narrow lens. And what they saw looked terrifying.

Even though I am in Kyoto, hundreds of kilometres away from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, people back home worried about my safety. I've spent a good part of the past week trying to convince family and friends that I'm okay. Not that I'm complaining. I'm extremely touched by all of the concern. I received emails from friends I haven't heard from or seen in years. It's nice to know that so many people are thinking of me. It has been the best part of a very long week.

Other people are frustrated with all of the fear-mongering from the foreign media. There's a sense that the media focus on the nuclear crisis is overshadowing the devastation of the earthquake and tsunami. They complain that it's taking attention and aid away from the earthquake survivors up north. It's also causing people outside the country to panic needlessly. Their panic feeds our panic.

I don't think it's fair to blame the foreign media. Yes, there has been some sensationalism but I can live with a bit of sensationalism if it helps draw attention to the disaster. I'm far more comfortable with a few inaccuracies than I am with media outlets that serve as propaganda tools for the government. Most people in Japan don't trust the Japanese media to look for government cover-ups and half-truths when it comes to nuclear safety. The Japanese media simply reprints what the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company are saying verbatim. The foreign media is working much harder to find out what's really going on.

I'm no longer worried but I'm still not taking what the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company are saying at face value. There has been too much confusing and contradictory information. At first, the Japanese government said people living outside a 20-kilometre radius of the power plant were safe. Then they changed that to 30 kilometres. And then the Americans stepped in and said that the evacuation zone should actually be more like 80 kilometres. (I don't know what distance is truly safe. Personally, I'd take their best-case scenario and double it. Just to be sure.)

The Japanese government is desperate to avoid mass panic and they've done a good job of keeping people relatively calm so far. In a country of 127 million people, mass panic would only lead to mass chaos.

We've already seen small pockets of panic, as some people in the Tokyo area started hoarding supplies -- buying rice, noodles, bottled water and toilet paper in bulk. Imagine if everyone tried to flee the country at the same time or ran to the supermarket and stripped all the shelves of food. It would make things much, much worse, especially for the hundreds of thousands of people in the evacuation centres who are already running short of food, water, fuel and medicine.

A handful of friends have flown home. The rest of us are staying put. The nuclear situation seems to be somewhat under control -- for now, at least. The media is starting to shift its attention away from Japan and toward Libya and Syria. For the first time in a week, Japan is no longer the top story. By this time next week, most of the foreign journalists will have left Japan. The country will start to recover and rebuild, without much attention or fanfare.

How you can help:

Japanese Red Cross

Canadian Red Cross

Doctors Without Borders

SEEDS Asia

Second Harvest Japan

Nuclear meltdown: To panic or not to panic?

I am still in Japan and I am still safe. But the very real possibility of a nuclear meltdown is making me increasingly nervous. I'm not panicking but maybe I should be.

I don't know what to do. The news changes hourly and it's often full of contradictory and confusing information. There was an explosion. There wasn't an explosion. Radiation is leaking. Radiation isn't leaking. Radiation levels have risen. Radiation levels have fallen. There's a risk to human health. There's no risk to human health. I don't know what to believe.

My Japanese isn't good enough to follow local media reports so I'm relying on western media outlets to keep me informed. It's an incredibly strange feeling to be sitting inside my Kyoto apartment watching Canadian, American and British journalists report on the disaster in Japan. I'm counting on people from outside the country to tell me what's happening inside the country. Life is still so unremarkably normal in Kyoto that it feels like I'm watching the disaster unfold half a world away.

The disconnect -- between the unfathomable devastation in the northern half of Japan and the absolute normality in the southern half of Japan -- is huge.

But I'm starting to wonder if this disconnect, and its accompanying feeling of safety, is just an illusion. The mask of calmness across Japan is starting to crack. For the first time since the earthquake and tsunami hit, Japanese people are starting to get angry. A lot of people don't trust what the government is saying and have chosen to get as far away from the nuclear power plant as possible. It's difficult to gauge the real level of panic because people communicate in an indirect way here. What is unsaid is often more important than what is said. You never take a sentence at face value. You have to read the subtext and decipher its unspoken meanings. So when a government minister appears on TV to tell people the risk of a nuclear meltdown is low, it's difficult for people to accept that as the whole truth.

Not only am I getting nervous but I'm also getting frustrated. There is no information about what a nuclear meltdown would mean for those of us in other parts of the country. Kyoto University has not contacted its students. City Hall is not publishing any information in English. The Canadian Embassy is telling us to stay away from the disaster zone but offers no advice to anyone anywhere else. No one is telling us whether or not we need to take potassium iodide tablets. If you were to trust what the Japanese government is saying, then only people living within a 30-kilometre radius of the Fukushima nuclear plant need to be concerned. Everyone else can remain calm.

But some people aren't buying it. A friend of mine left Tokyo and came to Kyoto a few days ago because she was worried the city would become chaotic if things got worse. She decided it was better to leave while there was an easy way out before becoming stuck if millions of people decided to flee at the same time. Another friend and his wife decided the radiation risk just wasn't worth it (they have a baby) and they're flying out of Japan tonight. My mom, who booked a flight to Japan several months ago, is debating whether or not to cancel the trip. She was supposed to fly into Tokyo two weeks from today. But that's looking more and more unlikely.

My friends and family back in Canada are becoming increasingly worried and it's starting to make me anxious. I'm getting emails on a daily basis urging me to leave the country. I don't blame them. Life north of here is a nightmare. The earthquake and tsunami have killed more than 10,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people are now homeless. Food, water, fuel, medicine and electricity are in short supply. And as if all that wasn't bad enough, we're dealing with a nuclear crisis at the same time.

But I'm not panicking yet. No one has given me any reason to believe Kyoto is not safe. People here are still going about their daily lives. Everything is so remakably ordinary you wouldn't know there was a disaster to the north of us.

Any suggestions?

After the earthquake

I was sitting in my apartment, organizing files on my computer, when the earthquake hit. I didn't feel a thing. Not even a tremor.

Kyoto is far away from the earthquake's epicenter so we were oblivious to the violent shaking and the speeding wall of water that would devastate northern Japan within a matter of minutes.

The earthquake and tsunami came and went unnoticed in Kyoto. It wasn't until friends from Canada starting posting on my Facebook wall, asking if I was still alive, that I knew something horrible had happened.

I turned on the TV for the first time in a week. Every channel was showing the same thing -- wall-to-wall coverage of the earthquake and the tsunami. Someone in a helicopter had managed to shoot footage of the tsunami as it roared inland. Ten metres high and moving at the speed of an airplane, the tsunami devoured everything in its path. We saw houses ripped from their foundations, cars bobbing along like toys, utility poles snapping like sticks. We saw people in offices ducking for cover as the shaking shelves toppled and crashed to the floor. The same videos played on a loop throughout the day. At that point, there wasn't much information. The full extent of the damage was unknown. But it was obvious the earthquake was bad.

During the next few days, the news got more and more grim. Hearing the frequently updated death toll is the worst part. The numbers just keep getting higher. The official death toll now stands at nearly 2,000. But the last report I read said at least 10,000 people are missing from a town that was virtually wiped off the map by the tsunami.

Life was so normal and so ordinary and then one tectonic plate moves under another and everything is suddenly turned upside down.

I can't imagine how terrifying it must have been.

Stories from the survivors are now starting to trickle in. A reporter interviewed a young Japanese woman who survived the tsunami. She had been holding her daughter's hand but lost her grip when the water rushed in. She hasn't seen her daughter since. The woman told the reporter that she saved herself but couldn't save her daughter. It's horrible and heartbreaking.

But here in Kyoto, life goes on. You wouldn't even know anything had happened. People are working, shopping and just generally going about their daily lives. I feel so far removed from the tragedy and yet so deeply affected by it. Japan is my second home and it hurts to know that so many people here are suffering.

I want to do something to help but I feel useless and powerless. I donated money but it doesn't feel like enough. I want to go up there and help dig through the rubble. But I know I can't do that. I'd just be in the way. If everyone headed up north, it would be a logistical nightmare. We need to make room for the professionals -- the doctors, the nurses, the soldiers, the search and rescue teams, the journalists, the people actually trained in disaster response. The last thing these places need right now is an influx of people with good intentions and no skills.

And yet, in the midst of all of this horror, Japanese people remain polite and civil. There is no looting. There is no shouting or pushing in the long line-ups for food, water and gas. Two nuclear power plants are on the brink of blowing up but no one is panicking. Everyone appears calm and orderly, pulling together for the common good. It's an inspiring thing to see and my friend Mark MacKinnon, a journalist with the Globe and Mail, captures the stoicism well.

For now, the best thing the rest of us can do is donate money.

The Japanese Red Cross, the Canadian Red Cross and the American Red Cross are all accepting donations.

Google has set up an excellent 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami crisis response site.

I don't know what else to say or do. Even though I didn't suffer through the earthquake, I still feel shaken up by it. It's just such a blunt reminder that life is unfair and death is around every corner. Things can go from good to bad at any moment. You can be holding your daughter's hand one minute and have it ripped away by a tsunami the next minute. It's just so fast, so uncontrollable and so unpredictable. It could happen to any of us at any time.

My heart goes out to all of the victims and all of their families.

The Tokyo Marathon (from a hedonist's point of view)

I am not one of those people who think the marathon is some sort of mythical challenge reserved for all but the fittest and strongest among us. Nope. I'm one of those people who think pretty much anyone can complete a marathon. All it takes is a commitment to a training plan that slowly and steadily builds up the mileage.

Finishing a marathon is an admirable accomplishment, to be sure. But let's not pretend it's something bigger than it is. If someone held a gun to your head and said, "Run 42 kilometers or I will blow your brains out!" you would do it, even if you had never run more than a mile in your life. You would somehow force your body across that distance -- run, walk or crawl. It would be painful but not impossible.

So why is the marathon held up as example of something that pushes the limits of human endurance? (I'm not talking about the elite runners here. They actually are pushing the limits of human endurance. They run the marathon at a pace that is so blisteringly fast they practically sprint the entire 42 kilometres.) But for the vast majority of us plodding along behind the front runners the marathon isn't all that difficult (assuming we've trained properly).

I'm not disparaging the marathon. Forty-two kilometres is a long way to run and it's a distance that demands respect. I just don't buy into the whole "massive challenge" mystique that the race wraps itself in. It's a bit of a smokescreen. In reality, the marathon is accessible to almost anyone. If you want to run 42 km, you can. People in wheelchairs do it. Blind people do it. Intellectually impaired people do it. Overweight people do it. People in their 80s do it. And, now, I do it too.


Sergey and I ran the Tokyo Marathon last weekend. And while it was tough, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I didn't hit the wall. I didn't cramp up. I didn't even break a sweat. This is probably because I was on cruise control the whole way through. My only goal was to cross the finish line feeling good. And while I wouldn't exactly describe the way I felt when I crossed the finish line as "good," I certainly wasn't destroyed.

I took my time getting to the finish line -- a whopping five hours, 40 minutes and 57 seconds. A time so slow it pretty much puts me at the back of the pack. A time so slow it prompted a flurry of emails from friends and family who assumed something had gone horribly wrong. My dad asked if I'd walked most of the marathon. A friend asked if I had injured myself. Another friend wrote, "You have some explaining to do!"

The simple truth is I plodded through with minimal effort on purpose and I'm okay with that. I know what it feels like to push yourself to the limit and it's not a fun feeling. I used to be able to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. But the pain barrier is now something I shrink away from rather than push towards. I wanted to make the Tokyo Marathon as pleasurable an experience as possible. Hedonism is the new masochism.

The only other marathon I've ever run was at the back-end of an Ironman triathlon. And I think the reason why the Tokyo Marathon felt relatively easy was because I didn't have to swim four kilometres and then cycle 180 kilometres beforehand. (Although, amazingly, my Tokyo Marathon time was half an hour slower than my Ironman marathon time.)

Admittedly, I did the bare-minimum amount of training needed to cross the Tokyo Marathon finish line. And Sergey, hobbled by knee pain for the past month, did even less. We signed up for the marathon last summer but our names weren't drawn in the initial lottery (the race is limited to 36,000 participants but because more than 360,000 people sign up each year, runners are chosen randomly. It's more of a challenge to actually get picked to do the marathon than it is to run the race itself). After we lost the lottery we also lost our motivation to train. And then, out of the blue, we got an email in November saying there had been a second lottery and our names had been drawn. So we signed up, with only three months to prepare.

Because of our bare-minimum training, I figured it was better to play it safe and run a conservative race. I planned to be out on the course for a long time so I decided to run with a backpack and fill it with all of the things I needed to keep propelling my body forward for 42 kilometres. What I lacked in terms of raw physical ability I would offset by a constant intake of sugar, caffeine and ibuprofen.


My backpack contained the following items. Six energy gels (taste like crap but they work), some money (in case I decided to stop at a convenience store for a more filling snack), a tube of chapstick, lots of painkillers, sun block, a bottle of coke, a coffee, a bottle of water (not pictured), and my camera (also not pictured, obviously).

Sergey wanted to run unencumbered by extra weight and figured he'd just pick up food and drinks along the course. We started the race together but agreed to run separately. He ended up finishing 20 minutes faster than me. Not bad for a guy who quit smoking six months ago, took up running in the summer, and suffered shin and knee pain throughout the entire race.


Unlike Sergey, I didn't have to deal with too much pain during the race but I did have to deal with a brain reluctant to push my body the entire distance. To keep my mind occupied, I divided the time up into regimented little chunks. Every 10 minutes, I walked for one minute and drank two gulps of water. Every 60 minutes, I walked for two minutes and popped one gel and took two ibuprofen. Every aid station, I drank a cup of gatorade. Every food station, I ate one banana. I was so busy focusing on these little tasks it took my mind off how tired I was feeling.


Things became mentally tough at kilometre 28. I was ready for the race to be over. I needed to find a way to keep myself going so I invented a hackneyed Hollywood plot and put the marathon at the centre of it. I imagined we were running through the streets of Tokyo 100 years in the future. But it was a bleak future. The world's population had grown so large it had strained the earth beyond its breaking point. Life was a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There was not enough food to eat or water to drink. The air was dirty and gray. Famine, disease, and death were widespread. Totalitarian governments were in power the world over. They wanted to cull the population and create a superior race of human beings. Their solution was to force people in the biggest cities to run marathons. Anyone who dropped out of the marathon before reaching the finish line would be shot and killed. Imagining there was a sniper by my side ready to shoot me in the head if I stopped running helped keep me going. (Zero points for originality but whatever works.)


Things became physically tough at kilometre 37. I felt a sharp pain in one of my toes that was so intense it almost brought me to a dead stop. I assumed one of my toenails had ripped right out of its bed and my shoe was filling up with blood. I could feel the detached nail shifting around inside my sock and the blood squishing between my toes. I didn't want to stop and assess the damage because I was pretty sure I would faint if I came face-to-face with the mess inside my shoe (turns out it was only a blister that had popped).

By kilometre 38, the pain had dulled and I hobbled through the last four kilometres. My legs were so leaden it felt as if someone had joined them together with elastic bands at the ankles. I wanted to lift my legs but I couldn't. I crossed the finish line feeling okay. Not great but not destroyed.

Still, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The weather couldn't have been better. Blue skies, 15 degrees and only a hint of a breeze. From start to finish, the organization was top-notch. Everything went so smoothly it was like floating from one cloud to another. From registration to the bag drop to the start line to the finish line there was not one wrinkle, not one kink. All 36,000 of us got the Japanese white-glove treatment from the organizers, volunteers and supporters. It was, hands down, the best-organized event I've ever seen. Every little detail was handled with meticulous care, right down to the bananas handed out to runners on the course.

(Side note: The bananas are actually kind of a funny story. Dole developed a banana specifically for the Tokyo Marathon. According to the company, the banana was created in the Philippines where growers played "runners' favourite songs to help in cultivation and make it even tastier." The songs played included the theme to Rocky and Queen's "We are the Champions.")

If I had one complaint, it would have to be the toilets. There's just no way to set up enough porta-potties along the course to satisfy 36,000 runners. There were several porta-potty stations but the line-ups were at least 15 minutes long. But there were plenty of convenience stores along the way and a few enterprising runners (myself included) decided to get off the road, push our way through the crowds, run down the sidewalk and jump into the nearest 7-Eleven toilet.

Also interesting to note was the large contingent of runners dressed in costume. I counted at least three salarymen running in full business suits. There were a few men dressed up in schoolgirl uniforms and wigs. Another runner went as Michel Jackson (black shoes, white socks, black pants, white t-shirt, single glove, fedora) and moonwalked most of the marathon. Dozens of runners dressed up as Japanese anime characters. Darth Vader, Spiderman and Captain America also made an appearance. It was somewhat demoralizing to be passed by a man in a Pikachu costume but my spirits picked up when I kicked Jesus' ass.


Would I do another marathon? I don't know. I think, like the Ironman, it's something I only want to do once. To cross it off my bucket list. I don't like the way the regimented training puts a stranglehold on spontaneity. The reward isn't big enough to make the sacrifice -- the huge investment of time and energy -- seem worth it.

I like running. I like the purity and simplicity of it. I like the solitude of it. I like the low-cost, low-tech, low-skill freedom of it. And the marathon is kind of the opposite of all of that. That's not a bad thing. I'm just not really sure it's my thing.

I'm happy I ran the Tokyo Marathon. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. I set a goal and I accomplished it. It wasn't a mythical challenge but it was good.

Why I refuse to work in Japan

Kyoto University is a cross between a ghost town and a funeral parlor these days. There are very few students on campus and the ones that actually do show up are usually wearing black suits.

There are two reasons for the empty hallways and somber attire. First, winter classes have ended and spring break has begun. Second, it is now job-hunting season for the class of 2012.

Spring break is a misnomer in Japan. Spring break is not a vacation. It is a hellishly competitive and brutally stressful period of job applications and interviews. But it is not job-hunting season for students that will be graduating next month. It is job-hunting season for students that will be graduating next year.

They will go to dozens of interviews during the next couple of months in the hopes of signing a contract with a company one full year before they graduate. Students who haven't secured a job by the time the recruiting process ends in May will be out of luck by the time graduation rolls around 12 months from now.

Japanese companies like to hire far in advance and openly discriminate against students who are not new graduates. Students who missed out on this year's round of hiring will have almost no chance of getting a job next year because they will be trumped by fresh graduates. Their only option is to stay in school an extra year, take a part-time job or go on welfare. No freedom. No flexibility. No choice.

Japanese employers do not look kindly on Japanese students that take time off to travel or do odd jobs while "finding themselves" after graduation. This kind of behaviour, which can be framed as adventurous, independent-minded and well-rounded in the western world, is seen as immature, selfish and irresponsible in Japan.

Taking a year or two off to build up a resume overseas isn't going to put a Japanese student any further ahead in the job market back home. Most companies prefer to hire new recruits with zero work experience. Students straight out of school are seen as blank slates that can be easily trained (or, as a Japanese friend bluntly put it, "brainwashed") by the company.

For example, one of the guys in my graduate school got a job offer at a major investment company with a starting salary of $80,000 per year. He has no work experience but will be hired as an investment banker straight out of school. The company will send him to Hong Kong for six months of training. In return, he is expected to be a very loyal employee for a very long time. I swear he aged 20 years right in front of my eyes while he was telling me this story.

No one is forcing the Japanese students to hunt for jobs a year before they graduate. But they have very little choice in the matter. This is the way things are done. To not do it would be unnatural.

A portrait of the job hunt

The job hunting process in Japan is officially known as shushoku katsudo or shukatsu for short. It is a world unto itself, with a set of rules unto itself.

It is a grueling process that starts with attending job fairs, picking a company and submitting a resume. If your resume passes the initial screening, you will have a preliminary interview. If you pass the preliminary interview, you will take a written exam. If you pass the written exam, you will be called in for a group discussion with several other candidates. If you pass the group discussion, you will have an interview with HR. If you pass the interview with HR, you will get a second interview with middle management. If you pass the interview with middle management, you will get a third interview with upper management. If you pass the interview with upper management, you will get a final interview with the head honchos. If you pass the final interview with the head honchos, you may (or may not) be offered a job.

It's a long, slow process. The written exam to the final interview can take months. But most students don't just apply to one company. They apply to dozens of companies, which means they are constantly traveling to big cities, taking one exam after another, running from one interview to another.

The job hunters are easy to spot because they all wear the same "recruit suit." Although, technically, it's more of a uniform than a suit. White shirt, dark suit, and plain black shoes. No earrings. Minimal makeup. Black hair. Everyone dresses the same in order to suppress their individuality and show they can conform to the group -- a highly valued trait in Japan.

The pressure is suffocating. Job hunting in Japan feels less like cubicle shopping and more like coffin shopping. Of course, not everyone feels this way. One friend swears the process is fun -- she's having a blast wooing and being wooed by several different companies. I believe her. I was also eager to get out into the working world after my undergraduate degree. But after years of slaving away in front of computer, I've come to the obvious conclusion that there are few things in life more valuable than time. We have so little of it and I don't want to waste one second of it.

That's mostly why I have decided to opt out of the Japanese job-hunting process. Not that I had much of a choice in the matter. My age, my work experience, and my embarrassingly bad Japanese pretty much disqualified me from applying in the first place.

I could apply as a "mid-career professional" but I don't want to work in Japan. I don't want to live in a shoebox apartment over some neon-lit noodle shop in the middle of Tokyo's never-ending concrete jungle. I don't want to wake up at 5 a.m. to join the dead-eyed masses that limply allow themselves to be pushed into packed subway cars by men wearing white gloves. I don't want to spend 12 hours a day toiling at some company that does little more than help the capitalist world go round. I don't want to endure enforced drinking parties with male colleagues who turn into lecherous gorillas after two drinks. I don't want five days of vacation a year. This is not how I want to live.

I want an intellectually stimulating career that is in line with my values. A career that allows me to do some good in the world. I want to be an active member of the community. I want to get off work early enough to enjoy the sunset from my balcony. I want time to connect with friends and family. I want to live somewhere with easy access to real wilderness. I want to live in a place where the skyline is dominated by mountains, not skyscrapers. I want a job with a modest salary and lots of vacation time. I want a balanced life filled with meaningful work, healthy relationships, community involvement and lots of time to indulge in passions, adventures and hobbies. This is what I want.

And I don't think I can find it in Japan. It's a difficult thing to come to terms with because there are so many things I love about living in this country. But living in Japan as a master's student is a much different thing than living in Japan as a salaryman.

So I will watch my friends run from interview to interview. I will watch them go down one path while I head down a different one. They are getting ready to become full-fledged members of Japanese society while I am getting ready to leave it behind.

Liquid pancakes

I found a vending machine in Kyoto that sells some sort of pancake-flavoured beverage. I didn't try it. Just looking at it made me want to vomit. I wonder if it tastes as bad as it looks.

Cigarettes and unexpected poetry

Japan is a smoker's paradise. The kind of place where you can light up in bars, restaurants and coffee shops. The kind of place where -- paradoxically -- it's against the law to smoke on the street but perfectly acceptable to puff away inside a McDonald's.

And should you doubt how pervasive smoking really is, let me quote from the 2011 Tokyo Marathon race guide, which asks participants to "refrain from smoking while running." Because, apparently, even marathon runners are chain smokers in Japan.


Everyone talks about how Japan's lax smoking laws are changing but I don't see it. It may be true that you can no longer smoke on most trains but some long-distance trains still have smoking cars. Last year, a new guideline (not a law, just a guideline) was put in place that "strongly recommends" employers to prohibit smoking in the workplace. But, as far as I know, the teachers at the junior high school where I used to work are still smoking in the staff kitchen. And while many restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, the dividing line between the two is usually invisible. It makes no sense. (But, then again, neither does Hello Kitty-branded booze. So I guess it's all relative.)

It's rare to see anti-smoking messages in Japan. Instead, anti-bad-smoking-manners messages are much more common. The biggest promoter of good smoking manners is Japan Tobacco, which created a series of ads to improve the image of smoking without (not surprisingly) actually discouraging smoking itself. You can find the ads in public smoking areas all over the country. They are plastered on ashtrays in train stations and outside convenience stores. There are more than 70 different ads in total.




The ads are interesting because they are so much more than just a plea for good manners -- they are a reflection of the Japanese psyche. In Japan, one must always behave honourably, even when smoking. To be rude or selfish is to commit social suicide. The ads hit where it hurts. But they do so in a way that is clever and unintentionally poetic.

I'm kind of obsessed with these ads. Each one contains an element of surprise and delivers an emotional punch. And they manage to do so with only a few well-chosen words and simple illustrations. It's not advertising. It's art.

I started taking pictures of the ads almost two years ago. Whenever I stumble across a new one, I take a picture of it. These are a few of my favourites.

Dude, where's my bike?

If there is one lesson I have learned during my time in Japan it's that a stress-free existence here requires a blind adherence to the rules and that you should always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic. Okay, technically, that's two lessons. But rules and bureaucracy go hand-in-hand here. Japan isn't the Land of the Rising Sun so much as it is the Land of the Red Tape.

Take bicycles, for example. Bicycles are treated no differently than any other vehicle in Japan. The upside is that cycling is a very mainstream form of transportation. The downside is that there are just as many laws for cyclists as there are for drivers. A partial list of things that are illegal to do while riding a bike include holding an umbrella, ringing your bell repeatedly, listening to music, talking on a cell phone, being drunk, riding through a red light, riding without a light at night, riding on the sidewalk, and parking in a no-parking zone.

Yes, you read that last one right. It's illegal to park a bicycle in a no-parking zone. Break this law and your bike will be towed to the pound. It seems kind of funny and absurd (there are no-parking zones for bikes? They actually tow bikes? There is a bike pound?) until it happens to you.

I will come clean and admit that I knew I was parking illegally. Mea culpa. There were signs explicitly stating it was a no-parking zone. But I had no other option. There is almost nowhere to park in downtown Kyoto. Of course, you can pay to park at one of those fancy bicycle garages but, to me, paid parking goes against the spirit of cycling. The beauty of riding a bike is that you never have to pay for gas or parking.

I wasn't the only one parked illegally. There were about two dozen other bikes in the same (very wide and very open) spot. It was a quadruple-wide sidewalk, with more than enough room for wheelchairs and baby strollers. I figured it was a safe enough spot to park. Besides, I was only going to be gone for 10 minutes. I just had to run into the bank and I'd be right back.

This was my tragic mistake. I should have known there is no such thing as "just running into the bank" in Japan. This country has an uncanny ability to turn even the most mundane errand into a bureaucratic nightmare. Forty-five minutes after I entered the bank, I was still sitting with a teller going over a pile of paperwork. She wanted me to sign a piece of paper that, despite her patient explanation, I simply didn't understand.

She tried switching to English but the only word I understood was "mafia." I was pretty sure her English was mixed up so I asked her to explain in Japanese. This time the only word I understood was "yakuza." A light went on above my head. She wanted me to sign a form declaring that I wasn't a member of the yakuza (because, apparently, the fact that I have two pinkies and zero tattoos isn't evidence enough). She nodded enthusiastically while apologizing that she clearly knew I wasn't a member of the yakuza but she needed me to put it in writing anyway.

With the question about my ties to organized crime finally answered, I was free to leave the bank. And so I half-jogged, half-walked back to where I parked my bike because I was late for a meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg (a shy undergrad rumoured to be a computer genius, complete with standard-issue hoodie and baggy jeans) who was making a special trip to my lab to fix my computer.

But my bike was gone. All of the bikes were gone. It was as if someone had taken a giant broom and simply swept them off the face of the earth. There was nothing but a big empty space where the bikes had been. I cursed and swore. I cursed the stupidity of no-parking zones. I cursed myself for parking in a no-parking zone. I cursed the stupidity of the bank for making me spend an hour testifying that I was not a member of the yakuza. I cursed the fact that I was now going to be late for my meeting with the Japanese Mark Zuckerberg. I cursed having to waste half a day getting my bike back from the pound.

But I didn't have time to deal with any of that now. I took the train back to school and spent the next few days bike-free. It's funny how much of an effort walking becomes when you get used to cycling everywhere. Wheels are so much faster than feet. The other day, I walked to Mister Donut (which is the closest thing to Tim Hortons in Japan) and all I could think was, "Oh my god! This is taking forever!" Everyone always talks up the benefits of cycling -- it's good for the environment! It's good for your health! But no one ever mentions the sinister side of cycling -- it makes you lazy and impatient.

It was good to take a break from the bike but by yesterday, I'd had enough of walking. It was time to go to the pound. I was kind of excited about going to the pound. I have never been to a real pound before, especially not a bicycle pound. But first, I had to return to the scene of the crime to figure out where the pound was exactly. Luckily, the no-parking sign contained a helpful map of where the bikes had been towed to.



I should probably explain that a bicycle isn't towed the same way a car is. There's no tow truck with a steel cable hooked up to the bike's front wheel, dragging it through the streets. What happens is a pick-up truck with an extra-long, extra-wide bed comes to a stop in front of a bunch of illegally parked bikes. A group of guys jumps out and hauls the bikes, one by one, over to the truck before lifting them up to another group of guys standing on the truck bed, whose job it is to pull the bikes up and arrange them in neat lines. They do this very quickly and very efficiently. It's like watching a well-oiled assembly line.


Getting my bike back required two train trips. One trip to where I had parked the bike (to take a look at the map) and another trip to the pound (or, as it turns out, the middle of nowhere).

The train took me south of the city. To the part of Kyoto you won't find in any guidebook. Unless it's to warn you to avoid going there. If Kyoto has a "bad" neighbourhood, then this is probably it. It was industrial, ugly and bleak. Nothing but empty lots, run-down houses, and tall fences. Exactly the kind of place where you would imagine a pound would be located.



I spotted the pound right away. It was cordoned off from the street with metal sheeting and barbed wire. But this is where the similarities between the cinematic pound and the real pound ended. Instead of being lunged at by snarling rottweilers, I was greeted by a group of friendly old guys. They directed me to a shed near the entrance-way where another friendly old guy asked me to fill out a form. I had to write down my name, my address, a description of my bike (I wrote down "black"), where I had parked it, and when it was towed. After I forked over 2,300 yen (about $20) and showed some ID, another friendly old guy escorted me to a long line of bikes that had been towed on January 28 (they were all neatly arranged by date. After four weeks in the pound, all of the unclaimed bikes are hauled out and crushed).

My bike was in the middle of the pack. The guy waited for me to unlock it and then I was free to go. Lesson learned. From now on, I will blindly follow the rules and always budget at least an hour for all matters bureaucratic.