It’s been a busy year. So much has happened. Summer break will be a time for me to unwind my thoughts. In the meantime, here’s a short story I wrote.

On an unrelated note, I am extremely upset that Google Reader is being retired.

The concept of rebirth is common to many religions. From the ashes of his past, the man is given a chance to live again and redeem himself. In some ways, I feel reborn as I write these words. It has been too long since I last felt the desire to give some semblance of permanence to my thoughts. Days became weeks, and weeks became months; the fun times rolled by with barely a whisper and, with little fanfare, a full year had vanished into my past. How appropriately ironic it is that the best year of my life should go completely unrecorded here.

So yes, I am still alive and well. The last time I updated, I was a wide-eyed freshman about to embark on a quest for knowledge and liberation. Today, I am a sophomore, slightly battle-hardened and a smidgen worse for wear, back home in Singapore for the short winter break. Having spent the last summer interning in the Silicon Valley, this is the first time Iâ€ve been home since taking off a year ago.

It is an odd feeling to be back – the feeling you get when you try to watch an old VHS tape you found in your closet and it starts to play from the middle. What were you doing when you stopped the video? Does that point of time bear any significance or is it just random chance? And just what the heck is a VHS tape? Vague recollections swirl at the back of your mind teasingly, but try as you might the answers are not forthcoming. Perhaps your unconscious is just playing a trick on you. After all, records of our past thoughts and feelings exist only in our gullible minds. If history carved in stone tablets could be altered and remade by the ambitious and the delusional, then our inner past might as well be entirely fictional. Indeed, it probably is.

If we truly have the power to (re)invent our past, then let us use that power for good. Believe that you are kind, moral, and just, so that your future conscious decisions reflect your new self. Though I am and have been an atheist all my life, I too operate on beliefs. I believe in my intuitions under the baseless assumption that my unconscious has noticed something that I have not. I believe in my feelings because questioning them leads one on an endless recursion of self-doubt and cynicism. I believe in the people I love because it feels wonderful for your feet to be grounded even if there always exists an irrefutable non-zero probability that you are stepping in quicksand.

When you say you believe, you allow the possibility of disappointment. And from disappointment or betrayal, there may come despair. Such is the way of the mind.
— Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Haruki Murakami

To believe is to make a completely rational decision to suspend rationality when it proves counterproductive. If we refused to believe that the images sent by our eyes to our brains reflect the realities of a real physical world, then we would quickly find ourselves paralyzed into inaction by the epistemological void. To believe is not to deny the possibility that we live in the Matrix, but to make the sensible bet that we do not. A smart gambler weighs the odds against the rewards and maximizes expected returns. Of course, sometimes the odds simply do not make sense, which is why I remain an atheist. Still, I acknowledge and embrace the power of believing. Sometimes, our personal experiences compel us to attempt irrational feats, and that is simply what must be done.

At this point, the few of you who stumbled upon this long lost relic of Internet past are probably bewildered by this senseless soliloquy. Rest assured, my year at Stanford has not driven me mad, nor am I under the influence of any mind-altering substance. I just figured that itâ€s been a long while and some rambling would do me well. I suppose this bit of drivel on belief shall suffice for now. Maybe Iâ€ll write more if my Muse decides to show herself once more. In the meantime, please watch Contact if you havenâ€t already. It was the movie from my teens that reshaped my thoughts on beliefs.

The day has finally come. I can hardly believe it. In a few short hours, I will be on a flight to…Incheon, South Korea, followed by a long transit before finally arriving at SFO. I will spend the next four years at Stanford and hopefully graduate with a few pieces of laminated paper.

My mind is kind of in a messed-up place right now, so that’s all I have to say for now. In the mean time, watch this awesome YouTube series.

See you in California.

Scandinavia is not the most exciting place in the world but it has some beautiful sights. I spent ten nights last month in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland with my trusty Canon 400D and these are the results.

Helsinki, Finland

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s kind of weird to me that Finland is not officially considered part of Scandinavia, especially when many souvenir shops in Norway were selling this shirt.

I guess it’s because Finland took a break from Sweden and had a century-long fling with tsarist Russia, but then Russia got addicted to Marxism and by the time Finland realized the whole thing had been a huge mistake Sweden had moved on. I may or may not be butchering Nordic history here.

Objectively speaking, Finland is probably the most boring country of the four. Helsinki, the capital, is about 1/3 the size of Singapore excluding water and has a population of just six hundred thousand compared to Singapore’s five million. On the weekends, many parts of the city (e.g. office areas, schools) feel deserted and wouldn’t look out of place in a movie about a post-apocalyptic or post-Rapture world. There are next to no tourist attractions in the city and the biggest one is probably the department store Stockmann in the city centre. Not quite impressive if you are used to Asia’s modern mega-malls.

I think this is the only LV boutique in the country

There is an abundance of statues though

You know your city is dull when a bunch of steel pipes is considered a tourist spot

Based on a casual observation, life in Helsinki seems slow and small-town even though it’s really one of the larger Scandinavia capitals. It feels like the kind of place where the tour guide would point to some unremarkable house in the woods and say, “That’s our Prime Minister’s home” as if she were talking about the mayor of Springfield (which she really did). Not really my cup of tea.

The unique part of Finland compared to the other three countries is probably the Russian architectures left from its hundred-year history as a part of the Russian Empire. This includes numerous Orthodox churches in a country with a Lutheran majority.

Nice Russian architecture though

The stall owner said they are real

Senate Square was built so that tourists may have a convenient location to board their coaches. True story

Statues of men carrying balls — it’s what all train stations need

The colour and font reminds me of JR East

An ageing relic of glories past

It’s like Japan but with more green stuff on the salmon

Wait a minute… Did I upload the right photos?

Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm felt a lot… bigger than Helsinki, but it’s really about the same size in terms of land. I suppose it does have a larger population so maybe it feels bigger because things look busier.

Stockholm City Hall, where they give out all the Nobel Prizes other than Peace

The most hideous thing I’ve ever seen made from gold flakes

I was in Stockholm for barely a day and didn’t really get to see much of it. It did feel like a much more cheery place than Helsinki, probably because it was sunny when I was there, but perhaps also because Helsinki’s Russian-influenced buildings project an aura of Soviet-esque dreariness I automatically associate with Cold War movies. I mean Helsinki-Vantaa Airport’s arrival hall feels like a prefab military prison from some Bond movie.

Stockholm Palace

Stockholm on the other hand is much closer to my idea of a scenic European city with nice idyllic riverfronts and neo-classical buildings. Plus Sweden is a kingdom so it has all that crazy European royalty shenanigans that tourists adore. Finland totally missed out on this lucrative business when it decided to become a republic after breaking up with Russia.

Now that’s the Europe I had in mind

Interesting that many of the palace guards are female

This shop sells yaoi manga imported from Japan

Don’t mind me, I’m just a stupid tourist. I’m not a suspicious person. No madam

Oslo, Norway

Travelling around Scandinavia really helps an outsider put into perspective just how huge a clusterfuck the European Union is. Finland, Sweden and Denmark are EU members but only Finland uses euro as its official currency. Norway, Sweden and Denmark all have their own version of krone as their currency and they are worth almost the same except not really.

Shops in Sweden and Denmark accept Euro (notes only) but give change in local krones. Shops in Norway don’t accept euro at all and even though Norway is part of the European Economic Area and uses the same tax-free system for foreign tourists. Sweden is technically obligated to eventually adopt the euro, but there is no deadline so they can hold it off for eternity, which many major politicians and the voters are fully in favour of.

Oslo City Hall

And amongst the Scandinavian countries, Norway is probably the most exceptional one when it comes to (non-)participation in the EU because it has a huge buttload of offshore oil and can do whatever the fuck it pleases. This is probably also why things are insanely expensive in Oslo.

A bottle of coke costs 20 NOK or 3.70 USD at a normal store that is not even in any tourist area, which is almost twice as much as it goes for even in central Tokyo. A regular meal at McDonalds cost 90 NOK (16.60 USD). The same meal cost 60 DKK (11.40 USD) in Copenhagen, 490 yen (6.40 USD) in Japan and 6 SGD (5 USD) in Singapore. The huge difference between Oslo and Copenhagen is what boggles my mind. Really makes Japan prices seem like a bargain in comparison.

For god’s sake, the road in front of the palace is not even paved! It’s a bunch of dirt!

While Norway is technically a monarchy, it only became one after separating from Sweden in 1905. Its king (a random dude they found on the streets…almost) is therefore rather poor, money-wise, and his palace looks really sad and is probably out-matched in extravagance by many government buildings in numerous third-world nations. Still, I was told by the tour guide that the people love the royal family very much, unlike those ungrateful Brits.

There was an election when I was there

Live TV coverage of the elections

Before there was Louis Vuitton

Man vs. evil babies

Norway Countryside

I spent most of my time in the countryside of Norway where there are tons of mountains and the clouds look like they are right above your head.

Passing by Utøya

Friendship is magic?

At a pizzeria run by Turkish brothers

Think I saw this in Thor…

Interestingly, I met a young Japanese lady on a working holiday manning the counter at a family-ran hotel in Lærdal, a small town in the mountains. Did not expect that. Apparently many Japanese visit Norway and Scandinavia in the summer. There was also always a female Japanese crew member (who only works there during the summer) on every cruise ship sailing between the Nordic countries.

I suppose if you think about it, Norway is kind of like Japan so maybe Japanese tourists enjoy the familiarity. They both eat whale and tons of salmon, have tons of mountains that are a pain to drive around, have among the lowest in Gini coefficients in the world and… well I guess that’s about it. Still it’s pretty surprising how many times I got to put my Japanese to use in rural Norway (three).

Norway is famous for its fjords, but I think they are overhyped. Sure, they look beautiful and all, but most of the time they don’t look all that different from regular lakes to me.

Entering warp speed

Bergen, Norway

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway behind Oslo. It’s a port city that reminds me of Nagasaki: city centre at the bay area surrounded by mountains with houses built of their sides.

Despite being located next to the gigantic body of water known as the sea, Bergen had a lot of trouble with city fires in the past and built to the ground numerous times, so even its buildings are all relatively new. Its most recent destruction took place during WW2 when a German warship carrying explosives blew up in its harbour by accident and flattened a whole bunch of wooden houses around the bay area. Those people just can’t get a break.

Bergen is a major source of dried cod and for hundreds of years, a monopoly over cod was given to the German Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League’s presence in Bergen was limited to male traders who were sent there as teenage apprentices and were forbidden from having contact with local girls. They lived together for many years in a bunch of wooden buildings near the docks (some of which are preserved on the World Heritage list) and presumably drank beer all day as I imagine Germans do when they are stuck in a foreign country and not allowed to have fun. Basically it all sounds rather homoerotic.

Glad they are taking fires seriously now

Copenhagen, Denmark

I really liked Copenhagen even though it didn’t like me that much — it rained hail the first day (even though it was technically summer) when I was trying to take a photo of the Little Mermaid statue.

Those white spots are hail

The Danish royal family has a much longer history than both Sweden and Norway (which both used to belong to Denmark) and it really shows in their castle décor. The designs at Rosenborg Castle look like the extravagance you would come to expect from royalties, with treasures from foreign lands and gold everywhere.

The Danish kings knew how to decorate shit

The castle has an underground treasury vault with modern security doors and the whole works.

I like taking pictures of election posters every country I go…

Konservative with a capital K

Tivoli is an amusement park in the middle of Copenhagen and it is the second oldest amusement park in the world. It is nowhere near Disneyland, but definitely way better than Hanayashiki, Japan’s oldest amusement park. The shitty part is that it charges for every single ride in addition to the park entrance fee of 95 DKK.

I suppose oriental buildings in theme parks are their equivalent of Sleeping Beauty’s castle in Tokyo Disneyland…

Surprisingly, the Chinese writings in the park are all pretty spot on

I took the S-Train from Copenhagen central station to my hotel two stops away. It cost 24 DKK (4.50 USD), but the interesting thing was that there was no gantry at either station! In fact, no one asked for the ticket at all for the entire journey. Either Danish people are all extremely honest or the train companies are losing a ton of money.

Panoramas

Made a few panoramas with the photos I took using my l33t Photoshop skillz.

Helsinki harbour

Fagernes, Norway

Fagernes, Norway

Fagernes, Norway

Laerdal, Norway

Oslo harbour

Copenhagen

Conclusion

My Scandinavia trip went okay.

Next up: Should I take CS106A or CS106X?

EDIT: Here’s a story I forgot to include. The immigration officer at Helsinki was being kind of a prick, probably because the queue was full of impatient Asian tourists. I couldn’t catch a sentence he said and he acted like I was retarded. He then stamped the immigration stamp on the LAST page of my passport. One week later, when I was departing from Copenhagen Airport, the Danish immigration officer couldn’t find the stamp and started flipping through my passport.

Me: Ummm… It’s on the last page.
Him: Last page? Huh? *Flips to last page*
Him: What an idiot. *Flips back to stamp on an appropriate page*
Me: LOL
Him: Those Finnish people, eh? *Shakes head*
Me: :D

After disappearing off the face of this Earth for the past two weeks or so, I return from the mythical land known as “Northern Europe” to find a package left at my door step. Beware, for mere mortals cannot possibly withstand the power of geek that lies in this post.

As regular readers of my blog (an endangered specimen of magical creatures only slightly more numerous in numbers than unicorns) know, I recently got back into crack Magic: The Gathering after many years of sobriety.

As with anything I do by my own volition, the addiction comes in a sudden burst of intensity and slowly tapers off into a less freaky hobby. But anyway, during that initial rush, I stumbled across the altered art thread on MTG Salvation and was introduced to the insanely wonder world of customized Magic cards modified with acrylic paint. Most of these altered cards are known as “frameless”, which involves extending the original art by painting over the official card borders, but many also involve replacing the official art with fan art (usually involving some meme or pop culture reference).

I bought some materials and tried doing alterations myself, but needless to say my inability to mix paint dooms my abominable creations. So I gave up and instead commissioned two cards from Sandreline, a respected member of the community. Check out her awesome gallery.

So long story short, these are the results along with the original cards:

Death’s Shadow

Fable of Wolf and Owl

This is a textbook example of when two distant branches of geekdom collide, much like the classic GTA Lucky Star.

Anyway, this is really just a short post to let people know that I am still alive having survived the 13-hour flight back from Copenhagen, though at one point the plane made a sudden plunge in the midst of some serious turbulence and I was sure that my time had come.

I just landed in Singapore 4 hours ago. Will post more soon* after I adjust from the jet lag and sort through 3 GB of mostly terrible photos.

* The term “soon”, wherever it is used on this blog, is defined as any point of time between the time of publication and the end of the universe.

In yet another breaking development that casts a blinding spotlight on the unrelenting passage of time and my lost teens, Maaya Sakamoto, my favourite singer in all dimensions of space and time, got married at the ripe age of 31 to fellow seiyuu Ken’ichi Suzumura.

Seriously, do you people realize that the 90s was like twenty years ago? It’s fricking insane. Maaya is basically old school now. I don’t even know the names of any voice actors nowadays. Get off my proverbial lawn you damn kids. I am having a quarter-life crisis.

Anyway, I had just returned from a trip to Hong Kong two days ago and spent today finishing up my packing for my imminent house-moving, so I didn’t notice this piece of gigantic news until Kurogane messaged me on Twitter.

There’s a short personal message on Maaya’s official news feed announcing that the wedding took place on 8th August (incidentally a rather auspicious date in some East Asian cultures):

今日はいつも応援してくださっている皆様に、ご報告したいことがありまãã€‚
私、坂本真綾は、８月８日に声優の鈴村健一さんと結婚しました。

今までの自分の人生の中で
好きだと思うことや、嬉しい、心地いいと思うことを優先ãã‚‹è¡Œå‹•ãŒ
いつも未来につながってきました。
だから結婚についても、
私がそうしたいと心から思えるときが自然と来たので
その気持ちに従いました。
鈴村さんは、一緒にいるととても穏やかな気持ちになれる、優しい人でãã€‚
これからも私が私らしく歌い、演じ、そして生きていくために、
心休まるパートナーが側にいてくれること、とても頼もしく思いまãã€‚
皆様にも、あたたかく見守っていただけたら嬉しいでãã€‚

これからもより一層仕事に励んでいきたいと思っておりまãã®ã§ã€
どうぞよろしくお願いいたしまãã€‚

坂本真綾

Today I have an announcement to make to everyone who has long supported me.
I, Maaya Sakamoto, was married to voice actor Ken’ichi Suzumura on August 8.

Throughout my life, prioritizing the things I like and the things that make me happy and feel at ease has always turned out to be the right path to my future.
So when it came to marriage, the feeling that this was the right time came naturally to me and I decided to follow it.
Suzumura-san is a kind person who makes me feel calm when we are together.
I believe that as I continue to sing, perform and be myself in the coming future, it will be great to have a supportive partner by my side.
I would be really glad if everyone would also continue to watch over us.

I hope to strive even harder in my work in the future, so please continue to lend me your support.

Maaya Sakamoto

Interestingly, as noted by Kurogane, Ken’ichi Suzumura voiced Shinn Asuka in Gundam SEED DESTINY, alongside Maaya who voiced Lunamaria Hawke. This is like Nadesico’s Ruri x Akito all over again. Although Nadesico is by now so old in Internet age that I don’t think anyone online knows what I am talking about.

Real-life parallels fiction

Now to be clear, this is not going to be a fanboy rage thing where I desperately struggle in a futile attempt to not have to confront reality because the marriage of my favourite singer somehow symbolizes the lost of a part of my comfort zone for the past decade. But I have to admit that the timing of this almost too perfectly coincides with the start of a new chapter of my life.

Human beings are superstitious creatures like it or not, and it’s not unreasonable to perceive mutual significance in unrelated events as long as we keep it to poetic musings.

I am actually quite happy for Maaya. 31 is kind of old for a woman to get married by Japanese standards and, in typical Japanese fashion, all sorts of social complexities evolve past 30 for a single working woman. Hope she continues to sing.

I guess officially Maaya Sakamoto is now Maaya Suzumura even though she probably keeps her maiden name as her stage name for branding purpose.

So I am moving soon and I have been spending the past week stacking things (mostly books) into boxes. Sifting through all the stuff I have accumulated in the past ten years really takes me back.

It’s been just about 10 years since I first watched Evangelion, which was kind of how everything began. I would link to my old blog post on it, but I wrote it on my old b2/cafelog (WordPress’ predecessor) blog and it’s stuck somewhere in my site database inside an unconverted b2 table. Just as well, since the post was probably shit.

Games and DVDs. An R1 Evangelion box set is buried somewhere underneath

I’m off to Stanford in just about a month or so and the house-moving will actually take place after I leave. The next time I set foot on Singapore, I’ll be walking into an unfamiliar room with all my precious stuff stacked in boxes covered with (at least) one year’s worth of dust. That ought to be fun.

Crap ton of Haruhi stuff

I am still hanging on to the slim hope that one day pristine limited edition Haruhi goods from the series’ golden age will be worth billions of dollars. But I think the chance that I will make a profit on this collection is probably only slightly higher than this guy’s long-shot investment.

Crap ton of Maaya Sakamoto stuff and other CDs

Honestly speaking, I think my Maaya collection can objectively be described as pretty darn sweet, especially considering I do not live in Japan. I basically have all her singles and albums (including her releases from when she was half of the teenage duo Whoops!!), often two copies of each, plus limited edition and all that jazz. I also have a bunch of posters that CD shops in Japan put up to promote her new CD releases, some related DVDs (including the short movie 03+ she starred in) and some concert memorabilia.

Bunch of manga and Japanese books

I am kind of a compulsive hoarder, but mainly in the sense that I like to collect more things. I don’t actually mind throwing away stuff I don’t need. Not shown in the pictures is a rather large mountain of old magazines and books that are destined for a glorious second life as rolls of toilet paper.

Random English books

Mahoro packed in her box

I actually do not own that many figurines in spite of my urge to collect stuff. PVC figures in particular do not preserve well in Singapore’s hot and humid weather unless you keep them in the box, so I had to throw away some over the years. But the few I keep around are pretty awesome. Maybe one day I’ll finally get a proper dust-proof display case for them and save them from the cruel fate of spending eternity in their boxes.

Kan’u Unchou and Tony Taka’s C73 releases

Haruhi Bunny and Tony Taka’s C75 releases

Going through my collection makes me feel old. I can’t believe that it’s already been a decade since Evangelion first raped my mind. A few days ago, I heard people on the radio reminiscing over 90s pop songs, referring to them as “retro”. Moments like that really turn your perspective upside down.

Speaking of Evangelion, check out my sweet new Esc key

I guess house-moving and college in the States are two huge changes waiting right around the corner that will mark an end of an era for me personally. I have no idea what the future will hold, but things are definitely going to be different soon. Part of me is feeling uneasy (and lazy) about the changes ahead, but mostly I am looking forward to California. Hopefully I will retain the essence of who I am, even as I grow into a new environment.

Manga and CDs

But no matter what happens, I’ll definitely still find time to finish the occasional volume of Kimi ga Iru Machi. That damn thing has more twists than a Taiwanese soap opera. I wonder if the San Francisco Kinokuniya is any good. I hope Maaya performs at Anime Expo again some day…

Anyway, I’ll be in Hong Kong from the 4th to the 10th and spend ten days in Scandinavia towards the end of the month. Things are getting kind of busy around here, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find the time to post some photos from the trips, even though I have yet to finish posting all the photos from my last trip in April…

Once in a while, people tell me that they want to study in Japan. Most of the time, they speak no Japanese. Fortunately for these people, the Japanese government has been actively pushing a programme that will see numerous top Japanese universities offer full undergraduate courses in English.

Known as the Global 30 Project, the initiative by MEXT intends to bring 300,000 international students to Japan by 2020.

Introduction

Currently, 13 schools have been selected to participate in the project, including University of Tokyo (東京大学), Kyoto University (京都大学), Keio University (慶應義塾大学) and Waseda University (早稲田大学).

Recruitment poster for Kyoto U’s anime interest group, circa 2011

Waseda University actually started its own English degree programmes in 2004, under the School of International Liberal Studies (SILS) and for a long time was the only option for lazy Americans who want to study in Tokyo without knowing a word of Japanese.

Among the rest of the schools selected for the Global 30 Project, the level of commitment appears to vary quite a fair bit, with some schools offering just a few niche degree programmes, while others are attempting to emulate Waseda in establishing a standalone international college.

Most of the schools are offering some form of liberal arts education, but Nagoya University (名古屋大学) is taking in students for the 2011 school year for both undergraduate and graduate research programmes in science and engineering. I believe Nagoya University is also the fastest school (excluding those with existing English programmes) in getting its programme up and running under the initiative, as other schools such as University of Tokyo and Ritsumeikan University (立命館大学) will only start taking in students next year.

Incidentally, a professor from Ritsumeikan will be in Singapore this Friday to explain and promote the school’s new English-based programme.

Lawson at Toudai’s Hongo Campus, complete with Toudai’s logo

University of Tokyo

University of Tokyo (aka Toudai) has come up with a Web 2.0-style logo for what it calls PEAK (Programs in English at Komaba), which is a really fancy way of saying that international students enrolled in its new English degree programmes will get to spend four years in Toudai’s secondary campus, far away from the main Hongo campus with its iconic Akamon and Yasuda Auditorium.

Other than a handful of graduate students, Komaba is where freshmen and sophomores study before moving on to Hongo. This means that foreign students in PEAK will probably be left alone at Komaba after the second year… Not to mention the fact that extracurriculars and club activities mostly take place at the main campus, so it’s going to be a pain in the ass. (See map.)

PEAK will start admitting students in Fall 2012. The application forms will be made available on the website starting from 1 Aug 2011.

Recruitment poster for Toudai’s animation club I found at Komaba Campus this past spring

School Terms

Interestingly, most English programmes such as PEAK are choosing to follow American and European college terms even though school years in Japan all start in April. Toudai is even evaluating the (remote) possibility of moving the entire school to a fall intake system in order to become more internationalized.

Personally, I don’t see how this will ever fly given that the entire corporate recruitment cycle in Japan is dependant on having April as the start of the fiscal year. Toudai graduates would be at a disadvantage if they graduated five months after everyone else in their batch had already found a job. Of course, given Toudai’s awe-inspiring reputation in Japan, it might just end up causing the entire employment system to change to suit its fancy.

Opinions

The main problem with English programmes run by Japanese schools is that they end up being even more isolated from the rest of the school when foreign students have enough trouble fitting in as it is. (Okay, I suppose the real main problem is that most professors in Japan can’t teach in English.) The entire college experience becomes very different for these students, especially when their classes are physically located away from the rest of the student body. It’s almost like a foreigner ghetto of sorts.

Leftist students at Kyoto University protesting the mutual security treaty between Japan and the USA that will lead to Japan being dragged into a war

Entry requirements for undergraduate programmes in English are generally less stringent than their equivalent Japanese-language counterparts at the same school. This is because very few foreigners can score well in the horrifying mess of rote learning known as the National Center Test for University Admissions that Japanese high school students spend their whole lives preparing for while resisting the urge to fling themselves in front of an incoming train on the Chuo Line.

This means that programmes such as SILS generally have some form of stigma attached to them when it comes to seeking employment in Japan, where brand name elitism and social stratification have been perfected to an exact science. In a country that ranks not just universities but every individual faculty of every school on a national level, SILS is not the “real” Waseda.

Of course, employers back home are unlikely to know the subtle difference between Toudai and Toudai Komaba, so PEAK participants will no doubt be able to proudly proclaim that they are Toudai students, drawing loud cheers of adulation from fellow fans of Love Hina.

Bicycles parked on Toudai grounds have stickers that indicate the faculty of their owners

Engineering Diversity

For the Japanese government, the long-term strategic consideration for pushing internationalism and English programmes in school is the country’s rapidly ageing population. The country needs skill immigrants and foreign business partners familiar with its cultural intricacies, but the language and cultural barriers make it a very difficult for foreign students to choose Japan for their college education.

I am kind of cynical about such initiatives. At some level, it starts off as an idealistic pursue of internationalism and cultural exchange mixed with long-term pragmatic goals, but the implementation often degenerates into yet another bureaucratic performance index, where the figures and statistics take on an importance of their own. Global 30 may indeed bring 300,000 foreign students to Japan by 2020, but it’s hard to imagine the quality of education they will receive in English in a country where few can speak the language at the high school level.

Will the English programmes provide meaningful value for the foreign students and the larger Japanese college education system? Or will they serve as a superficial facade of diversity — The equivalent of a token black guy being Photoshopped into a student handbook cover photo to showcase the school’s diversity? I guess we will find out in a decade or two.

For now, the Japanese government can throw a bunch of impressive numbers around, the participating schools can claim to be international education hubs and the foreign students have an easier backdoor into brand-name Japanese schools. Win-win all around, I suppose.

Another poster for Kyoto U’s anime interest group, next to a poster for the Korean student group

Conclusion

Okay, so it’s not all bad if you ignore my cynical asides, which can really be said for most things in life.

In fact, for non-Japanese speakers genuinely interested in studying in Japan, programmes such as Waseda’s SILS are actually pretty nice options to have. You do get the opportunity to live and study in Japan and you will eventually pick up the language during your time there. You will also make friends with a lot of Koreans.

If you are interested in studying in Japan and you don’t speak Japanese, take a look through the official sites:

• JUMP (MEXT’s Global 30 site for prospective students)
• Waseda University SILS
• University of Tokyo PEAK
• Nagoya University’s Global 30 page

Those looking for ways to fund their studies can consider the Monbukagakusho (MEXT) scholarship for foreigners. It’s a full-ride scholarship from the Japanese government with no strings attached.

I guess this post was really just an excuse for me to post the highly irrelevant photos I took at various Japanese universities over the years.

It seems like I am forever playing catchup with my sources of entertainment. Half a decade after The West Wing finished airing, I finally took the time to finish all 156 episodes. Seeing as each episode is 42 minutes long, this is on hindsight an incredible waste of my short mortal life, but goddammit it is the best waste of life ever produced for American TV.

Politics for most people is a battle of words and ideas. Political discourse for the average person is conducted in pretty much the same way most hypothetical physics questions are answered: in a vacuum frictionless room containing a perfect sphere. While convincing arguments can be made on paper and discussion boards, the real problem with politics is that it involves humans who are irrational, illogical and whose shit is generally all retarded.

Politics, as it applies to real-world governing, must therefore necessarily go beyond merely finding out and trying to convince people of the best solutions to society’s problems, but also compromising and making the most of any situation in a debate populated by people who will never see eye-to-eye with you, perhaps even rightfully so.

The West Wing, a serial drama depicting the fictional presidency of bleeding-heart liberal Josiah Bartlet (portrayed by Martin Sheen, who is also the voice of the Illusive Man in Mass Effect), highlights the human side of politics and in doing so paints a picture of democracy that feels closer to the truth than the caricatures spewing talking points on cable news.

Whether you find The West Wing to be an uplifting feel-good story of people trying to do good in an imperfect world or a depressing look into the way backroom political deals that affect the lives of billions are made for the most trivial of reasons depends on how much (or little) you already know about American politics. If you went in like wide-eyed Bambi, happily oblivious to the money politics and unscrupulous maneuvering taking place behind the scenes, you might enjoy the show’s implications less than a more seasoned cynic who got to see the softer side of the story.

My recently rekindled Magic addiction has left me thinking about the idea of the “metagame”, which I think is an appropriate description for the kind of politics portrayed in The West Wing. At the basic level, the game is a debate of ideas: does single-payer work better than private health insurance companies? But the metagame is the larger picture: knowing the opinions of all the other players in the playing field and the facts of the situation, how do you then go about winning each particular game? That’s a level of strategy that most online political debate will never consider.

While ultimately not all rainbows and sunshine, The West Wing presents a compelling case for the audience to be conservatively optimistic in the democratic process. Of course, the real hardened cynic would note that this is exactly what the media would have you believe with its thinly-veiled propaganda film.

Although the series has a clear liberal leaning in that it depicts a Democratic White House and most of the main characters generally fall on the left side of spectrum when it comes to hot-button issues such as the separation of church and state, education reform and gun control, the series does not serve as an advocate for any particular issue. It generally tries to humanize both sides of the debate while highlighting failures and imperfections in the system wherever they crop up, such as how the corn industry in the US wields disproportional influence on the formulation of public policy (such as corn-derived ethanol being pushed as “clean” energy) due to the importance of the Iowa caucuses in determining presidential nominees.

In fact, the show can sometimes be too mind-bogglingly apolitical for a story that is supposed to be set in the White House. For example, throughout the series, President Bartlet does not make a single policy speech on-screen. Major speeches, such as the State of the Union, are always cut off right after he steps up to the podium. The sole exception to this is a presidential debate that takes place in the last season where the two candidates actually speak substantially on real political issues such as education and healthcare reforms. I suppose this is because backlash was no longer a concern for the producers in the show’s final season and they felt it was a good opportunity to help raise the level of political awareness.

The West Wing has a knack of surprising you with fresh insights by attaching abstract ideas — often ones you disagree with — to the passionate voices of flawed but lovable characters as they go about trying to run a country. It will occasionally challenge your preconceived notions by lending voice to other ideas.

One particularly memorable example of this is when the black Democratic mayor of Washington D.C. met with President Bartlet to discuss a rider passed by the Republican Congress to create an experimental program allowing some parents in D.C. to have the option to receive school vouchers to pay for private schools. The rider was attached to the spending bill for D.C.’s budget and President Bartlet reassured the mayor that he was going to veto the bill because school vouchers take funding away from public schools. But the mayor surprised the president by requesting that he signed the bill because public schools in D.C. were not improving and the mayor felt that he owed it to the children of his district to at least try out the Republicans’ idea.

You will grow fond of these characters and feel like you are watching them every step of the way as they develop as individuals over the course of an eight-year presidency and do their best to make the country better, or at least not collapse under its own weight.

The West Wing is an highly intelligent show and I highly recommend it to everyone with an interest in politics. Of course, given that I am five years late to the game, this is probably a meaningless recommendation.

This is somewhat of a spoiler, but I find it interesting how closely the fictional election depicted in the series’ final season parallels the 2008 elections: The young minority Democrat beaming with naive enthusiasm and the old moderate Republican with a reputation for being a maverick in his own party. The writers must be amazed by their own prescience.

Also, the eighth episode of season five titled “Shutdown” depicts a federal government shutdown after the Republican Congress fails to agree with the President on the budget bill. This is obviously intended to echo the shutdown that happened during the Clinton administration, but it is also very relevant to the on-going stand-off between the Obama administration and the Republican House of Representatives over the national debt ceiling and the possibility of an impending government shutdown. The players may be different, but the name of the game is still “more tax cuts”.

“They want more tax cuts? Screw it.“