Yoga night! Yoga night! Yeah to Yoga night! And tonight Christian and Rebekah are coming with me so that I will not be the only American looking silly. Yippie!
Today I am going to go to an antique fair, maybe. This weekend is the Matsuri (Festival) in Nagoya, so there will be parades and drunken revelry in the streets for the whole weekend. Apparently in Toyko they have problems with the portable shrines being crashed into eachother as people get into shrine fights. Hee hee hee. It reminds me of the fighting monks a few years ago. Different sects would battle eachother in the streets. Whoever said Buddhism was peaceful?
I have something that has been irking me all day. Actually for longer than that. Since I came to Japan the news has been going crazy with the story of the Japanese kids who were kidnapped by North Korea 24 years ago. President Kim of North Korea finally admitted to Prime Minister Koizumi that there were still some of the kidnapped kids alive (they are around 40 now) and there have been pictures of everyone involved all over the news. The kidnapped Japanese got to come back for a week to visit, and it really is very sad for them and their families. But what bothers me is the attitude of the Japanese. They make it sound like there is this horrible wrong that has been committed against them, and the North Koreans are the most evil people ever. But they very quickly forget how many Koreans they kidnapped and brought to Japan to make pottery. They never apologized or admitted that they did something wrong. The Japanese committed terrible atrocities in Korea as well as China, but steal a few of their citizens and you'd think the world was ending. Not that it isn't sad, but their attitude bothers me as slightly hypocritical. It reminds me also of America's attitude after the 9-11 attacks. Not that we don't have a right to feel hurt and violated, but we should recognize that we are not the first people to ever feel that way. And we have caused plenty of suffering ourselves and should remember that when we start to sound self-righteous. Maybe we aren't so different from the Japanese.
Today I am going to go to an antique fair, maybe. This weekend is the Matsuri (Festival) in Nagoya, so there will be parades and drunken revelry in the streets for the whole weekend. Apparently in Toyko they have problems with the portable shrines being crashed into eachother as people get into shrine fights. Hee hee hee. It reminds me of the fighting monks a few years ago. Different sects would battle eachother in the streets. Whoever said Buddhism was peaceful?
I have something that has been irking me all day. Actually for longer than that. Since I came to Japan the news has been going crazy with the story of the Japanese kids who were kidnapped by North Korea 24 years ago. President Kim of North Korea finally admitted to Prime Minister Koizumi that there were still some of the kidnapped kids alive (they are around 40 now) and there have been pictures of everyone involved all over the news. The kidnapped Japanese got to come back for a week to visit, and it really is very sad for them and their families. But what bothers me is the attitude of the Japanese. They make it sound like there is this horrible wrong that has been committed against them, and the North Koreans are the most evil people ever. But they very quickly forget how many Koreans they kidnapped and brought to Japan to make pottery. They never apologized or admitted that they did something wrong. The Japanese committed terrible atrocities in Korea as well as China, but steal a few of their citizens and you'd think the world was ending. Not that it isn't sad, but their attitude bothers me as slightly hypocritical. It reminds me also of America's attitude after the 9-11 attacks. Not that we don't have a right to feel hurt and violated, but we should recognize that we are not the first people to ever feel that way. And we have caused plenty of suffering ourselves and should remember that when we start to sound self-righteous. Maybe we aren't so different from the Japanese.
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