It's Saturday evening. Time to watch my subtitled Japanese television programs. You get older, the mind begins to slide, you watch English subtitled Japanese television on channel 26. The samurai epic at nine is pretty good, but boy-howdy is it hard to get your head around what these written for the screen Japanese characters are thinking and how they're behaving in these police procedural, surviving the Kobe earthquake by planting a garden, boy meets girl but they have issues theatricals.

Writing them must be hard (well, maybe not that hard), but what do they have to say about current Japanese social reality? Is this a portent of a regimented - regulated - watched - dumbed down globalized future that we can all look forward to or a recitation of patterns of the past? Real Japanese people don't behave this way, right? Those big round happy faced teddy bear like creatures you see propped up in the bedrooms of Japanese children give me serious pause. They look like psychological props for a horror show. (The Japanese make good horror shows.)

The Hello Kitty Horror Show, a Japanese adaptation of The Rocky Horror Show? Weird fucking shit, all this bobbing up and down, all this “getting along in order to get along” and I, perceptive I, appear to be attracted to it on Saturday evenings. It is, after all, just television. Look at our television. No - a quick reality slap here - don't look at our television. This is coming into perspective. Comparing home grown Disney to Japanese grown Hello Kitty is like putting Satan in the ring with The Hello Kitty Cookie Monster. Adios Cookie Monster. I take it all back about Japanese culture. Japanese television executives have obviously been doing post graduate work at the Fox network. Pay no attention. I've been hallucinating. The obvious answers to all my questions surround me.

Settle down. You don't know what you're talking about.

I never know what I'm talking about. I think I need to go to Japan and check it out. Korea was different, but it wasn't weird, not that spending a year in the army in Korea let me see anything of the real Korea. I know the Japanese culture is pretty much closed to the eyes of a non-Japanese speaking (nuanced Japanese speaking) westerner who didn't grow up in the culture, but obviously I have an interest of some kind or I wouldn't be suggesting a visit. (I will never get it together to actually go to Japan, you understand, but in my world just suggesting an idea is significant.)

You should never have watched Woman in the Dunes when you were in college.

Sunday. A good morning for me, here in Oakland, and for you, I would hope, wherever you are. Two days of work next week and then off to Seattle. I can handle it, particularly if I blow off leaving until Thursday morning, use Wednesday to finish my preparations, give Emmy one less day to fret for my absence. Life is good. Best to repeat that - “life is good” - repetition leads to, if not understanding, then at least to indoctrination. ”He thought he was happy his whole life long, doctor. Poor deluded bastard. Evidently no one bothered to tell him the terrible truth and he went out with a smile.”