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Gen and Sayuri's wedding video
:: 24 June 2009, 18:25

I made this for a couple who got married last week.

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The Trash Problem
:: 15 June 2009, 11:55

The way a city takes out their trash is very telling of its people. Last month when I went home to visit my mom in Cupertino, California, in the heart of the Silicon Valley, I noticed that they no longer had to sort their recyclables. Everything goes into one bin. So their sorting task had dwindled to a total of two choices: trash or recyclables. This seemed like some sort of miracle, after years and years of sorting paper from plastic bottles from aluminum and glass. The idea of throwing everything into one bin seemed like a total no-no. Tuesday morning rolls around and I see the garbage collector in action – a huge, Wall-E type of truck four times the height of a Honda Civic. I knew I was away from America for too long when I was utterly mesmerized by the power and might of the garbage truck. A man comes around the side, fits a garbage can into an “arm” which hoists the can up over the truck and into the pile of recyclables the contents of the can go. In the process there are some loose receipts or flyers that fall out into the air, but no complaints, please, this is a modern miracle!

Trash day in Cupertino, California

A week later, I visited my sister in Berkeley, California, the heart of the bygone hippie era. I didn’t feel so out-of-the-loop when I saw that they still had to sort their recyclables. But I did notice that the little green compost bin (which Cupertino does not have) was taking in more than it used to – meat and biodegradable paper products such as tissues, paper towels, paper cups, etc. This little green compost bin is collected by the city of Berkeley. When a year ago, compost only took vegetable scraps, it has evolved rapidly and efficiently, careful not to discriminate against the omnivore’s diet.
In any case, both cities have a recyclables day and a garbage day. Simple enough.

Not so simple in Tokyo. I recently moved into my new neighborhood, where like all Tokyo neighborhoods, taking out the garbage is a job in itself. It requires an amazing memory or the task of posting idiot-proof reminders all over your house. Never mind that you have to sort your trash into three categories and 4 subcategries, each category is taken out on a different day. Please take a look at the chart for our neighborhood:

The pink area on the left indicates combustible items (burnable, yes the trash is burned here). Combustible items makes up most of the trash so it is taken out twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Until last year combustibles items used to not include plastics, which was quite a nightmare. But I don’t know what is worse – not having to sort your plastics from paper or knowing that in some burning facility there are mountains of plastics being burned every week.

The blue area refers to incombustible items (not burnable) including metals, metallic cans and glass. Since these items build up quite slowly, it is collected every second and fourth Tuesday of the month.

Finally on the right side, recyclables are listed, including newspapers, magazines, cardboard, bottles and aluminum cans which are all to be sorted seperately. Footnote – notice the plastic bottle illustration on the left. Residents must remove all paper labels and caps from plastic bottles, rinse them out and crush them before taking them out. Now notice the newspaper and magazine illustrations, these must be bound together with string.
Another footnote is that all garbage items must be taken out between the tiny window of 6 to 8am the morning of collection day. This morning I was cursing myself when I accidently slept in until 8:18am to find that the collector had come by in those 18 minutes I slept in. Cursing myself into shame, I calmed myself down by saying “at least they were combustible items, they’ll come for it again on Saturday.”

Finally, because there are no city-issued garbage cans in Tokyo, people leave their garbage curbside. This means that, bags and bags of all sizes are left on the curb vulnerable to scavengers – black crows. To avoid crows from pecking into trash bags, nets are thrown over the mountains of communal curbside trash. I never know who does it, but the nets are always promptly and neatly folded up by noontime.

Tokyo, Shibuya-ku

For each city it is clear that garbage is a social and cultural issue. When I heard about how my friend Kishi went to Bali and described to me their garbage system (burn all garbage in front of your houses on Sundays) it was clear to me that taking out the trash is something we deal with as citizens of this world.

Cupertino’s no-sort system is genius. It’s what the Silicon Valley does best – create systems. Finding solutions to make life more user-friendly is their schtick and I think they have succeeded.
Planning to put a zero-waste policy into motion in the near future, Berkeley is ahead of its game in progressive garbage systems. It’s more “Think Forward,” than “Think Different.” I can’t wait to see how far they will be when I move back next year.

Tokyo’s intricate garbage’s system displays the best qualities of its people. They all abide by its detailed, sometimes frustrating method that tests patience and cooperation, which is crucial when living in such a densely packed metropolis.

I will spend today figuring out how to come up with the best combination of trash cans for our new home.

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Andy Gouveia drew my portrait
:: 22 May 2009, 10:37

http://bluetreetops.blogspot.com/

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The Geniuses at EB Games
:: 20 May 2009, 09:09

I stepped foot into an EB Games store for the first time in my life. I always knew it was “some place you get video games.” I could even remember the colors of the logo. Not only that, I even had the right premonition as to where it was located.
It was almost as if I was waiting for my friend Andi, living in Japan, to ask me to buy a new video game called Bionic Commando. I knew exactly where to go.
I was never into video games. Wait, that’s a lie, I played Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt in the late eighties. But it pretty much stopped there. Well, there was Tetris too. But the idea of life-like humans appearing in video games is almost as foreign and uninteresting to me as a stack of piled up utilities bills next to my laptop.
But for some reason the folks at EB Games were clever enough at branding their stores to permeate into my unconscious. How did I know that EB Games used the colors red, white and black? How did I have a hunch that it was probably next to that cell phone store?
Really, it’s scary and I’d like the folks at EB Games to tell me their secret.

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Sweet Home, Garage
:: 13 May 2009, 05:48

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My mom’s house underwent a major remodel in 2001. The house went from nondescript, suburban 70s to Elle Decor country chic. Gone were the scratches on the front door caused by our hyperactive dog Shiro. And gone were the stains in the carpet from my sister’s Cindy’s micro-ravioli mishap. A stranger would consider these flaws, but I deemed them as characteristics.

Although I miss these traits of history once in a while, I am super ecstatic for my mother who finally got to realize her dream home. Plus, the comforts of modern interior are easy to get used to as a visitor – granite countertops for easy clean-up, and large, deep sink basins with just the right amount of water pressure.

But one part of the house has remained the same: the garage. As I pulled into the garage yesterday, it looked just as though I remembered it as a 12-year old. Sure there have been cabinets installed and it looks tidier, but the overall “look” has remained the same.

I haven’t hung out in a garage since moving to Tokyo and pulling into my mom’s garage yesterday brought back a sense of warmth.

As a kid my garage memories include spinning the washer, only to realize I had forgotten to add detergent. I also remember having makeshift band practices much to the chagrin of my mom and our neighbors. My prized eraser collection was also stowed in there and I’d sneak into the garage in the middle of the night a few times a year just to make sure it was still there. The garage was dark and uninviting but there were reasons to go there. And finally, when I first went off to college, I vividly remember my best friends Maria and Matt standing, then running with hands waving, as I pulled out of the garage.

So this is me, giving props to our garage and all the garages across suburban America that keep it real, house our dreams (guitars, power tools, beer), histories (photos, old furniture) and serve as the starting point of “getting away from it all.”

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Danish Babies!
:: 6 April 2009, 01:20

Danish Babies

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Transience
:: 1 April 2009, 08:01

Introductions and endings are less defined in my interactions here in Beijing. Yesterday I took a day-long tour with five other tourists who were visting Beijing from rural China. One couple in their seventies took me in for the day as if I were their adopted daughter. I met them in the minivan at 7:20 A.M. along with my tour guide.
“I thought you were Chinese. I might have spoken to you in Chinese if I met you on the street,” were Grandpa’s first words later translated to me as I introduced myself to the tour guide in English.
When we arrived to our first destination at the Summer Garden Palace, Grandma took my arm just above the elbow with her hand making sure I didn’t get hit by cars. This was my introduction to Grandma. She was very talkative to me after this, although I could not understand a wrod. Thereafter, I was in every one of their pictures. In front of the garden gate, in front of the crane monument, in front of the peace gate, in front of the longetivity stone… and more! About two 24-exposure rolls of films worth of more.
“Who’s this?” their real daughter may ask in two weeks. Although, she probably won’t even ask.
As the day came to a close and the minivan pulled into the hotel parking lot, I was bracing myself for a tearful goodbye. But all the bracing was a waste as just like any other stop, it was chaos followed by the tour guide hurriedly ushering those of us staying at the hotel to pile off quickly.
I caught a glimpse of Grandma and Grandpa as I shuffled around the minivan and turned around to see if they even cared that I had left. Both Grandma and Granpa were waving their arms ferociously through the glass window.
I teared up after all.
Chinese movies are oozing with drama, but what I sense is that in everyday life, there is a common acceptance of transience in Beijing. As a result, there seems to be less tension projected to each other personally. If there is, it’s released and fizzles into the air where it belongs.
We may meet in an hour or never again. This is the time we had. The end.

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Humming
:: 31 March 2009, 07:55

There is a constant hum. A symphony of working (or broken) machinery is present in Beijing. Whether it’s an idling train or a pipe in the walls stuttering in predicatable intervals, ambient sound comes in the form of automation.

Perhaps because these machines are working in metronomic consistencey, the people are less rhythmic. Moving to their own beat, human communication is unpredictable and confrontational. In other words, it’s very real. Coming from Tokyo, where inhabits the most robotically speaking residents I have ever encountered, I feel very present here in Beijing. I as for attention, and suddenly three people look up at me, wondering why I have interrupted them.

“Ni hao,” I say.
“Get on with it” their faces say.

But this is not unfriendliness.

“Do you have a pamphlet on Beijing,” I ask the concierge.
“No, just the one in your room in Chinese… next!”

She spoke nothing but the truth. No skirting around the fact that they didn’t have what I asked for or pretending like they were sorry for not having what I was requesting. Being real is novel.

I hover somewhere in between the humming and reactive communication – taking comfort in the language of machinery and that cross-cultural thing called smiling.

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My Grandmami: Here she comes.
:: 12 January 2009, 10:34

Every year since I moved to Tokyo in 2005, I have visited the Bay Area for New Years break. This year, I was able to spend two days in the company of my grandma. At 88, she is the rock of the family, saying everything with the conviction and confidence that only a grandma who named herself “Grandmami” can. And who always keeps a full bottle of Hennessy in her liquor cabinet.

Born in Kyushu, Japan on November 27, 1920, Grandmami is of Chinese descent. Due to the Sino-Japanese war and her blood, she was ousted by the pressures of the Japanese government in 1937.

My imagination fills this scene in with flickering black-and-white images. A 16-year-old Grandmami packs up a brown leather bag and sets off to somewhere she’s never been, with a language she has never spoken. Here I come, Shanghai.

The details are hazy. And isn’t it often us grandchildren who wonder why we never ask our grandparents the details. We’d rather play the can-do-no-wrong grandchild with the shiny bowl-cut, than the inquisitive historian.

So the film reel of my imagination is threaded and flickers on.

A few years after she arrives to Shanghai, she marries a Japanese-educated Chinese man. One child is born while the party wars rage. The Communist party proves victorious and everyone else is banished to Taiwan. So Grandmami, daughter in tow, packs up her brown leather bag. Here I come, Taipei.

In Taiwan, two more daughters are born, my mother being the youngest of three. By the time my mother is born, it is 1948 and the Sino-Japanese war had ended three-years prior. Semi-stabilized in Taiwan, the family stays on board in Taiwan for a couple more years, always intent on the fact that they will return to Japan. So while my mother is still a toddler, Grandmami, three daughters in tow, packs up her brown leather bag. Here I come, Tokyo.

Grandmami and her family live an upper-middle class lifestyle in Tokyo. Poodle skirts come and go. Grandmami opens a jewelry store in Roppongi, designing a diamond ring set into a platinum band that she still wears on her ring finger.

After her youngest child gets married, Grandmami gets a divorce. Grandmami, greencard (courtesy of the ex-husband) in tow, packs up her brown leather bag. Here I come, San Francisco.

All her children eventually end up in the San Franscico Bay Area to raise families and gossip on Sunday mornings. The brown leather bag must be in the attic somewhere, quietly ready-to-go.

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My Motto for 2009
:: 7 January 2009, 15:40

Live the Dream!

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Yoko Kumano © 2006