Jason’s Random Thoughts

I’m sittin’ at a coffee table unable to see straight,
watchin’ parallel lines unwind and undulate,
across the steam-streaked windows the scene seems bleak,
another train leavin’ home
conceding defeat with a low moan.

Hanging in a sky made of stone,
everybody’s leavin’ home,
I call my man Jerome to come meet me in the Twilight Zone
“Leave your mobile phone at home and come alone.”

It’s been a recurring problem throughout my life, but the last few weeks have seen it take new shape. The last time I managed to get a full night’s sleep must have been close to a month ago, with the 30 days since consisting of remaining wide awake for close to 20 hours a day. My wired consciousness interspersed with short power naps; the kind that leave you with bloodshot eyes and the sensation that you’re here, but not.

Insomnia has been both a benefit and a curse for as long as I can remember. In my youth the uncaring touch of wakefulness helped me accomplish some of my most obscure writing which has since been lost to the sands of time. This was back before I had paid much attention to computers and what they could do. The sound of binary code being manipulated by a sliver of silicon with etched lines had yet to seduce me. This was a time of paper and pen.

As I grew older and new hobbies and passions were discovered, I started to develop software in the early hours of the night. My fingers would hammer away at the keys until two or three in the morning, when a voice at the back of my head would then remind me of the alarm that was due to pierce the otherwise silent and dark cavern that was my sanctuary, heralding in the start of yet another day and yet another dollar.

I had thought this was something I could “grow out of.” My older friends had always complained about how tired they were once they reached a certain age. It was something I looked forward to. A full night’s rest, every night. How relaxing.

But it never happened.

Once I Was Fat, Now I’m Not

Since moving away from Ontario in 2002 I’ve had only a handful of restful nights each month, the majority of which have been here in Japan. Aside from these few days of peace, my mind has been constantly battling for sleep while deriding me for all the things I’ve yet to accomplish.

Where’s Embink? Why haven’t I put more efforts into studying Japanese? Why is my Arabic so rusty? Why haven’t I finished my books? Did I fill out my reports at work the day before? How will I present new material to the people who are notoriously resistant to assimilating a new language … despite their presence in the room?

These are but some of the things that run through my head on a minute-by-minute basis. But when the thoughts get quiet … that’s when things get interesting.

I’ve been having lots of “alternate story” moments running through my head lately. Things that I could have said in a given situation had I thought of it or if I were far more rude. One that I had posted to an open community reminds me of something I had read on CraigsList a while back, but most have been rather odd collections of “what ifs” and “who are theys.”

What Ifs are my favourite, as these often turn out to be pretty funny. My mind has a rather poor way of coping with stress in that it makes everything funny … even if it’s not. When things get really serious, I’m often reminded of something I had seen in a book, or online, or on some TV show. It makes me laugh … sometimes out loud. Naturally, this does have consequences, but it’s kept me alive thus far.

Who Are Theys are sometimes fun, but often just an exercise in boredom evasion. I see some people and try to imagine what their life is like. It’s done by taking into account how they dress, what they eat, how they walk, and just about anything else I can observe in the space of five to ten seconds. With this piddly amount of information, I then take it upon myself to guess what kind of house they live in, how materialistic they are, what kind of education they might have and just about anything else a guy in his late-20’s might think about. Suffice to say, it’s the biggest time waster at my disposal outside of reading the Daily Yomiuri.

Thought experiements occasionally mix things up by filling my head with mathematics, the varying laws of physics, and things I’ve learned from sources as respected as a post-secondary institution and as under-appreciated as a children’s science-related TV show (thank you Bill Nye, you science guy!). All of these things combine in order for me to think about the problems with interstellar travel, the amount of energy required to escape the gravitation pull of a black hole right before slipping into the event horizon, the amount of energy created by a star in its life, and just about anything else related to reality … be it inside or outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

But, despite the amount of time I spend in my head, and despite how tired I might get with the various types of thinking exercises, I just can’t fall asleep. Nothing has worked, and I refuse to take sleeping pills. If I wanted to be knocked out, I’d just hit my head against a brick or something. So pills are not the answer.

What have I tried? Everything I’ve been able to find in books and as recommended by doctors. Before sleeping I would:

• drink warm milk
• drink a few beer or something stronger
• get a comfortable bed
• get into a set routine, where I would wake and sleep at the same time
• exercise physically for an hour or two
• meditate
• listen to music
• listen to nothing
• listen to traffic
• watch TV
• sleep in a dark room
• sleep in a well lit room
• not eat or drink three hours before bed

The list has a few other items that I’d rather not discuss but, suffice to say, it’s a pretty extensive list. I’d be happy to get a good night’s rest for about 80% of the month if it were possible. Sadly … it’s not. So perhaps I could enlist a little wisdom from you. Do you ever suffer from insomnia? What do you do to overcome it?

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While checking out JapanSoc I happened to see a discussion regarding a post on Blogging Brad’s new site. The question brad asked was quite simple and one that many foreigners ask when living in a new country: Did Japan change you?

We can exchange Japan for any nation we might spend any length of time in, as the question is just as valid. Any change of scenery will change us, as will moving to a new city in the same country.

Moving from Hamilton to Vancouver in 2002 was a pretty big change as my previous lifestyle was no longer maintainable. It had to be modified, albeit slightly to be less wasteful and less angry. This isn’t to say I didn’t get upset in Vancouver, but the environment was less tolerant to such outbursts. The move from Vancouver to Kakamigahara, Japan in 2007 was even greater as a serious language barrier was in place, as well as cultural differences. If this wasn’t enough, I married my wonderful Reiko and have been living in the same house as my in-laws.

Past habits and behaviors were just not possible under these circumstances.

So what has changed? Quite a bit, I think.

I no longer swear, as I find it to be awkward. I rarely get upset and, when I do, the feeling passes in a matter of seconds. I’ve lost 23 kg since August and now eat 3 times a day. My communication skills have greatly improved, as has my writing (I hope). The list goes on, but these are the main attributes that friends and family will notice.

Change Happens

Wondering if I was alone in the realm of attitude adjustment, I asked some co-workers if they had noticed anything since moving to the country. Suffice to say, I wasn’t surprised with the answers. What did surprise me, though, were the details.

Two people have said that Japan makes them more frustrated, while other’s say just the opposite. Like Brad’s post mentions, some have become loud, but most have settled down. This said, I should mention that eight of the nine people I’ve discussed the mater with are either married or in a committed relationship. Regardless of what nation we call home, long-term relationships tend to have a powerful effect on our emotional states.

Does this invalidate my unofficial survey? I don’t think so. When it comes down to it, our environment plays a big role in how we act and react to stimuli.

Are We a Product of Our Environment?

Psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo proved quite some time ago that, regardless of our learned responses, we tend to modify our behavior when confronted with a foreign environment. There are exceptions to this rule, and the length (or potential length) of time we spend in any one place will certainly have a strong bearing on our psyche. However, at the end of the day, we modify our behavior to fit not only our environment but the role we play in it.

An example of this would be the Stanford Prisoner Experiment. Here, a group of volunteers agreed to take part in a study. They were not told what the study involved, but the compensation was apparently enough to entice these people. I will strongly suggest you take a quick peek at the article as it’s a fascinating look into how strongly we’re affected by our environs and expected roles.

How Does This Relate to Japan?

Although I do complain about the politics in this nation, Japan is a great country for the most part. The food is great. Most of the people are friendly. The trains usually run on time. Heck, most of us could go on for at least 20 minutes talking about all the things they might like about this country. But the fact of the matter remains: our environment changes our perceptions of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour based on previously learned rules and new sets of rules adopted during our time in Japan.

The way we respond to stress is also a rather large part of who we are in this country. Are we permitted to shout and scream when frustrated in Japan? Perhaps in our homes, but it’s not quite acceptable in public. Can we be loud, obnoxious and use explicit language wherever we might go? Sure, but we won’t fit in or make friends that way.

Whether we like it or not, we have pre-programmed roles and expectations “programmed” into us which dictate our actions. Depending on our response to different levels of stress, we could find ourselves speaking louder than usual or getting frustrated more often. With the number of people who are fluent enough in English to explain how to do something as simple as pay a bill through an ATM, I’m often quite impressed that more English-speaking people aren’t flying off the handle at every little “Japan-only” way of doing things.

So, has Japan changed us? Without a doubt. This country has changed many of us the very same way that Canada and the United States changes the people who have lived there for any length of time. We have a need to fit in to a society, wherever that society may be. Hopefully the changes that we aquire when living or working in another nation help us appreciate the incredible diversity that we can find in every part of the world.

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I’m not sure what it is about viruses in Japan, but they sure pack one heck of a whollop.

Two days ago I spent 15 minutes at a hospital here in Kakamigahara in order to get some money refunded, and in exchange for my patience I was awarded with another bout with the flu. Not just any flu … but an uber unfriendly Japanese “Sit-Yourself-Down” kind of flu.

Was it something I touched? Was it someone I spoke to?  Who can say for certain.  All I know is that in a really short amount of time, I managed to lose approximately the same amount of money I would have earned by going to work yesterday.  Fun?  Wow.

So, to prevent others from experiencing this needless downtime, I want to pass on a little advise that my wife often tells me: wear a mask.

Masks seem to be everywhere in Japan, and you can’t go one day in a crowded place without seeing at least one person wearing the ubiquitous white fashion accessories.  I’ll admit that they don’t block too many of the big germs that are making their rounds this spring, but they do offer that little bit of protection from the people that insist on coughing without covering their mouth, or otherwise act as a biohazard to the people around them.

So, on that note, it’s time to get back to work and be one of those very few gaijin to be seen wearing a mask.

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The last few weeks have been pretty hard on me, with several things remaining fresh in my mind regardless of how much I try to push it away temporarily.  Normally this isn’t an issue, as I’m quite good about delegating stress and worries to other parts of the brain where I can just ignore them for a few hours and get some decent sleep.  However, this hasn’t been an option recently.

For the last month or so, I’ve fought with the Sand Man.  It hasn’t been a very enjoyable battle, and I’ve been losing more often than not.  Since last Tuesday, any night where I can get more than four hour’s sleep has been a “good night”.  Most of the time those Serta sheep are often jumping the fence right up to number 500,000.

Fun?  Wow.

What really bugs me about this problem is that I’m one of those people that needs a solid six hours of sleep per night minimum in order to be pleasant the following day.  Without this amount of unconscious time, functioning and remaining polite and courteous is one heck of a chore.  Thank God for coffee!

I’ve tried everything to solve this, too.  From watching boring documentaries about tree bark (I seriously have a National Geographic documentary on tree bark to watch), to writing notes for future blog topics, nothing has helped take my mind of the list of things I need to do, should do, and must aspire to do.  Not only at home, but at work and in life.  The list is becoming almost endless, while my resources are anything but.  Unfortunately, this has also interfered with my post schedule.

There are lots of topics that are waiting to be typed out and polished off.  Heck, I have eight good posts waiting for their final revision and publication stored on my iPaq.  That said, I don’t really feel like discussing those topics when I’m so tired, yet can’t sleep.  So that means they’ll just sit on the machine and wait until I’m good and ready to examine them and put the finishing touches on the grammar and vocabulary, while adding links and images to enhance its relevance.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the best way to maintain or build readership for this site.

So how do you get around the whole insomnia thing?  In the past I’ve used meditation and boring documentaries, or reading a tech-heavy book … but these things just aren’t working anymore.  Perhaps it’s time for the big guns to come out … exercise before bed!

Then again … perhaps not :???:

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You’ve got to hand it to the Japanese.  They have the lowest murder rate in the world, the lowest number of alcoholics in any non-Muslim nation, and the least numer of heavy-set people.  That said, there sure are a lot of unexplained deaths, heavy drinkers and people suffering from metabolic syndrome.

WTF is ‘metabolic syndrome’, you ask?  From what I can tell, it’s Japan’s way of saying “your unhealthy lifestyle is okay, and your stomach is big because you have a disease.”

Excuse me while I roll my eyes with dramatic flair.

Japan is a nation of beer drinking, meat eating men and women who are about as active as any average city-dwelling citizen in Canada or the United States.  That is to say, they’re not very active anymore.  From what I’ve witnessed in my time here, shopping seems to be the biggest workout a person can get.  Walking all the way from the car to the mall … Walking through the stores … Carrying all the stuff you bought ….  Heck, it sounds like a chore more than something people would actually want to do on their only day off each week.

That said, it comes as no surprise that as we get past the big Four-Oh in life we start to develop a little bit of a tummy.  But for many Japanese, this is no biologically normal slow-down of our metabolism.  No.  This is something far more sinister in nature:  a disease called Metabolic Syndrome.  Luckily, no sooner was this terrible disease discovered that pharmaceutical companies had some ‘medicine’ to help prevent our bodies from bulging at the waist.

Excuse me, but I need to roll my eyes again.

Suffice to say, the market for medicines that claim to prevent metabolic syndrome is growing quite fast and the scheduled introduction of a new medical checkup system for this disease is believed to be one factor driving the sales of such products.

Starting from April of 2008, corporate health insurance associations and municipal governments will be required to conduct a special medical checkup for people between 40 and 74 to identify those suffering from this syndrome.  According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, about 57-million people will be subject to the tests and about one-third are expected to show signs of the syndrome.

I wonder if doctors will just look at someone’s waistline and say “Congratulations!  You’re not fat!”

Seriously.  The amount of money being spent on supposed prevention medications in this country is absolutely stupid.  According to Rohoto Pharmaceutical, herbal medicine has seen sales of over 3-billion Yen in 2007.  Among these medicines is something called Bofutsushosan, which promises to reduce fat around our abdomen.

So far, the health ministry has approved some 210 herbal medicines to combat various “ailments”, and it’s pretty easy for companies to develop and win approval for whatever new mixture of roots and flower petals they concoct.  Often the wait time is less than two years.

Kinda makes one wonder if there’s any way an ordinary person can get in on the action.

Not to be outdone by the pharmaceutical companies, electronic manufacturers have started developing health appliances that offer services that combine the measurement of health data with medical services.  Companies like Hitachi, who has developed a system under which customers will be able to measure how much they move and how many calories they burn.  This data is then transmitted to a portable terminal and can be sent to a doctor, allowing them to judge just how fat and lazy a patient might be.

Other companies, like Matsushita Electric, are developing small machines like the Joba, which went on sale back in 2000.  The Joba has sold over 300,000 units so far and people burn calories by balancing on the device while it gyrates.  This little horseback machine is considered to be a forerunner in the field of anti-metabolic syndrome appliances and is currently in its fifth generation.

What I find most comical about this whole ‘metabolic syndrome’ scheme is that people actually think they can remain skinny and in good physical shape while doing no actual labour.  Back in the day, people would do a little exercise to lose some weight.  It’s sad to think that people are now being brainwashed by pharmaceuticals to believe that every freakin’ thing that causes our bodies to deviate from what we see in TV advertisements is some disease, condition or syndrome.  There is nothing wrong with realizing that we’re getting older and putting on the pounds.  If a person really isn’t happy about it, perhaps they could take up jogging or going to the gym for a few hours a week.  These shortcuts to the “perfect body” will only make things worse in the long run.

That said, there’s definately some money in it for those of us with a little ambition.  I’m off now to buy and stock a vending machine with some of this herbal medicine stuff.  If there’s really a few billion Yen to be made, then I want in on the action.

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