40 years after first setting foot in Japan

champon ramen near JR Hita in Oita-ken

Summer of 1984 was the start of a year-long contract in the local school district's middle and high schools of Fukui-ken. Now in the fall of 2024 my Japan interests continue to grow and expand. Leaving aside the many changes in the world, and the ways that Japanese lives have changed in those generations since 1984, too, my own expertise in language and society has increased little by little; most rapidly and widely during the dedicated years of graduate school, ethnographic fieldwork, and writing, but also at a more gradual pace since then by meeting others working, living, and researching in Japan or about the place and lives there.

Pausing between bites of piping hot noodles on a rainy November afternoon, the passage of decades and the present moment of savoring freshly prepared champon ramen come momentarily into sharp focus. It is not as if those many hours of language study and initial model dialogues were leading up to a hot meal in this part of Kyushu. But then, again, in some ways the accumulated experiences, study, and observations do figure in to each successive moment in the days going forward. So, yes, in that sense, the 40 years did lead up to the first bite of ramen this afternoon!

The first semester college student in Japanese 101 with the Mizutani textbook of the 1980s open to see what topics and vocabulary appear is very different to the gray haired guy content in his choice of the noodles in rich chicken broth and smothered in a mishmash of vegetables and animal products. Back then the idea of traveling to a town for the first time, making all arrangements for transportation and lodging and budgeting enough cash might have been daunting. But now it all seems much less formidable. What once might have seemed strange at worst or exotic as best now feels pretty normal or even ordinary. Although far from native speaker fluency in oral skills and even weaker in literacy, generally being able to understand the speakers of Japanese and making myself understandable in return is not a big source of anxiety like it once would have been for a first semester college student. Let us hope for many more weeks and opportunities to explore parts of the islands new to me. May the learning ever continue.

Web of financial complexities in consumer lifetimes

 

Advice to customers of retirement accounts, 11/2024 brochure.

Many generations ago the average peasant or laborer used cash intermittently; it was not part of daily habits, necessarily. After the pace of commerce and interactions accelerated during the creation and growth of industrialization, though, more frequent and bigger exchanges began to happen. Now in 2024 a person has automatic payments (subscription or billing debits) happening in the background to their lives. At (self) checkout counters there are touchscreens asking what manner of financial currency the shopper will be using: digital payment from cellphone, cash, credit card, debit card, gift voucher, Bitcoin, and so on. Not only are daily transactions complicated and increasingly at risk for information crime (fraud, hacking, phishing), but the arc of a person's life is nothing longer as simple as "you come into the world with nothing and you leave the world with nothing" (you can't take accumulated wealth and debt with you after dying). Instead, it is not uncommon to have some net worth to distribute by written instructions, or if no legal arrangements are prearranged, then division of assets by governmental formula.

This screenshot is a simple overview to the kinds of financial decisions that many people should be aware of. There are lots of poor people for whom such things may seem irrelevant or alien to their experience. But for many others a failure to think through options, obligations, opportunities and other factors leads to losses, or at least foregoing of possible gains and costs to reduce or avoid altogether. In other words, the landscape of financial life in 2024 is altogether different to 1824 for many, many people; some more complicated than others. For the poorest, perhaps the difference from 1824 to 2024 is not as big, though. Looking in the opposite direction, not to pre-Industrial social experience of going from birth to the end of a long life but into the future, maybe the current range of complications will persist. But maybe there will be even more forms of payment and commodification of daily life needs. If that were to be true, than what today seems already too complicated, by comparison, will be viewed as "the good old days."