Klingsor's First Winter

I had a work meeting the other day.

We have a small group in my office who are in charge of communicating in times of a catastrophe etc.

One person was a little apprehensive of joining and asked is there any legal risk of doing this in Japan.

So a meeting was set.

He overseas crisis person talked about how it was unlikely and about how the law is in Canada and Europe. He eventually always mentioned he assumes or imagines in the same in Japan.

In other words no definitive answer, but he didn’t see why he answer is good enough.

The person left the crisis cell.

I have a friend who left Japan to move back to America.

He was supposed to get money back from his realtor/landlord.

The amount was substantially less on documents because they could not deduct a fee from his account.

My friend says he definitely had money in there.

He doesn’t seem focused on how to prove this, but more on the fact that he “definitely” did and how they’re trying to scam him.

It is incredibly foreign to me for people to feel confident in making statements without having proof in front of them, or not have their immediate action plan being about how to ascertain said proof. Why does your confidence in a situation matter when you can’t proof it? How can another act based just on that confidence?

I’m not sure if this feeling of mine is inherently due to having lived in Japan a long time or not.

I didn’t get laid off. Others did. It’s good for not feeling loyalty to a place. You are gone when you’re inconvenient. You should leave when they are inconvenient.

My son is still waking up early. My wife is a little stressed again. Im handling it a lot better though. The “woe is me” feeling is waining and I would just want to get shit done.

Tomorrow I see Hot Water Music. Will be very good. Hope they have cool shirts and perhaps I can get Caution in a cool color.

I want to buy land soon. I’m tired of the pre-dance. Let me dance.

Son isn’t sleeping as well as he was.

My wife is at a part-time job today. My son is on a nap right now.

We’re progressing with home buying. Haven’t made a decision, but I want to get there this month.

I have a paranoid worry that my job will try and lay me off next week. It would make no sense, but I’ll be on edge until Thursday night.

I need to work harder at work to be more attractive as an HR manager to work at other foreign companies.

I’ve finally properly started investing in NISA. Would love to do the max for my wife and I every year.

Life is tough to be honest. I feel like I’m failing at some things, but I think I look like a decent success on the outside.

So it goes. So it goes.

Son hasn’t woken up in the night. Two nights in a row.

This is glorious.

We have been so stressed for reasons I don’t even know. I think for me it’s my wife’s stress, but I know some of her stress is from me, and of course we’re both stressed I think from that continued lack of personal time.

I’ve just been on my phone this morning, but if this keeps up, I will start running at 4am, which has been proven to be the first step to save my soul.

My son and I have had a cold. So that has stopped that and also has gotten me to go to sleep before 9pm. Honestly probably a very good thing showing me how easy it is to get up at 4am if sleeping 7 hours uninterrupted.

It sometimes feels a little embarrassing how we struggle with all this, knowing how common child raising is, and how mature we should be for doing this in our 40s. I don’t think we could imagine a second kid now, and my colleague who’s 48 just had his fourth! (His wife is younger.)

Time for another cup of tea. They’re all still sleeping upstairs.

Canadian-ness isn’t something I often feel. It’s usually more a feeling of not being American, but being North American.

I feel a sense of being from Vancouver, but Vancouver’s relationship with Canada is different than Toronto or Montreal’s perhaps. I have also never been east of the Rockies.

However, whenever I listen to Winnipeg’s (maybe some are from Toronto?) The Weakerthans. I feel this slightly painful, very deep yearning for Canada.

It’s something I cannot properly put into words, and it may not make sense because I don’t think one thinks the Weakerthans are quintessentially Canadian.

Perhaps it’s because I listened to them a lot before I left for Japan at 21, and it somewhat feels like a soundtrack for my early 20’s that never materialized.

Most of my friends I think got into either hard drugs in the city, or having families in the faraway suburbs and I am glad I never was apart of either group. Despite all that was gained by loving my early 20’s onwards in Japan in the late aughts, the curiosity for what was potentially missed pops its head up sometimes.

And that feeling is what my heart identifies as Canadian, which it is in a very subjective sense.

Anyways, I’m listening to the Weakerthans final studio album now on the Saikyo Line back to Urawa, feeling Canadian in a way that isn’t connected with beer commercials, ice hockey, or contrasting with America.

I have to sit in this nice cool air conditioned building for an hour with nothing but my thoughts and my phone.

I spent the morning with my son at the community center. I was going to buy flowers for my wife after, but the line at the flower shop was outrageous, and after a phone call we decided on extra sweets.

My son is starting to be interested in other people. All of a sudden I become super self-conscious of my Japanese, and need to overcome that. It means I need to go to the community center every Saturday and Sunday. He will not learn shyness from me.

He’s also still enjoying throwing things, and this isn’t the first impression we want to make on others. So it’s balancing playing it cool, apologizing when necessary, and a bunch of other stuff.

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We’ve had a fairly clean living room and bedroom for a while, and my office is okay I guess, but we really stalled on the rest of the house. I want to get back to this. We may want to all of a sudden sell the place and I don’t want to wait until then to clean.

—-

It’s really not the time to be lazy, for the next decade or two. Maybe I can successfully fake it after a decade, but I need to let go of Sundays where I did nothing but lounge and waste the day. There’s so much I want to do and it depends on not being lazy.

—-

I want to start looking into camping gear. When my son is 2 or 3, I want to start doing some sort of camping. My wife says she does too, but she’s not a bug person and they live where one camps. Not sure how that will work.

I want camp in style though. As a kid my family did more roughing it camping. I want big tents and areas to chill if it’s raining. No hotdogs but fancy tasty food. Not sure if this is easier to say than do.

Golden Week was ultimately good.

I was around my son a lot and he became even closer to me. My wife’s stress is getting better.

Life is sometimes very tough, but it feels right.

I just played 30 min of a video game I like. Now it’s time to join my son and sleep.

More things to talk about when motivated to talk, which is not now.

I name video game protagonists my son’s name now. The older characters in games are 27. I’m above that by a skip and a jump.

He’s the hero now. He has to inherit the world that we left him. He can hate us as he feels fit, and his rage can change the world in ways our rage never did.

Or maybe that way of thinking is over and he’ll fight to be the best capitalist there ever was.

I don’t know, I’m on the Saikyo line buzzed coming home thinking about life listening to Billy Joel.

Being at home for a week is good to get things done around the house, but by no means not stressful and a relaxing vacation.

We seem to have a structured schedule for our now one year old son.

I have hope that more time to relax will come in the future, but perhaps not properly for another few years.

If it’s a time to be busy, then it’s a time to be busy.

That being said, I’m going to the leaving party of a friend who’s leaving Japan after 18 years of living here. So perhaps I spoke too hyperbolically.

There’s a few topics I want to write about, and hopefully I find the time to do so soon.

I’m writing this as my wife is out shopping and my son has his morning nap.

I usually get up with my son around 5:30. I try to get to bed around 10pm, so that I have ample rest before doing so.

Last night however I went to sleep before 9pm, and woke up naturally at 4am. My son is still asleep and I am having beautiful quiet morning time.

This is a million times better than night time. I must continue to do this.