My evenings have been rather full the past week. I’ve had “Farewell” parties for many teachers that were getting transfered to other schools, which happens all the time. All the teachers in the prefecture get rotated to different schools in order to ensure that quality teachers get placed all over the place, especially in the little islands to the south. Without a rotation system, those islands wouldn’t have anyone to teach the kids.

The other thing keepin’ me occupied was an essay which I submitted to HAMSA’s (not Hamas) “Dream Deferred” Essay contest. I’m gonna post it here for anyone that would like to read the fruits of my labors! I believe if it wins it becomes the property of HAMSA, so I may have to take this down if it makes it.
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WOMEN OF IRAN WIN EQUALITY
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

TEHRAN, Iran — The Twins of Tabriz seem to have twisted the very fabric of time and culture in Iran, undoing thirty years of female oppression and hurtling the nation into a future of true gender egalitarianism. The efforts of their Homai Movement, and dozens of other grass-roots campaigns like it, have finally secured the rights of women in Iran.

Last evening, women and their families filled the streets in every major city, cheering and waving flags after learning that women would now be considered equal to men in regards to finances, employment, and the law. Women circled each other on bicycles; an activity that had been previously banned in may parts of Iran. Many young people were seen waving copies of the Homai Movement’s symbolic book, the Shahnemah, Firdowsi’s great Persian epic that depicts its female characters as kind, intelligent, and strong. Homai was the name of a woman in the tale that became the ruler of Iran for a time. The books were held high in the air and the people shouted the Homai’s slogan: “The heart of Iran is its people, and a heart must be whole lest it fail.”

The Twins are the heroes of the Movement. Fayir and Banu Khandil, both biology graduates, seemed filled with pride and resolve despite having been on a hunger strike for the previous weeks. They stood outside the presidential office waiting for President Ahmadinejad to sign the equality law into force, alongside thousands of supporters.

“Just as my sister and I are equal in name and blood, so now will the people of Iran be equal in the eyes of their own countrymen,” spoke Fayir when the law was signed. His sister Banu stood at his side, following with the declaration, “With this victory, Iran is ready to set an example for all its neighbors, and all the world, to pursue love and fairness even in the darkest times and the wake of oppression.”

The members of the Homai Movement are well aware that their historic achievement became possible after a series of very fortunate events. They make no hesitation to acknowledge the Dagher-Ortis essay and the infamous PaterFr4g hacking as critical to yesterday’s success.

Sociology and history Professor Ihab Dagher is the father of the renowned Dagher-Ortis treatise. His secretive research on the events leading to Iraq’s downfall was successfully smuggled out of the country before the United States withdrew from the smoldering failure of the Iraq Invasion in late 2006. Professor Dagher joined Dr. Jamie Ortis and her research team working under the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR). Using Dagher’s meticulous notes and observations, Ortis’ own research, as well as ingenious citations of the Koran, the Shahnemah, and other Arabic and Persian works, the team put together an impeccable dissertation on the clear advantages Islamic countries like Iran would have in the international, economic, and spiritual realms by embracing religious and gender tolerance. Though the treatise is imposingly lengthy, those who have read it cannot deny its pragmatic and inspirational force.

Of course, when the treatise was published on the Internet in early 2007 in English, Arabic, and Persian, the Islamic nations it sought to affect, especially Iran, were quick to block its distribution. The governments were easily able to keep out paper copies at their physical borders, and the powerful filtering software used by the national Internet providers swiftly blocked the electronic versions. When a small group of six students from the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) in Tehran attempted to bypass the filters and obtain a copy of the dissertation in September 2007, they were arrested or killed in one of the most brutal police raids in the last decade. It was clear that the hyper-conservative elements of the government were aware of the treatise’s potential to “incite” reform. This horrific event ensured that no one else within Iran’s borders would attempt another illegal access. At the same time, civil rights groups demanded to see the treatise, often hailing the students as martyrs.

Clearly the IUST raid reached sympathetic ears across Europe, because only a month later Iran’s Internet service providers became victim to the historic “PaterFr4g” hacking. An individual or group in Europe took it upon themselves to access Iran’s filtering software through a weakness in the government operating systems, effectively removing all content control for the nation (some have even suggested the attack originated from Denmark, a misguided attempt at repenting for the Cartoon Riots of early 2006). Iranian techies frantically tried to restore control, but found that they had been locked out of their own systems. After nearly twelve hours on October 9th, computer engineers had to literally pull the plug on the server, physically severing Internet connection to the nation while they tried to undo the damage.

The damage, however, was done. In those twelve hours, the Dagher-Ortis treatise was downloaded by millions of Iranians. After reading only a few pages of the report, tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets in the largest spontaneous protest in recent memory. They waved trails of paper printouts like banners, white 8.5”x11” sheets filling the parks and town centers, people crying out for change and liberation.

Police were able to quell the protests quickly and thankfully without injury, but they could not undo the newly born spirit of egalitarianism. The ranks of existing civil rights groups swelled, and dozens more sprang into existence. The voices of Iran’s women, who were already highly educated and working in socially elite positions despite their segregation and many other limitations, could not be silenced. Moderate and liberal men could not ignore this spirit, indicated by the surge in activity by sons, husbands, and brothers. The Khandil twins started their own organization in Tabriz at this point, their philosophies born in physiological study given form and momentum from the Dagher-Ortis treatise.

The international community, delighted that Iran was pushing for civil rights from within, yearned to help. But if the world learned only one thing from America’s botch in Iraq, it was that if a country was to grow, it had to do so on its own, with only gentle support and quiet guidance from other nations. To be overt or heavy-handed would only lead to resentment or accusations of unwarranted meddling, and would actively harm the expanding movement. Americans especially wished to help, eager to create a positive new image in the Middle East and atone for their antagonistic history in the region.

Arizona-born Allan Ehren recognized these facts. He saw the yearning to help in his fellow citizens, and established the Conveyance Counsel in Chicago at the amazing age of 23. The Counsel organized massive fund-raisers across the country, and through the utilization of unassuming private diplomats and negotiators in Iran, channeled incredible wealth to support the efforts of organizations like Homai. Ehren addressed the Counsel’s efforts in an oft-quoted Newsweek interview:

“I’ll be the first to admit that we were taking an enormous risk. Our goal from the beginning was to provide the means for real, social change. We didn’t want to go into Iran with this money and tell the folks there what they were going to do with it. We wanted to let them change their own lives. The people out there weren’t oil tycoons with unlimited resources. They were the upper-middle classes to the lowest classes, and their efforts could be expedited with concrete financial support. Even with our solid application standards, we do risk losing funds to corruption by putting them directly into civil rights leaders’ hands, but to do it any other way would be saying, ‘Hi, I’m American, and I want to win your war against sexism with Operation Equality.’ This is their struggle in the end, and the Conveyance Counsel does not want to change that.”

Banu Khandil spoke on the partnership with the Counsel in another interview:

“At first we were accused of paving the way for another invasion by accepting this money. Even Fayir was apprehensive at first. But after the days of meeting with [Conveyance Counsel representative] Martin Tesai, we were certain of their noble aims. Now we are able to hold rallies, host banquets for leaders, produce publications. We have educated the populace and influenced the government at incredible speed. All this money has passed through our hands, and (laughter) Fayir still rides a rusty bicycle.”

Though having vast resources and strong support may make it seem like the Homai Movement had little opposition, the opposite was true. Outspoken conservatives hurled scarring insults to leaders. Police were quick to break up peaceful protests, but somehow lingered in their stations when anti-equality counter-protests reared their heads. Some prominent egalitarians were physically assaulted, being mauled in public protests or dragged off into alleys to be beaten by angry crowds. Banu herself suffered a black eye and broken jaw from an angry assailant at the Qom Rally in February, 2009, which was targeted by radicalists, partially in frustration from the death of Supreme Leader Khamenei the previous month. About the attacker, Banu said, “He was screaming at me for violating the decrees of the Koran. But I can’t help but wonder which passage inspired him to break someone’s face in wrath.”

However, each violent attack was counter-productive, pushing more and more temperate Iranians to support the Homai cause. The political and social climate had drastically changed. The police could no longer ignore the demands of the public, and a small handful of the anti-equality assailants were even arrested. The newly appointed Supreme Leader Chavosh Vahramian, though still conservative, did not want any more blood on the government’s hands. Similarly, the Iranian Guardian Council knew they couldn’t reject female candidates as they had in 2005’s Presidential election, fearing threats of hunger strikes (a tactic suggested by the well-educated and historically aware Twins). Ahmadinejad still won the popular vote, but having expressed strong support and respect for the female candidates in an attempt to win the suddenly moderate population’s support, he had inadvertently committed himself to pushing for women’s rights.

Yesterday, with Vahramian’s hesitant blessing, Ahmadinejad proved his commitment by signing the Gender Egalitarian Act into law, making history and establishing his second term as one geared towards peace and social reform. Fayir Khandil concluded the Twins’ victory speech with the following words:

“We have come together as a people, recognizing each other as equal human beings under Allah’s wisdom. And we have the youth of Iran to thank. Young people all over the country, many of them younger than even I, banded together, publicly calling for the casting off of ancient, small-minded law, and the rest of our society has been inspired by that call. The youth displayed courage and unity, and the world around us acknowledged our desire for a better life for our fellow Iranians by supporting our struggle. Now let us continue bettering life for ourselves and our country, so that Iran can become an inspiration for the rest of the world!”

The weather yesterday was fantastic, so it called for an adventure. The last Friday before the Vernal Equinox. I was gonna get in on this paganism. Contacted my friends Abs and Pierre, and we decided to meet on top of a viewing tower in Kaseda to have a drink as the sun set. Kind of sappy, but I can’t imagine a more powerful force in paganism than the sun.

The thing is, to have a drink in the next town, I couldn’t drive, cuz then I’d have to crash in Kaseda and I just didn’t feel like doing that. So I decided to bike the 9 km, and bike it back at the end of the night.

Utterly gorgeous! The mountain forests exploded in golden light as I biked over, and the air was the perfect temperature to keep me cool as I navigated the mountain roads. I stopped at a liquor shop nearby the tower, and purchased a wee bottle of some apricot-honey wine (not mead, but the bestI could do… it ended up being pretty good). Then I climbed to the top of the tower, and looked over the town and the fading mountains as the sun set behind me in a subtle splash of color. Abs and Pierre each enjoyed a beer, and we hung out and shot the shit for a bit.

After that we got some dinner, then loitered on the streets of Kaseda, enjoying brew. I saw three of my students that had recently graduated, they were quite startled to see me in settings outside the school. It was also hilarious how quickly they had donned punk-kid appearances. They dyed their hair into splotchy copper patterns and got their faces pierced in various areas. These kinds of appearance alterations would’ve landed them into big trouble if they were still attending school.

Finally, the night was drawing to a close, as Abs had to get some rest to catch a bus really early the next morning. So I threw on my reflective “Please Don’t Hit Me, O Fast Cars” sash, activated my mp3 player, and biked back in the darkness.

Only it wasn’t so dark. The moon, almost full, illuminated the sidewalk fantastically, and I could see the silhouettes of the rolling mountains all around me. The air was crisp and cool, and the entire ride home was exulting. Completely beautiful.

So it was an excellent Friday night. Honey wine, dinner with friends, gorgeous scenery, a bright moon, and some of my first solid exercise in months and months. This place is wretched in the winter, but with even a bit of warmth, the magic comes back.

Hrmm, adventures have slowed down. The past few weeks have been rather pleasantly uneventful. I spend lots of time just sitting around. The high school kids had exams, then the jr. high kids came to their high schools of choice to take entrance exams. This is strange, because all kids all over the prefecture take the same english test, but they have to go to the high school they want to attend to take it. And if they fail, well, they just don’t go to high school that year, I think. You have to throw everything behind one school, and hope you’re better than everyone else applying.

Next week is the last week of the term. We get Tuesday off for the Vernal Equinox because the japanese are paganly awesome. So I imagine Monday night I’ll be running naked through the forests, elaborate designs painted onto my body with the blood of boars, chugging booze made from the tears of virgins, sacrificing goats, and then culminating the evening by running away from Spanish Inquisitors who still come once a year to Japan… from the past.

The week after that is supposed “spring break” though I’m saving all of my paid leave days for the end of June when m’lady comes to visit… a month before I come home. So, since the students are gone, I just have to report to the mind-numbing office for the whole week, where I imagine I’ll get lots of studying done, lots of reading done, and lots of amazing doodling done.

After that, I go back to school, and the students will all be clicked up a grade, and there will be a large swarm of first year freshmen whom I will delight in terrifying.

I also realized I had no idea how to conjugate the lithuanian verb džiauginti in the present first-person. Actually, I didn’t even know that neutral dictionary form at first either. I spent like an hour finding out. Dziaugiu, right? Reading lithuanian online is really exciting. I used to avoid it at all costs, because it was mind-numbingly difficult. But after studying japanese for over half a year, when I pull up anything in Lithuanian i’m all like, “HOLY CRAP I CAN UNDERSTAND ALMOST ALL OF THIS!” It’s definitely the most difficult of the 4 languages I’ve studied, but I’ve got a real hankerin’ to hone my skills.

Jeigu bet kas nori internetiskai praktikuot lietuviu kalba su manim, as dziaugsiu!

I had my first disgusting lunch today. Up to now its been very good, and at worst just had some strange veggies or pickled radish… unpleasant, but no big deal. Today I got a particularly thin-looking stew, some pickled cabbage, and two breaded whole fish, maybe six or seven inches long, the girth of two fingers. I’d gotten little whole fish in my lunches before, but they were tiny, like the length of a mostaciollo noodle. They’re sort of crunchy (what with the bones) and not the best, but edible.

Well, the breading looked excellent on these fish, so I bit into one, while the students told me what each part of the fish is supposed to be good for (head makes you smarter, tail makes you faster, stomach makes you healthy. Always start with the head). Tasted like I expected, nothing special, but then I noticed a weird texture. I looked down at the bite, and saw DOZENS OF LITTLE WHITE EGGS POURING OUT OF ITS BELLY.

Like large grains of sand. Or those little white speckly things you see in topsoil. It was horrible. But, its all I had to eat, so I closed my eyes and just ate the rest, promising to myself that I wouldn’t look anymore.

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For dinner I was standing at the open microwave, eating the reheated taco meat straight from the container, and the doorbell rang. “Chotto matte,” I called out, swallowing and placing the tupperware back in the microwave. I dashed to the door and opened it to see a middle aged dude with a name-tag around his neck. He laughed out loud when he saw me. With a grin he pulled out a newspaper, asking me if I was interested in basic basic, japanese. I laughed, and said in my broken japanese, “Don’t read kanji! Too difficult!” He laughed, nodding, and went on his way. I went back to my taco meat.

The little earthquakes yesterday were from the huge construction machines making a road behind my apartment. I had seen them but didnt make the connection to my walls shaking.

Well, as though destiny was sympathetic to my crummy day, I got a bit of great news today.

I was accepted into the Intermedia graduate program at Arizona State University. I was born in the city, grew up in the forests, did high school in the suburbs, college in the agricultural great plains, lived a year on a sub-tropical mountain island, and now will pursue my graduate degree in the unspeakably vast American desert. I am filled with biome power!

I could hardly contain my happiness this morning… my lessons were overly energetic. But they were good! And now the sun shines on the blooming magnolia tree in the courtyard! HOORAY FOR GOOD LIFE!

Hmm, I may have just felt another earthquake… or a huge truck fell over in my town somewhere.

Had a really shitty morning. I had prepared a whole lesson for music, and even drawn this hella cool worksheet with little illustrations of various lyrics from three songs. We were to focus on Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which is slow and popular enough that the kids might know about it. The first class I went to, though, could have given a rat’s ass. For some reason final exams end like a month before lessons finish, which of course removes all hint of motivation to study, especially for less useful things like English. A good majority of the class all but ignored me and the teacher, and my teacher said, “They are being rude, you don’t have to continue the lesson.” So I didn’t. I unplugged the CD player, gathered my things, and a few of the better students looked stunned. This thing probably doesn’t happen at all. I thanked them very loudly in japanese, with clear sarcasm that they could even understand, were they listening.

I wanted to die, or more accurately, to kill. What a waste. This is why I’d rather just teach the textbook lessons, this is the thing I thought I had left behind when Kasasa high school closed. It was a fun, silly thing, and I was shat upon. I understood the reasons, if I were a student that had fulfilled all my responsibilities, , I wouldn’t wanna work too hard either. But to just turn around and start talking to others while there are teachers? I was upset.

I returned to my desk and found an e-mail on my phone from my friend Tammy. She was telling me about how her school had a “Creativity” or “Originality” class, in which the teacher… just gave lectures. Maybe showed a movie. The teacher claimed it was too hard to do anything else. Too hard to break these kids out their “just obey and be like everyone else” mindset, you mean. That just made my upsettedness turn into something hotter, more filled with anger. Sure, there are those people, the artistic geniuses we hear about all over the world, who are so creative they just explode past the rest of japanese society. But what about all the lesser, but still potentially creative kids? They get squashed, join a company, and become automatons. Horrific.

I’m in a much better mood now, though… some sunlight came out (how sensitive I am to its majesty), the second class took to my music lesson far better, i got a surprise letter from back home, and I drank the blood of those who opposed me. a perfect conclusion!

Alright! Finally got around to the last of the photos taken of my bro’s visit, almost two months later! Time flies when you eat four metric tons of rice everyday.

After Aoshima, we sped southwest to Miyakonoujo, where my good college buddy Troutman was staying at his girlfriend’s family’s home. And whattya know, they invited me ‘n Po! But I talked about that, I believe. The next morning we got up and headed for a big ol’ waterfall in the area.

A sign informed us it was one of the 100 most beautiful waterfalls in Japan! The falls themselves impressed me, not that fact. But if there approximately, say, 75 waterfalls more impressive in this country, they’d probably break my mind.

A path led up the rocks, to the top of the waterfall, where a neat concrete path led across the clear rushing water. Troutman and Po actually ventured off the bridge thing onto the large rocks, towards the waterfall. I stayed back with Rie because I still had a bit of a cold, or because I was a simpering panty-waist.

We wandered around the park for a bit, until it spit us out alongside another river and farmland. It was a brisk day, but super clear and bright, and the sun shone intensely, giving everything this mystical warmth and clarity. I believe I spotted this house and had Po snap it… beautiful. This is one of my favorite photos of the whole bunch, its just… wow.

We headed back to Kawanabe that day, probably to relax and sleep on our own futons, without fear of imposing on any hosts. Or was that the night we went to karaoke with all of my friends in the area? Maybe that was the next night. In any case, the food was good, my friends came out to meet Po, however briefly, and the evening culminated at a karaoke bar where Po got absolutely wasted. At one point he was just standing, doin’ a weird little shuffle dance with anyone else that moved or sang. It was awesome! I think he recovered just fine the next day, too, a testament to his resistance.

On what may have been our last full day, we headed out to my favorite place in the area, Iwaya Kiyomizu Magaibutsu park. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, maybe I haven’t, it’s a park some 8 kilometers away. Its surrounded by cliffs, caused by rivery erosion, and the center is just beautiful tended parkland. The real treat is one cliff-face that sports tons of Buddhist carvings all over it… the most recent is a Buddha from 100 years ago, the most amazing are celestial Sanskrit characters from almost 800 years ago:

Utterly overwhelming… before my continent was even discovered (by post-renaissance thinkers, anyway), people were carving observations about lunar eclipses and comets into Japanese cliffs.

Basically, its one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to, and its really close. I still duck in here every couple of weeks, just to walk around. Its so gorgeous, in any season or weather. Though soon the cherry blossoms will blossom cherrily, and that should be an amazing sight.

On our way out of the park, there was a big map of the town, and I discovered there was a waterfall up north some way! I had no idea! Po and I memorized the general appearance of the kanji that spelled the name so we could look for it, and headed north. A side road was marked with a big white wooden sign with just a bunch of non-descript black Japanese on it, but two of the kanji matched, so we turned down the road and followed it until we got to a little elbow bend in the road. There it flowed.

After enjoying it for a bit, Po and I hopped in the car, and headed back, opting to take an uphill right instead of the downhill left we had come in on. The road brought up up a mountain, to a small patch of deforestation that granted us a view of endless mountains and forests. We shot the shit, marveling at the things we had done and seen in just 3 weeks.

Before I knew it, Po entered the terminal to begin his long voyage home. The walk back to the car, and the drive back to Kawanabe from the airport was probably the most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever experienced. I was to return to an empty apartment, resuming the amusing but mundane task of teaching English to kids that really didn’t want to learn English, and I was gonna do it alone.

I think the light from the afternoon sun, which was bouncing off of Kinko Bay to my left as I drove, caused my eyes to water.