Conversations 2013 #1: “They’re in Japan, all day, everyday!”

23 January 2013 ~ 4 Comments

Conversations 2013 #1: “They’re in Japan, all day, everyday!”

Misc.

The following conversation took place yesterday between a friend and I in a café in Yokohama

Friend: I finished your book yesterday.
Me: Oh? what did you…
Friend: I dunno…I mean, I see what you see. I do. But it just doesn’t bother me.
Me: I see.
Friend: Well, now it probably will, but it didn’t before…
Me: Is that bad?
Friend: Fuck yeah it’s bad! I gotta live here. I got kids and shit. I ain’t going nowhere.
Me: Go??
Friend:You know what I mean…
Me: Actually, I don’t. Did the book make you wanna leave Japan??
Friend: Well, it certainly didn’t make me wanna buy that house me and Mrs been looking at, that’s for damn sure.
Me: Sorry about that…
Friendh: Nah, don’t be sorry. It ain’t your fault. You just called it like you see it, shit, like it is!
Me: I don’t see how it didn’t bother you before you read the book…
Friend: Yes you do. You said it in the book. It was in the first fucking chapter, wasn’t it?
Me: What was?
Friend: When you talked about how you tolerated life here initially. I was doing just what you said you used to do. I was looking down at these mofos. Fuck I care if they too ignorant, scared shitless and small-minded to respect me. It’s just like you said. They’re isolated on this little island, protected by their language and cultural barriers, so they’re relatively safe from outside influences like human equality and the other issues our boy MLK preached about and whatnot. These mofos hardly even know who he is. I told my co-worker that i usually take this day off back in the states and he was like, “why?” So I told him as much as I could about MLK and e civil rights movement and he was looking at me like everything i said was a foreign concept. Fuckers are clueless. So why should I let clueless mofos bother me?
Me: Ah.
Friend: You were dead on. I even look down on my wife. She’s just as Japanese as everybody else.
Me: LOL
Friend: That shit ain’t funny! Last thing I need is for my kids to get all fucked up too. Shit, I only see them a few minutes in the morning and a few at night. I’m at work all day…and they’re in Japan all day, everyday!
Me: I see what you mean…
Friend: That’s why I said “go.” You rocked my world yo, with your fucking book!
Me: My bad…
Friend: Nah, yo, kill that noize! I think if MLK read your shit, he’d know he’d made a difference. You feel me? In other words, Thank you.
Me: Don’t thank me…thank MLK! He, and our parents and shit, they did all the heavy lifting. All I did was tell my story.
Friend: But you keeping that dream alive…even here in Asia, and that’s admirable, bruh!
Me: Thanks yo.

Happy Birthday (belated) MLK! Thank you for all you sacrificed for the betterment of the present and for a brighter future for humanity!

Loco

PS: And if you haven’t read Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist yet, what are you waiting for? A personal invitation? Check it out! It’s available in paperback and E-book version here.

Tags: hi my name is loco, martin luther king

Cedric D

Yo man, I got your autographed book when I was laid up in a hospital bed in a small japanese town and I really dug your book. Especially the part where people stared at you in the hopsital; I totally understood that part (Although most of the book spoke to me personally). I can’t wait to read a sequel or anything else really. It did made me reconsider that home purchase too but I suppose I can always rent it out if things don’t work out. Or sell the land, whatever.
Anyway, I had 1 question about Kindle: I’m thinking about purchasing one in through Amazon Japan because getting books from AmeriKKKa is expensive and mendokusai. If I got a Kindle reader from Japan, can I still download books from Amazon U.S. Is the Kindle going to be all in Japanese? You know?

Peace
- Locohama
  
  Thanks for the props yo!
  I have no knowledge about the kindle, sorry )-
  Second book is in the works (-:
Will

Like it is…isolated.

“Last thing I need is for my kids to get all fucked up too. Shit, I only see them a few minutes in the morning and a few at night. I’m at work all day…”

Isolation through education or education through isolation.

What’s going on in the conversation about education in the US kind of applies to here. DR. GABOR MATÉ, a Canadian (cough)… the Canadian talks about how kids get disconnected from adults who are unavailable… probably at work all day.

“Children who become peer-oriented — because the peer world is so dangerous and so fraught with bullying and ostracization and dissing and exclusion and negative talk, how does a child protect himself or herself from all that negativity in the peer world? Because children are not committed to each others’ unconditional loving acceptance. Even adults have a hard time giving that. Children can’t do it. Those children become very insecure, and emotionally, to protect themselves, they shut down. They become hardened, so they become cool. Nothing matters. Cool is the ethic. You see that in the [J-pop] videos. It’s all about cool. It’s all about aggression and cool and no real emotion. Now, when that happens, curiosity goes, because curiosity is vulnerable, because you care about something and you’re admitting that you don’t know. You won’t try anything, because if you fail, again, your vulnerability is exposed. So, you’re not willing to have trial and error.”

People don’t spend nearly enough time with their kids. Especially here where the amount of cheese and its distribution throughout the maze seems to be just right for assuring, more or less, a very busy pack of people who are likely to forget what being human is, much less any notion of what MLK spoke about. One sure thing is that the amount of cheese is associated with not being vulnerable through exposure or bothering with trial and error. The maze conditioning starts in junior high (what else do you do with adolescents?) and continues to the top of the food chain’s hierarchy.

As far as they busy-mined people are concerned, you can’t eat equality.

Despite how uncool it might seem to not be obsessed with precious shiny things, I make it a point to spend time with my kids. That’s my gold, right there.

Regards.
- Locohama
  
  3 million kids…geezus! Impulsiveness. Mental restlessness. Damn, do I ADHD?
  Thanks for sharing yo. I used to be a big fan of Democracy Now.
  It’s always the parents who screw up the kids, ne

Loco in Yokohama

…Japan from a Human Perspective!