Thoughts on New Year's Eve

2011 was quite a year - our first full year in Japan - just in time for the big quake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns. Our son went off to school on the other side of the globe - leaving quite a vacuum at home. We did have time to travel through the American West on our vacation but stayed pretty close to home the rest of the year. I got back into photography, a hobby that I started in high school but had let go during the transition from film to digital. Now I'm relearning it almost from scratch. Technology will do that to you.

The new year sneaked up on me - I was shocked this morning to realize that this is the last day of the year. I haven't had time to consider the coming year but with less than three hours left in 2011 I better get into the right mindset. What will 2012 bring? I hope it will be a good one and all of my loved ones will stay safe.

Remember the Neediest

The masthead of the New York Times today says "Today is Christmas. Remember the Neediest". Even in a city such as Tokyo, surrounded by much wealth, there are many needy. It is easy to overlook them because the homeless in Tokyo do not beg. I've never seen a panhandler here. There are many homeless but you won't see them unless you go to the out-of-the-way to find the "soup lines". Ueno Park in NE Tokyo is a popular place for the homeless to gather and to sleep overnight. My wife goes there on Tuesdays and Fridays to help a church feed 700+. They are almost all old men who have lost their jobs or have mental problems. When I see them I can't imagine what it is like to sleep outside in this cold, damp weather. The only thing my wife asked for for Christmas was 1,000 plastic forks to give to the homeless of Ueno Park so I ordered the kind made from recycled vegetable starch from the US. They last a lot longer than the plastic kind and can be washed and reused many times. Next, I'd like to work on getting sleeping bags for as many of them as possible.

I've read that there has been a recent trend in the US of anonymous people paying off the lay-away items of strangers in stores like KMart and WalMart. That's a great idea - but they don't have law-away in Japan.

Jeopardy under a ginkgo tree

I had my camera lens a few inches from a ginkgo leaf that was resting on a rock when I noticed a face approaching from the left. It was getting closer so I glanced away from my prey for a second to see what the looming face belonged to. It belonged to an old man who was asking me if I was Japanese. He was already short but his stooped posture made him even shorter. He was wearing a baggy sweat suit he was holding up with an outsized hand. He must have been 80-90 years old and he looked like he had been beaten for about 70 of those years. Where I'm from they'd say he looked as if he'd been ridden hard and put up wet.

"Do you know who our prime minister is?" he asked in English. I passed that test so he asked me if I knew the name of the ruling party in Japan. Passed that one too so he pressed on with harder and harder questions. When he failed to stump me he switched gears and told me to ask him if he knew who any US presidents were. "Do you know any US presidents?" I repeated dutifully. Then, bent over so far I couldn't see his face he proceeded to name every single US president, in order, starting from Washington and ending with Obama. Good grief I thought. I couldn't do that. Not one in a thousand Americans could do that. I asked him how he came to know that and why he spoke pretty good English. "Oh, it's nothin' the top of his head said to me as he shuffled away without looking back.