I wrote this article for a newsletter for researchers in Japan.

My name is Shaney Crawford and I am a Canadian woman who has lived in Fukushima Prefecture for five years and Ibaraki Prefecture for eight years. As a foreign resident of Japan, I am often asked to describe the things that surprised me when I first came here. However, I first came to Japan in 1995, which is now 15 years ago, and to be honest, I don’t have a very clear recollection of that time. (Imagine being asked to recall what it felt like on your first day of junior high school. You can probably remember that you were nervous, but not the details of what was going through your head at the time.)

However, I recently watched the movie “Avatar” and it made me pause and reflect a bit on my time here in Japan. I don’t want to ruin the plot of the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it yet (I’m sure there are still one or two people who haven’t seen it, right?), but the basic idea is that a man gets the chance to become a member of a group that is initially extremely foreign to him. (It is a very similar story to Dances With Wolves, or the Last Samurai, but it is set on another planet.) The movie served, at least for me, as a reminder of what it felt like when I first came to Japan.

I hope you will forgive me for sounding ungracious or ignorant, but I remember thinking to myself, when I first came here (and after the initial honeymoon phase was over), that there were a lot of things wrong with Japan. At the time, I saw everything with “Canadian eyes” and I was frustrated with several aspects of Japanese culture. I couldn’t understand why everyone was so concerned with what their neighbours thought about them, or why meetings seemed to go on for so long and rarely resulted in any decisions being made. I didn’t like how there were no senior positions available to women and that everything that I bought was individually wrapped and then covered in plastic only to be handed over to me in yet another plastic bag.

I found a lot to complain about in these early days. I was also prone to making sweeping generalizations about Japan and Japanese culture based on my limited experiences. Even though I was living in Japan, and on the surface enjoying my time here, I had not lost my Canadian eyes, and couldn’t understand why the people in Japan couldn’t see what I could see.

And then, something happened to change my thinking. It wasn’t an immediate change, but looking back on it now, I think I know what it was that caused a fundamental shift in my worldview: learning to speak, read, and understand Japanese. In particular, I believe it was through studying the 1006 kanji characters that Japanese students study in elementary school that made the difference.

By studying the kanji characters, and not just learning the meanings or the readings, but trying to understand each character by deconstructing it into its elements, I became more familiar with Japanese culture and history and, more importantly, I became able to find out information on my own and not have to rely on others to explain things to me. If I had a question about something in Japan, I could try to read a book or a website, or ask a Japanese person directly. When I first arrived in Japan, I did not have that choice. I could only learn about Japan from people who could speak to me in English. If I had a question about Japan, I had a very limited range of people to look to for answers. If they could not supply me with a satisfactory answer, I was forced to give up.

Through learning the Japanese language, I was given the key to understanding the culture at a much deeper level than I had when I first arrived. Suddenly, I could understand the forces working behind the decision-making processes at an office because I had spoken to my Japanese friends and colleagues about my experiences and they had explained the intricacies to me. Instead of seeing things at a surface level, or always having my understanding coloured by the understanding of the person who translated for me, I was able to dig deeper, and develop my own understandings based on direct contact with a variety of people and resources.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that I am some kind of genius in Japanese. I am not. I can get by in Japanese, but I still have a lot to learn. I stumble on very basic grammar points, I have a very limited vocabulary, and I don’t think I will ever be able to pull off “keigo”, just to mention a few of my many weaknesses. But the key point here is that I kept on pushing until I was able to make sense of what was going on around me rather than just accepting what I was seeing at face value.

I feel that learning the Japanese language gave me the ability — and sometimes it almost feels like a magical ability — to see with Japanese eyes. Rather than criticizing everything that I saw in Japan, I became better able to see why things happened the way they did. And, slowly, I started to realize that there were also a lot of things wrong with how we do things in Canada. We Canadians often rush through things, prizing speed over accuracy. We will say anything with conviction, whether we have proof that it is true or not. And we will always put ourselves and our own interests first, rarely considering what might be best for the group or the community around us.

In the movie Avatar, one of the main characters initially refuses to teach the “foreigner” anything, saying something like “there is no point in trying to fill a cup that is already full”. When I first came to Japan, my head was full of Canada and there was no room for Japan. I thought my way was right and I think, in retrospect, I wasn’t capable of nuanced thought about what was happening around me because I didn’t have room in my worldview for other possibilities. Learning Japanese has provided me with another cup to fill. And, to continue the metaphor a bit longer if I may, it has made me realize that my “cup full of Canada” was only the appetizer. More than anything that I have experienced or obtained during my time in Japan, I feel that I am indebted to this country and its people for providing me with the chance to see the world through different eyes and, hopefully, keep my cups from ever becoming full again.

I love this guy! I wonder if he has released an album…

Just brilliant!

I don’t really get how there are a bunch of different passwords in Ubuntu so when I decided to change my password to something a little less arduous to type, I ran into some problems because I ended up changing my password for some things but not for others and my computer started acting weird (e.g. demanding a password to get a wireless connection). Here are two links that will help you if you are in the same predicament.

http://www.codetorment.com/2009/11/03/tutorial-change-user-password-in-ubuntu-9-10/

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1314488

I meant to write up lots of things about using Ubuntu after I installed in on my laptop. Unfortunately (well, fortunately for me), everything worked fine, so I didn’t have anything to write about!

I just upgraded to 9.04 and have had some problems with my computer seeming slow sometimes. I am not sure how to fix the problem. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes when I am typing, the computer won’t keep up with me. I am thinking about increasing my RAM, but I don’t think that the RAM is the main problem. If I figure out what the problem is, or how to fix it, I will try to report back here.

What I would like to report on today is how to prevent the delayed shutdown that has been introduced in 9.04 (codename Jaunty Jackalope). I guess some people like to have a second chance to decide whether or not they want to turn their computer off, but I kind of like to just say “turn off” and have it do my bidding immediately. I’m a bit of a tyrant that way.

If you, too, want your computer to start shutting down immediately after you issue the command, right click the icon in the top right corner of your screen (where you would usually left click to shut your computer down) and choose “Preferences”. Then, uncheck “Show confirm dialogs for logout, restart, and shutdown”.

Et voila.

I am a complete newbie in the Unix/Linux world. I used some Unix workstations at university, but I never really had a very clear understanding of how they worked, so I think I can safely downgrade myself to “absolute beginner”.

I have decided to jump into the world of Linux by installing Ubuntu 8.10 on an external USB drive and seeing where that takes me. I was able to install the OS on the external drive, but I am currently stuck at the point of trying to connect to the internet. My network card was fried during an electrical storm and I have been using a USB network adapter. Ubuntu seems to know that the USB network adapter is there, but doesn’t know what to do with it. I am stuck at that point. (I found the driver for the adapter, but I don’t know enough about Linux to be able to install it yet.)

Since people often ask me how I learn how to do stuff on my computer, I thought I would try to document the path towards my own personal computing enlightenment. I guess it involves quite a bit of reading (websites, magazines, anything I can get my hands on) and a huge amount of trial and error.

In the spirit of friendly documentation, here are three things that I have learned so far.

1. Get a friend to help you through your first installation so you don’t give up before you even get started. I had a friend help me with a basic dual boot installation on a desktop and then I did the USB HD installation by myself (with some online encouragement from a friend in Finland who has been acting as my Linux mentor).

2. If you want to install Ubuntu 8.10 on an external USB drive, follow these instructions.

It says that you can skip steps 8 to 11 (I did), and I also skipped steps 12 to 14 without any ill effects (that I know of). There are other sites with instructions for this task, but this one seems to offer the most simple procedure.

3. Read This.

Basic Introduction to UNIX/linux by Claude Cantin

The figures seem to be missing, but it is written in a way that even a complete beginner can absorb. I think it is important to have an understanding of Unix/Linux to get the most out of your new system. Well, that is what I think after two days of playing in the Linux world. I could be wrong, but it seems fairly self-evident.

It is going to take me a while to read Mr. Cantin’s tome, so I will leave this post for now and write more when I have learned more!

This weekend, I was sitting at my computer reading an email that had just come in from a friend when all, of a sudden, that email and the 50 other emails that were in my inbox started deleting themselves one by one — permanently. They were not in my trash folder, nor in my spam folder. They were gone.

I had heard of people having problems with Yahoo’s customer service, so I was skeptical that I would ever see those emails again. I was a bit despondent because my Yahoo account is my primary account for personal correspondence (I have different accounts for mailing lists and dealing with businesses) and I use my inbox as a kind of to-do list, so I had basically just lost a list of 50 things that people — friends — had asked me to do (and, more importantly, that I intended to do). Since the emails were gone without a trace, there was no way for me to remember all 50 things. I foresaw some unhappy friends in my future.

I decided to contact Yahoo customer service to ask for help with this matter. To be honest, I didn’t expect to receive a reply. However, not only did I get a reply, but it was fast (within 24 hours) and it offered me an acceptable solution (reverting my inbox to the state that it was in before the emails got deleted). The solution would involve deleting any emails that arrived afterwards, because they could only restore my entire account, not individual folders, but I could handle those consequences because that would just involve making a copy of any mails that came in from that point on. So, I informed them that I would like them to restore my inbox to its previous state, and within 24 hours, I had my wish.

Ideally, it would have been better to have my cake and eat it too — i.e. have some way to restore my inbox and keep the messages that came after — but I am really just happy to have those 50 “to-do” items back where they should be so I don’t have to spend the next four months apologizing for forgetting to do stuff that I had already agreed to do.

I have implemented a new “no email in the inbox” policy to, hopefully, prevent this sort of thing from happening again in the future. I have created a subfolder called “Process” and all incoming email gets shunted over there until I have dealt with it. I think that inboxes are one of the most vulnerable parts of email accounts, so I am hoping that this will keep me safe. (I could be wrong in this regard.)

I would also like to have some way of automatically backing up my email myself so I don’t have to bother the Yahoo people if something like this ever happens again, but I have not come up with an elegant solution for that yet. Yahoo doesn’t allow users to forward email and keep a copy on the Yahoo server, so I might try to re-route my mail through a backup Gmail account and then have it forwarded back to Yahoo or something like that. I am not 100% satisfied with that solution, though, so I need to think about it some more.

In any case, kudos to the people at Yahoo (Canada) customer service for a job well done. It would have been better if my emails didn’t disappear in the first place, but no company can control all the things that happen to their servers in a day. And since that is the first time something like this has happened to me in many years of using Yahoo, I am willing to forgive the blip, especially because of the excellent level of service I received after the blip occurred.

Here is a short, but sweet, bit of computer advice. If you hear a thunderstorm on the horizon, unplug your computer AND unplug the cable that connects your computer to the internet. In fact, if you live in a place that gets a lot of thunderstorms (in my city we seem to be having one per day this summer — climate change??), you might want to consider leaving your computer and internet connection unplugged whenever you are not using them, at least during the storm season.

The reason I am writing this is because we had a thunderstorm yesterday while I was out and my computer and internet modem (ADSL) seem to have been hit. They are both going to need replacing as a result.

This has not happened to me before in over twenty years of owning a computer, so perhaps if you don’t think it will happen to you, then just stick with unplugging your computer when you are at home and a thunderstorm develops. If you have a good (and new, and not previously damaged by a thunderstorm) surge protector, you might not have to unplug your computer, but you still may want to consider doing something about your internet connection.

If it’s not plugged in, it can’t be fried.

I really like this guy’s sound and technique.

I would have bought his album (which is available here), but I don’t like the other music on top of his playing. I hope he releases an album of just himself.

Here is my former Canadian neighbour’s recipe for Smashing Pumpkin Soup.

Ingredients

• 4 potatoes or 2 sweet potatoes (which are better for you)
• 1 onion
• 2 carrots
• some spinach
• 1 half or 1 quarter Japanese pumpkin
• 1 pack of tofu
• lots of fresh ginger
• 2 cloves of garlic
• chicken or vegetable bouillon
• milk (to be used at the blending stage)

Directions

Boil all ingredients in bouillon until they are soft enough to go in the blender, then scoop them up, blend them with the milk to make them soupy, and put them back in the soup. Keep boiling until the ginger taste permeates the mixture. If it’s not gingery enough, add more!

Makes A LOT of soup, so be sure to have a big pot handy, or decrease the portions of the ingredients. You can add or delete ingredients as you see fit. The resulting soup should be orange. If you skimp on the pumpkin or carrots, it may come out a rather unappealing green due to the spinach. But if you don’t mind the look of it, never mind about that.