Showa Festival

Sunday was the Showa festival. 

Today is Pearl Harbor remembrance day... so I considered not posting this today. However, I think it is important to see the changes in America and Japan's relationships over the years. Especially given today's wars and conflicts. 

Well enough of that let's look at some pictures. 

This Statue is at the entrance.

Music filled the front lobby. 

and beautiful decorations.

This garden is always beautiful. 

This been bag game was similar to jacks. 

An old woman demonstrated. I bet the students being so young, probably never even played this game. Just like I have never actually played marbles. 

This exhibit was about Sumo wrestling. 

Honestly Dai Dai could have stayed here all day.  We have to make one of these Kami Sumo (zumo?) things at home.)

You could get you stage name written before you went to play Kami Sumo. 

All this stuff is made with paper. 

And Dai Dai challenged this student to standing Sumo. It's like push hands. Except you can't move your feet. 

And you can't stand in Dan Been ma either. Shao didn't understand. They just let him win anyway.

This was about Princess Kaguya. She is the Japanese Moon Lady. The story is completely different than the Chinese one about Chang E'. Basically a farmer found Princess Kaguya in s bamboo shoot. So she's sort of a plant/human hybrid. In three months she became a 'beautiful maiden.' Everyone wanted to marry her. In the middle of the night she escaped and flew up to the moon. 

Find princess Kaguya.

Fish for Origami stuff. 

Throw stuff through the holes to get points. (I tried this and failed miserably.)

Look at that. We should decorate a corner of the house like this. 

And you get a picture with Prnicess Kaguya.

Shao too. 

This was about different places in Japan. 

Here is an igloo or Kamakura. The Ainu on Hokaido used to live in these. I saw a pretty extensive piece on this on Anthony Bourdain. The first time I heard about this though was from my mom. She lived in Japan for a long time. 

These reminded me of Lions. Their something else though. 

This was to see what items went from Portugal to Japan and vice versa. Honestly I didn't get a chance to read everything because I was watching the kids. 

This was funny. This was some kind of board game. The students asked Shao a question. When he didn't know they answer they whispered it to him. But... Shao understood exactly 0% of what they were saying and just stood there looking weird. If I couldn't get my point across I would use hand motions and just move them. But the students are so polite that they wouldn't do something like that. At the same time Shao was too embarrassed to ask them to repeat the question. So everyone just stood there, Shao looking to me for help. But I refused to interfere. Eventually we went on to the next exhibit.

Ahh this was the Tea Ceremony. 

You could dress up. The kids didn't want to. 

This sectin was put together by a student from Framingham State. 

She is American but went to study at Showa Japan over the summer. I didn't take a picture of her and I realize posting this that that was stupid. 

I took pictures of people in traditional dress. But actually the student from Framingham state was dressed in a sort of Modern fashion that has a name. Hajuko? I forget. That was foolish of me too.

Totoro!

I have to show this cartoon to the kids. 

Dai Dai didn't mind being a girl Shao refused. 

But he did try on a backpack. 

This exhibit was about Post War Japan. 

I actually learned a lot here. There was a Showa period of Japan because the Emperor's name was Showa. He was the emperor during World War 2 and remained Emperor until the 80's when he died. I didn't know that. Damn when you surrender to the States you get a whole lot of benefits.

There was a class schedule which I didn't take a picture of. 

In Japan there is a part of the class schedule weekly where the whole class discusses what they are going to do for some kind of event. (kind of likes this Showa event.) I thought that was interesting. In the states that meeting would be for teachers or admin people only. The class would have nothing to do with it.  

Gods and Demons

This woman could here the voice of God (they kind of waited for me to act strangely to this, but dude in the States almost every tenth person says they hear the voice of God.) And she led the kingdom.... but she was never seen in public. So basically her brother was really leading the Kingdom. They got support from China. I pointed out that China was three kingdoms at this time. "Yes!" they were surprised that I knew this. It was the southern Kingdom. I never heard this story before and I would like to read more about it. 

There was also the story of the Japanese Sun God, who is female. I didn't know that. Kind of like Norse Freyja. 

Here are the seven lucky gods. A lot of them are Chinese/Indian in origin. What I don't get is why there are always 8 Chinese immortals but 7 Japanese lucky gods. 

Here I am as a devil. 

And Christmas is big in Japan... and Fried Chicken (KFC particularly)  is a "traditional" Japanese Christmas food. 

Dai Dai almost knocked this bridge down.

This was about Mount Fuji. But the kids were done. I had to tackle Dai Dai and haul him out of there. 

All done! I thought this was pretty cool, and I think it is sort of inspiring what people can do with time and paper. I always feel like we should have more stations like this at the Chinatown Festivals. I mean they really don't cost anything to set up do they? (they don't make any money either though. Something to think about. 

We need police because we need stability.

I went to a a Spanish English intercambio at the Connolly branch library yesterday. Mostly we learned about Sancocho. But at the end we talked a little bit about the shootings and gun control. It turns out, in my group I was the furthest one to the right on the gun control thing. I am pretty much 60-70% in favor of having no guns whatsoever if it was possible. Though I see the other side of it too.

It was interesting when we started talking about police. A lot of the people from Domican Republic were very conservative and here's why. They were saying that they are not only here for the economy, because they could get jobs in DR too. Part of the reason they are here is stability, something which a strong police force provides. Now fo course there are problems. Of course there are bad police. But there also bad doctors, bad lawyers, bad bankers.. etc. The only other profession that has control of life and death is the doctor. But in any case the point was about police... these guys were like, "We neeeeeed them." because they see what happens when you have super corrupt police.

Most Chinese people will say the same thing.

For instance.. in China, police have a lot of power over regular citizens. (But not over gangs that are backed by powerful officials. Back in the 90's the Army invaded the police station with tanks because the Police Chief shut down a brothel... which a powerful official might not have run directly, but had a financial stake in.) So a lot of cops in China simply cannot be bothered to do their job unless they are getting money for it... not from the state but from whoever is paying them in cash in hand.

It has occurred to me that this problem of police violence has always existed. It isn't worse than before. It's just that before the gang violence was so bad that people wanted that cleaned up first. Only now, is it stable enough that we can talk about changing police tactics.

Furthermore, in terms of #blacklivesmatter, under Bush or even Clinton, or Bush or hell Reagan... there was simply not enough traction to have such a movement. I'm not saying that any of the former presidents were racist. Reagan probably really meant well, (for those who despise him) and of course had his flaws (for those who worship him.)

Now I don't know how true this claim is, but some say Reagan helped fund the crypts. But from his hands off government approach this actually made sense. The Crypts were semi-gang semi community organization at the time. They hadn't become so well known fro Drug Trafficking yet. So it makes sense as a hands off emperor to delicate the people most in power in an area and let them deal with it. It isn't crazy when you look at say the Roman Empire. It just looks crazy in hindsight.

The same type of thing was done in Chinatown right? The police let the Chinese take care of their own. As long as society was stable and no white people were hurt whatever, it was seen as it's own little country within a country. As long as everyone can do business... which is the focus of the Republican side.


It is only now that the President is black and is in his lame duck period that there is a reason for the black lives matter movement to really push hard. So in a way... it is a sign of progress that these tragedies make national news etc. We are getting better as a country.... unless we are actually  falling apart at the seams. Only time can really tell right?

Fiction: Christmas Lightsabers for sale.

"I can't tell you exactly when the world went to shit... or some would say it's a freaking Utopia now if you're a goddamn hippie.... but in any case it's different now. For instance, we were all connected before. I don't mean the machines. I mean the people could look at stuff other people were saying on this thing called the internet. It still exists but it's only machine to machine now, to you it's like how you're finger is connected to you small intestine. The brain might know but your finger doesn't know. So you're like a finger. Actually no, I'm a finger. You, your just living here not even plugged in."

"You've probably heard stories. But now, like people in your generation, all you know is Chinatown. Not even the whole Chinatown, just part of it. What happens in the other sections of Chinatown you've only heard rumors of.  I mean Chinatown is a lot bigger than it was, but it looks bombed to shit too, like we're living in ruins."


"Wait hold on hold on." said the Gujai guy. Gu Jai is a story. And these days young people would go around record people on cameras edit them and type stuff up and then project it onto the neighborhood wall at night. A big ass wall on the side of the building and give a little talk. Tell a little story. Children would come and sit and watch. It was something to do. You had to get someone to ride the bikes to power the generator. Tai Tung had one of the best walls around. Three people could bike at once. When one guy got tired they got someone else on the bike. There were solar panels everywhere to power necessary machines, for robot personell to plug in. But for these community walls, you need to bike.

"What do you mean Chinatown is bigger now? I thought at one point China had more than a billion people?"

"See that's what I'm talking about. You have no concept of geography or space. Hell I bet you have no concept of time. I mean Quincy and Boston used to be two different cities? Not just neighborhoods of one Chinatown? China and America are two different countries... well I mean they were."

The Gujai guy was lost. To him country meant a wilderness. But he knew he had really wanted to interview this guy. The guy was a robot. But he was the kind of robot that used human intelligence. In other words, he had been a real human at one point, and then before he died, probably right before, they had taken his brain and with some sort of surgery hooked it up to organic robotic material, which was new back then. There weren't a lot of robots like him left. Now robots were all practically organic and could simply grow brains or other organs from tree factories. There were still regular humans around too, like the Gu Jai guy and his friends and the little Tai Tung Community. But they didn't really interact with the robots. The robots were sort of just part of nature. They provided food and grew or printed little shelters. There were some humans who knew how to tap into the system and use it, actually tell robots what to do. And there were many more robots who could do that. But mostly, robots did their thing and humans did theirs. Humans had earth and some other places. Robots were busy colonizing all the difficult to inhabit space in between and far beyond. Or that's what this old timer was trying to explain to the Gu jai guy, so he in turn could explain it to the people.

"Look, I'll just tell you when it started being different. It's when they started selling those goddamn  lightsaber things for Christmas. They weren't really lightsabers. I mean there were these movies.. called Star Wars.. you know what a movie is right? No, but you heard stories. Anyway, Star Wars was like this story about space and stuff but they got it wrong because they didn't take into account how time would be all mixed up.... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Back then, people knew time bent but they thought of time, even in space and stuff, the way you think of like a day. How there is a beginning a middle and an end.  Not fluid and mixed up how it is. And they had these swords made of light in the movie. And kids had toys...but then some fucker, and I bet it wasn't an earth fucker either, made this like baton thing. You would flick it out, and it wasn't made of light I mean the thing didn't eve glow in the dark, it just reflected light like metal.... plus it had these lasers.. to tell the truth we still don't understand what that shit was. In any case, it worked like a lightsaber. I mean you flicked the thing out, and you couldn't cut someone's head clean off. But you would get to somewhere in the spine and the heat and the explosion and all that and the guy would be dead either from the electric pulse or laser or whatever the hell it was. The point is the things were dangerous. But they were cheap and people started selling them to KIDS! for Christmas! It was crazy shit man I'm telling you. The things costes about 10 bucks and man suddenly they were everywhere. They were on the internet in stores. It was crazy. Then a couple of people died and they government tried to ban them."

"What's a government?"

"Uhhhhhh shit. Well it's like...  it's like the Five Animal Alliance and the Five Family swords. Except more organized. As organized as robots. And it controlled the whole country. "

"Oh like the circuit system Gods?"

"No no, well trying to be like that. But basically people controlling other people but over a big amount of space, with like guns and tanks and bombs and like taxes.... you know what just let me tell my freaking story okay. And well I tell you all my stories you should have an idea of what a government is."

The Gu jai guy shrugged his shoulders.

"Anyway, so kids started like dying because they were playing with these weapons like they were toys. So they banned them. But then some people got all pissed off like the Second amendment and right to bear arms and all that... ah ah ah! Don't ask I'll explain that later. So then only adults could own them. But these idiots in the suburbs blew each other up by knocking two  lightsabers against each other. So then lightsabers became illegal. So now people are really crazy for them. You got all kinds of lightsabers now. Some are 10 dollars... some are freakin  ten thousand dollars. There are some that are so powerful you just open it once and on all sides light will cut like a whole block.  Some will cut up a whole city. And some are just totally freakin fake. Everyone wants one but only crazy people will actually flip them out. And then there are like preventative crazy people that carry them around 'just in case a crazy person whips out their lightsaber.' So the first place that gets flooded with this new explosive lightsaber is the middle east. I'm telling you everyone did all these lightsaber attacks at once and then bam! the middle east is like back to pre-Islamic times. Are the radicals light sabered themselves to death and a good number of regular normal Muslim people as well. A ton of kidd survived because they were shorter and statistically the suicide light saber cuts were aimed  high like adult chest level. Wel I don't know if you could say 'aimed' really. But that's what happened. I knew because back then they still had the internet and network news."

"So then some people state side are like 'goodriddance' I'll tell you the truth, I was one of those assholes. I didn't really mean it though if I thought about it. But then what happened next is there is a rise in Buddhist Terrorism. All of a sudden you get these crazy suicide Buddhist Lightsaber guys going around freeing everyone from the illusion of this world and granting them instant enlightenment. They were like this splinter group of Falun Gong called San Gok Ying. They believed everything that Falun Gong believed, except instead of a wheel inside them it was a triangle, and instead of nonviolence, they believed in achieving nonviolence through peaceful death. I.e.. suicide lightsaber attack."

"So China, still has like a billion people because they didn't have a lightsaber problem (and I found that highly suspicious)and the San Gok Ying cult pops up in the middle east. So then they ship all the Falun Gong people (not just the splinter group but everyone) to the middle east, like all of them, high speed train loads full hadning out free newspapers. They sent a bunch of evangelist Christians too. At the same time the portal letting all the alien dragons and shit through happens and the internet goes to shit. But we still had a system of news and somehow pulled radio back together off an on and we had newspapers. So you can't blame it all on the dragons and kei luns and all those other crazy animal things. I'm telling you it started with the lightsabers."


"So the middle east is crazy as ever and as religious as ever, except now it's this weird mixture of Christian Buddhist Fundamentalism and there is a resurgence out of nowehere of Manichaeism.. you know the Mau Gau guys. Yeah now their in Chinatown too right? Except over in the middle east back in that time they were nuts. So people dying and people passing out free newspapers whatever.... and then suddenly everyone just calms down and order is established. Yeah the Dragons, the real ones that act like humans, and the Phoenixes, they create some order over there. They set up little temples and guess what the new religious practice is? It's all work in factories. That becomes the new prayer, the new meditation. And learning Programming and scinec that's the new mysticism. The middle east jumps ahead of everyone unexpectedly in Technology. They start colonizing space and the other countries can't say a damn thing because of the Dragons. I mean those guys say they have weapons that could blow up the sun and hell we believe them. So nuclear power look slike no big thing anymore. So everyone else comes to their senses and they start pushing for Scince and space travel real hard too. So right aronund that time they realize, C'mon it doesn't make snese to do all this work to keep humans alive in space. Justmake robots that are more human. I mean this was later on and I was getting older and so yeah I volunteered to be art of that, with my brain going into a robots body. I'm glad too because I've seen a lot of stuff and I'm talking to you yeah? I mean some people said there are other ways to immortality. Like the tranposrt thing. But they didn't have that yet. So I chose the option they did have."



"Anyway, so hundreds of years as a robot and you know what we're doing now? We're developing this new technology to send through the pportals to the Dragon world. Brand new shit.. can you guess what it is? Fucking light sabers! I mean now, with the Dragon technology and some of our magic stuff mixed now we can make these things, and they are innovative, something to do battle in space star to start, sysytem to system. But if we are just inventing it now, where did it come from so long ago? That's the shit I'm telling you about Star Wars getting it wrong because time is all fucked up. Now see how you don't even bat an eye at the time thing but you're head was spinning about Goverenment and Newspapers. You can't wrap you head around those conceots but time being all messed up and fuid, that' sno problem for you. And the reason for that is those goddamn Christmas lightsabers they had sfor sale all othose years ago."


The Gu jai guy took his notes as fast as he could and took video and pictures butthat night when it was his turn to present at the wall he didn't even use any of it. He stood up and blew on aconch horn and his friends played some drums and did some lion dance to get peoples attention. And then speaking very lowly, drawing his audience to sit closer and lean forward to hear, he played his Chinese Zither and told a story of Chinatown long ago. The people looked forward eyes glaxzed over, seeing things in their mind's eye that the Gu Jai Guy revealed with words and music. And the wall became an obsolete technology of the past.

Paternal Grandparents

I started going through old pictures looking for images of old Chinatown. My mom had taken a ton of old lion dance stuff.... which I just can't find. But coming across some really old photos, I figured I better scan these first before they get lost. 

Below is my Paternal Grandfather. I have no idea what is written on the back. I was told that my Grandfather was the one sitting in a chair. Who is the other guy? I have no idea. What do I know about my paternal grandfather? Apperntly he was educated in Japan (this is pre-WW2) and he was some sort of aristocrat. My dad told my mom that he still remembered a little bit of growing up in the compound they lived in. Basically they were 1% and I believed my grandfather fled (maybe to Taiwan) when the Japanese invaded. (maybe) I also think he was Governor. That's it and mostly guesses. Oh. My grandfather had four wives at the same time. That was legal back then.

                              

I posted this on Facebook and my friend Nellie helped me to translate:

"It's a letter of sorts from your uncle to your dad saying he found him in China. Also, the photo was taken from when he went studying abroad in Japan. He was 21. Sitting down is your grandpa and standing is your uncle. And to "remember that". I could have missed some parts but I'm sure that's it"

To clarify.. my Grand Uncle (my father's Uncle) found my Grandfather in China. That's actually pretty important to me because that means that he remained in China or returned after the war. It also means my Dad had an Uncle.

                                                

Above is a picture of my Paternal Grandmother. 

 She actually died during my lifetime I think. Stomach cancer. My mom told me it is possible that too much salted fish is the cause. She was in Hong Kong when she died. She was the fourth wife of my grandfather. She had fled to Hong Kong with my father. I don't think they saw or heard from from my Grandfather again.

Going through and scanning a ton of pictures... I can tell you I am tired already. I don't know why but that stuff wears me out real quick. It's also hard to not get sucked into the pictures I am scanning and start staring at them.

I also noticed that a bunch of the Noah's pictures from an old phone appear to be tampered with.

Who edited David Hasselhoff into the photo? Was this Grace? I don't think so. Someone hacked in just to tamper with Photos? How strange. 

If anyone can read what is written on the back of my photos and translate, that would be awesome.  

Please Share, maybe somebody knows somebody that is related to me from this side of the family. It would be cool to compare notes. I guess what I am supposed to do is stick stuff on Ancestry.com