Klingsor's First Winter

I’ve coasted on my Japanese skills for probably a decade or so.

I told my wife I felt an email I received from the home builder we were talking to sounded cold, and she replied with my initial email sounded cold too! I was first upset because I asked her to check the email, but then I realized many things, mainly that it’s not her responsibility and I never asked her to check the tone of the email.

So my Japanese can appear semi-fluent, but that makes such mistakes make it sound like I’m a blunt cold foreigner as opposed to a little buddy just doing his best.

The current easiest solution is to just feed things into ChatGPT or something like that, which I do on occasion, but that also makes it feel like the humanity is leaving my body in some ways.

Really, there are likely 20-30 expressions that I just need to memorize when to use, and so IF I use ChatGPT, I need to do regular boring studying of all the phrases it gives me and understanding why it’s giving me them. I need to compare these phrases to what would be said when speaking to someone, so when meeting someone I can match the tone of emails I send.

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We leave the door open to my son’s play area and he has left it to explore the outside world. I’m going to make sure he doesn’t bump his head so I don’t get in trouble.

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EDIT: There’s more than this, there’s the dance of language that has gotten away from me. I need to get the dance back too. I think I had/have it to some extent.

My son is 11 months next week. Almost a year.

That punishment thing I mentioned in my previous entry did not happen.

I did run every day for 21 days or so, but then life (or laziness) got in the way. I’m going to try and run at night.

Our house, or at least the house’s important rooms are clean. We have guests over now and this is brilliant. Also, being lazy in a clean room feels luxurious.

Work is going well. However I feel like all my smoke and mirrors have been used and I have to give it pure raw competence and action now.

I never read that Murakami book I mentioned 8 months ago or so. I forgot I had it. I bought other books to get me back into reading.

I’m carefully looking into buying land and building a house. I don’t want to do anything rash. However, I think it would be good for the family. Not required though. We could be happy where we are. I think it could be a more fulfilling life if we did it. It would mean a higher mortgage to pay back every month, which is always somewhat a risk.

I have a complicated relationship with video games. The relationship is best when I’m listening to video game music on vinyl, and remembering the good times. However, it is fun to get sucked in sometimes.

I’m reading Narnia to my son again. We’re almost done the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. My son likes books, but not Narnia. He likes picture books. Maybe it’s silly to insist on reading, but I hope it to just be one of those daily habits.

I hope to write more. I hope to remember the theme of Klingsor’s First Winter more. I hope to be mindful more.

If I can’t find my keys, etc when I’m leaving the house, I’ll put 1,000 yen in a jar.

If I use my phone for more than four hours a day (to be adjusted), I’ll put 1,000 yen in a jar.

To be added upon later.

Punishment will set me free.

This year’s word is ACTION.

I purposely didn’t put dates visible on posts. It makes everything timeless, or at least that was the intention.

However, I just reread what I had previously written, which was two months ago, and nothing has changed.

May the next time I write be very soon, and with the words bolded: action has been taken.

My colleague’s son was born a week or so ago. He’s already going to the Spanish embassy to get their Spanish passport. I have yet to do this for my son, who is now four months old.

It’s easy to fall into routines where the bare minimum is getting done. The house is clean-ish. Laundry is done. Son is getting his exercises and sleep and feedings in. I am working, which has been stressful for a few months, and will likely be stressful for a few more.

However, my son doesn’t have his Canadian passport. I haven’t renewed my German passport in over a decade, which I think is a step to having my son get his German passport. My son as mentioned doesn’t even have his Canadian passport, nor a Japanese passport (these two I think will be needed when we go to Canada for Christmas, and the Japanese one for when we take him to Taiwan before that). The house has been disorganized forever, and needs a new concept as there are to many things that just don’t have a place they are supposed to be.

We have rooms of stuff we should actually sort through and throw away. Old curtains that are fine but we don’t need. A table we thought would work but ultimately didn’t.

It is easiest for us to leave clothes on our second floor where the living room is, as this is where it feels natural to get dressed (maybe this is the problem!)

In words, it feels like we’re living in our early 20’s, when in fact we are in our early 40’s and there are certain routines that should’ve been put in place long ago, and now with our son, I feel the urgency there even more to give him a structure and not the semi-chaos.

So I want to spend the free time above the bare minimum mentioned above focusing first on throwing things away. This could be using the car and going to the disposal place or to a recycle shop, but just getting rid of stuff we don’t need, and reclaiming space. Then properly putting in more storage and giving things more places to live.

A filing cabinet of some sorts would also be great.

In this chaos, there is also the need to eventually move my office/games room to the first floor, so our son can have a room beside ours. He may sleep with us for months to come, but I think getting this ready would be a good idea.

So I guess:

1. Throw away shit we don’t need
2. Get the floor coating done (I think I mentioned this before)
3. Move my room to the first floor, and give Ori a room for when he’s ready

If I could do this, I would be happy.

My son got up around 12:30am. The time when he first gets up at night ranges from 11:30pm to 1:30am, and 12:30am is about four and a half hours of sleep which isn’t too bad. However, once he was back to sleep around 1:15am, he didn’t wake up again until around 6:30am or so. I was able to naturally get up at 5am, relax a bit, and then finally do the gym and jogging combo that I have wanted to do forever. I went to the store to buy things for breakfast, and made my wife an eggplant omelette.

Then we lazed around and relaxed in the living room, the three of us. Then we had a nap in the bedroom, the three of us. Now I’m in the living room and they’re in the bedroom.

Really feels like a perfect day.

They have strong starts. I secretly I think sound intelligent.

But even if they are intelligent, they could always use an editor. At the beginning, I reread things four or five times to minimize the silly mistakes I can make.

However, I get tired of that. I just want to write something. You know, show that I’m smart.

Then the errors increase and I write a bunch of nothing.

Then I look back on what I read, and feel that I should wait until I actually have a good thought, you know, like in the beginning.

Then I don’t have a good thought and I get sucked into life and my reflecting time decreases to close to zero, as I usually have a phone on me that allows me the pleasure of not having to put thoughts together.

So the solution isn’t waiting for a good hour.

And the solution isn’t write shit and drivel.

The solution is, as it always is, trying hard.

When you say the name Murakami in English, the author Haruki Murakami comes to mind.

When you say it in Japanese, Ryo Murakami may come to mind, or many other people named Murakami. To me, a guy I hated at my last job with the name of Murakami comes to mind.

Let’s call him Haruki to avoid any ambiguity.

My wife hates Haruki. I used to love Haruki with great passion.

I don’t hate him now. I enjoy his type of writing, and I have mimicked it in short stories I have written in the past. However, any perceived depth I used to see in it I no longer see. I see a man throwing paint at the wall and having a pretty end result.

A few years ago people went to town on him for sexism in his books. The female protagonist in 1Q84 seemed hyper-aware of her supple breasts, and I think the male protagonist is forced against his will to have sex with a 16 year old woman. (It’s okay if you’re forced.)

I’m not sure what the general opinion is of him now, or if people just stopped thinking about him, but anyways, I just on impulse bought his latest book in English.

I bought the book because I know I find him easy to read, and not in a Dan Brown way. I may think there’s a lack of depth, but there’s still more beauty in that thrown paint than there is in mindful shit other authors squeeze out.

I want an easy to read book because I want to get back into reading.

I want to get back into reading because it’s a better lifestyle.

But core to a better lifestyle isn’t reading, it’s just that buying books is an easy way to think I am doing something.

I need to get back into a running routine. That is the beginning and end of all in life.

I need to run in the morning because I am a morning person. I go to bed with my son at 8pm, and I get up at 4am.

When I get up, the urge is to drink tea and play video games. I’m not sure I actually want to do either, I think it is just a habit.

My friend Derek talked about laying out clothes the night before, and I think that is the first step.

However, where are my running shorts? In the mess of unorganized clothes in my closet probably.

I need to organize my clothes.

My wife and I are holding on with our son, now 3 1/2 months old. He’s fed, he’s dressed, he gets his vaccines and does the Japanese ceremonies, he sleeps enough and gets to see family. We could do more tummy time for sure, but hey, he rolled over the other day, so something is going okay.

What we are not doing is properly organizing our house, throwing things we don’t need away, and getting into a proper meal routine. With everything else, we are always too tired to take that on.

It is not the act of running or reading that is hard, it is the mental framework needed beforehand that we have a mental obstacle with.

We need to clean up.

This is my 20th year in Japan, and next year it’ll be my 21st, which will be half my life.

While this is the case, it will only be the first year where I have been in Japan half my life, and the 42 years beforehand I will have been in Canada more than I have been in Japan.

In 2005 when I came, the plan was to stay for one year. A person in my training group in the English conversation company I came over for said he was here for life to meet a wife, as Australian life wasn’t for him. I thought he was the biggest loser in the world at 21, but now I admire his clarity (assuming he was not a shitty person). Hopefully he and a wife he met here and perhaps their kids are all happy.

When friends left Japan after their year teaching English, it was always a little sad, but that was the gig, it was something temporary. I didn’t think that I would be here for another 19 years, I thought that it would be my time to go home in another six months, or perhaps a year or to.

One of my best friends left after eight years in Japan, in 2012 (he came in 2004). Eight years seemed like an eternity to us. Could you even return home after that long? He wasn’t happy in Japan, and it was good that he left I think. I think he has gone on to find a life in a place he truly loves.

Last week, I learned a friend of mine would be going home to America in a month or two. I say friend, but we have really only met three or four times. He was a gaming friend. I have two types of gaming friends. The first group is people who enjoy talking about games, going to Akihabara to look at games together, enjoy gaming events, and potentially work in the gaming industry. The second group is people I play games with. This friend was in the second group. In this group, friends have amazing setups with most retro gaming consoles, with the best setups to play them. We play Kururin, Chu Chu Rocket, or Monkey Ball or maybe Rock N Roll Racing.

Since I found out my wife was pregnant last September, I haven’t met him, so it’s been just about a year. Apparently he was planning on moving back for a few months now, but as I never came out anymore, I didn’t know. Now, after 20 years, it feels like he just came here, and I can hardly imagine moving away now. I don’t think he has any unhealthy disdain for Japan, but he has realized that it is not the country for him to live in, and he is taking action to remedy that.

A thought I can’t properly infuse in this is that I am now centered around Tokyo, and for the first 12 years of life in Japan, I was centered in Chiba. If I went out for drinks, it would be somewhere in Chiba, and I wouldn’t care to go to Tokyo. Now, despite living in Saitama, my friends were mainly met online, and we are scattered across the greater Tokyo area, making Tokyo the obvious place to meet. Chiba feels more small and close-knit. Tokyo is big and ever growing. It can change how community is viewed.

When I lived in Kimitsu in the south of Chiba in 2005 and saw another Westerner, I would be happy to see a potential friend. Now, working in Ebisu in 2025, I see hundreds of Westerners a day and think nothing of it.

This somehow influences what I am trying to talk about.

I’m not 100% what I’m trying to talk about though.

I don’t feel like I’m left though. I am not leaving, but I am not left.

(The title is from the Weakerthans song “Left and Leaving”, which I heartily recommend you listen to if you like folksy poetic ditties.)