Making Do . . .

. . . Living on the Sidelines

     We seem to forget what creatures of comfort we've become in that blip of history known as the latter half of the 20^th Century--an eyeblink in the vast panorama of time on this planet when we thought we could have it all, consumer goods on credit without end--and the bill would never come due. Amen! My parents Great Depression generation would have scoffed at such a free lunch notion. And now, here we are, in the 21^st Century of apparent regression to an older, perhaps more common, mode of existence—doing with less.


       Here's one story I heard about recently.

our first house in Kurashiki, Japan, circa 1984

       This is another story that awes me and I have a great deal of admiration for the young woman in question. She is around 30-years old, has a 2-year-old boy and lives in an old Japanese style house in an area of Tokyo—much like the old house we used to live in in Kurashiki back in the 1980s when we were first married.

       But there all similarities end.


       This woman's electricity bill comes to only 500 yen/month (about $5). For comparison's sake, our electric bill minimum is around 2000 yen/month ($20), and that's when we are away. In the summer, with air conditioning, it comes to around 8000 yen/month ($80) and it usually averages around 5000 yen/month ($50) when we are living here.


       So, how does she do it?


       I can remember when my family lived in a cold-water tenement without central heating back in the 1950s United States. I can also remember, at that time, when we had no TV, only a radio with The Shadow and The Creaking Door to listen to, an old- fashioned washing machine with a roller-type wringer that my mother once got her long hair caught in, briefly, before having the presence of mind to release the safety lever, and the iceman cameth regularly to resupply the ice box. The electricity bill was pretty much kept to a minimum in those days.


       Fast forward to the present. Our previously mentioned young woman has no refrigerator or washing machine (and, I assume, no ice box either since they don't make them anymore). Besides, even if there were an iceman, she probably couldn't afford the ice. But, not having a fridge is no problem, she states, since she goes shopping nearby regularly for the simple vegetables and other ingredients she needs and doesn't require refrigeration.


       Owning no washing machine or dryer and not having enough money to go to a laundromat, she washes clothes like grandmother did, by hand in a wash tub and scrubbing board (the corrugated kind used in jug bands). Using all the resources at her disposal, her 2-year-old son happily agitates the clothes by stomping around on them and splashing in the tub and having a wonderful time doing it.


       She does have electricity, of course, hence the 500 yen/month electricity bill. How does she keep it so low? Obviously, having no electric appliances, no TV, no computer, etc., saves a lot on the bill. But, to further pinch the yen, she has only three light bulbs that she moves around from room to room as needed. Is this woman wretched and depressed and wailing about the cruel fate that has reduced her to this penury? Nope! She comes across as a very positive person on the TV program that featured her story, saying that her grandmother lived pretty much the same way after the war and taught her how to live.


       She's no fool either. She states, firmly, that she is living an eco-friendly life style.


       My hat's off to her.

                                 --------------------------------

       If you got this far, here are a few statistics:

       Here in Japan now, one in four men [25%] live on less than 100,000 yen/month (less than $1000/month), and one in three women [33%] do so, as well. That's as much as the rent for a decent small apartment. We, who are conditioned to the consumer ethos of the last century, simply scratch our heads and wonder how these people manage to survive!

        The story is similar in the US and the United Kingdom.

[Click to see]

One in Four Americans [25%] Say They Are Poor

More than Half of UK adults 'living on the financial edge'

My Hero

     A 96-year-old gentleman walking with a cane and carrying a bag full of money was picked up by the police at the Nagoya Airport recently. The story is true, funny and inspirational because it shows that one is never too old.

      It seems the old gentleman had a domestic disagreement with his 87-year-old wife—in more blatant terms he and the old lady had a fight. That they actually had a fight at that age shows a certain feisty spirit on both their parts. The kind of spirit that may have been conducive to the fact that they have been married probably for some 70 years give or take since people married much younger in those days.


      Many a couple, I am quite sure, have had their “I'm-out-of-here!” moments and stormed out of the house in a huff and a snit. Yours truly included. But, good lord!, at 96? I stand awed in admiration and can only hope that there, thanks to fortune, will go I. Not so much the fight, but the spunk to do something about an uncomfortable situation and make a change. A long drive in the country, for example, can give you the space and time to cool off—for both. Then the issue can be dealt with more rationally and calmly with more listening and less shouting and scoring points.


      But our 96-year-old went far beyond a mere drive in the country for a few hours. He decided to start a new life if you please, or even if you don't please. He walked out of the house, with the assistance of the cane, of course, with a traveling bag, went to his bank and withdrew 28,000,000 yen in cash and stuffed it into the bag.


      He had traveled to Okinawa in the past and thought he liked it there. (It's a little like going to Miami Beach.) He bought an airline ticket to Okinawa with the intention of setting up a new life there. Remember, this is a 96-year-old using a cane, with the presence of mind to get to the airport, buy a ticket, check in and go through immigration and security while carrying a bag containing 28 million yen (nearly $300,000), board the plane and get a hotel in Okinawa. (I wonder how Airport Security didn't pick up that much money, it must show up on the X-ray even though it wouldn't set off the metal detector.) 


      Meanwhile, I suppose, his wife filed a missing persons report with the police.


      After a several days stay in Okinawa, the old boy decided he didn't like Okinawa enough to live there after all, so he bought a ticket back to Nagoya with the intention of going to Kyushu and trying his luck with resettling down there. But, when he deplaned in Nagoya he was met by the police who picked him up and escorted him back to his loving (one would hope) wife. Hopefully their reunion was one of welcome home and not more recriminations.


      I'm an optimist and opt for the welcome home scenario. I like to think the old boy thought the old girl isn't so bad after all if she can still care enough to fight with me. And maybe the old girl thought, well, this old guy still has some spunk left in him. Maybe they will look at each other with newly opened eyes and think, hey, things could be worse! 

      But, then, I'm an incurable optimist. And I like it that way.

Age Discrimination and Other Rip Offs

Analysis of Accidents by Older Drivers in Japan

WARNING: MAJOR BITCH TO FOLLOW

     I am 71-years old and considered pretty well preserved—in good health, mental faculties intact, exercise regularly, have good reflexes, excellent corrected vision and have been driving since I was sixteen. A car is like an extension of my body and I don't think about driving any more than I think about how I walk. Well, full disclosure, at the moment I'm in the middle of doing rehab for the leg I broke last February when I lost my balance while doing a yoga exercise, so I do think about walking for the time being.

        OK, so my drivers license is due for renewal in December when I will be 72 and I would normally get a reminder to report to the Drivers License Center for renewal. But this year, I got a notice in the mail saying that I would have to undergo an additional procedure before I could even think of going for the usual renewal.

        If I wish to renew my drivers license I must report to the facilities of a local driving school, attend a three-hour lecture in Japanese (less than one third of which I will understand) and pay the exorbitant amount of ￥5,800 [about US$60] on a fixed income for the privilege. Then, and only then, will I be allowed to apply for a renewal of my drivers license.

        At first I was so pissed off, that I told my wife that I was thinking about not bothering to renew it and let her do the driving. She, however, has had to have surgery on both her eyes for retinal problems and has difficulty driving at night, whereas I have no such problem. So, I will have to undergo the inconvenience and boredom of an incomprehensible three-hour lecture and shell out the fee as an extra added insult.

        There may or may not be some reasons for raising this obstacle to senior drivers, but the cost and location of this lecture make it suspect. Also, there are no physical tests involved to screen for vision and coordination that would make some sense. No, only an endlessly boring (even if you can understand it) lecture and a rip off fee of $60. As for the location, it isn't even in a public traffic safety facility, but in a private driving school. You should know that driving schools in Japan charge outrageous fees for their driving lessons. I've often suspected, tough I have no proof (except maybe for this choice of a lecture venue), that there is a tacit agreement between the examiners and the schools to fail the students a few times in order to increase revenue. The school gets to charge for additional lessons, and the license center gets another fee for each additional driving test. Cozy!

        This pre-renewal lecture is blatant age discrimination and a kind of hidden tax in my estimation. It is well known that Japan is a rapidly aging society and the number of older citizens driving cars is increasing commensurately. In a paper entitled “Analysis of Accidents by Older Drivers in Japan” by Kazumoto Morita and Michiaki Sekine of the National Traffic Safety and Environment Laboratory, Japan, among the overall number of traffic accidents, those by seniors increased while those for middle aged and younger drivers decreased from 1993 to 2003, probably reflecting the increased ratio of older drivers to younger in the population.

        Comparing the number of accidents per 100,000 drivers license holders, however, the rates for younger drivers from 1993 to 2003 is considerably higher than both middle aged and older drivers and has remained rather consistent around 1,800 accidents per year. There is a slight rise over the same period for both middle aged and older drivers but the line graph is almost parallel averaging about 800 accidents per year--no significant difference between middle aged and older drivers.

        I have to conclude that this pre-condition to getting a drivers license renewal for seniors isn't designed to ensure traffic safety, but to bilk a bit of baksheesh out of the wealthiest element of the Japanese population, the elderly. See, they aren't spending their money to boost the economy, but saving up for their lavishly expensive funerals.

        Me? I'd rather have a drivers license. 

Call Me Mr. B. – Fourteen

Grade 4

Picture Pie

     We've all heard about integrated learning where one type of lesson can morph into another, so why not integrate Art and Math. Every kid knows that when Mom offers him some pie he's not going to get the whole pie but a fraction of it—better know as a piece of pie.

        While browsing through a bookstore some years ago I ran across a book called “Picture Pie” in which the artist composed an amazing array of imaginative pictures using circles and fractions of circles cut out of colored construction paper. I bought the book and kept it in my library.

        Fast forward ahead a few years. I'm in Japan, setting up an art program and looking for ideas for lessons that are a little, shall we say, left of center, educative, that might capture the imagination of primary school kids and would be doable. Kids this age are interested in their stomachs and the natural world around them, especially living things like animals and insects. Beetles are big in Japan where we have a rather large variety of shapes and sizes.

        I got the Picture Pie book off the shelf and started looking through it again, this time thinking about ways that I could adapt the technique to a project for my 4^th Grade class. It was obvious that you could tie the lessons to food and Math through the idea of cutting a pie into fractions, and that was how I introduced the project. Using large circles cut from colored construction paper I demonstrated how you could cut the circle into halves, quarters, eighths, even sixteenths and three-quarters.

        When they understood the concept of dividing the circle, which all were readily able to do having already studied fractions in their Math class, I discussed and demonstrated how to assemble the various shapes to form an abstract picture of some familiar object—such as the baby chick on the right. The image consists simply of a three-quarter yellow circle and three one-eighth circle pieces, one yellow and two orange, a small black circle either cut out of construction paper or simply drawn with a black felt tip marker and a few lines with the marker to represent legs and a tree branch.

        Abstracting shapes of this nature is, of course, very challenging even for the teacher. Consequently I didn't expect a lot of creativity in this project and allowed it to be an exercise in cutting, pasting, design and manipulating of the shapes. I had lots of examples on display that the children were free to copy and/or try to make their own pictures. They were required to create six different pictures that were to be arranged and pasted on large circles. The arrangements were then laid out on large sheets of white drawing paper to represent a bunch of helium filled balloons tied together with string as if they were being sold at a circus or fair or festival. Looks good enough to eat—if you slice it right!

To be continued...

Call Me Mr. B. – Thirteen

Grade 4

Jigsaw Puzzle

       The objective of this lesson is to create a 12-piece jigsaw puzzle on a medium heavy weight sheet of white drawing paper that can be cut into pieces that will hold their shape well enough to be reassembled into a completed picture puzzle by other people. This was a project for two classes—about three to four hours.

3 vertical, 2 horizontal wavy lines = 12 pieces

        I first instructed the kids to divide their papers into 12 irregular shapes. Using the whiteboard I drew a large rectangle to represent their papers and demonstrated how to estimate and divide the paper into thirds horizontally and quarters vertically by drawing small ticks along the top and left sides of the paper. Then they simply had to draw three vertical and two horizontal wavy lines creating 12 pieces (count 'em) of different jig saw puzzle type shapes that could be fitted together to recreate the picture. When to lines were done they were traced with a black felt tip marker.

       The children were required to make 12 different pictures based on 12 words that I had written on the whiteboard: circle, square, rectangle, heart, star, your name, a word, a number, a flying thing, an insect, a plant, an animal. I encouraged them to use their imagination, especially with the abstract shapes, and try to go beyond drawing, say, a simple circle, but adapt the circle to a real object that is round in nature: a ball, an orange, the sun, etc. I also told them to take the shape and size of each piece into consideration when designing the individual pictures so that the overall drawing would be compositionally interesting without too much “lonely” white space. When the drawings were finished I would look at them and OK or suggest improvements as necessary. Once OKd the drawings were once again outlined with a black marker.

         In the second class the kids used color magic markers to color and design their pictures and then cut them into 12 pieces along the wavy lines. For the rest of the class period they exchanged puzzles and tried to make each others' picture puzzles. It kept them pretty well absorbed for 10 or 15 minutes.

 

Jigsaw Puzzle

To be continued...