Movie Sign! - The World According to Monsanto

I've been hearing about Monsanto a lot these last few months. Enough to make some judgments on the company, but i've never really had a good picture of what it has done.

Ray had gone to a conference about raising awareness about GMO plants and their effects on small farms and communities. One of the attendees was a French journalist who made a movie about Monsanto. In it, she gathers information about Monsanto via the internet, typing in queries as an person who honestly knows nothing about the company then following the stories and interviewing the people involved.

You can watch it here.

or click here for a torrent of the full movie file

lost in transmeation

It's been particularly difficult not to learn any Japanese here in Japan. Try as i might, some Japanese words and phrases have seeped into my vocabulary alongside the small amount of Dutch that i know. Occasionally these phrases even spout forth from deep within my diaphragm like some sort of linguistic spit-take, often at other people, with mixed results.

Actually, i've been trying to learn as much Japanese as i can. Though, sometimes i want to speak Dutch to the people around me for some odd reason. Perhaps my brain hears a foreign language and immediately begins rummaging around the "foreign langauges" memory bank pulling out nothing but Dutch words and tossing them back on the pile (yes, sometimes i feel like my memory is just a giant pile but much like the state of my room, it's an organized chaos. eventually i'll find what i need. if i know it to begin with...).

Anyways, it's been fun learning Japanese syntax and structure and trying to put the few words i know into some semblance of a sentence. But one of the most interesting and humourous things about the Japanese language is their onomatopoeia. They don't have onomatopoeia just for sounds like "thud" or "bark", they also have sounds for different states of objects or certain actions.

For example, something that spins or an object that curls around in a spiral goes "guru guru". Like if you want to tell someone to roll up the garden hose, you could tell them to "guru guru" the garden hose. "Hokka hokka" is another good one. It's used for things that are hot and steamy. Hot, steamy rice is "hokka hokka gohan". Or you can "chun chun" (dip) a french fry in some ketchup. Or "badda badda" (take apart) some fresh peas or a Lego creation. These words just kind of give a physical feeling to these actions. I love it.

Best part is, there are these more widely known ones, a lot of them used in manga, but you can pretty much make up your own. I guess as long as there is two words together and people can guess what you're talking about, sometimes you can get some pretty funny reactions.

secondhand shopping is the bust!

I officially love recycle shops in Japan. Not only are they more organized than your typical Value Village, they have far more variety and higher quality as well. Plus, most of the items here have some sort of English saying on them that you would never find back in Canada.

Usually, when i go to another town, i go with someone who can translate a little for me so i never really felt like i was on my own. But a few days ago, i went on my first solo adventure this last Sunday and it turned out to be a success. I went to Naganuma by bike, which took about 45 minutes pushing a hefty wind the whole way. Recycle shops were high on my priority list and there were two that were open that day. The first one yielded a basket of pins that were ¥20 each. I think i bought half of them.

The second recycle shop, called Happiness as i later found out, was set up more like an antiques shop where things are loosely organize and if you want to find anything, you need to spend time digging through the shop. When i entered Happiness, i was the only one there. When the owner lady found me, she was very curious to know who i was and where i came from. I stumbled through a few stock lines of Japanese and she eventually found out that i came from Canada and that's about it. She seemed impressed nonetheless. I eventually found some small Anpanman slippers for ¥300 that i wanted to give to Toshie who at age one and a half is a huge fan. I told the lady i wanted to buy the slippers and she not only lowered the price to ¥200, but threw in a frog puppet thing too. I couldn't believe my luck.

Toshie loved the slippers. I was slightly jealous, they look pretty comfy.

Yesterday, we visited Second Street in Sapporo. This is the secondhand store that's set up like a department store, blaring American gangsta rap over the speakers. They had a huge array of different clothing. The brand name clothing had it's own section and some of the t-shirts there cost up to ¥9000. Then there was the low end section, where t-shirts cost about ¥1000 or less. I found a pretty crazy The Clash t-shirt for only ¥300.

No fruitless recycle shop visits yet. No doubt i will be returning.

intermission: i'm on tv! (a silly video)

They just got a new iMac here so of course i have to mess around with the built in camera a little. Kazu thought this one was funny and requested i post it.

That is all.

Japanese TV

When people think of Japan, they often think of the crazy TV shows they have here. Well, i have seen a few crazy shows on YouTube, but there are a few that i've watched here that were pretty entertaining. Most of the shows here are either variety shows with some over-excited host or game shows with some over-excited host. Perhaps because space is a premium here in Japan, so they need to operate within studios. Maybe also to save money, i'm not really sure. I'm just speculating from very little input.

Anyways, one of the shows that's a favorite here in the Epp household is called Million Family. I thought it was called Million Yen Come True for a long time because of the little bits of English on it. I like it too, because they have lots of diagrams showing what's going on, so i don't need to understand Japanese to enjoy it.

It's a game show where a family competes against the hosts for money. The first half of the show is usually a Hide and Go Seek game where the family picks three people to hide somewhere in their house for a half an hour while the three hosts try to find them. The hiding spots are sometimes pretty elaborate and clever. I took a little video of them hiding one of the girls:

As you can see, the family can also plant traps around the house. Usually tripwire stuff where a ball rolls down the stairs into the host or a hole covered with carpet so the host falls into it. In this episode, one of the floors of the rooms was covered in sticky tape and lego. If you try to jump over the pool, you'll hit the lego like the guy did in the video.

One thing that a lot of Japanese TV shows do is they very blatantly use cliffhangers. Usually three or four times in one show, sometimes even the same cliffhanger. In this show, a trick they do is if a host is nearby where a player is hiding, they slow down the clip and start talking excitedly "are they going to find her!? are they!?" then cut straight to commercials. Dirty, dirty tricks.

Another show that's been pretty memorable, was an hour long instant noodle special where four quirky hosts visited an instant noodle company and try all their new kinds of noodles. Trust me, there are enough strange noodles to warrant a full hour. They have one called American Noodle where the noodle is a full 10cm shorter than the normal ones. Because Americans don't like to slurp their noodles. They also had a seafood one where you heat up milk and pour it in. Sounds interesting and i've seen it in convenience stores here, but i haven't been able to try it yet.

Food Is Important Addendum

Aaron just reminded me of a few things with his comment on one of my posts.

First, he reminded me that i need to read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollen, which Ray had told me about a few weeks earlier. Second, of TED Talks. A brilliant little website full of interesting videos from people around the world.

I recommend you check out this one with Michael Pollen.

So, remember when i was talking about trying to get a ukulele?

Well, it seems word got around fast that i was a "professional" ukulele player. Which is not entirely true. It is true that I play in a band that features a ukulele--one that my brother plays--one which sometimes gets a little bit of pocket money for gigs, but that doesn't mean i'm suddenly a ukulele wizard. Nor a professional. It's not exactly my profession.

Regardless, word got around and it triggered a nationwide hunt for a ukulele for me. At least five people who popped by the farm every once in a while said they knew where to get a ukulele and would do their best to find one.

The hunt would have ended much sooner, but, you see, i'm a little picky with my ukes. Most of the ones i've seen in Japan have the wrong kind of tuning pegs. Even when i went to a higher end music store, all of the ukes there, yes even the ones that were about ¥40000, didn't have tuning pegs that had the little gears. They were all just pegs, difficult to stay in tune and required very fine motor skills to operate. Eventually, when it seemed i wouldn't be able to find the kind that i liked, i settled on a cheap one that we found at a recycle shop for ¥4000.

Not a few days later, one of the other ukulele hunters found a very, very nice Yamaha ukulele that her late mother had given her. She couldn't play it herself, but really wanted to hear someone play it. So, now i have it and i kind of feel guilty for having something so nice. It's much nicer than the one i have back in Canada.

Since getting these ukes, i've already played two solo shows. They consist mostly of covers, like "When I'm Sixty-Four" by the Beatles and "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and "Mr. Mercury" by the Secondhandpants. They were simple, like the ukes themselves, but they seemed to be a hit, even though most people cannot understand the lyrics. I can already sense that people will want me to play more as the summer moves on.

Guess i need to practice more.

Food Is Important pt.2: Science Knows All?

Ah, this topic feels a gathering hurricane in my brain. It's chaotic and flying loose within grey matter, yet with a certain gathering force. Somewhere, somehow this whole thing will come crashing together in some brilliant display of typery...or bloggery. Not sure which. Until then, though, i'll have to be satisfied with short disjointed stories or mind purges. Bear with me.

This post is a retelling of a story i heard from Ray a few days ago. He didn't say where this happened, i'll have to get more info on it when he returns from his week long trip. It has my embellishments all over it, i apologize. I'm just going to dive into this one...

It seems that science has taken over our minds. It seems to decide things for us. We've bought into it completely and follow it like dedicated cultists.

Well why not? Look what we've got from it. Computers, cars, boats that can carry tons of cargo, airplanes that can fly people from one side of the world to the other, space shuttles that open up the possibility for exploration beyond our world. Heck, now we can simulate the taste of bacon without the presence of bacon! Or we can cure polio or measles. All it takes is a tiny injection. That's pretty cool, i think.

But, it's gotten to the point where people don't care about their health and they eat the synthetic foods that science has created and that science in turn told them it was bad because we can just hop over to the local doc and get fixed up. It's okay, you can eat that entire bag of Smarties. Go ahead. Science will save you.

Well, if science is this good for us, well surely we can use it to save other people in other countries. Specifically, third world countries where food is scarce. Science could bio-engineer high-yielding strains of rice for these people, saving them from their hard lives. Sounds like a solid plan. No genetic engineering, just straight up cross-pollination. A clean effort.

Okay, done. But why is it that instances of starvation are higher in the areas where these new strains are being used?

One thing that the scientists failed to mention to their recipients is that the new strain of rice has a shorter stalk than the normal variety. Not a big deal for affluent westerners, but to other people who have built their lives on surviving, it means the world.

Since there are few tractors in the developing world, people still need to use other sources of power. Namely, animals. Animals need food, too. Rice stalks will do. But if their crops don't produce enough food for their animals, what do they have that they can feed their animals with? Their own rice? Plus, some people still use straw to make the roofs of their houses or other practical items.

Also, the new strain demands more nutrients from the soil. Suddenly, farmers have failed crops of the new strain. They ask the scientists what's going on. Simple, the scientists say. You need this fancy chemical fertilizer. Oh, i happen to have some right here. It's not free, though...

Science is imposing it's culture on people who have figured out how to live on their own already. Sure, it's not the comfy lifestyle we're used to, but maybe they're used to their lives. Or maybe there are other, more constructive, less imposing ways to help out.

Food is Important

Usually when i don't write something for a while whether it be a blog post, an email or a song or short story, it's because i get hung up on how to convey my ideas to the reader or things just don't sound good enough. It happens when i try to write about actually important issues because they're more delicate than the usual light-hearted ones.

This post has been circling in my head like a buzzards over a dying mule and every time i think i'm about to get some meat for this post, the mule gets up and drags on. So, i'm finally going to write it and i'm going to try not to edit it too much. I'll warn you right now that i might start to rant. It's hard not to with the things i've been learning here. Like the fact that food is important.

I thought i knew that already. I thought everybody knew that already. We need food to live. But it seems that our farming system doesn't know that. Apparently, there is a shortage of food around the world because farmers can get more money if they sell their crops for bio-fuels. I guess all of the farmers who do so just assume that someone else will be there to do the food farming. It sounds like that whole psychology thing where the larger the crowd is, the less chance a person will get help because everybody thinks someone else will do it.

Also, we've put a distinct emphasis away from farming. Less than %2 of the population actually farms in North America. This means that cities are possible. People now have time to do other things with their lives. Like work in an office, go to school full time or do scientific research. Sure, this shift has given us some useful things like medical science and computers, but now people don't have to look after themselves. Just work your 8 hours a day, get your paycheck and then veg out in front of the TV or internet with a sub you picked up on your way home. I know that's what i did back in Winnipeg. I love my subs, but i don't really know where the food came from exactly or what kind of work went into getting the food into my hands.  Money seems like it distances people from each other.  It's another middleman of sorts.

Here at the farm i'm staying at, they sell directly to people. They do all their own advertising and they've created a community of people who feel like they need to know where their food comes from. The people who buy food from here were even invited over for an event one day, where they actually got to participate in planting the rice that they will buy when it is harvested.  Now the people can appreciate the farmers and their work and even say that they helped.  I feel like that is so important now.

I'm not sure if this is making any sense, i'm finding it difficult to convey my thoughts properly through writing.  This feels like it would be best discussed in person.  But, i just hope i've instilled some thought in you about where your food comes from and who put the effort into growing your food, not just making it at a restaurant or stuffing it into a sub.

haiku while you work

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they know it's lunch time
when they gather at your feet
chickens are viscous

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