3 September 2004 (17 Elul 5764)
It often seems to me that in a sense life can be easier for those who do not (have to) think too much even about the most essential things for themselves before taking some action. This can often be because of (or thanks to?) their lack of thought about or blind faith in the things they are going to put into practice. I am not sure how scientific and valid my observation is, but according to my life experiences, I have seen far more women than men who can behave this way. I do not know if there can be any biological basis for this, should my observation be able to be generalized.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not programmed this way. The more essential an issue is, the more I rack my brain about it, postponing putting it into practice even for years or never fulfilling it. If I try to do something that is really essential for myself without fully convincing myself as I am dictated by the society or people of authority, something deep inside me starts sending me signals. This is incidentally one of the reasons why I still remain single.
Healthy skepticism must be a positive thing in the academic world, but in real life situations it can make my life rather difficult. Although I do not think that the same amount of time in the physical sense of the word always means the same for everyone perceptionally, there is of course a limit. If it takes someone else only a year or less to put something into practice, while I have to spend several years to do so or even never fulfill it because of my inclination for skepticism, I sometimes cannot help thinking that I am wasting my precious time.
10 September 2004 (24 Elul 5764)
Until I came to Israel this time, I had been busy struggling with the differences between Israel/Jewish and Japanese cultures, especially those cultural differences that are "invisible", as it were. Fortunately, after ten years of struggling, I can now switch between the two seamlessly and behave more or less naturally in any of them without exaggerating or becoming awkward. One of the first things that drew my attention upon my arrival in Israel this time was something I always noticed but was not so conscious of: in Israel there are so many people, especially over the age of 40, who are overweight, whether men or women, but there are few drunkards, while in Japan there are not so many people who are overweight, but there are many drunkards.
This has lead me to an idea that Israel and Japan are dominated by the culture of eating and the culture of drinking respectively as a means of socializing, and each culture shows tolerance to overeating and overdrinking respectively as well as to their outcomes, i.e., overweight and drunkenness.
As for the overweight of so many people in Israel, it may be possible to say that it is something genetic. It may be one of the reasons, but as I observe how people eat, especially on shabat and holidays, and do not exercise their bodies, I am not surprised at such a large number of overweight people here. Even for a person like me who runs every morning on weekdays, a typical shabat or holiday meal can be too much though it is such a gastronomic pleasure and I enormously enjoy it. Nevertheless, I never eat dessert, which is mostly fruits and cake, not only because I cannot stand sweet things but also because I cannot eat any more. But most of the people around me just eat, eat and eat. You do not have to be a nutritionist to foresee the outcome of such a habit.
This may be one of the reasons why drinking is not part of the Israeli/Jewish culture as you already have a means of socializing and sometimes also as a means of working out your frustrations. In this respect I am clearly a product of Japanese culture. Here in Israel I often miss chances to drink to socialize. On what few occasions I have to drink here I, therefore, have a tendency to overdrink, but I have to be careful as many people here are not so tolerant of the misbehavior resulting from overdrinking.
15 September 2004 (29 Elul 5764)
It seems that the personal network of friends, colleagues, relatives and neighbors is functioning much more effectively in Israel than in Japan. What I mean is not nepotism or favoritism known in Hebrew as protektsya but mutual help and exchange of ideas. I wish I were wrong, but I am afraid that these things, especially mutual help, is becoming less and less frequent in Japan as more and more people prefer getting "sterile" help in exchange for money to helping and being helped by friends, colleagues, relatives and neighbors. One of the main reasons for this tendency in Japan may be the avoidance of contact with people you know because traditionally such a network can do you more harm than good by checking your speech and behavior and exerting social influences upon you. Of course, such social pressure does exist in Israel, too, but much less, thus allowing people to make the best use of their personal network.
Since the first day in Israel I have been helped by a number of people in various things. The (re)start of my life here must have been much more difficult without all the help I have been receiving from them, especially from my closest friend, L.G. My parents and sister in Japan are surprised to hear that I found a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood of Jerusalem thanks to the information I had received from one of my Esperantist friends, M.G. Such a thing is almost unimaginable in Japan, especially in big cities. Actually, I tried to find an apartment here through "sterile" commercial service, but in vain. What distinguishes my present "landing" here from the previous one as a doctoral student 16 years ago is the existence of such a personal network. I hope that I will be able to help these wonderful people when the occasion comes.
Another thing that makes my old-new life here so agreeable and exciting is the fact that there are more occasions in both formal and informal settings to meet friends and colleagues and exchange ideas on academic issues and/or various aspects of life in general. This was one of the things that was missing almost entirely and frustrated me when I lived in Japan. I strongly believe that as the places where ocean currents meet are fertile fisheries, so are the meetings of us human beings. When people with various academic, linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds meet together formally or informally and exchange their ideas, there emerge new ideas that are often much bigger than the total sum of these ideas. Streets, restaurants and university corridors in Jerusalem are probably among the best fisheries in the world as various "weird" people are attracted here, as if by a magnet, from the four corners of the world.
24 September 2004 (9 Tishrey 5765)
There are two things that enormously raise my blood pressure: noise (in all its ramifications) and indifference. As Japan must be one of the noisiest, whether auditorily or visually, among the developed countries, I feel much less stress here in Israel, though I already have a serious problem with my neighbor's dog that does not stop barking.
As far as indifference is concerned, what frustrated me was the indifference of my students: many of them did not react in any manner, whether verbally or nonverbally, so that they seemed to me like robots. Although I have not started teaching here yet, I do not think I will have such a problem here. This is without doubt a great consolation to me.
Bureaucracy is probably a necessary or inevitable evil everywhere in the world. I did not have a special liking for Japanese bureaucracy, but many of the Japanese bureaucrats were at least not so indifferent; they were ready to help us. Although I consider Israelis as most friendly people in general as long as they are my friends or acquaintances, they suddenly show their ugly face once they become bureaucrats.
Almost Kafkaesque experiences may be too familiar to everyone living or having lived in Israel. I had to waste four days struggling with indifferent bureaucrats in Jerusalem, where I live now, and in Ramat Gan, where I will start teaching, just to make an appointment at the Ministry of the Interior to get a working visa, and that appointment is three weeks from now. I was not surprised to hear that a good friend of mine who immigrated to Israel about 15 years ago wept every time she had to cope with bureaucrats here.
Although concrete manifestations of their indifference do frustrate and humiliate me, what bothers me more than anything else is what lies behind this indifference: abuse of their power. The more experiences I have with them, the more convinced I feel that they develop an illusion that they are an omnipotent power to do whatever they want with poor citizens. Such abuse of power often makes them forget that they are supposed to serve us, and not vice versa. But in reality we have to throw ourselves at their feet, as it were, as we are at the mercy of these low-level bureaucrats who are not necessarily smarter than we.