Missing food

When I was in Cambridge, I used to miss Japanese food. Naturally, I missed sushi. I missed the cheap kaiten (conveyor belt) sushi at 105 yen per plate. I missed eating 18 plates of it in one sitting, washed down with ice glass or two of Japanese beer. I missed the softness, texture and taste of the noble fish - tuna, or salmon - in the nigiri sushi, but I also missed the taste of not so traditional combinations: onion salmon, salmon with burned cheese on top, the ubiquitous Californian rolls.

I missed karaage chicken (aka Japanese Fried Chicken, or JFC) so much that I learned to cook it after despairing to find it in England. I cooked it so many times that in the end my karaage tasted just like the original.

I missed the furai (from the English 'fry') foods - the ebi furai being the most desired of the whole family. The chicken katsu (you guessed it right - 'cuts') with mayonnaise on it I missed too - in fact, it was the only dish in the world with which I could tolerate mayonnaise.

I missed the salty liquid and the tasty noodles of ramen. I missed the little strips of nori seaweed on top and the tiny boiled quail eggs that rested on the noodle. I missed the soba and udon noodles served in huge earthenware bowls, their endless varieties, of course, but most often the inaka soba and the kitsune soba. And, speaking of earthenware, it was impossible not to miss the nabe stew (but is it stew?). I missed the white fish and cabbage and little shiitake mushrooms that you can fish out of the huge earthenware pot that cooks on the portable stove on your table while you wait.

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Now, in Tokyo, I miss the sandwiches. I used to eat them because they were a cheap and quick option to college food, but in the end they became a habit. I realise this now as I miss them - I would probably say no if asked, in Cambridge, whether I loved sandwiches. I miss especially the M&S ones - the Coronation Chicken, the BLT, the prawn mayonnaise (I lied - here's another food in which I am happy to tolerate mayonnaise), the chicken salad. Sometimes I crave the Sainsbury's ham hock and extra mature cheddar sandwich. And it was hard to beat the Boots (yes, the chemists who make sandwiches too) bumper sandwiches when you were really hungry.

I also miss the cheese. With all due respect, Japan, you can't handle cheese. Especially the English cheeses - I know I can get mozzarella here, as you're crazy about all things Italian. And maybe some Edam or Gouda if I try really hard. But not cheddar, or red Leicester. I might be wrong, though - I barely know Tokyo after only two and a half months here - so prove me wrong, Japan, do prove me wrong.

What are historians made of? Part 2

When I think about historians, I imagine a group of miners. They are just like your usual miners, wearing their helmets with headlights that send straight beams of light far into the darkness. This light cuts through the cave of the past, snatching tiny bits of history here and there. It also illuminates the way, so to say, retrospectively. Shows us how we came where we are.

I know it all sounds very cliche but this image helps me understand the broader picture, and I think it would be a good analogy to help students imagine the role of the historian. It is handy in outlining the limitations of history writing: no single historian can paint the whole picture with his lonely headlight in the vast and endless darkness. In that respect, every historian is like the blind man from the ancient story about the blind men and the elephant. Only a concerted effort among a group of like-minded scholars can reconstruct the past in a cohesive and meaningful way, but even then it is not guaranteed. Historians might end up as the proverbial blind men if they try too hard to define the whole elephant as one of its parts: its trunk, tail, or ears.

What are historians made of?

What does it mean to be a historian? Does it take a lot to become a good one? Are natural curiosity, good judgement, and passable writing skills enough? Can someone who is curious enough to ask interesting questions and patient enough to sit their arses down for hours every day doing tedious archival work and picking at sheet after ancient sheet of yellow paper write fascinating versions of the past? Are hard work and good imagination sufficient to reclaim from the darkness those little bits of light, hope, love?

Or is there something more that you need?

Can you really call yourself a historian if you cannot cry at the suffering of the generations before you? If the images of broken lives do not move you at all as you look down on them as specimens, objects of study, as mere material. If you can't see the pain, tears and suffering hidden behind every number in that neat table you included in your recent paper. If you can't hear in your mind the voices long lost, can't feel the fear felt long before you were born, can't imagine yourself in the place of thousands - millions - who were fed to the mincing machine of history...

Can you?

Japan and the UN

I have noticed in the past few months that more and more Japanese young people want to work for the UN. Having learned that I have been involved with some UNDP projects back home, they all emit their usual "Eeeee, sugoi!" (Wow! Cool!) They don't know, of course, that my work with the UNDP was very lateral and sucked most of the time. But even if they did, I think it wouldn't matter for them, because just the word 'Kokuren' (the UN) inspires awe in them.

Of course, this is not true about all youngsters in Japan. I am talking about university students with whom I've had contact most of the time. I can't say, therefore, that the group I have in mind is in any way representative of a greater number of young people in Japan.

Nevertheless, the reaction of these few young and very bright people surprised me. These young and bright people understand the importance of having good language and interpersonal skills, and they often put in a lot of effort into improving their English and presentation skills.

Re: productive time wasting

I am a time waster. And I’m good at it too. I waste a lot of time every day. For every hour of work I spend at least two hours not doing anything. Doing anything but work. Postponing the start of the work by all means possible, lazily dragging myself to the point when there’s no chance of escape and my back is finally and truly against the wall.

Well, I hear you say, you’re not alone. What’s so unique about being a time waster, a procrastinator? Nothing, obviously. Every one of us procrastinates on a daily basis, regardless of our occupation, willpower and general state of mind. We all spend away the precious hours (including some of those eight paid-by-employers hours) by doing totally useless things. And don’t tell me that checking email every 10 minutes, reading the news, tweeting and updating Facebook status, munching an apple, etc are not useless things when you’re supposed to be working. There is a theory that an average office worker spends only three hours out of their daily eight actually doing some work. That is five hours, or more than sixty percent of that workers’ time, gone to the gutter. Needless to say, the same can be said about non-office workers too.

But I must say that I am a special time waster. I am different from millions of others who waste time for the sake of wasting time, to make their long hours go faster, to draw nearer the end of the working day. I waste time to be able to work. This sounds absurd, doesn't it? But not only is it not absurd, it is also necessary.

My day always starts with time wasting and I am never able to concentrate on my daily tasks if I haven’t spent a couple of hours on useless stuff. I start the day by checking the email and reading some stuff I usually read on the internet (football pages, news etc). Then on my way to the library, where I do all of my work, the real time wasting starts. I go to a coffee shop to get an americano and linger there for at least half an hour, pretending to be reading that long article in the reviews section of the morning paper. From there I walk to Ryman the stationers on Sidney Street, where I waste another 15 minutes looking at fountain pens and feeling the smooth paper of Oxford notebooks. The nearby Waterstone’s is where I waste most of my time, though: the ground floor with all the new books, none of which I buy, of course; the winding walk up the stairs to the third floor, where I go through the familiar shelves of history and philosophy books. Add another ten minutes wasted in the travel books and guides department, and my time at the bookshop easily passes the hour. From there I walk to Corpus, where I go through the daily ritual of checking my pigeonhole, lingering in the library ground floor near the shelf with the periodicals (Sight&Sound is my all-time favourite magazine on that shelf). Only having made sure that I’ve wasted enough time in the library do I sit down and start working. And I do work for some time, without distractions.

I see this timewasting as a necessary ritual, something to appease my body, to prepare my mind for the day ahead. It is a ritual that helps me trick my lazy mind. It is a kind of ‘no excuses’ approach - having wasted so much time here and there, my mind and body have no excuses at the time when I’m finally at the desk, reading or writing. This understanding, this deal, if you like, between myself and my mind is a part of my attempts to come to terms with my existence, with the problems that only I can solve, the way in which my mind works. I don’t regret the time wasted as it leads to peace of mind and, sometimes, serendipity and inspiration (especially after the long hours spent in the bookshop).

Re: Writing

For someone who spends most of their time writing, preparing for the process of writing, reading in order to write, or simply thinking about writing for the best part of their days, it is easy to forget that writing is a struggle.

It is, first and foremost, the fight with one's laziness (as is the case with any other tedious activity - and writing is tedious!). I believe every one of us is lazy at heart, only some of us can overcome the laziness to actually produce something. I have my own methods of fighting laziness ('tricking' laziness would be a good way to put it), but this post is not about them. Laziness is by far the greatest foe of good writing, because even when you overcome it initially and finish the first draft, it might kick in at later stages (editing, for example) and ensure that you don't put enough effort to finish the work well. Our real selves are our ideal selves minus the laziness. Laziness reduces us to mere mortals and those who can overcome are the ones who can achieve true greatness.

Secondly, writing is a struggle against the endless distractions of the modern age. These distractions - the internet with its Facebook, Twitter, Skype and other networks, as well as the more traditional distractions of sunny weather outside or a crying baby in the room - have actually succeeded in turning us into uneasy beings. We have become unable to sit still without checking Facebook. Our minds wander away after only a few minutes of work. Our attention spans are shortening rapidly. If it continues like this, we will probably become unable to sit down for even two minutes, unable to concentrate, to achieve calm and lucidity of mind so important for thinkers and writers.

Writing is also a fight with one's alter ego. There is no easy way to explain this, but there is another person in each of us that influences the way we think and write. The voice inside us questions the validity of our thoughts, the choice of words, the logic in our argument. Every writer has to negotiate his writing with this inner voice; whatever ends up on the page is an outcome of this consensus.

Re: Coetzee and Auster

JM Coetzee and Paul Auster are the two of my favourite writers. They are also quite alike in style: both explore the vicissitudes of life, the hardships of being a middle-aged man in the modern world. They write about relationships within families. They document their protagonists' fall from grace (and into disgrace, Coetzee's eponymous novel). They are both very important writers of the Anglophone world, masters of the immaculate, perfectly edited prose.

Yet reading Coetzee, I feel that his writing is more powerful, with more sense of purpose. He is perhaps the only writer I have read who knows the insides of our heads and souls so much better than anyone else and, more importantly, can express them with only a few words. He is a sage, in this respect; it is difficult to baffle him. His prose is not flowery and articulate, but through this disciplined style he holds the reader's heart in his hand.

Auster is more romantic, more mercurial, more prone to digress into sentimental and often not very relevant details - this makes him so similar to Murakami Haruki. His prose is also very well-constructed; I am sure he spends three times as much time editing his texts as writing them. The result is impressive - you can't remove a single word from his texts, so well-organised they are.

Yet I find Coetzee's work more powerful, more gripping and, hence, more important and influential.

Re: Making it fun

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received about work is to "try and make it fun." This was especially true about the dull, routine stuff that I had to do in office a few years back. This is definitely true about the exciting but very difficult and lonely stuff that is my main duty these days: writing. But for some reason I have not been able to make writing fun for me. Maybe it is because I take writing my chapters too seriously. Maybe I should learn how not to take them seriously.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy writing. But this joy comes more often after I have printed the whole thing out, the resplendent white pages with rows of black letters making a neat pile on the table. The joy comes from the sense of accomplishment, however temporary, ephemeral and deceptive. It is definitely there with the pleasant dizziness that I feel after saving the document, switching off the computer and opening up a bottle of beer. No quote can convey my feelings about writing as Hemingway's famous "writing is like bleeding."

Since I started my PhD more than a year ago, my supervisor has been telling me to "write as I read." I have understood perfectly well that that's the best way to do academic writing - when the writing evolves, goes hand in hand with reading, and does not come out in one outburst at the end of all the reading. But perhaps the biggest advantage of this method is that by the end of your reading (and before you have even started writing), you already have several pages of writing. That means job half done!

So I've been using Google Drive and Evernote and many pages of good auld paper writing while reading. And today I realised that this is the closest that I can ever come to "making it fun". Because when you're doing it in bits, you are not overwhelmed by the momentous task of typing up 10 thousand words in a week. You do it little by little and the bits add up in the end. I am sure many people have been writing like this for a long time, but for me this has become a revelation. There is light at the end of the tunnel!