Re: Borderline state

Do you know this condition, this borderline state where you are already not asleep but neither are you awake? In this shallow and ephemeral state, an idea, an understanding, maybe even a realisation of sorts, or a solution to a question that has troubled you for long suddenly visits your mind. You have it by its tail, you're confident it's in your grip. Yet a moment later - you can't tell exactly how long as you don't have a clear sense of time - it's gone, slipped through your fingers. Your mind is completely blank as you try to restore it in your mind, to no avail.

So, do you know this condition? Have you ever experienced it?

Today, I finally found words to describe this condition.

Consumption tax rise and Japan's cautious shops

April 1 is not only April Fools Day where I am now. This year it brings one of the biggest changes in Japan in a long time. For the first time since 1997 the consumption tax goes up from 5% to 8%. 100 yen shops will sell stuff for ¥108 yen, not ¥105, the figure we've come to like in the past years. All other prices will rise, too. As a society averse to major changes, it is interesting to see how the Japanese society, particularly retail businesses, respond to the tax rise. The public, naturally, is not happy, although there are people who understand that change is necessary after years of stagnation.

Speaking of major change, I should point out that I have been surprised many times in the past at how little of it happens in Japan. Of course, it is all relative, and one has to give the Japanese society credit for at least coping well with change, if not welcoming it. What happened three years ago is illustrative here: I admire the way the people and the country responded to the greatest disaster in the nation's history in March 2011. Still, as someone who grew up in a turbulent time (I was nine when the Soviet Union collapsed on all of us), I find the stability in Japan pretty intriguing. Just an example: when I returned to Japan for the first time in two and a half years last summer, I was astonished by how little had changed in my absence, despite the Great Northeastern Disaster. The prices were the same everywhere - not just in kombini, but in pretty much every shop I visited. Railway prices were the same, the train schedules were unchanged, people were as friendly. Of course, two and a half years is too short a time, but even in England, where I spent the last couple of years before coming to Japan, prices change nearly every month (hello, Sainsbury's shoppers!).

Perhaps mindful of this wariness towards abrupt changes, the shops in Japan were very careful considering the psychological consequences of the tax rise in consumers. I am no expert in consumer psychology (although I have taken part in numerous consumer behaviour experiments at Cambridge. As a subject!) but even I understand that sudden rise in the prices will definitely result in a decrease in sales. The shops in Japan responded in their own ways and there was no single strategy, but what some shops did was quite peculiar.

One day in early March, on a trip to my local supermarket (which happens to be owned by Walmart) I noticed that everything there had become cheap overnight. Wow, I thought. I had completely forgotten about the expected tax rise and the only reason I could think of at the time was that the supermarket was going through renovation and the price drop was to lure customers away from competitors.

It took me a few days to understand that all products had become 5% cheaper. Only then did I realise that instead of showing new, increased prices, the supermarket had decided to separate the tax from the price of the product altogether. On my next grocery trip, I looked closely at the fine print besides the price, which, instead of the usual "tax included" now said "tax excluded".

For many people around the world - our friends in the US, for example - this is the usual state of things. They are used to the mathematical acrobatics of calculating in your head the tax and adding it to the price. But not me. My humanities brain, tired after a full day of reading Japanese articles, goes totally blank when I attempt this. Moreover, I feel cheated at the till when I am charged 8% more without being reminded, not because I don't want to pay the tax, but because I prefer to know how much I am going to pay before I go to the counter. So, if they had asked me before introducing this cruel practice, I would have told the overly cautious retailers: I prefer seeing the higher price than applying, in my head, the formula x+0.08x to every price every time, day, week and month!

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: Comedy and comedians

I have always said that I don't like comedy as a genre of cinematography. I don't find Adam Sandler and Chris Tucker funny. I'd rather watch some melancholic and thoughtful stuff by a little-known Asian cinematographer than chuckle at the funy lines by Woody Allen characters. I don't understand the secret behind the success of Eddie Murphy films. I simply can't enjoy comedy.

That said, my favourite writers and speakers are all comedians. I deeply enjoy every word uttered (and written) by George Carlin. My favourite columnist is Charlie Brooker and I like reading Rod Liddle's pieces full of profane humour (although I don't always subscribe to Rod's ideas in general). Stephen Fry is among my all time favourites, not only in TV, but also in books and other stuff. And there are many others who I cannot remember right now, but who are there.

Is it me, or is there something wrong with comedy films?